DOHA, QATAR – Three Carnegie Mellon Qatar students along with students from the university’s home campus in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, embarked on a two-week journey in Kigali, Rwanda to work with the One Laptop Per Child program.

Computer science student Waleed Khan; information systems student Abhay Valiyaveettil; and business administration student Jimmy Briggs Musili met up with the Pittsburgh students in Kigali, where they spent several hours each day working in partnership with local teachers to develop a two-week summit for elementary school children and design up to six lesson plans per day for a primary school.

The lesson plans used the laptops provided through the One Laptop Per Child organization to teach computer skills in music and video creation and even introductory programming skills. That’s not all they taught the students, though, says Khan.

“The laptops were only one part of the teaching and learning experience. We taught them how to think critically. We talked about non-verbal communication and a lot of teamwork was involved.”

The team used games such as soccer and other ice-breaking activities to develop strong relationships with the schoolchildren that would enhance the learning experience even more. “The experience was amazing,” says Valiyaveettil.

While in Kigali, the Carnegie Mellon students also had the opportunity to meet with one of the founders of One Laptop Per Child, who said that their implementation of one particular program on the laptops was the best he’d ever seen.

The One Laptop per Child Association is a national non-profit organization whose mission is to create educational opportunities for the world’s poorest children. The organization is currently based in the United States and is set up to oversee the creation of an affordable educational devise for use in developing countries.