Group of Interns that worked as trainers during the July HoS and Teachers Capacity Building

Maybe the most important goal of OLPC in Rwanda is to introduce powerful learning ideas in the society, showing that children are able of much more than school usually offers and computers are a fantastic tool to develop this potential. However, to make such goal sustainable, it is necessary to develop local capacity that really understands the principles behind laptops and learning.

We need to reach people in different levels and spread the ideas not only among school’s teachers, but in people that will support OLPC initiative, people that will be teachers of the teachers, students, school managers, politicians and so on. We need to help the society to change the “grammar of school” speaking a new language that goes beyond teaching, and focus mainly on learning.

As part of this larger perspective, we run different kinds of internship programs in Rwanda. We mostly focus just graduated students (both from universities and secondary schools), but we also have actions on future teachers that are studying in universities and Teachers Training Centers – TTCs.

At the same time that this action is building capacity for people in the country, it is helping to support the activities at schools, contributing in the growth of examples about powerful ways to learn with laptops.

What is capacity building in our perspective?

Our internship program is about learning. Our objective is to help the intern to understand the principles of constructionism and how they can be implemented in classrooms. However, we don’t accomplish that through theoretical seminars, but through the consistent relations between practice and reflection, where the theory comes to contribute in the comprehension of what was observed in the schools.

Developing capacity goes much beyond the training of skills. You can train people to perform simple tasks, but contributing to the cognitive development of a person is a much longer and work intensive task. People need to construct a genuine understanding about their actions, process which is always individual and that we can only indirectly intervene (you can’t think for other person, only try to guide their reasoning in the right direction).

We expect that our interns, more than blindly repeating what we do, understand the principles behind our actions, and become able to critically think about what they are doing and to come out with their versions of how to adapt the ideas to the local context.

To accomplish that, the interns are involved in almost all moments of our work. They are engaged in the planning the actions we are going to carry out at schools, and than go to the field to implement them. This field work, with teachers and students, provide them the elements, the experience, to reflect upon.

We encourage them to document their thoughts on personal blogs, making easier to see the changes and development of their concepts. The blogs are also a feedback mechanism, where we can know what is going through their minds.

Interns Meeting in the OLPC Office at KIST

Once a week, the whole group meets to discuss what happen in the field. It is our role to provoke them towards a reflection over our actions. We usually introduce some theoretical concepts in order to explain what we observed at schools. During the meetings, we also assess our actions and re-plan for the next week of work. It is also part of the internship to learn how to develop materials that can be used both for teacher’s trainings and by other trainers.

The different internship programs

The internship program started in an informal way in 2009. After volunteering in our school’s activities, Jimmy Parfait and Désiré Rwagaju became our first interns and more recently, part of our team.

Their main responsibility is to coordinate action in 2 models schools: Nonko and kagugu. They organize the work at schools offering Clubs, teacher’s capacity building and support in the class, coordinating with the other interns. They also are responsible for to help the school to take care of the laptop, teaching some simple maintenance and re-flashing techniques for some teachers.

In the first semester of 2010,  we started our first formal internship in a partnership with Kigali Institute of Education – KIE. We selected 8 students from a 100 students group that in 2009 worked as volunteers for OLPC. The selected undergraduates were Lote, Leandre, Pie, Emerthe, Theogene, Janvier, Jean Bosco e Evode.

They use part of their free time working in different actions at schools, like students clubs, teacher capacity building and support teachers in class, based on the needs of each school and their time availability. They have helped also in the creation of lesson plans, exemplifying the integration of the XO in the primary school national curriculum.

The last local interns program is the secondary schools internship for students that have full time availability (in Rwanda high-school graduates must wait 1 year before being able to enroll into universities). In this modality we have Jean Claude e Adrien. They have been working in the schools with students in clubs, supporting teachers in the class and also teaching in the teacher’s capacity building.

This year we have received interns from abroad for a period of 2 and 3 months. They are as part of the OLPC internship program, coordinated by Bryan Stuart.
From end of May to end of July we had 7 interns:
Robert from Kenya; Sam, from England; Tiffany, Whitney, Avram, Jackie from USA and Elisee from Rwanda but he has been attending college at USA.
Those interns came to help us in our on going actions at schools as well in teacher capacity building. Although, their main contribution is to cooperatively work with of our local interns, bringing their expertise for the work and sharing their experiences and vision about the world. On their side, they have the opportunity of learning from the experience and vision of the local people.

In other side, by coming to a country with so many challenges, facing the reality and acting in this reality we believe that this interns will be able to develop a deeper understand about what the laptop initiative is about.

Links to Interns Blogs

Learning Development Officer

• Désiré Rwagaju Rwagaju.wordpress.com
• Jimmy Parfait Mrjimmy2.wordpress.com

Secondary school internship program

• Tuyishimire Jean Claude Specialthax.wordpress.com
• Ndikumana Adrien  ndikuadrien.wordpress.com/

College Internship Program: KIE (Kigali Institute of Education) students

• Theogene Bunane Theogene.wordpress.com
• Emerthe Mukahabyarimana Emerthe.wordpress.com
• Pie Nduwayo Ndupiego.wordpress.com
• Janvier Nkundukonzera janviern.wordpress.com
• Evode Munyeshuri  Evodemn.wordpress.com
• Leandre Mundere  Mundere.wordpress.com
• Jean Bosco Ruhinda Ruhindajohnbosco.wordpress.com
• Lote Imanirarora loterutare.wordpress.com/

OLPC International Internship Program

• Elisee Habimana ezwitholpc2010.blogspot.com
• Tiffany Wang Twolpcrwanda.blogspot.com
• Avram Rampersaud  avramolpc.blogspot.com/
• Whitney L. Eich  Whitneyinrwanda.wordpress.com/
• Jackie Lewis jmlewis49.wordpress.com/
• Robert Memeti robertmemetiolpc.wordpress.com
• Sam Gompertz samolpc.wordpress.com/

By Silvia Kist and Juliano Bittencourt.

Escaf is one of a few private schools in Kigali with laptops. Being private, instead of receiving laptops for the entire student body by the Ministry of Education, as a part of the One Laptop Per Child Project, some parents with the financial means, were motivated to purchase laptops directly from MINEDUC. Today About 40% of the students in grades Primary 4-6 own laptops.

After 2 months of teacher training in basic use of laptops and introduction to computers and learning, teachers were still arguing about how difficult it is for them to use laptops in their day to day teaching.

“What do we do with the rest of the students, the ones without laptops? They will disturb us and their classmates. ”

“Laptops are a burden for us. First we have to plan our lessons, and then we have to plan again with the laptops!”

“There are no laptops for teachers, so how can you ask us to teach with laptops if we don’t own one ourselves?”

“If we work only with the students that have laptops, then we will be the excluding the rest of the students, it’s not their fault that their parents didn’t buy a laptop for them.”

After listening to their complaints, and trying to understand their point of view, I came up with all sorts of solutions, but for each one they had an excuse that obstructed its implementation. I also realized teachers needed more support with developing lesson plans using laptops. At this point they saw the laptops as a totally separate part of a lesson; they couldn’t see it as a whole.

An urgent change was necessary if we wanted the school to keep progressing in the laptop project.  The headmaster decided to take a more authoritarian role with his teachers.  For my next visit, they had come up with their own plan to work things out.  Teachers were enforced by the headmaster himself to carry out the plan for the next phase.

• Teachers from P4-P6 levels would have their own laptop (lent by Mineduc)
• Teachers from P4-P6 were expected to bring a lesson, and together with the support of OLPC trainers they would develop a plan to incorporate laptops for that specific lesson.
• Students could share their laptops with others, work in pairs
• Students with laptops can be grouped together for additional assignments at the end of a lesson (for ex:  students from P5A, P5B, P5C with laptops in one classroom, while the ones without laptops would be grouped in two other classrooms for different kinds of activities)
• After-school Clubs for students would begin, with the support of OLPC trainers. At least one teacher would be working directly in each club, to learn the process and implementation of the clubs.

To my surprise, teachers were complying with the headmaster’s orders in a very satisfied, content way. And just like with baby steps, the first teacher who stepped up, represented a breakthrough for the whole school, and served as a model and inspiration for others.

What was the deciding element that pushed the project forward when it was about to fall apart? The determination of the head of the school was essential. But, why did he step up and defend the project, instead of taking his teachers’ side? A big reason was the fact that parents who had purchased laptops had put their confidence in the project and in him. They had promised these parents that students would use the laptops in school, but up to that point, the use of laptops had been very limited, and was headed to nearly null if teachers didn’t take a more active, involved role. But aside from these reasons, the headmaster had an additional motivation as a result of a previous revelation he had encountered.

While the teacher training was taking place, the school had scheduled 2 hours of laptop time per week during school hours. OLPC trainers were in charge of these sessions, while teachers took a more passive role, claiming they didn’t have enough training yet. During this laptop time (which lasted for about one month), students developed projects related to their community problems with their laptops. Most of the finalized projects were presented to the headmaster and he was amazed to see how good the students’ projects were.  He said:  “Our students are superior to many others now, because they are very good with the laptops. I support this project, I really believe in it, now that I have seen the wonderful things our students can do.”

A critical aspect for the success of the project is the interest, involvement and enthusiasm of the head of the school. In some cases, authority is the turning point, and the only way out. Especially when it comes to cultures that are so reluctant to modify their routines, and that have a strong resistance to implement other methodologies, even if in the end, they reduce a large part of their efforts as they facilitate their labor in some ways.

by Melissa Henriquez

This Monday, July 5th, started a one week Capacity Building about the XO laptop with 300 teachers from all 30 Districts  (5 Provinces) of Rwanda. This is the start of the second milestone of the OLPC project implementation in the country. The first one was the distribution of 10.000 XOs that OLPC donated to Rwanda in 2008, most of them inside Kigali. This second phase is the distribution of 100.000 XOs bough by the Rwanda Government into 150 school all across the country up the December 2010.

The training is being attended by  the Head of School and one teacher from each one of those 150 schools. Its main objective is to discuss with the schools representatives the implementation plan for the project and gather their input. During the training, school are going to be informed by the Ministry of Education details about issues like electrification of classrooms, laptops distribution, implementation schedule, creating awareness with parents and local communities, etc.

They also are going to learn about the two main points of the OLPC implementation: one laptop per each child and children take laptops home. Those two points are always controversial and it is very important that school’s principals understand the underlining logic behind them. It the school management buy the concept, the success chances of the project in the school increase significantly.

Although the training has its main objective into the awareness of the school and logistics, 2 of the 5 days are going to be dedicated to teachers getting familiar with the XO laptop and its usage. For this purpose, the Center for Laptops and Learning and its interns created a small reference booklet that covers most of the training content. You can check the booklet here: OLPC_Rwanda Training booklet.

During the training, we also are going to implement simultaneous dramaturgy technics in order to foster the discussion among teachers of common challenges a classroom with laptops faces.

You can take a look in the development of the training through our Flickr Photostream were we will post daily the pictures of the training.

How did it start?
8-9 year old students of a Public school from Porto Alegre/Brazil were curious about Africa because of the World Cup.  Motivated by their teacher, Rosa San Pedro, they wrote a letter and sent it by e-mail for 2 classes of Kagugu Primary School in Rwanda. In this letter they wanted to learn more about Rwanda and would like to meet the Rwandan students through Internet.
Kids of P3 and P4 grades got very excited when they received this letter!  They knew Brazilian football players!

In order to meet the Brazilian students, Rwandan ones learned Portuguese greetings using the Speak activity in their XO laptop. They also looked for information and maps of Brazil in their laptops.  The Brazilian ones learned English to start the communication.
The meeting happened through a skype call. The Brazilian students were in their school at 11AM and Rwandan students were at Kagugu school at 4 PM.

After the greetings and the presentation of each group in a foreign language, students of both countries had time to express their curiosities about the foreign culture.

The Brazilian students were curious about:

If there are snakes in the schoolyard?
If kids in Rwanda run way from lions?
Why aren’t girls in the school (because of the short hair)?
Why do the students in Rwanda wear uniform?
If the Rwandan students are well behaved? What do the teachers in Rwanda do to keep the order?
How is it to be African?
Why are the Rwandan students were using t-shirts (it means that it is hot) and in South Africa people are using jackets, gloves, caps, scarves (it means that it is very cool) if they are in the same continent?

The students in Rwanda were curious about:

If in Rwanda it was 4pm, what time was it in Brazil?
If there are gorillas in Brazil?
Why don’t the Brazilian students wear uniform?
Why do the Brazilian students have long hair?
What is the history of Brazil?
If the Brazilian students are happy with the result of the last game of the Brazil in the World Cup?
Where is Brazil on the map?
How do you do to come from Brazil to Rwanda?
What is the name of  Brazil’s president?
What is the best Brazilian football player?

The call ended with Rwandan students singing a song for the Brazilian students, many exciting claps and words like: I loved to meet you! I love you! Tchau, Tchau! Bye, Bye! Kisses!

The Rwandan teachers Murekatete Mediatrice, Rukera Abdou, Muhire J.M.V, as well as, Eduard, Kagugu’s principal, talked with the Brazilian teacher too.

The next steps will be to start an E-mail Pen Pal Program, with letters created by students and emailed by the teachers of both countries and the creation of a Twitter account to continue communication among them.

Doing a pen pal is not totally new. However it is always exciting for children to know students from other countries. By meeting face-to-face we have the advantage of making the communication more real for the children and even for the teachers. It is the kind of powerful learning experience that opens new possibilities for children.  Before the video-conference, the whole idea of talking with children of another continent was abstract for both parties. From the moment they saw each other, the questions and the curiosities started popping.
Besides that, in order to communicate, this kind of activity creates the need and meaning for students to learn a foreign language and to learn about a foreign culture.

This activity was created/coordinated by Silvia Kist, OLPC Learning Team,  and assisted  by Jimmy Parfait, Desire Rwagaju, Tiffany Wang, Tuyishimire Jean Claude, Evode Munyeshuri and Agnes Uwizeyimana (Kagugu’s vice-principal).

Take a look on the photos about this activity in our Flickr

The objectives of this training were to enable teachers to feel comfortable and confident in the use of the XO Laptop; to strengthen teachers’ knowledge about how to integrate the laptop with the curriculum, and to let teachers experience the impact of Project-based Learning as they developed their own projects on the theme of malaria.

At Kagugu Primary School there were  34 teachers, who were divided into two groups according to their previous experience and training with the laptops: beginners and advanced. 

This training was a big success in terms of achieving our main goals. Teachers were happy and their feedback was very positive. Most of them said this was one of the best trainings they had ever been in. This training would be followed by a continuous support to teachers as they learn to incorporate the laptops in their teaching and into their lessons.

While working with the beginners’ group, I met Damascene. He was one of the teachers who had never used a laptop before the training. Throughout the training he learned about the basic activities on the XO, and like the rest of the teachers, he also developed his own project on the theme of malaria. “I learned how to teach through the laptop, how to make my own project using the laptop. Like Etoys book, Write Activity, how to change the color of the letters and the size, so many things I learned”, he says.

The training was conducted in English, we also offered simultaneous translation to the teachers’ first language, Kinyarwanda. Even though their level of English comprehension was limited, they refused to receive translation. Most of the teachers hesitated when questions were asked, they took a while to respond or react to interventions, questions, or comments. Being one of the youngest teachers in the group, Damascene was the one who could best communicate in English. From day one he was able to express his ideas in full sentences and promptly, plus he was always the first one to respond whenever a question was asked.

Most of the projects developed by the teachers were simple and lacked personal opinions and inferences. Damascene was the only one who could make his own conclusions, recommendations, and opinions from the information he found on the internet. Language was a big part of his advantage. His original curiosity about malaria was “Why does malaria affect Africa more than any other continent in the world?”   In his conclusion he explained how climate and poverty are a big part of the cause. His project was definitely one of the best in the group.

I believe Damascene’s language advantage also gives him additional benefits: more motivation, better use of his creativity, and integration of the laptop in teaching can happen faster. Just one week after completing the training, Damascene started to use the laptop to teach in class. He says “laptops are important because students get so motivated to learn with them, even the ones that are not so good students, plus, the students improve their ICT knowledge. For the teachers they have more time available to prepare for class because everything is easier with the laptops.”  “Because I use the laptops in my class, my group was selected for the pilot program of GIS from Germany. That’s why they have to use the laptops, because more good things can happen. If you have laptops you have to use them. For example, I told the students to do the homework on the laptops, so when I checked them, I didn’t have to use pen or paper, I just looked at their laptops. “

I was veryproud of Damascene, so I decided to learn more about his ideas and motivations. I asked him what he thinks about the OLPC project in Rwanda.  “I think MINEDUC has the duty to help the teachers to learn how to use the laptops, they have to train the teachers. They have to think about the trainers they send to schools, without the training it is not important to send laptops. They also have to give enough chargers for each school and class. I have to tell the society that I congratulate the Organization for giving the opinion to bring this project to Rwanda, to send laptops to the poorest countries in the world.”

I also enquired: where do you see your students 10 years from now? “This will help the development of Rwanda , when they get to secondary school they will have a higher level in ICT  because they started using the laptops since they were so young. They will teach those students that haven’t had the opportunity to use laptops before, and as they teach, they will increase their ICT knowledge even more.”

These are wonderful insights from Damascene. In his answers he summarizes two basic aspects to make the project in Rwanda successful: Teacher training and Electrical Connectivity (power strips and chargers). Even though those two areas are precisely our priority at this point, it is good to hear it coming from the teacher’s point of view.  They are the ones in direct contact with the students; they are the ones who are able to motivate others; they are the ones we should empower to ensure a positive use of the laptops and the success of the project.

 by Melissa Henriquez

During the school holiday in July 2009 in Rwanda, students and teachers from Nonko, Rwamagana and Kagugu Primary Schools returned to their classrooms for a week to participate in Rwanda’s first XO Camp.

The One Laptop per Child (OLPC) Learning Team designed the XO Camp with help from the Rwandan RITC Core Team. The goals of the XO Camp is to give students the opportunity to work on something fun that they would not be able to work on during school and to continue capacity building for teachers. The XO Camp, within the basis of rich learning activity, is designed to provide an example of interesting and challenging things that can be done with laptops and to create a vision of powerful uses of computers for teachers and school managers.

These rich learning activities relate to the growth model that OLPC and the Government of Rwanda are building for the laptop initiative in Rwanda. In this growth model, it is important to create powerful exemplars, which are centers of innovation and reflection about laptops and learning. The enthusiasm and the lessons learned in these centers are used to spread the transformation across the school system (see David Cavallo’s paper, Models of Growth: Towards Fundamental change in learning environments).

We have had 3 XO Camps that ran simultaneously at the primary schools: Matsiko Project, Newspaper and Game Programming. We are spotlighting the Matsiko Project in this entry.  The Matsiko Project was created to introduce a different approach of the way the learning happens.  The idea behind the Matsiko Project is to offer an opportunity for a group of students to express their curiosities about the world and to conduct investigations about subjects that are meaningful to them.

The principle of the Matsiko Project is to engage students in their learning process: developing the spirit of investigation and critical thinking about the questions that come to their minds.

As part of this learning process, our intention is to instigate students to question and then to investigate the question by researching in order to understand HOW the things work or WHY some things happen.

By creating experiments and models using the laptop was a way for the students to express their understanding about the topic and to verify the problems and the gaps in their understanding.

In practical terms, the Matsiko Project aims to develop a group of students that will:

• Question
• Investigate the question(s)
• Create models and experiments using the XO laptop
• Create reports about the discovery that can be shared with other student

In July 2009, in Kagugu Primary School, we selected a group of students from P4 and P5 to come during the school holiday.  We worked with the students 4 hours per day for a week in the Matsiko Project.

To engage the students and to instigate them to express their curiosities, we used a book called, Curiosity is the Award Itself or Ibihembo  bya matsiko (in Kinyarwanda).

The book tells the story of a very curious girl, Glory, that suffers from a disease called “accumulated curiosity” and shows the solution that her family found to help her:  the whole family will do investigations.

On Day 1 of the Matsiko Project, we copied the book to the students’ laptops and we told them the story.  After the students heard the story, they read by themselves and looked at the images.

Shortly afterwards, we asked the students questions about the story:

• Did you like the story?
• Do you know someone who is curious like Glory?
• Who is curious like Glory?

Most of the students knew someone like Glory, the book’s main character: themselves, cousins, friends, brothers and sisters.

Then, we asked:  “What are you curious about?”

Since all of the students started talking and saying their curiosities at once, we decided to ask them to write only one (the most interesting curiosity) in the Write activity on the XO laptop.

Afterwards, the students read their curiosities aloud to the class and here is what they were curious about:

1. Why are some people white and others black?
2. Why do the people in Rwanda speak Kinyarwanda and others speak English?
3. Why do some people in Rwanda speak English?
4. Why do white people know many things and blacks do not?
5. Why are some people short and others tall?
6. Why do some people have short noses and others long noses?
7. Why do black people don’t have the same hair as white people?
8. Why do we need to use clothes?
9. Why do white people look like Chinese?
10. Why do Rwandese people have black skin?
11. Why are Chinese like Japanese?
12. Why do people have different colors?
13. Why did God create people with different colors?
14. How can I be rich?
15. How can I learn better?
16. Where does the sun come from?
17. Where does the sun go when it is night?
18. Why don’t we have sun at night?
19. Where is the earth?

It is important to stimulate the students to keep questioning (even the most simple questions). The basis of scientific discovery is the skill of an individual to question and then mobilize to find the answer. The development of knowledge begins by good questions.

Since we had a short period of time to work and few resources to work with, we decided to have the students choose together one curiosity to start a small investigation.

The students chose the following curiosity to investigate: Where does the sun go when it is night?

As with traditional investigation, before the research, the students took notes about their hypothesis for that question and then they registered the question and their hypotheses about it in the Write activity on the XO laptop and shared them:

Students’ previous ideas about the question were, as follows:

• Ryihishe mu bicu.   It is hide on the sky.
• Ryhishe inyuma  ylukwezi.    Hidden behind of the moon.
• Rihinduka ukwezi.    The night, it changes with the moon.
• Riba riri mu kirere.  It is going into the sky.
• Riba ryagiye huko ryikaraga.   It goes and turns.
• Rijya mu mubumbo imbere.  It goes inside the earth.
• Rijya mu yandi masi.   It goes to other planets.
• Rihishaga iriyuma y’umubumbe.    It is hidden behind of other planets.

To register the hypothesis or previous ideas is an important step for the students to figure out what they know about, what they think they know and to compare with what they are learning.  Sometimes the previous idea makes sense and is confirmed by the investigation. Sometimes the previous idea is false, but the process always shows the students’ thoughts. Through this process, we can see how the students’ thoughts changed and how much they learned. Most of the students had good hypotheses.

Jean Piaget, who studied children development, said that children are like little scientists, who are always trying to make sense of the world around them. They have a lot of “theories” about how things work. Their theories are logical and show their thoughts. Questions come from the gaps in their theories.  Our role is to understand these thoughts, to try to do an intervention to put them in contradiction and to guide them to arrive at a better explanation by themselves.

On Day 2 of the Matsiko Project, we started by observing the sun and its position in the sky.  We discussed the sun’s position in the sky at different times of the day.  For example, where is the sun during the middle of the day? Where is the sunrise? Where is the sunset?

During the observation, two false ideas came up: the sun is small and the sun moves.

Next, to check if their ideas were right, we directed the students to research information on the Internet, on Wikipedia and in the offline content of Browse on the XO laptops.

Since the Internet was not working well, we decided to look for information on the XO laptop and we found a book about the solar system with images.

In the images on the XO laptop, the students could see that the sun is bigger than the earth and that the earth and other planets turn around the sun and the earth turn around itself.

At this moment one question came up:  If the sun is bigger, then why when we look at it in the sky, it looks small? One student said that it happens because the sun is far away.

Then, we went out of the room to check to see if this information was correct: We did an experiment to understand why things far away look like they are smaller. For the experiment, all the students used Record to make a video of the globe.  In the beginning, the globe was close up and it looked big. Then one student started to walk with the globe her hands and the farther the globe moved, the smaller it looked.

Through this exercise, it was possible to understand why things far away look smaller. Other   information that students found reading the solar system book was that there are other planets, too.

In addition to that, one student found out that the earth turns to make day and night and it takes 24 hours. Then, the students used the globe to simulate the earth movement to make day and night.

On Day 3, we started to use Squeak/ Etoys, an XO laptop’s activity. The idea was to use the Squeak/Etoys so that the students could represent their knowledge about the solar system up to this point.  With Etoys, students can draw objects or import from other activities and put some commands for these objects (turn, move, sound, etc).

The representation/simulation about the solar system is very important because during the drawing and programming we can see how the students understood the concept that we were working with.

To start with Etoys, we asked the students to draw an object and in this case, the sun, and “to keep”  (this is a “command” in Etoys). After they had drawn the sun, some kids played with the sun making it smaller or bigger and also used some simple commands, like making sound and turning.

On Day 4, as we took into consideration that the students had first contact with Etoys the day before, the idea for the next activity was to simulate the earth’s movements.

First, the students went to Browse to find the earth image and copy to clipboard. Afterwards, they dragged and dropped the earth image in Squeak/Etoys. In Etoys, they had drawn the sun. Next they painted the background in one color and “keep” (“command” in Etoys) and then they opened the “Halo”

and then the “Viewer” for the earth and next they dragged and dropped the “turn by” (“command” in Etoys for programming) and the earth turned.

When they finished their simulation, they shared with their classmates and we compared their simulation with what they had learned.  There were some problems like the size of the sun and the earth and about the movement of the earth and also the sun.

We discussed again which is bigger, how much bigger is the sun, and what is the earth movement, if the sun moves. We also used the body to simulate these movements.  The students arrived at the conclusion that the sun is bigger than the earth and does not turn. The sun remains in the same position. It is the EARTH that turns. During the night the EARTH shows another part of the sun.

We also took notes of the information that the students had learned:

• Our planet is called EARTH.
• The SUN in bigger than the EARTH.
• The Sun looks small in the sky because it is far away.
• The EARTH takes 24 hours to turn.
• The EARTH takes 365 days to turn around the Sun.
• The Moon turn around the earth.

After the discussion, the students came back to Squeak/Etoys to correct their projects. They made the sun bigger than the earth and the moon smaller than the earth and put movement to the moon to turn around the earth and the earth to turn around itself.

They also wanted to put the movement of the earth around the sun, but it was not possible during this time because to put two movements to earth required complex programming and the students were only just beginning to get familiar with Etoys.

To do the model and to reflect about the model was a precious moment of learning. Before the simulation on the XO laptop, the students appeared to understand, but when they expressed by simulation, they realized they did not understand initially.

This means that it was necessary for the students to express their own ideas by doing, even committing mistakes. By debugging the models, the students face contradiction with their previous theories and this is a way to build new knowledge.  That is what we call, Constructive mistake.

In the beginning of Day 5, the last day of the Matsiko Project, we explained that they would present their projects to other classes. Then we discussed the conclusion to our investigation’s question, and we simulated again the solar system using their body to pretend to be the sun, the earth and the moon.

After that, we asked the students to open their projects made the day before, but most of them decided to make the project again. It was nice because it showed that they were able to make it by themselves and even help their classmates.

In the middle of the day, we asked some students to go into the other classes to talk about their projects, about their questions, hypotheses, conclusion and also to show the solar system simulation in Etoys.

The Matsiko XO Camp finished with students presenting their projects to other classes and sharing learning.

To present the projects is also another important part of the learning. When the students are able to explain in their own words, it shows their understanding. Their understanding builds confidence.  Also when the students share their projects, they are sharing their learning, by “teaching” other students.

Other Possibilities

Another strategy of the project is to develop the students’ literacy in Kinyarwanda and in English. When we create projects that engages students, they read and write with enthusiasm. We can take advantage of every moment to give students an incentive to read (and make sure that they understand what they read) and to write on their own (and there is no copying) about the investigation.  We can bring reading materials about the “project question” for them to read.  We use Write often as a way to express ideas.  We start by writing the question and the hypothesis, but it is important that the students produce some texts about their ongoing comprehension. Some texts should be revised by themselves and also by their classmates (they can exchange the XO laptops).  We can use students’ mistakes in their writing activity as an example to teach better ways to write. Or we can do a correction of the text all together. We can ask, “Instead of writing this,  how could we write better to express the same idea? Another thing we can do is to use the project to teach some words in English. We can create a list (short dictionary) with the main words about the investigation.  We can do it together on the blackboard, but always asking the students what they think and what is the translation. Or, they can create short dictionary on the XO laptop (using Write, Etoys, Memorize, Record, or Scratch) or we can also create a poster to put on the wall. If the school has a server, we can create a blog where students can write a diary about the evolution of the project (their own ideas and their comprehension) or even to do a report about the project.  In this way students from other schools can read it.  This is the best way for the students who are starting to write to improve their writing: writing that will be read.