July 14, 2003
Siby Hiking and Field Test
A beautiful village surrounded by a wall of red stoned mesas, Siby greets visitors at its tourist information center where a tax of 1000CFA per person is requested. Siby is my favorite place in Mali so far. Before we even saw the village, we were mystified by the surroudning greenery and a distant waterfall in the cliffs. There we hired a guide to take us to the great arch. He not only took us to it; he had us climb all the way to the top where we could see for miles around. Small kids followed us, barefooted and with torn clothes. With our hiking gear we appeared over-prepared.
In the village we tested the Kinkajou.
We gave a demonstration to Sekoubu Craovč, teacher of French, History and geography; Sekou Sidibč, director of second cycle de Siby; and Lssa Souleymone CAMARA Directeur Siby i cycle B
The school in Siby serves a village of 20,000 people, and 769 students from the 1-6th grades. There are 156 students in grade 5 alone. It costs 6000 CFA per book currently. Each student has a French book, a mathematics book and a work book. Many of the books are falling out of their bindings and the covers are worn.
The response to the Kinkajou was very positive. The younger teacher saw many potential uses for it. He wanted to use it to post problems at night where the students could write it down and study it and go over the solution the next day. The classroom could be made dark enough to see the Kinkajou during the day.
They like the ease of operation and think that they could put all the 5th year books on it to cut costs. They would like the flexibility to change the material to suit their needs.
One teacher commented on the size of the images, particularly in reference to adult education. He likes how large the image is because many adults are going blind and it is difficult for them to read out of books.
The ministry of education gave them a teaching tool before. It is a wooden box with a roll of paper with images. It has a handle to turn the images. We are very intersted in seeing this device.
