Tag: computers

Categories
Mombasa

Apple-Cat Part 2

A short while back I did some experiments with making my own workbooks for my students.  They were absolutely a success.  I had conversations with my students like (and I am of course translating), “If a cat is eating a cat, then there are two cats involved, so why wouldn’t I use the plural ‘cats’ in the sentence?”  A completely logical question, and one that I failed to anticipate when I designed the workbook.

My fastest vocational students needed about three hours to get through the workbook and the corresponding review sheet, and it was time well spent.  I could tell from the questions I got that the first workbook was ten thousand times more effective than any previous approach I had tried.

Here are links for the revised workbook and the review sheet:

The downside is that it’s difficult to whip up the energy necessary to draw all the pictures, photograph them, and then clean them up on the computer.  Part of me regrets bringing a normal laptop instead of a tablet.

Because of the time and energy  problem, I’ve been applying the workbook’s methods to more conventional blackboard teaching.  The method is basically to use very few words, but just shuffle them around and observe how the meaning changes.  I typically write sentences on the board and have the students come up and draw a pictures that they think correspond.  It can be kind of fun, and it’s easy.  In the last couple classes, we’ve been dealing with “to” and “from,” like:

  • The boy runs to the girl.
  • The boy runs from the girl to the house.

Etc.  And so far so good.

In other news, I’m in phase two of my arm infection, which means that it’s getting smaller on its own.  Also, as I type this, the school is being painted in preparation for another big competition that will take place here when the term ends.  Someone donated new mosquito nets, too, which will make the dorms a lot nicer.

The school is also going to clear out a room to make the new computer lab.  I met with Camara a while back, and it seems pretty easy to get computers from them.  This is very exciting for me, so I’ve been doing a little work to make sure the kids can use the game software that they’re used to, even if the new machines don’t have floppy drives.

Categories
Mombasa

Of Fiber and Floppies

Today traffic was terrible.  On my way to lunch, I jumped out of the matatu early and walked the rest of the way.  As it turns out, President Kibaki was coming into town, so all the main roundabouts were completely shut down.  He was actually here for a big deal: the big public launch of the undersea fiber optic cable that has finally arrived from the other side of the Indian Ocean.  This was the last stretch of ocean in the world that didn’t host an Internet connection, but now East Africa is finally caught up!  Here’s a local news blurb on it.  And one on Forbes.

I didn’t see the big event, but I did see 50-or-so Mercedes vehicles screech into town, surrounded by motorcycles, sirens blaring.  It’s a safe bet that Kibaki was in one of them.

In mildly related news, I’ve updated my learning software page to reflect all the changes I’ve made to my educational floppy disk in the past couple months.  I was thrown into a cycle of changes as I tried (and succeeded, I believe) at getting the thing to work on a 486 with 8MB of RAM for an old computer in Embu.  It also works on my Core2Duo with 3GB RAM, so it works on a wide range of computers now.

I’ve also gone ahead and given the disk a name: FUZOMA Floppy.  FUZOMA is a liberal blending of the Swahili words for “teach” and “learn.”  (It’s also a word that had no matches on Google until I registered the domain name.)  For now I just have one huge page dedicated to it here on the blog, but sooner or later I’ll get around to moving stuff over to fuzoma.com, because it feels way too cramped on a single page.

I also wanted to mention that over the course of making this floppy disk for the students, I’ve tracked down and contacted a number of shareware authors from the old DOS days and pestered them with questions, and everyone has been remarkably helpful thus far.  Special thanks to Bob Ferguson for sending me the EditV source code, which helped me as I designed the FUZOMA text editor for the kids as they learn to use the computer.  Also David at Bozz Software for reading my long emails, and Dom Domes and David Alves for making such great learning programs.

I’ve gotten positive feedback on the project from two other volunteers in Kenya thus far.  Nic had some nice things to say on this blog, and although Daniel doesn’t get into it on his, he told me that he used the typing game as a bonus for his final exams!  It’s a start…

Categories
Mombasa

Late

For some reason I have been unable to access my blog for the past week or so, as the Internet seemed to only work for websites I didn’t really want.  Oh well.

The second term has been reinvigorating.  Class time has become quite different since I made the investment in the printer.  I print worksheets for all my students the night before class, and normally that means two double-sided printouts of varying difficulty, usually along the line of a single theme.  Examples include: sudoku, connect the dots, easy crosswords with vocab-reinforcing pictures, and mazes.  This week most everything was pirate themed (it keeps my interest if the themes are timely), and I threw in an Obama maze for good measure.  Few students, and often no students, get through all the work, but that’s OK, as long as they can stay busy at one of the difficulty levels.  Different students respond differently to the activities, as they appeal to different personalities I think.  One of my students, a girl much older than the rest of her class, has always been in a state of visible annoyance at the menial exercises presented to her.  In particular, she hates anything that involves crayons.  I hadn’t been able to pique her interest in anything; that is, until we had a word search day.  The rest of the children struggled to find all the words, but she immediately began a methodical hunt and she finished long before anyone else… and she was smiling.

I love seeing progress with the puzzles.  I’m mostly seeing a change in the children’s’ “lookahead”—that is, their use of strategies necessary to determine which solution is “correct” when there may be multiple correct answers (like  a maze), or a correct answer that can cause the other answers to become wrong (crosswords, sudoku).  This is so completely the opposite of copying from the board that it’s been tough to get them to accept the idea that you should write “possibly correct” answers down, and that as the teacher, I can’t say “correct” or “wrong” until they finish.

The worksheets are also great because kids who are waaaaaay behind can simply color them without holding back the class.  It also becomes optional homework if they don’t finish in time.  Most classes start now with many students showing me how the completed the previous class’ work overnight.

Improvements around the house has been slow but steady.  I finally managed to fit my new sinktop in such a way that it doesn’t have any wiggle room, and I’m teaching  myself some rudimentary plumbing work as well!

P1020964

I’ve also converted my home into a WiFi hotspot, which means I can have multiple laptops online at the same time, which is great for visitors (and for me when I have visitors).  I hide this technology under a doily to confound thieves:

P1020966

I’ve also kept busy in the library.  My improvements with the floppy disk mean that the programs are more intuitive, and the kids need less help from me.  This is great because they develop more confidence on the machines, and it frees me up to read to the younger kids.  Reading in sign is something so critical for their learning, but it’s something I’ve been terrified to try in the classroom, because it puts my own signing on the spot, and it requires me to entertain 15 kids at once.  In the library I usually have an audience of one or two at a time.  The kids like Curious George and tell me that he lives close to their house.

P1020967

The floppy disk itself has undergone a major overhaul after it had so many problems on the computers in Embu.  I‘ve now tested it successfully on a wider range of machines, and it’s far more consistent—it should work with 8MB of RAM as well as modern dual-core CPUs.  The sheer number of changes, though, meant that I needed the kids to spend time breaking it again, but it’s now finally back to the the refining stages.

This weekend many volunteers till be convening in Mombasa for a long weekend.  I’ll be sharing some WiFi and some beers while they’re here, and then on Tuesday it’s back to classes again.

Thank you so much everyone for the birthday wishes— they didn’t all appear on the blog right away because of my Internet weirdness, but I did see them, and thank you.  I hope no one’s arm was twisted too hard :).  It is nice to be reminded that the world hasn’t totally forgotten me.