A work in progress
The last post detailed the state of our work in Bijawar as of January 12, and this one will focus on the developments since then. The faculty at the boys’ HS school was unable to start a computer pilot project in February because of the schoolwide preparation for the state board exams that the students...
Winter 2008-2009 summary
Note: What you see here is only the part of my summary that deals with issues and future plans. Click here to see the whole summary, which includes background information and a detailed explanation of the work we did in three weeks. Issues Education One of the major issues with computer literacy in Bijawar is...
Day ten
Kalpana came by for the first time in three or four days this morning. Because we’re not working with the high school girls anymore, we finally had time to introduce her to Excel. We’d spent the last couple of days making a foolproof Excel template to replace the individual student report cards (called marks sheets...
Day five
This morning, we worked with five of Kalpana’s students from the girls’ high school as part of our effort to observe the ways in which people of different ages (elementary-school children, high schoolers, young teachers, and older teachers) approach and absorb computer education. The girls above, left to right, are Shivange (12th grade), Prachi (1th...
Day four
We worked with Kalpana by herself in the morning; since she was sick on Sunday, we reviewed some basic Word and Windows concepts to solidify the fundamentals. She’s planning on bringing some girls from her class tomorrow. My goal was never to teach students directly, because it’s a fairly unsustainable model, but I think it’s...
Misadventures in flying
Getting to Bijawar from San Francisco requires two full days of travel. Getting to Delhi alone, via Europe or East Asia, requires two flights and 25-35 hours, depending on how long the layovers are. From Delhi, you can either catch the Shatabdi train to Jhansi, which takes hours, or a commuter plane to Khajuraho, which...
Preparing to teach beginners
Although there might be computers at the Bijawar high schools available for teachers to use (see here), we’re taking four laptops on which to help people learn. This move is partly for ease and portability, so that we can hold sessions at my grandmother’s house whenever people are free, and partly so that we have...
Hindi computing
In Bijawar, the language is Bundelkhandi (or Bundeli), a quasi-dialect of Hindi. The written languages, in Devanagari script, are exactly the same. The comparison, for example, between “English” as a concept and the English specifically spoken in California might be apt. I speak some Hindi, although not very well and not very fluently. I basically...