I guess I should talk about work a little, that is why we are in Ma'adi. Ok the name of the school is Cairo American College as you probably already know. No it is not a college and no it is not all Americans, but yes it is in Cairo. I am working in the Elementary School (ES) which is comprised of PreK to 5th graders, there are 500+students, 50% US, the rest are from over 70 different nations. There are several buildings that make up the school and they are all over the campus. I am located in the 3/4 building.
I am responsible for ALL of the technology aspects of the ES that comprises: training staff, supervising 2 TAs, running the servers, curriculum implementation/development/assessment, managing 350 computers, budget, blah, blah, blah. Not quite the job description they gave me in the interview.
So week one has been crazy. I received all of the technology order from last year in my office that is 5 times the size of my old one, with a window looking outside not into Ralphies. Although I do miss his antics. The school is replacing the computer labs using a trickle effect. So I have 3 labs: Lab 1 new G5 Intel Macs, old one going to lab 2 and so forth down the line to get more computers in the classrooms. They do "image/clone" here at the ES but it takes over an hour and a half. I streamlined that down to 8 minutes. They love me! or they hate me I cannot quite tell yet. I am making a lot of changes that I believe are for the better.
Private schools do things very differently. Every team has an aide that does all the little things in the classrooms: hanging bulletin boards, sharpening pencils, labeling supplies, inventory, etc... There is Zaki who does all the photocopying-you are actually not allowed to do this yourself. They provide all of the camera film you want and pay to develop it. Students receive all of their school supplies from the school all year long, there are soft tissues galore! Oh I can go on.....but I won't.
The campus is very lush and has flowering trees, shrubs and plants everywhere. It is amazing considering they have no rainfall to speak of. There is a landscaping division of maintenance that keeps the place pristine. Cairo is a photographers dream. I unfortunately formatted my camera and lost a great deal of pictures that I took on my way to work. Luckily I can go take them again. Not much changes from day to day. Here are a few of the flowers on campus.
Updates coming again soon!
