Our First Day Back
Today, after almost a year, we finally made it back to Ntugi Day Secondary School. We spent part of the day reacquainting ourselves with the teachers and the school, and got to see what progress has been made with the program that we implemented last year. The students have continued to use the OLPCs, and the teachers have continued to integrate the computers into classes.
We spent the rest of the day introducing the teachers to Google Docs, which is a web-based service that allows users to create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. These files can be shared with other users, and can be simultaneously edited in real time by multiple people. Here are some photos of us and the teachers:
Here’s a video of the computer lab, with us showing Google Docs to the teachers:
While we were helping the teachers use Google Docs, Mr. Olds, a teacher from our school in Toronto, showed Pippy to Godfrey and Francis. Pippy is a developing environment for Python for the OLPC. Mr. Olds used a sample program called “Guess a Number” to show how Pippy works, and explained how a random number could be guessed using math. Here is a picture, followed by a video, of Mr. Olds and the teachers:
Today was a great day – tomorrow, we plan on showing students what we showed the teachers today. We’re hoping to integrate Google Docs into the program in many ways – we could use documents for essays, and spreadsheets for data collection and processing. We hope the students will be receptive to Google Docs – we’ll keep this blog, along with Flickr, Twitter, and Vimeo updated!
- Connor
