Now that the Celtics have completed their incredible journey to title #17, I may find the time to get back on this blog. Seriously, summer has arrived with a vengeance, and we are flying to keep up with the ambitious schedule of summer maintenance and improvements that we have set for ourselves. Like a Rajon Rondo fast break, we hope to weave through the lane, do that Bob-Cousy-throwback-pendulum-move and then take it to the rim.

The upper school ended the year by devoting a day to the 1:1 student laptop program. I was so pleased that we got the faculty together to discuss the program for the first time in many years, even if fear of student distraction and tech overload dominated the discussion. Some teachers are struggling with students distracted by the myriad online opportunities once they open their laptops. Many are concerned about the effect of so much screen time on the social fabric of the school and active class discussions. Other teachers appear to be handling it just fine. On the more positive side, applications of the laptops to support teaching and learning are widespread and powerful. One teacher summed it up with, "We would never want to go back." We will review the results of these discussions and prepare further conversations for the fall.

In the middle school, I continued my annual practice of teachers sharing successful technology integration strategies with each other. I find that teachers not already working together in teams do not regularly share lesson plans with each other. The tech share provides at least an annual moment for this to happen, allowing me to step completely to the side. It provides all teachers the opportunity that, if their colleagues can experiment with new applications of technology in the classroom, so can they. Teachers shared their work with digital audio recorders in Costa Rica, trip planning using Google Earth, reflections on literature in Moodle forums, and manipulating images of one's self in Photoshop.

Today, we started our new web site design process. A month ago, I let go of my previous strategy to upgrade only the back-end of the web site and postpone the redesign to later. This will dovetail nicely with a reexamination of our schoolwide communication strategy. I also have the help of Drew of OneNW, who provides online communications consulting to environmental organizations. He has helped us start this process well-focused on our target audiences, their values, and their roles at Catlin Gabel. This will lead to the development of user scenarios and a detailed design document, which we will share with some part of the school community for comment. We hope to launch a new site a year from now, a site that will offer both the intuitive access to information and useful transactional tools that people now expect from an organization's web site.

At the same time, I continue to pursue the Drupal experiment. In just two hours' time, I built a prototype for a human resources site using Views and a Custom Content Type. This allows anyone to create an account, submit a job application, and upload attachments. It also solves many of the problems we are experiencing with our current web services provider for job applications, Ceridian. This tool would be part of our main web site platform, get applicants to a list of jobs in one click instead of three, and allow them to upload multiple file attachments instead of just one. By creating an account, the applicant may return and modify the application later on, for example to upload more attachments.

This prototype does not yet offer all of the desired features, and it appears that I will need to learn Actions in order to add automated email features to the system, for example when the HR director wants to notify at once all the applicants who did not get the job. I am also taking a look at Coherent Access (thanks, Bill), which may provide an easy hand-off from the HR office to the supervisor reviewing the first round of applicants. Since we receive 3,000 job applications a year, this will be a more strenuous test of our ability to host large volumes of content in our own system.

Summer workers have arrived, we placed our summer order for Macintosh computers yesterday, and equipment for audiovisual installations is on the way. Soon, we will be up to our eyeballs in computers to upgrade and prepare for the start of school in August. I went with two units of the new Smart 608i2 -- save $900 over the 680i, as long as you don't mind the lack of amplified audio! The Epson 1825 replaces last year's 1815p but looks almost indistinguishable in features and form. The summer schedule is tightly scripted. On a good note, we are making more use of scripts to automate installation and configuration than ever before. Stay tuned for a report of whether it actually speeds up the configuration process.



Yesterday, our new core switch (Cisco 6500 series) arrived, and our consultants and we took the network down briefly to test the new configuration. It passed the test, so we appear to be on track to put it into production the coming Monday evening. We will need to touch all campus switches and access points to complete the upgrade, another step in getting our entire network infrastructure under warranty and on a predictable replacement schedule.

I am pleased to attend design meetings for the proposed Creative Arts Center. The teachers have come up with fabulous ideas for the arrangement and equipping of new classrooms, which are essential to the future success of the Arts program at Catlin Gabel. The construction of the building depends on raising the requisite funds by April 1, so stay tuned as we hope that the dream will become reality. An early idea for our communications plan is to create a mini-site with a completely different graphic design and blog format to keep people up-to-date on progress toward the goal, inform, and generate enthusiasm for the project.

Yesterday, I launched a new home page design for insideCatlin, our intranet community portal. We added so many new content sections and tools to the site this past academic year that the home page no longer made any sense to users trying to find specific items. The new home page design loads the user's Moodle cookie and displays links appropriate to that person's LDAP and Moodle group memberships. If you go there, you will see only the base set of items unless you are a Catlin Gabel community member. They see additional items that only apply to their context in the school. In this way, we provide dozens of links to the home page without cluttering it for any individual user.

For security, a script doing the work lives outside the web directory, and the links themselves do not contain protected content. You actually have to log in before you see substantial information, a strategy borrowed from Yahoo! and other internet portals. I am also raising the visibility of media content -- photos from Gallery, and audio and video files from Drupal. Naturally, I have yet to build the audio file queries, and I want to convert video upload from Video to a FLV-compatible format before working on that section. The photo thumbnails look really great, though!

This week, I hope to make good progress on several scripting projects, especially upgrading existing Perl scripts such as the curriculum map, bookstore, and admission inquiry scripts. Then, I have taken on some new projects, such as a community service tracking form and major assignments conflicts calendar. The school has so many needs for data forms with logic and calculations. It's great that systems like Drupal are designed for this very thing, but I am still finding it a lot easier to creates the ones that require a lot of calculation or close tie-ins with our student information system in Perl rather than in Drupal. I did recently create a senior projects archive in Drupal, so I am learning to move some recording and archiving functions into there. Each senior project entry contains a brief description of the student's project, their proposal, a link to their project blog, and their final report. This year, half the class did a senior project. Next year, the faculty hopes that all will, so the ability to review past projects and then track current ones will become even more important.

If you haven't already, go get your $250, 500-seat iLife and iWork site licenses. Pages fills the space between InDesign and Word -- our lower school teachers love it. Remember what a similar deal did for Macromedia nearly a decade ago? Kudos to Apple for the move.

I really wish I could write a separate blog post for each of the items above. I am glad I could provide you with a little reference. Do drop me a line if you are engaged in something similar and would like to compare more detailed notes.

Good luck with your summer projects. I hope to see you at Building Learning Communities in July.

tags: webdesign, techintegration, Moodle, Drupal, curriculummap

Things are heating up in anticipation of the summer. Simultaneously, we are wrapping up the current year and starting work summer work. I have the following going on now.

Evaluations: It's time to write annual staff reflections for the IT department. Each individual completes a self-evaluation, I write a performance review, and then we meet to discuss.

Laptop Survey: We should perform an annual review of our 1:1 student laptop program so that we adapt and improve it over time. Unfortunately, we have not taken a close look at the program since its inception in 2003. This year, we will resurrect three comprehensive surveys from 2003, for parents, teachers, and students. This should provide us with useful information to reflect back to the community in the fall.

Arrivals and departures: Unbelieveable. We have about 30 personnel changes to make, what with the annual arrivals, departures, leaves of absence, long-term substitutes, and internal transitions.

Communicate fall plans: Present at closing faculty meetings to share new plans for the fall.

System replacement: Collaborate with laptop and desktop replacement for users.

Summer training workshops: Finalize schedule, teaching assignments, and open signups.

Web application programming: I am updating the bookstore, admission inquiry, curriculum map, and signup/volunteer applications. I am also going to migrate and adapt my community service script to this school.

insideCatlin redesign: Our intranet has grown like crazy this year, now comprising dozens of courses, tools, links, media galleries, and hundreds of pages of content. It is proving impossible for newbies to find what they are seeking on the site. We plan to transform the home page to provide clear guides to the content that users seek.

Public-facing web site platform migration: We hope to move our public-facing web site to Drupal with the help of a development/consulting firm.

AppleScripts: Finish developing AppleScripts to speed up laptop cleanup and deployment.

Core switch refresh: Follow the progress of this major project and participate when needed.

(I'm sure I've left off something important!)


While I am impressed with the manner in which the "blogerati" continue to raise the conceptual level of the ed tech discussion, I fear that this also makes it increasingly irrelevant to the daily work of practitioners like us. Last night, I caught up with my aggregator. Today, I have put together this list of urgent projects and routine tasks. The contrast struck me. I am all for questioning assumptions and redesigning education, but let us not forget the incremental changes that practitioners can make today to improve their work.

Theorists continue to raise the bar for the changes that we should make. They are right, but we also need to answer how to facilitate such discussions within the busy structure of daily school life. Our school is stable, successful, and thoughtful. We are not a technology school. We would like to improve broad aspects of our school -- student workload, weekly schedule, global education, experiential learning, service learning, and affordability, among others. It's hard to find time to focus just on technology, so we squeeze it in where we can, like so many other initiatives. As such, we must make changes over the long term, making technologies available to innovators and helping them share their work with colleagues. We measure progress over a span of years.

I question the focus and timing of the K12 Online Conference this year. It takes place for ten consecutive weekdays. Who can leave school for ten days of professional development in October? Who can follow hours of video presentations while continuing to work at school? This conference is no longer designed for practitioners. Sure, it's possible that I might view these videos later on, but then the online community has moved on to other pastures. The strands seem more abstract than last year -- will practitioners find enough meat to inform their practice?

(rant complete)

tags: k12online

Last week's New York Times article titled "Blackberry's Quest: Fend Off the iPhone" explained the pressure that the iPhone is placing on Research In Motion to add consumer-friendly features to new Blackberry devices. The following statement caught my eye, due to its implications for school laptop programs.

Indeed, R.I.M.’s allure to carriers and corporations may be irresistible and impossible for Apple to weaken, even if Apple improves iPhone security. But some analysts still wonder what will happen to the BlackBerry’s dominance when everyday consumers start driving growth in the smartphone market.

We have seen a similar pressure arrive here at school. Students choose their own laptop platform when they enter the high school. Historically, their choice mirrored their parents' platform adoption: about two-thirds PC. Two years ago, the platforms drew even -- 50/50 PC and Mac. Last year, 90% of students chose Macintosh.

Though we have understood for a while that Apple's popularity has skyrocketed here, we have to this point limited our analysis to the computers' "cool factor", the iPod, the new acceptability of Mac to Intel parents, and the good Mac experiences these students have had in their earlier years. The Times article underscores a broader trend. Our experience with Apple may repeat itself in other areas as students and teachers apply their consumer experiences to their work at school. We may need to stay abreast of technology developments beyond the realm of business.

TiVo is another good example. Many teachers now expect a different interaction with television than before, thanks to the rise of DVR in the home. Now, we have two TiVo devices on campus, though we have had to learn how to operate them within a network environment, with its increased challenges.






tags: blackberry, iphone, tivo

I am taking a look at the role of technology in supporting global education efforts at school. I am new to this field and have a lot to learn! The basic premise is that a school may attempt to create as many opportunities for rich interactions between its students and people/places around the world. The richest interactions involve expensive trips, but technology can play several roles. Technology-mediated communication may enhance the richness of these trips by providing pre- and post-trip activities that make the time spent there even more valuable. It may provide for less rich, but more broadly accessible interactive experiences, such as email pen pals, discussion forums, blogs, and cheap audio and video chat interactions. Finally, technology may provide expensive, rich distance interactions through such technologies as high-end videoconference solutions.

One immediate reaction I have to my first investigations in this field is that there seems to be a significant split between the high-end and low-end folk, especially when it comes to synchronous telecommunication. When you're talking to someone halfway around the world, it seems to me that the additional expense and complexity of high-end videoconferencing is not worth the marginally improved quality. Even with Skype, it's remarkable how close people in Africa (for instance) feel and how much richer the communication is than anything that was possible for free even two years ago.

So my first recommendation is that those looking for rich, electronic interactions with faraway people would do best to make the maximum use of inexpensive communication technologies now and then just wait. For what we consider expensive and high-end today will no doubt become inexpensive and ubiquitous in a rather short period of time.

Environmental sustainability was the focus of a faculty/staff discussion on the first day of meetings. Small groups of employees were asked to brainstorm ways to move toward the ultimate goal of a 100% environmentally sustainable campus. Much of the discussion was provided by Mike of the grounds crew, who explained his department's initiatives in plant cultivation, re-use of wooded material, composting, and recycling.

Toward the end of his explanation, Mike hit the nail on the head regarding the balance between services provided and sustainability. Given the amount of water required to maintain grassed lawns even during the summer when school is out of session, would the school community support an initiative to plant water-conserving, indigenous plants instead?

The same argument applies to computer technologies. We provide 600 computers to about 900 users. Each teaching faculty member and upper school student receives his or her own laptop computer. We set up and configure dozens of servers and network devices to provide the highest quality of computer access possible within the school's generous constraints.

Most computers we purchase have two or three lives within the school. Some have four or five. New computers typically go to the most intensive users. When they provide insufficient capacity or speed for these users, then they cascade down toward other users with less intensive computing requirements. The few computers that are actually not of use to anyone within the school go to Rummage, our annual sale of used goods, thereby finding yet another life elsewhere. Our facilities department sends computers that no longer function to FreeGeek, a refurbishing and recycling center. In the best of cases, the machines are used by those learning computer repair skills, brought back to life, and then distributed to deserving organization and individuals. Other equipment is properly recycled, so that their raw materials can be re-used and toxics put in a safe place.

Our school community expects and enjoys a high level of computing operation. Should we purchase fewer machines in the name of environmental sustainability? What impact do the faculty and student laptop programs have on the environment? Do the benefits of these programs outweigh the costs? Probably yet, but it is worth considering the question.

Aside from scaling back our program, what else can the Catlin Gabel technology program do to practice better environmental stewardship? Instead of sending broken machines to another computer refurbishing center, we could launch our own. Catlin students could bring discard machines back to working order and donate them to people or organizations that need them. One teacher would like us to make duplex printing the standard across campus. We could make a stronger effort to replace paper distribution with electronic communication. We could replace more CRT displays with lower energy-consumption LCDs (is it worth the resulting generation of waste?). We could implement printing quotas or at least provide users with printer volume feedback.

Wouldn't it be great if a computer manufacturer produced a "green" computer? It could use fewer toxic materials than other computers. The case and other components could be made from recycled materials. It could use slightly older, more universally available components so that there was a larger stock to draw from. It could draw less energy than it peer machines. It could come with instructions for disassembly and proper disposal (I am reminded of the HP return address labels that ship with every printer cartridge).

How do you handle the conflict between high-end technology use and the subsequent generation of computer waste? What is your tech department doing to make its practices more environmentally friendly?

Catlin Gabel is a school with a strong sense of purpose and oft-renewed committment to a "progressive" educational mission. Our middle school head asked me the other day to consider what technology could do to support the school's mission of progressive education. This is the kind of charge I enjoy being given, as a clear institutional mission and vision gives a tech department something to shoot for. Here are some initial thoughts on the question. I hope to continue to develop these ideas over time and implement new tools within the school.

What is progressive education? The father of progressive education, John Dewey, described an educational vision of "education through experience." That is, children learn best by interacting with content and performing authentic tasks. Ruth Catlin emphasized the "child as the unit of consideration," another way of saying that instruction should be tailored to each student. Mel Levine focuses on "learning profiles," the unique set of cognitive strengths and weaknesses that each student possesses. These and other theorists contribute to a model for progressive education that is student-centered, activity-based, fully scaffolded, and authentic.

Today's national educational environment is relatively hostile to progressive education. The "standards movement" emphasizes high-stakes testing, and President Bush has set the tone by implying that testing along will directly improve student achievement. Missing from the conversation is serious consideration of alternative assessment methods that better measure student conceptual understanding and a strategy for improving teaching and learning once student achievement has been measured. Within these regressive educational times, Catlin Gabel does a great job of reaffirming its committment to educating students in the manner it knows best.

Computer-based technologies may be used to support practically any kind of educational mission. They are certainly well-suited to a high-stakes, testing-based environment, able to deliver tests to students and produce reams of statistical comparisons. However, computer-based technologies may be even better suited to supporting a progressive educational mission. Students may work on their own, at their own pace, on open-ended tasks. The organizational capabilities of a computer are useful in order to manage short-term activities and long-term projects such as multimedia presentations, research projects, and artistic works. Teachers may use online databases to share information about students in order to better tailor instruction to each child.

Social software, probably the hottest area of new growth on the Internet, is an extremely fertile field that is perfectly suited to progressive education. Internet-based services offered by Google, mySpace, Moodle, Flickr, Drupal, Wikimedia, and Elgg are creating new ways for individuals to interact with each other and develop group membership on the Internet. Such technologies support the progressive educational practices of groupwork, public performance, and learning through experience.

The first social software we are piloting is Moodle, which is best-suited to managing course web sites but we will also use as online community software for faculty affairs, student clubs, and parents. Moodle gives people the capability to do course work by posting documents, creating discussion forums, conducting surveys, posting and submitting assignments, and more. One exciting feature is the ability for students to join and leave club web sites at their own will, allowing club membership to organically grow. For instance, by joining a club web site, a student will automatically become subscribed to their announcements email list.

Other instructional software such as ChemSense and CMap Tools also have social components. Both allow students to collaborate with each other on their mental models, whether they are on campus or not.

Check back on this space for more reflections and reports on technology and progressive education.

Since Maru-a-Pula is now on holiday, I will take the next couple of weeks to write my final report on my visit. Here are some of the recommendations I plan to make, in rough order of priority.

1. Finish networking the academic part of the campus.

2. Redistribute former lab computers to department offices and classrooms as requested.

3. Follow a sustainable system replacement schedule

4. Renegotiate external support contract to focus on occasional, highly technical support rather than daily, routine support tasks.

5. Build new school web site aimed at prospective and current families.

6. Share student technology self-assessment results with staff.

7. Install and configure new servers.

8. Continue to improve Internet bandwidth.

9. Provide staff training for a variety of tech skills

10. Provide a data projector to each department that wants one.

11. Provide 3-5 laptops to staff each year based on a competitive application process

12. Launch school intranet web site to host a simple CMS, such as Moodle.

13. Upgrade clients in two remaining computers labs and library, including at least one Mac/Win dual-boot facility.

14. Extend campus network to staff housing on campus.

15. Redesign forms 2-3 curriculum to replace tech classes with technology projects integrated into other subject classes

I continue to be amazed at the degree to which improved Internet connectivity has brought Botswana several times closer to the States in one instant. Now that Botswana Telecom is offering ADSL service to anyone, web access is a lot faster, and FTP and Skype are now possible. Of course, faster access has an even greater impact on the ability of the MaP community to reach out and touch the rest of the world.

Packets still have a long way to travel, so it makes sense to have a backup strategy. I am able to FTP files to the Maru-a-Pula web site, though I will mainly rely on the Website Baker administrative interface to make most changes. Skype has the potential to make conversations with MaP staff from this distance so much richer and less expensive. But it may be more effective to Skype their phone numbers, in order to maximize the benefit of our fast connectivity and not overly tax theirs.

We have ordered the router that will allow the school to share the three Internet connections they have. Up to this point, they have used only one ADSL connection. I am curious to find out how much the perceived speed of access increases once they are using all three.

It never seems easy to return from Botswana. First, the hour flight from Gabs to Jo'burg was 40 minutes late due to bad weather. I ran through the terminal to catch the London flight and managed to frighten the gate staff because I somehow managed to get there without a boarding pass. They assigned me to a seat occupied by a lady who would not move, so I stood in the airplane galley for a half hour while they sorted it out. Finally, I received good news: an upgrade to "upper class" (as they call it)! After the obligatory features tutorial, I enjoyed lightly fried Kingclip with champagne for dinner and slept in a fully reclined bed! Did you know that Virgin stocks laptop power adapters? Too bad their Mac adapters were 10 years out of date!

The adventures continued. The plane had to make an unexpected landing in Tunis because one of the passengers had a heart attack. She was okay but had to deplane and get to a hospital. When we arrived in London, the police met our plane on the runway to collect a passenger who had experienced some kind of psychotic break during the flight. I missed my connection in London and was sent home via DC instead -- six hours later than expected.

I am sitting in Sir Sereste Khama Airport, waiting for the boarding call to Jo'burg. Thus begins about 30 hours of sitting and waiting until I arrive home. I will sit through flights of one, 10, and 11 hours, layovers of one, one and three hours, and a final BART ride of one hour. I will likely be insane by the final leg! Thankfully, I have my laptop, iPod, two books, and the inflight entertainment to keep me more or less occupied during the trip.

I kept my last day as simple as possible. I presented my preliminary recommendations to Kofi, Andy, and Phil. We made some final changes to Andy's computer. We imported 200 professional photos of the school into his iPhoto. Andy was particularly excited to begin emailing photos widely. We also gave him an admin login to the new MaP web site -- the first time I have heard of a school of 600 students handing over direct editing privileges to the school principal! Andy was once a professional journalist and has a clear vision for how to market the school. We'll be okay.



We spent the afternoon running final errands -- Microsoft documentation for Phil, South African jazz and gifts for me. Ironically, installers arrived just this afternoon to link Andy's house to the school network by radio signal. A little earlier, and I could have had Internet access in the house for the entire trip! The daily evening walks to the computer room were charming enough but not so convenient.

Final reflections on this trip will come later. For now, we can clearly see the path forward for MaP technology. The resources are in place, and changes are already happening. Great thanks to the MaP staff and Andy for hosting me so well during this trip. I will look forward to continued contact with the school and a return visit as soon as possible!

After toying around with us the last couple of days, the rain is finally falling in earnest. Pula! The country has received a lot of rain lately, but everyone is grateful. A few months ago, Botswana went through a severe water restrictions that caused most people's garden's to die out. On the technology front, we saw a few fireworks today! We found that the old AppleCentre of a decade ago has split into two parts, one for sales and the other for support/service. We met with both, in order to acquire a few Mac Mini computers and to get a quote to wire the department offices and many classrooms that are currently unwired. Here, we learned the dark history of networking at Maru a Pula, which due to tight budget restrictions, has completed several small, disjointed wire projects over the last few years. The result is a jumble of equipment and connections that don't play very well with each other. Needless to say, we are going to try to finish the rest in one coordinated effort.

Our second stop was at the photographer's, Illustrative Options. There, we picked up digital copies of school photos shot last year, which we plan to use on the web site. See below for a sample shot from SOS Children's Village. I was pleased to discover that the company does not nickel and dime the school to reproduce the photos on our web site. The fees that the school originally paid did not explicitly cover web publication, yet the proprietors were happy to have their work reproduced on the web if cited.


Photo by Illustrative Options

Our third meeting was with Joe Thomas of Avantec, which designed and built our alumni web site. There, I learned that one in-person meeting is more valuable than six months of email exchanges and phone calls. We got a lot accomplished in about an hour that will help iron out the last few remaining bugs and allow our alumni director to complete all her necessary work.

Believe it or not, I actually feel on schedule with the plan for this week. In 10 short days, we will have participated in enough meetings and crafted many plans that will allow the school to move forward in a definite direction in the near future. Naturally, I have a lot to do over the next couple of weeks. I will complete my written report before the opening staff meeting of the second term on May 10. Andy, Tracy, and I will bang out the rest of the new MaP web site and give it a big launch at the school. I will follow up on the many requests I received to research software applications in different disciplines. Finally, I will happily Skype my way back to my colleagues here at MaP on a regular basis to follow their progress and provide support where I can.

Tomorrow, I shop for friends and family, pack, and leave!

Last night's concert was fantastic. I had no idea that David Slater could collect a dozen opera singers mostly from Botswana. Angela Kerrison and Sibongile Khumalo were particularly excellent. The Sedireng and Gaborone choruses showed greater exuberance for this special event. Having just come from the U.S., I was struck by the high degree of racial harmony in Botswana. Black Batswana and white South Africans get along especially well here. Mutual appreciation and cooperation rule.

I took in my only game park visit of the trip. If I were here longer, I would absolutely make a trip to the Okavango, Chobe, or central Kalahari. Since I am only here for ten days, the local Mokolodi Nature Reserve just had to do. Our guide, Tshepo, took us to all the right places, and we had close encounters with giraffe, elephant, and even an orphaned cheetah in an enclosure.



This afternoon, Andy and I made progress on the web site project. It is a great pleasure to work with a school principal who has a clear story about the school that he wants to tell. We completely reworked the information architecture of the site to capture this vision. We replaced the section "About Maru a Pula" with "At A Glance," and "Programs" became "What Makes Us Different." We are adding an entire section for parent information. This is how information architecture design should work. I just hope we like it as much tomorrow and that it passes muster with the marketing professionals out there!

The end of this trip is quickly approaching. Tomorrow, we will meet with Fatema Khan, the local Apple expert, and Joe Thomas of Avantec, who developed the new alumni web site. Tuesday is my last day in Botswana.

It has come to my attention that some friends of Phil are reading this web site. In lieu of Phil's own report, let me show you him enjoying a light finger supper with the U.S. Ambassador to Botswana, MaP alumni, and current staff.

I took a break from IT work today, instead meeting with friends around town. Sheila Case took me over to Jenny and Daniel's new quilting shop today, I saw the MaP Marimba band play at one of Gaborone's new malls, and Andy took me out to lunch at Sanitas with Alan Wilson, Jeremy and Helen Long. Tonight is the grand finale of the Maitisong Festival with Sibongile Khumalo headlining a classical program of Negro spirituals and Mozart Symphony 40.





Here is a classroom shot from earlier this week. The MaP campus is a collection of mostly small buildings with lots of space between. This is beautiful but partially explains why the school has not yet wired half the campus.



While not working on IT today, I reflected on the ease with which I have reintegrated into this community after an absence of 10 years. Though many of the personnel have changed, the place feels very much the same. How can that be?

"What I'm proudest about is that sense of a community, an outpouring of a community that thrives and prospers. It's not just a seat of learning; it's something far greater than that."

- Deane Yates, Founding Headmaster of Maru-a-Pula

The members of this community share a set of values that they transmit to new arrivals every year. The feeling of the place stays the same despite all of the changes in personnel. Old timers who return find that the warmth, modesty, justice, and intensity very familiar indeed. Everyone belongs in this place and is welcomed back upon return. This aspect of the school is one of its greatest strengths, allowing it to grow exuberantly during good times and remain resilient during the bad.

Today, we set out to pick up necessary supplies -- a small router to set up a test environment for the new servers, RAM for Brenda's machine, and the school's first wireless access point. We were directed to Incredible Solutions at Riverwalk. Nothing could have prepared me for this modern shopping experience, apparently in place since 2002. The pace of development here is incredible. Ten years ago, you could only buy computer supplies from tiny shops that also provided services. Now, I felt like I was in Best Buy. I wish I'd brought my camera to show you -- you could hardly believe the rows and rows of blank CDs, iPods, digital cameras, laptops, and printers available for purchase. They even had a Skype phone! Prices weren't bad, either. The router cost the equivalent of $100, and Phil picked up an iPod Shuffle for himself for $120. Unfortunately, they didn't have the WAP. The school will have to wait a little longer for its wireless, though hardly anyone has a wireless-equipped laptop to use it, anyway.



The web site is moving into a new stage of development. As I mentioned before, the software is installed and running well. I have also pulled content from a variety of other sources and lain out the site in a rough fashion. We continue to wait for the graphic design. Now, I need to edit the pages for HTML format. It's great that the HTML carried from one site to the other when I copied and pasted in Camino. However, some of the formatting doesn't fit the new site and needs to be stripped. On Sunday, Andy and I have a date to review the organization of the entire site, so that the architecture best reflects the intended priorities of emphasis. We are simultaneously pulling photos from other publications for the site, mostly shot by professional photogs within the last two years. Finally, we will edit for voice, creating a sense of common language with content that has come from disparate sources. By then, the graphic designer should have finished, and I will apply the template to the site. Hopefully, this won't take more than a couple of weeks. I am optimistic that I will able to use the web editing interface effectively from the States. If that fails, I can always ask Phil to help FTP files! Truly, the West has become so much closer since ADSL has become available in Botswana.

Phil started to really help people today, ticking off some of the to-do items we had compiled in the last few days. RAM installed, Brenda's machine now flies as it should. The staff computer local profiles are cleared, allowing everyone to log in without error. We found out that the school does not implement full roaming profiles. Instead, there is a standard profile that is copied to the system each time a user logs in. The system is supposed to delete the local profile on logout, but that has been failing. Login was prevented because one file name in the local profile was too long to overwrite. Go figure.

Today was a busy interview day. We met with eight heads of department. One theme common to all of the conversations was frustration with the lack of networking and computers throughout campus. The teachers have plenty of ideas that they would like to implement -- writing music with notation software, laying out drama programs with publishing software, molecular visualization, email with students, laboratory data probes, GIS mapping, and paint programs. However, they lack the basic necessities to make this happens, most notable a sufficient number of computers and network access throughout campus.



Unfortunately, the thirst for new tools is not easily quenched. The school recently upgraded from dial-up to ADSL, yet teachers still complain about the slow speed. Hopefully, the next steps will provide more relief. Phil and co. will upgrade the main computer lab over the next few weeks and redistribute the old computers to department offices and a few classrooms. When the next term starts, the different should be noticeable.

I like Website Baker more and more every day. I started to peek under the hood, and I like what I see. Though the first level of editing tools are extremely simple to use, the advanced features are extremely powerful. I learned how to assign pages to different templates (e.g., for a unique home page) and divide a page into sections with different content. The home page now has a space for static content and for news. Principal Andy and his assistant Lynda are prepared to start editing content themselves. I am sufficiently impressed that I think I will try the software for the upcoming new UHS web site, too.

On an unrelated note, I was incredulous to find that the PowerMacs that I purchased in 1995 are still in use! Naturally, the staff despite the ancient machines but have little choice but to use them. I think these were the first Macs to use the PowerPC processor.


It's been on this cart since 1994!

Phil and I visited Frank Warwick at Thornhill Primary School today, in order to get a sense of computer skills preparation at our feeder schools. Frank showed us around their brand new, two-story building and two Mac labs. Frank takes a left-brain/right-brain approach to primary skills education, adding a healthy dose of creative multimedia production to the usual productivity application skills. He felt pretty strongly that Macs were the way to go and satellite was more reliable than ADSL for the moment. On another note, the stylistic and cultural differences between Thornhill and MAP were striking. I'm glad I taught at MAP.

We also met with a number of department heads today to gain their perspectives on the most important academic technology needs. Charlie (maths) pointed out the difficulty of gaining access to computer labs fully scheduled with basic skills classes. He would be happy to distribute files to students through a school web site. He would like suitable drill and practice software for both basic maths, algebra, and geometry skills. The students would benefit from the instant feedback that a teacher of 25 kids cannot immediately provide. He would also like to try Efofex (get it?), an Australian piece of software for creating maths exams.

Sally (Englsh) would like to investigate more web-based tutorials for spelling and punctuation, now that MAP has acquired a faster Internet connection. She would also like to teach students basic desktop publishing skills to jazz up their writing exercises. Students would benefit from web-based historical content on authors.

Joy explained the intricacies of scheduling to Phil, who will be helping him. This is potentially more complicated than the American system, as students take up to seven classes each, classes meet for a different number of periods on a 6-day cycle, the school has three terms each year, and examination sitting and coverage schedules also need to be created.

The teacher conversations suggest that it may be time to change the model for curriculum integration to one more similar to that of University High School. If the skills content taught in Forms 1-3 were integrated into other subject areas, then this would allow the classes to meet in the computer labs more often, and the students would have more meaningful work to accomplish. Obstacles include teacher apprehension of change and the amount of curriculum development that would have to be done to shift instructional models and schedules.

I spent a lot of time developing the new MAP web site today. The winner of the CMS contest was indeed Website Baker, due to the lightweight interface, the option for adding more functionality through plugins, and the modern graphic design. Website Baker passed the final test, template modification. Although Tracy is still working on the final graphic design, templates are based on one PHP document with about four dynamic PHP statements, so it will be possible to use just about any graphic design with this software. I have modified it just enough to make it look like ours for testing purposes. The content varies considerably in voice at the moment -- it will need a lot of editing and reorganization before it is ready to launch.

In other news, the school continues to pay for the crashed mail server hard drive and no backup. There was no mail for the second straight day.

Thank you, Eric, for your Skype call today! It's been fun to receive surprise calls from the States while working. I also spent an hour updating the Grand Lake Montessori volunteer page for a new event. I am still amazed that I can develop on a U.S. server from over 10,000 miles away. This level of internet access, which those in the U.S. would consider slow, is such a new thing for Botswana. No, the world is not flat, but it is getting smaller.

Today, I began to accomplish something here. I am sure it helped that I slept for more than four hours last night for the first time in days. Or perhaps it was that I have taken in enough information to know what to do first. Lynda scheduled appointments for me with heads of department and a knowledgeable tech director from a related primary school. I sorted out my proxy problems so that I could send and receive mail from Apple Mail rather than having to go through the web site. (The key was to apply the proxy to all but the last of the protocols in the network preferences proxy tab.) I got the necessary FTP details to begin to set up the new MAP web site. I dragged Phil to all our meetings, so that he could get up to speed on the school's tech needs as well. I laid out the sections and began to write background information for the technology plan document, which is my objective for the week. I made a point to take some pictures today -- I often forget amidst the meetings. They may help give you a sense of the landscape and kids.



The school's technology program has hit on hard times since Phil and I arrived. Are we bad luck, or are the systems crying out for help since we have arrived? No matter: two serious disasters struck. First, the mail server hard drive crashed, and neither mirror nor backup was in place. Why not? Poor communication. The external tech support consultant wasn't doing it, the computer science head of department didn't tell anybody, and the worst possible outcome resulted. Second disaster: the server with all of the grade reports went offline just as grades were due. At least the CS teachers back that up manually -- I hope this happened! What is the solution? Put Phil in charge of housekeeping tasks that others have not been managing. He will be the internal person that every school needs to ensure that critical maintenance tasks happen.



The school also needs one person to order equipment and stick to the school's technology plan. The school just ordered 29 workstations and three servers. It turns out that they only needed three servers if they were going to use one for thin clients to run terminal sessions off the server. But the school bursar (finance guy) changed the plan at the last minute, when he discovered that the IGCSE examining body does not permit students to take tests on computers that are connected to a network! The word didn't get around for some reason, and the school bought one server too many. No one person is at fault, but ordering by committee clearly does not work. No matter -- the new servers have RAID, and I know a mail server that needs redundancy!



I got some more insight into the variable speed of the school's internet connection today. It really slowed to a crawl between about 2:00-4:00. By 5:00, it was flying again (in relative terms). Apparently, the school is a pilot participant in the country's ADSL rollout, and Botswana Telecom is still working out the kinks during peak periods. I assume that the rush ends at 5:00 because people leave work at go home. I understand that residential DSL is still not a reality, and home dial-up is frustratingly slow compared to the U.S.

How's this for a daily schedule?

- Staff announcements at 6:50 a.m.
- Classes from 7:00 a.m. - 12:45 p.m.
- Lunch from 12:45-2:00.
- Clubs and sports from 2:00 onward

This is what you may get in a hot desert country. The classrooms are strictly unbearable in the midday summer.

Thanks, Jimmy, for Skyping me while I was working here tonight. Just click on the "Call me" link at right or start Skype and look to see whether kassissieh is online. Talk to you soon ...

Tomorrow, we begin to meet with heads of department, visit Thornhill school, and test the files that we have uploaded to the new web server.

On this first day of the school week, I spent the day meeting with people to get the lay of the IT land at Maru a Pula. I met with Nidhi (alumni director), Kofi, Kwesi, and Joy (computer science teachers), Margaret (librarian), and Mike (bursar). Unfortunately, the current tech picture is rather muddled. Kofi was thrust into the role of department chair by the previous principal. The combination of a full teaching load, server management, and tech support has proven too much to handle. The hiring of an external agency (High Performance Systems) has not solved the problem, as the company sends a junior technician to solve problems once each day.

Luckily, an American volunteer named Phil has just landed for a year's service. He seems like the most likely candidate to take over server administration for the year, training someone else to replace him before he leaves. With some background in systems administration, the hope is that he can fully manage this aspect of school operations.

As if to underscore the urgency of the need, the school's mail server experienced a hard drive failure today. The data drive, containing all of the mail and account settings, crashed. There was no mirror drive or external backup, so the data may be lost. Ironically, the mail server is new, having only been in place for six weeks. Blame is difficult to place, since HPS was supposed to manage software and backup and apparently did neither. At the same time, no one at the school took ownership of the relationship with HPS, so they were not held accountable.

Another level of confusion has been the method of platform selection. A comedy of incomplete conversations by email led to the arbitrary selection of Windows desktop clients over thin clients and Macintosh systems for the refurbishment of the first computer lab. That was the safe choice due to its popularity. I am happy to work with whatever they have. Unfortunately, these are not going to be set up in time for me to see the new lab in operation, as the school is giving the battered computer room a makeover before installing the computers.

I continue to struggle with strange proxy settings, the default for student computer use here. This apparently improves performance and limits access to blocked sites. It also blocks my FTP and mail clients, preventing me from working with the full suite of applications on my computer.

Things are slightly better on the alumni web site front. I solved one problem today, where Nidhi was not able to download the alumni database from the web site because Windows automatically denied access to any download .mdb file. Thanks, Microsoft. I discovered that there exists an option to unlock the file in its Properties window.

If you notice that my work has veered away from curricular integration into basic infrastrure needs, it's because users cannot even consider the former without a solid, reliable foundation. That has become my primary objective now.

That's it for today. Tomorrow, we point Phil toward the servers and set him off.

I landed in Gaborone at 12:20 today, after a solid day and a half of air travel. Principal Andy Taylor welcomed me at the airport, and I met the new volunteer Phil Sandick, who is going to be a great asset to the school's tech operations for an entire year. I met a few teachers whom I hadn't seen in ten years and generally reacquainted myself with this lovely country and school. Andy and I resolved to start tomorrow's investigations with the three computer science teachers and move from there to the heads of department. My first goal is to learn as quickly as possible what is being taught, what is the general state of the tech infrastructure, and what current technologies are most congruent with the teachers' pedagogical and curricular objectives. The goal for the week is a draft technology strategic plan for the school.

If you are accustomed to the pace of technological change in the U.S., you would find the rate of change here about ten times as great. I was only here a decade ago, yet technology has advanced far more quickly than in the U.S. over that time. In 1994, I came here with a binder of CDs for my music, and the only ways to contact home were the staff room telephone or postal mail. This week, Phil Sandick arrived with iPod, Skype phone, and laptop computer! He is now so much more connected to the rest of the world. Though the internet connection here is slow, it is by no means impossible. They have two 1.5MB down/384k up connections, and once they get the proper router to enable load balancing, it will feel faster. Surfing and blogging feels just fine to me now.

On the cultural front, the school's Maitisong Festival is underway. What a coincidence for me to be here during the cultural highlight of the year! This evening, I saw mind.junk.magic and Esther Baker-Tarpaga. For more information, visit the Maitisong Festival web site, the Botswana Guardian, or AllAfrica.com.

Skype should work fine from here, as long as the network isn't too busy. Use the link at right to call me (kassissieh) if you have a moment. If I hang up on you, I'm in a meeting!

I'm in Heathrow airport, waiting for the gate announcement for the flight to Johannesburg. After some good sleep tomorrow, I should be ready to start meeting with Maru a Pula staff on Monday. First order of business will be to set specific objectives for the week, potentially including visiting primary schools, planning the second round of purchases, and designing an academic tech integration strategy. The school has likely just received its order of 29 HP desktops, the first step in their tech upgrade.