In early October, three schools and their communities in the Retalhuleu district of Guatemala celebrated the delivery of new computer equipment and the beginning of two years of training to bring the wealth of information and educational resources available on the internet to their classrooms. Teachers in each of these schools, Escuela Recuerdo de Perez, Escuela San Jose and Escuela Sector Aguilar, will learn to use the equipment and to access the internet to harness the resources there (“Think of being able to access the information in all the libraries of the world”) to dramatically enrich classroom instruction in each of their schools.
This enhancement, beyond the limits of teacher lectures, whiteboard exercises and well-worn textbooks, will enable teachers and their school communities to improve students’ motivation to learn and will support greater student achievement. Internet sourced materials on a wide range of subjects, math, social studies, language, music, to name a few, have been implemented in the curriculum at prior schools participating in the TINFA program and we expect much success for the three new schools as well.
The training program, equipment and internet access are being delivered by TINFA and are made possible by a grant from participating Rotary clubs, University Sunrise Rotary, Mill Creek Rotary, University District Rotary and UW Rotaract (Seattle). The clubs’ contributions were multiplied by matching funds from Rotary District 5030 and the Rotary International Foundation, bringing the total to $53,000, . The effort was assisted by Club Rotario Guatemala del Este.
