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Reneal Team Philippines: Meet Rhog Sampan! [2016-10-22]

Reneal Team Philippines has been blessed to have many wonderful supporters over the years.  Our newest members come to us through long-time Reneal intern Jade Reyes, now a high school computer teacher at Arcelo Memorial National High School.  Jade also taught part-time for a while at Cebu Technological University in Danao City.  Two of his students at CTU, Rhog Sampan and Lloyd Tuñacao, are doing their on-the-job training in their final year of college with Sir Jade at Arcelo.  Part of their responsibility is supporting the Reneal projects in Cebu.  It’s been a delight to work side-by-side with these two young men, and we’ll be featuring each of them in a blog article.  It’s time to meet Rhog!

Unexpected opportunity [2016-10-16]

Reneal Team Philippines finished the time in Daanbantayan with a bang, spending all last Saturday at Daanbantayan National High School rearranging the tables in Com Lab 2 and bringing up the new second server.  The 16.04 new operating system will be running in Com Lab 1 as a beta test, and Sir Chester was very pleased with the new interface and features.  All the penguins were running well by the time we finished!  It is always a joy to work with the Sir Chester and Ma’am Rubena at DNHS, and we truly appreciated having our boys Rhog and Lloyd with us to make the work lighter.

Wrapping up [2016-10-07]

It’s been a long and eventful two weeks here in Daanbantayan for Reneal Team Philippines.  We are all tired and ready to go home, with just one more day of work between us and the bus ride home.  We have finished installing the Reneal system at Calape National High School and Tominjao National High School.  We had orientation training for teachers at both schools, and it was really a delight to work with such dedicated and interested folks!  We hope it translates into heavy computer use for students and teachers in the coming months at those schools.

Northbound [2016-09-23]

Monday Reneal Team Philippines heads north to Daanbantayan for two weeks to install the system at Calape National High School and Tominjao National High School.  We will also put in a second server at Daanbantayan National High School, where they already have two computer rooms and need a little more power.  However this week, for the second week in a row, we returned to a happily familiar place. 

Cebu! [2016-09-17]

Time is flying – it’s already been almost two weeks since we left California!  Communication has been on the back burner, due both to our busy schedule and to the incredibly slow internet at our apartment.  We’re both taking a breather today though to get caught up.  We have already visited six schools, finished our first lab installation, expanded another lab, replaced many old CRT monitors with flat panel monitors, purchased a big pile of computer equipment, and prepared the five new servers for installation.  We couldn’t have done it without the help of Reneal Team Philippines! 

…3 …2 …1 [2016-09-04]

We’re on our way tonight!  Things are pretty well packed and ready to go.  I think all of our baggage is within the weight limit – our little scale has been getting a workout.  I am so thankful our shipments of computer equipment to Cebu don’t have a weight constraint!  Speaking of which, Katherine and I got three more boxes packed on Friday, with a total of 21 monitors.  Those boxes will go out right away when Neal and I get back in early November.  That only leaves 28 of the Free Geek monitors to pack yet, out of the 80 we received just a few short days ago!

Countdown! [2016-08-23]

Neal and I spent the last week enjoying the waning days of summer in the Sierra Nevadas on a backpacking trip.  Now it’s full speed ahead for Cebu!  Since my last post, Jade, Rhog, and Lloyd have been to Carmen National High School and Tominjao National High School to complete the Ethernet cabling and lab set-up.  The final boxes of equipment for 2016 have arrived at Compostela National High School and are ready for deployment to the various schools.  Jade has compiled a list of gear that we still need to buy, including LOTS of power strips from one of our favorite Cebu suppliers, Ace Hardware!

Box wrangling [2016-08-12]

Exciting news!  Forty of the laptops donated by Polycom in July are on their way to the Philippines!  Katherine and I packed four boxes last Monday.  We tried to do it in a modular fashion, with two boxes required per school.  Each pair of boxes contains 20 laptops, 20 laptop adapters, a network switch, and a monitor, keyboard, and mouse for the server.  We just need to add the server itself, 20 mice (one for each laptop), a UPS, and some Ethernet cables and – voila! – a computer lab!  It’s nice to have hardware for two 2017 schools already in the pipeline!

Team Philippines in Action! [2016-08-07]

Reneal IEO Intern Jade Reyes has been up in Daanbantayan in northern Cebu for the last couple of days, along with Rhog and Lloyd, our two college students doing their on-the-job-training under Jade’s direction at Arcelo Memorial National High School.  The guys worked with Sir Chester at Daanbantayan National High School and Sir Denver at Calape National High School to set up the client computers sent by Reneal and to do the network cabling.  As Jade said, now it’s just “plug-and-play” for Neal with the main server!  Next weekend the guys will go to Carmen National High School and then back up north the following weekend to do the prep work at Tominjao National High School.

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