I’ve only been in Uganda for about a week but I already feel a strong attachment to the place.  I’ve been talking to Johnny and Tim Rosenberg for almost a year and now I’ve finally been able to come over here and put my hands to work in country.  I just wanted to do a little post to share the experience and show some pictures.

Wanyama Road on the way to Rehaboth Integrated School

HFC staffers Fred and Henry loading software on the laptops

Fred and I teaching a class on how to use the XO

Students at Rehaboth owning TetrisMath

I just graduated from West Point this spring, and my senior year there I worked on a project developing software for the One Laptop Per Child program.  Tim Rosenberg put me in contact with Johnny and HFC so that we could get an understanding of the real needs of the students where the laptops are used.  In the end we made a game called TetrisMath that primary school students can use to practice and improve basic arithmetic skills.  The game has math problems drop from the top of that must be solved before they reach the bottom and stack up like in Tetris; the teacher can adjust the settings to change the type and difficulty of the problems.  West Point paid for me to come to Uganda to deploy the program and do a report on how West Point can best support the computer work here in Uganda.

HFC connected me with the Rehaboth Integrated School in Bugembe, Uganda, who had 100 of the XO laptops from OLPC but hadn’t used them yet.  Together with the Ugandan HFC staff we installed TetrisMath on all the computers and did training sessions for the teachers and students at Rehaboth.

The teachers and students were very excited about the laptops and TetrisMath, but the most basic computing skills like keyboard input and use of a touchpad were completely foreign to them.  It was really gratifying to see the kids excited about practicing math, and the teachers were glad that their students would be able to learn some basic computing skills.  HFC is also supporting Rehaboth with a full computer lab, which will make the school eligible for additional financial grants.  When I get back to the U.S. later this week I’d like to write more thoughts on the trip, but it has been a pleasure getting to know the Longs and to be able to help out in a small way with the work that HFC is doing.