Today the kids spent about 15 minutes typing, then we went over some storage vocab – CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, flash memory, hard disk, etc. We then reviewed some of the vocab from the past few days. We also began teaching a second shift of kids from 10-11am, this time ones who haven’t had the chance [...]

We spent an hour today working on the kids’ typing skills, using some free software that we dug up on a CD at the school in December. It’s surprisingly good for something that was on a CD otherwise full of junk. The lessons are straightforward, and the kids really enjoyed the subsequent games and then [...]

Today we covered bit/byte/etc., as well as how to cut, copy, and paste files. I think that I need to emphasize the difference between cut and delete, though, because the distinction is fine and hard to grasp. We also covered how to manipulate multiple windows and figure out which one is currently active. We went [...]

Neha came with me to the school this morning, because she’s interested in helping out and perhaps teaching, if she doesn’t get an appointment at another school. Three additional students showed up for a total of eight, so we went through all of the hardware basics again, as well as some desktop and Windows vocabulary. [...]

I went to the school this morning at 9:30 (the driver didn’t show up until then), where the lab was locked and a bunch of boys were standing around outside, with no teacher. I called the teacher, who said that the fuse from yesterday hadn’t been fixed yet, so we couldn’t do any work. I [...]

I arrived in Bijawar last night after five days in transit: SFO to Delhi, by way of Hong Kong and Bangkok (total travel time: about 30 hours), then to Bhopal (total travel time: about 4 hours), then to Bijawar (total travel time: 12 hours, including lunch in Sagar). Update (July 21, 2009): Now that I’ve [...]

I’m planning on going to India this Thursday night (actually Friday morning) for a month. Originally, I’d wanted to leave two weeks ago, but the monsoon was delayed about a month in central India. As a result, the weather two weeks ago was still around 110-115°F, so I delayed my departure. The temperature high in [...]

As promised, here’s another update of what’s been happening in Bijawar since April. One of the teachers at the Bijawar Boys’ HS School called us from Sagar (about two hours from Bijawar), saying that he was at a store, looking to buy some new equipment – chairs, tables, and assorted computer hardware – for the [...]

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 [...]

This is the really cute little boy whose family rents out the upstairs part of my grandmother’s house. Onto the actual news. Today was a much-needed counterpoint to yesterday’s frustrations. We accomplished all the nitpicky little details that were left to finish in the morning to get the computers in the boys’ high school ready [...]