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The XO has now become a classroom tool for all teachers
November 30th, 2011
The XO laptops are now being used by nearly all our teachers in teaching of their regular classes. Children have also started doing activities such as music and art which were not possible for them before now.
Children in Class 1 have progressed from Tam Tam Mini to Tam Tam Jam and learning to make their own music using Drum kits, Strings, winds, concert, people and animals voice.
Tabla, violin and guitar are their favourite instruments.
There has been great progress in teaching maths too. Our teachers
have trained on the Khan Academy videos and have been using their new-found techniques in the classroom.
From this week children in class 5, 6 and 7 are registering directly with Khan Academy online using their XO’s and will use the on demand videos from Sal Khan to learn maths just like children in the Western World. If this works then we will have levelled the playing field for our students!
English projects are also being done on the write activity, see the write-up below:
More projects on the XO this week
November 21st, 2011
When the Class One teacher asked her students to use paint activity to create whatever they wanted to Little Ayesha Aslam produced the following heart warming image.Shows how she is 
Do notice the tiny I Love message on top left!
Children also used Write and Record activities to do word opposites exercise
In science our children are working on 3 projects to investigate the following topics 1) The Human Eye, 2) Cross Section of a Plant cell and 3) cross-section of a plant cell. See their images below.
Read about our progress with XO Laptops
November 16th, 2011
In November the children finally got to use their laptops on a daily basis. Our administration very cleverly solved the problem of laptop distribution and collection everyday. They have hired an ex student who is sitting privately for his high school diploma to do this job and this also gives him the chance to study in the school premises. All the teachers have started projects in their classes this week. Teachers are reporting that children are responding very well to this new way of learning and have developed an interest in their classes.
Class 1 is doing a project on Nouns and Action Words with the Write and theRecord activities and have done this with great enthusiasm. They are using different colors, pictures and photos to write and learn names of the days in the week, months in a year, names of different shapes and parts of body .
Class 4 and 5 are also working on some interesting maths activities that their teachers have helped them download.
Class 5 students love using Typing Turtle while working on new projects they want to improve their typing and familiarity with the keyboard. They have used Paint Activity to drawn the map of Pakistan and the World map. See their maps below
Class 6 students have decided to make a project on Pakistani cricket team. They are loving working on projects that are of interest to them.
Class 7 and 8 have learnt to download any topic in Infoslicer Activity and make notes on it. So they can now research any topic and make notes as well as use Paint Activity to make or design map on it and write names of continents. More next week…..
There is now a request from the KG I and KG II teachers, who do not have dedicated XO laptops for their class for access to these. We are planning to let these children “borrow”laptops one day a week from Class 1 and 2 so they can also begin using this great new tool. More information next week.
Ist week with XO laptops at Rehnuma
November 1st, 2011
We had anticipate disruption to normal activities in the first week before they went back to a more stable routine. On day 3 the children were still as excited as day 1. We have given each XO a unique number both in physical and digital form as well given it the child owner’s name. We quickly realised that the logistics of 150 children marching to and fro the computer room to take and return their laptops was in itself causing quite a commotion.
We quickly decided that from next week the school gate keeper will deliver the laptops to each of the class rooms first thing in the morning and the class teachers will collect and return them for charging to the computer lap each end of school day.
We are not letting the children take these home till we have more experience using these XO’s.
On day 3 the Aaj TV team cam to start making a documentary on our progress. We are hoping to catch the attention of other schools in Pakistan to demonstrate that technology can enhance the standard of education for the poorest sector of our society. Here are some photographs from this day.
We want to thank Mr. Rashid Mehmood (Executive Producer), Mr. Sultan Ahmed Butt (Director), Mr. Abdul Ghaffar Khan (Asst. Director), Mr. Wahid Hussain (Cameraman) for taking out time to do this.
We now need to start working with the OLPC community that have successfully integrated these laptops into their learning and education programs. We do not have the experience yet to use this as the dominant source of learning.
We also want to participate in collaborative projects with other schools around the world. Please do get in touch with us if you are interested too
October 25th, 2011
Today have taken our first step towards e-learning and using the power of technology to educate underprivileged children in Pakistan. The experience was both heartwarming and delightful. I am adding some pictures for you to see for yourself what is happening here.
The teachers had allocated the XO’s per class and child the day before enabling us to hand them out class by class. For the first time ever we had 99.9% attendance with only one child missing due to illness!
The excitement could be felt in every room. The school buzzed with subdued conversation as they sat jaws dropping in from of their personalized laptops. The class I walked into was class 4 trying to figure out how to play IMPLODE. They soon figured out how it worked and when they were successful they were rewarded by the laptop with a big smily face on the screen this was followed by jubilant howls and an exchange of congratulatory hugs and cheers.
Considering these children had never been exposed to technology before we were amazed that the activity they wanted to use most was browsing the internet. Most often the teachers were being asked for help with creating email accounts and downloading music. Our internet connection soon slowed down as 150 students try to connect at the same time
Looks like these children have not been left behind in the information age even in the backwaters of Karachi. They know about the internet!
Class 8 our senior most class decided to download more activities themselves as they had been allocated older XO’s in which only a few activities were pre-installed.
We are live with 150 laptops all working!
October 20th, 2011
All our technical problems have now been resolved! The new server is now up and running, the UPS and voltage stabilizers are ensuring that we have constant electricity and at a constant voltage. The PTCL internet br
broadband connection works most of the time and the wi-fi is broadcasting this to all floors of the school. You take these things for granted in the West but it took the ingenuity and perseverance of Mujeeb Mirza, Zahid Butt, Amir Islah, Yunus and many others from the Aaj IT Team under the constant direction of Mujeeb Turk and Khalid Shaikh! well-done my friends we would not have got here without you.
broadband connection works most of the time and the wi-fi is broadcasting this to all floors of the school. You take these things for granted in the West but it took the ingenuity and perseverance of Mujeeb Mirza, Zahid Butt, Amir Islah, Yunus and many others from the Aaj IT Team under the constant direction of Mujeeb Turk and Khalid Shaikh! well-done my friends we would not have got here without you.All this week I have been spending my evenings learning the Sugar Activities and all afternoon the teachers have been staying late to use these themselves. We have been learning from each other. Our Plan is to hand out the laptops to the students starting Monday October 24th 2011.
Work continues on installing the new XO’s
October 4th, 2011
A lot of preparation is required to have the 140 laptops up and running. First of all the racks for charging these laptops had to be built so not much heat is built up while the XO’s are being charged simultaneously. See photo attached.
The Electricity supply in the school is very erratic so we have invested in a UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply) that will run the server and the WiFi in the school during school hours so that the laptops can work at this time and talk to the server. When this was installed we found the voltage fluctuations to be so high that the UPS could not be switched on for fear of blowing up so today we are installing a voltage stabilizer!
Because there was no electricity during school hours in the last few weeks the internet set up by PTCL could not be fixed even though they sent the man to repair it. We are now hoping they will come back to fix it. We are also contacting KESC (the electricity company) to fix the voltage in our area.
The cost of implementation is mounting up as we realise that our current school server and WiFi cannot service 150 laptops simultaneously so we are now buying a more powerful server and WiFi! We are not daunted by this and will make it all happen.
140 XOs arrived
I am delighted to announce that the 140 new XO laptops have finally arrived at our premises. Now that the machines are here there is a lot of excitement and activity. In expectation of these laptops new docking stations have been built at the school where the laptops can be charged once a day. A UPS unit is being installed to ensure we have sufficient electricity at all times as this part of Karachi has only a few hours of electricity supplied during the school hours. The broadband WIFI is taking time but we hope to have that in place soon too. The computer room doors and windows have had to be fortified to help keep these units secure.
On the Academic side we have started working with a group called the Academic Achievement Program (AAP) who’s mission is to enhance the quality of life of less privileged children through education. AAP are teaching our teachers to use Khan Academy videos for teaching maths to our children from Class 1 to 8. They are also helping us with English by guiding our teachers on how to teach children English from Class 1 to 3. AAP’s current focus is on English and Mathematics. AAP will spend at least five years with every batch of students.
AAP works in collaboration with organizations such as ourselves and The Citizens Foundation (TCF). AAP currently uses TCF school facilities but hires and trains its own teaching staff. You can find out more about them from
Other help with familiarizing our teachers with these specialized machines has been provide by Dr. Habib Khan entirely in his own time and in his personal capacity. In addition to the Khan Academy videos we have pre-selected a host of sugar activities for our laptops per class and are in the process of loading them on to the laptops as they get configured for each class. The AAJ TV technical team are helping us do this. Kishwer Aziz
Children started working with the computers at home
Children are able to do the following activities:
* Use calculator
*Chat in school
*Speak (type words and Listen)
*Paint pictures
*Record audio and video
*Chat in school
*Speak (type words and Listen)
*Paint pictures
*Record audio and video
*Listen and spell
*Typing turtle
*Shapes
A photograph of the AAJ IT Team deploying XO’s at Rehnuma
School server goes live connecting our XO community with the rest of the World
School Server has been Implemented
Congratulations, the OLPC school server was successfully implemented at Rehnuma Public School today, February 12, 2011
We are now part of the Global Community of OLPC through Internet. Our School Server is connected through Wi-Fi 802.11 Protocol and successfully tested on XO Laptop with Internet Connectivity. The Fedora Core Linux 7 with Latest Patch are used for OLPC School Server.
We conducted a successful training session on OLPC School Server. Teachers now are able to design workflow course activities in XO Laptop through OLPC School Server with Wi-Fi and Internet Connectivity.
Following team members under the guidance of Khalid U. Shaikh were involved in the deployment of OLPC School Server Project.
Mujeeb Turk (G.M.IT Aaj TV), Amir Islah ( Manager Server Management), Mujeeb Mirza (Asst Manager Hardware), Mujahid Hussain ( System Administrator). (Special thanks to Mr. Martin)
The very first Activity- XOs ready to go
Guided by Amber Waseem a 1st grade Art teacher, children made pictures with different shapes and colors choosing bucket, eraser and pencil as their tools.
Children are beaming with joy.
