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Duane Sharrock

Bringing the world to innovation - MIT News Office - 0 views

  • mentions: a popular TED talk Smith gave in 2006 and Time magazine’s
  • D-Lab, the project aimed to develop creative solutions to problems facing people in the world’s least-affluent countries — and then hoped those residents would embrace the solutions.
  • thanks to a major new U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) grant to D-Lab and MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning, D-Lab’s instructors and researchers will implement this strategy even more broadly — providing greater continuity to projects around the world, says D-Lab founder Amy Smith, a senior lecturer in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering.
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  • Awareness of D-Lab has grown in recent years, thanks in part to some prominent mentions: a popular TED talk Smith gave in 2006 and Time magazine’s selection of her in 2010 as one of the world’s 100 most influential people.
  • The program now employs about 20 people and encompasses 16 courses that reach about 400 students each year. Even though D-Lab does little to publicize its activities, staffers are increasingly hearing that this program was a major reason why participating students chose to attend MIT.
  • with the new USAID support, “we can harness the alumni of IDDS as a kind of an extremely diverse and dispersed design consultancy,”
  • While some students have already managed to turn class projects into ongoing organizations — building better water filters in Africa, bicycle-powered washing machines in Latin America, and wheelchairs in India, for instance — the new funding should enable more such activities, Smith says, by “incubating ventures and training entrepreneurs.”
  • The emphasis has shifted,” Grau Serrat says, “more from designing for poor people to designing with poor people, or even design by poor people.”
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    Another reason some students are applying to MIT. Undergrads are making a difference globally. "the innovative MIT classes and field trips known collectively as D-Lab, the project aimed to develop creative solutions to problems facing people in the world's least-affluent countries - and then hoped those residents would embrace the solutions." "The program now employs about 20 people and encompasses 16 courses that reach about 400 students each year. Even though D-Lab does little to publicize its activities, staffers are increasingly hearing that this program was a major reason why participating students chose to attend MIT." "All of D-Lab's classes assess the needs of people in less-privileged communities around the world, examining innovations in technology, education or communications that might address those needs. The classes then seek ways to spread word of these solutions - and in some cases, to spur the creation of organizations to help disseminate them. Specific projects have focused on improved wheelchairs and prosthetics; water and sanitation systems; and recycling waste to produce useful products, including charcoal fuel made from agricultural waste."
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    "All of D-Lab's classes assess the needs of people in less-privileged communities around the world, examining innovations in technology, education or communications that might address those needs. The classes then seek ways to spread word of these solutions - and in some cases, to spur the creation of organizations to help disseminate them. Specific projects have focused on improved wheelchairs and prosthetics; water and sanitation systems; and recycling waste to produce useful products, including charcoal fuel made from agricultural waste."
Courtney Jablonski

Electronic tablets break down educational barriers in R.I. schools | Rhode Island news ... - 0 views

  • using iPads to write essays, edit videos, practice their multiplication tables and e-mail their homework to teachers
  • revolutionizing the way a handful of Rhode Island schools provide instruction, communicate with students and parents, and evaluate teacher performance.
  • using the iPad to evaluate what teachers are doing in the classroom.
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  • $500 from the school’s operating budget, the iPad is cheaper than a typical laptop, more portable, and, with its touch screen technology, easy to use.
  • Of course, with greater freedom comes greater responsibility. That’s why Trinity has developed a detailed policy, signed by student and parent, which explains how the iPad can be used. For example, the use of social networking sites is prohibited. Students may only access the Internet through a specific application that filters out inappropriate material. And the iPad must never be left unattended.
  • “Technology offers flexibility in scheduling and the ability to work anytime,”
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    Have any of your schools started to use the iPad? In what capacities?
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