The Irony

I had long conversations with the teacher during this visit. One of the issues we discussed was the difficulty designing activities. He told me "I am trying to design activities, but it is very hard to integrate concepts from different areas".

The curriculum for rural school is organized in thematic units (i.e. human body, energy, environment, etc.), which include the concepts of the different domains. The teacher has to design and facilitate activities for each grade (first to six) in math, science, social sciences, Spanish and agriculture, keeping in minds the guiding topic.

Given the material he has to propose activities that integrate concepts from several areas, I can see the difficulty he faces. I encourage him to think beyond what it is propose in one week and look at the material as guide to propose activities that may be of interests to the students. I also tell him that it is ok (and good) to revisit a concept more than one time because students will be able to make even deeper connections.

As we work on this issue I can’t stop thinking about the irony: we don’t experience life as a series of disconnected facts, we artificially created the division, but somehow we lost the ability to go back. I don’t know if it is because we have a hard time making explicit the concepts on a given activity, or because we still think that “real” learning happens in a vacuum.

Reunited at last

I came back to Costa Rica one more time. It is the last official visit with the project. I was great to see the children again. After the first hour.. I felt as if I had never left. I have been communicating with the students and teacher over the internet, but seeing them again feels great.

I found the same entusiam and motivation.. the students continue to do projects... some of them at the school, but the most interesting ones get done at home when they take the computers. They actually keep the computers during the vacation period (December to February). The teacher asked them to use them the way they wanted, but he recommended turn on the computers at least three times a week.

The students told me they worked with their parents and siblings. They also did a variety of projects.. solar system, games, tv program, weather, etc. One of the students told me he left the computer home, but he spent some of the time with some family, far away from home. He said he called his father and asked him to turn on the computer. He said he didn't want his computer to break. He gave his father instructions over the phone of how to turn the computer one and off and he even told him hoe to open Microworlds, create a turtle and give instructions... unbelievable!

I will be here this week... visiting the school and also visiting other school that work with the Omar Dengo Foundation.

New opportunities through better education…

I have been talking to the teacher every day, several times a day. It is great to be able to communicate with the teacher and to hear the details of what is happening at the school. It is a lot more efficient than what we were doing before.

The teacher told me today that there are 21 children at the school now. He was expecting 19 children, but two new families moved to the community in the last few weeks. He told me, "two families moved to the community looking for employment opportunities and for better education for their children." He also told me that families from other communities have talked to him about sending their children to the school, but their main limitation is that there is not public transportation to the community. I also think that there is a limit to the amount of children the school can accommodate and the teacher can work with.

He basically said that people see the project as a new opportunity for the children. He also added that people not only see it as a new opportunity and better future for their children, but also for themselves.

I can only be excited and pleased to hear about the level of attention and interests that the project has created after only few months of work. Thanks to the teacher, the children and families for the good work!!

We are flying today...

When I talked to the teacher on MSN he told me, "We were traveling by turtle, and we did not know... we are flying today". We have struggled with the connection to Internet since the day we started the project. We have had access to the Internet via modem, which was not enough to keep regular communication with the teacher and the children. The teacher was able to access his email and we chat on msn, but we were never able to have voice or video conversations. In December, the school had an ISDN line installed, but we had to deal with several issues before they could really use the line.

The school finally has its ISDN line working at a reasonable speed (128 Kbps). I have been able to communicate with the teacher and the children today. It is great to see their faces and be able to talk to them. They wanted to know when I am visiting again.

We are all very happy with this new Internet connection. They're happy being able to connect to the Internet and to access information, and to talk to me when I am not there. I am happy because I can have not regular communication with the teacher to know what he is doing and to be able to support his work as he becomes fluent with the technology. For now on, we will be flying!

Talking about their work...

I just got back from Costa Rica. We had a really successful day on Friday. We had an open house where the children presented all the project to the community, people from the Ministry of Education and from Omar Dengo Foundation.

They were all really happy with the work that the children and the teacher had done... they were impressed by how well the children were able to explain the projects, their learning process (regarding content and technical aspects of the projects) and how good they felt about their work. Parents were really proud!

People from the Omar Dengo Foundation and the Ministry are really committed to supporting the work... and they look forward to the project to continue next year!!

Reflecting on their learning process...

We are organizing an event for tomorrow. The children will be showing the projects they have built, as well as the ones they have made with their parents and the preschool kids. Parents, members of the community, and people from Omar Dengo Foundation and from the Ministry of Education will come to the event.

I am hoping to talk to people and capture their impression on the projects and on what has happened during the last few months. I talked to a student who graduated from the school last year. I want her to do the role of reporter and use the camera to capture some of these moments while I am talking to people and making sure things go well.

The children practice their presentations. It was very interesting to see them reflect on their learning. I asked them possible questions as they were presenting to get them to think and prepare for tomorrow. It was great to see how other children started to ask questions to help the other students. It was a lot of work, but children were working really hard to prepare and make their projects better!

When learning happens...

We continue to work on natural disasters. The seismographer is almost ready and we started to work on the anemometer. We actually built three different versions of the anemometer today to see which one moved better with the wind. Some of the girls got really interested when they saw me working on it, so they started to work with me.

I discuss this with the teacher. He has been spending a lot of time writing reports and documents for the end of the year and I worry that he is not doing the work with me and with the children. He is very interested and he comes to make sure he follows the work, but he is not taking an active role this week. I brought up how some of the most interesting learning experiences during these months have happened this way. When the children see me working on something, they want to collaborate with me and they naturally get engaged.

In the conversation he mentioned how children do the same at school. There are two or three students that have become sort of role models, once they figure something: a procedure, a way to change the windows settings and colors... all the others follow. I think this is all the result of a very open environment that allows collaboration and group work.

If I get the teacher to do the same I can have him reflect on what results he gets from the experience... for now, I have my own experience working with the children.