Road mending Ugandan style.

This is one of those times when you wished you could take photos but even so you couldn’t get it.  It was just so bizarre!

Driving home from Kibale NP we were dodging potholes in the very bad stretch of road between Fort Portal and Kyenjojo.  We came around a corner and there was a young man walking slowly down the middle of the road waving a hi-vis vest helicopter (or Kevin Sheedy) style above his head.

Following him was a tipper truck with 20 men standing in the back using shovels to pitch dirt into the potholes.  Their aim was very good!  Then followed a man with a eucalyptus branch, which he was using as a broom, sweeping any errant dirt into the potholes.  A water truck followed along last.  It sprays the water into the air to catch any airborne dust so you better be sure your windows are up and wipers working.

We laughed, but then we realised it actually does a good job!  The potholes filled the previous day were set hard as concrete and we were no longer having to dart all over the road to miss them.

Well done Uganda!  The only thing missing was the red and green flag wavers NOT telling us what to do.

Photos are of tea plantations along the road.  It is such a pretty part of Uganda!

Computers

Many teachers here had never opened a lap top computer before we started our computer competency classes 3 months ago.  Last week they were each presented with a certificate of participation in Beginner or Advanced Computer Competency.  The ‘Beginners’ have learned how to name and save a document and how to use WORD.  They have especially enjoyed changing the format of their documents and have used all the fonts and colours!  The Advanced class worked on inserting shapes and other things into Word documents and on the mysteries of Excel.

We had 8 assorted laptops for the 30 teachers to share while we were running the classes but have added to the store since – including 5 contributed by my dear Auntie Lyn.  (In some ways this is also thanks to my late cousin Allan who was an early adopter of computer technology.)  My sister Lyn has also contributed and my cousins, Ian and Sue, have chipped in with USB flash drives for the teachers.  We have enough computers now for the teachers of each class to have one to share and they should have a USB each with the ones contributed by volunteer Emily’s mum.

Now the hard part comes with teachers having to apply their skills to typing up their class and department reports and homework sheets.  We will need to insist on typed reports as, when you’re a ‘chicken peck’ typist, handwriting is faster and easier, but only practice improves typing speed and accuracy.  Evidence so far is that they’re giving it a go!

The other challenge has been teaching order and tidiness in relation to where documents are saved.  I find them littering desktops and unsorted in My Documents.  I am about to start ‘hiding’ unfiled docs.  They have been warned!

We have a small and cost inefficient printer at school so all but small numbers of documents need to go to the Kampala office for printing.  It’s just like when I started teaching 35 years ago and printing was done by the office girls and required a week’s notice!  Teachers will have to be organised.

Teachers had two weeks of PD before the students returned from their term I break.  We are so lucky to have this time of preparation and learning.  It was an excellent time for sharing ideas about active learning tasks and I gave the many examples with dice, cards and other ‘zana’.  One teacher talked about the importance of how a full stop is constructed – those on the right would result in a zero for that question!

I have been making dice from any cardboard I find.  Sizes range from 3 cm to 10 cm side length.  I have shown teachers how they can be used in maths and in phonics lessons.  Tr Geofrey from Mbazzi has taken it on with a vengeance and has made about a dozen for his P2 class.  Tr Racheal at Katuuso has also been inspired.

This large one is for a Phase 1 Phonics game.  It has the sounds a, i, n, p, s and t on the faces of the die and 18 small cards with a word on one side and a picture on the other - 3 for each sound.  I look forward to trialling it with the pre-primary class next week and then having a working bee to make some more. 

Phonics Phase 1 Game

The cut offs from the dice have also been transformed into cards for a Roman Numbers teaching task that I hope to see demonstrated by Tr Micheal next week.  Perhaps my next post will have photos of these teaching aids in action.

The children ( and teachers! ) are enjoying using the Jump Rope for Heart skipping ropes donated by Baimbridge College Hamilton.