Harlem Children’s Zone Netbook Project

Virtue Foundation Donates Netbooks to Create Liberated Learning Lab For K-3 students at Harlem Children’s Zone’s Promise Academy

In keeping with the Foundation’s goals to provide opportunities for children to have access to a 21st Century education, the donated Netbooks will be utilized to launch the creation of a mobile Liberated Learning Lab for Promise Academy 1 students K-3 and support its Intervention Plan.

“Technology is the great equalizer of our time that can level the playing field, and bring children tangible skills and real opportunities in the future that will enable them to reach their full potential.” said Dr. Joseph Salim, Executive Director of Virtue Foundation. The winning proposal from HCZ promises an innovative way to integrate state of the art technology in the students’ daily learning environment.

In the new Liberated Learning Lab, designed for K-3 students, the netbook donation will empower lab participants to have access to the latest cloud computing based resources designed for early education, including easy access to web-based programs that provide leveled special reading and math instruction. Lab participants will also gain access to an increasingly large number of online educational resources that permit collaboration, information sharing, and the ability display work to their peers as well as the outside community.

The Promise Academy’s Intervention Plan enables students of varying abilities and learning levels to collaborate in small teams to accelerate learning. Within this Plan, the Netbooks will allow students to utilize a common technology platform to work together more closely on collaborative projects designed to enhance learning interactions.

“The Netbooks from the Virtue Foundation will play an important role in advancing our school-wide instructional technology endeavors. I am especially excited to see how our intervention staff will use the Netbooks to tap into the web-based instructional resources, and the many avenues to display and celebrate student progress. The idea is to provide tailored instruction to support our low level learners and challenge our most advanced, so that we can achieve our goal of success for all students both now and in the future.” Tony White, Promise Academy I Elementary School Principal.

The Harlem Children’s Zone Promise Academy I project is a first step towards duplicating in New York, the Virtue Foundation Louisiana Education Initiative, the home of Louisiana’s first all Digital Academy, that was launched in October 2005.

For decades, Central Harlem has been torn apart by crime and poverty, but the Harlem Children’s Zone® is helping to change the odds for 17,000 children and adults in this community. HCZ is a groundbreaking non-profit that is transforming Central Harlem by eliminating the barriers to children’s success. It has created an interconnected network of education and social service programs that support children from birth through college, as well as strengthening the families and community around the children. In the Children’s Zone®, children are succeeding in unprecedented numbers, closing the black-white achievement gap and going on to college and the workplace.