Pwofesè DeGraff resevwa $1 milyon pou kontinye travay lap fè sou Kreyôl

DeGraff awarded $1 million NSF grant to continue linguistics research in Haiti



Michel DeGraff
Photo: Melanie Gonick
Funding will help develop classroom tools to teach science and math in Creole for the first time.
Peter Dizikes

October 3, 2012

MIT linguistics professor Michel DeGraff has received a new grant of $1 million from the National Science Foundation to support his innovative study of the value of native-language instruction in Haiti’s schools.

The funding, to be distributed over five years, will help support DeGraff’s efforts to examine whether Haiti’s students perform better when taught in their native Creole rather than French, the traditional language of instruction in the country.

“This NSF grant is a fantastic and much-awaited opportunity,” DeGraff told MIT News. “It's going to be a big boost to the efforts that we at MIT and our partners in Haiti have launched to help transform higher education in Haiti.”

In awarding the grant, the NSF stated that the project will be “putting knowledge about language structure to work in ways that may raise fundamental new questions for linguistics research.”

The issue of native-language instruction has long been a focus of DeGraff’s work. His scholarly research has traced Creole’s description by Europeans and North Americans as a hybrid, seemingly inferior tongue; DeGraff has assembled evidence showing that Creole’s evolution has followed the same pathways as many Indo-European languages.

Along with this research, DeGraff has helped initiate a project based on Open Education Resources (OER) in order to develop Creole-based active learning tools. The NSF grant will enable OER to create and disseminate those tools in the so-called STEM fields: science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

“Thanks to groundbreaking teamwork among MIT faculty and Vijay Kumar and his team at MIT’s Office of Educational Innovation and Technology, we will now be able to introduce and evaluate innovative active-learning pedagogies in the one language that all Haitians speak,” DeGraff stated, adding: “As far as I know, this is the first initiative ever to introduce online Creole materials for STEM in higher education.”

Among other things, the project will take learning tools created at MIT, such as STAR (Software Tools for Academics and Researchers), and translate them into Creole for biology classes; the initiative has already introduced Haitian instructors to MIT’s TEAL (Technology-Enabled Active Learning) program for physics.

DeGraff’s initiative has organized a series of workshops with Haitian educators, starting in 2010, on making technical education available in Creole, and has been placing materials on its website, http://haiti.mit.edu. A new series of workshops is scheduled to occur in January, covering the use of TEAL, STAR, Mathlets (a mathematics tool), educational games, as well as the topic of assessing the effectiveness of these tools.

“Haitian faculty and students have had too little access to advanced content in science, technology, engineering and mathematics,” DeGraff says.

Saa se yon kokennchenn nouvèl ki pral gen yon boulvèsman lan tout peyi ki pale kreyôl.

Sa pral konsakre lidèchip Kreyôl ayisyen an lan edikasyon Ayiti ak lôt peyi yo.

Mwen ta swete entelektyèl ayisyen yo pran konsyans e gouvènman ayisyen pouse pwogram konsyantizasyon pou tout moun rekonèt valè lang peyi an.

Anpasan,, MIT merite respè paske la p fè sa Leta ayisyen an pa vle fè.

Konpliman pou pwofesè DeGraff. Bravo. Ayibobo.

SA A SE AYIBOBO VRE!
Se pou PWOFESÈ DE GRAFF achte tan lan RADYO ann AYITI pou li sa eksplike sa FÒS ANTI PWOGRÈ yo refize fè.

Fòs sa yo san wont pou yon gwo òganizasyon tankou NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION ap sponsorize ETID konsa alòs ke FRANKOFOU tèt di yo refize tande.

MIL AYIBOBO ANKÒ!

Anpil leson ! anpil kè kontan! Michel se yon nonm ki pa pale anpil men ki aji ak ladrès.

Nan moman misye jwenn kokennchenn bourad sa a, NSF ap viv yon peryod difisil. Toupatou, se limite y ap limite opotinite pou syantifik yo jwenn bourad - kidonk, se pa yon ti nouvèl ki tonbe la a non! se gwo koze!

Se raman nou kapab jwenn yon avantaj konsa kote moun k ap pouse yon pwojè rechèch nan nivo sa a, se anmenm tan yon moun ki enterese nan aspè pratik ak devlopman pwojè a. Se pa "eksperyans" yo pral fè sou sistèm edikasyon Ayisyen an. Se yon opotinite ki ka ede nou ratrape anpil reta.

Kontinye travay zaka! kontinye travay!

Tyeke la a pou plis detay:

http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=1248066

"The focus of this project is on the creation and innovative uses of Open Education Resources (OER) for STEM learning at the post-secondary level with Haitian Creole (Kreyol) as the language of instruction.

As part of their work, the PI and his team are creating a set of Haitian Creole-based, technology-enabled active-learning resources for STEM higher education in Haiti.

Haitian public policy is to teach in French, a distinct disadvantage for the Kreyol-speaking public. In addition, there are few materials, and almost no on-line materials, available in Kreyol that can serve as resources.

Interactive materials and resources created at MIT (STAR; Software Tools for Academics and Researchers) are being translated into Kreyol and embedded within the active-learning framework for learning science and engineering created by and used successfully in large classes at MIT (TEAL; Technology-Enabled Active Learning). Professional development materials for TEAL are being translated into Kreyol as part of the project, and Haitian teachers are learning to use an active-learning approach.

A variety of fundamental research questions are being addressed, pertaining to (i) the effects, impacts, and challenges of creating opportunities to learn in one's mother tongue, especially when it does not already contain relevant vocabulary (ii) the creation and diffusion of scientific and technical vocabulary in languages without technical words, called "language engineering", (iii) technical and socio-technical issues in adapting and incorporating learning technologies into the learning environments of underserved populations".

JAF;
Mèsi ANPIL poutèt ou mete SIT NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION lan ki eksplike ETID sa a .Pòte TEYORIK ak PRATIK li.
NSF eksplike ke RECHÈCH sa a ,se pa AYITI sèlman l ap sèvi non ;se tout kote ki pa pale LANG KOLONYAL yo SOU PLANÈT LAN e ki pa genyen e devlope tèm,ekspresyon SYANTIFIK e y ap ize REZILTA yo lan ""post secondary level),lan INIVÈSITE.

Poutèt sa sèlman ,mwen ta renmen yon lòt gouvènman;paske ENBESIL nou gen lan gouvènman ann AYITI aktyèlman yo pa p a la pòte pou yo benefisye de kokennchenn ETID sa a.
W ap wè de peyi tankou END ,ou byen peyi lan AMERIK DI SID ki gen plis ke mwatye popilasyon yo ki pa pale PANYÒL pa egzanp ap benefisye l e IWONIKMAN se sou LANG KREYÒL nou an ,ke l ap fèt

Ann AYITI gen yon gwoup moun depi yo wè SIPREMASI lang FRANSE an menase yo fè sa AMERIKEN yo rele ""CIRCLE THE WAGON""
Trajedi an ,se yomenm ki an chaj peyi an.
SE PA RANS NON ,SE PAMI PI GRAN SÈVO SOU PLANÈT LAN ,ki pral travay sou PWOJÈ SA A!

Malerèzman Ayiti bezwen devlope politik pou defann enterè Ayiti ak Ayisyen lan tout kwen planèt lan.

Nou pral wè lôt peyi ak lôt pèp pral benefisye jeni ayisyen epi yo pap menm rekonèt sa e bay Ayiti kredi.

Nou deja wè sa lan domèn Politik ( Boliva), Atistik, Mizik, Atizana.

Kounyea gwo peyi ap mete ansanm pou akapare resous anba tè ak petwôl Ayiti.

Si se menm NÈG sa yo ki ap pale lan RADYO oubyen ekri lan JOUNAL AYISYEN yo ;mwen si ke anpil peyi ap ize RECHÈCH sa yo anvan AYISYEN ann AYITI yo aksepte l.
Tankou NSF di l ;travay lan ap fèt ak LANG KREYÒL paske DEGRAFF se youn lan pi gwo ,sinon pa pi gwo espesyalis lan LANG sa a;men y ap itilize l pou tout peyi ki pa pale LANG KOLONYALIS yo.

Yon kont randi VIZIT DEGRAFF ak yon gwoup PWOFESÈ MIT ,ann AYITI ,lan mwa MAS dènye!

http://haiti.mit.edu

Mwen tou di ayibobo pou gwo pye mapou saa ki rele met Desgraff.Pou mwen se moun konsa mwen respekte kom intelektyel tout bon.ke tulututu ki pa ka ekri yon paragraf nan yon teks san yo pa site yon otè franseuuuuu ale o dyab.mwen pap bay yon Desgraff pou 100 manigat.(lol)

ROZO;

Si pou w ta bay 100 MANIGAT pou yon DE GRAFF;se flate ou t ap flate MANIGAT (lol).

Se pa manti non.(lol)