{"id":342,"date":"2011-04-12T10:23:08","date_gmt":"2011-04-12T16:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.briandeyo.us\/brd\/wp\/?p=342"},"modified":"2011-04-16T03:51:15","modified_gmt":"2011-04-16T09:51:15","slug":"this-is-what-a-peace-corps-experience-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.briandeyo.us\/index.php\/2011\/04\/12\/this-is-what-a-peace-corps-experience-is\/","title":{"rendered":"This is what a Peace Corps experience is."},"content":{"rendered":"

When I first volunteered for Peace Corps I knew I wanted to help.\u00a0 I wanted to help, but had no idea what that would actually mean.\u00a0 Wanting to help is a great idea, actually helping seems to be something else.\u00a0 The image in my head of what it would mean to be genuinely helpful has been elusive and fuzzy.\u00a0 In a euphoric moment however, I have recently encountered and experienced exactly what it was I was seeking.\u00a0 I have had my first real Peace Corps experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have been teaching computers at the Primary School for a few weeks now.\u00a0 At the end of last term I pushed several teachers through an intense crash course on everything the XO computers could do.\u00a0 In case you aren\u2019t familiar with what the XO is, I can tell you a bit of what it is.<\/span><\/p>\n

The One-Laptop-Per-Child<\/span><\/strong> program (<\/span>www.laptop.org<\/span><\/a>) was started by Nicholas Negroponte a\"00000000\"<\/a>bout a decade ago.\u00a0 Nicholas Negroponte was the director for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology\u2019s<\/span> Media Lab<\/span><\/strong> for many years.\u00a0 The Media Lab is one of the most prominent and advanced technology centers in the world. MIT\u2019s Media Lab could be considered a rocket-powered space station on an intergalactic voyage.\u00a0 The mission of this voyage is to create new ideas and new technologies, and then applying these ideas and technology.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been a fan of Nicholas Negroponte for a number of years, particularly after reading his book Living Digital<\/span>.\u00a0 After Professor Negroponte left MIT he started working on the OLPC project, whose aim was to enable all children of the globe to have access to information technology.\u00a0 Focusing on economically poor countries and students, the OLPC foundation created the <\/span>XO.\u00a0 <\/strong><\/span>The XO was designed to be a low-cost computer, low enough to be put in the hands of every small child in the developing world.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a great computer by t\"Blog<\/a>he standards we expect today.\u00a0 It wouldn\u2019t have been an icon of powerful computing 5 years ago either.\u00a0 It has a 266 Mhz processor, which is slower than most of our phones.\u00a0 It has 1GB of memory which actually is the short-end of what many new netbooks are coming with.\u00a0 It has roughly a gigabyte of storage.\u00a0 These all might be seen as shortcomings in a computer for us.\u00a0 If we saw it on the shelves at Best Buy most of us would walk away, or at least the sales guy would try to get you to move on.\u00a0 These features are only describable to the children using one word.\u00a0 A word that is continually overused in modern society, just ask Bill Engvall.\u00a0 These computers are Awesome.<\/strong><\/span> I can share with you a glimpse of the joy children experience with these computers, only because it has been captured in a few photograph\u00a0 An unrelated survey was given to a 5th grade class this week.\u00a0 In the survey it asked the children what is their favorite class.\u00a0 So many of them answered computers, I\u2019m honored.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The first class was fun.\u00a0 It consisted of trying to get children to point out the various part of the XO.\u00a0 What are the speakers, where is the camera.\u00a0 Almost everyone has played with a cellphone here, so it became \u201cthe camera that is just like the one in the cellphone.\u201d\u00a0 And the speakers were \u201cjust like the ones on the really loud buses.\u201d Most children memorized the parts of the computer pretty fast, but lacked mastery in approaching the mouse.\u00a0 The mouse in the case of XOs a touchpad.\u00a0 I still feel obligated to call it a mouse, because 30 years after its creation, the mouse is no longer a pointing device.\u00a0 It is a concept.\u00a0 And it is a concept that I took as granted.\u00a0 I somehow lured myself into believing that mouse usage was universal, and had somehow already established itself in the collective unconscious of children all over the globe.\u00a0 The lesson learned by me was not to skip anything with these children.\u00a0 Any knowledge I have is completely new and foreign to them, including the simple word \u201cclick.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

At the end of the first lesson, after getting the children to turn on and immediately turn off their computer, I asked them an interesting question. One of the more popular questions asked by Peace Corps volunteers to their students is \u201cwhat do you want to be when you grow up?\u201d Because the question has been asked here by plenty of volunteers before I got here, I was prepared for the answers.\u00a0 Almost all students answered one of a few things.\u00a0 Police, soldiers, teachers, and nurses.\u00a0 One student wanted to be a banker, and the other an accountant.\u00a0 It is true that children want to grow-up to be the occupations they are exposed to.\u00a0 The children are ready and ripe for something as intense and powerful as computer and the internet.\u00a0 I feel there is a critical mass of curiosity building in these students, and computers are the perfect relief valve.\u00a0 Not to be caught in a trap of dismissing the children\u2019s interest as \u2018status quo\u2019 or \u2018to be expected,\u2019 I asked them an additional question.\u00a0 \u201cHow do you think computers would be used in the job.\u201d\u00a0 A few kids muttered some answers, but one hopeful policeman said \u201cit would help me catch thugs.\u201d\u00a0 These kids were ready for computers and I was ready to get them working.<\/span><\/p>\n

The first class was an introduction to me as to what my service could actually look like.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t until my second class though<\/span> that I felt my own awe at what I was experiencing.\u00a0 Our second class consisted of a review from the first class, including \u201cphone cameras\u201d and \u201cbus speakers.\u201d My main focus was trying to get the students acclimated to moving a ball through a maze in a very simple game.\u00a0 It is literally a maze, such as the ones we find on the back of cereal boxes.\u00a0 The object is simple, get the ball to the end of the maze.\u00a0 Movement requires the use of the arrow keys.\u00a0 Up, down, left, right.\u00a0 Simple concepts once you have been exposed to them, and had time to experience just what \u201cleft vs. right\u201d might mean.<\/p>\n

And it was in that moment when I was looking at the different faces in the room that I realized I was engulfed in the \u201chelp\u201d I had so incredibly wanted to bring.\u00a0 I was aware of the physical presence the silence of the students had on me.\u00a0 I heard nothing bu intensity from the students. I immediately went to the front of the room, something told me I needed to see this from a beter perspective.\u00a0 The silence of the students was they key for me to recognize that something was happening.\u00a0 The students were entranced by the glow of the screen, and completely absorbed in the decision of going \u201cleft vs. right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Knowing that I was there and I helped these students engage a part of their brain that up until that moment was untouched, gave me the incredible satisfaction of helping.\u00a0 And it gave me my first real Peace Corps experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I first volunteered for Peace Corps I knew I wanted to help.\u00a0 I wanted to help, but had no idea what that would actually mean.\u00a0 Wanting to help is a great idea, actually helping seems to be something else.\u00a0 The image in my head of what it would mean to be genuinely helpful has …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":341,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,10,62],"tags":[65,64,252,68,67,66,63],"class_list":["post-342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-peace-corps","category-tech","category-xo-and-olpc","tag-computer","tag-olpc","tag-peace-corps","tag-primary-school","tag-teacher","tag-teaching","tag-xo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.briandeyo.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.briandeyo.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.briandeyo.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.briandeyo.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.briandeyo.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=342"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.briandeyo.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":344,"href":"https:\/\/www.briandeyo.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342\/revisions\/344"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.briandeyo.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.briandeyo.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.briandeyo.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.briandeyo.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}