One of the Rwanda Center for learning and laptops summer 2010 objectives was to run 3 clubs at ESCAF – Story telling, Game programming and Journalism – for 5 weeks with one training session a week. The game programming club aimed at helping students to develop four different games; we had five trainers in the first two weeks but three during the last three. Through an elimination process, the voted for four most favorite games.
1.Volleyball: This is a mini-volleyball game with 4 players, 2 on each team. The ball moves from one side of the net to the other.
2. UBUTE: Ubute is a game that Rwandan children use to play every day at school or even at their homes,it's played by a group of people and one of the group has to start the game. The game is to run after someone then if you touch him, it's his turn to run after others. The one who's running after others is the one who has Ubute. If i can translate Ubute in this game it's like
3.Racing: It consists of runners running and touch a specified line and then come back .
4.AGATI: the athletes stand on two lines, each line facing the other. Two persons standing on one edge of each line, race around the two lines forming a rectangle, and then switches with the other person on the other edge. It kind complicated to explain if you never watched it but it’s like relay- race.
NOTE: Because of the complexity of this game we developed SOCCER instead we developed soccer.
This is like air-hockey where each player can touch the ball only once before the other opponent touches it. The Rwandan kids play this game very often. This video game can be played by two people, the left one uses “Q” and “A” keys to move the player up and down respectively, and the right one uses “UP” and “DOWN” arrows.
Main problems encountered
1. The way of choosing which games to develop: Giving the kids 100 % of freedom to choose games doesn’t help them to learn much, mostly because if the game is very hard to program, the trainers themselves can’t teach correctly.
Our action: For AGATi (relay-race), I suggested LESI, – it’s in the category of football – another game that boys play very often, and they liked it. Another game that was a little more complicated was UBUTE, however the trainer for this game tried to do his best.
Suggestion: I think we should get together and plan the games ahead of the club’s kickoff day and then we should make the students familiar with the concepts of the game before they start developing it. For example, if it’s volleyball; first take them to play volleyball; if it’s a new game to them, it’s even more fun, because they like to learn new things. Moreover we should plan several games and let them pick their favorites among our proposals.
2. Inconsistency of trainers: After week 2, even though we got another trainer, the other two had to leave for various reasons. This means we had four groups for three trainers.
Our actions: I noticed it would be so confusing to mix that group with the others since we would have restarted over. Therefore I asked other interns and staff to give us a hand; however because they had other plans, they couldn’t show up as often.
Suggestion: I believe inconveniences may surprisingly come anytime, but there should be a plan of double-checking the availability of trainers. Another alternative is to teach one game at a time; which helps all the students to be on the same page (disadvantage: this limits their curiosity and creativity).
3. Shortage of available classrooms: Having four different groups in the same classroom with one blackboard was so challenging. Since we don’t use the projector, sometimes we really needed to write on the blackboard for more explanation.
Our action: Some groups like Volleyball and football had to go outside in the yard.
Suggestion: If it was well organized, I am pretty sure the ESCAF authorities would have given us other rooms. In the future, we should specify what types of needs we need from the schools’ authorities.
4. Un-programmable/hard-to-program games: this issue relates to the first one. After the kids were given full right to choose games, the trainers felt pressure to program those games. However we should not forget that OLPC interns are not experts in programming.
Our actions: In our understanding AGATI and UBUTE were the most complicated; so I proposed the kids another game. As I couldn’t come up with a good way to develop AGATI, I brainstormed what else the Rwandan kids may like. LESI (air-hockey-like game) - which is commonly played - was the first game to come in my mind. For this meeting I brought a ball and went outside with my group, and then the kids played the game and were very eager to implement it in Scratch.
Suggestion: If there is a plan to improve the computation thinking of these kids, OLPC trainers should also get more trained how to use in depth this visual programming software (Scratch, Etoys, TurtleArt). Other activities are easier to grasp but these ones are a little harder. SEE ALSO suggestions for ISSUE #1
5. Different educational level: Students were in different grades ranging from P4 to P6. Because of this there are some mathematical concepts they couldn’t understand on the same level, I would say for insistence the Cartesian plan which is commonly used in programming.
Our action: We tried our best to teach all of them the most basic features and elements of a graph and how it relates to someone’s position in the real life.
Suggestion: I don’t think grouping them according to their grades is the most suitable solution because we want students to help each other, instead we should test their knowledge about different mathematical concepts (angles, graph …) before the clubs and then trainers should figure out together the best way to approach those types of subjects.
6. Lack of follow-up on their retaining capacity: We gave them homework only less than two times during the whole time, so some kids couldn’t even remember what they studied the previous session.
Our action: We didn’t do much to test their retaining capacity over time. We always continued from the previous week’s work.
Suggestion: This issue is the result of lack of pre-session evaluation and organization. Before training there is should be a meeting of trainers to evaluate the previous session and plan the following one.
7. EXPECTED ISSUE: The most common issue you would expect while using XO 1.0 is the mouse freezing. Also some students came without having charged laptops.
Our action: For the mouse problem, we borrowed external wired mice from the office and we would share them among the students who had issues. The kids with dead-battery XOs shared with thosewho had them charged.
Suggestion: Assuming we still have XO 1.0, we should make more mice available for training use. In case of sharing an XO due to lack of battery power, the project done should be copied into the other XO so that the student won’t have to redo the same work.
8. Lack of motivation: There wasn’t any type of material motivation.
Our action: Before we took a decision to install gcompris and english4fun for all students, we installed them only for students who were performing the best; which I noticed was not the best motivation because all kids really need those educational activities.
Suggestion: There should be a very small budget for candies, cookies ...maybe once two weeks. I suggest this because the researchers found the kids are very interested in material things.
This issue is the result of lack of pre-session evaluation and organization. Before training there is should be a meeting of trainers to evaluate the previous session and plan the following one.
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