Developing Information and Communication Technologies for Education in Haiti
- Nine training sessions of about 3 hours were held over 5 days in March 2016 with 232 participants from secondary schools and teacher training colleges.
- Participants often shared computers because there were not enough for each session of 30 to 40 people.
- Teachers and students named lack of internet connectivity, lack of skilled personnel, lack of digital educational content and inconsistent electricity as daily obstacles.
- Many novice users learned the mouse and keyboard by the end of a session, and the authors concluded students were not receiving sufficient lab time.
- The article cites 67% of children over-aged in 1st grade and 91% by the 6th grade.
The Information and Communication Technologies for Education initiative aims to give young Haitians, young adults and teachers computer familiarity and information literacy in the Hinche province. The team used design science and mixed methods to develop three artifacts: computer on a stick, Internet in a Box (an offline library of about a terabyte, with 5000 hours of Khan Academy videos and 40,000 e-books) and software tutorials in Haitian Creole. Nine training sessions of about 3 hours were held over 5 days in March 2016 with 232 participants from secondary schools and teacher training colleges, with two or three users often sharing one computer.
Participants engaged eagerly and many learned mouse and keyboard use by the end of a session, but qualitative results showed barriers of limited internet connectivity, lack of skilled personnel, lack of digital educational content and inconsistent electricity. The computer on a stick and Internet in a Box could not be deployed in the available environment, and survey analysis was still under way.
How to cite
VA Engage Journal, 2017, Developing Information and Communication Technologies for Education in Haiti, http://scholarship.richmond.edu/vaej/vol5/iss1/3
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- VA Engage Journal