Where did the time go? [2015-07-11]
Two weeks since the last blog entry, and what a shock to already be back here in Korea on our way home to California. Two months always sounds like a long time, and we even think there will be time for some leisure travel, but tasks expand to fill the time available. Even with very long days of work, it still came down to the wire to get things finished up.
As always, there were some disappointments. We did not make as much progress with NComputing as we had hoped. Many of the systems are still under warranty, which made the schools reluctant to try Ubuntu as a second option since that would require making some minor modifications to the system. Plus the browser is still not running well under Ubuntu. We are still wrestling with the future viability of the Student Information System (SIS) database that Neal developed. It has more capabilities than the National Dep Ed Learning Information System (LIS), but the LIS is pushed down from above and the SIS is not. I was not able to support more schools with the FET timetable program, which eases the heavy burden of class scheduling. There are definitely things where more time would have been helpful!
But on the bright side, there were some real high points. Watching the students and IT teachers prepare for the first-ever Cebu Open Source Software Championship (COSSC), we really felt that our top goal had been accomplished – there was a quantum leap in knowledge and capability using the applications on the system, both for student and teachers. (More on the COSSC in a future blog…) We finally figured out why some of the older computers were hanging and were able to fix it with a new driver for the old Intel i845 family of graphics chips. That was a HUGE win for us! That hanging has been a headache for years now, and I think we’ve finally fixed it! And Neal spent last weekend writing a very robust “clean-up” routine for the student accounts when computers have an unexpected shutdown. It should eliminate the occasional emergence of the xfce “black rat” background as well as kill residual processes. Neal also figured out that we could get great performance with Scribus if we run it locally, so that was another major victory. We got to witness the wonderful results each time the Compostela National High School elective class met to study desktop publishing with Scribus. Seeing the buzz in the room and watching students come to the IT lab every available minute to practice was a true thrill!
Once we get home, we’ll spend some time capturing lessons learned. Not surprisingly, making updates to the system at each school was a headache. Computers have the most irritating habit of not behaving consistently, and it seemed like we had some minor – but different – “issue” at each and every school. While each by itself was not significant, multiplying it by 14 schools turns into a big time sink. We need to continue to refine how we keep systems updated but without adding a lot of extra work that competes with time spent on expansion and training.
The Reneal Board of Directors meets in two weeks, and one of the discussion items will be planning for the 2016 Philippines projects. We have a huge need for used computers: Pentium 4 units with 512 Mbytes of RAM (no hard disk necessary) are perfectly adequate for the job. Schools in Northern Cebu in particular have almost no existing computers, so every older computer that is not being used in the US can be a seat in a public high school computer lab in the Philippines. We will be hunting for help that can make a new IT lab a reality!