Instead, the school is going to buy individual UPS units for each computer. They already bought one Intex model for Rs. 1450, and the teacher has verified that it can support one computer during the time when the school has electricity. The store in Bhopal has agreed to sell the school ten more units for Rs. 1200 each, which is still a little steep for the school’s limited budget, especially since they’ll have to shell out money again for new UPS batteries in a couple of years. We’re hoping, however, that this purchase will allow them to restart the computer literacy classes. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.

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.

Board exams started at the school at the beginning of March and will continue until April (when the new school year starts), at which point the teachers will be busy grading and preparing exam results until the beginning of May. Everything is done by hand, so the process is time-consuming. We’re planning to restart the computer program once this process is over.

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 was no one in the shop to talk to, so we didn’t pursue it. Computer Care & Ware sent someone to the high school to look over the setup and give us a quote on how much they would charge for a regular monthly service contract, which includes cleaning, antivirus updates and scans, checking internet connectivity, and reinstalling any buggy software. Their quote came to Rs. 1000 per month.

This whole exercise propelled the assistant principal into taking more interest in the maintenance and upkeep of the computer lab for what seems to us the first time. He thought the quote was too high and started calling people he knew to find a better price. The same evening, we decided to go to Chhatarpur to meet with one of his new contacts at Bundelkhand Computers to see if we could get the broken UPS fixed. We met with Subhash Tiwari, who told us about other computer work he does around Chhatarpur at different academic institutions. Although no one there knew about UPS systems, we did get the name of the LG service engineer I mentioned in my last post; he eventually came to the school, but he was mostly unable to diagnose the problem. Subhash also visited us eventually and cut the ethernet cables that the assistant principal had bought last March to the right sizes and connected all of the computers to hubs. We measured the distances in the new computer lab that has been under construction for at least eighteen months to make sure that the cables were long enough to work there. We also strung a 50-foot cable to the next room so that the babus (administrative assistants) would have a dedicated internet connection. Until now, they’d been moving the DSL modem between the two rooms, creating lots of frayed and tangled wires.

The UPS still isn’t working, so the classes are at a standstill. We measured the voltage across the batteries, and they seem to be holding a charge just fine, so we’re kind of at a loss as to why the UPS is unable to funnel that power to the computers. We’re still working on getting this issue resolved. The next step is to get in contact with a store that sells and services Amaron batteries (the kind that are in the school) and have their service technician check the batteries one more time. If he says they’re okay, then we know the UPS is the problem, and we’ll have to find a way to get that fixed. We have yet to find someone in Chhatarpur who can do that kind of work, so we might have to look in Jhansi (four hours away) or Gwalior (eight hours away, with two bus changes).

Textbooks

As far as printed material goes, we picked up a book called Dynamic Memory Computer Course (ISBN: 818419255X) at the Jain Book Agency in Delhi (here’s the book on their site, but there’s no picture or good description). It’s in Hindi, and it seems to be a really good reference for the teacher and kids in Bijawar. I think the teacher also found the books that the school already had, but I’m not totally sure where they are or what happened to them.

Former students

We spoke with some of the students from the first batch, and they’re really interested in being able to use the computers on their own time. Once we get the UPS fixed and the classes running again, we’re going to see if the teacher can open up the lab on Sundays to allow students who’ve already taken the computer class access to the computers.

Girls’ HS School

At the Girls’ HS School, we’re working with a passionate, young woman teacher to see if there is some way that we can get them computers so that they can implement a program similar to that at the boys’ school. I’ll keep you updated on this as we get further along in the process.

English language education

During this visit, we also wanted to explore the possibility of teaching English language conversational skills, reading, and comprehension to ninth and tenth graders. We first needed to assess their English skills grade level as compared to American standards in order to establish a baseline from which we could work, so we took some copies of short stories from the magazine Highlights for Children (aimed at US kids, ages 6-9). We asked Divya, the English teacher at the Boys’ HS School, to send us five girls and five boys from the ninth and tenth grades who might be interested in helping us with this two-week project. Not surprisingly, there was a huge response, and we were inundated with requests from students and their parents. I’m still not sure if this response was because they genuinely wanted to learn English or just because the classes were free.

We started the project with a group of five each of ninth grade girls and tenth grade boys. Most of these kids were the best students in their classes, with parents who had the most resources, but it very quickly became evident the students had absolutely no conversational skills. They could read at approximately an American 2^nd grade level, but their reading comprehension was very poor. Their theoretical grammar knowledge was pretty good – unsurprising, as this is something that can be written and memorized – but their ability to apply that knowledge was limited to nonexistent. Along the same lines, the students are being taught to memorize English. The teacher reads short passages from their textbook aloud and either dictates or writes down the answers to all the questions in that lesson, and the kids memorize those answers word-for-word. We went through a couple of the lessons from their textbook, and each one of the students just spit out the same rote answers.

In general, though, the students were very enthusiastic, showed up on time, and were ready to learn. They usually did conversational role-playing for the first half of the hour and then reading comprehension from the Highlights short stories for the second half. This pattern seemed to hit all of the points we wanted to emphasize, but our limited time in Bijawar made it difficult to assess if they were really retaining information and skills. When we left, they all wanted to know how they could keep learning – something which we’re still struggling to figure out.

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 Windows installed on it, so we might have to do that as well. This whole endeavor required harassing the people at the Wipro call center a number of times, until they finally conferenced us in with the person who’s in charge of the Gwalior area of service. He sent a service engineer from Jhansi, which is about four hours from Bijawar by car. Getting to Bijawar is such an ordeal that the qualified IT personnel in bigger cities like Jhansi and Sagar refuse to make regular trips to service the computers here.

Two new batches of students were started at the Boys’ HS School on November 3, but the UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply) in the computer lab stopped working less than a week later. The UPS allows the power from the mains to supply the computers until a voltage fluctuation or the power going out forces it to switch over to ten 12V external, rechargeable batteries, maintaining a steady supply of power. This turn of events has left the teacher and students (and us!) very frustrated.

We’ve been checking out a couple of places in Chhatarpur who claim to be able to identify and fix the problem, but none of them seemed willing to send technicians to Bijawar. We’ve had a hard time trying to tell which stores have people who know what they’re doing. I have a feeling that they can do some basic computer maintenance, but that they’re just saying yes to anything we ask, in the hopes that they’ll find someone to actually do the work later. As a side note, it was great to see the teacher taking initiative to try to get the UPS fixed while we were still in the US – he wasn’t successful, but then, neither were we.

The assistant principal at the school finally managed to get in touch with a service engineer who works for LG but who repairs UPS units and other electronics and appliances. He came to Bijawar today on another call (to fix a microwave, I think), and so he took a look at our UPS as well. The life of the batteries is apparently only about 18 months, less if they’re not power cycled regularly – which they weren’t for the first year or so, because they just sat in a room, gathering dust. Someone recharged these batteries yesterday with some other machine, but they need to be replaced very soon if the computers are to be run. We’re going to test the batteries tomorrow to see how long they can hold a charge, but I doubt it’s going to be very long.

We’ve also been working with some ninth and tenth grade students on conversational English and reading comprehension, but it’s late, so I’ll write about that tomorrow.

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 first two batches (who started while I was there in July and August) learned to use the internet, each of them set up a Gmail account, and we received several emails from them. It was satisfying to see them use the Hindi transliteration in Gmail and become comfortable with sending email.

The teacher has now settled into a pattern of training each batch of students for six weeks – six days a week for one hour every day. Because the school has electricity from 9am to 11am every day, the teacher runs two batches at the same time, one from 9am to 10am and one from 10am to 11am.

Here are some numbers on how many students have gone through the program so far:

• Batch 1 (July 15, 2009 – August 31, 2009): eight students from the 9th grade
• Batch 2 (August 1, 2009 – September 15, 2009): eight students from the 9th and 10th grades
• Batch 3 (September 3, 2009 – October 31, 2009): seven students, four from the 9th grade and one each from the 10th, 11th, and 12th grades
• Batch 4 (September 16, 2009 – October 31, 2009): eight students, four each from the 10th and 11th grades

The teacher identified Lalit, a 9th grader from the first batch of students, as someone who would make a good TA; he’s smart and picked up things quickly. He’s currently working with the third batch as a TA. He stopped coming sometime in mid-September, and we talked to him, telling him that if he attended regularly for the next month, he’d get a stipend. Hopefully, this motivated him to come to class regularly as a TA. We’ve also asked the teacher to identify a student from the third or fourth batch who could serve as a TA in the future.

The electricity schedule changed in the second half of September due to Navaratri, a major festival that lasts for nine days. The teacher was only able to teach class from 11am to 12pm during this time. He had permission from the principal to teach the second class from 3pm to 4pm, but he was pulled into other official school business, like helping students fill out registration forms for upcoming board exams. When the schedule went back to normal starting September 30, the computer classes went back to the normal time.

As I’ve talked about before, there are one monitor and one CPU that haven’t ever worked. Wipro customer support is awful, but I finally forced them to supply the school with a replacement monitor. I’m having a really hard time getting them to fix or replace the broken CPU, even though the computers are under an active warranty. The teacher has reported that two of the other computers tend to freeze up whenever anything is opened in MS Office. All of this just underscores the continued need to identify people who can come to the school on a regular basis and provide IT support.

The teacher has also asked for more Excel exercises, which we put together and sent to him. He’s been using them regularly with the students, and he’s been sending us the results, which is kind of nice. In the past few weeks, he’s also gotten a lot more comfortable regularly sending us short emails to update us on what’s been going on. He’s started to understand the things that we’ve been so insistent on in the past – teaching only one kid at one computer, for example, or connecting all of the computers to the internet so they can be taught internet skills more quickly. It’s gratifying to see the teacher’s progress.

The principal at the Girls’ HS School informed us that the school was supposed to receive computers in October, which – well, I’ll believe it when I see it.

I’m planning to be in Bijawar for three weeks again this winter. Here’s a partial list of things that are on our agenda:

1. Identify IT support and set up a regular schedule for servicing the computers. This’ll be something of a challenge. I think there are people in Chhatarpur (about 70 km away) who can provide this kind of service, but we’ll have to vet them to find dependable and trustworthy ones to hire.
2. Get all of the computers connected to the Internet. This is something the school should really be able to do on their own, but it’s probably not going to happen unless we get it done ourselves. They have all of the equipment, and they just need someone to connect it all together.
3. Find good computer books in Hindi that can be used as a reference by the teacher and students when they have questions or need help with something. We’re not sure if books like this even exist (they should, but who knows). If they do, we’ll have to look in Delhi or Bhopal, since Chhatarpur is unlikely to have anything like this. We’ve also asked the teacher to find the books that came with the computers, since they seem to have disappeared between last winter and now.
4. Meet with the students who’ve already been trained and find out what they need in order to take their skills to the next level. One idea is to have the teacher open up the lab on Sundays. Students who’ve gone through the program can sign up for times to use the computers and keep their skills up. The teacher would just be supervising them and answering questions – he wouldn’t really be teaching at this time.
5. Explore the needs of small-business owners with regards to computer services. Perhaps the students can earn some money completing small computer tasks for the community. Part of the earnings could be used to fund the computer program.
6. If the Girls’ HS School receives computers by December, we’d like to set up a program there similar to the one at the Boys’ HS School.
7. Identify an additional teacher to help with the computer program. Doing so would provide something of a cushion, in case something happens with our current teacher. If the Girls’ HS School receives computers, another teacher might be able to start there as well.
8. See if there’s interest in a program that focuses on developing English language speaking skills for the students. Perhaps it would be possible to use technology – landline or cell phones, maybe – to pair students in Bijawar with people in urban areas who speak English well.

We still have a lot of planning to do for December, so I’ll keep you posted!

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 right about now, though. I made some Maggi (sort of like instant ramen) the other night, and it was such a nice change, even though the flavors were still definitely Indian.

Yesterday was Rakhi, so the school had a holiday. Attendance has also been a little spotty because of the festival.

In the last couple of days, we introduced Excel to the second batch of kids as well. They’re picking it up really fast, and they seem to understand it intuitively more than Word or Windows – which really just reinforces what we learned last winter. The first and second batches of kids are now at the same place in Excel because we skipped a bunch of stuff with the second batch to get to Excel more quickly. That said, they need to learn to use Windows and Word as well, so after I leave, I hope the teacher focuses on those topics a bit more.

Some of the kids were having trouble with the basic math in Excel – which operations do you perform on which numbers to get a percentage out of a data set? Which numbers do you multiply together to get total price out of unit price and number of units needed? I can’t tell whether they were being distracted by the shiny, shiny software, whether they were having difficulty translating the math they’ve learned in the classroom to a different application, or whether their math skills really just aren’t that great. I think it might be a combination of the first two, especially since what I’ve seen of the Indian system – and particularly the rural, resource-poor Indian system – emphasizes rote learning over creative thinking. (No judgment, just an observation.)

I checked the school’s warranty on the computers, and it turns out that it’s for three years. I called Wipro back and yelled at them for a bit, and now the status of my complaints is “pending engineer allocation,” which is an improvement over “rejected.”

In my last post, I forgot to mention that I bought a couple of power strips in Chhatarpur on Sunday and gave them to the school on Tuesday. They work. Also, it seems like all of the computers might be getting simultaneous internet connectivity soon, because some technician has been called to wire up the switches in the next few days.

The principal and school finally seem to be on board and at ease with what we’re doing, and they’ve relaxed enough to give the teacher the keys to the computer lab (before, he’d have to pick them up from someone’s house every morning). That at least bodes well for some sort of short-term sustainability.

I have another massive post in the works with a more detailed analysis of the kinds of challenges I’ve faced in my three weeks here, so stay tuned!

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 Excel, so I wanted to give the kids a good grounding in that myself. They’re picking it up pretty fast.

My car didn’t show up this morning because the driver had gone to Jatashankar in the morning instead of coming here, so I got something of an unexpected day off.

The teacher has been coming over regularly in the evenings to go over the next day’s lesson plans, which is nice, but hasn’t totally fixed my frustrations with the different style of teaching. There seems to be a lot less long-term (or, really, even short-term) planning involved, and the teacher just covers whatever seems to strike his fancy any particular day. The concept of making lesson plans for the day or week or month, to make sure that all the material gets covered, and nothing is accidentally skipped over or repeated, is absent. While I understand that this is just sort of the way the schools in rural villages work, it’s frustrating at a personal level, because I’d like to give the kids a higher quality education than that (and also because the lack of order bothers me).

I tried to get Wipro to fix the CPU and monitor that don’t work, but no dice. They say the parts aren’t covered by any existing service contract. The school’s only options might be to a) write it off as a loss or b) hire an outside repairperson. Wipro has to have the worst customer service ever – just finding the right number to call took me three hours of Internet searching and cold calling.

I got mehndi done on my hands today (I’ll try to post some pictures tomorrow) because Rakhi is on Wednesday. The girl, Priyanka (above), who drew it on talked to me about how she’d love to learn English and computers. I’d really like to explore options for teaching students conversational English – not even reading and writing, which some can manage on their own, but actually speaking it, which is just as important in the job market.

I’m writing this in bed, and the house next door has live music and prayers blasting through loudspeakers mounted on their roof; the speakers have been on non-stop since Saturday afternoon, starting with the reading of the Ramayana and moving on to aarti. There has been other stuff, too, but I don’t really understand most of it, so I’m not sure what exactly. The house was recently built/renovated, so I think this is a housewarming of sorts. It’s a big community event – people have been in and out of the house all weekend to read, visit, and pray.

The mosquitoes are eating me alive. One actually bit my lip the other night, and it swelled up and made me look like I’d been punched in the face for a good 12 hours. I’ve been trying to keep them at bay with a combination of Odomas and some Repel Lemon Eucalyptus stuff that doesn’t have DEET in it, but that only goes so far. The super-carcinogenic mosquito coils available here work pretty well, but they make my eyes water and give me a headache (as well as mutating my DNA, I’m sure).

We weren’t able to work today because there was some mix up with the keys, which makes it the second time in a week that the class has been seriously hampered or canceled because the wrong person had the keys. I really should talk to the principal about finding a solution to this problem. I’m looking forward to getting back in the classroom tomorrow.

After about a half hour, we switched the second set of kids into the computer lab and covered some more vocab words and then had them play Solitaire for a while. (I impressed everyone at one point by beating the game in under two minutes, which isn’t a great time, but I’ve honed my skills during some epic procrastination jags.)

Today was really frustrating, partly because the whole routine was thrown off, but also because I feel like we’re in a bit of a rut. We haven’t had any time to prep as a group for the subsequent day’s lessons, and so whatever we cover ends up being thrown together on the fly – which is not a particularly effective teaching style. From tomorrow, I think we’re going to start meeting at 3pm to plan for the next day, which should improve things.

This second set of kids is mostly 9th graders, who are new to the school, and they seem to be a little overwhelmed and tentative. I think perhaps a bit of a pep talk is in order, to contextualize all of the stuff they’ve been learning.

These kids (now a grade older!) came by in the afternoon; they wanted to learn some more computer stuff, but since I didn’t have any extra laptops with me, I offered to help them with conversational English. I’m not really sure how to go about doing this – I tried some basic verb conjugations, but my Hindi isn’t good enough to explain what the I, you, he/she/it, we, you, they chart is, nor what the present/past tenses are. Maybe I’ll just stick with teaching them how to speak grammatically correct English, but forget the formal grammar stuff and hope that they sort of just get a feel for what “sounds right.” Maybe they’ll learn the actual mechanics of the language in school. That sounds lame even while I’m writing it.

Also, here is a cute kid from the family that rents out our upstairs apartment (yes, this first picture is blurry):

And his family:

That black thing in the background is a water tank.

I didn’t even bother with the solar eclipse, although I would’ve loved to see it, because there was zero chance of the sky being clear enough to see anything.