One learning from Beth Santos' experience in San Tome was the need for teacher training on XO laptop maintenance. As XO's succumbed to the wear and tear of student usage, teachers and students need to know how to fix the laptops. But how to give them the confidence to repair XO laptops on their own?
Beth fixing an XO laptop
Follow Julia's advice on Talking with the teachers about their own training:
Another important theme that was brought up at ALL of the schools was maintenance. Because the core team here (the local team in charge of school support/maintenance, here please find some of the duties and recommendations for a core team: Core Team Basic Tasks) is still small, many of the schools are left with broken laptops that they have no idea how to fix.
The teachers requested that they all, or at least some, have maintenance training so they can fix some of their own laptops. This is a great idea, being that almost all the laptops can be fixed with either a USB key or a screwdriver. If the person reading this is in charge of deployment in a country I suggest that you make sure an in-school teacher maintenance program is developed at the schools where the laptops are being deployed.
To do this, you might want to provide:
- laptops for spare parts (these can be damaged laptops)
- a screw driver to take-apart/replace spare parts
- a USB key containing: the newest software build, individual activities, and the fixsound activity which you can get here: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/FixSound
- Also a maintenance manual, here are some suggestions: Troubleshooting Guide, http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Disassembly
