Magdala Interview Report 1

Country Case Study: Haiti

Interview Report
Magdala D. Norton

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Introduction
In the underdeveloped world of Haiti, there is limited access to technology and not every child is
afforded the opportunity to receive an education. In discussing with persons that have both lived in Haiti
and attended schools in Haiti, I have learned that technology use in the educational system in Haiti is
almost nonexistent. Majority of my research led me to readings discussing the complexities of the
education system in Haiti and accounts as to how Haiti has come to be in such despair; I learned more and
more how much in need Haiti was for not only technology integration but for a school system of equality.
(Luzincourt & Gulbrandson, 2010) reports, According to the 200203 education census cited by the
World Bank, only 8 percent of Haitian schools were public, while approximately 92 percent were
privately owned and financed, meaning they were tuition-based in most cases. Because of Haitis extreme
poverty, most schools were unaffordable and therefore inaccessible to the majority of families. In fact,
only 55 percent of children aged six to twelve were enrolled in school, and less than one-third of those
enrolled reached the fifth grade. With an unsupportive government and a country in immense poverty
there is no real focus on technology use in schools. Education in general has many challenges that

must be addressed before technology integration can become a true priority. According to
linguist Michel DeGraff, The language issue is one of the major barriers blocking Haiti. Until
we solve this issue, Haiti cannot move forward as a nation on its much awaited development
path (2011). The fact that students are not being taught in their native language limits their
learning potential because they are concentrating on learning the language and the content being
taught. The language barriers of the students, the lack of teacher training, the inability families to
afford the cost of education, lack of infrastructure, lack of access to the internet, and the
increasing gaps in students age within each class pose great obstacles in the challenge to
integrate technology into education. (Luzincourt & Gulbrandson, 2010) states, Primary education
for all children under the age of fourteen should be free and compulsory. Substantial investement

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is needed in vocational training, as well as in adult education and civic and peace education.
Teacher and technical education should be promoted through campaigns to improve the status of
these professions, incentives to participate in pre-service and in-service programs and financial
and other awards. Curriculum and training options need to reflect the number and types of jobs
that may be available after students graduate, providing the skills necessary to support a modern
economy. The state should work with the private sector in expanding public-private partnerships,
for example in the areas of school construction, scholarships, trainee programs, long-distance
radio programs and internships. Haiti needs to do much more to develop students and teachers
capacities to manage conflict peacefully by making teaching methods more student-centered,
promoting critical thinking and creative problem solving, and reforming curriculum to encourage
tolerance and inclusion. The international community must recognize that long-term security and
development depend on a well-functioning education system. The international community can
help by assisting with the establishment of a clear strategic plan for education, including ways to
monitor and assess reform. The changes are what he believes will bring forth the change in the
education system that Haiti so desperately needs; the necessary changes that he stated also
reflects the views of the author. This report will seek to bring to forth the issues and challenges
that are faced by Haitis education system and explain why technology usage is not at the
forefront of issues to be addressed within Haitis government.
Interview Questions
1. What is your experience with Haitis school system?
Rationale: This question will better help in understanding the view that the interviewee
has of Haitis education system.

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2. Throughout your teaching career have you used technology in the creation of and instructing
of your lesson plans?
Rationale: This question will help answer whether or not this person has any experience
with using technology in his or her instruction.
3. If technology has been used in your teaching, do you believe that it was effective? How so?
Rationale: This question will address how the interviewee feels towards technology usage
in the classroom. If he or she feels negatively towards technology it may be because he or
she is not trained or just do not see the point in using technology. His or her attitude
towards technology in the classroom will be beneficial to future research into the use of
technology in Haitis school system.
4. Do you have any knowledge on initiatives in relation to technology integration in Haitis
schools?
Rationale: This question is important because his or her personal knowledge will help
identify what steps the school system is taking in order to begin integrating technology
into the education system; is there a possibility for progress within Haitis schools.
5. What training have you taken to prepare you to teach in Haitis schools? Is there any
additional training available to keep you certified to teach? Also, in terms of technology
usage, is there training in that area?
Rationale: This question is instrumental in confirming or disputing reports that state that
Haitian teachers are undertrained. It also helps answer whether or not the teaching
students receive in Haitis schools are helping prepare them for competing in our
continuously growing global world.
6. What do you believe are some of the current challenges facing the integration of technology

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in Haitis schools?
Rationale: This question is instrumental in not only identifying current challenges and
issues, but also in determining how progress surrounding technology in education is
perceived from a variety of positions within the education system.
7. Considering the level of global collaboration possible through the integration of technology,
to what level do you think it is being promoted within Haitis schools in relation to practice
and/or policy?
Rationale: This question is instrumental in understanding how South Africans perceive
their use of and progress in educational technology in relation to their global peers. It also
highlights how South Africans are using technology to promote global relationships.
Strategy Used
To attain more information about educational technology in Haiti, I used google scholar
to find articles that speak on the current issues faced by Haitian schools and information on case
studies that were conducted that aimed at integrating technology into Haitian schools. I scoured
the internet for research that discussed the current challenges faced by Haitis education system
and proposed changes that would ultimately lead to change within the system. Once those
articles were found, read and determined instrumental to this case study emails were sent to the
authors of those articles. The author of this case study does not have a social media account other
than Facebook so attempts to communicate with the authors of those scholarly articles were also
made through Facebook, one in particular was Ms. Emma Naslund-Hadley. No responses were
received either through Facebook or email so attentions were then turned to actual teachers and
students in Haiti. In the future, research of the country should be conducted before it is selected
as the country which the case study would be completed on. The access to technology in Haiti is

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truly limited and its used in the school system is an afterthought when compared to the other
more pressing issues such as the inability of families to afford the cost of education.
While awaiting responses from the individuals that I contacted via e-mail, I discovered a
website titled Voices from Haiti. This website contained valuable interviews with relevant
members of the education community in Haiti who spoke on the Education system in Haiti as a
whole; authors of articles placed on this website provided a personal view of Haiti. The plan now
was to use these interviews as a back-up plan should none of the selected interviewees reply to
the emails sent; however, none of the interviews found were useful for purposes of this paper.
Persons Interviewed
Magda Destima (Telephone Interview)
A current teacher in Haiti who teaches in the primary level of schooling at a co-ed
private school named Sainte Therese in Cote-De-Fer, Duval Haiti.
Kerfye Pierre (Telephone Interview)
A current student in Haiti who is in the primary level of her education at an allgirl catholic private school called Soeur de la Sagesse (Sisters of Wisdom) in
Petion-Ville, Port-Au-Prince Haiti.
Additional Interview Sources
Michel DeGraff (Onlne Article accessed on voicesfromhaiti.com)
Findings and Reflections
As a teacher in Haiti, Ms. Destima provided valuable insight into some of the major
concerns surrounding educational technology in Haiti. She provided a perspective into the life of
a teacher in Haiti and the variety of challenges and obstacles that are faced by Haitian teachers.
Ms. Destima stressed how important it was to avoid implementing technology into the school

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system without first training and preparing teachers on this task. From her perspective, it
appeared that Haiti is still not at a point to where technology can be implemented yet alone
teachers being trained on this implementation. Most families cannot afford the cost of tuition so
the thought of having to buy laptops or other technological devices and paying for the cost of the
internet will be burdensome to most families and may also affect the students enrollments. Most
areas do not have the infrastructure to support the internet so even if students were able to attain
laptops or computers they may not have access to the internet.
Her statements support the findings of research on educational technology in Haiti. In the
OLPC Pre-Pilot Evaluation Report (Haiti) Ms. Naslund-Hadley and her co-authors discuss what
challenges they were faced with when implementing the one laptop per child. Some of the
challenges were: low battery life, limited electric outlets for students to charge their laptops, the
language on the laptop was not converted from English to Haitian Creole, low level of teacher
engagement or activity, and students attention span. These challenges did not lessen the proof
that technology integration would be beneficial in Haitian schools. Forty three students were
interviewed after the study was completed and forty percent of those students believed that the
XO laptop would facilitate learning or provide opportunities for the future. Students believed
the XO laptop could be used to facilitate the learning process through the use of tools such as the
Internet and a calculator because, as student # 40 stated, Everything you need is on the laptop.
As noticed from the OLPC study technology can become a part of education in Haiti;
however, whether or not it is effective relies on the training provided to the teachers and a change
from teacher centered instruction to student centered. Studies have shown that child-centered
learning can be at least as effective as teacher-centered instruction, if not more so, particularly
for young children. By improving critical thinking skills, child-centered learning has been found

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to raise academic achievement and improve overall intellectual performance. Particularly in
settings of extreme poverty, where educational materials and resources are scant and teacher
quality is lacking, the implementation of child-centered learning can increase students ability to
think independently and to develop problem-solving skills more rapidly. Technology that is
explicitly child-centered and designed for individual use has the potential of accelerating
educational development in the short term. From Magdas perspective she believes that teacher
training is how the idea of introducing technology into instruction can become a reality.
Speaking with an actual student in Haiti provided another perspective into the education
system in Haiti and helped answer the question as to whether or not students in Haiti would
value being taught through technology. In interviewing Ms. Pierre it was revealed that there is a
major deficit in Haitis education system. She does not visualize ever using technology at the
school she currently attends because the demographic of that area is of extreme poverty. Her
family would be considered middle income according to the economic standards in Haiti but
with a family consisting of four children they cannot always afford to send each child to school;
she actually missed one year of school because her parents only had enough money to send two
of their children to school. Her focus then is not on technology it is on actually being able to
attend and complete school for the year that she is in. Education for her is a gateway out of her
current economic status and she sees the value in education. As for technology, she sees value in
it as well but having not have accessed to it she is unsure as to what value it would add to her
life.
Mr. DeGraff provided an even more in depth looking into the current issues facing Haitis
education system, what areas have been improved and he also shared his experiences with
technology in his own instructions. He believes that Information and communication

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technology [ICT] is also a powerful tool for opening up Haitian students to the world (2011).
He was part of a pilot program hosted at Lekol Kominote Matenwa in La Gonave that was
funded by the U.S National Science Foundation that used computer games in Kreyol, Haitian
Creole, to hone the students math skills. What the kids in this project have been able to achieve
through the use of these games would have been impossible with Frenchfor most students and
teachers in La Gonave, like in the rest of Haiti, French is a remote foreign language. Success in
math requires that students be able to elaborate and communicate their reasoning in a language
that theyre fluent in (2011). In reading his innerview it can be inferred that his platform in
education is that students should be taught in the language that is native to them; to not teach
them in that language places them at a disadvantage in education and ultimately the global world.
Conclusion
While Haiti remains a third world country with a focus on a wider range of issues that
plagues the country there seems to be no hope for relief in the areas in which they need aid. The
privatization of schools in Haiti, the lack of economic advancement available to the citizens, the
lack of infrastructure to support technology usage in both home and school, families not being
able to provide the bare necessities for themselves, and lack of a stable government that can
provide citizens with the resources it needs to sustain are a short list of the current challenges
faced by the small island known as Haiti. Other nations have been focusing their attentions on
the troubles of this island and initiatives have been taking to provide some form of aid to the
struggling nation. Studies, such as the OLPC study, will not truly bring forth change until the
issue of economics is addressed, the high cost of education is addressed, and support from the
Haitian government is available to the citizens. Education/Pacte national/engagement des acteurs
- PACTE NATIONAL POUR UNE DUCATION DE QUALITE, states, recently an agreement,

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titled the national pact for quality education, was made between the Government of the Republic
of Haiti, the educational community, the organized political parties and the sectors of civil
society which agreed to the following commitments: increase and rehabilitate the public offer
school, doubling funding for at least the education, subtract the education system of patronage
and negative political influences, implement the special status of education personnel, promote
training throughout life, develop and improve the quality of technical and vocational education,
regulate and modernising higher education. It appears that Haiti is aware of the challenges faced
by its education system and addressing the areas that must change in order for students to receive
quality education; by improving its education system other issues can too be resolved. The better
educated its citizens are the more they would be able to contribute to the nation and maybe bring
in jobs that would improve the low economic status of majority of Haitian families. Education is
where change must first begin because a more educated populous would better contribute to the
nation.

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References

Luzincourt, K., & Gulbrandson, J. (2010, July 30). Education and Conflict in Haiti. Retrieved 7
October 2015, from http://www.usip.org/publications/education-and-conflict-in-haiti
Michel Degraff. (2011, August 11). Michel DeGraff: Our word is our bond. Retrieved 25 October
2015, from http://www.voicesfromhaiti.com/inner-views/michel-degraff-mit-linguisticsprofessor-our-word-is-our-bond/
Nslund-Hadley, E., Kipp, S., Cruz, J., Ibarrarn, P., & Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2009). OLPC PrePilot Evaluation Report (Haiti).
Nieusma, D. (2004). Alternative design scholarship: working toward appropriate design. Design
Issues, 20(3).