Things are moving well at the beginning of summer...
Shipment en route for Kuma
The new shipment of additional equipment which should have left Brussels for Kuma at the end of April was finally wrapped up and delivered to the transporter last Sunday. Additional computers, keyboards, mice, screens, printers, projectors, projections screen, white boards and a good quantity of small equipment are now en route for Kuma, via Lomé, and expected to reach destination just before August 15. The shipment even contains a vacuum cleaner which should facilitate equipment maintenance, making the fight against dust more efficient.
The Raspberry Pi workshop
Some of the equipment will be used for the setup of a first Raspberry Pi workshop. The 25 Raspberry Pi’s arrived, with all cables and power supplies, last week.
We now need to build a stable image of the system (Raspbian “wheezy”), copy it on the 25 SD cards and test the entire set of Raspis… We’ll start with a very simple image, with no specific purpose except for the general introduction to the raspberry Pi and Linux. Of course, scratch and Python will be pre-installed and they will make it possible to introduce programming.
Python will certainly be the language of choice for the introduction to programming at the CIK. However, a test installation of Apache/MySQL/PHP (LAMP) for the Raspi seems to indicates it can work in an acceptable way, despite being rather slow… An introduction to programming applications for the web (HTML, PHP, SQL, and CSS) should therefore also be possible for the students of the lycée (HS) using the Raspi.
We are, of course, eager to receive any feedback from others who have some experience introducing the Raspberry Pi in a school environment and to listen to all advice related to our objective of using the Raspi with Middle School and High School students...
There was very little to report on the CIK blog in the past
few weeks... Teachers and students continue their ICT training at the Center,
week after week.
There are however two particularly encouraging news to report now:
Financing the first CIK building
Thanks to our generous donors, we now have most of the funds necessary for the construction of the first CIK building in Topkli. We still need a few thousand euros then we’ll be able to start planning the construction.
The architect from the Ecole Africaine des Métiers de l’Architecture et de l’Urbanisme (EAMAU in Lomé) should be ready with a updated proposal within the
next few days.
A Raspberry Pi classroom
Another generous donor helped us with the purchase of 25 Raspberry Pi (http://www.raspberrypi.org)
and all their necessary peripherals (cases, power supplies, SD cards, video cables, keyboards,
mice, etc.) We should therefore be ready to open a full Raspberry Pi classroom in
September.
That would most likely be the very first class of its kind in Togo, and one of the
first in West Africa. A very interesting setup to explore the potential of that
amazing tool in secondary education in rural areas...
Of course, we now need to consider all details of a teaching program using
the Raspberry Pi : the objectives, but also the content and the methodology.
A reflection that will take place throughout next year and will require
close collaboration with a group of teachers from Kuma ...
Additional equipment in preparation
A new shipment of equipment for the CIK is planned for the end of March.
It should leave Brussels to reach Kuma by the end of April. It will include several servers, a few additional computers, some whiteboards, some lighting equipment, projection screens and some other equipment that will improve the quality of the learning environment at the CIK...
Financing of the first CIK building
A donation of 10000€ was recently added to the budget for the construction of the CIK building in Kuma Tokpli.
If we can find the remaining balance within the next few weeks, we should be able to launch that important phase of the Project within the next few months...
