Today was the first day that all the children showed up to their allotted time slots. In total today there were around 35-40 kids. this was separated into 15-17 kids in the morning and then 10-11 kids in the afternoon. as it was the first day at full capacity we ran into some issues but we are learning from them to improve as the program progresses. In the morning it was more challenging then in the evening this was due to the quantity of kids that showed up. We have 10 computers for the program so we could seat all of the students in the morning class. What we had to do was create all of them Khan Academy accounts. We tried logging in with Facebook for the ones that have a Facebook but we ran into the same problem as before that the link was not working. In the end we had to create nearly every student a Gmail account and log them in that way. In the morning we made all the students user names and showed them the basic workings of the website. We had to have a group outside playing math ans strategy games because we could not seat them all at once. We had planned some games as a contingency in case we could not have all the kids on the computers. We were originally planning to have 2 students per computer but this is unfeasible because we the students are on such different levels. So the contingency is math and strategy games. We will also split the sessions into two parts one before recess and the other after recess. This partition will allow all the students to be able to partake in the games and to use our limited number of computers. We have also discovered that our band with can make up to 8 computers run smoothly having all ten up at the same time is workable but it makes the website lag or take a really long time to load. To try to solve this we are trying to get a separate modem to connect about half the computers to it. But for now we are working with what we have.
In the afternoon the process went smoother. With the exception that Gmail did not allowing us to create accounts for some of the students. But the smaller class size ensured that the students in this shift got to use the computers and if not to work personally with a instructor. The reason for this smaller class size was that there was a substantial amount of no shows. But this is a more manageable class size. What we can take from this is that we should have about as many students as computers. But as the program has started we will continue to have all the students come to their times and we will have other learning activities they can partake in. We also have these personal whiteboards the students may use to solve problems on and it has released them from trying to make their work look good and focus more on the process. In the Bolivian eduction system neatness of ones notebook is a grade in itself. But having these whiteboards helps the students be free from this habit that has been ingrained in them.
We will take what we have learned today and try to make the program better in the weeks to come.
EWA
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