Summer Learning Schedule

A lot of thought has gone into our XO workshop schedule for this summer. Last summer, our team worked in the local schools all day everyday for 3 weeks, which greatly disturbed their normal curriculum. Therefore, our school administrators do not want the XO program to happen during school hours this year. Fortunately, the schools will be on Winter Break for 3 weeks during the deployment, which will allow us to administer XO camps at each school. Because we have three schools and three weeks of winter break, we originally thought that we would be able to have a week long camp at each school from 8:00am-3:00pm everyday. These plans had to be reconsidered when we were told that sending the students home for lunch would not be acceptable and that we would need to provide a full meal. We do not have enough money in our budget to provide a full lunch to approximately 75 people everyday for 3 weeks, so we decided to break the days up into morning and afternoon sessions at different schools. We will teach at one school in the morning from 8:00am-11:00am, and then move to a different school in the afternoon from 12:00pm-3:00pm, providing a light snack at each session. We also wanted to schedule the camp sessions at different times at each school so that everyone has the opportunity to attend- maybe a student who could not attend the week of morning sessions at the winter camp will be able to attend the week of afternoon sessions. After winter break ends, when the students return to their regular school schedule, we will work with the students in afterschool workshops from approximately 2:30pm-5:00pm each weekday afternoon.

We hope to review basic computer skills in a very constructionist manner for the first week of the Winter Camp (our 6th grade students have had XO computers for a year now and have been sharing them regularly with the 4th, 5th, and 7th grade students, so we should be able to quickly move through these skills), complete an in depth learning project during the second week of camp, and then work on new programs such as Scratch and E Toys during the afterschool programs. Of course, the students may be too advanced or not advanced enough to follow these plans, and we will remain completely open to change. Our current schedule (which could, of course, change at any moment) is:

June 22-June 29:
This week will mostly be concerned with logistical needs. We need to make sure that we have permission to hold our weekly XO camps at the schools, finalize our afterschool workshop schedule, meet about what our role should be at the after-school programs (since these are already regularly scheduled events, do they have regular lesson plans? Should we plan something? how advanced are the students skills so that we know what kind of lesson to plan? Etc), finalize learning projects after getting more teacher input, contact local newspapers about covering our project, and address a problem with electricity at one of our three schools.

June 30-July 6th:
We will hold our winter XO camp at Mmaweshi Primary School each weekday morning from 8:00am-11:00am. We will hold an additional winter XO camp at Driehoek Primary School each weekday afternoon from 12:00pm-3:00pm. Details about learning projects for the camps to come.

July 7th-13th:
We will hold our winter XO camp at Driehoek Primary School each weekday from 8:00am-11:00am. We will hold an additional winter XO camp at Katane Primary School each weekday afternoon from 12:00pm-3:00pm. Details about learning projects for the camps to come.

July 14th-July 21st:
We will hold our winter XO camp at Katane Primary School each weekday from 8:00am-11:00am. We will hold an additional winter XO camp at Mmaweshi Primary School each weekday afternoon from 12:00pm-3:00pm. Details about learning projects for the camps to come.

July 21st-August 13th:
We will focus on our after school programs during the last 4 weeks of our deployment. We will spend each Monday running a teacher training workshop at each school, each Tuesday will be spent at Mmaweshi Primary School, each Wednesday will be spent at Driehoek Primary School, and each Thursday will be spent at Katane Primary School. The workshops will be held from 2:30-5:00 with exact learning projects to be decided on later this week, after getting more input from the teachers.