The Kasiisi Project · Elizabeth Ross, Founder & Director · 64 Linnaean Street · Cambridge MA 01238 · USA · +1.617.493.5775
For news and updates about laptops at Kasiisi, see the Kasiisi Project blog.
In July 2009, Kasiisi Primary School became one of three schools in Uganda to be supplied with 100 OLPC laptops for furtherance of 21st century computer skills among schoolchildren. 
Students Ian Wrangham, Koojo Matthew and Rwabuhinga Francis, pictured at left, were one of 15 college teams in 2009 to win a $10,000 internship from the One Laptop Per Child foundation (OLPC). Groups from 220 colleges competed for internships in countries around the world. This group collectively represented Colorado College in the competition. Both Matthew and Francis are Kasiisi Project scholarship students.
The OLPC foundation, based at MIT in Cambridge MA, supplies third-world students with small, rugged, intuitively usable XO laptop computers to promote more rapid learning and assimilation into the interconnected world community.
Last year's summer internships in Africa were organized and funded by the foundation's OLPCorps Africa Project. The Wrangham-Koojo-Rwabuhinga group - the "Kasiisi OLPC group" - worked with the Africa Project, with a new community based organization (CBO) Kibale Forest Schools and Student Support Project (KFSSSP) based in western Uganda, and with the Kasiisi Project. The group went through OLPC training during June 2009 in Kigale, the capital city of neighboring Rwanda.
The OLPC computers were delivered to Kasiisi School in mid-July 2009. The team, aided capably by Kasiisi Project volunteer Jeff Bittner, trained Kasiisi School teachers and P5 (fourth grade) students during the summer. Training programs will continue through the end of the school year in summer 2010 for the same set of students who were the first to use the computers. 
Thereafter, every second class year coming into P5 will receive laptop training for two years. We are seeking funding to enable all children to receive laptop computer training, not just half of the population.
Watch Jeff Bittner and Koojo Matthew talking about the project in a Great Primate Handshake video on YouTube »
Jeff Bittner attended the OLPC annual meeting at MIT in October 2009. He carried out OLPC training and related work through the end of the March 2010.
Kasiisi School teachers continue to participate in teaching laptop skills and have taken over more of the responsibility as the months have gone by. Musinguzi Moses, Mahendra Richard and Kyota Tom do most of the teaching now. Part of the overall goal is to coordinate computer learning with literacy teaching and learning through the new Kasiisi School lending library, which is also used to house the computers when they are not in use.
Over time, the cost effectiveness of computer teaching will depend strongly on how the cost of electricity is contained and funded. The OLPC group still uses a gasoline-powered generator to recharge the laptops several times a week. This is expensive. We are seeking funding for extending electricity from the nearby main road into the school, and ongoing funding for the electricity itself, which costs about the same per kilowatt-hour as in the US.
Ian Wrangham, Colorado College
Koojo Matthew, Kampala International University
Rwabuhinga Francis, Makerere University, Kampala