Friday, March 27, 2009

New Technologies, New Country

This last week, I was in Belize on a World Leadership School trip. Our school sent 14 middle school students, along with myself and two other teachers, to study Climate Change and perform a service project in this tiny Central American country. Our service project was to raise enough money to provide five laptops for a small school in La Democracia, Belize District. According to BTL, Belize's only telecom provider, they will provide free internet service to any school that can prove it has at least five computers. So, that was our aim. Also while we were there, we taught the students how to use the software installed, and completed short video projects. You can view the completed projects and read a semi-daily journal of our experiences on the trip Wiki. My most proud moments:
1. Realizing that the parents were "camped out" in front of the wiki back at home, waiting for our students to blog each night.
2. Listening to our students ruminate on what it will take to make a difference in the climate change phenomenon, and coming to the conclusion, all on their own, that values have to change.
3. Watching Belizean students who have never used computers before jump right in with both feet and take control of the mouse!
4. Hearing the Standard 5 & 6 classroom teacher Mrs. Pech say that her heart was overflowing with gratitude because of what she knows this will bring her students.

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