The Minister of Education

We just had our meeting with the Minister of Education and it went very well. We found out, during the meeting embarrassingly enough, our school our contact at STeP UP recommended was a politically charged move and we have since moved to a different school. One main drawback from the meeting is that the minister didn’t want the students to take them home for fear that their families would sell the laptops. This will be a focus of ours to convince the community that it is in their best interests not to sell the laptops and to convince the community that by buying the laptops they are hurting students.

Left to Right: Chika, Corey, Danielle, Ashley, The Minister of Education, Paul, Myself

After our meeting we visited our school and determined that the fifth grade class has 45 students and the sixth grade class has 40 students. The school has power and we have word from the ISP on island that they will provide internet at the school. We are looking to saturate the two classes and recycle the laptops to the next fifth grade class after the year. This afternoon we will work with the teachers to develop a laptop learning schedule.

-XO Mike

T-minus two weeks! (This time it's for real)

Two weeks from the time of the post I will be sitting on a plane headed for London.

Possibly my transportation across the pond.

Our team is still on track and my Portuguese is coming along quite well. The class is 1/3 over but I am learning enough to give me a strong foundation to build upon when we land.

Tuesday I will be training our team on how to care for, handle, and operate the XOs so that we are capable teachers. I have been playing around with my XO since receiving it and have learned most of what I know through play and experimenting.

An unexpected surprise this week came when Corey distributed a revised budget. In the budget our food and lodging expenses are covered and we ordered 180 256MB flash drives along with 10 administrator 1GB flash drives. This will be crucial for having effective deployments where the saturation of the laptops will not reach 1:1. Students will be able to store their personal documents on the (hopefully) 1:1 saturated flash drives which can be used on any computer.

This weekend I am practicing my photography skills with my dad at Meredith's nursing school pinning ceremony! Congratulations Meredith! The pictures will be uploaded to a separate flickr account but I will post some of the best on my own account (links will follow in other posts). Graduation party tomorrow at NaNa's and then off to Chicago to spend a night with the Four Brothers to celebrate Chris' and Mark's belated birthdays as well as Pete's pre-birthday.


Prepare for a flood of photos on my flickr account!

-XO Mike

I can't read a calendar correctly

Oi!

In my first Portuguese class I learned something I did not expect. I can't read a calendar and I have just under three weeks until I leave. This comes as both a blessing and a curse as I now have more time to prepare but also more time on campus (it's reallllly quiet).

The class went really well and I expect to learn a lot over the next three weeks. We have started with the basics and I can say, "Meu nome e Michael" (my name is Michael) along with a few other things including the alphabet and numbers through 100. What I think will be most confusing is trying to distinguish Brazilian Portuguese (Professor's language) and European Portuguese (STP language). The differences are much more than I thought and European Portuguese is much more difficult to understand than Brazilian Portuguese.

-XO Mike