Thank You, L2L Volunteers

Our 7-week training and deployment in Lesotho is now over, and everyone is back home, hopefully happy with what we accomplished. 

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the wonderful group of volunteers who not only made this trip a success for the project but also a pleasure for me.  I especially want to thank those of you who flew to Lesotho, for shouldering the burden of paying for your own plane tickets.  At $2000+ a pop this trip, that's a very generous donation to the cause.

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Tony Anderson

Tony worked tirelessly throughout the entire trip, doing programming, setting up servers, customizing the learning system, and doing lesson preparations, not to mention teaching a few classes.  He could be seen sitting day and night in the shade at his stone table or in the school office, rarely ever without an XO laptop in his hands. There was usually a glass of warm Coke nearby.

Tony is a retired programmer and has worked with OLPC projects in Nepal and Rwanda.

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Craig Balcomb

Craig is my younger brother.  He served as my go-to guy and sounding board during this trip.  Anything I needed, he took care of it.  Among other things, he taught computer lessons, handled most of the laptop charging, took tons of photos to document our work, and kept my water bottle full.  Called "Crazy Craig" by the teachers, he loved to ham it up and entertained folks with his antics at the project celebrations.

 

Craig lives near Cincinnati, Ohio.  This was his second trip to Lesotho to help L2L, and hopefully there will be many more.
 

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Kathy Plath

 

Kathy always had a positive attitude and graciously took on some of the less pleasant, but necessary, project tasks, including menu planning and grocery shopping for the entire group.  She was a great help, and her professionalism and teaching experience was invaluable to all of us during teacher training.  The start of school was delayed until after her departure, so she didn't get to spend as much time working with students as she would have liked, but fortunately she still managed to engage children in the village.

 

Kathy is an I.T. teacher in Pueblo, Colorado.

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Mama Lolo Mabitsela

Mama Lolo came to Lesotho to learn about our project so she could start a similar project in her home town in South Africa. Besides attending XO laptop training with the teachers, she participated in discussions and planning and helped out wherever she could.  She made a significant contribution to the project by translating during interviews in the village.

Mama Lolo is a retired teacher.  She runs a B&B in Soweto.      

 

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Mary Ladabouche

Mary came to us as a wonderful, unexpected surprise.  She had just recently moved to the village of Ketane and had read about our work on the internet.  She hiked from Ketane to Nohana Primary School and back almost every day, in all kinds of weather, just to help us with training.  She was great in the classroom, assisting students, prepping laptops, and helping with story time.  She even climbed up on the roof to help me install solar panels.  It was always a pleasure to see her warm smile.

Mary is a retired primary school teacher now serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ketane.



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Sherrie Howey

Sherrie didn't have a lot of time to spend in Lesotho, but she definitely left her mark.  She visited leaders, families, and students' homes in the village and was able to collect all kinds of information during interviews conducted as part of the project evaluation.  While at Nohana, she awarded nine scholarships from FIPE (The Foundations for International Professional Exchange) to local 7th and 8th grade students so they can continue their education.

Sherrie is on the L2L Board and lives in Colorado. 

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Jennifer Selden

Jennifer claims she's not a "computer person" or teacher, so when she came to Lesotho, she wasn't sure how she could help the project.  She needn't have worried.  She helped in the library and at story time, and did just fine helping with computer classes.  Her most memorable impact was at play time singing "A-tooti-ta" with all the children, who absolutely adored her.

Jennifer is Sherrie's daughter.  She lives in North Carolina, where she has been helping 5th graders from the U.S. and Lesotho exchange pen pal letters for several years.

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Mamatsepe Sejanamane

Mamatsepe is a talented young Mosotho woman, very computer savvy, fluent in English, and a natural teacher who has a great way with children. (Don't let it go to your head, kid.)  We were very fortunate to have her assistance.  She provided simultaneous translations during interviews and lessons, as well as teaching XO laptop lessons on her own.  When teachers were absent, she stepped into their classrooms as a substitute teacher.

Mamatsepe currently lives in Maseru, but  she plans to move to Kokobe soon to do volunteer service full time for L2L.

 

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Volunteers, thanks so much for all your hard work.  I can't tell you how much I appreciate your dedication, professionalism, and friendship.  I couldn't have asked for a better team.  And, I hope you will continue to help L2L here in the U.S.and in Lesotho.

- Janissa 

 





Janissa Balcomb with Nohana Primary School
teacher Teboho Mphasi, one of her star pupils





A Successful Trip to Lesotho

I'm home after my recent 7-week trip to Lesotho.  Now that I'm back in the land of regular internet access, I'll try to catch everyone up on all that happened during the trip.  There's lots of news, so stay tuned for a series of posts that will be coming soon.

- Janissa

 

 

 

Connexions - online textbooks

An interesting tidbit from Tony Anderson:

Mark Shuttleworth Foundation has made a complete set of downloadable textbooks available via Creative Commons. They are located on the Rice University Connexions site (http://www.cnx.org). The texts combine a teacher's guide, textbook, and workbook.

- Janissa



 

Disaster Averted

I'm scheduled to leave for Lesotho in 5 days, with 6 volunteers joining me there for much of  January.  Our training at the schools in two remote villages was scheduled for January 7-30, at the start of the new school year.  

A few days ago, our  project leader, Matlabe Teba, informed me that the Ministry of Education and Training was postponing the opening day of school and requiring teachers to attend ministry training for a new curriculum instead.  The result was that no teachers or students would be in the villages until January 28. 

Talk about a gut punch.  I was facing a huge setback to our work in Lesotho and possibly a disaster in the making for our organization.  With extensive plans already in place, plane tickets purchased, hotels paid for, equipment shipped, leaves taken from work, meetings scheduled, anticipation and expectations high, and two volunteers poised to leave in just a few days, I had a huge decision to make and a lot of weight on my shoulders.

The way I saw it, we had three basic options.  We could go as scheduled, postpone the trip, or cancel all together.  All had drawbacks and potential to do varying degrees of harm to the project.  It was a matter of which risks I was willing to accept, who would benefit, and who would be harmed.

While I was frantically exploring the consequences of each option and brainstorming alternatives to try to salvage the situation, L2L team members jumped in to help. 

Sherrie contacted South African Airways to find out what it would cost to change or cancel plane tickets.  She found out that the airline charges $250 per person to change a ticket. 

All of our volunteers were already stretched pretty thin financially after paying over $2000 each to get shots, purchase their ticket, pay for hotel and other travel expenses.  They couldn't afford this extra fee. L2L could try to pick up the fees, we were looking at at least $1500 in fees, and we are stretched pretty thin financially this year, too.  Postponing the trip was not a viable option.

Sherrie also found out that, if we canceled in advance, the airline would refund all but $300 of the ticket price.  This was a surprise, and made the cancellation option look a little less painful.  Cancelling the trip now meant the volunteers would get most of their money back, but it was unlikely any of us would have the money to try to go again for quite some time.  That would leave a lot of things hanging in the wind, and could stall the project if funders and volunteers lost faith in us.

At this point, I was pinning my hopes on the kids of Ketane wanting computer lessons badly enough that they would come even when school was closed.  But I literally had hours to make a decision before the first volunteer was scheduled to fly, and the word I was getting from Matlabe didn't sound good. 

Tensions grew high and I was pressing Matlabe pretty hard to give me an answer or at least his best guess.  Emails went back and forth with him asking for more time and me explaining we didn't have time.  Matlabe doesn't like guessing and prefers to get a consensus from others before making important decisions.  This was putting him way out of his comfort zone.

Although Matlabe had just returned from Namibia and wasn't in the village, he started contacting teachers by phone to see if they would come for computer training put on by L2L volunteers, even if school was officially closed.  He contacted school board members to find out whether or not we could use the school before the official start of the school year.  And he scheduled a meeting with the parents to find out if their children could come to school, even if school wasn't officially open and even if the teachers were away at ministry training.

Word arrived the next day from Matlabe that the teachers were on board and so was the school board.  He wouldn't be able to meet with the parents for several more days when he returned to the village, but he was hopeful that they would go along with the new plan given the teachers support.

So, I made my decision to go on with our trip as scheduled. 

There is still some risk that there will be complications due to the Ministry change, but I'm hopefully we can deal with those.

Not only was disaster averted, but the outcome reinforces how much our work means to Matlabe, the the teachers, and the school board.  That they would buck the Ministry is a pretty big deal.  And I'm confident the parents and students will display similar support.

My blood pressure is returning to normal, and I'm resuming normal preparations for my trip, leaving instructions for my husband how to water the houseplants and access our NFL football online subscription while I'm gone.

This has been another reminder of the perils of working in developing nations, of the satisfaction that comes from having a team that can surmount such obstacles, and the true appreciation the people of Ketane have for our help.

Exhausted, but happy,

- Janissa


 

Local Fi Organization - offline resources for the XO laptop

There is a group of volunteers who are starting to develop lessons and educational materials for XO laptop projects without access to the internet. They call their group Local Fi (as opposed to Wi Fi).

 

The Local Fi website http://www.localfi.org was created as part of a Stanford U. class project.

 

 

It is still in its infancy, but they already has some good suggestions.  See the pdf's in the Curriculum section.

 

 

 

I really like their graphics too:

 

 

 

 

- Janissa

 

 

 

Mamatsepe Sejanamane Won't Be Joining Us

I just got word from Mamatsepe that she got a job in South Africa, so she won't be able to help us with the upcoming deployment and training.  I will miss her, but I'm so very happy she found work.  She was long overdue for a lucky break.  I wish her and her son all the best.

- Janissa

Classroom Posters of XO Keyboard, Shortcuts, and Activity Icons

I've created three 24" x 36" posters to use in the classroom during computer training.  The first is of a keyboard with all the "special" keys a color-coded.  Using those colors, I have included the basic shortcut key combinations.  The second poster is of the keyboard with the Journal, Neighborhood, Group, and Home keys featured.  The third poster of a list of the Activity Icons on all the L2L XO laptops.  These are grouped by color-coded categories.

I am having the posters printed at Walgreens because that's the only place I could find that does large posters for a fairly reasonable price.    I place the order online and am having them shipped to me.  Each poster cost $30.  Shipping & handling is between $6-7.  They estimate it will take about 10 days.

Here they are.  You're welcome to use and adapt as needed.  If you want higher resolution versions, post a comment to let me know.