UCC Visits Lewa

Updates

Our trip to Kenya so far has been both eventful and successful – from the journey to our home at Lewa to our work at the school. We hope that this blog post encapsulates what we have achieved since we arrived.

After a very cramped flight and a long drive from Nairobi, we arrived at Marwell Research Station, our home at Lewa Wildlife Conservatory. During the first couple of days, we stayed at Marwell and got the laptops and the rest of our equipment organized. We also began to work on our Solar Suitcase idea, a kit that would allow a student portable wireless internet and computer access powered by solar power, anywhere in Kenya.

Last year, we noticed that when we plugged our solar panels directly into the laptops, they wouldn’t charge as there was too much current flowing into the laptop’s battery. This year, we decided to use a charge controller to limit the current so that the battery would charge. First, we needed to connect our solar panel to the charge controller, however we couldn’t find a  connecter that would allow us to do this. We therefore decided to solder the two together. Matthew and I used our soldering iron to carefully solder the two together and then surround the exposed wire with heat-shrink to seal the connection.

Here is Matthew and Amal checking to see if the heat-shrink tubing has successfully covered the soldered wires completely. 

However, we found out that our solar panels only provided 10W, which would only provide enough power to sustain a charge whereas we needed solar panels that would output 20W which would have enough power to charge the laptops and then sustain at 100%. We are currently looking locally for this type of panel.

On Tuesday, we arrived at the school with the goal of setting up Gmail accounts for every student at the school. This would give the students access to email as well as Google Docs: a service that would allow students to write and save notes and other documents online. The service also would allow collaborative document editing within the school as well as between UCC and Ntugi.

For the next couple of days, we helped set up Gmail accounts for various classes, however we discovered that there was an easier way to do this – Google Apps for Education. This service would allow us to quickly create accounts for every student in the school and group students into their forms. They would all have access to Google Calendars, Google Docs and even their own custom Google search engine. We also bought a proper .com domain for the school so that it would be easier for people to navigate to their website. Check it out at http://www.ntugischool.com.

On Friday, the whole school participated in a track and field sports event. We were invited to watch and even participate in the activities. Richard ran the 400m race, but due to the altitude and heat got very tired near the end. He still managed to complete the race and the school was very appreciative of his efforts.

Here is Richard, racing some Ntugi students in the 400m race. 

The class that won the most events would be presented with a goat as a prize at the end of the day The ceremony was not without excitement, especially when the prize escaped from its tether!

We were very honoured that the school asked Mark and Richard to present the goat (after some students caught and brought it back) to the winning class.

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- Amal