OLPC Peru/Arahuay

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Arahuay (in the Arahuay district) is Perú's pilot site.

School   : Institución Educativa Apóstol Santiago : Escuela
Since    :                2007-07-07              : Desde
Students :                  46                    : Estudiantes
Teachers :                   3                    : Docentes
Laptops  :                  60                    : Laptops
Tot.Pop. :                  742                   : Pob.Tot.
Feature  :             2600 m (alt)               : Característica

Chronicle 1

Carla Gomez Monroy, OLPC

OLPC in Peru: 16 – 30 June 2007

[editorial note: the teacher's and student's names are fictitious.]

Arahuay is the town were the first OLPC project in Peru is being implemented.

Arahuay school break

Arahuay

Not far from Lima, relatively speaking, Arahuay is approximately 100 km away and about a 3-hour drive, of which 37 km are on a dirt road, which takes one hour or more, depending on the time of day and night. Transportation is limited to two buses during the day. One leaves Arahuay at 6 AM and the other at 3 PM. On their way back, the bus arrives in Araguay at 11.30 AM and 7 PM.

Arahuay is located in the Cordillera de la Viuda at 2600 meters above sea level, where mobile phone signals are only available in the mountains that have special antennas.

Arahuay is an agricultural and animal farming town of around 500 people. Education has become an important factor for the development of their children. Every child in town must attend school. The name of the school is I.E. Apóstol Santiago and it is a combination of primary and secondary school. I.E. stands for Institución Educativa, which translated is Educational Institution.

[set of images] Boy and chickens | The town's church | Local women and baby |Bus leaving

Primary school is a multi-grade school. 1st and 2nd grades are taught together by one teacher, A. And 3rd and 4th grades are taught by B, while 5th and 6th are taught by C. Secondary education is 5 years long, and the school has 4 secondary classrooms. The primary school has 46 students, 8 in first and second grades, 21 in third and fourth, and 17 in fifth and sixth. Secondary school has around 50 more students.

Education for all

Some students come from other towns and even from Lima, the Capital of Peru, to study in Arahuay. The town of Arahuay provides them with a boarding house during the week. The boarding house is the former primary school and it has a kindergarten in it. Meals are sponsored by the Nutrition Aid National Program (PRONAA). The CARITAS Catholic Association takes care of the children at the boarding house, and the cook is paid by the Parents Association. Children arrive on Sunday night in Arahuay and leave Friday afternoon, bound for their hometowns. Some of these children have to walk 5 hours to get home, and 5 hours back. This boarding house arrangement is uncommon in Peru, so this local effort is an outstanding initiative. The boarding house is for girls and boys, which makes it more interesting, since traditionally girls are not allowed to be away from home.

[image: ] Boarding house

The Huascarán Program

The Ministry of Education has the Huascarán Program, which promotes the application of Information and Communication Technologies to 3260 state schools in rural and marginalized urban areas in Peru. Including the alternative basic education system (for adults), special education (for handicapped children), and bilingual schools (a community’s mother-tongue and Spanish).

The Huascarán Program provides two kinds of services, depending on the geographic location and the local needs of the schools. 1) They provide teachers and principals with guidance on pedagogical aspects and on the application of ICT to their learning activities. 2) Also, in some places, Huascarán Program provides them with an Innovation classroom, which has about 5 to10 PCs, depending on the number of students. In some cases, Huascarán Program also provides them with a VSAT antenna when the cabled signal is not available. And the local person in charge of the classroom is trained technologically and pedagogically.

Huascarán Program in Arahuay

Arahuay town's Local Education Facilitation Unit (Unidad de gestion educativa local) provided 5 PCs, and Huascarán Program contributed with the VSAT, its installation, and the server configuration for the Internet. The Innovation classroom and the VSAT are in the town hall, which is halfway up the hill. The decision of setting up the Innovation classroom in the first floor of the town hall was for security reasons. The school is at the lowest part of the town.

Information dissemination

Information in towns like Arahuay and its surroundings spreads by word of mouth fast. Even the first day we came to town, just to look-see and to come back prepared, as well as to speak with the principal and teachers, when the afternoon bus came and a man got off, he asked the principal about the laptops. We just laughed.

Handing out the laptops

The teachers first encounter

The three primary female teachers live in town during weekdays, and Friday afternoon they go to Lima to visit their children and family. Sunday evening, they come back to town. B, one of them, has been teaching for 8 years in Arahuay already.

When we came to introduce the OLPC Project to their school, they weren’t expecting us. Nevertheless, they were interested in the idea of working with us in the afternoons when they were in town. In June, there are like 4 holidays which take place precisely during our implementation period. Since they leave town right after school on Maríays, we proposed working with them Maríays in the afternoon and one Saturday to take advantage of the little time the team was going to be in Arahuay. At first, they were enthusiastic about the schedule. However, every day that they work with the laptops, they become more acquainted with them and enjoy the teacher sessions increasingly.

The first time we came, we came for just one day. It was a Monday. We introduced the teachers to the project, and we had our first session with them. Since then, they kept their laptops. Due to procedural Ministry of Education reasons, we could not come back to town right after to start working with everybody everyday. However, we did come back the following Thursday to apply the evaluation tests and run the information and perspective surveys that had been prepared by the Huascarán Program Pedagogical Team, comprised of D and E, and by the Measurement of Quality Unit. That afternoon we worked with the teachers, and in the evening, we handed out the laptops to the parents and their children in a special meeting we held with them for the purpose.

[image] teachers

Children receiving their laptops

Thursday evening, we had set the meeting at 6 PM when parents start getting back from their chacras (where they farm). We started at 6.30, when more parents were around. The principal welcomed the OLPC in Peru team and spoke of how honored the town was to be the first one to receive the laptops and to participate in the development of the project i Peru. After him, the president of the parents association spoke, also welcoming us. Representing the Ministry of Education, D spoke, explaining the purpose and details of the project. I spoke about the OLPC Project and the importance of making it a community project.

[set of images] The principal speaking | Boy and his mother | Girl and her grandmother |All got a laptop

We handed out the laptops following the school lists. Each child came to the front with his or her representative to receive an XO laptop and to have a photo taken. Everybody was very excited, though to my surprise, none of the children opened their laptop.

The parents had cooked for the OLPC-Peru team a traditional pachamanca (goat meat cooked under ground), which we enjoyed a lot. Bringing back some of such delicious food to all the wonderful OLPC people in the world is impossible. But I can share the handmade posters they set up in the classroom where the ceremony took place... They were made for all of us:

[set of images] "Thank you for the computers" | "Thank you for supporting our children" | "Arahuay welcomes you" | "Welcome to I.E. Apóstol Santiago"

We left town too late and had to drive really slowly in the dangerous and super dark way back to the next town where we are staying. On the way, I asked why nobody had opened their laptop during the ceremony,...and I was told that out of respect to their parents. I was quite surprised, but looking forward to seeing the children’s reactions the following day at school.

The parents

Something the teachers told us afterwards, that also impressed us, was that every single parent came to the meeting, except for two of them, even when parents had to walk incredibly long distances to make it. Of the parents that didn’t show, three children are brothers who are fully registered in the school, and we also gave them their laptops. They will be able to use their laptops freely, as all the other children in Arahuay town, however, they will not be able to take their laptops back home on weekends until their parents come and approve that it's okay for them to take them home on weekends. Town authorities and OLPC-in-Peru are concerned that since they go so far, they may be hurt by someone trying to steal their laptops from them, since word has spread that they have laptops. Nevertheless, the Arahuay community has committed itself to making sure the children can freely and securely use their laptops around town.

A new student at school was transferred two weeks ago but had not been registered yet. Her father came, walking many hours, the day after the ceremony to finally register her daughter in the school, so she could also receive her laptop. For her own safety, she will not be able to take it with her on weekends.

The XOs' first day at Arahuay school

Early morning on Friday, all children were in their classrooms with their laptops charged. Most of them had already tried it at night, and it was a mix of discovering new things and sharing with others what they had already discovered. Teachers kept on teaching, letting children explore their new laptops and encouraging them to do the class work. The children did all the activities. Some would put away the laptop while writing on the notebooks. Some others would write quickly on the notebook and then start punching here and there on the laptop. Still others were totally into the laptop and so excited that they would be doing something totally unrelated to the class and calling the teacher to come and see what they had discovered.

Since most of them had tried it at night and also during the morning, the batteries started running down, and everybody wanted to plug and charge theirs. So some moved closer to the outlets and started working from there. A student in grade 3-4 stood up and unintentionally pulled the charger cable, and his laptop fall down. He was really worried that it was not going to work any more. In fact the keyboard stopped working and he was really concerned about it. I was called out from another classroom to come and see it. I went in and then out of the classroom with the child and his laptop, telling him that we were going to fix it. He kept on asking when he would have it back. We sat in the garden, and I helped him get it open, and we quickly fixed the keyboard. Some of the secondary students stopped by to look, and they found it interesting. When we were going to start it, he was still worried that it was not going to work anymore. Once it started, and when the keyboard was actually working nicely again, he was so happy.

On the first day, we also discovered that children started punching all the keys as soon as the laptop starts. And on that first day we had four laptops that were all confused for being typed on while the OS was booting. One worked after simply being re-started, though three of them had to have their NAND re-installed.

[set image] Between the XO & the notebook | Closer to the power & classmates | Trying it outside | Fixing the first keyboard

On the technical side

Electricity, charging, alternative powering solutions

Plugging in the laptops is an issue that has to be looked into soon. The school electricity set up is for handling only one light bulb per room, so having many laptops charging at the same time is not safe. Also, because all the children want to plug in their laptops at the same time. We are encouraging them to bring their laptops fully charged from home, though the battery takes too long to get fully charged and around 2 to 3 hours to get discharged.

Children found that the chargers get too hot for them, so they have been instructed to turn off the power strip before lacing or removing their charger.

We have two children with no power at home, so they will be given preference, charging their laptops early morning and before leaving school.

Today, July 1st, I was told that the Ministry of Education authorized moving the Innovation classroom into the principal's office, appropriately wired. The school and the parents probably will have to look into the wiring of the classrooms. I have requested some solar panels to make the battery charging safer for children.

[images: power]

Network configuration

When the OLPC servers and access points had not arrived in town, the configuration was as follows. There was a server providing connectivity to the 4 PCs that are in the Innovation classroom. An access point was placed on the outside balcony of the second floor, from where the school can be seen. The existing wireless access goes from that access point to part of the school, including the houses in the way, the patio of the school, and the 5 & 6 grade classroom.

A wired connection was run through town, in a straight line from the access point at the top, setting two switches in two different houses along the way. Another access point was placed in the principal's office, giving a strong wireless signal to the entire school.

[images] VSAT and digging | Access point on the balcony of the second floor | (photos by Eduardo:)First house with a switch | Through the light poles

The physical distribution of the network connectivity in Arahuay is unusual, and it was not considered by the OLPC server developers, however the technical team is putting in a lot of effort to provide the strongest signal possible to the school and nearby places. I made a little painting of the Arahuay setting.

[image - drawing] Arahuay town

The secondary students

The secondary students had made comments that the laptops should not be given to the primary students because "they don't know how to use laptops." However, they have been very keen and helpful running the cable through town, climbing high up on the light posts, house roofs, and all along the way, helping with the wiring. They also helped, together with the assistant teacher, to dig the hole to ground the VSAT antenna (which means a 1 meter deep and a 3 meter long dig) behind the Innovation classroom. Some of them are also interested in learning how to fix the XOs or learning how to work with them in case something goes wrong, to aid the primary students. Secondary students that have siblings in primary school borrowed their XOs to play with them and to access the Internet.

[image]

Chronicle 2

Carla Gomez Monroy, OLPC

OLPC in Peru: 21 June – 10 July 2007

[image] Teacher and student intent on the XO

Introduction

When I'm asked how we are measuring the benefits for children of the OLPC Educational Project and what kind of parameters and evaluation methods we are using, it is hard for me to figure out what people really expect to hear: That the moment children got their laptop they became smarter? That at the end of the period between moment x and moment y, the children in the laptop group performed better than those in the placebo and the no-treatment groups? Well, in Arahuay School the Peru Ministry of Education is running a short term pre-test and post-test pilot study, with an OLPC group only, to see what light can be obtained regarding what actually happens and how it happens in terms of knowledge, performance, and skill development variables. We are going to have the fully analyzed data and results by the end of November.

Meanwhile, many events, which may or may not have made children smarter, are worth highlighting. The OLPC project gave place to an environment, created by and for the child, which fostered learning in a more motivating and significant way than had previously been the case. I present a few observations regarding some people, events, and experiences of the month we spent in Arahuay implementing the project. They have to do with personal motivation, inter-personal relationships, and community impact, with a positive influence on the children, teachers, school, and the whole community, as well as on us, the implementing team.

Observable changes

In general

Right after the project started, we noticed that most of the children started coming to school tidier or better dressed, no one commenting on it.

In the three different classrooms, several children showed aggressive behavior towards their classmates, absenteeism, and even desertion. The teachers made these observations and pointed out specific children who had changed their behavior patterns tremendously. I have to make a note regarding some of these children. It is obvious that each child has a world of its own, but at Arahuay School most of the children are lacking in good nutrition, clothes, and housing, and some don't even have a family to give them care, affection, and love. Some children who were lacking in family support at least came back to school by themselves.

[image] Arahuay primary school children range from 6 to 12 years old.

Antonio and his brothers

Antonio is about 8 years old and is in 2nd grade because he is repeating it. He has a twin brother, Bernardo, who made it to 3rd grade, and another brother, Clemente, who is in 6th grade. Antonio and Bernardo were categorized by the teachers as children with bad behavior, especially because of being too aggressive towards their classmates. The three brothers live in the school's boarding house weekdays and go to their hometown over the weekends. They have two more brothers. Antonio is seated apart from the group, at a desk for himself, closer to the teacher and farther from his classmates.

[image] antonio

The first day Antonio came to school with his XO laptop, instead of playing during recess, he kept on exploring the XO. He quickly became one of the most acquainted with it and empowered to help his classmates by telling them how to do this or that. The change was suddenly and highly noticeable. His teacher was amazed of how he had become more focused doing the class work and was helping his classmates with the computer activities. His twin brother, Bernardo, would leave his 3rd grade group and go to Antonio's 2nd grade classroom to ask him how to save or do something specific on the XO. Even his teacher would ask him how to do certain things that he had already mastered. Clemente, the older brother, who is top of his class, and thus the school's flag-bearer in ceremonies, reported that the relationship among them (the three brothers) has also become much better and that they support each other a lot. When they are not in school, Antonio also helps him with the XO, and, sometimes for some things, Clemente helps Antonio.

Because she didn't believe they had received laptops, it took their mother two weeks after the start of the project to finally come to meet us. She arranged with their three teachers that on Friday afternoons she would be waiting on the road for the teachers to come down with her sons' XOs, and Sunday evenings, she would go up town with her children to leave them at the boarding house.

Diego comes back to school [image] diego

Diego is in second grade. He had stopped coming to school. However, he did come to pick up his XO laptop the day we handed them out. His teacher explained to me, that he has no father, and that his mother went to Lima, the capital, to work. And now, Diego and his two brothers are living by themselves, but a kind neighbor gives them their meals. Diego's teacher went to his home to encourage him to come back to school. Four days after we had started working with the children at school, he came back, and all his classmates welcomed him a lot. From then on, he came to school everyday. Diego also caught on quickly to the XO, and was very keen on helping his first grade classmates do their work on their XOs. He, as several other kids at school, frequently had old, dry mucus on his nose and seemed to prefer me wiping it off than doing it himself, so I switched to reminding him to do it himself, to trying not to mind it too much. Everyday, we brought toilet tissue from the hotel and gave it to the children directly or left it around at school, mainly for that purpose, but to little avail. It was rather cold, and everybody seemed to be used to those noses. Diego's clothes were shabby, unclean, and scarce. His schoolmates, the teachers, and we all adored him, and not only for his radiant and unmatched smile but because he was so bright and sociable. I liked working closely with him, learning from him as much or more than he was learning from us.

[image] First grader being helped by Diego

Emilio saves the day [image] emilio

Emilio is a very clean boy in 2nd grade. He is shy and sometimes stubborn when he doesn't want something. I saw him chasing his classmates with the teacher's yardstick for having taken his color pencils without his permission. He's very good with the XO and between Antonio and he, they always have the answers to how to work things out on the XOs. María likes to tell this story about him, when once she was in his classroom.

“Once, when the teacher was explaining to the children how to look up some new words in the on-line Diccionario de la Real Academia Española [the best Spanish dictionary, costly and practically out of the children's reach in book form]. Emilio understood the procedure and quickly looked up the entire list of words while the teachers and the other students, together, slowly went through the process. The Internet connection went down. The teacher made the best of the situation and explained what the Internet was and about the satellite connection, for them to understand what was going on, and ended by saying, "We will have to wait a little bit until the connection is reestablished." To which Emilio replied, "No need, teacher. I got all the words, and everybody can copy them from me.”

Laptop coming up

Gabriela is in the first grade. She is a lovely child. She has convergent strabismus, and her feet are turned inwardly. Her mother says both conditions are the result of convulsions she had when she was little. Gabriela doesn't like to wear her glasses. She says she prefers to put them on her cat or her pig. Since our first visit to the town, we noticed that Gabriela wore the right shoe on her left foot and the left shoe on her right food. Her mother is saving money to buy the orthopedic devices for her feet. She is the owner of the small grocery store, which has the community phone line, and where meals are also served. The days we were at her school, she came tidily dressed and combed.

[image] gabriela

Gabriela's teacher and mother were very concerned that Gabriela was going to lose her laptop, because she is known to lose everything. The teacher arranged with Gabriela's brother, Hugo, who is in the last grade of secondary school, for him to bring Gabriela to the classroom in the morning, and after school to come back to get her laptop and take it home with him. Some other days the teacher would take Gabriela to her mother's store. Once, while I walked Gabriela to the store up the steep stairs up town, I asked her if I could help her carry her school bag, which looked heavy and had her laptop inside. She said no. My guess is that she was told not to remove her bag from her back, at all, until getting to where her mother was. The first question her mom asked when she saw us coming in was, "Where is the laptop?"

Ignacio's motivation

I heard different stories of why Ignacio stopped coming to school. A certain fact, however, was that he had been reported as a dropout from sixth grade, after two months of not coming to school. Even the Thursday we handed out the laptops, he didn't come.

The Monday after, he came to school with his father. The father explained that he has to leave home really early to go to their chacra, their farm, to work and that there was nobody to wake Ignacio up so he could go to school, but that he was going to talk to his neighbor, so she could wake Ignacio up in time for him to come to school. That day, Ignacio got his laptop, and he was fast getting used to it, faster even than some of his classmates who had it since the previous Thursday. The school authorities and the Ministry of Education staff decided that Ignacio could not take his laptop home because they were afraid he would not come back to school again. Therefore, the teacher who did the cleaning of the school and boarding house took Ignacio's laptop every afternoon up town for Ignacio to be able to use it while she was cleaning the boarding house. Then he had to give it back to her. He spent a week like that, during which he was also very involved with his classes. His motivation to be at school could be felt.

One Monday, a week after he got his laptop, he came by and asked me to please give back his laptop to the principal's assistant. I pretended not to know the arrangements that they had made for him and asked him why. He sat next to me in the schoolyard where I was running some connectivity tests with the technical team and he shyly explained to me that he was not allowed to take it home. I asked him what his feelings were about being back at school. He said he was happy. I asked him if he felt he was capable of taking his XO home and keep on coming to school. He said yes. I asked him where he lived. He said really up town (no Internet connection gets there). I told him he could take his laptop home but that the Internet connectivity was not set up to reach his house, and that he had to come to classes to send me emails once I was gone, and also to share all his findings with his classmates. He smiled but didn't leave. I assured him that I was going to speak with the school authorities for them to know that Ignacio would be taking his laptop back and forth with him. He left happily, and kept on coming to school. I asked the school authorities to let him take his laptop, and told them that if for any reason he stopped coming back to school, they should not scold him, but go to his home and motivate him to come back.

Teacher's day

For the celebration of Teacher's Day, students in the different classes of kindergarten, primary, and secondary school prepared plays, songs, and dances for their teachers. All the teachers and children gathered in the yard to see the performances. However, as soon as the sixth grade students finished their sketches, they sneaked away and into their classroom to work on the Internet. I learned about it when one of them came looking for me because some could easily connect to the Internet while others couldn't. I helped them connect by clicking on the circle to access the Mesh.

Some of the younger children video-recorded the whole event on their XOs, including when the teachers were eating their meal.

The power of the XOs

The teachers realized that children really enjoy working on their laptops a lot and want to do all the class work on them. To the point where, sometimes, teachers tell them conditions, such as: "If you don't work, you won't be able to use your laptops." Or, "You won't take your laptops home today because yesterday, instead of doing your homework, you were playing with your laptops." I asked one child I knew hadn't taken his XO home if he had done his homework, and he said, "No, I didn't do it either. But anyway, she won't let us take them home today." At the end of the day, they all went home carrying their laptops.

Teachers & their classes

In Arahuay, teachers have become multiple role players in the community. They are the ones looking into each child's life problems and ways to solve them. Some times they stay after school to work with some students, so all their students move along evenly. They go looking for their students to their homes if they start missing classes. They talk to their parents if they find it necessary, telling them, for example, that they need glasses or have behavior problems, and sometimes they even give children stationery.

The fact that the teachers live far from home and family weekdays gives them more time to do their class planning and create educational materials for their students. On the other hand, it is hard for them to be far away from their own children and family.

[set of images] Primary school field trip up town to the school library [Series of photos taken by María]

Juana, 1st & 2nd grades

Juana, who teaches first and second grade in the same classroom, patiently spends the required time with each of her students. Many times, while she is with one of her students, the others get distracted, especially Gabriela. Nevertheless, she manages a good balance between individualized assistance and keeping everybody busy. She gives them time to do their activities in both their notebooks and their laptops. She helps them all until everybody finishes, and if necessary, she stays after class with the ones who haven't finished. Juana alternates the activities between the notebook and the laptop and is always looking for ways of exploiting the XOs features to enhance her students' learning.

[images] Teacher and second graders | Teacher Juana and one of her pupils

Learning through recording

One of Juana's activities is for practicing reading aloud skills. She pointed out to me that most of her children didn't pronounce correctly all of the words while reading aloud, and that sometimes, since they still read so slowly, they don't always understand what they had just read. Her planned activity included reading a small story and then answering some questions about it. However, each child was supposed to read the story while recording it with the eToys recording feature and, afterwards, listen to the recording of themselves. In class, the children recorded the story, then listened to it once, and without the teacher prompting them to do so, most of them recorded several times until they felt more satisfied with the results. After that, the children answered the questions easily without having the teacher read them the story so that they could understand it.

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