Connecting cultures and computers

Several Penn students traveled to Ecuador this summer to open a school's doors to the Internet. Amin, along with 14 students and teachers from the University and the School District of Philadelphia, traveled to Quito, Ecuador, through a program that allowed them to spend two weeks setting up the country's first Internet-equipped computer laboratory in a public elementary school and train students and teachers there to maintain the facilities. The program, called "Formando un Puente" -- Spanish for "Building a Bridge" -- is a partnership between the School of Engineering and Applied Science and the School District of Philadelphia Service Learning Initiative's Urban Technology Project, and was created to promote technology-based educational opportunities for low-income households and businesses. The project is a division of the Penn Science and Technology Extension Program, known as PennSTEP. According to Amin, the group began its trip with considerable skepticism. "We knew it was going to be tough and we didn't know what we would be facing," he said, noting that it was unclear whether there would be sufficient electricity in the lab or even if the lab would be completed before the group's arrival. One major obstacle was an embargo on transporting boxes on passenger flights from Miami to South America. The group, which was traveling on that route, contacted cargo planes and airline representatives, and about half an hour before the flight to Quito, the airline allowed the team to transport their 10 central processing unit boxes, 10 monitor boxes and 13 personal boxes to Quito. In spite of some unforeseen difficulties, the computer lab opened its doors at the end of the team's first week in Quito. "It was the first time we saw the second- and third-graders on the computers," said Pranav Gupta, an Engineering and Wharton sophomore. "It was amazing to see that they were captivated by the computers," Gupta added. "We knew they would not be able to do that if the project hadn't happened." In Quito, the group lived with the families of the students and teachers at the school and met with the city's mayor and director of education. They also painted a mural that depicted how the group bridged the technological gap between students from the U.S. and Ecuador. "I learned so much about the culture," Engineering and Wharton sophomore Arti Kalidas said. "The parents only spoke Spanish, so I had to speak Spanish," Kalidas added. "I ate their traditional food and joked around with the kids? and went to Mass. It's not all that different [from our culture]. "It's the little things that make people different," he noted. Joseph Sun, the Engineering School's director of academic affairs, added, "Our students' valuable experience that was acquired through the Puente project? will serve as a model in planning, designing and building computer labs for other community-based organizations and schools." He said the Puente group has tentative plans to replicate the Puente model in a West African country next summer. Most of the funding for this summer's project came from a "Phennd" grant, which is a local gift given to partnerships between universities and K-12 schools. And 3Com -- a national informational technology company -- donated a modem and network interface card, which together enabled the computers to be served by a single Internet connection. An Ecuador-based Internet service provider called Satnet is providing the school with free, unlimited Internet access. According to UrbanTech Director Edison Freire, a local Philadelphia teacher, Satnet's contribution is significant. Internet access costs approximately $2 per hour and $400 per year, while the average household income in Ecuador is less than $1,000. "The impact of the computer lab has national implications for Ecuador and also for how Penn develops projects for the community in collaboration with the School District of Philadelphia," Freire said. Freire added that he hopes the project has made the public school -- Escuela Fiscal Zoila Ugarte de Landivar -- an example for other schools in Quito and a training school for teachers. He also said he would like to see the program serve as a stepping stone for similar educational initiatives between the University and the local schools. And Kenneth Holdsman, director of service learning for the School District of Philadelphia, noted, "It's a partnership that has very mutual benefits for the Philadelphia public school students and the University students."