[Rwanda-learningteam] June 25 meeting minutes

[Julia Reynolds]

Hello All,

Thanks so much for sending these notes Melissa. It is good to learn
some of what is happening there. Hope everyone is well. I have been
thinking a bit about how to diminish our role some and how to more
greatly empower the community receiving laptops in hope to create more
sustainability at the school-level. Here are some of my thoughts.
Thanks!

1) Set up Parent Teacher Associations (PTA) with specific focus on the
laptops. This way the accountability falls not to us, but to the
parent’s whose children are in the school, parents, who have direct
stake in the outcome of the program, vs. general community. They can
meet to assess which teachers are using the laptops, how they are
using, address problems in the school, etc. Things that we are
currently doing. Instead empower parents to take charge of the child’s
education, which would obviously benefit the school in other ways too.
Schools, such as Kagugu, already currently have a strong PTA. It would
be a good place to start such an initiative, but it would also be good
for the Headmaster/mistresses from the 150 schools to bring back this
idea as it would be much easier for them to facilitate then a general
call to the community. The idea being that the parents once empowered
and having stake in the project would then spread the ideas to their
communities.

2) It may be good for each school to leave the general training with a
goal for their respective schools. We can speak with them about what
are attainable goals, but this way they know something they are
working towards and can aspire for that vs. what has happened at
current schools, where they are unaware of their own goals for the
laptops and have no timeline or way to check their progress.
Example: Our goal by the month of December is for every teacher to
have used the laptop in one lesson plan per week, etc.

3) Lastly, just as with parents, teachers could also have more stake
and a more empowered role in the program. This could start by
providing teachers who will come to the training with titles and
specific roles, or each school could organize their teachers to focus
on various aspects of the project. For example, one group of four
teachers could be in charge of creating lesson plans for all teachers
to use, one group could be in charge of learning new ways to use the
laptop, one group could work on the assessment of student’s learning
with the laptops.


On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 6:21 AM, Melissa Henriquez <melissa at laptop.org> wrote:
>
>
> --
> Melissa Henriquez
> One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)
> melissa at laptop.org
> +250782160561
> www.laptop.org
>
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-- 
Julia Reynolds
One Laptop per Child (OLPC)
julia at laptop.org
+0750552766
juliarwanda.wordpress.com
www.laptop.org