University of Pennsylvania OLPC

Developing Brighter Futures, The University of Pennsylvania Project in Cameroon

Introduction

In education Cameroon has recently seen a series of successes focused primarily on raising attendance rates in the traditional school system. This however has not alleviated the over 40% poverty rate, the majority of which is focused in rural communities. Due to the failings of the education system and the lack of diversity in vocational training and work opportunities rural flight has endangered the success of both rural and urban communities. The answer to these problems is a community leader in education that focuses primarily on a child-centered learning curriculum. The United Action for Children, in the southwest province, is the answer to these problems. The UAC focuses on a child centered model that encourages children to seek out answers and solve problems for themselves rather than the rote memorization that most schools employ. Through small class sizes of no more than 25 students and individualized teacher attention the UAC schooling model is the future of Cameroon’s education system. This is why it is the perfect vehicle for the OLPC 100 laptop deployment. Despite these successes the UAC is in great need of essential resources to advance their agenda and extend their influence into the remotest rural regions of Cameroon.

The University of Pennsylvania and the United Action for Children Partnership

We are three students from the University of Pennsylvania passionate about the power of child education and energized by the opportunity to deploy these community changing tools into a Cameroon’s educational structure. We have developed a partnership with the United Action for Children to complete the mission of the OLPCorps Africa. With a focus on child centered learning, small classroom sizes and individualized attention we believe that the UAC’s education model is perfect for deployment of 100 laptops. We will develop a new initiative called “Schools on Wheels.” The goal of this project is to reach students that cannot access the resources of UAC’s main site the Jamadianle School in Buea, Cameroon. As three students from the University of Pennsylvania we will organize the facilitation and deployment of 100 XO laptops into the villages of Upper and Lower Bokova. The school populations for these two sites are 97 students between the ages of 6 and 13 years old: 35 students from Upper Bokova and 62 from Lower Bokova. The students will work daily with the XO’s in a series of projects that focus on the partnerships three primary goals: Ownership, Communication and Literacy. Through these three project themes students will become a central influence in their own society.

Team Structure and Deployment Plan

The partnership consists of two teams. The International team is composed of three undergraduate students at the University of Pennsylvania. Samuel Ribnick is the Logistical Lead. Siler Bryan is the Pedagogical Lead. Both have worked in administrative positions in a multi-site tutoring and education program in local West Philadelphia public schools. Brittney Exline is the Technologies Lead. She is a computer science major with knowledge of several programming languages as well as experience working in the financial industry.

The Local team consists of the Senior Management of the UAC. One of the founders and current Director of the United Action for Children, Mr. Orock Thomas Eyong is extremely enthusiastic about our project. In our onsite deployment we will be assisted by a minimum of two teachers as well as the IT staff including the Head of Computer Programming Mr. Oforka Anslem and staff member Njang Raphael.

The deployment schedule will begin in the first week of June when we arrive in Buea. We will spend this time with orientation for teachers, parents and students in our primary community of Upper and Lower Bokova. Mr. Eyong is currently mobilizing students and families to develop this summer program in anticipation of our arrival. Following our return from the retreat in Kigali, we will spend eight weeks implementing an XO project based curriculum using our established wireless internet access (Mr. Eyong has determined that this is feasible for this location) and the connecting resources of the Jamadianle School.

Projects include enhancing the One Child One Chicken program already in place by encouraging children to use their laptops to chart data on their chicken, such as feeding patterns, weight, egg laying, behavior etc. and draw conclusions from categorizing this data, as well as looking up animal care or creating a virtual scrapbook or blog about their chicken, or their lives in general. Children in the village will be encouraged to communicate via their local networks and explore the meaning of community in the context of these connections.

One special project we would be very excited to implement involves establishing connections across the ocean. The Philadelphia Freedom School program brings children in similar age groups together over the summer to enhance literacy and explore African history as well as learning in an engaging and proactive way. We would like to establish an email partnership between the children of this remote part of Cameroon and the children of inner city Philadelphia where the children can interact and learn from each other via this technology.

These are just a few examples of the projects that we will implement together with the children and their laptops, and that will gradually spiral upward into more in depth applications and greater independence. In general our projects will be divided into three parts: Ownership, Communication and Literacy.

Ownership- Ownership ensures total saturation. Laptops will be provided on a 1:1 basis to the students to assist in creative and active exercises already implemented in the Jamadianle School such as the One Child, One Chicken and Tree Program.

Communication- Each day students will connect with children in both their local community of Buea through the Jamadianle School and in Philadelphia. The International Team will partner with the Philadelphia Freedom Schools for this project building both international connections and increasing literacy.

Literacy- The students will complete activities that focus on interacting with each other and their XO laptops to transform the way they build vocabulary, develop their comprehension and express their thoughts on paper. We will use activities and multimedia presentations to diversify the subjects that they study focusing on everything from science to farming to history so that they can develop their own passions and personalized learning experiences through their laptops.

Sustainability and the Future of the Partnership

Throughout the 8 weeks we will be in Cameroon, we hope to bring the educational experience of the children living in this village to a new level where they feel empowered to explore and learn on their own. In this way the presence of the XO in their home will be a continued source of stimulation and fascination. We have no intention of removing all guidance at the end of the summer though, and Schools on Wheels will continue to guide the students with projects throughout the school year as well as encourage students to come up with their own projects that use their laptops. These projects could possibly lead to a presentation at the Jamadianle School itself, or even empower members of the community to come together to support children's education in this village. The IT staff at the Jamadianle school will continue to support the 100 XOs employed in the Bokova villages even while they work with us to expand this program to the many other villages that the School on Wheels program reaches, and on even to the Jamadianle school itself, where the student body of 615 could benefit greatly from the resource of XO laptops.

This summer will serve as the beginning of an exciting next step for the United Action for Children. With the infusion of the XO laptop into this rural site, the UAC can begin to shrink the distance between villages and develop a strong rural regional identity. During the school year the teachers will easily be able to continue their work with these students, while receiving the excellent support of the Jamadianle’s Computer center. This deployment is also easily replicable and, in the future, this partnership will expand our projected successes in the Bokova villages to other remote villages. Each additional laptop integrated will help transform education and build a regional community.

Our Team

Siler Bryan is a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania majoring in International Relations and Modern Middle East Studies. He has extensive background in education with experience teaching ESL classes in his hometown as well as managing the mentoring program at West Philadelphia High School for the organization the Community Schools Student Partnerships, of which he is a member of the Executive Board. He spent the past summer teaching 3rd and 4th graders as part of the Philadelphia Freedom School program, where he had the task of writing innovative curriculum that focused on literacy and Afro-centric history as well as implementing a “teaching through doing” environment that encourages creativity and exploration through a variety of mediums including computers.

Sam Ribnick is a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania majoring in History and Modern Middle East Studies. He has a background in political organization and education policy through his work in Washington with District of Columbia Youth Advisory Council. In Philadelphia he serves on the Executive Board of the Community School Student Partnerships working with students across the West Philadelphia area in grades k-8. He is the Assistant Site Coordinator currently at Alexander Wilson Elementary School.

Brittney Exline is a sophomore majoring in Computer Science. She is the youngest African-American female to ever be accepted to and attend an Ivy League at the age of 15. She has volunteered with children of all ages, most recently tutoring High School students in West Philadelphia. This past summer she worked with a small hedge fund in New York City, helping with selection and analysis of stocks for their portfolio. She has extensive programming knowledge of Java, as well as some experience programming in Python, C, Netlogo, and Matlab.