Captains Log- Week Two on IBM CSC Assignment

Monday, 11th July

We started the week off doing more interviews with the staff and educators at Fundação Pensamento Digital to gain some insight into how things operate at the centre and how their processes could be streamlined and improved. Our first interview was with Fernanda who is the Pedagogical coordinator at the centre and we spent most of the day talking to her to understand the student courses, curriculum and evaluation. Fernanda also requested myself and Jasmine to give the students a cultural presentation on our countries. So, that's another one for the agenda for next week.

In the evening, the local IBM offices hosted a bbq for the IBM CSCers at one of the local yacht clubs.

Tuesday, 12th July

More interviews with the Digital Education Teachers at the FPD centre. In the evening, we had our weekly team meeting, celebrated Michele D's birthday and did some group activities as part of some research that the Harvard Business School is doing on the success and outcomes of the #ibmcsc program.

Wednesday, 13th July

Found out in the morning that Marta was expecting some visitors to the FPD centre from the Local Government offices. They invited us to sit in on their meeting and listen in. Luckily we had our lovely translator Irina with us and we were able to get the gist of what the meeting was about. One of the Governor's Secretaries personally thanked us and IBM for coming all the way out here and for the work we are doing with FPD. They can see the improvements in the children at the centre since its initiation 1.5 years ago and are really keen to see the outcome of our assignment and its benefits to the centre. They posted an article on theie website about our work.. http://www.stds.rs.gov.br/conteudo.php?cod_conteudo=2494&modo=impressao. We even managed to score an invite to visit their offices next week. 

Thursday, 14th July

Jasmine and myself spent all day holed up working on our deliverables. We have started drafting up documents to put together the "Education Model" that FPD uses at their centre and are working on a strategy to use this as a replicable social technology model to partner with other NGOs as well as to the FPD stakeholders whose main aim is to improve the standards of education in underserved communities in and around Porto Alegre. 

Friday, 15th July

Jas and myself spent some more time on our deliverables and in the afternoon started prepping for our weekend trip to Iguazu falls.

#brazil #brazil10