We’ve finally made some progress on getting the school a solution to their broken UPS. In March, we tried to use a voltage stabilizer as a cheaper alternative, since buying a new UPS was proving to be too expensive, but that plan didn’t work. The stabilizer couldn’t handle the large voltage fluctuations at the school. [...]

I haven’t updated in a while, but here’s a picture of the wires at the boys’ HS school. Pretty horrifying, right? Here’s a close-up. See the rock? The one tied to the wire to provide enough tension to keep everything in contact in all the right places? Yeah.

We talked to the teacher at the boys’ high school last night, and he confirmed that they bought one voltage stabilizer for their computers. We think that this can serve 5-6 computers at one time, but he’s going to do some testing and find out for sure. Board exams started at the school at the [...]

This is a mostly comprehensive summary of what we did in Bijawar this December. Computer maintenance We talked to the people at two computer shops in Chhatarpur – Microworld Computers, whom we were referred to by an acquaintance who runs a cyber cafe, and Computer Care & Ware. We stopped by Microworld Computers, but there [...]

I’ve been in Bijawar since Thursday, so here’s what’s been going on since the last time I wrote. I finally got Wipro to fix the broken CPU with a new hard drive (they’d previously replaced the monitor), which we still have to test to make sure it actually works. I’m not sure whether it’s got [...]

Sorry that it’s been so long since the last blog post! There’s still an analysis in the works, but here’s a (very long) update on what’s been going on since August. To our never-ending surprise, the computer education program at the Boys’ HS School in Bijawar is going pretty well. As the students from the [...]

(Note. Sorry about all the recent downtime. It’s been resolved – thanks for your patience!) Today is my last day in Bijawar! It’s a little strange how well I’ve adapted to the vagaries of living here and how quickly the time has gone. I really wouldn’t mind a little Thai or sushi or frozen yogurt [...]

It’s been a week since I last updated this blog; sorry for the delay! We did a little bit more Word with the first batch of kids, then we skipped straight to Excel. I figure that the teacher can handle Word and more basic Windows stuff on his own, but he’s a little weak on [...]

I haven’t updated in a few days – not much has been going on, actually. We’ve been working with the first batch of kids on Word formatting, and we’ve been going over more Windows fundamentals with the second. This second batch still seems kind of lost and overwhelmed, but hopefully if we go slowly enough, [...]

This morning, one of the other teachers had the key to the computer lab, which we didn’t know, and we weren’t able to get it until almost 10am. This threw our entire schedule off. We ended up having the first set of kids practice some typing for 15 minutes, then we went over a couple [...]