Dear Mark Zuckerberg, Congratulations on acquiring OculusRift. I can imagine your enthusiasm on revolutionizing traditional classroom pedagogy. I believe we have one thing in common: sharing unbounded spaces and experiences with the people in our lives. I was excited when you announced earlier in February that Facebook had the resources to help people across the world (to solve bigger and more important problems). I was even more excited on your first appearance at the Barcelona-based event - Mobile World Congress - to talk about bridging the digital divide. Now that SocialEDU has been embarked as a pilot project for students in Rwanda, I believe strongly that the next pilot country ought to be Ghana, being an emerging economy which supports innovation. I agree with what Airtel Africa’s CEO Christian de Faria said about Rwanda being among Africa’s most respected countries for its outstanding development record. That argument is valid. In 2009, my team mates and I had the opportunity to interact with President Paul Kigame about an initiative (One Laptop per Child) very similar to SocialEDU. (He gave massive endorsement for the project) The specific objectives of the project were to: - Develop ability of school pupils to employ computers in performing everyday tasks and solving everyday problems from a very young age; - Enhance pupils’ access to information, as well as to knowledge and learning outside the classroom; - Enhance pupils’ ability to demonstrate problems, give feedback on pupil work and construct assessment materials that are adapted to the individual; - Provide poor children with the same opportunities for learning as wealthy families give to their children I noticed this Smart Kigali program has been well-defined from engineering to delivery. What I havent come across yet is an indicator to monitor sustenance over the programs lifespan. Today, most learning is functional or informational and oriented towards socialization and vocational goals that takes no account of sustainability. There are clear linkages between education, poverty reduction and sustainability. The poor and marginalized are disproportionately more affected by poor environmental and socio-economic conditions. Sustainable development has important political, institutional and capacity implications. If you do agree with me, then I believe it would be honorable for us to work together on kick-starting an effective sustenance model. My team mates would be thrilled to put their skills to great use again. At 1:30pm today on twitter, therell be a chat conference for the Young African Leadership Network. I will certainly do well to hashtag this note as as a contribution for the event and hope this note finds you. I look forward to a response someday somehow. Rita Freudenberg Nia Lewis Nicholas Negroponte Mike Lee Young African Leaders Network
Posted on: Wed, 26 Mar 2014 11:41:49 +0000
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