Waveplace Blog

Great news!! Our pilot in Petite Riviere des Nippes has gained enough funding to continue for five more months to come.

"The laptop program Waveplace has put together has had a very positive effect on the mentors as well as the students involved with the pilot program in Petite Riviere Di Nippes, Haiti," said Jack Davidson, the director of the American Haitian Foundation, our partner organization in Petite Riviere.

"The children enrolled in the program are out performing their peers in all subjects. This year during registration many parents have asked how they could get their children involved with the program. We plan to continue the program for the next five months."

We are so proud of our mentors and students in Petite Riviere. Looks like a good program that will only continue to grow.

Stay posted on our site for more news from Petite Riviere and other locations as Waveplace develops programs throughout Haiti.

Here's a post from the Haiti Partners blog. It tells a short but very touching story about one of the students in our Waveplace program in Darbonne: XO Laptop Helps Healing August 29, 2010 Haiti Partners participated in a pilot with Waveplace and OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) of 200 xo laptops in April and May of this year. Last week I (John Engle) visited with about 20 students from our various partner schools to see how they’re progressing. Respecting one of OLPC’s principles, all students in our partner schools keep the laptops so that they can continue learning. I...

Here's a great video posted by John Engle of Haiti Partners showing some of our Darbonne students in action back in May. A quick note that Waveplace did not *create* Etoys, but we do make training materials for it....

Sometimes we have bad days, that is for sure. But the ratio of good days to bad days is getting better and better. Yesterday we had an amazing class. Today we had an amazing class, too. I'm so proud of these teachers for taking a difficult subject and making the most of it. Explaining animation (Lesson 9) was a little bit difficult for the kids (for the teachers, too). Many thought the only way to animate something was to change the color and watch the drawing automatically color-shift. But I explained to the teachers that if the students didn't actually...

Today is the day the ambassador is coming to visit. I'm dressed up really nice. I arrive at school about 10 minutes before 2pm, and most of the teachers and a solid percentage of the students are already there. I think everyone realizes that today is an important day. I review Lesson 8 with Professora Arlete; she has a few questions that she wants to cover before class starts. And then class begins. Today is the polar opposite of yesterday. The teachers are working together beautiful...their teamwork is like magic. The kids are angels. I swear they're all sitting up...

So I'm walking in town and I get a phone call. It's the Embassy of Taiwan. The ambassador is going to come by tomorrow afternoon to watch our class!!!! This is huge news, as the Embassy of Taiwan is considering funding our laptop program. I mean, this is bigger than huge. This is the culmination of a year of work, and it's all happening tomorrow. About an hour later I'm sitting in the office of the Minister of Education, a really sweet man who sounded really pleased to hear that the laptop program was going well. His office had cancelled...

Before class, all the kids are sitting around with their computers, enjoying some "free time" before we start. It's a computer programmer's dream. The schoolyard is quiet and the teachers and students are all sitting around, on benches, on the floor, under trees, using their laptops. I buy five lollipops from the man selling them across the street. I approach the first group of kids with laptops I see. "Are you guys on the Internet?" I ask. "Yes, Professora." They say. I tell them that we're going to have a contest to see who can find out what the capital...

Hey, today was not so bad! The electrician came by STeP UP. I looked him in the eyes and said, listen, let me take your number and think about this. It seems this idea of using the internet when there's no electricity sounded really good when I thought it'd only cost like $50, but now that it's more like $250 it's seeming a bit like a money pit. I want to be very careful with the money that we spend for this project so I think I'm going to put it on hold until it's something we really need. And...

Called Roberta this morning to confirm our meeting at the Ministry of Education. Good thing I did, because it was cancelled and she appropriately didn't tell me. At STeP UP today I was a little annoyed with her. She thought it would lighten her image to compliment me on my shirt. When that didn't work, she worked a new meeting out with the Ministry- 9:30am on Friday. Then we'll go to the US Embassy shortly after. The electrician came by today (he also stopped by the school to check out the wire hookup). He wants about 5,500,000, or about $280,...

Class doesn't go badly today, woohoo! We did the teacher class first because students are coming to class extremely late (a feature of our summer program, NOT of our regular academic year program) and we don't feel like getting mad at them since it is vacation and all, so we had our teacher class from 2-3:30 and our student class from 3:30-5. At the teacher class we learn Lesson 8, tests. The teachers are picking up things pretty well. They have a problem with listening -- it drives me crazy -- they'll just drift away into their project and then...