Yesterday a subsection of the OLPC Learning Team for the Middle East had an exciting meeting with representatives from Shara’a Simsim, the Palestinian branch of Sesame Street.  In the United States, Sesame Street is well-known for its beloved characters like Cookie Monster and Oscar the Grouch, who help prepare young children for school and instill in them a love of learning from the earliest ages. Less well-known, however, is Sesame’s work around the world, including what Sesame Workshop refers to as “Muppet Diplomacy.”  Muppet Diplomacy may sound like a funny phrase, but it refers to the very serious efforts that Sesame dedicates to helping children around the world develop into respectful, contributing members of an increasingly interconnected world.  Building on Sesame’s efforts to promote respect and collaboration across racial lines in the US, international versions also seek to break down children’s perception of the “Other.”  Shara’a Simsim follows in this path, promoting respect for differences. Although the show doesn’t directly address the region’s conflicts, it does aim to provide Palestinian children with positive role models. Producers state that these efforts are particularly important for boys in conflict situations because they often feel the additional weight of social pressure to remain strong and defend their families. Shara’a Simsim has dedicated episodes to helping children cope with fear and to developing positive images of themselves and their communities.

Sesame continues be a leader in producing high quality multimedia learning tools for children.  Panwapa is a recently developed website for children that is functional in five languages. Children can learn basic household vocabulary and the numbers 1-10 in five different languages by playing Hide-and-Seek with Cocoa the Penguin. They can watch videos about children growing up in different countries around the world. The Palestinian Sesame team is working to develop additional interactive content for children in Arabic. OLPC is eager to build upon our relationship with Sesame Street.  We are looking forward to pooling resources and sharing advice so that together we can make the highest quality learning tools available to the children most in need all around the world. Yella bina!

Recently posted by Beth Santos at the end of 10 months at São João school on the West African island of São Tomé e Príncipe on Step Up OLPC:

…São Tomé, man. Something about this country, it was like the XO laptop was made specially for them.

The cabinet should be finished next week. I can’t wait to hear about it. I hope it’s nice.

At the teacher meeting, the teachers also took a second to reflect on the past year. They were amazed, really- just as amazed as I am. They said the kids are so computer literate now, after just one year. Many of them use email regularly. Lots of them are very familiar with the Internet. It’s almost shocking how much progress these kids have made. The teachers say that there is a visible difference between students in the computer class and other students at the school. It’s such a huge difference that it impassions the teachers more and more to get enough for everyone else to use, too.

I would not mind seeing five computer programs at five schools. I would also not mind if we could hire five coordinators for these five schools so that we can start building a little economy…and a country-wide initiative. I told the teachers how proud of them I was. They brought the kids this opportunity and they really did it!

During her time at the São João, Beth and São Tomean computer professor Miguel Afonso da Boa Esperança trained teachers and lead weekly Saturday classes for a group of 100 6th graders.

Setting up the computer classroom, São Tomé, Nov 7, 2009 by Beth Santos