One of the computers has gone missing, which is unfortunate, but not entirely unexpected. Expensive things have a tendency of disappearing in the village environment. Another one of the computers isn’t currently working, but the teacher is looking into it.

The students apparently spent the first day setting everything up, because someone had unplugged everything, and all the wires were in total disarray. Again, that’s not entirely unexpected, but at least the students had the chance to see how everything gets put together.

More details soon about how things are progressing.

We finally met with all three government officials a few days ago: the DEO, the CEO, and the Collector. They were all super positive about the work that we’re doing and the plans that we have for the future. The DEO wants a copy of my curriculum, and the Collector had some good suggestions about how to focus our work to proceed more effectively, including dedicating more time to teacher training, which is something we’re pretty committed to already.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like we’ll have time to actually train teachers and implement our plan at the girls’ HS school (above). That process will have to wait until next year.

We’re thinking of leaving a couple of donated laptops at a middle school, however, because they have a teacher who was trained through Microsoft’s Project Shiksha program in 2006.  We’re still trying to decide what exactly we want the school to use them for – whether to teach students or simply watch educational English DVDs that we can provide them. We’ve been working with three eighth graders from this school for the last few days, and they seem to be picking things up just as well as the ninth graders I’ve worked with in the past.

The last – and best – piece of news is that the UPS units finally arrived at the boys’ HS school! Everything is now hooked up and in place for computer classes to begin again. All the government schools are closed from today through the 15th because of the crazy cold snap here in Madhya Pradesh, but as soon as they open again, I think the teacher will begin classes. We might run into the problem of final and board exams that are due to start soon, so it may well be that classes won’t begin in earnest until July, when the new school year begins. We’re trying to press the school to get the computers thoroughly cleaned with a special vacuum to get rid of all the dust that accumulates everywhere; the computers are getting really slow, and the dust is a big part of that.

Look at this boy! He’s grown up so much since I first photographed him a year and a half ago.

And here’s another cute little girl, wrapped in her mother’s shawl.

Here are all the teachers gathered around a computer watching the Thriller video.

The boys’ school was recently repainted in this great cotton candy shade of pink. It used to be a really dingy shade of yellow. The stairs in the picture above lead to what will eventually be a permanent computer lab that has been “almost finished” for more than two years now.

And here are some cute girls from my family. The first and third in the picture above are twins, and the middle one is their little sister. The last one is their cousin, who’s been on this blog before.

Our other plans haven’t been going quite so well. The UPS that arrived at the beginning of December was in fact delivered by mistake. It was intended for a middle school in Bijawar. We’re back to square one, essentially. We now have to buy individual UPS units for each computer at the school, which is a long process – we started thinking about this in July. I hope we can get the equipment and set it all up before we leave. I think the teacher is itching to start classes (and get paid for it!) again.

We’re also trying to set up a similar computer literacy program at the Girls’ HS School, but the principal has asked us to get permission from the District Collector and/or the District Education Officer (DEO) in Chhatarpur. We tried to meet with the Collector last Thursday, but he was out meeting with other people. We finally managed to get a few minutes with the district’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), who seems pretty nice and friendly. She gave us an appointment to speak with her again tomorrow (Monday). Since we’ll be in Chhatarpur anyway, we’ll try to meet with the Collector as well.

Our other plan is to try a computer education program at one of the co-ed middle schools in Bijawar, where the administration and teachers seem really into it – something which we haven’t always found to be the case in government schools. My main concern was English language skills; if the high school students struggle with the English required to run a computer, then middle school kids will be even less able to manage it. Eighth graders students, however, are at basically the same level as ninth graders, so we might be able to start there. We’re also thinking of recruiting an English teacher to co-teach with a computer teacher, so that the kids can get good explanations of words they don’t understand.

…which brings me to the next item. We’re thinking again about ways to supplement the English education here, which suffers from a lack of teacher expertise. We met with the English teacher at the Girls’ HS School yesterday to brainstorm areas which he thinks he needs help with, and we’re hoping to meet with a group of middle and high school English teachers today to continue that planning.

I believe the teacher has started classes up again, which makes me very happy, since my original plan of having the school sustain this program on its own, without my help, looks like it might be working. I’ll have more details for you soon.

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.