Staring up at the mountain [2014-02-07]

The initial visits to the six new schools to be served by Reneal IEO in the Philippines in 2014 went very well this week.  As we had anticipated based upon our evaluation visits last year, we will be working with some fantastic people.  Our main goal this week was to identify any additional equipment we might need as well as additional modifications the schools might need to make prior to implementing the low-cost computer infrastructure.  Probably the most challenging aspect of this year’s work in the Philippines is that each school is a little bit different in what will be installed.  Unlike Tanzania where we have typically begun with a blank slate for the IT lab, most of these schools have some existing (but dissimilar) computer capabilities that we will be complementing with the low-cost computer infrastructure approach.  The unknowns, multiplied by six, will more than fill our next few weeks here.

We have roughed out an ambitious schedule that has us doing installation and training at the rate of about one new school per week.  This was about the rate we were doing installations in Tanzania, although the “week” there was definitely more like a 60-hour week than a 40-hour week!   However we have the secret weapon of our intern Jade, plus some less complicated logistics for transportation and electrical power here in the Philippines compared to Tanzania.  And thankfully we have more time if (when) we run into surprises that slow us down.

This weekend, with Jade’s help, we hope to purchase the last of the equipment we need.  We will also make a pile of the items that we need to take with us on Monday to our first target for implementation, Tayud National High School in Consolacion.  Tayud is “two rides” from Compostela using public transportation, but the school is graciously picking us up Monday morning in Compostela to avoid the major hassle of us getting on and off crowded vehicles with big, heavy boxes. 

Tayud NHS presently has two separate computer labs, and our goal is to tie both together via the centralized main server.  The good news is that most of the network cabling appears to already be in place.  However Neal wants to run a higher quality network cable between the two labs, so that will require some additional careful work.  There are also some older computers that may take some tinkering to boot to the network as thin clients. Day 1 will find us focused on the main lab: putting in the high speed network switch, checking out the existing network cables, and positioning the server.  On Day 2 we will extend the effort to the second lab.  We’ll do testing on Day 3, and with some luck we hope to begin teacher trainings later in the week.  Thankfully our longer time here in the Philippines in 2014 will offer the luxury of on-going visits to answer questions and make minor upgrades as the teachers and students become used to the system.

The following week we’ll start all over again at Carmen National High School.  Carmen NHS also has two labs.  The first lab is a simpler version of the Tayud set-up.  However the second lab is set up solely with NComputing thin clients.  Neal has been working on integrating those seamlessly into the low-cost computer infrastructure, but this will be his first large-scale attempt.  The following two schools, Estaca Elementary and Compostela Central Elementary/Sci Tech, also have six NComputing nodes each but with a different model and architecture than Carmen NHS.  Reneal IEO is providing donated laptop computers to these two elementary schools for use as thin clients.  Compostela Central also has a second lab used by the Sci Tech elementary students; we will extend the low-cost computer infrastructure to that lab as well.  The final two schools (Bagalnga Integrated School and Sapak Extension High School) are much simpler, with less equipment and a single lab.  Bagalnga is the recipient of donated laptops as well.

Laid out in this fashion, it does seem rather like a mountain of work ahead.  Almost certainly the schedule will slip some as we encounter unanticipated issues.  However we are constantly motivated and sustained by dedication of the school heads and teachers with whom we work hand-in-hand, as well as the thought of students’ lives being transformed though the use of these new computer resources.