Ntugi Group

What began, three and a half years ago, as a challenging experiment to bring laptops and wireless internet to a school with no power and no computer experience has now become a regional initiative. It is bolstering education, enhancing computer literacy, promoting conservation education, and providing training for local graduates throughout the a region of northern Kenya between Meru and Isiolo - centred around the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy.

In 2009, teacher Mark Battley and four high school students (Amal Chandaria, Connor Cimowsky, Derek Chan, and Adam Gordon) arrived from Toronto, Canada. With Lewa's Education Programme as their Kenyan hosts and partners, they arrived on site with eight laptops in a suitcase. Their goal? To deploy the little green One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) XO’s at Ntugi Day Secondary School, charging them with solar panels, and using a single Safaricom 3G modem to create a wireless network.

Then-Principal Jacob Mbijiwe hoped that would allow his Ntugi students to connect to the Internet and become, as he put it, “part of the universe.” The experiment worked; the five-person Toronto team became the first on the planet to connect OLPC laptops to a portable, wireless network using solar power. More importantly, that 2009 visit was the start of the Toronto group’s continuing commitment to Ntugi School, to Lewa, and to Lewa’s Education Programme. Flash forward three years: The small Canadian group of five has grown as they’ve brought friends, brothers, fathers, mothers, and wives to Kenya - including four members of the Walker family - to be part of this remarkable program. 

Mark has now retired from teaching to pursue OLPC deployment full time and the boys have graduated to university. Determined to renew their continuing commitment to Lewa and the OLPC project, they formed their own small NGO, Ntugi Group. Its mandate is to provide resources and training to local teachers and students, building local capacity in ICT4E and digital literacy. Ntugi Secondary’s tiny laptop experiment, and it’s Toronto partnership, has also grown to include:

40 XO laptops in a full solar-powered computer lab

A school website

An NBA-sized concrete basketball court

Music and Art programs

A Journalism Club that takes advantage of the school's blog

A Computer Club that works on computer animation and programming.

This growth has been driven by Ntugi Group’s original ‘local hero’ and first Site Supervisor, Godfrey Mutwiri, a Geography and Math teacher at Ntugi Secondary. Godfrey has recently been joined in the project by the group’s two new interns, Simon Mwangangi and Judy Kinya, responsible for the duplication of Ntugi Secondary’s success at other schools throughout the Lewa area.

Simon and Judy were Head Boy and Head Girl of Ntugi Secondary when Ntugi Group first arrived in 2009. Now, as graduates of that school and of its OLPC laptop initiative, the two interns are driving expansion and innovation of the program, providing a scaleable model not only for local schools, but for other OLPC deployments worldwide as well. You can get a sense of their remarkable ability in these videos that document their teaching and repair skills, or read their regular reports here.

Ntugi Group’s scope has now expanded to seven sites within Lewa’s Education Program. As well as the 3-year-old program at Ntugi Secondary, Judy and Simon have also launched programs at Ntugi Primary, Leparua Primary, Ngare Ndare Secondary, Lewa Downs Primary, and Subuiga Primary - with an additional small pilot planned for Kariba Primary. By September there will be 120 laptops deployed at Lewa-supported schools.

The interns also teach and support a 12-laptop OLPC lab at Lewa’s Conservation Education Centre, giving visiting students a chance to use the XO’s to play conservation games after their game drives. Simon has used the OLPC laptops to teach himself the Python programming language, and is now designing custom-made interactive quizzes and activities for Ephantus Mugo’s conservation program. Soon, Simon’s students, like Ntugi Secondary’s Computer Club Prefect, Jackline Kathambi, will be able to do the same.

One of the highlights of the year was a BBC visit to Ntugi Secondary in March. Current Principal Phineas Ithinji was interviewed, as was Simon and Jackline. Jacki was filmed teaching the Computer Club at Ntugi, and then at her house, teaching her mom and little brother. She also helped the BBC presenter connect with her colleague in China via video Skype on the XO! These interviews were broadcast to 360,000,000 households in 122 countries worldwide on the first November weekend, as part of BBC’s popular new show about innovation, Horizons. You can see the video by going to the Horizons Episode 15's web page, and scrolling down to the Part 3 link.

Additionally, in July, Godfrey, Simon and Judy traveled to Matapwili, a remote village in Tanzania, to represent Kenya, Lewa and Ntugi Group by launching a 30-laptop pilot project there. Hosted and supported by the Tuende Pamoja Charity , Kisampa Lodge, and the Barbour family, the Kenyan Ntugi team trained the local children, villagers and teachers, and worked with 30 visiting students and teachers from two high schools in Australia to get the Matapwili program up and running. 

Monday: Ntugi Secondary

We were happy to find out that we could use an XO laptop with a projector. This will help us in handling the massive class of over 40 students that Judy handles with Ntugi Primary kids. It will be possible to move at a faster rate with this technology. 

Ntugi students are working on projects on Scratch that will soon qualify them to start Pippy - and Python programming - if they present well-designed, well-coded projects. The task is to identify a project, designing it and code it correctly as per the design. I am looking forward to receive these projects.

Tuesday: Ngarendare Secondary/Lewa Primary

Ngarendare students have adopted the idea of self-exploration and learning with a set objective. They are now in a position to ask pertinent questions that help them in their progress - unlike during the earlier lectures we used to give them. 

Much has been achieved during the last two weeks of this type of learning as the Networking group now sets the connections for the class and the researchers are piling up their findings and improving the whole school by sharing this knowledge!

At Lewa Primary, it was the turn for the Grade Seven class to use the collaboration method of learning in their Social Studies. They find it fun to learn this way and are able to remember much of the content taught during the lesson.

Wednesday: Subuiga Primary

Another group of students has formed - this time specializing in typing. They wanted to know how the text books that they read are typed. We used the Write activity, and they had fun helping each other find the keyboard letters and use them in typing. 

The group working with Scratch has started a project they have named Ken the Bee. It is an animation  in which a bee flies to a flower, gets nectar, and then flies away. 

The Painters have so far painted 4 photos to use in telling a story about a football game as a picture-illustrated story in Fototoon. They have two more to paint to have enough for the first scene of the story.

Thursday: Lewa Conservation Education Centre

Students from Ntumburi Secondary paid a visit to the CEC. After the heavy rain, we had to focus on the Education Center first, to at least have the roads dry before the game drive. The students had several environmental questions to research on the Internet, and that they could present later, after the game drive. The teachers were amazed to see their students on the laptops and the Internet so engaged, lively and cooperative compared to their usual ‘cold classes,’ as they called it. With the research done on the Internet, it was easier explaining concepts in then field during the game drive, as it was just an extension of the theory work. The day was very good!

 Friday: Leparua Primary

The Leparua kids were working on their projects. The group working on Scratch completed the first version of their code and presented it.  The Paint group has a few more photos to paint to complete a scene of a picture-illustrated story they are making. They very much enjoy doing it in group work. It’s nice progress that we have seen.

Monday: Ntugi Secondary

We witnessed students enjoying a new learning environment as English teacher Mrs Rosemary Mburugu held a class in the Computer Lab with Form Four students. We helped with the lesson preparation with the objective of enabling the students to understand how to write an email - or “electronic mail” - as per the syllabus. It helped the students by giving them hand-on skills on setting up and accessing an email account, and writing an email. 

Mrs Mburugu said, “it will not just help them to do well in their exams but will also help them in the rest of their lifetime’. 

The Computer Club members have adopted the self-driven philosophy we are trying to tech. They explored on Scratch by themselves, with little assistance from me, using the basics I had taught them earlier, and shared their work with the larger group at the end. 

Tuesday: Ngarendare Secondary/Lewa Primary

I was happy to see the ‘Departmental’ organization at Ngarendare where students are combining their efforts to perfect what they can do best. As facilitators, we simply went round the class helping out to those who were stuck on different issues - it was the best class I have ever held with the laptops! 

The Research department was investigating electrolysis and made new discoveries that they were willing to share to the rest of the school. They were given a set time to do a presentation of their findings to help the rest of the students know about this interesting topic. 

The Technical expert group were learning how to trouble-shoot a laptop losing Internet network access - the possibilities and their solutions in each case. 

The Networking department had some new recruits who have been away from school and had chosen to join in. For the first time, I witnessed the students from Ngarendare teach others about what they learned. I left them to teach their peers about what I had earlier helped them learn.

At Lewa Primary, the Class 6 kids had their chance to interact with the XO laptops. We showed them how to turn on the computer and start an Activity. We left them to explore the Maze game and try to learn how they could play it. I was amazed to find three students playing the game without being told what to do. I lastly taught them on how to shutdown and the day was successful.

Wednesday: Subuiga Primary

It’s fun to see kids enjoy what they are doing - especially when done in group work. The students at Subuiga are gradually grouping themselves according to their areas of interest. The method we are using at this school is to introduce an Activity - then pick the best of the students in it and group them to collaborate, challenging them to come up with something even better. 

I now have a Paint club and a club doing Scratch. I will next involve them in making Memorize games which they will be sharing with the rest of the students and will form a group of experts in this area. Once we get everybody settled we will be able to run different Activities at the same time, where we will just be facilitating learning.

Thursday: Lewa Conservation Education Centre

The Internet at the CEC has facilitated the learning of conservation education. It also links the kids visiting to the larger world and makes them understand the ability of the Internet to provide possible solutions to almost all problems. For many of the visiting students, it is their first time to use or interact with the computers, especially in browsing the Web.

 Friday: Leparua Primary

The Leparua kids have familiarized themselves with the Activities they had chosen to work with and by next Friday they will start to work on real projects. We find our teaching so much easier now that students work on Activities of their own interest.

Monday: Ntugi Secondary

A new method of teaching at Ntugi Secondary has helped us cover a wider area of study in a shorter time. The projector technology, by which I prepare presentations and present them to the class using a projector has made this possible.

I had been spending a lot of time explaining concepts orally, and many students couldn’t understand - so I had to go round showing each one individually. But by using projected presentations, I am now able to explain clearly to everyone at once. For example, when I was teaching an example code from Scratch, I was able to teach programming concepts like iteration and conditional execution, and also how to debug. These were my objectives, as per the programming curriculum am designing. After the presentation, the students were able to write related codes that applied each of these concepts.

Right now, I am taking screen shots on Sugar and then using a Windows laptop and Powerpoint to connect to the projector, but this coming week I am going to try connecting my XO to the projector using a USB/VGA adapter - and experimenting with the Portfolio activity to build slideshows.

Tuesday: Ngarendare Secondary/Lewa Primary

I was impressed to see how well the students had implemented and executed our 'departmental" idea at Ngarendare Secondary. When I arrived, the students quickly settled into their respective groups, and I had tutorials that guided them about what to do.

The Technical experts learning hardware and software maintenance took apart a faulty 1.5 XO and named the parts. They’d been having theory lessons on the same - about the microprocessor, logic unit - and they were finally able to see them embedded in the motherboard. They named the type of the microprocessor.

The Research department learned how to connect to the Internet and browse things of their interests. Next time, they will have an topic or objective to research about they will present their findings to the rest of the school.

The Networking group also did their part. They learned how to connect and share an Activity with the mesh network and troubleshoot any related problems. Next, they will learn how to connect to a WAP device.

At Lewa Primary we held a Science class with new group of students using collaborated chat in Speak. Now, all the teachers want it done in their classes and with their subjects! They find it very useful.

Wednesday: Subuiga Primary

'Let kids be brought together by their interests' is my motto. As much as possible, I try to discover the interests and talents of the kids I am working with, and help them develop in the directions they want.

At Subuiga, for instance, I held a class using the Paint Activity with the aim of inspiring those students who are very good in painting. I got five kids who will now form a group of painters. I will go on introducing new Activities each week, picking the best kids in them to lead that group.

Thursday: Lewa Conservation Education Centre

Lewa's CEC is now capable of offering a chance for visiting students to connect to the Internet and research on the challenging environmental questions of the day. They are exposed to ecosystems and wildlife during their game drives at Lewa and, with this experience and exploration, they end up with many questions that can only be partly answered during the drive itself.

So, afterwards, they are given a chance to browse those questions and others on the Internet. Although this exposure to online research is focused on environmental questions, it is a way to show them how the Internet can provide reliable answers to any questions of interest. They research a set of questions and then they discuss their findings with the group. Teachers accompanying them admire the method - but they also express their challenge as,unfortunately, they generally lack such resources back at their schools.

Friday: Leparua Primary

At Leparua, I pitched the idea, adopted at the other schools, of combining students according to similar interest after our visit on Friday. There are now a group of painters and programmers who are eager to learn the way in each of those directions. I had a meeting with the responsible teachers that have been assigned to help in the program and we laid of strategies about how to best offer guidance to the students as they explore their interests. 

My role will be just to collect the projects at the end of the week, helping them solve any difficulties they encountered and introducing new ideas. This is the time am yearning for: when the sites run themselves independently!

Monday: Ntugi Secondary 

I sighed with relief as the schools have finally settled their teachers strike. The strike has affected the operation of Ntugi Group’s OLPC laptop program since no students were in school. 

So, today was my belated first day of the term to visit Ntugi Secondary and I arrived armed with new strategies for improving the performance of the computer project in the school. I held a meeting with the Computer Club members and discussed the way forward this term. 

We discussed the best ways to develop the student’s skills in computing as well as their creativity and logical thinking in problem solving. We designed strategies on how to achieve this objective and we agreed that the best way is to have every student choose his/her area of interest and, as a facilitator, I would help them improve on them. I have noticed several students who are good at and interested in programming and I will bring them together to form  a group of programmers, while not neglecting the others’ interests (programming in Python is now my own personal area of interest). The recent problem was that not many students had enough experience to really know what they could do best.

Tuesday: Ngarendare Secondary/Lewa Primary 

A new term means an improvement from the past term. Following the logistical struggles that faced the Computer Program at Ngarendare, it became essential to revise my methods of operation. I’d had great hopes of getting a connection to the power grid (what we call mains power in Kenya) before the start of this term but it has taken longer than expected. 

My only left option is to find a way of engaging a maximum number of students in the most efficient way with the few computers we can carry into the site in our backpack - which is eight!. Having identified that students have diversified interests, we are going to experiment with dividing the course into different departments. These are included in our proposed curriculum for the pilot project. These are:

Networking

Programming

School Media 

Research

Hardware/Software Maintenance and Trouble-Shooting

They are explained more in the curriculum (which I have written with Judy and will post soon) and each has objectives to be achieved in both the short term and long term. This will equip the students with the required knowledge to fully ‘own’ their project and have the ability to maintain it. It also works to make them not just ‘end users’ but real ‘creators’ - the larger goal of OLPC and Sugar - and more so creates awareness to the available professional careers in these areas.

We explained each of these areas to the students and explained the activities that each would involve. They chose different areas and, to my surprise, very few chose programming; I guess they have been having a hard time since i had made it the main activity during the last term! Next is to give them tutorials on their areas of choice and facilitate their learning by helping them on the difficult bits.

At Lewa Primary, we used collaboration within the Speak Activity for a Social Studies class. Our objective was to experiment and find out how computers might improve studies in class. I was lucky to get supportive teachers who helped in formulating a question-based lesson where students discussed using collaborative charting. We had ten questions on a topic and at the end I had the student write down what they had learnt during the lessons. It is amazing that everybody remembered 80% of the information provided, and that the teachers found it a more effective method of teaching.

Wednesday: Subuiga Primary

The large number of students at Subuiga creates the need to use an Activity that would simultaneously engage as many students as possible. It also calls for an Activity that involves group work. I found holding revision lessons, where students discussed a selection of questions through a collaborated chat in Speak to be a good way of enganging them. 

This gives a chance to students who are too shy to face the class and support their argument as they can type and submit their reasoning easily during the chat. It also gives a teacher access to the honest reasoning of the student and a position to help understand things in a better way. It leaves the student with information that is easily remembered for long and would be suitable for mastering the difficult sections in learning where students struggle to understand.

Thursday: Lewa Conservation Education Centre

Student visiting the CEC will now be able to collaborate more efficiently on the the XO 1.5’s after we devised a better solution to networking. Human beings  are social and engaging a collaborative activity gives them a better environment that enables the students to learn from their peers.

Friday: Leparua Primary

Due to transport challenges, we were not able to access Leparua, but we are hoping to visit there next Friday.

Thanks to all that made all this successful.

Habari ya siku. I wish to inform you that the teachers' strike is still on, all the schools are closed and therefore we cannot be given a room to do our teaching.

In the village, though, there are individuals who are asking to be helped in eliminating their computer illiteracy. They are not all current students - some graduated last year and one is a primary school teacher .

Therefore I have considered it wise that, instead of going in the CEC office where there is also no work, I will teach my neighbours in the village their while we await for the government to get an agreement with the teachers.

Let me begin by thanking everyone with whom have interacted this term for their support. It has been a very busy season for me with a lot of learning and experiences. I have been visiting different schools but every day of my teaching has been successful, and the students and teachers have been so kind and cooperative.

I am happy that, by now, most of my students have understood the basis of the Sugar Activities we’ve included on our build (Turtle Art, FotoToon among others) and my suggestion, for the coming term, is to give them room to think and come up with their own projects.

At Ngarendare I have the students with potential - only that they get to use the laptops only once in a week and therefore they don’t have chances for practice. I am sure that if the school were to get power, and they had more of a chance to use the XO's, the school would produce smart individuals faster than any other institution!

In the few months that I have been teaching, I am very happy with Ntugi Primary teachers  too because, since I started with them, they have never missed single lesson and they always accompany their kid’s in class and help me in teaching . This is really essential because the numbers of kids - 52 - is very big and I need their help.

I would like to thank everyone who has contributed to the success of my teaching throughout the term. And let a special thanks go to Ntugi Group, to the Lewa Education officers for their advice, and to Simon Mwangangi for the warm welcome he has offered me as his Assistant Intern. 

Thank you all!

Following the schools timetable, the second term is over, and it’s now time for the August Break. 

A lot of effort has been applied this term to make the ends meet and guarantee the progress and success of the pilot project - the extension of the OLPC program to 6 sites beyond the original deployment at Ntugi Secondary.

That extension is now one year old, as is my role as Ntugi Group intern. This is the view of things from my perspective - about the performance of everything, of what was expected, and of what has been achieved so far.

The specific objectives of this term were:

1) To develop Ngarendare Secondary, Lewa Primary and Subuiga Primary as independent sites by...

Giving them a permanent set of XO laptops so they don’t have to depend on our carry-in backpack program - which is limited to 8 laptops.

Training the Computer Club members to run the school sites with the help of the site supervisors (teachers assigned to run the sites).

2) Enroll more students at the already developed sites, Leparua Primary (16 laptops) and Ntugi Secondary (50 laptops), and train them from introduction to Sugar all the way to project development.

The efforts to develop the pilot sites as independent, permanent, and self-sufficient sites has faced some challenges. 

The training part (1b) has worked fine especially with the addition of a second intern, Judy Kinya. This has enabled faster training for the schools' Computer Clubs and, more importantly, the addition of a 7th site: Ntugi Primary. Ntugi Primary is a neighbor school to Ntugi Secondary - a hundred meters away - and the students now come to Ntugi Secondary to use their complement of laptops.

Remember that the are sites (Ngarendare, Lewa Primary, Subuiga) started by us- the Kenyan interns -  and we are eager to see how they might develop into and run as independent , permanent sites. Then we can compare them with sites started by foreigners (the Toronto team) and see the difference. The main challenge now is on (1a). We have got enough computers for the new sites, but no power to run them. The promised Mains power (connection to the grid) has not materialized, and this has delayed the development of the sites by not balancing the knowledge of the Computer Clubs and the Site Supervisors with the needed physical resources like computers and their accessories - all because we are waiting on power. On the up side, it has been possible to get the students working on project towards the end of the term, and the Ntugi Secondary kids have really started working on a complex project. 

Of course, the extension of our work to the pilot project in the neighboring country of Tanzania is one of this term’s achievements that we cannot forget. It moved us from being ‘local interns’ to ‘international consultants’.

The most important thing at this stage in our development here in Kenya is to build a digital curriculum, specific to the XO laptop and the Sugar software, that shows students the future path of their learning and  can guide the interns to know what to teach them every step along that journey. This will work best if other teaching facilities also assist in teaching. For instance, the Conservation Education Center, with plentiful and quick availability of Internet can be easily linked to the other schools like Ntugi who also have access to Internet (through a 3G modem) and they can combine efforts in conservation. Requirements going forward:

We humbly request for the stakeholders to get the power issue solved and mains electricity supplied to the suggested sites.

Add more links that connect us to our new sister site in Matipwili, TZ.

Every body’s advice and suggestion in order to come up with the best curriculum that suits our project.

This being the last week of the term in most of the schools, I decided not to teach anything new but reviewed what we‘ve covered throughout the whole term - except in Ngarendare where we developed a colour spectrum graphic with students in Turtle Art. I am happy that some of my student have understood the Turtle Art icons so completely and, by next term, I am sure they will be able to come up with their own project with the help of their teachers and me.

Monday: Ntugi Secondary

We polished the remaining bits of our Fototoon project with the first section and with the second section, I taught the students how to view a post in the school blog - and how to post theirs. Unfortunate that Godfrey was not around to open us the Blogger account so we shall post it next week.

Tuesday: Lewa Conservation Education Centre

We didn't go to Ngarendare as we normally do because there was a community meeting. Instead I worked at the CEC with student from Mucheene Primary, and Simon went to Lewa Primary in the afternoon.

I taught the Mucheene students typing and word-processing using AbiWord, and they were able type a bit of information about the five animals they had seen during the game-drive through Lewa that day.

Wednesday: Ntugi Primary

At Ntugi Secondary, I hosted the kids from Ntugi Primary in the afternoon in the Computer Lab. We did simple collaboration with the kids using the Speak Activity. I divided them into groups and every two groups were to share the activity so they could understand the collaborating ability of the XO laptops. They were able to do this with my help and that of their two teachers who are dedicated so much. The students were able to hold science discussions. This was very interesting to them, since they were able learn typing skills as while reminding themselves classwork at the same time.

Although this use of Speak for these chats may seem like a very simple use of the laptops, their teachers considered this as one of the best way of teaching especially during discussion lessons.

Thursday: Subuiga Primary

At Subuiga, I taught the kids how to use all the different Paint Activity icons and, by the end of the introduction, they were able to paint surprisingly nice pictures .This was very interesting since the kids were able to reveal their hidden talents.

Friday: Leparua Primary

The Leparua kids have a lot of potential - the only thing holding them back is they are not given enough time to utilize the machines fully, and we are working on solutions to that - especially creating a sing-in/sign-out protocol for the school.

We were able to create a very nice Turtle Art project of a spectrum of colors. This was amazing since I come up with the idea for the project, but it was up to them to figure out how to do it and they contributed so much to the development of the project.

The Extension of the Horizons idea and Pay It Forward Philosophy

For the last two weeks, we have been visiting the Kisampa Conservancy, working in the Matipwili community which neighbours the conservancy. I am happy that the 'horizons' idea or philosophy is being implemeted at a very fast pase that no one could have anticipated at the beginning of  the XO laptop project in Ntugi Secondary.

When Mark Battley and his students first came to Kenya to experiment with the OLPC laptops 3 years ago he explained two concepts to Simon Mwangangi and me:

Pay It Forward: If someone gives you something, you don't have to pay it back to the person who originally gave it to you... you pay it forward to someone else who needs it. In our case, we were given the opportunity to use the laptops, and the training required. Now, we pay it forward by teacher others what we learned.

Horizons: To complete any journey, you must find a spot on the horizon and head towards it. Soon you will have arrived at your destination - the horizon - and you will be surprised by a new horizon, and a new journey, waiting for you. For us, the first horizon was to learn how to use the XO. The next was to become an intern and teach at 7 sites within our community. The latest horizon is travelling to Tanzania to start a new OLPC pilot project there.

Ntugi's Horizons and Pay It Forward idea has now gone beyond our Kenyan borders and is giving people a lot of experience. Personally, I am proud that I have gained  a lot of  experience, as well as implementing the pay it forward idea not only to my fellow Kenyans, but also to people in by neighbouring countries.

Richard and Jeanann Barbour, the owners of the Kisampa Lodge and caretakers of the conservancy were very good to us and they gave us the full support we needed to start the OLPC program. Their objective was to introduce the community to the modern world. They thought that through this, people would change their awareness and help them, especially the students both in secondary and primary, to perform well in their education which is the main key to community development. I also stand to support them because the XO  laptops have contribute a lot toward the good perfomance of students at Ntugi Secondary. I should know since I used to be one of them!

People in Matipwili have a lot of potential and willingness to learn computers, only that they didn’t have someone to teach them before. I know that they have the potential because from the moment we began teaching, we never arrived befor the learners - they always arrived early and were waiting for us in the outdoor  library we were using while the computer lab was being constructed.

In the few days we spent with them, we identified and worked with very smart individuals who could share the ideas we taught them to others - and majority were very young kids of Grade Four and Five. This was very encouraging and it also improved my teaching morale as a teacher to understand that such young students could be master users and teachers.

I commend Ntugi Group for their support, Richard and Jeanann for their hospitality, generosity, and warm welcome, the entire OLPC community,and the Matipwili fraternity for allowing us into their community, and my dear mum for allowing me to cross the border - and everybody who contributed to our successful trip to Tanzania.

Thank you all!

Monday: Ntugi Secondary

At Ntugi Secondary, I was greeted by the journalism students eager for me to share my experience in Tanzania with them. Our team (me, Godfrey, Simon and Mark) had travelled to there to start a pilot OLPC program in the remote Matpwili village. I shared my photos and it was a great motivation to them that we were expanding the project - and that will give them more chances of working with the project. Everybody from the group was determined to work hard so they could eventually have the same opportunity I'd had - to cross the border and work as a consultant.

Tuesday: Ngarendare Secondary/Lewa Primary

At Ngarendare Secondary we resumed our activities where we'd left off before our trip. The students had really missed the lessons and I was happy at the seriousness they showed to start their lessons as usual. I also had the chance to work with the only group of students that I had not yet introduced to the Turtle Art Activity. This group turned out to be the most active since by the end of the session they were able to draw different shapes without consulting me at all!

We proceeded to Lewa Primary where the kids were ready for our lesson and I introduced them to the Tux Math Activity. They were able to sharpen their brains by having groups compete with each other to get higher scores  - this was a simple and effective motivation for the  kids to learn Math.

Wednesday: Ntugi Secondary

At Ntugi Secondary, the demand for the students to learn more on the XO laptop is increasing day by day. The students requested that I show them how to join the XOs together in a mesh network for collaboration so that in case I am not there, they can connect the machines during the lesson by themselves and hold the discussions. This was, as a teacher, a very interesting and encouraging comment to hear from my students. I went ahead and showed them how to do all this during the lesson and it was very interesting.

Thursday: Subuiga Primary

At Subuiga Primary school, I had Grade Five kids and their two teachers. We played a Memorize Game and, by the end of the lesson, the kids had learned how to create their own custom multiplication Memorize game, save it and share it. 

Friday: Leparua Primary

All primary schools supported by Lewa had girls’ soccer competitions which brought pupils from different schools together. Simon and I spent the whole day at Lewa Social Center, where the soccer fields are, and it was our pleasure to meet all the schools we teach in one place - and watch them play!

Monday: Ntugi Secondary At Ntugi Secondary school, I was eagerly awaited by students of the Computer Club who were eager to know about my experience in Tanzania where Judy, Godfrey and I had traveled to help start another pilot OLPC project. I shared my photos with them and it was a great motivation to them that we were expanding the OLPC project in East Africa - that will give them more even chances of working with the larger international OLPC movement. Everybody from the group was determined to work hard in the hopes of, one day, having the same opportunity that Judy, Godfrey and I did. Tuesday: Ngarendare Secondary/Lewa Primary I had Judy with me at Ngarendare Secondary where we resumed our activities after our trip to Tanzania. The students had missed our lessons and I was happy with the way they reported punctually to our class. I had a session of a theory class with the half of the club where we discussed  computer software and its classification. I used the XO's Sugar and Gnome software as an example as a teaching aid.

Once the school gets power, we have allocated enough laptops that we will be able to engage all the Computer Club members to our practical activities and creating projects. In the afternoon, we proceeded to Lewa Primary school where we met the Lewa Primary kids ready for our lesson and introduced them to the TuxMath Activity. They sharpened their minds by playing rounds where they competed to be the best scorer and we helped them advance to ever more abstract levels of the game. Wednesday: Subuiga Primary

An unlucky day since we had a blackout at Lewa and I was not able to charge the laptops to be used at Subuiga. So, instead I spent the whole day at the Education Center cleaning the XO's and and changing the old labels on the laptops. I also re-imaged the 12 1.5 XO machines at the CEC and they all worked flawlessly.

Thursday: Lewa Conservation Education Centre We had students from Ntumburi Secondary School and they had a chance to utilize the XO laptops in a collaborated Speak Activity where they discussed on the various issues related to conservation. Ephantus Mugo,  the Conservation Education Coordinator at the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy helped me to supervise the students and see to it that they were doing the correct thing. They had fun in this as well as they learned a lot about conservation.

Friday: Soccer Competition

On this day, all Lewa-sponsored schools had a girls soccer competition which brought all the kids from the different schools together and we spent the whole day with them at Lewa Social Center. It was but was a pleasure to meet all the schools I work with and see them in a different circumstance... I was confused as to which school I should cheer for!

We are currently writing posts for Day 2 at Leparua Primary and Day 3 at Ntugi Secondary, but in the meantime, we wanted to share two remarkable videos taken on those days. They document Ntugi Group's two interns at work.

Simon Mwangangi and Judy Kinya are two of the world's first students to have trained on the XO in school, graduated from an OLPC program,  and to be paying it forward by  training the next cohort of local students at seven sites in their community. Their outreach involves both primary and secondary students.

What is remarkable about these interns is that they have been on the job for less than a year, Simon for nine months and Judy for one. We will be posting subsequent videos, but these will give you a first impression of their teaching and technical prowess:

Judy Kinya teaches TurtleArt to a group of Class 7 students at Leparua Primary School.

Simon Mwangangi repairs eight OLPC XO laptops with Kevin Gordon at Ntugi Secondary School.

Simon and Judy at work at Ntugi Secondary School.

Thursday: Ntugi Secondary and Ntugi Primary

Three years ago, we arrived at Ntugi Secondary School for the first time, so it was a stirring experience to pull up the hill and into the courtyard once again. It was also a moment of striking temporal vertigo.

When the Toronto team — a teacher and his four high school students — first came to  Ntugi School in 2009, our current interns, Simon Mwangangi and Judy Kinya, were also students, introduced to the OLPC in their Form 3 (Grade 11) class.

Now, three years later, that teacher, Mark Battley, works on OLPC projects full-time, and the Toronto team has grown to encompass 8 families and 13 people. The four original Toronto students are at university, and Simon and Judy have graduated from Ntugi and are now teaching Sugar and the OLPC XO's at 7 sites including their old alma mater.

Although the Toronto and Kenya teams stay in weekly contact by phone, text, IRC, and Skype, nothing can replace the feeling of being together after a year apart — working, laughing, sharing, and planning.

Our first working day was an opportunity to unpack our gear, catch up on the past year, plan for the week, and watch our interns in action — our first opportunity since the internship program was established just as we were leaving last July.

Judy Kinya is our second intern and the most recent addition to the Ntugi Group. She volunteered throughout March and began full-time work in May.

Judy Kinya walks across the gully that separates Ntugi Secondary and Ntugi Primary

Judy is pioneering a new program that brings Class 7 (Grade 7) students from Ntugi Primary to Ntugi Secondary's Computer Lab once a week for OLPC classes. Although the two schools are side by side, and the primary acts as a feeder school for the secondary, they are not formally linked. Judy's OLPC program is the fulfillment of several long-standing goals:

Create opportunities for co-operation and collaboration between the two schools

Use Ntugi's lab and 40 XO's to their fullest

Introduce Sugar and the OLPC laptops at the primary level

Give primary students exposure to the 'grown-up' world of the secondary school, and encourage them to continue on to high school after their graduation from primary.

At 2:00 PM, Judy walks down the little valley between the two schools and into Ntugi Primary's courtyard where she meets with the primary teachers and then brings the Class 7's over to Ntugi Secondary.

The class is huge, and it fills every seat in the Ntugi Secondary computer lab, but Judy is masterful in both inspiring and managing them.

Judy is a comfortable and natural teacher, introducing concepts from the front of the room, and then moving between groups of students, checking their work and suggesting new ideas.

On this day, she was introducing the Memorize Activity, taking students through the demo addition game and then showing them how to create their own photo-quiz by using Memorize in combination with Record.

The primary students' home-room teacher comes over with his students and helps with the facilitation.

On this particular day, Judy also had her co-intern Simon Mwangangi along to help out with the teaching.

Kevin Ballon, part of our Toronto team, is on his first trip to Kenya. He has been training on the OLPC's Sugar OS for several months, and this was also his first chance to step in and help teach.

Amal Chandaria, who is on his 4th trip, and was part of the original team in 2009, was there to document the class... and he encouraged some of the Ntugi Primary Students to try their hand at photography too!

It was really a privilege to watch Judy teach, and to see how far and how quickly the program has grown under Simon and Judy's leadership.

Monday: Ntugi Secondary

Ntugi Secondary is a site with students who are very willing to learn a lot with the XO laptop. The students asked me to show them how to switch to the Gnome desktop and use the AbiWord and I helped them to do it. Then, we carried on with the business of day - some of the students had taken pictures of the events that happened on Monday evening in the school compound, and they used the Fototoon Activity to make interesting stories from them.

Tuesday: Ngarendare Secondary/Lewa Primary

Ngarendare Secondary and Lewa Primary are both sites that are really thrusting to learn computers. We used Typing Turtle with students at Ngarendare so as to improve their typing  speed and also help them to use two hands in typing .We were only able to practice the home row since time was limited .

This was the first time the Lewa Primary pupils had access to the laptops, and they had a lot of interest and willingness to learn more. We taught them how to use some of the XO laptop activities like the Write and Record Activities. In Record Activity they were able to take photos and do some recording while they sang and did other different things.

Wednesday: Ntugi Secondary

Form Two (Grade 10) is a group of students ready to use the laptops in learning. I helped them to create a game in Memorize Activity  after I realized that they had difficulties in their Geography class matching different minerals with the areas in which they are mined. I thought a Memorize game would make it a bit more fun for them to study. We were able to come up with a very nice game which can not only be used by the Form Two students who created it, but also by the other members of the school who are studying geography. The nice thing about Memorize is that the students learn both as they create the game, and as they play it.

Thursday: Ntugi Primary

The Grade Seven students from Ntugi Primary School are always eager to learn new ideas every time we meet with them for computer lesson. On this day, they wanted to learn how to both play the math games that come preloaded in the Memorize Activity, and how to create their own mathematics game using the 'create' tools. I worked with their two teachers Simon Mwangangi, Mark Battley, to help each group create one, save it to the Journal, and share it with the other groups using a USB key.

 Friday: Leparua Primary

At Leparua, I am working with the Grade Seven kids who are always ready to learn new ideas on the Turtle Art Activity. First, I asked the kids to remind me what we had covered in the previous lesson and they were able to remember. Then, I then taught them how to use twor new Turtle block commands: The Operation command that makes the Turtle draw a circle a circle, and the Repeat command that makes the Turtle repeat an action for more than one time.  By combining these they were able to draw a simple flower.

Ntugi Group's Toronto team arrived back at our home-away-from-home, the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy on June 6th. This trip, our team consists of veterans Mark Battley (6 trips), Amal Chandaria (4 trips), Adam Gordon (4 trips), Kevin Gordon (3 trips), and our newest member but long-term friend, Kevin Ballon (1st trip).

Our home in Lewa – Marwell Research Station. Mark stays in the pup tent (right of frame) while Amal and Kevin have separate rooms in the main building.

Mark Battley's pup-tent with Mount Kenya in the background left.

The full Toronto team will be in Kenya for ten days, working with SIte Supervisor Godfrey Mutwiri, and Interns Simon Mwangangi and Judy Kinya to strengthen the local OLPC program. Then, while the rest of the team returns home, Mark Battley will stay on and travel with Godfrey, Simon and Judy to Tanzania where they will help the Tuende Pamoja Charity establish a 30-laptop pilot in the village of Matipwili. 

Amal Chandaria and Kevin Ballon working with Scratch at the Marwell Research Centre

The purpose of this trip to Kenya is to...

Replace Ntugi School's complement of 40 XO 1.0's with 40 new XO 1.5's.

Refresh and re-deploy the original 40 XO 1.0's to new 'permanent' pilots at three schools that, until now, have only been served by our interns' carry-in 'backpack' visits: Ngarendare Secondary, Lewa Primary and Subuiga Primary. The laptops will be moved to those schools as mains power is connected at those schools over the coming weeks and months.

Re-flash all XO's to a new build.

Deliver USB key-rings (with 5 USB keys each) that containin all 3000 Khan Academy videos (http://www.khanacademy.org/) converted to .ogv format so they play on any XO and can be distributed to our 7 sites here in Kenya.

Experiment with new modem/routers to increase the numbers of laptops that can be online at one time.

Experiment with a directional antenna so that, at Leparua, the students might not have to climb the hill every time they need a 3G Internet signal.

Install a rooftop antenna at Ntugi Secondary to boost the 3G signal at the Computer Lap which is at the bottom of the hill.

Bring Scratch and eToys resources (sample projects and instructional videos).

Document Ntugi Group's OLPC program through photography and video. The photographs will be part of a chapter in an upcoming book that documents the experience of six small OLPC deployments around the world.

Provide professional development for our two interns, Simon and Judy, and design both a management structure and job descriptions for our Site Supervisors and Interns.

Visits to all our OLPC deployment sites and the establishment of blogs for select schools.

Kevin Gordon works with intern Simon Mwangangi to repair an XO

By the end of this trip, Ntugi Group's OLPC deployment at 7 sites in the Lewa area should include:

Ntugi Secondary (40 XO-1.5's)

Ntugi Primary (visits Ntugi Secondary to use the 40 XO 1.5's at the lab there)

Leparua Primary (16 XO-1.0's)

Ngarendare Secondary (16 XO-1.0's)

Lewa Primary (16 XO-1.0's)

Lewa's Conservation Education Centre (12 XO-1.5's)

Subuiga Primary (8 XO-1.0's)