January 30, 2014
Verizon Mobile Learning Lab brings student tutors to city high schools
Only a few years ago, Taiwo Adefiyiju ’14 (Providence, R.I.) was a student at Mount Pleasant High School in Providence, preparing to take SATs and hoping to go to college.
Every Wednesday since September, she’s been back at Mount Pleasant helping juniors prepare for their own college entrance exams — and she travels in style, inside the Verizon Wireless Mobile Learning Lab.
The learning lab, a converted school bus painted red, is a mobile classroom filled with technology, including wireless tablets and smartphones, its own generator, wireless connectivity, and individual workstations. Each week it brings PC students to four Providence high schools — Central, Juanita Sanchez, Jorge Alvarez, and Mount Pleasant — to tutor juniors and seniors preparing for their SATs.
“It’s amazing. I love it,” said Adefiyiju, a health policy and management major with a minor in public and community service studies. “Because I graduated from Mount Pleasant High, just giving back makes me feel good.”
Jonathan Gomes, associate director of the Office of Academic Services, said the 15 tutors recruited for the program reflect a variety of majors. They were trained for the one-on-one tutoring and are paid for their work. The partnership between Verizon and the College is one of only three in New England this academic year.
“Verizon Wireless began the program in 2011 as a way to leverage the latest technology to help students prepare for SATs and college courses,” said Verizon spokesman Michael Murphy. “Data has shown that increasing student engagement with mobile learning devices brings improved academic achievement.”
Being with college students also shows them that their dreams can be realized, Adefiyiju said.
“I tell them, ‘Don’t let anybody ever tell you that you can’t go to Mount Pleasant and go to college, because I did it,’” said Adefiyiju. “It helps motivate them.”
