IPRO 335 Visits Haiti to Help Transform the Quality of Education Across the Nation
On January 3, four members of IPRO 335: Developing Technology to Transform Education throughout Haiti traveled to Port-au-Prince to carry out a site-assessment survey of four primary schools in the Lascahobas region. This IPRO partners with the Haitian Ministry of Education to develop the One-Laptop-Per-Child (OLPC) initiative. The IPRO's goal is to design an affordable, sustainable, and replicable solar powering system to enable charging of the laptops at these schools. The group, which included Simon Brauer (3rd year Psych), Jacob Ernst (5th year Arch), Annie Hutches (4th year Arch), Darah Shah (3rd year BME), and Assistant Professor of Political Science Laura Hosman, collected technical data needed to design a solar panel system at each school and spoke with school officials to gauge the interest level and project commitment at each school.
The IPRO students are also partnering with engineering students from the State University in Haiti, whose school was completely demolished after the earthquake, to develop content in French and Creole for the Haitian students to use on their laptops. On the final day, the team also met in Port-au-Prince with the Haitian Minister of Education, who was very positive about this endeavor, and acknowledged the great need for these types of partnering and capacity-building education projects in Haiti.
The team is planning a follow-up visit to deploy their solar solution in May 2011. For more information on IPRO 335 and to donate to the efforts please visit: http://iitempoweringhaiti.org/
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