Khairat Today

Khairat school, OLPC India

Your Daily Update of Khairat Pilot

Khairat School Kids on a Educational/Fun Trip

It was 14th November , the day celebrated as Children's Day in India. And to make this day of special significance for the kids at Khairat School we decided to take them places across Mumbai where they have never been before. So here is the brief account of this special day with the kids.

We started early morning from our office in Navi Mumbai to Khairat Village where they all waited for us. We were a team of five people all eager about creating an exciting day for them.

Bus at Navi Mumbai Office to leave for Khairat

On reaching Khairat we had them all in the bus from where we began our journey to Mumbai. Also we had some of their guardians accompanying us.

Our Journey to Mumbai

This was the first time all the kids of Khairat School were going to see life in city. And their curiosity arose as we got close to the city and most of the times their eyes all focussed outside window in search of things they had never seen before. Some few things that caught them were tall buildings,huge trolleys , urban trains and search went on....!!!

Look at that.....!!!

They all were carrying their XOs to capture all those fancy things they saw, wanting to preserve all the memories.

XOs for Capturing

We were all heading towards Veermata Jeejabai Udyan popularly known as Ranee Baug spread across several acres. It is a zoo with botanical garden. Here they were going to see various creatures. On reaching there , they all moved out of the bus carrying there XOs. We also had one of the officials of the zoo accompanying us giving them all the details about each creature they saw. On visiting various parts of the zoo , they turned their XOs on and all were very keen on capturing what they saw. So if you happen to ask them what did they see at zoo, you would have an prompt reply stating "I saw that large elephant,deers,funny hippopotamus,snakes, colourful cranes,birds.. !!! " and list would go on. Following are some details of the same.

My New Friends

hmm...looks a cool picture!!

Hey Hippo Look at me

I have you in my XO !!

Dont repeat my words you Mr. Parrot!

Then they moved across places in zoo all exploring various creatures

Where are we heading now!!

Look what I have captured!!

Watch Out I'm Coming Down!!

Look where I have Come!!

After having a wonderful time at Zoo , we all headed to lunch after which we visited the Tarapur Aquarium where they got the view of various sea creatures and various shells. From there we moved to a near by beach. Almost everyone had turned into a photographer for capturing the lovely site the view had to offer with Sun almost about to set. There they played with sea waves jumping everytime a wave crossed them. And then from photographer they had suddenly turned into architects. They formed groups and started making sand houses , trying hard everytime there house went down. And then we had an expert who managed to make a sand house with a bypass between the house, almost excited at doing that fleet. All different houses were seen. Then we all headed back home. They were all tired and most of them slept in the bus except a few who wanted to explore the journey back home.

They all had a great and a memorable day with some of the memories captured in their XOs.

--Amitg 09:18, 16 November 2007 (EST)

Remote update – after Oct. 14

Source: Amit

• All the children have been going to school regularly, even Kamala, Vinod, Sooraj and Garima (who still skips class-days once in a while). These four children have integrated to their classmates and enjoy school. Vinod and Sooraj are doing as well as many others in class with the XOs.
• The teacher “ looks pretty committed bringing them to school now. The other day we had [the teacher] himself getting them….”
• The teacher has already started maintaining his school records on the XO. He is always figuring out the best possible means of making use of the XO during his teaching.
• One day, the teacher said that Garima had voluntarily asked him for books for her.
• All the children are getting better and better at the laptop, to the point that one day they had visitors from Mumbai and:

“well, they were enthralled to see them [...] everyone did something: from writing names to taking their pictures [...] also showed them activities like memorize , etoys, tamtam ... they were all having fun, and the two... were on fire ... he didn’t even allow them to touch his keypad... wanted to do it all by himself ...and for the first time, I heard [him saying] something to them .. I don’t know what he said .. but was pretty interested in showing them stuff he had done and was sort of explaining it to them.”

Comment: Rajiv doesn't speak English and the visitors didn't speak Marathi, but that didn’t keep them from speaking to each other, and communicating: at this point, language doesn't matter.

Artistic XO photos by Rajiv

The Fields	A Friend and the artist
The Moon	Enlightened Kamala

--Carla 16:43, 30 October 2007 (EDT)