Visiting Ola Al Qeblatein Girls School at Nahaleen, Beitlahem 04/04/10

Ola Al Qeblatein School was an amazing school. We would like to thank the headmistress of the school and all of their staff for their welcoming and great generosity. Mrs. Labiba Odwan, the math teacher, was waiting for us enthusiastically at the school door and was very happy with our visit.

Mrs. Labiba worked hard with her students. They only had 40 XO laptops working out of 84. The XO batteries weren't working, and the school didn't receive a full number of the additional batteries. However, Mrs. Labiba tried to manage that by working on the XOs on separate days for the two third grade sections.

When we were updating the XO laptops, we faced problems with the XOs having the old batteries. The XOs kept showing messages telling us that the batteries weren't present. We tried switching the batteries with new ones, however there wasn't an enough number of them. Time was running quickly and we had to decide what to do. We decided to distribute the 40 working XOs on 67 student, and two of PaleXOs technical team stayed trying to solve the batteries problem. Isra' Badaha and Ayman Natsheh managed to get them working after 2 - 3 updates for each XO laptop. This means the time for each XO to get ready was more than 30 minutes. They got the XOs working by the end of the day. Great job guys.

The students had experience with XO laptop. We let the students name the parts of the XO and what was the function of each one. They also told us that they used Memorize activity to solve Math equations and English letters, Calculate activity to make sure their math answers were right, and Write activity to write in English and Arabic. In addition, Mrs. Labiba got the students to use her XO to play on Math activities. The teacher's XO was updated on the second teacher workshop and we installed on it some new activities. So, the students had the chance to play Tuxmath for a little time. Mrs. Labiba is really a hard worker and she applied everything we showed her in the second teachers workshop.

The students were very active and happy to use the XOs. We were not comfortable letting each two students use one XO, however, they understood that we are working on getting all their XOs working and they actually took turns to use the XO and played together.

We connected each section to a different mesh. Section A was on mesh 6, and section B on mesh 1 in order to be able to identify each section's students. The students got that easily, learnt how to connect to different meshes and noticed when they were disconnected.

We had time to use Speak, Chat, Write, TuxMath, GComrpis Guess Count, Pacman, and Physics activities. The girls easily learnt new stuff, and explored the activities by themselves. They also tried to solve the mouse problem by cleaning the pad whenever it behaved weird.

One of the students was used to writing diaries. The pictures below show her writing about the day.

How innocent she is! Here's the English translation for what she wrote originally in Arabic: "Today we played on the computer, we used the lion activity + writing the name and spelling it + addition game. We also won in all games, it was the most lovely day in my life. Thank you for all your efforts. GoodBye".

Another girl was drawing the icons of the activities they were playing:

We would like to thank all PaleXO members and volunteers for the hard work: Asma Aqqad, Aya Hassouneh, Ayman Natsheh, Isra' Badaha, Maysa Nouh, Ala' Abu Nada, Tamer AlKhouli, Noura Salhi, Aseel Ashhab, Samar Ayesh, Ahmad Ramahi, Salam Abu Macho, Manar Malki, Ayah Hayah, Nagham Morrar, Randa Shannak, Somaia Salah, Maram Manasrah, Dunia Hamed, and Rawan Abu Leil. Special thanks to Isra' and Ayman for their great work to get the XOs working, and many Thanks to the Palestinian Education Initiative for their support.

This school's situation was modest and they had low facilities. However, they worked very hard with us and offered a lot of help. Mrs. Labiba Odwan is the most active and responsible teacher we have seen interested in working on the XOs.