Back to work [2018-02-27]
We’re back at work after ten days off. It was definitely time for a break, especially for Neal. The operating system and software upgrades that he’s been doing at each school never seem to be routine – there is always some weird new issue that needs to be worked. That fact in itself is frustrating but I guess once you get up to 40-odd computer labs (installed over multiple years in two different countries), configuration control becomes difficult no matter how careful you’ve been. Anyway, we’re both recharged and ready to finish off the remaining work here in Cebu.
Our last pre-break activity, visiting Tabok National High School, had to be postponed. The tropical storm that moved through resulted in a second day of cancelled classes. Thankfully we’ve been able to reschedule that work for an upcoming Saturday (teachers and students must make up the lost time; “typhoon days” are just like snow days in Nebraska). We are happy that we’ll be able to fit it in and are still on track to finish what we’d planned.
Yesterday we were at Jagobiao National High School in Mandaue City. We very much enjoy working with the IT teachers there, Sir Isidro and Sir Nelson. They really engage the students in keeping the computer lab well-maintained and clean. Back in 2005, the Japanese government donated a huge number of computers to schools in the Philippines. We affectionately refer to these units as the “red dot” computers, due to the distinctive donor sticker on the front. Well, Jagobiao still has every single one of their red dot computers functioning after 13 years! These computers work well as Reneal clients, so we’ve been able to extend the life of that generous donation from the Japanese.
When we walked in the door of the computer lab at Jagobiao, a science class was underway. The students were using a PhET simulation on the computers to study the ideal gas law. PhET is a wonderful collection of science and math simulations coordinated through the University of Colorado, and we were thrilled to see them in use. However we were dismayed to realize that the upgrade to Ubuntu 16.04 wasn’t supporting the Java simulations properly. Thankfully Neal was able to make a tweak in the Firefox settings to fix that… but it was yet another on-the-spot challenge to address. We also discovered that Jagobiao was using some older 10/100 network switches, which was likely the cause of some lagging performance that Sir Isidro reported. Lloyd will head back late next week to work with Sir Isidro to replace those switches with a single 24-port gigabit network switch. Hopefully that will eliminate the performance problems.
Today we’ll be heading to Compostela Central elementary school for more of the same upgrades and repairs. Who knows what weird issue we’ll meet with today? Happily it will be a commute that we can walk – a nice change from recent weeks! Thankfully Ma’am Caren, one of our dear friends at Compostela National High School, has helped us arrange a private vehicle for commutes such as yesterday’s to Mandaue City.
The other big event this week is Reneal System Administration training! We’ll be holding this training Thursday, and the folks at CTU-Carmen have graciously agreed to host it. Tomorrow we’ll be working to prepare for that. Sir Jade, Lloyd, Neal, and I will share the presenting load. We’ve done this training many times, but it’s still always exciting to meet with the Reneal Super Users and teach them more about the system!
[Photos: students and teachers at Jagobiao NHS using the PhET gas law simulation]