At the end of yesterday’s class, we took some time to explain this weblog to the boys. A key concept of this project has always been to implement twenty-first century (Web 2.0 user based) technology in order to communicate these students’ stories to the wider world. However, due to an absence of Internet at the boy’s school, and slow Internet connection at the girl’s school, we haven’t been able to actually blog with the students. (We have shared the blog with the girl’s school and plan to at least look at the site with them in the near future). We conveyed to the boys that this was a space on which to share their projects with people around the world and that they can add any content that they wish to. With many confused faces turned my way, I remembered seeing one boy trying to access www.gugle.com earlier that day. Even though they were not taught any Internet skills at school, these boys had cleverly found a way to keep up with the times. So I took a shot in the dark. “Have you guys heard of Google?” Their expressions perked up. “Say I go onto Google and I search, ‘boys residential school, Andhra Pradesh,’ I could find this blog!” One boy, Aslam, almost jumped out of his seat. He understood. Another key concept had been conveyed. I asked him to explain to the rest of the class in Urdu (their native language) and slowly smiles followed nods. These boys were really getting it. They are always so excited to share their projects with us, imagine an audience of the entire globe! Remy and I then invited the boys to design their own page for the blog and within minutes they were thinking of a name for their page, and a symbol to represent their group. “Kings,” was decided upon and chalk sketches quickly followed. So stay tuned. The “Kings” are planning their Internet Debut and they are expecting comments from YOU!

All this chatter about the Internet provoked the boys to ask us for our email addresses. I glanced at what we had written on the board, “The Internet Connects People,” as I carefully wrote out my address for boys who had yet to discover the phenomenon of email. But they will be leaving this school in a year, and they will happen upon an Internet Café. And when they do, they will have instructions on how to set up a free email account and they will have at least two people to email! Maybe one or two of them can enter the blogosphere and add content directly to the “King’s” page. In this day in age, an email address can be the most permanent we’ve got. As we encouraged the boys to stay in touch with us through email, and wrote down the school’s mailing address for history’s sake, Kareem, a leader in the class who commands a great deal of respect, looked me in the eye and said, “Do not forget about us,” as his slightly smaller sidekick, Fayaaz, echoed “Stay in touch.”

P.S. Ironically enough, we are still experiencing slow Internet, hence the absence of photographs and slide shows that we have been waiting to share. Welcome to our test of patience, send some here!