Joseph Gentsch to Join LEP as New CIO
The past few months have brought many positive developments for The Literate Earth Project, including our partnership with Lukwesa Morin and our collaboration with the Raspberry Pi Foundation. We are also pleased to announce that our board member Joe Gentsch will be assuming the role of our new Chief Information Officer. We wanted to hear from Joe what he’s focused on for 2021, so we asked him about the Raspberry Pi, coding, and the importance of digital literacy.
Joe, LEP is thrilled you’ve accepted this new position—tell us about your previous involvement with LEP and what you'll now be doing as CIO.
I’ve been involved with LEP almost since its inception. I remember when CEO Jeff Fonda came back from his first trip to Uganda in 2009 and, inspired by what he saw, began laying the groundwork for the organization. Since that first trip 16 libraries have been established, fostering education and a love of reading in over 8,000 students.
After being loosely involved in the early days, from 2015-2017 I served as Chief Financial Officer. Critically, in 2016 I traveled to Uganda to participate in several library openings. Experiencing a library opening first-hand made me appreciate LEP’s work on an unexpectedly deeper level. I will never forget seeing the children’s faces, lit up with grins of excitement as they eagerly pulled books off their shelves. Much like Jeff after his first trip, I left Uganda feeling inspired and motivated to do more.
Later that year I helped organize a charity 5K in New York called the ‘Let’s Get Literate 5K’—exceeding expectations, the inaugural race brought out 100+ runners and raised $3,000. Until now I’ve remained an advisory board member, weighing in on strategic decisions, but our recent partnership with the Raspberry Pi Foundation presented an ideal opportunity for me to assume more responsibility. Simply put, my aim now is to develop a comprehensive digital literacy plan, in an effort to integrate access to technology into all our past and future libraries.
Tell us a little bit about this phrase 'digital literacy’—what is it and what are the potential benefits of it for our students?
A quick Google search of the term ‘digital literacy’ provides the following definition: “An individual's ability to find, evaluate, and compose clear information through writing and other media on various digital platforms.” Essentially, if being literate means knowing how to consume and employ a language, being digitally literate means knowing how to navigate and make use of digital ‘languages’ such as the internet. Very few students we work with have internet access, the cost of which is prohibitively high for consumers in Uganda. This limits students in two ways: one, they can’t learn how to use the internet as an educational tool, and two, they’re only able to research topics with representation within their library. The goal is to help students gain familiarity with using computers and the internet as educational resources. We believe this skill could be instrumental to our students as they advance academically.
Tell us a little bit more about the Raspberry Pi itself—apart from helping with digital literacy, what exactly does it provide students?
A Raspberry Pi is essentially a stripped-down digital processor that fits in the palm of your hand. Throw in a monitor, mouse, and keyboard, and you’ve got yourself a basic working computer. The process of configuring a Raspberry Pi involves downloading Kiwix (a free, open source, offline web browser) and an offline version of Wikipedia onto the device using an SD card. Raspberry Pi’s allow us to enter remote areas without a Wi-Fi connection, and still have the search functionality of Wikipedia. It amazes me that the entire digital Wikipedia library can fit into an SD drive the size of a thumbnail!
Significantly, Raspberry Pi’s can also be configured to run coding programs. We are looking into setting up beginner coding classes and exercises for our students, with programs like Scratch and Python. Programming is becoming an increasingly valued skill, and another avenue of opportunity for students. With this added component of our mission we are introducing students not only to a new hobby, but potentially to a new array of career options. I am proud and humbled to play a part in these students’ paths toward digital literacy, and am looking forward to helping carry out LEP’s mission as our new CIO.