Team
We are all MIT undergraduates and are unbelievably excited about the prospect of helping the children most in need this summer.
- Mary Wang ('12): Project Leader
- Owen Derby ('12): Technology Leader
- Maddie Mirzoeff ('12): Teaching Leader
- Janet Li ('12): Community Relations Leader
Basic Info
- Who: Peace Corps and Zach Swank, Environmental Educator
- Where: Bababe, Mauritania Brakna Region
- When: June 20th-August 22nd for some of us, June 20th-August 29th for others
Goal:
Our goal is to give children the tools they need to explore the world and learn independently of the rote memorization they are accustomed to. We want to empower them with the ability to share what they have learned, teaching their peers and parents the new tools they have acquired and express the ideas they come up with.
Project Set Up:
We are working with the Peace Corps [http://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=learn.wherepc.africa.mauritania] [and link to wiki page on Peace Corps in Mauritania] on this initiative. The Peace Corps has been in Mauritania since 1967 and is well received in Bababe. We are also working with Zach Swank, an environmental educator who has worked with the community in Bababe for two years now. He will provide us with an opening into the community, then facilities to store and charge the laptops, and assist us throughout the 10 weeks. Working with him will ensure that the project is well established by the time we leave. He will remain in the area for a year after we leave, ensuring the integration of the XOs into the school curriculum there.
Working with the Peace Corps will ensure sustainability of the project. Our project, if successful, will serve as a pilot for new Peace Corps programs and further involvement in Mauritanian education.
Our deployment will be set up as a summer program for children in Bababe in Maison de Jeunes, a youth center established by the Ministry of Culture. Based on the information from our local contact, there will be more children interested in the program than we can provide for. Thus, we will choose a diverse group of students in the 5th and 6th grades. In a heavily male dominated education system, we will make sure that we provide equal opportunities to both genders.
Working with the Children:
The current school system in Mauritania is not very conducive to children's learning, due in large part to the deep poverty of the country and the consequent lack of resources and tools available for students. Bringing in 100 laptops to a classroom of elementary school children will have inconceivably eye-opening and irreversible effects on how they learn. Allowing each child to learn and explore the XO's one-on-one will give every student the chance to be exposed to innovative technology and utilize the opportunities that come with it. The biggest opportunity is undoubtedly the Internet; the ability for students to access this infinite information database will have astounding effects on their capacity and yearning for knowledge and learning. We will also use the XO's as learning tools in the classrooms, teaching the children how to use the laptops to gain more understanding about each other and their own environment.
The children will learn how to use the XOs through interactive, multi-player games that will show them that they can use the XOs to share information with classmates. They will be encouraged to explore all the features of the laptops and discover for themselves how the laptops work in a supervised setting. Then, they will design projects relating to topics they are interested in. They will work in teams, potentially in collaboration with children participating in our sister deployments in Kaedi, Tdjikja, Kiffa and Kankossa. Using the XOs, they will record what they observe, share the designs and ideas they come up with, and present the results to their peers and parents. We hope that this will foster a collaborative spirit in which students are eager to learn from and teach others.
In addition, we will work with local educational providers and Peace Corps volunteers to design lesson plans for schools that will incorporate the XOs. Keeping the 5th grade public school education curriculum in mind, we will show the children how to take what they have learned and apply it in a new and interesting way. An elementary game they could play: a scavenger hunt for teams of four. [link to the following] There would be a map with the location of the classroom and a destination marked on the board. The first team member would have to type out directions (including distances) in a language they are learning (perhaps English or French) to another child in Chat. The second child would use Record to record oral directions and send the file to the two remaining team members who would follow directions to reach the destination. They would have to use Distance to accomplish the task, measuring the distance between the two XOs to travel the right amount to reach the destination. Other possible ideas include using the XOs to record and share their community history and cultural vibrance. They will be able to express their creativity by writing and sharing stories, artwork, and music.
In short:
In working with children, we hope that they will have positive effects on the community. The beauty of children is that they are often more communicative and willing to share than adults. Their energy and enthusiasm will allow them to be a positive influence in their communities.
Sustainability
The Peace Corps has been involved in Bababe for more than twenty years and is making no plans to leave. By training Bababe volunteers in teaching with the XO's, and passing on these skills to new volunteers, our program should still be flourishing long after we are gone. We will also encourage the children to keep in contact with our team by inviting them to email us photos, videos, stories and artwork and to keep us updated on their lives as they get older. There is even the possibility of setting up pen pals between the Bababe students and a school in the U.S. or the U.K., so that each culture could learn about the other and so that the Bababe children could speak with other kids their age from a different part of the globe.
Our team is also in the process of establishing an official student organization at MIT dedicated to overseeing our program, logistically, financially, and personally, after we return to the U.S. By becoming an official club, we will be able to apply to the MIT Undergraduate Association Finance Board for any funds related to our organization; this board receives around $200k every year to provide funding for student groups. In addition, we will be able to fundraise both on-campus, by holding university-wide events, and off-campus, by soliciting alumni for funds or by soliciting corporate sponsorships. These are all ways in which we will be able to provide financial support after we leave, in order to maintain internet connectivity, power, connections to servers, repairs, and eventual replacement of the laptops. In addition, forming an MIT group will further student interest in our program and in OLPC in general. By forming an organization, we hope to provide support and maintenance for existing programs and also to raise the necessary funds to send new OLPC teams to Africa every summer.
Language and Communication
The local spoken languages in Bababe are Pulaar, a language used in Senegal, Mauritania, Gambia, and western Mali; Hassniya, a dialect of Arabic that is understood by most children because they must learn the Koran at a young age; and French. The children also learn English in school, but at the age of 6-12, they probably only know the basics. For this reason, we will most likely teach the children in French, although we will obviously still use English in English language classes.
Two of our team members can speak some French, but we will still all work with Peace Corps volunteers to make sure that we teach the students most effectively. Some of these volunteers are mentors at the Girls Mentoring Center in Bogue who speak any mixture of English, French, Hassniya, Arabic, and Pulaar. We will familiarize these translators with our curriculum and goals each day before we meet the students, to make sure that the children receive the most accurate instructions.