Last 6 weeks have been an amazing personal journey for me when I started some familiarization sessions with teachers from three schools (Navesi Primary, Nabua Sanatan Primary and Draiba Primary school) in Fiji for the OLPC pilot poject. I met with 18 teachers on Wednesday evening and 16 teachers Thursday evening for an hour of familiarization session for 5 weeks - this included switching on the PC and OLPC XO laptop, opening a gmail account, getting to know the OLPC project and exploring the XO machine. Teachers came with mixed capabilities: on one end of the continuum you have one or two teachers who own a 3-G phone and comfortable with learning new tools in ICTs in general and on the other end those who had never operated a computer before and have a basic mobile phone though. This was followed by a one-week long training of teachers with the ICT consultant (an OLPC expert) on OLPC organised by School of Education at USP. Before the teacher began their training, it seems I was the most nervous and excited of all. I want to see this project work. I suppose, there is so much one can do in just 5 one hour sessions but I believe the familiarization session helped teachers participate in the one-week training session with confidence and pick up the training sessions with ease. One lot of group finished their training last week and the second group will begin next week Monday. On Friday, 31st August, all the teachers from the three schools will complete the training with a certificate - Looking forward to their graduation of these digital adapters!
I have my two star teachers: one is a young man who has no formal training in computer but shows tremendous promise and the another one is an older lady who had never touched a PC before and was very scared and nervous to "switch on" the PC on the very first day of the familiarization sessions, you should see her now - works with the PC and OLPC xo laptop as if its her tamed horse!
My wish is to see the project become very successful and for this reason as long as I am in Fiji, I will stay involved with the project to contribute and learn about its developments!
I have my two star teachers: one is a young man who has no formal training in computer but shows tremendous promise and the another one is an older lady who had never touched a PC before and was very scared and nervous to "switch on" the PC on the very first day of the familiarization sessions, you should see her now - works with the PC and OLPC xo laptop as if its her tamed horse!
My wish is to see the project become very successful and for this reason as long as I am in Fiji, I will stay involved with the project to contribute and learn about its developments!
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