A National Standard

Our mission: To accelerate digital literacy in Haiti by 1) developing software standards for Haitian classrooms and 2) installing sustainable computer lab models throughout the country.

Why a Standard?

Schools in Haiti face many challenges.  Adding technology to classrooms introduces additional hurdles, including lack of internet, lack of technical support, lack of pedagogical guidance, lack of funds, English only software, lack of power, etc.  Done properly, establishing standards can effectively addresses many of these challenges.  The current situation of multiple disjointed efforts to place computers in classrooms has resulted in a hodgepodge of deployed technologies and an inability to develop a common, shared, community-level technical or pedagogical knowledge base around any one technology.  That is, what is learned in one site cannot be easily transferred to another site.  Also, there is great variability in the quality of what is deployed (Is it deployed in French? English?  Both?  Is there age-appropriate software installed? Which ones?  How easy is it to maintain?  etc.). 

Standars address many of these issues through

• shared technical knowledge: solutions to technical issues can be shared, leading to community-know-how on tehcnical matters.

• shared pedagogical methods: one shcool's clever use of a software package can potentially be shared and used by every other school.

• a software baseline:  all schools using the standard start with a well-stocked, curated, pre-installed, industry-recognized, French language software base.

To be clear, the standard image is a minimum standard.  Each institution can freely augment the standard offering.  Installing ZL standard images is trivial by design.  Restoring a computer to its "new" state takes between 5 and 30 minutes, depending on the image size and can be performed by non-technicians.