SpiTux Project Information
A Brief History
Students and Classes Today
A Look Ahead
A Brief History
SpiTux is the Linux Penguin Tux coming
to Spitak, Armenia. The goal of the SpiTux Project is to build a computer
lab for the young people of Spitak's Italian Village. The computer classes
at the lab started October 1, 2002. The lab is using Linux, an operating
system that is fairly new to Armenia.
SpiTux was born this summer. Anoush Najarian started the project, financed
it, and moved to Spitak to teach at the lab. Why? Because there is plenty
of need for a computer facility for Spitak's kids and youths. Because it's
hard to find the hardware, and the IT professionals, for teaching computer
science in schools, and the SpiTux lab will serve as a CS teaching lab
for one of the schools in the Italian Village. Because SpiTux will be the
first such facility in Armenia to use Linux, and it seems very important
to introduce Linux to the Armenian school system. Finally, because it's
a fun thing to do!
Students and Classes Today
Classes for School Children
Classes for School Children
We have six groups of young people, ages 10-17, each meeting three hours
a week. Three of these groups are "new", Level I groups, started in January
2003, and three are in Level II; they've started in October 2002.
Our lessons are project-driven. That is
to say, rather than make up a list of subjects, we're thinking mostly in
terms of what we can produce. The five projects for Level II students are:
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a personal webpage for each (showcasing their SpiTux works,
and other interests)
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writing little JavaScript programs, to incorporate into the kids' personal webpages
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a children's computer book.
The idea is for the kids to do the writing, the typesetting, the illustrations,
and then to publish it -- on paper, hopefully, and most definitely electronically.
Emilia Bostanchyan is the SpiTux Level I graduate in charge of this project.
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Armenianization of TuxType,
a lovely piece of open source programming that teaches typing. Currently, it uses
the English alphabet, and the instructions are in English, too, and we'd
like to make the Armenian-alphabet version of the program.
Tigran Petrosyan is the SpiTux Level I graduate in charge of this project.
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understanding computer internals and learning to assemble/disassemble a machine.
With Level I kids, we'll be doing:
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Logo Programming
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web design
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digital imaging and computer art
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beginning C programming
We have a digital camera, a laser
printer, and a scanner, and our goal is for each student to use these in
their projects, and also, to learn to type freely -- in Armenian and in
English.
Newspaper Publishing Group
Out of the three groups of Level II students, we have chosen ten people,
ages 11-16, for our Newspaper Publishing group. They're learning how to
make a paper: how to build a template using publishing software, how to plan
the structure of the paper, and what makes good journalism. All the students
coming to our lab collaborate on the paper in some way, but we felt that
we need a small group that will be responsible for actually putting the
newspaper together. It is community-oriented, with the kids doing
the writing, the photographing, and the interviewing. Issues #1 and #2 came
out on 11.29.02 and 12.24.02, issue #3 expected by the end of January.
Classes for Teachers
We offer computer training to a group of teachers and educators
from the Spitak school system. They have been coming to class since October,
hence they are in Level II. They meet twice a week, for a total of
3 hours, and learn general computer
literacy (same as the kids), computer design, and desktop publishing.
High School Computer Science Classes
Anoush Najarian also teaches the Computer
Science classes for the Boarding School (Spitak School No. 9) grades 9
and 10. They meet for an hour a week each. The goal with these students is to
give them, over the course of the academic year, a variety of computer
skills, and to involve their teachers of other subjects in giving them
computer-related assignments: compositions in Armenian, English, and Russian
to be typed up, programming assignments to illustrate what they've learned
in their science classes, virtual tours to aid in their geography, biology
and history lessons.
Classes for the Refugees' Village
Edik Ehtibaryan has been teaching two groups (youths
and adults) of people from the Refugees' Village that is a part of Spitak's
Italian Village: the Shogher Center, the home of our lab, got financing
from the Jinishian Memorial Foundation to work with that community. These
classes have been going on since October, and will resume in March, after the Winter Break.
Adult Beginners' Classes
Our primary interest and service being
to the children in the community, we couldn't overlook the need for computer
training for the general public. Three of our adult groups have graduated in December 2002,
equipped, we feel, with the basic computer user's skills. Currently, Karen Najaryan is working with two new groups
of adult beginners that come in twice a week for an hour.
Free Computer Time
Monday-Wednesday mornings, we have "free hours"
for the students and graduates of our adult beginner classes. The kids in Level II
work unsupervised on Monday afternoons: they receive an assignment on Friday,
and work on that.
System Administration Group
We are training a group of young
students to be lab sitters during the free hours. This is not an easy task:
our users are very new to computers, and we're using dual-boot machines,
to support our networking and programming tasks under Linux, and Design
and Publishing applications under Windows 2000. Along the way, they're
learning general system administration tasks: how to install software, manage
users and passwords, set up a network.
Self-Financing School Democracy
We are fortunate to have great assets:
the people, mostly volunteers, that teach at our lab, and a fair amount
of computer equipment. We do have a variety of operating expenses: the
electricity and the phone, paper, toner, floppy disks. To deal with these,
we have instituted a small membership fee, paid by those who can afford
it, reduced or waived for those who can't.
We strongly believe in listening to the
voice of the people, so we've held free elections to the Project Council,
made up from representatives from each of our student groups, to make decisions
on membership, expenses, equipment, and teaching-related matters. We also
plan to hold a monthly meeting for the parents of our young students, to
hear their opinions and concerns.
A Look Ahead
Seminars on Computers and Schools
We are preparing a series of seminars for
the local teachers and educators, in which we will provide a forum to:
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discuss the fruits of the cooperation efforts between the SpiTux Project
lab and the teachers in the area
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introduce a variety of educational software currently available, both commercial
and freely available for download
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discuss the uses of these types of software in highschool classes and at
afterclass activities. Come up with a wish list: "What we want computers
to do for high school students and teachers in Armenia"
Each teacher will walk away with a personal
development plan, and a list of ways s/he can incorporate computers into
teaching.
Challenges
One problem we have at hand is the lack
of an in-town Internet service provider. At the moment, to get to
any ISP from Spitak, it's a toll call of 20 drams/minute. We've set up
a once-a-day dialup connection to fetch our email, for now. We're looking
for ways to bring an ISP to Spitak.
Insuring continuity is the other
great challenge we see ahead: presently, all our teaching staff except
one come from Yerevan, and we are actively seeking ways to develop local
skills to help us teach in the future, and to eventually take over the
teaching altogether.
Winter Camp for College Students
We are intending to run an informal camp at the SpiTux
lab during the winter break, bringing a few college students from Yerevan
down to Spitak, and giving them a chance to teach at the lab.
We see this as an opportunity for both the college students and the Spitak
youths: the college students will get a chance to do public service (as
well as some serious teaching!) whereas the kids will benefit from seeing
new faces, and learning new things. The camp will allow us to offer intensive
courses in Computer Graphics and Computer Sound. We advocate division of
labor, and inviting professionals to teach subjects that are within their
domain of expertise.
Computer Classes During Summer Camp
Farther into the future, we are hoping
that during the HUJ (stands for: Armenian Student Brigades) student camp
to be held in the Italian Village next summer, there will be camp members
who will come to Spitak knowing about our lab, and wanting to contribute
something to the project. Quite a few of the HUJ volunteers come from Western
Europe, and Linux is standing big and strong there.
The Tux in SpiTux
Our interest in using Linux is that it's
a great operating system, it's free, and open source. Which means staying
away from pirated software, and being able to use (and improve!) the Linux
Armenian language support. The advantages of Linux explain its many educational
and commercial uses in the West. We're hoping to engage the Open Source
community in our activities. We are starting a group for Armenianization
of the Linux desktop environments. We are contacting the OSS and Linux
in Education newsgroups and funds, looking to generate interest in SpiTux,
and ways to broaden the project.
Your Feedback
This is what we're up to. Let us know what
you think! There are many ways to help, and last but not least, please
mention us to your friends - perhaps one of them would like to collaborate
with us!
The SpiTux Project
Shogher Youth Center
1, Shvetsarakan
Spitak, Armenia
Tel. (055) 23791
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