What Project Would A Laptop Help You With?

More time teaching, less time doing paperwork.

Short Description Of Project

Niandankoro is a small farming community in North-Eastern Guinea who’s “College” (middle school) has been teaching 7th through 10th grade boys and girls since 1998. Class sizes vary between eighty and one hundred and seventy students, depending on the grade and the year. Some students live locally; others come from up to 18km away every day. Our school’s staff currently consists of a Principal, Vice Principal, two teachers, and a Peace Corps volunteer. As our school’s staff is very small and our student body rather large all staff are responsible for administrative as well as teaching work. All of our grades and attendance records are calculated by hand and written out for the students, and then written out again for our own records and again for the district records. In the past year our district, and Guinea’s school system as a whole, has begun demanding electronic copies of all records. As there are no computers in Niandankoro, one or more of us has been obliged every week or two to miss a day of school to go to the nearest city to pay a person in Siguiri to enter our grades and the information needed for the students who are taking the Brevet, the test each student must pass to move from 10th to 11th grade.

How Would A Laptop Help You?

Our goal in possessing a computer of our own is to allow us all to spend more time teaching and less time traveling to have paperwork done for us. We would be able to calculate grades and attendance more quickly and easily, thus giving us the opportunity to give students monthly feedback instead of trimester–ly or yearly. Increased teacher availability and increased feedback would, we hope, help keep our students actively involved in their education.

The computer would belong to the school as a whole, but I would be in charge of its protection and maintenance. All staff are currently receiving training in Microsoft Word and Excel in the hopes of being able to have a more streamlined and productive school year next year.

What Languages do you speak?

French, Sousou, and Malinké