As I mentioned in my previous post, I flew to Nepal on 1st of May 2015 and added Day 2 and Day 3 photos to my flickr album. It's really hard to explain the situation there but I hope you can get an idea.
Another evening in Nepal with dark and fear of aftershocks
Blankets give them enough warm but not Education!
What's the next step?
During my visit to Dharding on 3rd of May 2015, I learned that I can do much better work with my experience. There is a small school in the village with 400 students and 8 teachers.
I have been running a similar project in Sri Lanka and I had a plan to do my next deployment with Raspberry Pi.
Why Raspberry Pi?
Simply: Its cheap and portable.
Its much easier to relocate a lab in case of an emergency and its really cheaper than generic desktop machines.
What's required?
Single set need LCD Display, Keyboard/Mouse, Power Supply, Storage/Memory Card in addition to the RPi 2.
I bought Raspberry Pi 2 on last evening
Operating System?
Hanthana Linux, a Fedora remix bundle with bunch of Educational tools and Sugar Desktop.
Software?
LibreOffice, Firefox, VLC, Educational Tools, Gnome/Sugar Desktop.
Internet?
Not in the scope for now.
I would like to expand this in to several schools, based on the support I get from the community. I can't afford several devices and also I need local community to support by series of workshops to teachers and students.
They were about to receive new cloths..
Can you imagine if they touch a computer for the first time?
Wanna join?
Feel free to contact me if you willing to help this project.
They have no idea about their future but you can make it!
One of the brilliance of the original design of the RaspberryPi was that a lot of the peripherals could be sourced from stuff people already had or something that could be bought second hand easily.
ReplyDeleteSo I'l wondering if you've considered using old TV sets as monitors (RPi supports components video output) and old phone charger for power supply.
The added benefit to this is you're help to reduce the amount of waste created in the long run.
Awesome idea! Will do it! Am in! :)
ReplyDeleteHi Chinmay,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment here.
Yes, I would like to use used but working keyboards/mouse, phone power supply but I am not sure about display or monitor.
I have previous experience in one of the remote school in Sri Lanka where, the project was failed at some point.
It was really hard to find someone to troubleshoot and fix the issue and also nearest service center may 10-20km away from the school.
Many people interested in that kind of project as they can leave all 'Electronic waste' at a rural school.
But I really want them to bring the knowledge back to home as rest of the family members can learn from the same device. I hope kids can just bring the RPi2 back to home and plug in to their home TV. I saw several satellite TV connection in the village. ;-)