BlackBerry increases support for the Haiti Digital Mentoring Project

This week I received a shipment of another 100 smartphones from BlackBerry for the Digital Mentoring Project in Haiti. This increases the number of smartphones and tablet computeres that BlackBerry has donated to 150+. It is an incredible display of support for the work we are doing to connect school principals in Haiti in a digital professional learning community.

Here is an overview of the project:

1. Original group of 10 school administrators (2011-2013) who served as our testing group. The results of the research project that accompanied this pilot project are forthcoming this spring in two international journal publications and a book chapter.

2. Scaling up from the pilot project to include:

a) 20 BBs for school administrators from a private school system with representatives in each region of the country (research: assessing use in a school system)
b) 30 BBs for teachers and administrators from a school in a small community (research: assessing use to connect staff within one school in a rural community)
c) 10 tablets for student use in same school as b (research: assessing use by students and teachers in classroom settings)
d) 20 BBs for lead teachers from a teaching association with teachers from different parts of the country (research: assessing use to support teacher professional development)
e) 10 BBs for administrators and support staff in a large school in a city (research: assessing use to connect administrative staff in a large, urban school)
f) 10 tablets for student use in same school as e (research: assessing use by students and teachers in classroom settings)
g) 30 BBs for Ministry of National Education regional staff and/or school principals (research: assessing use to connect principals to support leadership professional development)
h) 10 BBs for a university senior management team (research: assessing how mobile learning can be facilitated in a university setting in Haiti)

There are a lot of projects on-going and it is exciting to see the project scaling up in this way!