Courtesy of Raleigh
One of our current challenges for the Inspire India Programme is how we keep computers and digital cameras etc charged up in remote areas with very limited electricity. Working in conjunction with Raleigh we will have 30 young people and 5 staff out in Southern India near Mysore. They will be split into 2 groups after their initial training and be involved in building toilets in remote tribal villages. Following this they will have some more specific cultural visits and then take part in 3 trekking projects.
During the time we hope they will have the opportunity to blog about their experiences, they will no doubt already be taking photos and video. We are developing this to support the experience and their reflection as this is an area that worked really well with the group that went to China. Using what we learnt in China we are looking to have a couple of netbooks, a dongle and encourage the group to email a key contact here in the UK who will do the uploading to the blog etc.
As mentioned earlier our challenge is charging the hardware. The Flip cameras will work fine for the video blogs as they run off aa batteries and have USB plugs. So my next task is to look up what is out there that might work……….although perhaps you can point me in the right direction!!!!!
Sometimes when sailing we use small solar panels to power (and recharge) batteries – there are now some that fold quite small and fit into your bag. Worth looking in that direction, I think.
Looking forward to the blogging – are you considering Twitter too? Setting up individual id’s based upon the project – so WSindia1 etc would enable direct feed to the web and the ease to upload photos, audio even moving image. Less opportunity to edit – but more “real”. If concerned, maye staff id’s only.
Thanks for this David. I haven’t yet delved into the realms of Twitter (probably should!) so hadn’t thought about that. I will try and spare some time to look it up. I’ve also got staff who I need to train in order to support the young people first (although some of the YP may know already).
I’ve noticed a few solar panels around so will start looking at those. Any other suggestions welcome!
car chargers & very big batteries is the way to go – also sticking to the same models of whatever you use so that where possible batteries are interchangeable. I also use a device that copies memory cards – its a portable hard disc that you just pop cards in and it reads everything off the disc so even if your other devices break or get stolen you have a backup (without having to rely on power for your laptop) – can’t remember what that device is called but its ancient so there must be better ones available now.
Thanks Mas, I was aiming to go for the same makes of everything which works with what you’ve said and also looking at some portable hard disks to put video and photos on. Ones that read the cards would work well so I’ll add that to the requirements on to the shopping list.