[OLPC-SF] IIT class designing solar chargers for Haiti's schools

[Bruce Baikie]

    IIT class designing solar chargers for Haiti's schools

By Hailey Branson-Potts, Tribune reporter

http://bit.ly/hPncmv

April 13, 2011


linois Institute of Technology professor Laura Hosman, foreground right, 
with her students who designed solar-powered chargers for laptops 
donated to elementary schools in Haiti.(Terrence Antonio James, Chicago 
Tribune/April13, 2011)



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Jacob Ernst, an architecture student at the Illinois Institute of 
Technology, won't soon forget the severed power lines he saw in Haiti in 
January.  "Occasionally, you'll see someone actively cutting down a 
power line to take the electricity," Ernst said. "There are a lot of 
problems with people needing electricity, but it's in very short supply."

The electricity shortage in Haiti is the catalyst for a project-based 
class at IIT in which the 11 students are helping design inexpensive, 
solar-powered chargers for donated laptops in Haitian primary schools.

The interdisciplinary class, Developing Technology to Transform 
Education Throughout Haiti, is led by Laura Hosman, an assistant 
professor of political science, who studies the introduction of 
technology in developing nations. It is being taught for the second 
semester through IIT's Interprofessional Projects Program.

In 2008, the Haitian government received a donation of more than 10,000 
laptops from One Laptop Per Child, an international nonprofit that 
distributes small, rugged laptops to poor schoolchildren in developing 
countries. The laptops were given through a One Laptop Per Child 
promotion called Give One, Get One, in which donors could pay $399 for 
two of the low-powered laptops and donate one or both, Hosman said.

But in Haiti, there was a large obstacle to the donations' success: More 
than 90 percent of the country's primary schools do not have 
electricity, which is required for charging the laptops. "There are so 
many issues and problems with bringing pieces of technology into the 
developing world, when it's actually an environment that we are taking 
for granted," Hosman said.

Laptops were distributed in 2009 to some of the few schools that were on 
or near the country's power grid, Guy Serge Pompilus, the Haitian 
Ministry of Education's coordinator of the country's One Laptop Per 
Child project, wrote in an email.

Students had access to the laptops for a few months before the January 
2010 earthquake that devastated the country.  The students were 
"immediately passionate" about the laptops, Pompilus wrote.

"They just started to experiment with the laptops," he wrote, "and they, 
most of the time, outperformed the teacher in mastering the laptops."  
But the earthquake made the schools' electricity sporadic and 
unreliable, Pompilus wrote.

Schools might receive a few hours of electricity each day, but it might 
come in the middle of the night when no one is present, Hosman said.  
The unpredictability has left "thousands of laptops out there that used 
to have a way to charge and no longer do," Hosman said.

One Laptop Per Child's involvement in donations usually ends when the 
laptops get into the recipient countries, said Bruce Baikie, president 
and chief executive officer of Green WiFi, a nonprofit that provides 
solar-powered wireless Internet to developing countries.

"The issues of getting Internet connectivity and power are for the host 
countries to work out," said Baikie, who has been a technical adviser to 
the IIT class.

That's where the IIT project comes in.

Pompilus approached Baikie in 2009 at a One Laptop Per Child conference 
in Rwanda, where they began brainstorming how to use solar power to 
charge the laptops in Haiti. Baikie took the idea to Hosman, who pitched 
the idea for the class to IIT.

The IIT students, working with Baikie, have completed a design for an 
inexpensive system that will use solar panels connected to batteries and 
a charge controller to create a direct-current-only charge for the 
laptop batteries.

"Right now, solar seems to be the most dependable power source from a 
long-life standpoint," Baikie said. "And Haiti has plenty of sunshine."

The systems will be able to last for 15 to 20 years with little 
maintenance, he said.

The IIT group plans to return to Lascahobas, Haiti, in May to install 
solar power systems in two elementary schools that will charge hundreds 
of laptops.

The class is trying to raise $37,000 to fund travel and the 
implementation, Hosman said. So far, it has raised about $6,500.

If the class does not raise enough money, students will continue 
fundraising with the hopes of installing the systems in the fall, Hosman 
said.

Ernst --- who went on a site-assessment trip to Haiti in January --- 
believes in the project because the IIT group will be working with 
Haitians, teaching them how to install and maintain the devices and 
giving lessons on solar energy, he said.

"A lot of the fixes that people are doing are short-term fixes, whereas 
education can be more of a long-term, actually sustainable fix for the 
country," Ernst said. "We're not just going to drop off these solar 
panels and say, 'Here's your electricity; I hope it works for you.'"

The IIT students have partnered with engineering students at the State 
University of Haiti, who are creating French and Creole educational 
content for the laptops.

For Pompilus, it is essential that teachers be trained how to run the 
laptops and have access to relevant content, he wrote.

"We are using the laptops in an environment in which the people rely on 
rote learning," he wrote. "The use of laptops runs against the whole 
culture of schooling and learning. It is a double revolution: the 
technology and the methods."

The sight of classrooms in Haiti in January is what keeps Dhara Shah, a 
biomedical engineering student, invested in the project and often unable 
to "focus on school and focus on other things that don't have to do with 
Haiti," she said

In the Haitian classrooms Shah visited, there were not enough benches, 
tables or materials for the students, she said.

"This is so much more than just a solar project," Shah said. "There are 
all these students out there who aren't as privileged as us. We have 
electricity right now, we have clean water, we have access to 
sanitation, and they don't."

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