Looking back, looking ahead [2013-09-13]
Reneal IEO struck gold yet again, this time at Mlangarini Secondary School. We found there a visionary school head, a committed and knowledgeable IT teacher, and students and teachers eager to use computers. It seems almost miraculous that all three of the 2013 Reneal IEO projects in Tanzania would fall on such rich soil! We are so grateful for the help given to Neal last year to help us identify, visit, and screen candidate schools.
Mlangarini is about 40 minutes from the center of Arusha, with much of that time spent bouncing along a dirt road. About 1000 students attend school at Mlangarini, with 600 of them being “boarding scholars” living in dormitories on the campus. Because it is so far from town, Neal and I were invited to stay in teacher housing, also located on campus. We were really overwhelmed by the generosity and hospitality during our time there. We stayed there on campus Monday through Thursday night, which allowed us to spend long days working in the IT lab.
A unique feature of our work at Mlangarini was that the school is not yet on the electrical grid. We did not have prior experience running computers off of a generator, but by and large it worked well. This was due to some incredible preparatory work done by the teachers there to wire the room for the IT lab. We did have a couple of abrupt shutdowns when the generator ran out of gas, but we soon learned to recognize the spluttering of an engine running on fumes. We also learned (the hard way) that generators and uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs) are not always compatible without some tweaking.
The pattern of the days at Mlangarini was very similar to that at Mukulat. Day One and half of Day Two were spent getting all of the various cables (monitor, mouse, keyboard, power, and network) connected and the computers and monitors checked out and prepped to be thin clients. The big job again was preparing the Ethernet network cables, but the IT teacher was very skilled at this. With the help of some of the other teachers, everything was networked together with the cables neatly tucked into plastic conduit by the end of Day Two. The first day was spent with a smaller generator that could only support about 6 computers at a time, so it was fantastic to have a larger generator on the second day that could run everything in the lab at once. As before, it was a huge thrill to see the Ubuntu log-in screen on all of the computers!!! The rest of Day Two was spent chasing down little issues with the server, getting the teachers’ individual accounts set up, and so on. It was another fantastic team effort! At the end of the day, I rode back into town in the school van with the teachers who commute, so I could exchange the apparently faulty UPS. Much to my surprise, it worked perfectly in the shop. Thus it was that we got schooled in some of the nuances of generators.
Day Three we had a training session with the six student computer specialists, followed by a training session with the teachers. The session ended in dramatic fashion with the generator running out of gas. It was gratifying to have several motivated teachers return once the generator was back on line to explore the various applications available on the system.
Day Four went by in a flash. Neal went over the sys admin manual and various functions with the IT teacher, who was just a joy to work with. We all worked together to try to re-label the educational resources to conform to the Tanzania subject areas and curriculum, to make it easier for teachers to find what they need for their classes. Neal got the internet up and running with a USB modem – surprisingly good performance, given that we were so far away from town! Then suddenly it was 3:30, the standard time for lunch, and then departure with the teachers’ van back to town. The school headmaster called the students together for an assembly just before we left. Neal and I had a chance to speak a few words to them about the new IT lab and our hope that it would give them a new window on the world and a chance for learning and discovery. It was a moment that we truly wish we could have shared with everyone who has supported Reneal IEO over the last few years.
But there’s no time to rest just yet. We will spend the weekend tying up a few loose ends on the system. Today we visited some schools to evaluate as candidates for next year’s projects; those visits will resume on Monday. We are already very excited about the 2014 prospects that we will bring before the Reneal IEO board for consideration in January.