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Newspaper...
I walk into the little market in Haenertsburg yesterday minding my own business when out of the blue someone says, "Hey, aren't you going to buy a newspaper?" I respond with a simple "No", thinking to myself, why would I buy a newspaper and why is this guy trying to sell me one. He then says, "no, no, you're the guy in the newspaper." So now I'm thinking, what in god's name is this guy talking about. I then pick up a paper only to find an almost too seriously looking picture of me and HoD Nehvutalu and a half page article written about our ceremony the other week. It was a well written article, I will give her that much. What I got a real laugh at was today when the principal of Mmaweshi nearly tackled me with excitement screaming "you're famous, now the whole world knows of Mmaweshi". Good times.

More work to come...
So after that little 5 minutes of fame with Mrs. Magono at Mmaweshi, we began to discuss the project. I'm a little concerned at how much of an influx of students we're going to see next year. Of course, she's overly joyous in the fact that more learners will be arriving come January, on account of the XOs. The whole time I'm thinking, great so how do we deal with this? If half the community's children come to Mmaweshi we're going to have some issues to deal with, particularly in terms of ownership, taking the XOs home at night, etc, etc. On the positive side, she did mention today how they're going to design a subject starting January specifically for the XOs. It's a start.

Research...
I finally had a chance to start finalizing my research on status with the XOs. I've finished Mmaweshi and am scheduled to finish Driehoek and Katane on Monday. Casi, Casi. Then I'm wrapping up with some in depth interviews with a few of the teachers early next week. Staying hopefully this gets me a free trip to EWB 09 in Dubai, UAE next March.

Another deployment?...
Kelly Trimble met with some contacts in Joburg yesterday, a principal and a philanthropist. They're eager to learn more about the laptops. Hopefully, I'll be meeting with him next Wednesday to discuss the possibility of implementing the XOs into his school curriculum. I guess he's fairly keen w/ computers, or so I hear. If we get him on board, we'll have another entire deployment of XOs already paid for. We'll be responsible for the extra costs (power strips, servers, access points, alternative power, plug adaptors, shipping costs, etc). Although it's a bit of money, it certainly pales in comparison to what we had to do this first go around. As I think about the possibility of this coming to fruition, I almost laugh at how easy this deployment would be in comparison. First, the students in Joburg speak English. Second, most have dealt with a computer before (we wouldn't have to teach what a mouse or button is). Third, the Joburg school has electricity. Fourth, internet would be a simple installation, not like the nightmare Mmaweshi currently is. And the list goes on and on... I think this will work though. We'll know in a week.

SA Curriculum...
The 1 hesitancy this next possible deployment will face is how to fully integrate the XOs into the curriculum so they see better test scores. Of course, teachers here are faced with making the students pass the national exams. Maybe this will be a fall semester project, yeah? I'll touch on this later.

The ball is definitely rolling. I'm hoping to get this going so that I can return come December. Always looking for help if anyone wants to join in...