Howdy
In lieu of sending out periodic e-mails, I'm going to post pictures and stories of my upcoming summer teaching in Kenya to this blog. I am part of a six-person team that will be teaching Java, internet technology, and entrepreneurship at a Kenyan high school and university as part of the MIT Africa Internet Technology Initiative (AITI). My teammates are Marta Luczynska, Curtis Van der Puije, Bilha Ndirangu, Zahir Dossa, and Robert Leke. (I'm sure I'll post some pictures of everyone soon enough.) Other teams will be teaching in Ghana and Ethiopia.
Right now I am in the midst of arranging for DHL to pick up several computers for the computer lab at Alliance High School, which is one of the schools we'll be teaching at. We'll also be teaching at Strathmore University. Alliance's lab has original Pentium computers that have been in constant use for over a decade. Past AITI teams have had some major issues with getting them to work.
So, we decided to collect some donated machines, refurbish them, and ship them to Alliance. We collected decomissioned Pentium III machines from MIT, salvaged as much as we could, and installed Linux on them. We're also sending a few iMacs to a community computing center in Laare. I'd like to thank MIT's equipment exchange and the CSAIL Infrastructure group for their donations. I'd also like to thank Matt Papi for installing and configuring Linux on the machines. (FYI, Partimage worked quite well if you ever need to do this kind of installation.)
While I'm at it, I'd like to thank Mark Dwight, CEO of Timbuk2 bags, for his donation to our team. We're teaching an entrepreneurship component to the course that includes a business plan competition. I asked my friend Chris Gorog, a Stanford GSB alumni, if he had any good sample plans. Mark responded to a solicitation that Chris sent to a GSB mailing list and also gave us a generous donation of Timbuk2 bags for our trip. These bags are great and I highly recommend them. By the way, thanks to the many other people who responded to Chris' request -- it was overwhelming and will be quite useful.
Right now I am in the midst of arranging for DHL to pick up several computers for the computer lab at Alliance High School, which is one of the schools we'll be teaching at. We'll also be teaching at Strathmore University. Alliance's lab has original Pentium computers that have been in constant use for over a decade. Past AITI teams have had some major issues with getting them to work.
So, we decided to collect some donated machines, refurbish them, and ship them to Alliance. We collected decomissioned Pentium III machines from MIT, salvaged as much as we could, and installed Linux on them. We're also sending a few iMacs to a community computing center in Laare. I'd like to thank MIT's equipment exchange and the CSAIL Infrastructure group for their donations. I'd also like to thank Matt Papi for installing and configuring Linux on the machines. (FYI, Partimage worked quite well if you ever need to do this kind of installation.)
While I'm at it, I'd like to thank Mark Dwight, CEO of Timbuk2 bags, for his donation to our team. We're teaching an entrepreneurship component to the course that includes a business plan competition. I asked my friend Chris Gorog, a Stanford GSB alumni, if he had any good sample plans. Mark responded to a solicitation that Chris sent to a GSB mailing list and also gave us a generous donation of Timbuk2 bags for our trip. These bags are great and I highly recommend them. By the way, thanks to the many other people who responded to Chris' request -- it was overwhelming and will be quite useful.
posted by Steve Weis at 7:11 AM
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