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Presentation slides of a paper named “Matsiko”: Rwandan children doing curiosities investigation with their laptops. I've coauthored the paper with Silvia Kist and David Cavallo and presented it at Constructionism 2010/Paris.
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“ M a t s i k o ” : R w a n d a n c h i l d r e n d o i n g c u r i o s i t i e s i n v e s t i g a t i o n
w i t h t h e i r l a p t o p sSilvia Kist
Juliano Bittencourt David Cavallo
Rwanda• Highest demographic density in
Africa and no natural resources in quantity to boost the economy
• Vision 2020 - Services in tourism and ICT as engine for economic growth
• Educational system based on rote learning - teachers believe in what they do
• Children still believe in school as a way to get a better life
OLPC project in
• Initiative from the Government as strategy to promote change in the educational system
• Aligned with Vision 2020
• Lots of excitement, but how to grow with quality?
OLPC strategy in
• Cavallo’s Models of Growth - MoG: changing the learning culture inside and outside classrooms
• Focus on developing people
• Working in Micro/Macro strategies
• Instantiating exemplars of laptops and learning
Matsiko• Matsiko = Curiosity
• Investigation of Children’s Curiosities
• One of micro level activities ran at schools in Rwanda
• Implemented 5 times with different groups of children
• Roots in the Learning Project methodology of Prof. Léa Fagundes(Brazil)
Matsiko
• Principles • Kick-off activity
• Each student must make questions on their own
• Students must choose questions to investigate
• The teacher is the guide
• Investigation Process: more than finding the right answer on the Internet
• Build models
Matsiko in Rwanda• “If Egypt is up and the heaven is up too, is
heaven in Egypt?” (Kagugu school, G3),
• “Where does the human come from?” (Nonko school, G1)
• “People use to say that the earth turns around the sun, why don’t we feel it?” (Nonko school, G2)
• “Where does the sun go when it is night?” (Kagugu school, G1),
Children doing an experiment about perspective where the laptop records the globes movement.
Solar system simulation done in Etoys(left) and Rose explaining her work (right)
Final Considerations• Proposals like Matsiko aren’t meant for larger adoption as a
curriculum. They are interventions in the school system
• Matsiko achieved success in changing the mindset of many politicians and managers inside the government, making the discussion to shift from an “ICT project” to an “Education project”
• It served as a laboratory for the development of people in new ways of thinking about teaching and learning
• It influenced and gathered support from school managers
• It provided a powerful learning experience to many children
More informations• E-mail:
• Blogs:
• http://www.gc4ll.org
• http://silviakist.blogspot.com
