20141221_162639Now that we have electricity, we have seen some major developments. Due to some extra donations from family and friends, I’ve been able to buy a new laptop and printer for the school. The printer also acts like a photocopier which will come in very handy to print exam papers and to photocopy notes or pages from books.

WP_000176In addition to this, we’ve been lucky enough to receive another donation from two volunteers who were working with me here at Matandani. Once they saw we had a laptop and printer, they thought it would be amazing to have a projector to finish off the IT requirements. This has been a fantastic addition as it gives the laptop a lot more potential as they can now use it in the same way as all the teachers in Scoil Bhride do in their classes in Ireland. It opens up a whole new world for the teachers and students as they now have access to the Internet through a dongle. They can read books online now and show Powerpoints, videos and look at maps and pictures from around the word. It truly is going to change Matandani for the better.

 

WP_00011920141217_144445Although it is brilliant having all this technology at Matandani, I had to organise computer lessons. You might not believe me when I say that most of the teachers had not used a computer before and the head teacher even told me that he had never even touched one!

After talking to a few computer skilled people in Zomba I chose one of them to come to Matandani to teach the teachers how to use this fantastic resource! To begin with we have chosen four teachers to learn the basics such as Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint, and how to type and send emails. The classes have started and I am so happy with how the teachers are learning the computer skills and how excited and dedicated they are also. They currently practice every day and after two weeks I can see huge improvements already.

We hope to give every teacher the same training before the end of this academic year.

 

Finally, one of the other great things the projector enables us to do is to show movies to the children. We are hoping to show a variety of children’s English speaking movies and Disney favourites like the Lion King so that they can listen to the English and not only enjoy the movie, but learn from them too. I am currently trying to build up a collection of Disney movies for the children to watch over the next few months!

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I have even got in a few lessons about Ireland. We looked at maps of the world showing where Ireland was exactly and with the help of an internet dongle, I was able to show them our flag, some stats about our country and also some pictures of our cities and countryside! I showed them a video all about Gaelic Football and Hurling….. they were so wowed!! 🙂