Class time [2014-03-15]
The big event for us this week was system administration training for the IT teachers at the six schools where we are working this year in Cebu. This is the first opportunity we’ve had to offer such training, and it was a wonderful day. Fifteen IT teachers participated from the six schools and as usual, there were many others “behind the scenes” helping us to make this day a reality.
The seeds of this class were sown in 2012, when one of our Reneal IEO board members graciously offered to use her corporate allotment of 40 hours of volunteer service to write a system administration manual. She was able to extract from Neal’s gigantic knowledge base the key aspects of sys admin for the low cost computer system. The result was a beautiful piece of work that we were able to share with IT teachers in Tanzania in 2013. However another unexpected byproduct of this work was helping Neal to recognize opportunities to create some programs to greatly simplify the sys admin tasks. He has invested significant effort since then on this, and now the IT teachers have a single command that performs a myriad of tasks for them: checking disk space, evaluating state-of-health of the internet and network, monitoring system processes, and so forth. Not only that, it also tries to fix any problems that are discovered and provides advice on others. This simplification continues, and we got even more ideas yesterday from our training participants.
The sys admin manual is now much slimmer as a result, but that meant that we had lots of editing to do this week to get it ready to distribute. Neal, Jade, and I spent many hours this week in the “lab” in our apartment developing a class outline, deciding who would present what, preparing presentation materials, and discussing hands-on activities. Then at night, Neal and I tag-teamed to revise and format the manual. We planned to use two projectors, one to display the slides and one to show the screen of the main server. We used the remaining server that has not yet been installed for the class, so any changes we made during hands-on exercises could be overwritten. Miraculously it all came together Thursday afternoon. Neal and Jade headed over to the training venue, Compostela Central, to prepare and check the setup. I caught a ride to the mall to get 30 copies of the manual printed.
What a thrill it was Friday morning to greet our first batch for system administrator training! For me, one of the real joys of this work is having the chance to interact with the bright and dedicated teachers here in the Philippines. We all worked hard but also had fun. Two dear friends from our home school of Compostela National High School helped us by picking up and delivering the all-important lunch and morning and afternoon snacks for our group. And of course we were so grateful to Compostela Central for hosting the event. We look forward to continuing to work with this group of newly-minted system administrators!
In a couple of hours from now, we will head to northern Cebu with our good friend from Aboitiz to visit some schools in the municipality of San Remegio. We will be scouting for possible projects for this April-May. This will be our first exposure to the areas ravaged by Typhoon Haiyan. It will no doubt be a sobering experience.