In the library we were given a talk by Jeff Bittner, an American volunteer working on the XO program at the school. One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), the organisation behind the XO laptop initiative, works with non-profit organisations and schools in developing countries, and accepted an application from Kasiisi Primary for the school to receive 100 laptops. The XO program is teaching the Primary 5 classes (consisting of 160 students) how to use a laptop for one hour each day. They only have 100 laptops so to keep it fair they have given one laptop out for every two students. Someday in the future they hope that they will be able to afford enough computers so all of the student can have their own and then be able to take them home at night to work on them as well as show their families how a laptop works. Unfortunately, there is fear for the children and laptop safety walking such long distances between school and therefore do not yet know the logistics of how this idea will actually work.
Bookshelves where the XO Laptops are stored
The P5 pupils were chosen to have the first set of laptops so that they can benefit from them for two years before their national exams, but the school aims eventually to raise funds so that all pupils have access to a laptop. When explaining the challenges of introducing the XO laptops, Jeff said, “Bringing a laptop into a classroom and making it useful is a hard challenge for any teacher”, the implication being that, for Ugandan teachers who may not have received any formal teacher training and are very unlikely to have used a laptop before themselves, to then use it to educate up to 160 pupils at once, is an extremely hard challenge indeed. In addition to this, affording the 20 litres of fuel necessary to generate power to run the laptops for a month, and improving security on the building which houses the laptops, puts a strain on the school’s resources, as the Kasiisi Project can only provide so much funding, and the school’s own budget is stretched already.
Jessica sitting in on the XO laptop class
When the handshake group visited the P5 laptop lesson they had only been conducting the class for three weeks, but during the one hour class the children showed us how much they have already learned. They could use the webcam to take a picture of us sitting at the computer, import it into their writing program where they then proceeded to type up a miniature biography of the people in the picture. Their typing and spelling skills were quite impressive, never having to ask how to spell a word and even using the shift key to produce capital letters. Below is Lucy Radford’s experience with the XO laptop and the two children, Edith and Kato, who were so excited to show the “Mzungus” how they used the laptop:
“The P5 pupils have, at the time of writing, had three weeks of training on the XOs, and we were invited to join them for a lesson to see how they were getting on with the new technology. I, Lucy, sat with 11 year old Edith and 13 year old Kato, who were quick and confident in opening up the laptop and turning it on. They went straight into the “Record” programme, which allows them to use the built-in webcam to take photographs and record audio and video, and is their favourite programme so far. At their teacher’s instruction, they then opened the laptop’s writing programme and imported into it a photograph they had just taken of themselves, in preparation for working on their Biography project, which is being used to help them explore and learn about the laptop’s features, and practise typing and literacy. Edith and Kato said that school is more fun now that they have the laptops, but they wish that they had them at home, too. Edith’s favourite subject is English, and she was enthusiastic about the idea of having story books on the laptop, while Kato really enjoys the Music programme that is already loaded on the laptops. When using the laptop to write, both children were adept at using the shift key to get upper case letters – in fact, far better at it than I was, as I’m so used to using Caps Lock! They were also confident with the erase and enter keys, but frequently held the space key down for too long and ended up with large gaps between words. However, considering they had never even laid eyes on a laptop or computer before the XOs reached their school three weeks ago, I was astonished by how little they struggled with it. I asked if they’d found it hard to use at first, and they said it hadn’t taken them long to work out what to do. They did get confused about getting back to work they’d previously saved, but with so many children in the class, they couldn’t get the teacher’s attention to ask for help. Eventually, after trying various approaches, they worked it out by themselves and were soon busy writing about their families for the Biography project.”
