Dear Boston OLPC Community,
What: Class to train adults to train teachers/create content with E-Toys
E-Toys is a childrens’ programming environment used extensively around the world including Haiti with Waveplace.org.
Who: Techies interested in education, Educators interested in technology.
We are working on a project at the Haitian Coalitian and the Clarendon Hill Apartments housing project in Somerville, and we need your help! Read on if you’re a techie, teacher, Haitian translator, or anyone else who’s interested in educational software.
The focus of this class is an educational program called eToys – I’m sure many of you have heard of it. For those of you who haven’t: eToys is a multifaceted program that is currently being used in courses in Haiti on XO laptops. With it, kids can learn basics of programming, animation, and logic, but it’s so much more than that. Waveplace has created an innovative curriculum that extends eToys to virtually every subject…math, science, social studies, even language arts.
Teach Kids in Somerville: Our goal is to run our own eToys classes for children here in Somerville. For the kids of all ethnicities at the Clarendon Hill Apartments, we want to run an eToys course on storytelling that will use a similar curriculum to that being taught in Haiti. We have donated computers for the students to use.
Teach volunteers who will be going to Haiti this Summer: We would also like to run a series of classes for those interested in traveling to Haiti to do their own training – namely adults at CHA and possibly local high school students. That’s where Sprout comes in – we need your help to run these “train the trainer” sessions! These trainers would then bring their knowledge to Haiti to enrich childrens’ education.
Create Curriculum for Haiti: There are a good number of curriculum units available and being used in Haiti with E-Toys, but the need is extensive! Curriculum needs to be written, turned into interactive E-Toys projects, and translated into Haitian Creole. Somerville has a wealth of people with each of these skills. We would like your help bringing them together to provide free educational materials for children in Haiti. All content will be under open licence and will also be available to be translated for use in other countries, and of course here in Somerville!
Learn More about E-Toys and the Existing Curriculum: You can find examples of existing curriculum and students’ projects at an Illinois school here: http://etoysillinois.org or some tutorials from Waveplace here: http://waveplace.com/resources/tutorials/.
We will be running an eToys training class soon for anyone interested in learning more about eToys or working with us and the Haitian Coalitian. You’ll get to learn how to use basic eToys functions, from creating sketches to animating them by using scripts. You can even create your own games – eToys is LOTS of fun! You will also learn more about education work in Haiti through organizations like Waveplace and locally with the Haitian Coalition.
When and Where? Soon and in Somerville! We will be working with interested people to figure that out. Please contact me at redfern.derek@gmail.com or Caroline at caroline@solutiongrove.com if you’re interested.
Thanks for your help!
Derek Redfern/Caroline Meeks
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Caroline Meeks
Solution Grove
Caroline@SolutionGrove.com
SaigonOLPC 
