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HyperStudio participates in MIT-Haiti Symposium

By Anna van Someren on November 1, 2010

HyperStudio participated in the MIT-Haiti “Best Practices for Reconstruction: Technology-enhanced and Open Education in Haitian Universities” Symposium (October 21-22), which brought Haitian University professors together with MIT faculty, staff and technologists to discuss rebuilding Haiti’s educational infrastructure. Based on HyperStudio’s experience in developing educational projects for language and culture, Executive Director Kurt Fendt shared a presentation describing an approach which would engage Haitian students in building identity awareness, linguistic, cultural, and global skills. Given the linguistic situation in Haiti – 90% of Haitians are native speakers of Kreyòl for whom French, as the official language in education, is inaccessible – these skills would be developed through two core educational components: documenting heritage by working closely with planned oral history projects in Haiti and strengthening cultural awareness by developing cross-cultural curricula and integrating them in a variety of university courses.

Links of interest:
Read MIT News article “Build Back Better” on the Haiti Symposium.

Michel DeGraff’s Op-Ed “Language Barrier” in the Boston Globe, June 16, 2010.

Browse photos of the Haiti Symposium.

Photo credit: Jeff Merriman.

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