The weekend so far

Did a little Fashion parade for Carchi n Mobo this morning out of boredome and they thought i was high on crack or something.

So i have been sober for more than 5days now and turned down the opportunity to party like a rockstar last night with a couple of friends and a bunch of girls which was kinda strange considering i see myself as a yes man.

Yesterday was Friday the 13th, not that i'm superstitious but queer things have a penchant of rearing it's head on this particular day(s) of the year. This year was no exception as i lay on my bed, Dubz burst in to my room saying he just got a call from someone requesting us to come calm Four7 down as he's beating the living daylight out of one oh his workers. Myself & Dubz left the house in the pouring rain, hailed a cab and off to CP hoping he hadn't killed the boy or caused any fatal damage. We got in and the girls where like Thank God his friends are here, when we saw him, he was still beating the shit outta this kid. We retrieved the cane from him and asked him what the kid did.....the boy stole a customers' wallet and used the money to buy a phone, not only that, he stole from Four7's room and planned on running away. We calmed Four7 down and asked the boy where he kept the stolen purse which he couldn't produce but kept lying about where he kept it till we ended up in the restroom of CP. We pleaded for his sake considering he was a first time offender only to get to Four7's place later @ night to discover he's been stealing for quite a while and even broke into the house when no one was around which was what triggered the violent side of meas i joined Dubz n Four7 in beating the shit outta him till he confessed all his sins.

Anyways i'm heading to the pool now

ramblings!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Four days of abstinence from some of my vices and I am already feeling the side effects of not being my usual self. As the weekend approaches that is when my resolve will be truly tested. Starting with BYOB Thursdays @ play which I haven’t missed for a while now followed by Friday nights at Dub-C before hitting the clubs and finally Saturday nights of stupor with a few of my people. Will I be able to say NO when the opportunity arises? Thursday I might be able to if the flat mates are not interested, Friday is a tricky one as its Sumbo’s birthday and finally Saturday I should be able to fight it considering I’ll be heading to Church the following day (something I haven’t done in a while). I leave all in the hands of God. Even got a call from my dad today as he saw some of the comments on my profile….the old man no fit decode wetin dey go on. Just told him I was okay…..only if he knew about my nicotine kissing habits.

Moving to other things, life has been dealing me harsh cards lately but I have learnt to take the blows as they come. Haven’t had a job in a while now yet I have been surviving thanks to help from family & friends. Today I am trying to decide on where to start my new life as either
1. Project Coordinator.
2. Site Engineer.
3. Office IT Support.
The 1st was a job I applied for yesterday and I got today, all that’s left is negotiation of wages. The 2nd was a referral from a friend and the 3rd was a job I applied for a couple of months ago but told me to wait till they have their office set up.

Not to bore you with my work life let me talk more on what’s going on in my personal life. The girlfriend’s still not happy she hasn’t seen me in a while, had to walk 2miles to the bank because my ATM expired and was too broke to hail a cab…sign of the times and my good friend Mr. Dubz made fun of me. A friend moved in with me lately and all of a sudden she’s friends with everyone which is nice…was actually scared she wasn’t gonna fit it but she fit in perfectly. Took a liking to one of my fat flat mates and they decided to kick me outta my room which I stomached for the past few days but tonight I decided to be stubborn and yay I have my room to myself. Funny thing is I’m out in the living room blogging as I spent most of my day sleeping and can’t sleep now.
Got a meeting tomorrow with my potential CEO @ about 3pm later today, hope I impress the dude with my plenty oyinbo…………..make I go sleep jare

P.S
Google Wave is the shit…………….only 100,000 users in the world and guess who’s one of them?
P.S.S
I’m full of shit

Changes

Ones personalty can't be judged by his/her outward actions alone as the inner part is more or less the deciding factor in ones true nature. My character has been a subject of scrutiny for a while now by a bunch of people who don't really know me but can i blame them? NO! I blame myself for misleading a lot of people with some of my actions as well as some of the habits i have picked over the years. I have grown to love alcohol the strong ones to be specific, cancer sticks which i find very difficult to quit....actually puffing on one as i blog (hope it's the last one) and going out every weekend if i am in a perfect state of health and my weekend starts on BYOB Thursdays @ play.





Considering joining the AA if it helps matters



I have decided to kick against some of these habits maybe stop them totally or worst case scenario put a little bit of moderation if i find it hard to stop. My decision to try and effect these changes arose from a little soul searching, girlfriend complaining and maybe last nights binging and the subsequent hangover that got me thinking i need to cool it down or just stop it entirely. As i have come to realize that most people except close friends judge me by my outward ways i have decided to change some of my ways in order to suit the general public as well as living healthy.

I have decided to quit smoking (not the 1st time) but i need the encouragement of people around me, i will limit my weekend grooves and only go out when all my flatmates or friends are involved, will try to stop flirting (not as if i am a pro), try not to get drunk whenever i am out drinking and all those other things that just seem wrong needs eradication. Will try my best to be closer to God, honest to myself and people around me, get my acts right and he good generally.





And if this doesn't work out before the year ends, i will make it a New Year's resolution so help me God. If/When you see me backsliding please stop me and i am open to constructive criticism.

Google Wave

I finally got my google wave invite after weeks of requesting it from google, lucky me got the invite from a friend who applied way back in June. The snag is i only have 2 contacts on it at the moment so there's little i can do to figure out the whole functionality of google wave as we're never online at the same time.



A breakdown of what google wave is all about;

Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

Google Wave is designed as the next generation of Internet communication. It is written in Java using OpenJDK and its web interface uses the Google Web Toolkit. Google Wave works like previous messaging systems like email and Usenet, but instead of sending a message along with its entire thread of previous messages, or requiring all responses to be stored in each user's inbox for context, message documents (referred to as waves) that contain complete threads of multimedia messages (blips) are perpetually stored on a central server. Waves are shared with collaborators who can be added to or removed from the wave at any point during a wave's existence.

Waves, described by Google as "equal parts conversation and document", are hosted XML documents that allow seamless and low latency concurrent modifications. Any participant of a wave can reply anywhere within the message, edit any part of the wave, and add participants at any point in the process. Each edit/reply is a blip and users can reply to individual blips within waves. Recipients are notified of changes/replies in all waves in which they are active and, upon opening a wave, may review those changes in chronological order. In addition, waves are live. All replies/edits are visible in real-time, letter by letter, as they are typed by the other collaborators. Multiple participants may edit a single wave simultaneously in Google Wave. Thus, waves can function not only as e-mails and threaded conversations but also as an instant messaging service when many participants are online at the same time. A wave may repeatedly shift roles between e-mail and instant messaging depending on the number of users editing it concurrently.

The ability to show messages as they are typed can be disabled, similar to conventional instant messaging. The ability to modify a wave at any location lets users create collaborative documents, edited in a manner akin to wikis. Waves can easily link to other waves. It is in many respects a more advanced forum. The history of each wave is stored within it. Collaborators may use a playback feature in Google Wave to observe the order in which a wave was edited, blips that were added, and who was responsible for what in the wave. The history may also be searched by a user to view and/or modify specific changes, such as specific kinds of changes or messages from a single user.

As of October, 2009, Google Wave is still in active development and is expected to remain in development until later in 2009. It was launched to about 100,000 users on September 30, 2009. Google Wave access can be requested. Developers have been given access to Wave proper, and all wave users invited by Google can nominate up to 20 others. sorry folks i can't send invites as i wasn't invited directly by google.

The best part is it's open source so developers can edit several extensions of it.

My take on the whole google wave trend by the time it's extended to the general public is it's gonna kick ass and you just might kick your facebook pages good bye as you can do virtually everything you do on facebook and more.

unemployment's a bitch!!!

At first it was fun staying at home watching movies and browsing the internet and puffing away cancer sticks all day. Now it's just plain annoying and tiring. Been in the labor market now for about 2 months and before you people start comparing me with people who've been out of a job for years well i ain't them and i know my worth.

What have i been doing all this while? Been sending my Resume to several companies, talking to family and friends to recommend me to several firms but to no avail. Luck kinda smiled on me recently (so i thought) when a flatmate of mine hooked me up with an interview with some engineering firm which i obliged all in the name of getting out of the house. Getting to the office armed with my Resume and totally psyched i was the man for the job, i was filled out some forms and was scheduled to meet with the CEO in a few minutes. After waiting for about 5mins i was asked to come in, presented my Resume and he was like you're an Engineer!!!! like duh....he started ranting about them not needing an engineer but someone who was good with computers and the Microsoft Office packages as well as developing proposals and out of desperation i said yes thinking it was a position of a business developer only to find out i was applying for the post of a SECRETARY...i mean a whole SKILLS = SECRETARY....kindly told them i wasn't doing again as they wanted me to start immediately. On the bright side i was told to come for another interview next week for the position of a site engineer...hope that goes well.

the OLPCorps Africa '09 Experience

My OLPCorps '09 experience was a one in a lifetime opportunity for me as friends were made, new tricks learned, experience gained, etc. The 10days spent in Kigali helped me understand people as there were 30 other teams there. I bonded with a lot of corp members but the CUNY team Ghana(Oliver & Derek) were the closest as we had lots in common and could relate to almost everything.

My deployment came to an end mid-September which was way past the expected timeline the team anticipated. Had high expectations for the deployment but didn't achieve most of what the team set out to achieve as the laptops were not released by customs till the OLPC paid about $3000, there was little or no support from our local partners, some of the kids didn't respond the way we anticipated. We made it after 12weeks instead of the scheduled 8weeks no thanks to the bottlenecks we had.

All teams where required to send a member to Boston for summit where each team talks about their lessons learned, sustainability of the project, deployment ups and downs as well as moving forward. It was also an opportunity to meet up with old friends. I was the member that had to go to Boston with all expense paid by the OLPC considering i wrote the proposal and was much more on ground through out the deployment. Had to get a visa to the United States which i was refused for the 1st time for reasons i can't fathom, finally got my visa the following week after Nia Lewis sent word to the Consular who in turn put in a good word for me.

A few weeks later i'm on a plane to the Boston from Abuja, 12 crazy hours with 2 stops, 1 in Dakar and the other in JFK, New York. Was gonna ditch the flight to Boston and take another the following day so i could attend Oliver's birthday party but my bubble got burst cos it would cost me $150 or so to change the flight. Got to Boston and kinda found it hard to locate the hotel i was going to be staying even though it was right in front of me..lol.

Had a great time in Boston and headed to NY to hang out with my buddies Oliver and Derek as well as old friends O-Mog and Yinka. even bumped into an old fling of mine on her birthday. Now i am back in Nigeria getting my hustle on.

Modern Technology for Primary School Education in Nigeria

Early childhood education is substantially beneficial to a young child’s development, but Nigerian students are dropping out of primary school at an alarming rate. Even more worrying is that only a fraction of students who attend primary school, continue on to secondary school and even less matriculate to a tertiary institution. While the Nigerian Education System has made major improvements, we are still playing catch-up to the world’s more developed nations. But Nigeria and the rest of the world are now at a pivotal crossroad – modern technology has developed immensely and now it is possible for each child to have their education enriched with state of the art tools for learning. A pioneer in education technology is One Laptop per Child (OLPC), developer of the low-cost, durable “XO laptop.” OLPC’s goal is to provide each child in the world with their own laptop. As someone who has worked first-hand in OLPC deployments in Nigeria, I strongly believe that, through OLPC, Nigeria can not only improve primary school dropout rates, but also revolutionize our educational system and hold Nigeria as an example for the world.

The One Laptop Per Child Association, Inc. (OLPC) is a U.S. non-profit organization set up to oversee the creation of an affordable educational device for use in the developing world. Its mission is "To create educational opportunities for the world's poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning." Its current focus is on the development, construction and deployment of the XO laptop. The XO is designed to operate on less than 5 watts of power. It is a brightly colored plastic laptop with rounded corners with antennae that folds up the sides to form ears. It utilizes the "sugar" interface which presents people icons in a neighborhood metaphor, a built-in camera and other media options which offers scope for creative schoolwork. The basic hardware specifications are 256MB of DRAM and 1GB flash memory.

OLPC's mission focus is not on its state-of-the-art innovative technology, but on its educational approach that fosters discovery of knowledge by the children themselves, encouraging them to find the application of that knowledge in a practical and meaningful context. Both, the technology of the OLPC laptop and the methodology of the Constructionist educational approach has been inspired, researched, developed, and implemented by MIT scholars. Large-scale OLPC deployments are underway in Rwanda, Uruguay, Peru , Mali & Cameroun (just to name a few). In Rwanda’s case, schools have seen a 200% attendance increase in primaries schools with the XO laptop, similar findings are reported in Nigeria was one of the first countries to benefit from the XO, along with: Uruguay, Mexico, Rwanda, Haiti, India, & Peru. In 2007, OLPC started a pilot in Nigeria which provided L.E.A Primary School Galadima, located in the outskirts of Abuja, with an XO laptop for each child in Primary 4, 5 and 6 (and also for each member of the staff). Children took home their laptops each day. The children enjoyed working with their laptops both during school-time and after. They helped each other in their activities and also produced projects on their own, some individually, and some in collaboration with their mates.

While the positive effects of the laptop so far outweighed any of the negative, if is extremely unfortunate how much attention was paid to the minor instances of laptop abuses. First, it was felt that the XOs were a distraction from academic activity as they indulged in spending school-time “playing” with the laptop's camera and surfing the web for entertainment material. I for one am happy to live in a time where a child being able to access a wireless network, use a search engine and find their desired materials is considered “play.” I think many can see the direct benefit this will provide the children in the adult lives.

In a few cases, children were found visiting inappropriate websites showing pornographic material. But, we must ask ourselves did the children not consider these things before the laptop was there? Of course they did, the laptop was just a venue for them to explore this. I hope the parents of the children who visited these sites used the opportunity to talk with their children about such things, and turned it into a learning experience. Additionally, if we are fortunate enough to have more laptops in the country, we can use content filtering software, which will make these sites inaccessible.

Lastly, we must ask ourselves, should we deny Nigeria’s children a good that just a few years ago unimaginable because a small number of bad things are possible? I hope not! To me, it is no different than denying a child a pencil for school because they could use it has a weapon!

As the pilot phase of the OLPC deployment in Galadima came to an end, the kids were obviously saddened by the departure of the OLPC team that worked with them over the months as they’ve become attached to them. Good thing is that most of the children, if not all, are now in secondary schools sharing their experiences on modern technology with other children. This proves that with proper motivation, children won’t drop out primary school at an early age.
Fast forward to 2009, the OLPC came up with a grassroots initiative tagged the OLPCorps Africa program where students and volunteers all over the world were asked to write proposals for deploying 100 XO laptops to an African country of their choice. After which selected proposals (teams) would undergo training in Kigali, Rwanda for two weeks before heading to the selected African country of their choice for eight weeks with operating stipends for the duration of the project.
In total, 220 proposals were sent to the OLPC only 30 applicants were picked, out of which, three Nigerian teams were selected. The teams selected were; 1.) Texas A&M University with Sam Ade Jacobs as team lead deploying in Kingdom Heritage Primary School, Otta, Ogun State; 2.) University of Lagos graduates with Adetola Adeola as team lead deploying in the IBB Primary School, Minna, Niger state and; 3.) University of Ibadan with Kolawole Oreoluwa as team Lead deploying in the School for handicapped in Ibadan, Oyo State.

Their mission is to use the XO laptops to improve literacy in Nigeria, encourage cross-cultural interaction and help children relate subject matters to real-life scenarios. The three teams started their deployments in their various schools as soon as they returned from the workshop in Kigali, Rwanda putting all they have learned to good use.

All three teams worked closely with the teachers in the first two weeks of the deployment to get them familiar with OLPC, the XO laptop and the theories of constructionism. The teams had sessions with parents of the students to demonstrate how they can become actively involved in their child’s learning experience before ultimately handing over the XO laptop to the students.
The children, teachers, headmasters, OLPCorps teams and parents with the support of the sector’s educational authorities, as well as government, private and non-private organizations made the OLPCorps Africa 2009 educational project a huge success as the students now use their XO’s at school and at home, in class and, quite often, even at during lunch breaks for various educational projects as well as games. All of a sudden, all three Primary Schools have gone from the age-old chalk-and-board teaching technology to the avant-garde one-laptop-per-child XO technology with cutting-edge features.

Adetola, Team leader of the OLPCorps Minna says, “This project is more about education than it is about technology - the laptops are enabling the children to work together and learn themselves, rather than by note memorization, which is often the norm in our schools today.”
Kolawole, Team leader of the OLPCorps Ibadan also claims, “The students are interested in learning new things everyday and most of the kids want to further their education beyond the primary school.”

The teams rounded up their deployments after eight weeks and all recorded a successful project as they were able to see visible improvements in the children they worked with. They hope the kids all turnout to be future leaders and continue their education beyond primary school level, while just eight weeks made a major difference in the lives of several children, we need the support of the Nigerian community and government to make this opportunity possible for each child in Nigeria. We need to act now and recognize the importance of technology in the classroom and not wait to follow in the footsteps of developed nations, this time, we can be first. I hope that Nigeria will be among the first country to provide one laptop per child.

the week in a nutshell

Monday through Wednesday was spent at the new Silverbird Mall helping my boys (Bola, Sam, Kizzy & Deji) out with the network infrastructure of the complex as i didn't wanna lay idle thanks to Abuja Connect even if i wasn't getting paid for it, i still enjoyed it. Had lunch @ Kizzy's place and later went to the wine shop for some liquor in the system. Crashed @ zone 4 as i had to see BJ early in the morning unfortunately my hopes were dashed as the man no just wan understand my condition.

Thursday morning, Seyi n his pops head to Ilorin for his bro's induction, he left his car for me without fuel...what on hell am i supposed to do with it? piss in the tank?...lol. Stayed at home most of the day tho.

Had a shitty day on Friday due to some domestic issues i rather not talk about but for those who know me very well, i hardly let shit get to me. I decided to go bowling with Akin, DInjo, Kachi, Debola and two other chics i just met (Ope & Tope)hoping to go clubbing after that, by the way i won the game and Dinjo came last....lol. We ended up going home after the game as all the ladies were not properly gingered for an all night activity no thanks to Kachi. Ended up talking on the phone all night with a whole bunch of friends who were celebrating with Kunbi my lil sis on her birthday and wished i was there.

Got up like 9ish on Saturday and myself, Dinjo and Abdul decided to go and see Lola @ the hospital as she had a serious asthma attack,we met Ife aka fairy God mother there. We dropped Ife at home after trying to cheer Lola up, need i say we did a great job. We headed straight to Wuse Market for shopping which took longer as the traffic was crazy. Got back to Woodcrest and we started cooking Lunch with the aid of Fairy God Mother after which we had a sumptuous meal. Decided to go chill with AK later in the evening at his Shop and later headed home.

Spent some time with Susan and KC cracking them up with jokes till we got tired. chilling like a super villain in my room with Hassan snoring when i drift off thinking about a lot of things when it hit me "i haven't had alcohol this weekend!" to top that i didn't go out on a Friday night. Strange it might seem to me but i find it a little bit relaxing as i didn't expend energy @ the club and didn't go to the wine shop for my usual friday night shayo b4 i hit the clubs.

So i'm in my room and it's almost 3am and i can't sleep.....anyways make i dey run find something do online....ciao

2 Weeks After Kigali

Back in Nigeria and the deployment is yet to kick off due to an unforeseen constraint, the Nigerian Customs . The Customs have refused to grant a tax waiver for our 100 XO’s as they are not tax exempt goods (TIA). We tried explaining the laptops were a donation from the OLPC Foundation but they were not willing to budge on the tax.

We are not the only Nigerian team in this quagmire as each team is required to pay the sum of N346,074.05 (three hundred and forty six thousand, seventy four Naira and five Kobo) which is about $2308 for the 100 XO’s. This we didn’t budget for and we have spent the bulk of our budget on the trip to Kigali and Internet connectivity for the school. We have tried many avenues to get the waiver but to no avail. Nia Lewis has gotten in touch with DHL so as to resolve this issue asap. The Niger State Ministry of Science & Technology through its Director of ICT, Engineer Abubakar Y. Salisu has also tried his best to get a waiver for the team but he’s been hitting road blocks in the process.

What has the team been doing so far? Chilling i guess and getting familiar with our individuals XO’s. We also took a trip to the deployment school to talk to the teachers and resolve power issues. I haven’t been able to blog as my old laptop finally packed up and i am stuck with using my XO for most of my cyber activities which ain’t comfortable considering the amount of things i do online.

Hope this customs issue is resolved by Monday so we can start already.

Back!!!!!!!!

So my sojourn is East Africa came to an end after 10 great days. Met a lot of people, exchanged culture and had mad fun. The downside was falling ill for almost a week which was a NO NO for me, this also crippled most of the activities i got lined up for ME.

Day 1 in Kigali, hooked up with the Ghanaian teams (all 3 of em) Opoku, Sammy, Paul, Siisi, Siegfried, Oliver aka Hungary and Paul aka New York. We were taken to our Hotels unfortunately the cool cats(Hungary & NY) had to be taken to another Hotel aka Bethel while the rest of the crew chilled at the Hiltop.

Day 2 was at KIST (Kigali Institute of Science & Technology) where David Cavallo and some of the OLPC Core teams talked to us as well as each team coming up on stage to talk about their plans for their deployments after which we head to the "Republika" for Happy Hour....the hours spent there was indeed happy after several bottles of Udeme and the likes.

Day 3 was the VIP day with dignitaries like the President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, the OLPC Chairman, Nicholas Negroponte, OLPC Coordinators in Haiti and Paraguay as well as several Government officials. After all the formalities, a welcome party by the Rwandan Dance Troupe ensued and trust ur boy, i sure joined in the fun with my other fun peeps.

Several days went by and i learned a few tricks on the XO, made loads of friends and tried my best memorizing everyone's name. I can proudly say i know 50 Corps members on 1st name basis ain't that something.....had so much fun till i got struck by malaria, ain't that a bitch? had to go to the hospital, get my blood sample just to be sure and was given drugs that had no affect on me at all as i was ill for the better part of the workshop.

Malaria or no malaria, didn't let that weigh me down, went out a couple of times to KBC, played a football at the stadium with a local team and we were leading 4-0 in the 1st half alone with Coy getting on the score-sheet after a pile driver from Eli my Jewish (lol) friend. Our team played a 4-4-2 diamond formation, consisted of amateurs including yours trully playing on the left side of the attack, Olesia (a girl) playing the the middle, John also in the middle, Innocent Obumba aka PELE(left wing), Coy (right wing), Coy (defender) and Victoria and we had local team fill the remaining spots.

Why i joined the OLPCorps

It was my NYSC (National Youth Service Corps) year and I was lucky to be sent to a private firm (Ateq.ICT) for my internship for a period of a year. Alteq.ICT happens to be a consultancy and project based firm. One of the projects they where handling back then was the pilot phase of the One Laptop per Child Initiative at the L.E.A Primary School, Galadima, Gwarimpa, Abuja. I was attached to the team as Technical Support, my job was to fix all broken XO’s, update software build, send broken XO’s to Quanta (XO manufacturer) as well as make sure the school had Internet connectivity at all time.


The team was made up of Tomi Davies (Alteq.ICT’s Chief Operations Officer) who guided the team during the whole deployment period, Carla Gomez of the OLPC for the learning content (constructionist learning), Roland Igwe was to assist her with this, Ahmad Dan-Hamidu and I were in charge of Technical Support and Asabe Yabani later joined the learning team. Towards the end of the project, Chukwuka Uzoegwu and Hassan Ogunlowo (my team member) later on joined the team to aid with technical support of the project. At first it was business as usual but as days passed by, I became interested in the XO and activities embedded in it thanks to my interaction with Carla.


I took it upon myself to learn about constructivism and interacted with the kids to find out how they faired when they worked on the XO’s, I realized the impact the laptops had on them was immense as some of the kids who couldn’t write their names knew how to a few weeks after the XO’s were introduced. Some of the kids even helped me out in fixing broken XO’s (Kabiru of primary 6 and Shuaibu who was in primary 4). I realized these kids can be anything they want to be and achieve all they want in life with the aid of the XO thus my interest in the OLPC.


The project ended on a sad note for me as the Federal Government who had previously promised to purchase a million (1,000,000) XO’s decided not to as they felt there were other needs the kids needed instead of laptops which shouldn’t be a priority instead they will rather build more classrooms and give out more books.


I had the opportunity to interact with Julia Reynolds throughout the duration of the project as she was the contact person from Boston who handled the receipt of broken XO’s and replacements. It was during this period we became very close friends and I look forward to meeting her at Kigali.


It was Julia who told me about the OLPCorps Africa project based on my interest in the OLPC after which I decided to contact some of my buddies to put together one of the 220 proposals sent to the OLPCorps and later picked as one of the 30 finalists.


I hope to prove everyone who thought the OLPC was a waste of time wrong as well as make a case to the fellows in charge of Education in the Country and NGO’s who are willing to champion this cause.

OLPCorps Journal

The countdown is on, just 3 more days before we head to Kigali but we need to make sure some sort of infrastructure is put in place before we leave.

The team embarked on a trip to Minna on the 3rd of June, our main aim was to address a workshop/seminar and make a presentation to shed more light on our intended deployment which was scheduled for 10:00AM Thursday. Unfortunately, the presentation had to be postponed as most of the participants sent word about not being able to attend.
The presentation would be combined with the program launch slated for 29th June, a week into our deployment.

We also planned to resolve the connectivity issues and power issues. We settled for a Ku Band VSAT from Direct ON PC Limited who provided the solution at a subsidized rate. Also, we made provision for a generator as back up for power as well as set up the power adaptors for charging the laptops in the classrooms.

We headed to the Niger State Ministry of Science & Technology to see the ICT Director, Engineer Abubakar Salisu but we were told he went to the customs office to see how he can get a tax waiver for the XO shipment. Akin headed to the school to supervise the VSAT Installation while I waited for the Director.
When he returned, we had a meeting where we talked about the sustainability of the project and plans he had for IT in education in Niger State as well as how the ministry intend to support the project

So far, he and the Ministry have been very supportive of our deployment; they are taking various steps in supporting us during the course of the project some of which includes;
•Getting the team accommodation throughout the duration of the project
•Giving us 5 (five) facilitators from the Ministry of Science & Technology to assist us during the project
•Taking care of logistics for the opening and closing ceremonies
•Souvenirs which includes banners, t-shirts, bags for the XO’s, face-caps and badges for all participants
•Publicizing the project


Engineer Abubakar has also helped in the receipt of the UK chargers and he is seriously working on getting a tax clearance for the XO’s as soon as they can get the tracking number of the XO shipment.
For the opening and closing ceremonies, the Niger State Ministry of Science & Technology will be inviting various stakeholders in the State to grace the occasion, they plan on inviting the Governor of the State, all Local Government Chairmen, the state UBEC (Universal Basic Education Commission), the Emir whose palace happens to be opposite the school, the PTA (Parents-Teachers Association), Alumni of the school which includes prominent Nigerians (two past presidents) and other important Government officials who can help in the sustainability and expansion of the project. The team plans on inviting the Federal UBEC, the NPC (National Population Commission) and several corporate bodies that might be interested in the project.

The planned presentation did not hold but….

Today (4th of June) was the original date we set for the workshop/seminar for the project but due to unavailability of the stakeholders and other participants supposed to attend it had to be canceled. That didn’t deter us as we decided to have an introductory session with the 5 Teachers and 5 Facilitators from the Niger State Ministry of Science & Technology. Akin did a little presentation on the constructionist learning method and I introduced them to the XO and XO Activities. We also briefed them on possible projects the kids can work on and asked them to think of other projects that can be carried out. We were able to shed more light on our intended deployment in general. I am sure by the time we get back from Kigali, we will have a more intense session as the participants didn’t have any questions for us and they were very comfortable with our presentation.

We took some pictures with some of the kids and the XO. The kids were highly interested in the XO as we showed them some of the activities. I can tell our deployment will be a successful one based on the reactions we got from the kids.

We took some pictures with some of the kids and the XO. The kids were highly interested in the XO as we showed them some of the activities. I can tell our deployment will be a successful one based on the reactions we got from the kids.

My weekend

Ok so i left the comfort of my bed last night instead of resting and allowing the anti-malaria drugs take effect properly, i decided to tag along with Akin, Kachi and Bunmi to the Dome. So we get to our destination and started mulling on what to do till Kachi suggested we play Nintendo Wii which we played for about 45minutes till one funny chap aka the onile decided to switch off the TV after paying for an hour, a rawkus for shele but men chill sha, collect our money back.

So we decided to head to the club upfront aka Octagon and chill out for a few unfortunately i can't take alcohol because of my medication so my groove level was below par. Bumped into a lot of old friends tho.

We left Dome at about 3:45am and decided to head to Play Lounge but decided to drop kachi at home but for some funny reason i decided to get off too and thats how my night ended.

Saturday evening and i'm chilling with Dinjo waiting for Akin to come pick us up for Buba's(Kachi's visafone colleague) party.....on getting to the venue, we feasted our eyes on some of the mamis on display (not that they were for sale ooo).....anyways back to the party....Bunmi and Kachi had already adapted to the environment, a bottle of JW(RL) with Coca-Cola as chaser was all i needed to get the party started......after several shots of JW(RL) which i wasn't supposed to take (considering i was on malaria medication) i was already in the spirit tormenting all the girls on the dancefloor giving dem all the alanta moves.....the rest is history sha.

Here are some of the pictures taken

TGIF....

am
Here i am again after how many years blogging. It's been long and i haven't got time thanks to work, life and off course "facebook" . The major reason i'm doing this is because i am bored and a little bit under the weather no thanks to the gas mask wearing heavyweight mosquitoes who refused to die after spraying my entire room with a whole canister of Baygon Insecticide.

That being said, today is Friday and for those who know me very well, you know a Friday never passes without me putting some alcohol into my system and having fun all night long till the wee hours of Saturday, the end result? tales to tell the following evening considering the hangover.

This Friday is not looking like any regular Friday why? I am on serious malaria medication which can't be mixed with alcohol....ain't that a b***h? Oh well, i most likely will stay at home, watch movies, have a stick or two of B&H and miss the thrills and frills the Wine Shop & Bar has to offer which includes making fun of drunk people, catching trips and constituting a nuisance to the general public.

I know Deji (lil Bro) will still call me to find out where i am going tonight. Anywayz i have to go now, have some pressing issues to sort.