Still Teaching

Getting with the Program

Though Prizegiving is tomorrow, I was expecting today to be high on the ceremonial side. There are a bunch of teachers leaving, and the year is drawing to a close, and it only seemed appropriate for there to be some intimate acknowledgments of the bonds we’ve formed as a staff and as a school and while tomorrow is a large celebration with pomp and circumstance and family and friends, I imagined today might be a day for some calm before the storm.

But today was all business. The moment I arrived at school the secretary handed me the agenda for tomorrow’s program and asked that I turn it into a booklet handout. I had last year’s design saved, and I substituted some of the graphics with a bunch of vector-based graphics I built for the Peace Corps t-shirt, and by the time morning assembly was over—mark the time, 10:00 a.m.—I had a draft ready for my pule’s approval. I handed him the design as he walked out of the Great Hall. He nodded emphatically, said, “This is very nice!”, and then walked away without waiting for feedback.

I went over it again with the school secretary, who had some changes of her own. She wanted to put the starting time for tomorrow’s event at the top of the agenda, “8:30 – Taimi Amata”. I smiled and nodded and ignored her suggestion.

We’ve been having a talent competition of sorts at my school over the past few weeks, and though the entire agenda was written in Samoan, the talent events were written in English: Soloist Finals, Duet Finals, and “Agapela Champs 2010”. That last one seemed a little ridiculous to me, so I changed the invented Agapela to the traditional Italian-borrowed “A Cappella”. This caused a brief controversy among staff, as many thought I had no idea what I was talking about.

Once we finally started making copies of the program, my Vice Pule asked, “Did you fix fa’aisuaso?” Apparently the word should have been Fa’aiuaso, translation unclear at press time, but no one had told me this until the copy machine had started. I quickly hit cancel and fixed the mistake.

As the day wore on, I made 360 double-sided copies for tomorrow’s program, and after the secretary got sidetracked, I ended up folding about 250 copies of the program in half. The entire project took about 4 hours, and I was all too happy to get out of school this afternoon.

Once I was got out of school I went to the Peace Corps office, picked up the brand new Peace Corps t-shirts, headed to Italianos for dinner, and then went to the airport to see Dan and Jordan off.

I got back to my house around 1:15 a.m., only to be greeted by my pule who emerged from the campus’s shadows. “Can you come early tomorrow morning? The programs are wrong. We need to re-print them,” he told me.

Even though I’d received his cursory approval, the thumbs-up from the school secretary, and my vice pule’s (late) blessing, my principal wants me at school at 5:30 a.m. to redo the program. How fun.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

In order to make a big show of the Dux award (in America we'd call this the Valedictorian), my school gives the winning student 4 different trophies, all of which must be returned next year so they can be awarded again. In order to document the 4 trophies, the Prizegiving Committee asked me to take a photo of them today. I suggested Ms. Peteru be in the photo. She happily agreed.

My folded programs in the foreground. All of which must be discarded.

Blakey and me out for Dan and Jordan's going away this evening.

Slideshow: Year 2

Yes, I admit these last Cultural Explorations were sporadically posted over a much longer time period than usual. For a moment on Sunday, I actually planned to write and publish 5 blog posts. But then I literally fell over on the couch and fell asleep. Much like last year, last week’s lead-up to the Welcome Fiafia was a mostly sleepless affair. With everyone in town last weekend, there was little time to catch up, and the re-introduction of Year 13 Camp this week has left me surviving on caffeine and mid-afternoon catnaps. So sorry if things have been uneven; it’s an accurate portrayal of life.

The slideshow turned out pretty good. Since the Fiafia came up way faster than I was expecting, I didn’t have much time to throw the slideshow together, so I mostly relied on the same clever tricks I concocted last year. Thus the crowd was less awed than last year, but still satisfied, I think.

I included factoids about each volunteer, and since I have twice the familiarity with group 81 this year, I was able to sprinkle the show with in-jokes and euphemisms. In fact, use of the word “factoid” itself is a quiet shout-out to the 81s.

There were the typical hang-ups. One volunteer felt all of her pictures were lousy, another shouted out during the slideshow presentation that the village I’d listed as her home was incorrect. Whatever. As a pre-emptive buffer to such criticism, I made sure to a make a show of being self-deprecating during the part about me. So there.

Supy put up a big stink because the Fiafia was held on his birthday, trying to get all of us to attend his alternative party. To lull him into coming, I included a special Happy Birthday Supy segment, which included, among other things, a sing-along-with-the-bouncing-ball portion; not an easy feat in PowerPoint.

I was worried people wouldn’t get it or would be weirded out, but much to my relief, the crowd actually sang along to the bouncing ball! Too bad Supy didn’t show up. That’s right. He didn’t come. Not that I’m bitter.

Until 4 hours before the Fiafia was scheduled to begin, I still had no introduction. I was chatting online listening to my iTunes on random play when Ira Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” came on. I thought of the beginning of the movie “Manhattan”. And thus the introduction was born. I found as many dramatic pictures of Apia buildings as I could find, changed them to black and white, and edited my Gershwin mp3 down to a manageable length.

The result is ridiculous. Woody Allen filmed iconic images like the Empire State Building at dawn, cars crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, and crowds moving through Time Square. I used shots of a breakfast banner over McDonald’s, a Birthday sale at Chan Mow, and two ladies walking in front of K.K. Mart. Iconic to Peace Corps Volunteers? Certainly. Majestic? Not so much. Entertaining to (movie nerds) me and Koa and no one else? Most definitely.

Oh well. I liked it.

I hope you're well. The finished product was 215 MB, so I’m not going to post it here. But there are some screenshots below to help you visualize.

Dramatic photos of Apia from the slideshow intro.

More dramatic photos of Apia from the slideshow intro.

Okay. So the basic gimmick I kinda invented last year and then shamelessy used again this year works like this: Dan's pictures fly in. The disappear one after another to reveal different information about Dan—his village, project assignment, and factoids. Different pictures replace the old ones. Then Dan's name and all of the pictures except one fly. In this case, the large picture on the left stays.

That large picture on the left then pans within its frame to reveal a different member of group 81. In this case, A.J. (Red arrows added for demonstration purposes.).

Once the pan finishes, pictures of A.J. fly in to fill the slide. The process repeats itself. A.J. links to Phil, Phil to K8, K8 to Blakey, etc. We're all connected.

Production Setback

Leah still wanted me to bring doughnuts at 7:57 this morning. Since we were scheduled to truck down to her village first thing this morning, she wanted us to bring two dozen doughnuts from Gregg’s Bakery in town to share with her staff, and I figured Peace Corps staff would be cool with making a pit stop before we left town. But then 19 minutes later before Peace Corps staff ever arrived, Leah called me. “I think we have a problem,” she said. Ho, boy, Leah. You don’t even know.

As I’ve mentioned on the blog before, I’ve been charged with videotaping and editing a video on The Art of Co-Teaching for the Peace Corps office here. Theoretically this video would be shown to both incoming groups and to schools where a Peace Corps Volunteer will soon work. Kaelin 82 is spearheading this production; I’m just DP. We went out a couple weeks back during my school break to get footage of a bunch of the 82s leading songs and activities with their kids, and interviewing Principals and students alike.

I have a little experience with digitally editing video, but not too much, so I was a little nervous from the beginning. It hasn’t helped that I can’t get my laptop to acknowledge the camcorder. This morning I finally figured out how to turn on the camcorder’s “USB Flow”, but even then, my laptop crossed its arms and turned a cold shoulder. Vista can be a snooty jerk.

But even that wasn’t the half of it.

I rewound to our old footage from last time to see how much tape we had left for today and set the tape at the right spot. But in the viewfinder’s playback, the screen is barred with a bunch of thick grey lines. Also, the camera’s speaker, which was already had an obnoxious crackle, was mostly silent. This wasn’t how playback looked and sounded two weeks ago.

In my frustration over the USB issue, I downloaded the camcorder’s 300-page manual over hi-speed internet a week or two ago, so I went looking for these grey stripes in the troubleshooting section. The manual diagnoses a dirty video head, and prescribes using the cleaner cassette for a minute or two to clear up the problem. But the Peace Corps doesn’t have a cleaner cassette.

And if the camera can’t play the footage we already shot, I’m severely dubious of its ability to accurately shoot new footage. But none of that mattered this morning because the staff member with whom Leah was going to co-teach was out sick. And he was the back up. The original is out on maternity leave.

AND THEN this afternoon I went to the office to figure this out with the Peace Corps’s Technical Officer, and I was standing at his desk when the acting Training Manager came in to tell me that it’s irrelevant whether Leah’s co-teacher will be back in school tomorrow because no one from the Peace Corps staff is available to drive me down there anyway.

So between missing on-screen talent (and her understudy), a camera with which to shoot said talent, and the transportation to carry the nada-camera to the nada-talent, the project seems a little doomed. I think we have a problem.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

Pelenatete giving a presentation on Thailand.

Fautamara giving a presentation on the Philippines.

The Lost Symbol

Marie, with a slight look of panic and confusion in her eye, took out her pen with purpose and drew a pair of small circles. And then she looked at me helplessly. Her manner was so profound it made the little symbol she drew all the more menacing. The moment was straight out of a crappy Dan Brown thriller: I was baffled by what she’d drawn, and she was driven by urgency and deadline. The symbol sat there staring back at the two of us like two looming eyes.

Half of my year 13 class from last year (i.e. 3 students total) showed up this morning for help with their university computer homework. Sinaumea and Tui’s assignment is the same Microsoft Word project I’ve helped a bunch of other students complete in the past, but Marie is planning on majoring in computer studies, so her work tends to be more involved. She was working on creating her own relational database in Microsoft Access, something about which I know very little.

Access is a clumsy program, too simple for professionals, too involved for casual users. In my opinion, there are very few database issues that either:

• Necessitate the use of a “real” database program (e.g. MySQL, etc.); or
  
• Can’t be dealt with in Microsoft Excel, which is much more user-friendly.

In fact, even after teaching it for 2 years, Access is still a big mystery.

But Marie and I were elbows-deep in it this morning when she drew the peculiar pictogram. My first instinct was to scour Access’s various toolbars looking for an 8. Or a colon. Or some sort of digital Rosetta Stone. It’s amazing how quickly and easily computer icons can go from useful tools to nonsensical Egyptian hieroglyphs.

When I worked at eCivis, the company built new proprietary software, and there was a small contest to design icons for the graphic user interface. I remember readying my entry, and to a point I can sympathize with whoever designed those for Access.

Perhaps the problem was we were working in Office 2003. Now that Office 2007 has done away with drop-down menus, I assume the Access interface is more self-explanatory.

Now that I think about 2007’s laconic interface, there is something primal about the little pictures; as though humans have gone from drawing buffalo hunts on cave walls to a small tipped paint can icon in the “Paragraph” section of Microsoft Word. Such evolution.

Anyway, as you’ve probably guessed by now, Marie had drawn the symbol for “infinity”. Errr... ∞ . There was a big Robert Langdon moment when I rotated the paper 90° and the 8 she’d drawn was transformed.

It still took a while to figure out how to change a “one-to-one” relationship to “one-to-many”, but lo and behold, when we finally got it, the ∞ showed up, all bold and shiny.

Now we’re ready to take on the search for the Holy Grail.

I hope you’re well. Picture below.

Dylan 77 has been back in Samoa the last couple weeks. Today at Italiano Pizza, he drank his Vailima through a straw.

Searches Me

“Something’s wrong,” the girl next to me was perplexed. The two of us were surfing The Web on the art room computers my freshman year of high school. I turned my attention to her screen. “The Internet,” she said. “I reached the end of it.” Having heard the Internet was endless, she couldn’t figure out how she’d reached the bottom of the web page. I’m not sure what my response was, but it doesn’t seem too long ago there were a lot of people in The States who had no idea how the Internet works. In Samoa, the concept of the Internet still seems a bit elusive.

Occasionally students will approach me—many of whom are older and no longer in my class—to ask me for help researching a particular topic on the Internet. Though most homes in Samoa don’t have a computer let alone Internet access, The Web is still vaguely known to be a good source of information. So every once in a while a student will ask me to find them sources on a given topic—usually history or economics related.

We have Microsoft Encarta on the computer lab computers, so usually I will refer students to that before agreeing to do Internet research by proxy. For some reason a bunch of the science students have been asking me for information on the acidification of ocean water. I’ve sent them all to the Encarta entry on “Acid Rain,” which isn’t really sufficient, but it includes a few parts about the acidification of lakes and streams. Same difference.

Today, though, two girls approached me separately to ask for Internet help, each posing a different problem.

One girl, Tauinaola, came into the computer lab second period. “Can you do some research on the Internet for me?” she asked. “My topic is ‘The Limitations of a Financial Statement.’” As with the Ocean Acidification kids, her topic was vague. I asked her what she meant by The Limitations of a Financial Statement, and her only response was a shrug. I asked how it was brought up in her Econ class, what the context was, what else they were learning about. She shrugged more.

As a teacher, it seems like there’s an ethical dilemma here. While I recognize there’s value in knowing how to Google something, I’m willing to do it for certain students, provided they give me enough direction.

The other girl, Penina, approached me before school. “I need you to search for some information on the Internet. I’m doing a report on the history of our school.” My expectations for any such information were low. Immediately I tried to dissuade the girl from thinking the Internet would help. I told her it would be better to get information from the Principal’s office. She would hear none of it.

During my prep period I dialed up. I found a couple sites with terse answers to Tauinaola’s question. The thinness and directness of the web articles seem to match the flimsy topic she’d given me. I printed what I found.

The search for Penina’s topic was even thinner. In fact, if you Google the history of my school, one of my blog posts is the top result. Talk about garbage!

Penina wasn’t happy to hear my search had come up empty. “Why is there no information?” she asked. It’s hard to explain.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

Last week we attended the Athletics officials' meeting at Nuuausala. This is the inside of their hall.

These are the seating assignments for the different schools at Friday's meet. Check out the symbol used for the ampersand between CSC and TSC. What does that mean?

I'm Ready

I’m almost qualified for my job now. The main thrust of my job, teaching computer classes, has always been within the scope of my ability. Sure, I’ve never had a teaching credential, but I’d say I have good teaching instincts and I’ve been capable of that all along. It’s the fixing hardware issues and speaking Samoan and maneuvering staff politics and living without hot water in which I have no background. But at this point I think I’m finally qualified.

At my Peace Corps interview the lady sitting across the table told me that engineers and other highly qualified computer professionals often find teaching computers to complete novices to be below them, which is understandable. It doesn’t make sense for a networking whiz or a systems expert to teach a 14-year-old to use a mouse.

But it would be nice to have a little more expertise in Microsoft Server. Also I came in to this knowing almost nothing about hardware. But I’ve learned plenty about both.

Sometimes I forget what recent experience has taught me, and I slip into a pre-Peace-Corps mindset. For example, one of the Dells in my lab stopped functioning at the end of last term. When you pressed the power button, nothing would show up on the screen, and the system unit would make a high-pitched whining sound. My first instinct was to leave the machine alone and teach with one less computer.

And that’s what I did. But then yesterday—six weeks after the fact—I thought to myself, that’s probably just a RAM issue. The humidity here does funny things to computers, and with RAM all you have to do is take it out and put it right back in, and that fixes the problem. Sure enough, I popped them out and then popped them right back in. Success!

I also realized moments later I could consolidate parts from the machine missing a SATA cable and the other machine that needs a new power supply. Both of those have been out of commission for months. What a waste. I switched the SATA cables (and the hard drives for good measure), and now there’s a working computer at that station. Success again!

I’m not claiming to be an “expert”, but I have learned to deal with very specific issues in my lab, almost to the point I’d be willing to hire me to work here.

I’m not particularly good at living without hot water, and my bucket-laundry leaves something to be desired, but I’m functional. And that’s progress.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

Notice anything weird about this picture? That's right. The lights are on. For the most part, there is more than enough ambient sunlight here that we almost never have to use the classroom lights. But today it was so rainy, the cloud cover so thick, we had to turn on the lights. It was crazy.

The kids from the school across the street racing in the rain.

Innerspace

Today I struck back. I admit, the problem had been getting to me. I asked Phil over the weekend, “How do you keep your antivirus updated? Is there a way to download the updates separately from Avira?” No, he told me, you have to uninstall the program and then install the completely new version with the virus updates. He waited a moment, stared off into the distance and then asked me, “What have you been doing to keep your computers updated?” Nothing, I answered. He laughed.

I’m unclear on why, but for whatever reason, Samoan flash drives are sated with virus files. I don’t know what corrupted websites pass them on, nor what drives my students to such websites, but talking with other volunteers—Peace Corps and otherwise—the virus problem in Samoa is a cyber epidemic.

Last year things got so bad with students’ flash drives wreaking havoc on my server, some of my computers were rendered useless, and even my personal laptop took a beating. I had to completely banish flash drives from the computer lab this year.

Results have been lackluster. I’ve caught some of my most trusted year 12s and 13s red-handed. Usually they’re trying to copy music to or from their flash drives, pirating as indiscreetly as possible. On one hand, I empathize and stand somewhat impressed by my students; it takes a certain amount of familiarity to upload and download music so freely.

On the other hand, I’m a teacher, and therefore a micro-authority on piracy and copyright infringement. It’s like being a member of the Canadian Border Patrol during prohibition: it’s your job to keep the rascals out, and yet, the authority’s collective effort is so ridiculously ineffective, one feels silly for getting so riled up about the whole thing.

So today I took steps to deal with the problem. Based on Phil’s recommendation, I downloaded the new installation of Avira last night with the most updated virus definitions. Then during my year 13 class, I walked the students through deleting the old antivirus program, restarting their computers, installing the new antivirus, and running a complete system scan with the new antivirus in place.

I’d braced myself for a downpour. As I’ve said before, my server is sated with viruses, so much so you can’t plug a flash drive in without it being tainted with at least 15 different virus spawns.

With the help of the year 13s this morning, we conducted a thorough system scan of every computer in the lab, and much to my surprise, the scans came up nearly empty. I caught 3 viruses. Either my computers are cleaner than I thought they were, or the virus scanners allowed quite a bit through the cracks.

In either case, today’s activity with the year 13s went as well as one would have hoped. They stayed together through nearly during the entire process, and during the long virus scans, we managed to fit in a game of Hokey Pokey.

I’m looking forward to repeating the whole process next month.

I hope you’re well. Picture below.

I think when I go back to The States, I will miss the variation of color and style in Apian architecture. It isn't cookie-cutter or run-of-the-mill by any standard.

Kodachrome

It’s no secret I haven’t had the greatest luck with cameras in this country. In fact, the bad luck starts before I arrived. My sister bought me a Sony Cybershot before I left San Francisco, but only the battery pack and the charger made it to Los Angeles; I had to stop at a Target to get one before I left, and the original had to be mailed to Samoa. This actually worked out well because halfway through training I had my Sony Cybershot in the pocket of my ’ie when I sat on it or laid on it or something else happened and the viewfinder cracked. Since then I’ve had a camera stolen, another left in a taxi, another float away in an ocean current, another get kicked off the dock at Lusia’s (I got the first two back.).

All of this ran through my head this morning when one of my students, my top year 13 Amanda, sat down at my desk and said in an overly respectful tone, “Mister, I’ve got something to ask you.” I waited. “My mom graduates tomorrow, and she wanted to know if we could borrow your camera to take pictures.”

Amanda’s mom used to be on the faculty at my school, but she left to get an advanced degree at just about the same time I arrived. She came in as a long-term sub for a while last year, and I’ve run into her at meetings and functions since. Whenever I see her, we have the same conversation where she asks how Amanda’s doing in class, and I give the same glowing progress report. But I don’t mind it. Amanda’s great.

I wouldn’t say that it was difficult for me to entrust Amanda with the camera in spite of this; I would say the only reason I even considered lending out my camera is because of Amanda’s track record and because I know her mom. If almost any other student approached me to ask about the camera, I’d have turn him/her down flat out.

In the past I’ve found that only a slight amount of resistance on my part usually deters a person from asking to borrow the camera. A long stare and a long “Hmmmmmmmmm” usually do the trick.

I lent the camera out once before. I let a staff member borrow it for a couple hours on Friday afternoon. She returned it on Sunday. I was perturbed.

I gave Amanda the stare and the “Hmmmmmmmmm”. It rolled right off her. Really, I should have just said no outright, and it would have all been over. It was too late. I was mulling it over.

Frequent readers will remember I have a soft spot for family photos, and the debate in my head was pretty short. Sure, there’s a risk I’ll never see the camera again, but on the plus side, what a great role model this mom is to her daughter, and why should there not be pictures? That stuff about it being the mom’s idea to borrow the camera was a bald-face lie. Amanda had come up with the idea most definitely. She wanted to take pictures of her mom. Who wouldn’t?

I lent her the camera. I cleared my pictures off and charged the battery and showed her how to keep it on “auto”. The one condition was she needs to return it to me by tomorrow afternoon.

I’ll probably get it back next Tuesday.

I hope you’re well.

The Ol' Switcheroo

My phone rang during mass this morning. The screen was blue, which means I hadn’t put it on vibrate, so I was very lucky it rang during the closing song when the obnoxious ring was overpowered by the choir. But when I immediately put it on vibrate, the screen was still blue. It confused me, but I didn’t think much of it. I also paid little attention when it rang again during to’ona’i this morning and it had a musical ringtone. I don’t have any ringtones. Once again, I was confused but mostly indifferent.

I finally got around to investigate the situation while riding in the car this afternoon. I put it on the “discreet” setting. It stayed blue. Something else was amiss, but it took me a minute to figure out: this was phone was in good condition. Frequent readers will remember I threw my phone at a dog just before Christmas, and has been cracked and scratched ever since. “Oh no,” I said out loud, accessing the list of saved phone numbers. “This is not my phone.”

Cell phone service is still relatively new in Samoa, and while there is some variation in phone models, this country doesn’t have the variety of phones one would find in a place where cell phones have been around longer. There are also only 2 cell phone carriers in Samoa: Digicel and GoMobile. This also cuts down on the variety of phones. The third factor is price. Most people here don’t need the functionality of a Blackberry or an iPhone, so most of us buy the cheapest bare-bones model, in my case a Nokia from the Clinton era.

Given the lack of variety and my tendency to socialize with others who have an income level similar to mine, phone snafus like the one this morning happen more often than they might other places.

I was at a social gathering last night, at one point during which I laid down on a couch. When I got up from the couch, it turned out I’d been laying on top of 3 identical Nokia phones. I took mine and left. But of course, I didn’t take mine. Oops.

I called the number of the person who’d called during mass and to’ona’i.

“Malo.” A woman’s voice.

“Malo,” I said. “Ummm... Who’s phone is this?”

“This is my phone. You just called me.” Right.

“Who’s phone am I calling from?”

“Patrick?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “This is Matthew. Is this Patrick’s phone?”

It was Patrick’s phone. I don’t know Patrick, but I guess he was there last night. I had his mom on the other end of the line. She was worried about him. I explained the mix-up, and told her I’d tell Patrick to call her when I got a hold of him.

“Are you a palagi?” she asked.

“Yes.” I said.

“Good,” she said. “Take care of yourself.”

After I bought more phone credit and loaded it in, I found a number for Julie saved in the phone’s contacts. It was Julie’s house where the accidental phone swap had occurred, and I figured she could remedy the situation.

She was happy to drive to my house to switch the phones, except my phone was still yet to be found.

When I got home from to’ona’i, my phone was laying right next to my computer. As it turned out, there was no swap. When I got up from the couch and saw three phones identical to mine laying there, it turns out none of the phones were mine. Mine had been in my pocket the whole time. Oops.

I’m spray-painting mine bright orange.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

Samoa played in the finals of the Hong Kong Rugby Sevens Tournament last night. We watched at my friend Ainsof's house.

Samoa won.

Last time Samoa won the Hong Kong Sevens was 2007. The put the team on the $10 bill. What will they do this time?

Patrick was at the party last night. Incidentally, it was not his phone I took; there are two Patricks. In an case, this Patrick is an Australian volunteer. He teaches computers at the National University of Samoa, and his mum reads the blog.

Your Reports in My Handwriting

I still haven’t gotten used to the idea that every time teachers have a due date for formal paperwork, it inevitably translates to me typing everyone else’s stuff. Ideally I would have them type their own stuff, but faced with spending copious amounts of time in the computer lab keeping things in line, I cry uncle and agree to do the typing. I usually split duties with the school secretary; and so the marathon typing begins.

Today a teacher came up to me to ask about a letter she needs to write to someone in New York. At first I think she wanted me to write the entire letter, but I convinced her she should come up with her own draft and then I could polish her draft. And I’d type it of course. This kind of project makes me happy.

An example of a project that doesn’t make me happy is as follows: Another teacher approached me Thursday to ask if I’d type a document for him. He hands me a business studies assignment from another college with the name of the college whited out and my school’s name written over it. He wanted me to re-type everything so our school’s name would be written at the top. Grrrrr.

Part of the reason teachers ask for this kind of thing is because the South Pacific Board of Education looks over everybody’s stuff and I guess the assumption is that if they hand in some shoddy xeroxed version, it would reflect poorly on the school, but a fresh typed version someone maintains a modicum of respect. It’s kind of like in Back to the Future when Biff Tanon asks George McFly, “Do you know what would happen if I turned in my reports in your handwriting? I’d get fired. You wouldn’t want that to happen, wouldja? Wouldja?”

And just like George McFly, I’m a pushover. And I type stuff that someone else has clearly spent well over an hour typing.

This situation became particularly aggravating this morning when I went to print the business studies report on my secretary’s computer. See, the assignment I typed for the business studies teacher involved a bunch of financial statements, which I created by inserting Excel spreadsheets into my Microsoft Word document. Apparently when you create such a document in Word 2007, save it as a .doc file, and then open it in Word 2003, it destroys the entire thing.

I typed up the entire thing (8 pages!) last night, and it destroyed it this morning. So I retyped the first 3 pages at home during Interval today, only to fall into the exact same trap. So after school I spent another hour typing the same 8 pages I typed last night. But now I’m really really familiar with the internal assessment for the Year 13 accounting students. Hooray.

I hope you’re well. Happy Birthday Margarita! Pictures will be posted later tonight, or more likely, tomorrow morning.

Fun with Freeware

When I was in elementary school, we would trek out to the computer lab once or twice a week to play a host of semi-educational games like “Oregon Trail” and “Number Munchers.” I feel a little like I’m betraying my generation when I say this, but I hated Oregon Trail. The game was always too long to finish in one class period, and as much as it simulated being a Conestoga wagon, I always felt like the “Jennifer has malaria” and “Jennifer has died” updates were morbid and arbitrary.

Back then, all those games were published by one company, the Minnesota Educational Computer Company (MECC). Today in my computer lab, each workstation has a similar collection of programs, but just about all of mine are freeware. For those unfamiliar with the term, Freeware is just what it sounds like: free software. For whatever reason, the people or companies that publish the program make it free to be traded and downloaded over the Internet. Since most of our schools don’t have the funds to pay for licensing, and since software piracy is wrong, the Peace Corps has accumulated a pretty big collection of freeware.

There are a bunch of Linux programs (that I run in Windows) like TuxPaint, TuxMath, and TuxTyping (the TuxSuite, if you will). There’s a Tangrams program. There’s a mouse-training program. There’s the whole OpenOffice Suite (open source programs that mimic Microsoft Office).

And just like at my elementary school growing up, I have a hard time finding the right way to integrate these programs into the curriculum. I teach computers, not English or Math, so there’s no natural place in the annual plan to stop and play math games. So last year they almost never came up. The programs were just names on the Start Menu that made it harder for the kids to find Microsoft Office.

But this year, I figure I’ll try to use them a little more often. I have four year 11 classes, and this year it seems more difficult than last to keep them all on the same page. I’ve seen my 11.1 and 11.4 classes somewhere around 8 times so far. I’ve seen 11.2 once.

Third period this morning I was faced with seeing 11.4. Again. And then a light bulb went off in my head: Freeware. I had them play a program called “Sebran,” which Max swore by. The program is pretty basic, but the coolest thing about it is someone took the time to translate the whole thing into Samoan.

Sebran is actually a collection of simple games—Hang Man, Memory, Typing, Spelling, Mental Math—and Max was right: the kids love it. Honestly, the program is probably intended for fourth graders, but no one seems phased by that.

I’d argue there may have been actual learning going on. As much as the girls spent half the period giggling at Hang Man, they were typing and using the mice and making connections. And I imagine it would be nice to have a simple program in Samoan after dealing with the convoluted English words in Microsoft Office for a year.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

Nofoagafou and Junior playing TuxType.

Emma and Maria playing Hang Man.

Today was the Rugby Sevens tournament at Apia Park (I had to stay back at school at hold down the fort.). The boys had a big huddle on the field this morning.

Presenting the World

I’ve been searching Google Images for hours. The pictures of dancing Carnival ladies from Brazil are a little to risqué. It took me 3 searches to find a picture of Japanese soldiers from World War II. Looking for photos of Argentine gauchos, I had to wade through pictures of UC Santa Barbara. Photos of Mexican food are a tease. Same with Thai food. Or maybe I’m just hungry. Image-searching Israel is a big pile of depressing.

Last year I started February by dragging my year 13s through 2 months of computer theory sludge. It was a race between everyone in the room to see whose eyes would roll back first. So this year I’m changing the order of the curriculum a little. In a daring move, I’m putting optional material up first: PowerPoint.

After last week’s Ministry of Education meeting, a bunch of Peace Corps sat around discussing which optional topics we were going to do this year. Someone voiced anti-PowerPoint sentiments because of its non-cursor interface and its wide array of tools much different from straightforward Microsoft Word and Excel palettes. But I spoke up in defense of PowerPoint: it engages the kids with artistic inclinations a lot more than Word or Excel or even Internet research. And Word and Excel do have the “Drawing” tool palettes. And its just so fun to watch my kids get all worked up about public speaking.

During our PowerPoint unit last year, I swear it seemed like some of my kids were going to hyperventilate. They would stand up in front of the class, their knees shaking, their voice wavering. I find it so cruelly entertaining. And it’s such a necessary life skill—not PowerPoint, but the idea of presenting and speaking authoritatively on a subject.

It’s difficult to get students to choose a topic. The first time I assigned the project last year, I suggested 5 possible topics and almost everybody in the class chose “Samoan Culture.” Snooze alert. I demanded variety from them, if only to keep me awake. So we chose again. I tried to assign topics that were easy to structure into a presentation, which means lots of lists: Places to Visit in Samoa, Favourite Music, Aspects of a Good Student, etc.

This year’s assignment is much the same, except I’ve changed the topics so each student reporting on a country. I wanted to further their horizons past Samoa and Fiji and Australia and New Zealand, so I gave them a list of countries to choose from. I tried to go for a wide variety with strong, distinct flavors: Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, India, Israel, Jamaica, France, Ireland, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa, Thailand, Vietnam.

For the most part, students have gotten into the spirit of the project, although there’s been some difficulty finding source material beyond Microsoft Encarta. There was also some mild francophobia on display when Tafale asked if she could ditch France for Japan. Yeah, that’s cool.

To aid them in finding visuals, I've volunteered to find pictures on the Internet.  I’ve also had to fill in some gaps. I told Amanda I wanted to know about sacred cows in India. And for the food slide in the Mexico presentation, Motu was pitifully brief. I asked Luaao to talk about feijoada in his Brazil presentation. He looked at me funny. “How do you spell that?”

I hope you’re well. Happy Birthday, Joe! Picture below.

I get a little bored while the kids are working on their presentations in class, and it's probably for the best that there are no games on my computer. So I've taken to drawing seascapes in PowerPoint. Like this one.

Context

“This is the part of the day where I listen to NPR and play Spider Solitaire and space out,” I told myself as I staked out a spot on the couch directly in front of the fan. I got home from school and fed the cat, and there was some follow-up business regarding yesterday’s draft, but by about 2:30 this afternoon, I was ready to vege. I had some non-urgent errands to run in town, but 3 hours later, no progress was made on that front. That’s when I heard Maengi’s door swing open. “Matt?”

I stretched like a cat after a nap. Yesterday afternoon Maengi asked me to take a look at her computer. She had a virus that was using up major bandwidth on her Internet connection, disabling the antivirus program, and that blocking access to Windows Explorer and other applications. I’ve gone on virus-hunting missions with Koa in the past—Koa’s an impressive virus hunter—but when flying solo, I tend to prefer the all-encompassing Windows re-install.

Maengi needed time to find her XP CD, so I told her we could try again this afternoon. I had aspirations of early evening exercise, but given my afternoon inertia, I couldn’t justify postponing my date with Maengi’s computer. I grabbed my external hard drive (to store any files she wanted to save) and headed over.

With me at the helm, fixing computer problems tends to be an exercise in the blind leading the blind. Luckily, the Windows XP re-install process is pretty foolproof.

Maengi brought out banana chips and apple juice while I transferred folders to my hard drive. “Do you remember a year 13 from last year named David?” she asked.

“Yeah. He took computers last year. Why do you ask?”

“I guess he got one of the Year 12s pregnant,” Maengi said, the tone in her voice 61% pity, 39% amusement.

“Oh no!” I admit I smirked a little. Teenage pregnancy is never ideal, but both of these kids had finished school, and what else could I do but enjoy a mild scandal.

As it turns out, Maengi had a slew of scandals to tell me about, most of which happened before I got here. A couple stories she told blew my mind.

It’s weird to imagine this place before I came, but the longer I stay, the easier it is to conjure. I’ve met the lady who lived in my house immediately before I moved in and I’ve heard the story of how my pule got his job and I’ve heard about the teacher who was supposed to help me teach computers but who moved to New Zealand just as I arrived. I’ve heard the stories about the first Indian missionaries arriving back in 2001. I’ve heard about the music teacher who died tragically fishing in the harbour just weeks before I arrived.

I don’t know if being aware of all this context will make me any more effective at my job, but I guess it makes me feel like a part of the story.

I only caught one snag re-installing Windows: for some reason Maengi’s laptop retained all of its drivers except the modem. This was extra frustrating because the modem driver had to be re-installed at one of the computer shops in town last week. But I looked around on the back-up, and after 15 minutes of tinkering, I found it. Maengi was thrilled.

I can’t help thinking the way my school was before I came won’t be much different from how it will be after I leave. But I like to think I’ve made some sort of difference.

I hope you’re well. Happy birthday, Max! Picture below.

The assignment was to write your name on the board and then stand under it so I could take your picture. This kid came up to the board and wrote "Soft Love". Awesome.

Anticlimax: Part 1

While we were in training, the Peace Corps instituted a new method of monitoring volunteer achievement by using trimesterly reports. Every 4 months we fill out an Excel Spreadsheet (with all kinds of fancy macros so it doesn’t feel like Excel at all) with all of the things we’ve done during those 4 months. It seems like there should be plenty, but with teaching day in and day out, there can be a lot of blank space in those reports. So we’re constantly on the lookout for menial triumphs to note on our Volunteer Report Forms.

I brought up this mental list 2 weeks ago when Yukiura, the Senior JICA (Japanese International Cooperation Agency) working with Samoa’s Ministry of Education, emailed me last week to ask if I’d present at the Computer Studies teachers meeting. He was looking for a Peace Corps to present the Peace Corps textbook volunteers have been putting together and editing and re-editing over the past 6 years. I agreed, and then immediately emailed Sara for some guidance.

I attended a couple textbook committee meetings during term 1 last year, and I assembled a draft of the Spreadsheet chapter, but after a certain point last year, Sara and Ryan were appointed to compile the materials and unify the layout. And I’ve been out of the loop since then.

Sara replied quickly with a bunch of helpful instructions on what I should talk about and how the textbook materials are organized. This was about 2 weeks ago, and I hadn’t given any more time or thought to the presentation until around midnight Tuesday when I realized I should probably put together materials for Wednesday’s presentation.

As I waded through the material and became more familiar, I began to feel like this presentation was a slightly bigger moment. The Peace Corps has been teaching computers in Samoa for 9 years, and all of the collective information that’s been passed down and perhaps the only tangible thing we’ll all leave behind are these teaching materials and textbook. And I suddenly realized this presentation was, in a way, the culmination of years of work of past PCVs. So there was some pressure.

Yet if this was the case, MESC’s setup already played down the moment. They’d scheduled me for late in the morning on the second day after they presented textbook materials they’d developed themselves. So with no fanfare, after tea and kekesaina on Thursday morning (“Surprise! We moved your presentation to tomorrow,” they told me.), I got up and presented the Peace Corps textbook and teaching materials.

I emphasized this was Peace Corps’s last year teaching computers—I searched for relief and/or glee on the faces around the room, but was happy when I saw none. I emphasized the blood, sweat, and tears many volunteers had put into it. And then I was done.

Yukiura thanked me for presenting, and the other PCVs who were at the meeting hooted and hollered as we Americans are prone to do. Every school received a copy of the textbook and teaching materials on DVD.

The Acknowledgement section calls out the following PCVs: Michael 71(?), Marques 75(?), Dylan 77, Meghan 77, Cale 79, Matt 79, Ryan 79, Sara 79, and me. Computer-wise, aside from our current classes, I guess our work here is done.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

Phil gives an impromptu lesson in Photoshop.

Me presenting. Blah blah blah.

The lady who came to speak about MESC's new SchoolNet project was the spitting image of my supervisor Adrianne at eCivis. It was creepy.

House Call

According to the Peace Corps, my job assignment in Samoa is teaching computers to high school students. According to Samoa, my job assignment is computer genius. As flattered as I am to take on this title, it can lead to a lot of disappointment on the part of Samoa. But not for a lack of trying. Every once in a while, I’ll dust off my little kit and get in someone’s car and make a house call. “Now, what seems to be the problem?”

One of the Indian missionaries, Apong, approached me this morning with a streak of urgency in his voice. “Matt, are you available this afternoon? The reverend at our church is having a difficult time with his computer.” At that point, my plans for the afternoon were lounging on my couch in my boxers, reading. So I agreed to look at the computer.

Apong and I started at my school at the same time last year, and it’s been interesting contrasting our experiences. On the whole, being a Peace Corps and being a missionary are quite similar. At the same time, there are key differences—you know, like Jesus. And the ability to drive. Apong kicked off the new school year by purchasing a used Hyundai. So after school—i.e. at 10:00 this morning—we piled into Apong’s car and headed up the hill to pick up his wife, Zorin.

When we arrived at his house, she greeted us with a breakfast snack. While she prepared the finishing touches, Apong gave me a tour of their small house, pointing out all of the furniture he built during the school break in December. As it turns out, Apong is an amazing carpenter.

After snacks, we headed down the hill to the reverend’s house. Apong knocked on the door. “Hey, we should have called. Oops,” Zorin said. Initially it seemed this house call would have to wait, but then the reverend’s wife Mata showed up at the door.

She was happy to see us, and she ushered us into the computer room. We switched on the machine. It booted up slowly.

Zorin and Mata got to talking about the problems at Zorin’s school. Though Mata is retired, she’s chair of the local Women’s Committee, and she still has quite a bit of sway in the community.

Apong and I scratched our heads as the computer froze halfway through the cold boot. I re-booted in Safe Mode and started a defrag.

The four of us sat and gossiped about teachers and pules and students and staff. Mata boiled up some tea. The defrag took over an hour, and eventually Zorin and Mata left the room. Apong picked up the guitar laying on the shelf nearby. As it turns out, Apong is an amazing guitarist. Self-taught too. He’s the kind of guy who picks and plays amazingly well, but if you ask him how to play a C chord, he stares at you blankly.

After the defrag, we ran an antivirus scan, which yielded nothing. We restarted the computer. It froze again.

Mata brought out lunch—rice, pisupo, and fish.

4 hours later, we left the house with full stomachs and no idea what was wrong with the computer. I chalked it up to a dearth of RAM (256 MB), a virus the scanner wasn’t picking up, or heat and humidity.

Mata was grateful just the same. Another successful house call. “Take two of these and call me in the morning.”

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

At the kitchen table with Mata, Reverend Keri, Zorin, and Apong.

Apong and his 10-month-old son.

Apong built a high chair. "I've never actually seen one, but this is how I assume one would work," he said.

Internet and Ice Cream

I took my year 13s to meet the Internet after school Thursday. During our volunteer visits in training, Blakey got to go with now-RPCV Meghan’s year 13 class to meet the Internet, and ever since I’ve wanted to do the same with my own kids. Regular blog readers will remember when I took Filifili to meet the Internet, which served as a pretty good dry run. So when my kids came over to decompress after the PSSC exam 2 weeks back, I promised them a celebratory trip to the Internet this week.

I admit I was kind of loathing the whole thing. Logistically getting a bunch of Year 13s across town and then taking up a sizeable section of the Internet café seemed like a lot of work, and this was in the midst of this past week, which was already proving hellish. But it was something I wanted to do, and the kids started asking me about it. School was canceled Friday, so Wednesday afternoon it was decided that we’d go Thursday.

From my dry run with Filifili, I knew the kids would need to be prepped, particularly in choosing an email address and a password. So when school got out Thursday, I had the kids come up to the computer lab where we had a 15-minute session on what goes into an email address and why they are used and what theirs should potentially be. And then ditto for passwords. And then I gave a crash course in composing and sending an email. They took notes, which was cute since there’d be no test on this. But their notes did prove somewhat helpful when we got to the computer lab.

We took a taxi van. I thought about asking my pule if he’d drive us in the school van, but I was trying to pull the whole thing off without getting too much bureaucracy involved. If my pule drove, I figured the trip would involve a long discourse on the evils of the Internet, and how the kids had better be good Christians when they logged on. In the taxi we just listened to music.

I should clarify that the 6 students who came with me to the Internet weren’t all students from my class. Marie, Sinaumea, and Sione came. They are mine. Filifili, Mira, and Faimalo are not in my class, but were able to get in on the action because I was paying and I could invite who I wanted to invite, and the three of them hang out at the computer lab often enough they may as well be in my class.

We hired 3 computers for an hour. The first 10 minutes were chaotic since I hadn’t really discussed URLs and basic Internet navigation. But I was able to get them all to Gmail, and from there Marie, Sinaumea, and Sione were able to get through the sign-up process.

After that they were allowed to do what they want. I showed them my blog and Facebook. Koa suggested I show them Bebo. Marie signed up for a Bebo account. And then Mira found YouTube. And then they were all on YouTube. And that was where they spent the remainder of their hour, which was fine with me.

Mira and Marie must have watched the same “New Moon” trailer 17 times. I was able to convince Filifili to check out the Silent Library Japanese Gameshow, which he enjoyed.

When the hour ended, we went to get ice cream cones at McDonald’s, but they were out, so we went around the corner to Chan Mow and got ice cream there.

Sinaumea pulled me aside while we were all eating to thank me. “That was my first time on the Internet!” He said.

From Chan Mow, they all left to walk to the Fugalei Market, and I left in the opposite direction to walk home. Overall, the event was a success.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

Marie and Mira look up "Chris Brown and Rihanna" on YouTube.

Students on the Internet with McDonalds in the distance.

Ice Cream at Chan Mow.