Tanzanian secondary schools typically have very limited resources for things like books and laboratories. Many schools, even in remote locations, have generators that they run in the evening to give students additional study time. This trip I brought about 90 GB of digital content for secondary education with the plan to investigate possible projector options that could be used in a school in a village that could recharge batteries.
Much of the content I brought was assembled by a group of engineers from Cisco for developing countries. Their project is called the Rachel Initiative for "Remote Areas Community Hotspots for Education and Learning". They have a page for browsing most of their content and provide access to all the content files. I also have been collecting short videos of science experiments and explanations as a way to introduce experiments that would be very difficult to do in a village school. I have only about 50 videos so far and have started indexing them to the Tanzanian syllabus for Chemistry, Biology, and Physics. English is the language of instruction in Secondary School and most students struggle to learn English as they try to learn their subjects at the same time. I collected some free audio books from Librivox with the hope that they might help practice listening to English while having some interesting content including classic short stories, bible stories, and the entire new testament.
Collecting content is easy because there is so much available in a country with good internet access. Here in Tanzania though, internet connection is rare in schools and expensive. This content can be supplied to a village school in the form of DVD disks or preloaded on computers. I brought a 30 lumen Samsung pico projector that can play content from a media card without a computer that I had planned to use for the science videos. Testing this at Kilolo Secondary school made it clear that 30 lumens is not enough and the built in speaker is too weak. Fortunately, Ron Reed of Kilolo Star who is also interested in video for schools had brought the Optima Playtime projector, a 50 lumen projector that has a good built in speaker. He rigged up 12 volt battery packs from a drill that can be recharged and play the projector for an hour and a half. I think this solution, in combination with a laptop computer which will be available at most schools, and/or a DVD player will be the best solution and plan to take it to Village Schools next week to evaluate.
I met with Global Outreach who places computers in schools and has a learning center here in Iringa for both teachers and students and gave them a hard drive with all of the content. I have also given sets of DVDs to the director of education for Iringa Diocese schools and will visit Village Schools. The goal for this trip is to learn about a good option, return to the land of fast internet connections and collect more content, and maybe find a grant to provide projectors and content to a number of schools as a trial. I think the projector that Ron Reed had found will be the way to go until more technology comes along and for only a couple hundred dollars per school, teachers could have an excellent resource to help them teach. (Teachers will learn from this content as well)
Shika na Mikono is project for providing low cost science activities for village schools that I have also made a connection with. They are having a workshop of Tanzanian teachers in Morogorro along with a handful of Peace Corps Volunteers this week. Aron Walker is a second term PCV who is leading this effort and he has moved to Iringa to work with Klerruu Teachers college. Aron is interested in video content as well and he and I plan to visit Village Schools together. I created a web page for them where they are starting to assemble activities that will be put into a Latex document. It has been a great trip for this project already and I am looking forward to seeing what we learn at Madisi.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Kilolo Star Vocational School
Our partners in Kising'a decided this year to send all new sponsored students to Kilolo Star Vocational school. 12 students are attending in Kilolo, about 25 km from Kising'a, and studying tailoring, carpentry, and masonry as well as learning some english and introduction to computers. Kilolo Star was founded by Ron Reed, a public attorney from California, who designed his own drilling rig and started a well drilling school and operation. Both the vocational school and well drilling are heavily subsidized by Ron as he gets them established and sustainable. I have been fortunate to overlap with Ron this trip and we have been working together on video content for secondary schools, well rehabilitation business models, and well drilling. Kilolo Star drilled the Ihimbo dispensary wells for St Paul Partners. I visited Kilolo Star today with Ron and a video crew doing a documentary for PBS.
The students were all hard at work the whole time we were there and I met with the computer teacher and helped set up some Kiswahili basic computer guides that she can use to teach her students. Students continue at Kilolo Star for 2 years and should be learning a valuable skill that they can use for employment.
Kilolo Star Website
Blog of last years visit to Kilolo Star
5 of our sponsored Kising'a students
The sewing machines hard at work. Chapa kazi
Tracing a pattern, looks like for a school uniform
The boy tightening the vice is from Kising'a
Gluing primary school desks
Computer lab with XP, 500 MB RAM, 2 GHz P4, 35 GB HD machines
The students were all hard at work the whole time we were there and I met with the computer teacher and helped set up some Kiswahili basic computer guides that she can use to teach her students. Students continue at Kilolo Star for 2 years and should be learning a valuable skill that they can use for employment.
Kilolo Star Website
Blog of last years visit to Kilolo Star
5 of our sponsored Kising'a students
The sewing machines hard at work. Chapa kazi
Tracing a pattern, looks like for a school uniform
The boy tightening the vice is from Kising'a
Gluing primary school desks
Computer lab with XP, 500 MB RAM, 2 GHz P4, 35 GB HD machines
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Acacia Pharmacy
I got to Iringa March 5th and have had good luck meeting people and preparing for several projects. Tomorrow I will go to the village of Image to inspect a well location that I brought a submersible pump to install. We are contracting the help of a very good water engineer here in Iringa. Image also has a secondary school with computers from Global Outreach and I am bringing digital resources for science too.
Our partnership has been supporting the dispensary in Kising'a by bringing medical supplies. LCP sent money with me to do this again. Today, Dr Saga, who stayed at our house in October with his wife Dora, took me to Acacia Pharmacy to purchase a standard list of pharmaceuticals and medical supplies that he prepared for dispensaries. This is the rainy season which means more malaria. The supply list has about 54 different items and we purchased a year's supply of medications for a dispensary serving more than 5000 people for 1.3 million shillings ($900).
I will be going to a second well site on Saturday in Ipalamwa and Kising'a is on the way so I will be able to deliver the supplies and hopefully stay over in Kising'a if public transportation to return is available. It has been amazing how plans have fallen into place so I hope the good luck continues for my 4 weeks here.
This is what 1.4 million shillings looks like. You do not put it in your wallet. The 10,000 shilling note is Tanzania's largest denomination worth about $7.50.
Dr Saga and the Acacia Manager who was preparing the 5 page hand written invoice.
Three people were assembling the pharmaceuticals and packing them into boxes. The woman was embarrassed to be in the picture but I can see that she is smiling so I think it was ok.
Acacia Pharmacy is named after a famous type of African tree with 1 inch thorns that put buckthorn to shame. It is a very nice store where you can get anything you would want from a pharmacy.
We went to Agape Stationery to photo copy the invoice pages with copies for the dispensary, the diocese, and the government district medical officer since Kising'a is a government dispensary. Power was out this afternoon as it has been every two or three days because of rationing hydroelectric power with low water levels. No problem for Agape, they pull out a generator out front and keep the copier humming. Notice the warm African greeting between Dr Saga and his pastor from Ilula who just happened to come by.
The boxes delivered to Iringa Lutheran Centre where I am staying. Fortunately, I was just upgraded to the honeymoon suite so I have plenty of space. It is good that I should be in Kising'a Saturday night because the suite is needed for more fitting guests.
Our partnership has been supporting the dispensary in Kising'a by bringing medical supplies. LCP sent money with me to do this again. Today, Dr Saga, who stayed at our house in October with his wife Dora, took me to Acacia Pharmacy to purchase a standard list of pharmaceuticals and medical supplies that he prepared for dispensaries. This is the rainy season which means more malaria. The supply list has about 54 different items and we purchased a year's supply of medications for a dispensary serving more than 5000 people for 1.3 million shillings ($900).
I will be going to a second well site on Saturday in Ipalamwa and Kising'a is on the way so I will be able to deliver the supplies and hopefully stay over in Kising'a if public transportation to return is available. It has been amazing how plans have fallen into place so I hope the good luck continues for my 4 weeks here.
This is what 1.4 million shillings looks like. You do not put it in your wallet. The 10,000 shilling note is Tanzania's largest denomination worth about $7.50.
Dr Saga and the Acacia Manager who was preparing the 5 page hand written invoice.
Three people were assembling the pharmaceuticals and packing them into boxes. The woman was embarrassed to be in the picture but I can see that she is smiling so I think it was ok.
Acacia Pharmacy is named after a famous type of African tree with 1 inch thorns that put buckthorn to shame. It is a very nice store where you can get anything you would want from a pharmacy.
We went to Agape Stationery to photo copy the invoice pages with copies for the dispensary, the diocese, and the government district medical officer since Kising'a is a government dispensary. Power was out this afternoon as it has been every two or three days because of rationing hydroelectric power with low water levels. No problem for Agape, they pull out a generator out front and keep the copier humming. Notice the warm African greeting between Dr Saga and his pastor from Ilula who just happened to come by.
The boxes delivered to Iringa Lutheran Centre where I am staying. Fortunately, I was just upgraded to the honeymoon suite so I have plenty of space. It is good that I should be in Kising'a Saturday night because the suite is needed for more fitting guests.
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