Peru: A Collaborative Endeavor

SOE faculty and students took the exciting opportunity to join with Community Connections in an international setting this past May, participating in a service learning experience in Tacna, Peru.

Community Connections is a technology- based service-learning program developed by the Computer Science department at USF.

Since 2004, Community Connections has worked with teachers, students, and parents in Tacna, Peru to help bridge the digital divide. While the project was initially a venture undertaken by only Computer Science faculty and students, it has expanded in the past two years to incorporate School of Performing Arts (Dance Program) and School of Education (SOE) faculty and students.

The SOE team included three SOE faculty, Dr. Christopher Thomas from Leadership Studies, and Drs. Xornam Apedoe, and Yvonne Bui from Learning and Instruction. Graduate students from each department also participated in the experience, including Angela Mucci and Emily Hughes, Master's students in the Organization and Leadership program, and David Stephens and Mary Howland, Doctoral students in the Learning & Instruction program. 

The experience involved traveling to Tacna, Peru to learn from and work with the students and faculty of Colegio Miguel Pro, a co-ed K-11 Jesuit school located in the Habitat for Humanity project in Tacna.

Miguel Pro is dependent on state funding and private donations for support. Although it is a private school, most of the families who send their children there have little or no disposable income. For more information about the school, you can visit Miguel Pro’s website at: http://sites.google.com/site/mptacnapractice/mp-home.

Contribution to the Goals of Community Connections

The SOE faculty and students made a unique contribution to the overall goals of the Community Connections program. Their work was primarily focused on the following three areas.

Teacher Professional Development
The SOE team worked with the teachers to help them integrate instructional technology in meaningful ways into their daily teaching practice.

Student Technological Literacy and Voice
Both teachers and students were introduced to video technology using Flip Video Camcorder technology. The students used the video cameras to create short personal documentaries providing a unique view into their daily lives.

Service Learning
The third focus was to assist Colegio Miguel Pro in developing a Service Learning Curriculum. The administrators, teachers, and students at Colegio Miguel Pro, are strong proponents of service learning activities and creating change agents within the school. One of the most rewarding parts of the experience was the collaboration and discussions between USF faculty and students and Miguel Pro faculty and administration about the importance of service learning.

Service is inherent in everything that Miguel Pro does and believes in, but the SOE team was able to help the Miguel Pro faculty and administration understand how to connect service to the educational curricula within their school. One of the many things that the SOE faculty and students learned from the experience was how powerful it can be when a school has a strong focus on service. This sharing of knowledge and work amongst Miguel Pro and USF is what made the experience so meaningful, and one that they hope to continue.

August 2009

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