CAMRIDGE, Mass. -- Fourteen MIT students will be in China for six weeks this summer teaching at nine schools in Beijing, Chengdu, Shanghai, and Xi'an. The China Educational Technology Initiative (CETI) program, sponsored by MIT's International Science and Technology Initiative (MISTI), was created in 1995. The students left on June 6.
The students are:
Reid Andersen, a sophomore from San Mateo, CA;
Lan Chen, a junior from Chicago;
Hesky Fisher, a freshman from Brooklyn, NY;
Krzysztof Gajos, a senior from Gdansk, Poland;
Ruxi Guan, a freshman from East Northport, NY;
Wei Hu, a sophomore from Whitestone, NY;
Sammi Le Truong, a sophomore from Los Angeles, CA;
Bryan Ly, a sophomore from Billerica, MA;
Ryan Miller, a junior from Cedar Rapids, IA;
Ben Walter, a junior from Cambridge, England;
Hoeteck Wee, a freshman from Singapore;
Wesley Wong, a sophomore from Hong Kong;
Xiang Xian, a freshman from Suzhou, China;
Roger Yeh, a freshman from Andover, MA.
Teams in Xi'an, Shanghai, and Beijing will hold the first-ever LEGO robotics competitions in China. Working with a non-profit organization called For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), the teams have developed a curriculum to give Chinese students the chance to build and design robots that meet the challenges presented to them. The generous help and support from FIRST and LEGO Mindstorms has made this event happen.
In Xi'an, MIT students will also use wireless LAN technology to connect their school to the Internet. Proxim, a sponsor of a similar MIT-CETI project in Shanghai two years ago, is again providing the wireless bridge and antennas to implement the plan.
Digital camcorders and laptops provided by Sharp Electronics will be used to document the various projects. One of the Shanghai teams hopes to produce a video documentary to highlight the high education standards and tremendous work ethic of Chinese high school students.
MIT and Chinese students will have a chance to meet students in geographically distant cities over the Internet with video-teleconferencing equipment and software provided by 3Com and Microsoft.
Web and multimedia authoring tools provided by Macromedia and TriWorks will also be used to incorporate animation and interaction into ordinary Web pages.
The students will be posting ongoing journal reports and updating the CETI web site. You can find all of this information at http://web.mit.edu/mit-ceti/www.
