OLPCorps Cornell Mauritania

Mission Statement

We are a group of socially conscious, technically inclined students at Cornell University who wish to improve education in Africa. We believe that OLPC and its constructionist, hands-on learning method is the best way to do this.
We are going to use technology for the rest of our lives in whatever profession we choose. Acknowledging this, it is necessary to share a part of what we have been given. All children can succeed if given the right tools. We need to go out and share the technology that has enabled us to learn.
Improving literacy is the best application of this technology.

Who we are

Name	Major	Responsibility
Eli Luxenberg	Information Science '10	Project Lead
James Elkins	Information Science '11	Logistics Lead
Seth Luxenberg	Policy Analysis and Management '08	Community Lead
Alan Garcia	Information Science '09	Technology Lead
Nora Callinan	Biological Sciences '09	Fundraising Lead
Jawwad Asghar	Mechanical Engineering '11	Pedagogical Lead
Billy Podlaski	Biological Sciences '11	Pedagogical Lead
Charles Curwen	Information Science '12	University Liason

When

Summer 2009 - June 20th-August 20th

Where

Tdjikja, Mauritania

<googlemap version="0.9" lat="18.559205" lon="-11.431832" zoom="15"> 18.558205, -11.426863 Tidjikdja, Tagant Location of the Girls Mentoring Center </googlemap>

750 Word Formal Proposal

Introduction to Mauritania Cornell OLPC proposes to introduce laptop computing to Mauritania with the goal of improving literacy rates of young children. We plan to partner with the Peace Corps and the Girls Mentoring Center (GMC) in the rural “city” of Tidjikja.

Mauritania is an Islamic country north of Senegal that borders the Sahara. Mauritania incorporates the border between Black and Arabic Africa, manifested by an intense cultural blend.

Mauritania’s Unique Literacy Problem In Mauritania, school subjects are taught in Arabic or French, rather than the local language. If a student does not have a firm grasp in either language, their performance suffers. To compound the problem, Arabic presents a diglossic situation as described in Mohamed Maamouri's paper. Fusha, Modern Standard Arabic, is the formal written and spoken language, which shares roots with the local dialect, Hassaniya, and can be confusing for students. This impedes language instruction because children cannot connect the words on the page to the words that they are speaking. The overall literacy rate in Mauritania is only 51.2%, compared to 99% in developed countries.

How the XO Laptops Can Help The Cornell OLPC team proposes to emphasize use of the Speak program on the XO as a tool to solidify students’ language skills in Arabic, English and French. Pen-pal programs with speakers in America will be initiated by Cornell OLPC, which will both expose Mauritanian students to different ideas and strengthen their language skills. (See the section below on the instructional program.)

NGO Support The Cornell OLPC project will partner with Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) working in Mauritania. PCVs have been serving communities in Mauritania since 1967. Their mastery of local languages, cultural training, and community based service will provide access and presence within the country. President Clinton’s Education for Development and Democracy Initiative of 2000 allowed Peace Corps to create Girls’ Mentoring Centers (GMCs) to support girls’ education and empowerment. The GMCs provide tutoring to female students, as well as life skills classes in topics such as personal finances, goal setting, arts and crafts, computers, and entrepreneurship. They are comparable to 4H clubs or the YWCA. PCVs work with local mentors to teach children through both the Mauritanian public schools and the GMCs. The city of Tidjikja, in the Tagant region, is one of the poorer, more isolated areas of Mauritania. The GMC in Tidjikja is the site of the proposed Cornell OLPC project deployment.

Cornell OLPC instructional program Research suggests that student learning outside the classroom when integrated with computer technology surpasses that of the traditional classroom. As we see in the U.S., teachers struggle to keep pace with student learning in digital environments (NMC 2009). Students become active learners and producers of knowledge when they are able to “own” their learning environment ([ http://digitallearning.macfound.org/atf/cf/%7B7E45C7E0-A3E0-4B89-AC9C-E807E1B0AE4E%7D/JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDF Jenkins 2007]). Informal education is a perfect space for literacy development that relies on laptop computers to promote student engagement.

A series of inquiry-based learning projects will introduce students to their laptops and help instructors map learning trajectories and objectives. For example, the team is interested in partnering with Electronic Learning Products, Inc, makers of TUNEin To Reading, to support their development of a "sing to read" literacy approach to learning Arabic. We hope to support students to record their own voices in song and transcribe the written words. Sharing these songs and transcriptions across African OLPC projects so that students are contributing to the inquiry projects of other teams is an ideal goal.

In nomadic Tidjikja, citizens return to outlying villages or vacation in the capital city during summer months. However, parents in Tidjikja are committed to their children’s education and will stay if offered this opportunity, according to current PCVs. The Tidjikja GMC will be open during summer 2009 to deploy the Cornell OLPC project, and recruiting 100 students of elementary school age for this program is a reasonable expectation.

Deployment The Cornell OLPC team will load Sugar-OpenMSX onto each computer, so that we can utilize the Arabic educational programs developed for the platform. All team members are technically competent, proficient in programming, with majors in computing-related fields.

Laptops will be shipped to Nouakchott, the capital city of Mauritania and received by the Peace Corps. The Cornell OLPC will transport the computers to Tidjikja by hired taxi. The laptops will be locked in the Tidjikja GMC until the program launch.

Sustainability Twenty-two GMCs exist across Mauritania. Computer labs have been in select Mauritania GMCs since 2005. These labs are maintained by PCVs. A full-time peace corp volunteer is dedicated to the GMC in Tidjikja, the site of the proposed Cornell OLPC project deployment. The Peace Corps and the Tidjikja GMC provide the infrastructure for long range sustainability.

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