Projects List Update

Projects I have completed:

1. Cleanup effort at Guinsaugon Landslide Memorial Chapel involving 30 3^rd year CAT-in-training students. Our students joined local government leaders and community members in picking up garbage from around the chapel site. This cleanup effort coincided with St. Bernard’s initiative to prepare the site for the 3^rd anniversary commemoration of the tragedy. I am still gathering documentation of this project.
2. I researched the possibility of creating our own printer ink in hopes of saving my school money on printer cartridges. After getting in touch with a friend well connected to the chemistry community in Minneapolis, MN, I have abandoned this project. They reported it to be impossible with the means available to us here.
3. Performed analysis of books, along with volunteers from the 4^th year, in the SJNHS Library and wrote up a report explicating the data collected. This analysis is meant to serve as a basis for seeking book donations for the school. This was completed January 10^th, 2009.
4. Researched possible library management software, either free or open source. We have selected a final candidate and because of the value of using this program, the library will be getting its first computer.
5. Worked with family and friends in the U.S. and have thus far obtained 171 new books for the library, including fiction for all reading levels, a number of dictionaries and a complete encyclopedia set.
6. Worked with other partners in the U.S. for a pen-pal letter exchange and book drive. Fifteen students in the U.S. have collected books and school materials to fill five balikbayan boxes (potentially 350 or more books) and they should be in transit at the time of this writing (June 26, 2009).
7. Implemented a firewall system that not only protects the computer lab, an invaluable asset to the SJNHS community, from many viruses, hackers and other malicious activities and software. This firewall also blocks inappropriate content, such as pornography and images of violence, from being available to students as well as harmful downloads that could infect computers on the network with viruses.
8. Implementation of free software SteadyState, a means by which to protect the lab from students changing settings or installing viruses or other unwanted applications.
1. My ICT co-teacher and I have already installed SteadyState on numerous computers throughout the lab, experimenting with configurations that suit the needs of our lab. SteadyState is “a tool developed by Microsoft that gives administrators enhanced options for configuring shared computers, such as hard drive protection and advanced user management. It is primarily designed for use on computers shared by multiple people, such as internet cafes, schools, libraries etc. SteadyState is the successor to the Shared Computer Toolkit.” –taken from Microsoft website
2. We have already completed developing a 4 page document of instructions on installing Windows XP from scratch, installing all necessary software and locking it all down with SteadyState. This documentation is written in a way that someone with very little computer experience can fix a computer themselves without relying on the presence of the ICT instructor.
9. Implementation of a PXE server in the school’s network. This server will greatly decrease the amount of time the ICT teacher will spend doing computer maintenance. Before, it took 4.5 hours to reinstall windows and necessary software per computer. This means that if a virus affects one or more computers, the teacher is already obliged to spend at least 4.5 hours on each computer, or exponentially more, fixing the computers. With the implementation of the PXE server, we can reformat a computer in a matter of ten minutes, thus being able to reformat the entire lab in one day. Ideally, if a student’s computer is misbehaving, we can reformat it back to the original, brand-new state in a matter of ten minutes, hardly interrupting the participation of the student in the class.

Here is a youtube video of the PXE Server in action!

Projects I am currently working on:

1. Developing a working, semester-long lesson plan, teaching fourth year students the basics of web design using open source, free software.
1. My co-teacher and I are running a demonstration of the plan and will create the documentation so it can be replicated at other sites.

Projects on the back burner:

1. I have a contact at the University of Saint Catherine’s in Minneapolis, MN that is interested in starting a book drive and donating books to San Juan National High School. Because we are already working with YCS, we will also distribute any of the collected books fro St. Kate’s throughout Southern Leyte, depending on the shipment size.

Projects in the pipe:

1. I would like to develop an outline for a “ICT Lab Stewardship Program” wherein, during the school year, I will train 3^rd year and fourth year volunteers on the basics of computer hardware and software maintenance, the idea being that, year after year, fourth year students will be able to train 3^rd year students before they graduate. I intend to provide documentation with a basic outline of this program for others to follow.
1. Not only will this provide our highs school with basic computer technicians to service the lab after I leave SJNHS, but also
2. To provide students with a necessary skill set that they may eventually use these skills outside of school as a means of income generation.

Personal Interest Statement:

As a volunteer with a background in and passion for ICT in the classroom, I see myself leaving a lasting impression on my community by developing easy-to-follow documentation for projects that bring ICT into the classroom in a sustainable way. A lot of online documentation requires a basic knowledge of computer skills and terminology. I intend to put the power of ICT in the hands of anyone who wishes to utilize its potential without the prior know-how. Hopefully this documentation will be easy enough to follow that PCV’s of all sectors can utilize these projects in an easy-to-follow manner.

Back To School

As a time-honored tradition, I got my haircut before school started. Sitting in the plastic chair, i felt that same anxiousness I was so familiar with as a student all those years and I began to wonder if all teachers feel that. I'm sure not every teacher goes to Target to get a G.I. Joe or Barbie lunch pale, but they must still experience those same feelings they did when they were kids, picking what design they wanted on their accompanying thermos.

It's wonderful to be back at school, at the time of this writing about a week and one half in. Already the malaise of summer has dissipated and I find I have a reason to wake up every morning. Classes have not yet started, per-se, but I have had some great opportunities both for project preparation and completion.

I would first like to mention and thank Grandma Pickle and her community who donated 171 books to my school on their own dime, which I received about 3 weeks ago. I have also spent months planning with a fellow Namibia program colleague, Emily Negrin, to connect her students in California with my students in a penpal program. Over the months, the penpal program snowballed into a books and materials drive, gifts from her students to ours. I anticipate receiving 5 boxes of books and materials from Emily and her students for our library and the use of our students.

With regards to Gram, her friends and community, Emily and her students, the hardest thing about doing development work is being able to count on people. Many of you have told me that what I am doing is good, a mitzvah and charitable and noble work, but without people like them, people like me are nothing but a drain on the community in which we planned on serving. They pump the lifeblood through my veins and through the veins of my community. With that, I say, and I think we all say, daghan salamat po (many thanks, with respect).

As for other projects that have been keeping me busy, I just finished building a Linux-based firewall called Smoothwall. I have never worked with Linux before and it proved to be more challenging than I had anticipated. All in all, building and introducing the Smoothwall server into our network took a good 7 hours. Smoothwall protects our entire network from hackers, caches data to free up bandwidth, blocks specified content like porn and lets us monitor overall network traffic. My principle, Ma'am Rachel, was very impressed. I would like to be sure to give a special thanks to Dr. Dave in batch 266 for his patience and guidance.

Otherwise, being back at school means hanging out with the students. Here is a video of the fourth year ICT students doing a 20 person human knot on the first day of school.

The kids really make it all worth it. People back home can break their backs getting books to our library and I have spent 9 hour days at school working on computer projects, but the kids really make it all worth it. I feel so much older all of a sudden than I actually am. To conclude this post, Attached is a candid picture Sir Erwin took of me wasting time with some of the fourth year ICT students, showing them pictures from my Europe trip; apparently Aaron has a handsome nose.