De Boismenu College

I spent the first three days this week over at De Boismenu College.

 

Day One, involving a little backwards and forwards from Two Mile, was focussed on getting a workable accounting system in place. I installed an accouting package that allows them to record their transactions simply and run financial reports. Together with Soloman and Fr John Mitakda, we set up a suitable chart of accounts and entered all the transactions for the year to date, running off the Income Statement, Cash Flow Statement and Balance Sheet for January. I also typed up a brief operating instruction to assist future work. I will need to go back at some point to ensure Soloman is happy with the processes, put a better backup in place, and check whether we have encountered any transactions not catered for.

 

Day Two was spent setting up the computer lab for the new year. All of the computers were heavily infected with computer viruses. Since they have no internet connection they have not been getting virus or operating system updates, however the viruses have been coming in via USB memory sticks that the students use (more on this later). One computer could be recovered, but all the others needed to be re-installed from scratch. We will need to make some arrangement for them to get virus checking updates on disk and install them regularly. I set all the computers up on a local network, with an additional place for laptops to be attached, and the ability for any PC to print to either printer.

 

Day Three I gave a presentation to the students on Communications and Media, followed by another on computers (a topic of great interest to some and not so much to others), and finally I asked them to grab cleaning materials and join me in the computer lab to give it a good clean followed by a practical of how to use the lab. One of the things I emphasised in the computer talk was the risks of virus infection and to keep their USB stick for use on the DBC computer, not to go sharing it on other computers because they will certainly be infected. After lunch I held an introductory computer class for around eight students who had limited (or in a couple of cases nil) exposure to computers. We covered all the basics right through to hands-on using word processing and spreadsheet.

 

Later I spent time with Fr John putting together a college budget for 2011.

 

A photo of the DBC computer lab is attached.

 

Peace,

Sean