Ceibal project: One computer per child, Uruguay

Anecdotes of Plan Ceibal in Durazno, Uruguay

2009-01-30T12:19:00.004-02:00

(Translated from Spanish. Original article by Rosamel Ramírez: "Anécdotas del Plan Ceibal en Durazno")

Anecdote #1

The most stunning thing I saw was in the first Expo-Fair of Plan Ceibal at the Independence Square in the city of Durazno.

Touring the stands and talking to other teachers and children of different schools, I arrived at the stand of School #81 of intellectually disabled.

There they were the students with their XO very well cared for. The teacher Laura on the alert, with a lot of dedication, narrated the following.

"This student could never communicate before she had the computer, she didn't vocalize a single phrase... however, using the program Record, taking photographs and shooting videos, almost always with her as a protagonist, I was able to make her family take photos and shoot videos at home, and that she tells me something about that at school.

The same thing we do at school and she talks about that at home.

I'm delighted, I can't believe it, now she pays attention, she participates a little, and even sometimes she tries to make questions.

It is an everyday excercise, with low expectations about her achievements due to her condition, but it is like a miracle what happened to her."

Anecdote #2

In my 6th grade class I had a 14-year-old student that didn't know how to read.

He was very anxious to recibing his laptop.

He had serious behavior and social problems that he was controlling inside the classrom.

When the computers arrived we distributed them and I proposed to write a text in Write.

He had liked very much a play at the school.

He had been moved by and identified with Nacho, one of the characters.

Then he told me:

- Teacher, I want to write about Nacho... but I don't know.

- Come and tell me what you want to write.

He told me orally.

He brought his laptop, entered to Write and wrote everything he proposed himself.

He knew almost all the phonemes and graphemes, but he didn't know how to join them.

- What a beautiful work you did! Now you have to read it to your classmates.

- But I don't know how to read?

- Ah, it doesn't matter, you will know because you did it - I said in a low voice with complicity and a wink.

He read it many times in silence, he passed it to his notebook, he stood in the front and with tears in his eyes, he read the text to the class.

- I know how to read, I know how to read! - he would shout, excited and smiling

For him it was an unforgettable day, he wrote and the read aloud... then he read simple texts written in his classmate's XOs... this is how he started his literacy.

Anecdote #3

After many days using TurtleArt, I proposed my students of 6th grade to draw a parallelogram with its median parallels and to designate every point in it with an upper-case letter.

But...

- How? - they asked - if we can't write here.

- Ah... maybe you can... to the one who makes it I will give a pendrive.

I was almost sure that they wouldn't make it.

That day we had visits from abroad, about Plan Ceibal in the school, and just when the were entering our class, Matías Cantero said:

- I won the pendrive!

Everyone ran to his desk... and the class was a commotion.

I explained briefly to the Inspectors and the Director what was going on, because I was inhibited by so many visits at the same time.

I had planned another thing... but that had to wait for later.

They weren't uncomfortable.

They talked spontaneously with swede and american visitors, thru a translator.

Effectively, Matías won me over.

He drew every letter as a geometric figure of very small dimensions, making computations of p.t and angles, because he couldn't erase anything or else his whole work would be erased.

Very exciting.

We gave him an applause.

At least here I think he was the first to make letters with TurtleArt.

I gave him a pendrive, but I didn't make more bets like this, there wouldn't be a budget to honor them.

By themselves they organized a competition of vocals in TurtleArt in the following days, then consonants, they would put conditions for the measures, the use of Arc...

They would display their work on my desk and they would call as "judges" children from other classes, at random.

There were still prizes but of a lower category, hair clips for girls, keyrings for boys, and so on.

But by themselves they became dettached from material rewards.

On another day they proved the amount of diagonals on a regular polygon with more than 4 sides... and again Matías, that was not outstanding until then, found the generalization with a little help from me by telling him that the amount of vertices is called "n".

He explained it to his classmates.

They arrived at the formula (n-3).n/2.

It took us many weeks.

Anecdote #4

Within the scope of the family it is impressive what the kids make their parents do with the laptop.

They teach them to connect to Internet, to enter and exit correctly from the programs.

Néstor told me that his father, who is a constructor, would search for house models and make plans in TurtleArt to build them later.

Besides that, with the calculator they would make the budget for the materials, among other things.

And the list in Write.

Anecdote #5

In another home... of the Ortega family, the mother studies to teach Introduction to Law, she uses the computer, downloads the subjects from Internet, about Pedagogy, about Freire, she told me, and many more.

Then she would come to our school and we taught her to use the pendrive she had bought with her savings.

She has three children at school.

Teacher Nancy, from 3rd grade B, where one of her daughters studies, teaches very well to use the XO.

Carlos is in my class and he's very enthusiastic about TurtleArt, ESPECIALLY.

He would write his final works in write and print them in a cybercafe, to present them.

He had never touched a computer before.

Anecdote #6

His husband is an artist in leather engraving.

He wants to photogarph his works with Record and make a blog to publicize them.

We arranged to do it in March.

He's very enthusiastic about making his work worldwide.

A wonderful community impact in Uruguay of Plan Ceibal and the whole community.

Who can still remain doubtful about its success?

Questions to Negroponte

2009-01-21T14:43:00.005-02:00

OLPC has changed its priorities drastically, with a very brief statement of its founder, Nicholas Negroponte, which did not clarify many key aspects of this change.

On this basis, in the OLPC-Sur list we produced a set of questions that have been sent to him, and we hope to have the answer soon. Here they go.

About the new priorities:

1. Development of generation 2.0

It appears that the OLPC development team will dedicate themselves to this, is it so?
What efforts will OLPC make to support the XO-1?
Will the XO-2 be developed as an important free software project as the XO-1 was?
For how long is the XO-1 going to be in production?
Is the production of XO-1s at risk if the sales stop? Do you have a plan to sustain the demand for XO-1s in this atmosphere of uncertainty?
Whats your timeframe for having the XO-2 in the market?
In what ways are you planning to involve the community in the development of the XO-2?

2. A no cost connectivity program

What technologies are you aiming at?
What will the first deployments be?
What role will the community have in this project?

3. A million digital books

How does this integrate into the ongoing OLPC project?
What places will be given priority for their distribution?
What technologies will be used for their implementation?
Have you considered having them be sound and music players as well?
What role will the community have in this?

4. Passing on the development of the Sugar Operating System to the community.

In what way will OLPC support the community in this transition?
What concrete plans do you have to help the deployment countries supported by the OLPC software developers who won't be there anymore?
Will OLPC open other options for software platforms in addition to Sugar?
What place will the community have inside OLPC?

About OLPC Latinoamérica

How this separation is gonna be handled? What this spin off mean?
Which communication will remain between OLPC and OLPC Latina?
Which it's gonna be the structure of the desicion making process in OLPC and OLPC Latina?
Which it's gonna be the OLPC's business model?
Is Latinoamerica included in the "Give Many" program?

Ciebal Search Engine

2008-08-13T08:58:00.006-03:00

Originally published by Pablo Flores on Thu, Jul 10th, 2008
Translated by Paul D. Spradling

This search bar gathers information related to Ceibal Plan from over 50 websites. It's great for searching for educational material, technical support, news, historical material and more. I hope you find it useful.

To embed it on another website or blog just copy & paste the following HTML code:


<form action="http://www.google.com/cse" id="cse-search-box">
<div>
<input type="hidden" name="cx" value="006919666904599263899:v8q6iznlepq" />
<input type="hidden" name="ie" value="UTF-8" />
<input type="text" name="q" size="31" />
<input type="submit" name="sa" value="Buscar" />
</div>
</form>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/coop/cse/brand?form=cse-search-box〈=es">
</script>

Book "Ceibal in the society of the 21st century" was published.

2008-07-15T11:49:00.006-03:00

On June th 27th we launched the book “Ceibal in the society of the 21st century - References for parents and educators” (only in spanish, at the moment), of which I had the great pride of being compiler and coordinating the production.

As we say in the introduction:

CEIBAL Plan is a great bet of Uruguay for equity, democratization of knowledge and improving education. According to the schedule, in 2009 it will finish the delivery of portable personal computers to all primary schoolchildren and teachers in the country, while running a process of updating the education system to the reality of the times.
Children are receiving owned computers for use at school, and also in their homes, opening the possibility that its use gets shared within the family. In turn, through a huge technical effort that takes the country at the forefront in terms of connectivity, the CEIBAL Plan is carrying out internet access not only to schools but also households. This will offer to the entire community a new opportunity to learn basic computing, accessing information of interest, and engage in exchanges with other actors and agencies of society.
Within this framework, it becomes more important the effort that the country has been operating to provide services to citizens via the Internet, what is known as "electronic government". This book seeks to generate discussion about the new possibilities for the community and offer some elements for exploiting them.
(...)

The first chapter is an overview of the Plan, developed from the standpoint of the team that is responsible for defining its educational policies. This vision is complemented in Annex 2: "Educational Project".
Chapter 2 seeks to provide a historical perspective of the Plan, its origins, evolution and implications, mainly from the standpoint of social impact that is generating and that can be achieved in future.

The book was produced and printed with the support of UNESCO.

We tried to reach as much people as possible, offering different readings through photographies, illustrations, sockets, etc.

(come on dad, get the laptop that it doesn't byte)

You can download it online here (pdf, in spanish).
You can access more material about the book in www.ceibal.edu.uy/gobiernoelectronico.

Hope to have the chance to translate the material into English soon.

Rising Voices Article

2008-06-26T09:14:00.002-03:00

Nice article written in Rising Voices blog, about some of the last activities we've been doing for developing for the XO: Blogging Since Infancy: Engaging the community to build new media applications for OLPC laptops.

Just as a clarification, I'm not "in charge of distributing One Laptop per Child (OLPC) XO laptops to the hundreds of thousands of Uruguayan child students", I'm just part of a team working on the technological and educative aspects of the project.

Thanks Rezwan!

Laptops in the most disadvantaged areas of Uruguay

2008-06-07T18:41:00.006-03:00

Translated by David Sasaki of Rising Voices. See post in spanish.

If we look at how the next phases of expansion of Plan Ceibal (OLPC in Uruguay), it is apparent that we are about to face some new challenges. The arrival of the plan to the capital, Montevideo, next year will bring a new unprecedented dimension to the project which involves the most marginalized communities in the country. For the first time, the poorest sectors will have a tool in their hands to connect to the information society. The children will bring the computers to their homes, the family will access the internet, and a new segment of the population will be online.

For the first time, those with little voice will have a medium of communication with which to describe their experiences, dreams, and needs from their own perspective, unlike the traditional means of researchers from other sectors of society speaking for them. Blogs, videos and e-mails are just some examples of ways in which this sector of society will be able to express themselves more strongly than ever before in order to show their culture, their way of thinking, their reality.

The same tool will be in the hands of both rich and poor in the country. Children, senior citizens, and the whole spectrum of society will be able to exchange mails, chats and favorite sites, in a Facebook-like manner.

Like never before, the most marginalized communities will have a powerful tool to make transactions and queries with public institutions. They may claim their rights from the government. If they are given the support, they may also use it for training, acquiring positions, and working remotely.

There will also be new means with which to communicate, to convey information of interest, culture, and new forms of entertainment.

Bringing technology to the most excluded classes is already starting in the provinces of Uruguay. Salto, the largest city in Uruguay after Montevideo, is one example. A belt of marginalized communities surround this city, which is currently being flooded by XO laptops in the hands of its children.

Residents of Salto also want to make themselves heard.

There is a new form of communication, which brings us enormous challenges. We could think of it as something dangerous. We could see it as a new opportunity. But we must address the issue seriously, because the parameters which govern public opinion could change. Ceibal is giving growth to the internet for children … and now for the poor. It is an opportunity for social inclusion that, without the attention it thoroughly deserves, could become a new circumstance of exclusion.

Ceibal Jam! Let's develop for th XOs!

2008-05-15T22:38:00.003-03:00

Translated by David Sasaki of Rising Voices in the article Ceibal Jam! An event for the XO. See post in spanish.

The time has arrived to make some new applications for XO laptops. Uruguay is in a privileged position, since our high density of XO laptops gives us a large user base who can use our software. To put it another way, Uruguayan programmers have the double benefit of being able to both provide practical solutions to meet the educational (and other) needs of our country and, at the same time, distribute their applications to the entire world.

To facilitate the exchange, with the support of LATU and the Faculty of Engineering, a gathering called Ceibal Jam! is being organized this weekend for developers interested in programming applications for the XO. Information is constantly being updated on the wiki, where you can register and participate.

The purpose of the meeting is to make initial contact between those interested in developing on the XO platform and to start working on some interesting applications. To do so, we are going to host some introductory talks and workshops, and then organize in small teams focused on specific development goals. In particular, there is an initiative to develop a system to facilitate the creation of blogs from the laptop, which would increase the number of blogs authored in schools throughout the country.

“Jam!” meetings take place throughout much of the first world and consist of gathering people with common interests to work intensively to create something together. Its origin comes from jazz groups, which conducted improvisational “Jam sessions,” usually after a concert. It is a new mdoel in our country, but we hope that is not the last meeting of this kind.

Be sure to attend!

Press: 200,000 More Laptops for the Ceibal Plan

2008-03-20T13:47:00.005-03:00

Published by Pablo Flores , Monday, March 17th, 2008
Translation - Alec McLure

Miguel Brechner, the President of LATU, told "El País" that the government will put out a bid for an additional 200 thousand computers for the Ceibal plan in April. He also observed that these days there are more competitors in the market who offer laptops which are suitable for the program.

Additionally, the freezing problem that affected the computers provided in the Florida department has been resolved. A software problem had shut them down.

"The technical problems which froze the Ceibal laptops have already been resolved. They came from the factory with an error in the software," explained Brechner.

The request for bids had established a requirement for the computers to have a kind of security key which would be activated in case of theft, but the software was accidentally activated on all the machines.

In the next few weeks laptop deliveries will continue in the rest of the schools in Florida, Flores, Durazno, and Colonia (in that order). There are 30,000 laptops to be delivered, and new shipments will arrive in the next few weeks to reach the 100,000 in the original bid.

Meanwhile Nicholas Negroponte, the creator of the OLPC program, announced that he would resign as general manager of OLPC, but will stay on as president of this organization. He has been its main motivator since it was created three years ago.

In a recent Business Week interview, Negroponte said that he would like someone to guide the project. "We shouldn't be in the hardware business, nor in the software business. We should be in the education business.", he stated.

Negroponte doesn't consider himself to be the right person to direct this project and he indicated that he will not be involved in day-to-day management, but rather use his perspective to offer a global vision.

The OLPC board will have a session in Uruguay at the end of the month, coinciding with the Americas Innovation Forum at the Hotel Conrad Punta del Este from March 30 to April 1st - which will be inaugurated with the conference.

En esos días, además, el creador del proyecto de un computador por niño visitará Florida, el primer departamento uruguayo en implementar el Plan Ceibal.

The Value of Creativity

2008-02-03T21:42:00.000-02:00

Originally published by Pablo Flores on Wed, Jan 23rd, 2008
Translated by Paul D. Spradling

Alberto Nieto, Executive Secretary to the National Agency of Investigation and Innovation (ANII), makes some very interesting declarations with respect to the rolls played by Plan Ceibal and the roll of teaching in our country, in an interview with the El Pais newspaper.

“(…) another very important value which we’ve lost is creativity; social creativity must be declared. And in that sense the present educational system in Uruguay, and in any country, has few possibilities of resolving it.

Why?

Because the educational system’s main function, whether we like it or not, is to teach to read, write, add and multiply. If in addition to that you promote creativity, the teacher has to be Mandrake [the magician]. We need to search for tools that will allow students to develop their creativity. The child learns, and simultaneously he’s thinking on his own, developing creativity, inventing things. This is fundamental for the country, we need kids that are accustomed to seeing the world with a creative and entrepreneurial vision. These values are not easy to stimulate through the current educational system. Looking for lateral exits, like Project Ceibal, seems very asserted.”

Nieto’s way of thinking puts the importance of parallel actions that can be realized over Plan Ceibal in evidence; they can act as innovative and creative catalyzers on the Uruguayan society. The Ceibal Plan has the great advantage of opening spaces of participation to institutions and people (while being completely inserted into the current elementary system), which if well used, can generate opportunities for the productive growth that the country needs.

He is later asked in what areas could we innovate in Uruguay.

“The priority today is in the sectors of agro-industrial chains, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, alternate energy, technology in information and communication, touristic complex and natural resources and environment.”

We can think of innovative projects that take advantage of Plan Ceibal’s potential and favor these areas. For example, how about capacitating producers on the best seeds they can plant, the best work tools, give them fresh information on the market’s prices, provide them the opportunity of connecting between themselves to make common actions…? The possibilities are there, the conditions to make use of them are also there. An example is the recent agreement UNESCO made to perform a production that will teach people to take advantage of the possibilities in the use of the laptops to access electronic governmental benefits.

It’s all a matter of not saying with arms crossed, use imagination and go. It’s a lot more productive than waiting for the solutions to our problems to come from the outside.

Interview with El Espectador

2008-02-03T12:10:00.000-02:00

Originally Published by Pablo Flores on Fri, Jan 18th, 2008
Translated by Paul D. Spradling

I [Pablo Flores] was interviewed yesterday on El Espectador radio by Diego Zaz and Marcela Moretti for the Asuntos Pendientes (Pending Subjects) show. Being the good, integrated in the information society people that they are, they uploaded it to the Internet as soon as it went on air. So for those interested that weren’t listening to the radio at the indicated moment, you can listen to is here (if you have Real Player):

Access the radio’s webpage with the interview

To launch the year with humor… gabouy’s predictions

2008-02-03T12:04:00.000-02:00

Originally published by Pablo Flores on Fri, Jan 18th, 2008
Translated by Paul D. Spradling

Very good forecasts for the year by gabouy. I copy below what he has to say regarding Plan Ceibal:

"The Ceibal Plan obtains national scope. Hordes of volunteers will be traveling to the interior to collaborate in one way or another. The state will realize it has 'N' unpredicted items with hidden costs, and will launch a ‘Give a Laptop’ or money or an hour of class campaign to collaborate with the plan. The first case of child pornography associated with the plan will be made public by the end of Q3, but will be buried by the national media. Cyber cafés will gain popularity in the interior, and as a consequence the ‘mate’ and ‘matera’ items will be created in Second Life. Some hacker in Paysandú will be able to boot a stripped-down version of XP, only to show it can be done. He will have driver issues."

If you would like to see all predictions, here’s the link.

Happy 2008!

2008-02-03T11:54:00.000-02:00

Originally published by Pablo Flores on Fri, Dec 28th, 2007
Translated by Paul D. Spradling

I say goodbye to the blog until mid-January and leave you with this greeting, made by Fernando da Rosa, that shows some of what’s beneath an XO.

It is now time to disconnect!

[I will only translate previous posts, videos and slideshows upon request. Leave a comment or email me at spradling 'at' gmail.com]

Usage Manuals for the XO

2008-02-03T11:49:00.000-02:00

Originally published by Pablo Flores on Thurs, Dec 27th, 2007
Translated by Paul D. Spradling

Fernando Cormenzana has uploaded some support material on the usage of the XO to his blog:

• The XO’s JORNAL
• Introduction to SQUEK and E-TOYS
• OLPC Manual – SUGAR
• Zoom Metaphor
• Music & Sound on the XO

The material is based on some translated material on the OLPC’s wiki. Thanks for the contribution Fernando!

The Government & Ceibal

2008-02-03T11:39:00.000-02:00

Originally published by Pablo Flores on Thur, Dec 27th, 2007
Translated by Paul D. Spradling

The ministers’ council in Sarandí Grande today was marked by the presence of the Ceibal Plan. Every minister had his or her own XO. Beyond the symbolism and the different ways to view this form of the Government’s communication (that, by the way, surprised some friends from other countries who found how close our Government can be to the people incredible), it is a true demonstration of support to the Plan from the highest position of hierarchy.

These are the words of President Tabaré Vázquez regarding the Project:

• View the picture & video gallery of the ministry council and the inauguration of the MEC (Ministry of Education and Culture) center in Sarandí Grande (includes speech by Jorge Borvetto, Minister of Education and Culture)

• View the Presidency’s photo gallery of the ministry council

Handing Out Plan Ceibal’s Laptops

2008-02-03T07:29:00.000-02:00

Originally published by Pablo Flores on Thurs, Dec 27th, 2007
Translated by Paul D. Spradling

This article was written by Gustavo Ochoa, a volunteer who participated in the handing out of laptops a few weeks ago. It’s worth it!

Today is a time of renovation. Changes that are hard for us to start making. Because the same thing is happening to us with Varela, José Pedro, than with Varela, Obdulio.

The myths of Maracaná and the public school load us with obligations to the past and obstruct our view and ability to take action on what is ahead.

However, if we don’t close our eyes and put faith in the construction of a new vision, we are presented with opportunities that can show us part of the way.

Because with no vision there is confusion. And today we are lacking a slogan for education in which we can believe in, and bet our effort and will on.

Plan Ceibal is, without a doubt, one of these opportunities.

But you have to live the Plan Ceibal to understand it. It’s not possible to discuss if it’s OK, or if it’s opportune, or if a previous pedagogic project is required, or if it’s previously required to do this or that.

To understand Plan Ceibal, there is nothing better then to pass a day handing out laptops in the rural schools of the interior.

The doubts vanish after participating in this experience.

The Ceibal Plan is not an educational plan; it’s a plan of equity. The Varelian Reform was, among other things, also a plan of equity.

“All Uruguayans have the right to posses the tools that allow them to read books and access the ideas in them; and to carve themselves a better future with this access”, said Elbio Fernández.
“All Uruguayans have the right to posses the tools that allow them to access the global information highway and the ideas that circulate through it; and to carve themselves a better future with this access”, say those who impulse the Plan Ceibal.

There are many analogies that make me think that we’re upon a historical moment similar to that of the late 19th century. We are upon one of those moments that you can’t let pass.

We haven’t had, in the last 130 years, an opportunity to participate in a change so important for education as the one we’re developing today. Although many don’t see it yet.

That is why I decided to incorporate myself in the group of volunteers that went to hand out computers in the department of Florida. I leave you with my experience:

I arrived to LATU (Uruguay’s Technological Laboratory) before 8:00am on the cool morning of last Thursday. I asked the doorman where the volunteers met; he pointed to front of the Ingenious building, the area where innovative companies incubate. There were about half a dozen, half awake, high school kids (probably juniors and seniors) waiting there.
I introduced myself and found out that most of them where from High School #10, there were also a few from HS#15.

There was also a veteran, like myself; an engineer that was with the Open Source Center. Fernanda, a literature teacher and militancy partner from around 1983, arrived a while later. Pedro, a student, and Gabriela, a recent Telecommunications graduate, arrived later; they were both contracted by the Plan Ceibal to coordinate and supervise the handing out of the laptops
with the volunteers.

“Today we’ve got Chamizo, the rural area of Chamizo and Fray Marcos”, said Gabriela once inside the vans and on our way, “We’ll split up between the rural schools of the area and the schools in the towns I mentioned. We’ll form 3 teams in charge of you guys who are the adults.”
Some of the kids where already repeating the experience.

“This is the third time I come. I like anything that’s volunteer”, commented Leticia, a pretty, 17 year old brunette and a Senior in HS#10.

Ricardo, also from HS#10 and volunteering for a second time, was a real reference. You could see the capacity of organization and the seriousness with which these kids took the work.
The morning was clear and warm when we got to Fray Marcos, very pleasent.

School #45 was the town’s main building. Important in its two floors, but humble nonetheless. The park was across the street, with Artigas’ bust, a shady spot, calm, beautiful.

The post office vans were parked in the shade, waiting with precise logistic, with the precious cargo of computers that came directly from the port. And behind the gates were the looks of hundreds of kid’s little eyes.

And Mirta Mendieta, the Principal, who came out to receive us with a smile. “We’ve been waiting for you, the kids are very anxious.”

Gabriela goes through the formalities and signs the receipts with the Principal and the Post Officers, who had already unloaded the boxes. She took the other two teams and the necessary computers and left Ricardo, Francisco, Florencia, Stefanía and the veteran who’s speaking to you, to cover school #45. The school has almost 400 students, distributed in two classes per grade, from 1st to 5th grade, and one 6th grade class; a total of 11 classes plus the 2 ‘initial education’ classes.

We advanced through the halls of a well-lit and ventilated school; but you could see the effects of time and the difficulties in maintenance. Two beautiful and large classrooms in the 2nd floor were empty. “We weren’t able to use them this year and had to squeeze the 4th years into a deposit with no ventilation. When it rains, being in those classrooms it’s like standing outside. The isolation is very old, made in base of asphalt and fiberglass that are now expired. There is also no electricity on the second floor.”

Mirta told us about her worries and hopes as Principal. “We’re working on the roof, I’m showing it to Florit today so he can lend me a hand.” Héctor Florit arrived in a different vehicle than ours; he participated in the day’s activity, integrating with the handout and having lunch with the volunteer team.

We began with 2A. The classroom’s door was shut; it had no windows. When it opened, forty eyes looked at us and smiled. “Do you know what we’re here for today?” we asked as we entered. They respond in unison, “yesssssss!!!! To bring the computers."

We organized the handout and asked for a round of applause for the first little girl who received her laptop. They all clapped as each of them came to the front at our call. The calling reminded me of my childhood, of the roll-call in my class; I called them as my memory told me to: first the two surnames, pause, then the two first names in rapid succession.

The kids looked at the computer, the manual, the power brick, and waited for the others. But their anxiety to start opening, touching and looking beat them; clusters formed around each computer, where everyone observed over the owner's shoulders.

We weren’t done handing them out, and already some computers were already on, they had entered their access codes, and lauched the diverse applications.

“How many of you have computers in your homes?” The count of hands did not surpass 5 or 6, in the class of 30. The volunteers from HS#10 spread out across the tables and began explaining the basics; most of all, they were responding to individual questions.

But the cellular reproduction began immediately; unstoppable, spontaneous and geometric.

By using the old method of observing those who know, in less then 10 minutes they all had started their computers and found their favorite program.

An interesting observation: the games were not the first and most visited programs.

The most solicited, the question we heard the most was: “Mister, mister, how do I put music on?”
The second: “Mister, mister, can you teach me how to take pictures?”
The third: “Where are the games?” And the forth: “what do I have to do to write?”

But please, pause the reading for a moment and imagine the surroundings and the atmosphere: the questions came 40 at a time. They were directed at each of the team members, and also of course to the teacher, who with caution and aware of her own doubts and insecurities regarding the technology, always had an answer for the kids; even if it was immediately followed by a look of despair towards us.

They grabbed your arm, spoke one over the other and repeated the same question every minute.

Then we began: “Who was a able to take pictures?” A few answered, “me, me”, followed by my instructions: “OK, you teach him, and you teach her over there, who are asking for help on that which you know how to do.”

Fernanda looks at them and asks us if this experience was useful to for us to value the work of teachers.

None of the kids noticed when the team left to handout the rest of the laptops in the other classrooms.

“The thing is, after you give them the laptop, you seize to exist”, told me Pedro Arzuaga, an engineer who had already participated before.

We repeated the same with the other classes, with the same looks, the same laughs, the same shouts, the same applause, the same anxiety to have, to touch, to learn, to play.

“It’s the first time the kids cheer because recess is over” said the Pincipal at lunch.

Luis Garibaldi arrived in the afternoon and, doing as Florit, integrated in the handouts and participated in the explanations on the use of the machines to the kids. They both took a look at the situation and saw that it was far from being caos; the teachers and students rapidly took the tool into their hands and started establishing usage patterns.

Finally, we gave the computers to the “initial education” teachers and to Mirta. The work was done by 5 o’clock in the afternoon.

All the kids formed a line in the yard, as they do everyday, but today they had a special smile. They all carried their green carrying-case in their hands, and not in their backpacks. They all wanted to show it off, to their dad who waited outside, to their brothers, who knows.
A girl on her bike carried it in the shopping basket.

And like this technology integrated into Fray Marcos’ life today. Every kid now begins a new path, similar to the one the kids from Cardenal have already gone through. Surprising the world by uploading, with rural candor, the birth of a calf or the slaughter and fabrication of sausages to YouTube. They will be seen by hundreds of people around the world who have never been out of their city.

Because if there were doubts on the possibility of creating content by the mere handout of these computers, these doubts have now seized to exist. The children themselves will surprise as photographers, as journalists, as investigators. And they will communicate with the world without asking for anyone’s permission.

Ministry Council Open on Thursday: “Information and perspective on the development of Plan Ceibal”

2008-01-26T06:41:00.000-02:00

Originally published by Pablo Flores on Wed, Dec 26th, 2007
Translated by Paul D. Spradling

In accordance with information from the Presidency’s Calendar for December 27th:

The Ministry Council will meet in Sarandi Grande, Florida, in a new rapprochement instance of the Government to the people. There, the Ministers will expose topics of interest and give information and perspective on the development of Plan Ceibal.
(…)
All Ministers will meet with the society’s institutions and organizations from 1:30pm to 4pm.

As informed in the same page, a MEC Center (Ministry of Education and Culture) will be inaugurated that same day in Sarandi Grande.

P.S.: It’s pure coincidence that last week’s activity with the University de la Republic was in the same town.

Reflections on the Future

2008-01-26T06:35:00.000-02:00

Originally published by Pablo Flores on Mon, Dec 24th, 2007
Translated by Paul D. Spradling

New year's around the corner, a time of balances and reflection.

I enjoyed these videos; it’s good to take a break from the routine and think about the future a bit.

Merry Christmas to all!

New support material from Florida’s IT teachers

2008-01-26T06:27:00.000-02:00

Originally published by Pablo Flores on Mon, Dec 24th, 2007
Translated by Paul D. Spradling

Florida’s IT teachers have created their own blog where they are supporting the project: http://ceibalflorida.blogspot.com/

There you will find material, such as this presentation on how to manage files and use a pen drive:
[I will only translate previous posts, videos and slideshows upon request. Leave a comment or email me at spradling 'at' gmail.com]

| View | Upload your own

The blog also has news and tracking, direct from where all the action takes place. Congratulations for the initiative!

Press: “OLPC creator arrives to Uruguay in March”

2008-01-26T05:17:00.000-02:00

Originally Published by Pablo Flores on Mon, Dec 24th, 2007
Translated by Paul D. Spradling

OLPC creator arrives to Uruguay in March
Visit. Nicholas Negroponte will assist the Americas Innovation Forum

Nicholas Negroponte, the mythical academic from Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Media Lab and president of the OLPC foundation will come to Uruguay.

He is coming to give a conference for Americas Innovation Forum (AIF), which will be held from March 30th to April 2nd, in the Conrad hotel of Punta del Este.

Organized by the Uruguayan Government, through the National Agency of Investigation and Innovation (ANII), AIF is the follow-up event of the Americas Competitiveness Forum (ACF) that took place in Atlanta, GA, USA last June, hosted by the US Secretary of Commerce, Carlos Gutiérrez.

The Executive Secretary of ANII, Alberto Nieto, presented this forum as the opportunity to encourage the meeting of the players of innovation and as a tool of socioeconomic development in the region. For Industry Minister Jorge Lepra, AIF 2008 also has the main objective of positioning Uruguay as a regional reference in the area of technological development and innovation.

The forum, whose motto is “Promoting prosperity and development through innovation”, was designed as a meeting point for the business, academic and governmental references of the Americas. These people know the importance of innovation and the added value of knowledge as key factors for development.

The three main objectives are: innovation culture and strategies, public policies to promote and support innovation, as well as the value of knowledge in enhancing productivity.

GURU. Nicholas Negroponte has been thinking for the best way to put a computer in the hands of every child since the 70s, but it wasn’t until 2005 that he presented his proposal to achieve it: OLPC, One Laptop Per Child. It’s about a small computer intended for Third World Countries; easy to use, impact, dust and water proof, that doesn’t need electricity to recharge (it uses a small generator). [Note: The generator was not implemented into final design].

But it’s not as cheap as originally proposed. Two years ago, Negroponte assured that his laptop would cost U$S 100 and that its production would begin in 2006. But the reality is that the mass production of the laptop didn’t start until late 2007 and that Uruguay would pay U$S 199 for each of the 100,000 PCs initially ordered for their Ceibal Project, inspired in the OLPC.

The plan consists of giving each public school student a laptop at no cost. Its two main objectives are: the digital alphabetization of the new generation of Uruguayans and to improve the traditional process of education. This initiative is considered key by the government, who assigned important budgets to the project.

Project Ceibal began last May with a pilot experience in Villa Cardal, Florida. In this experience, 180 children and teachers of the Italia School received their own laptop.

In addition to leading the creation of the XO laptops that are used in the Ceibal Project, Negroponte was a pioneer in the field of computer-assisted design, and cofounded and directs MIT’s Media Laboratory. He is also author of the best seller “Being Digital”, translated to over 40 languages.

In the private sector, he’s a board member of Motorola Inc. and a partner in a venture capital company specialized in digital technologies for information and entertainment. His company has given start-up funding to over 40 companies, including Wired magazine.

Source: El Pais

View post on Negroponte's visit to Uruguay in 1997 (This links to the Spanish version of the blog. I would go crazy if I were to translate old posts every time a new one links back to it. I will however translate them upon request. Leave a comment or email me at spradling 'at' gmail.com)

Press: "Ceibal laptops now reach Flores and Colonia"

2008-01-25T20:54:00.000-02:00

Originally published by Pablo Flores on Mon, Dec 24th, 2007
Translated by Paul D. Spradling

Ceibal laptops now reach Flores and Colonia
Distribution of computers will continue in February and March.

The first stage of the Ceibal Project has come to an end with the distribution of almost 7,000 laptops to about 100 schools in Florida. The distribution to the rest of the departments of the interior will begin in February, starting with Flores. LATU is already working on the electricity and connectivity requirements in this department, as well as in Colonia.

Daniel Benedetti, General Manager of Brightstar Uruguay S.A., the company that sells the computers, told El Pais that 7,500 laptops, of the initial batch of 55,000, have been received and assigned to the department of Florida. The remaining laptops will begin arriving on February 2nd and throughout March to continue this project whose aim is for every student to have a portable computer of their own.

Currently, more than 85% of children who assist a public school in Florida already have their laptop. LATU President Miguel Brechner explained to El Pais that the laptops where distributed to the schools with better connectivity. “It was a technical decision. The laptops must connect to the network at least once a month for security reasons, so we don’t want to distribute laptops if they won’t have access to the Internet. Brechner assured us that “everything will be covered for when classes begin in March”.

The person responsible for LATU said that work is being done to fulfill the distribution in Flores, and then in Colonia, while the remaining rural schools in Florida are incorporated. Brechner said “there’s always a peak per department that must be resolved later, and we don’t want to move on to another department until close to 85% of the children have been covered”.

The delays are due to difficulties in connectivity, which Antel is in charge of. The Commercial Sub-Manager, Osvaldo Novoa, explained that to the moment they only had difficulties with some rural schools that had no telephone service or electricity. He said that ANEP and UTE are fixing these problems.

Novoa told El Pais that they have advanced at a good pace, and that they’re even working ahead on the connectivity of rural schools in Flores, Colonia and Soriano to prepare them for the installation of the networks and WiFi nodes.

Nicholas Negroponte (father to the OLPC project) will visit some of the schools in March, when he will come to Uruguay to assist the Americas Innovation Forum and the OLPC board meeting.

Source: El Pais Digital

Video of activity in Sarandí Grande

2007-12-23T20:45:00.000-02:00

Originally published by Pablo Flores on Sun, Dec 23rd, 2007
Translated by Paul D. Spradling

For those of who weren't there, this 45sec video gives you a taste of the activities that took place in Saradí Grande.

Excellent video from Fernando da Rosa. He also wrote an article about the activities.

This was last activity of the year. We hope to continue our work late-January, and give the project everything it deserves!

A Day of Activities in Sarandí Grande

2007-12-23T07:52:00.000-02:00

Originally published by Pablo Flores on Thurs, Dec 20th, 2007
Translated by Paul D. Spradling

Yesterday we were in Sarandí Grande for the announced support session for parents and teachers that have received their laptops recently.

We were a group of seven: 3 engineering professors (Gabriel Gómez, Raquel Abella and myself), 1 psychology professor (Esther Angeriz), 1 Communication Sciences professor (Fernando da Rosa), Fernando Cormenzana, and Daniel Viñar who decided to come along since he's promoting a similar project in Bolivia.

In the morning we worked with the teachers. We were surprised to find that many rural schoolteachers have not received their laptops yet. They had already been given a basic course so we decided to give them a more in-depth look at the uses of graphics and the internet. We counted on some very valuable support material: Fernando da Rosa's Videos, which we were able to copy to the laptops so they could have them for future reference.

In the evening we received the parents, some of who brought their kids along. We started by introducing the project and giving some presentations on the theoretical use of the laptops. It was very interesting to see the parents listening attentively and the kids concentrating on tasks in the laptop. We then opened up for questions. It was amazing to see how some kids (like Valentina in the picture) have learned to use their laptops so quickly and how they put it in good use.

Being there was a great pleasure. The people were really grateful for the laptops and appreciated the help we went to provide. We arrived at the clear conclusion that there is great demand for more information, help documentation, support activities, etc. Surely, in part, it's because of the recent arrival of the XOs; they were not given the time to learn to use them sufficiently.

We hope to have a new activity in Florida before the end of the year.

More information:

Giving the Laptops: 2 Images

2007-12-23T06:54:00.000-02:00

Originally published by Pablo Flores on Thurs, Dec 20th, 2007
Translated by Paul D. Spradling

The following extracts were sent by Cesar Barrettto, a volunteer that helped with the distribution of the laptops in Florida.

Image 1: It was on our way out of the school, the bus driver hurrying the group of '83 volunteers so we could leave. Someone brought hot water to replenish the thermoses [to drink mate]. We were happy, talking about the gratifying moments we had experienced since morning. As we turn out of the driveway, we see a family sitting on the porche of their simple block house. The father was sitting on a low stool, his wife standing on his side, three children gathered around them, one of them still with their tunic. They watched with joy how their father explored the XO, one of the kids was thrilled to explain the basics. We weren't able to take a picture, but this memory will stay with us for ever.

Image 2: We were giving the first XOs to the kids in the school for disabilities. One of the volunteers stuck the labels and scanned the laptops; we called out the kids one by one to receive their laptop. We called for 'Juan'; the principal, with a big smile, said to us: "you'll see". From behind a steel column, in the roofed patio of the old house, emerged a little kid with big cheeks and glasses, tumbling around with a great big smile. Juan has Down's Syndrome. He's happy and you see it. Everybody can tell. He received his laptop and quickly and happily tumbled back to his place. Everybody cheered. It was a party!

Thank You Cesar!

More pictures:

Giving of laptops at the school for disabilities by Cesar Barretto
Giving of laptops at School No. 4 in the city of Florida by Raúl Etcheverría

Inside One Laptop per Child: Episode 4

2007-12-23T06:32:00.000-02:00

Originally published by Pablo Flores on Sat, Dec 22nd, 2007
Translated by Paul D. Spradling

Episode 04 takes us on location in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Where the first batches of XOs have been delivered and deployed. Meet the teachers using the laptops in the classroom. Where besides doing daily assignments on the machines, some students have already learned programing. Local culture has permeated the project, and as a veteran school principal explains, an improved education is set to equip a new generation of Brazilian citizens.

It's strange that OLPC is using Brazil as an example, given the recent news of brazil's apparent loss in an auction to purchase 150,000 computers for children.
The auction went to Grupo Positivo with a new version of the Classmate PC.

Inside One Laptop per Child: Episode 3

2007-12-23T06:18:00.000-02:00

Originally published by enrique_place on Tue, Jun 19th, 2007
Translated by Paul D. Spradling

How can these laptops "talk" to each other even without widespread internet access? How is the network they create different from the network at your home or office? Episode 03 explains it all.

Source: OLPC.tv

Inside One Laptop per Child: Episode 2

2007-12-23T05:46:00.000-02:00

Originally published by enrique_place on Tue, Apr 24th, 1007
Translated by Paul D. Spradling

Episode 02 of this series produced by Red Hat documenting the One Laptop per Child project focuses on the activities built for the laptop.

I love the minimalist offices with the walls covered in white-boards! ;-)

The following video is from Eduardo Silva's blog (Chile). Eduardo contributes to the OLPC project thru Google.

Inside One Laptop per Child: Episode 1

2007-12-23T04:56:00.000-02:00

Originally published by enrique_place on Wed, Apr 25th, 2007.

Translated by Paul D. Spradling

First part of a video produced by Red Hat.

Red Hat has a close relationship with this project: they collaborate with developers and investigation; and a version one of their products: Fedora Core GNU/Linux, is included in the laptops.

"This is the story of the little green laptop that could. Meet the faces behind the One Laptop per Child initiative and see what they do every day in the Cambridge, MA office. Sit in on a brainstorming session. And find out what you can do to help."

"The famous" Marcelo Tossati (brasilian), can be seen participating in the project near the end of the video. He has worked in Conectiva (now Mandriva), and has been put in charge of maintaining a branch of the GNU/Linux kernel by the one and only Linus Torvalds.

Activities supporting Ceibal Project begin in Sarandí Grande

2007-12-20T19:25:00.000-02:00

Originally published by Pablo Flores on December 14th, 2007. Translated by Paul D. Spradling.

Project "Flor de Ceibo", initiated in the Universidad de la Republica, has given rise to the collaboration between Plan Ceibal and LATU (Uruguay's Technological Laboratory). The project's general aim is to organize volunteer activities, counting with the participation of students and staff of the university. The project is in an embryonic state, but its aims are well defined:

The university will support Project Ceibal, accompanying and contributing, with the end of improving opportunity and equality in the access to the new technologies to all children in the country; generating a profound change in education.

It is expected that students and staff of the university will participate, contributing their experience to facilitate the students, teachers and parents first encounter with this new tool (the laptop).

By means of an activity of mass participation throughout the university, it is expected to contribute essential elements to the formation of the university's students. Key elements include: closer contact with the reality of the country, development of communication and expression skills, and the horizontal link with students and staff of other faculties or mayors.

We hope to generate links that will potentially give birth to projects of development, content or that will contribute national know-how. It is expected from this experience, that some students will maintain contact with the schools that they visited and that development projects with social utility will surface.

We aspire for a project of mass participation by students and staff of a variety of carriers, which will develop throughout the year 2008 in which Project Ceibal will spread throughout all rural areas of the country.

The modality of uniting, in mass, the university's students to the volunteer activities of Plan Ceibal will begin next year. Nevertheless, a preliminary activity in which only professors will participate, is already planned.

It will take place in the Sarandí Grande Theatre this following Wednesday, December 19th. The work schedule is the following:

10:00 to 10:30 Meet with teachers: Introduction.

10:30 to 12:30 Meet with teachers: Laptop utilization and email workshop. Q&A.

13:30 to 14:00 Meet with parents: Introduction.

14:00 to 16:00 Meet with parents: Laptop utilization and email workshop. Q&A.

The idea is to back off a little from exclusive school use, and to support the families so that they also take advantage of this powerful resource.

We expect everyone in the region. It is recommended to bring your own laptop.

On Students' Motivation

2007-12-03T20:11:00.000-02:00

Pablo Flores, November 27th, 2007
(Translated by Alec McLure)

Based on a question in an earlier post, I'm making some comments on the project's influence on students' motivation.

Motivation is hard to measure quantitatively. According to the headmaster at the Cardal school, there was never any problem with desertion or any high level of absenteeism, but the latter was reduced this year (i.e., the kids were absent less than in other years). The teachers also tell us that students seem more motivated and that, in particular, they enjoy it when it's time to work with laptops.

On the other hand, additional motivation comes up when the kids take their computers home and show their parents what they have done and what they have created. In this sense, there's generalized perception that the project is helping to bring families "closer" to the school. Edith Moraes, director of the grade school, says that she's very happy that a long-existing trend is reversing itself - where it seemed that the school was going down one path and families down another.

In any case, these results are extremely preliminary given that the Cardal experience has special qualities due to it's enormous level of exposure.

We could have a new reference point in the next few days, when massive laptop distribution begins in other schools in Florida.

PS: I'll soon be adding some videos to this post.

"Special Report: Uruguay, the next Finland of Latin America"

2007-12-02T20:36:00.000-02:00

Translated from "Reporte Especial: Uruguay la futura Finlandia de América Latina", originally published on september 18th, 2007.

That's the title of the article published on the site Un computador por niño - Chile, in which there is a very good revission of the Ceibal Project and its strategical goals.

It includes an interview made by Luis Ramírez to Sylvia González, project coordinator. It's been subtitled into English through the fav2fav blog, here it goes...

Today begins the mass production of XO laptops

2007-11-05T23:51:00.000-02:00

According to what Walter Bender said today in the inauguration of the OLPC Learning Workshop that is being held this week in Boston, right in this moment is starting the mass production of XO laptops. Initially, it is expected to have a production of 15.000 laptops per week, which will be accelerated afterwards.

It's Official - Ceibal Project Will Begin With XO Laptops and IBM Servers

2007-10-15T22:45:00.000-02:00

Published by Pablo Flores , Monday, October 15, 2007

Translated by Alec McLure

After the technical analysis period for the proposals presented in the call to bids and additional negotiation between Latu and the offering companies, the following have been adjudicated:

Laptops: XO from OLPC (represented in Uruguay by Brightstar)
School Servers: IBM servers (provided by INCO)
Connectivity: Declared as deserted

This adjudication went through a period during which the team from Positivo (the company that offered the Classmate PC) made comments on the technical evaluation (in which they came in just under 4 points lower). Latu officially responded to these comments, coming to the conclusion that they didn't apply. At the same time, Latu pointed out that in the proposal's total scoring (which included a 40 point economic component and a 60 point technical component) there was a large scoring difference in favor of Brightstar's OX offering; this offering came in at US$199 as opposed to Positivo's $243 (which was bundled within a package of service offerings.)

Some of the XO components, like the mesh network, integrated camera, and screen resolution had a strong effect in its favor. It's worth noting that all the components which the Education Commission had requested for the laptops were included in the call for bids' technical terms and in its scoring. It also appears to be a good thing that Villa Cardal's XO laptop experience can be built on.

As far as the servers go, INCO (Interamericana Computing) made a significant offer of IBM servers with 2 gigs of Ram, 2 x 120 gig hard drives, and installation service at the price of US$610. This was the winning bid.

As regards connectivity, the proposals presented were very expensive. This was most likely due to the challenging requirements for home coverage in the call for bids. Latu's technical team along with Antel, have been doing excellent work on this and have attained the experience to do it on their own if this should become necessary.

All this information will be confirmed at a press conference to be given by Latu in the next few days.

This adjudication corresponds to what was referred to as "Phase I", initially 100,000 laptops, so the possibility of strong competition for future roll-outs (as a matter of fact, a new and noisy global player has come into view: Asus EeePC)

2nd Latin American Meeting for Presentation of One-on-One Modality Projects

2007-10-07T13:30:00.000-02:00

Published by Pablo Flores , Saturday, October 6, 2007

Translated by Alec McLure

A second regional project analysis meeting under the heading of "One Computer Per Child and Per Teacher" will be held on October 16-18, 2007 at Montevideo's Hotel Cottage.

Representatives are expected from Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Paraguay, Panama, and Peru, in addition to Uruguay (download Agenda (pdf in Spanish).

This meeting is strongly supported by the IDRC and its "IT and Communications Technology for Development in the Americas (ICT4D Americas)" program.

Linux.com: "Uruguay poised to make first governmental OLPC purchase"

2007-10-06T19:55:00.000-03:00

Lisa Hoover of Linux.com has written an interesting article about the situation in Uruguay and the world refering to the OLPC project. She used different sources of information, included an e-mail inteview she made me days ago.

Here is a quote:

Negroponte says if Uruguay places an order for XO laptops, the project is ready to deliver. "Some machines would arrive as early as December 1," he says. Complete order fulfillment depends on a number of factors. "The exact rollout of laptops ... is driven as much by other orders and the need to keep overall manufacturing smooth -- flat or upward sloping -- not with peaks and troughs, to drive the price lower and lower."

According to Pablo Flores, a team member with the Ceibal Project, the organization overseeing the implementation of laptops in Uruguay's classrooms, there is a "logistics plan to distribute the laptops school by school" once delivery is taken. Flores says the Ceibal Project team is already preparing schools for the influx of laptops. "We are working very hard to integrate the computers into the educational system. We are training teachers and working in a collaborative environment to join together the contents and applications chosen by educators, as well as sharing educational experiences."

Read the complete article.

Press - Ceibal Plan Will Buy OLPC

2007-10-04T12:57:00.000-03:00

Originally published by enrique_place , Thursday, October 04, 2007

Translated by Alec McLure

"Commision's Report leans towards US$199 laptop"

ALEJANDRO NOGUEIRA

The formal decision is not out yet, but Latu received the report from the committee adjudicating on the bid for 100,000 laptops for schools. Nicholas Negroponte's OX scored 56.84 points and the Intel Classmate 53.06.

Yesterday Latu looked at the two companies participating in one of the largest purchases envisioned by the State for one of this administrations' most ambitious educational plans. In addition to the original 100,000 computers in the bid, there's an option for another 50,000 and for hundreds of servers (which are in a separate call for bids).

Brightstar Uruguay presented the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program, which has the units designed by Negroponte's MIT group; Grupo Positive de Brasil were there with the Intel machines. Both of these units are made in China under their designer's specifications.

Timeline. The companies now have five days to present any objections to the process - this would delay any decisions by the government, which would rather get the decision made. the official intent is to begin distributing school laptops before the end of the yeard and to roll out to all schools in the country before the end of the current administration.

Brighstar began the process by offering their computer at US$205; Positivo at US$ 274 (in their open-source Linux offering) although this unit had more memory and functionality. Latu negotiated on price, and finally the OX went down to US$199 and Intel's unit to US$258.

Grupo Positivo's proposal, which included servers, connectivity, teacher training and educational portals, also had a proposal for use of Windows and tech support in Uruguay by the Sonda company.

Brightstar's offer only includes teacher training and tech support, in addition to an additional 1% supply of machines for replacement purposes due to wear and tear. In addition, this design allows for parts that can be replaced by the children themselves.

Both machines were additionally designed to be highly impact-, water-, and dust-resistant.

Negroponte's so called "green machine" (it's apple-green) doesn't have a hard disk and uses so called open-source (non-commercial) software. This machines book-sized prototype which weighs in at 1.5 kilos (3.3 lbs) was presented at the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis at the end of 2005.

These laptops are the ones being used in a pilot program to bridge the digital gap which is being carried out in the Cardal school in the Flores department [in Uruguay]. [Translator's note - see editor's comment below - it's actually "Florida" department]

Negroponte originally announced a US$100 laptop but up to now hasn't achieved that price. His plan, which originally was focused on working with large populations in poor countries, will apparently have it's first concrete expression in Uruguay.

Uruguay's inclusion in this program was obtained after convincing him that it was easier to apply the project in a small country with a relatively sparse population.

Leader in Cell-Phone Logistics

Brightstar is the Motorola cell-phone distributor used by countries such as Movistar (Telefónica) and CTI Móvil (América Móvil), both in Uruguay and in other countries in Latin America. In Uruguay, it also distributes BlackBerries and Palm [Pilots] and LG-branded products. In the Ceibal Plan bid it offered the Intel-designed computers.

Brighstar Corporation is principally a distributor and provider for value-added services for the wireless telecommunication industry. It specializes in managing inventory, logistics, fulfillment, internet-based solutions, invidual packaging and post-sale support to the cell-phone industry. World-wide, it's the third-largest provider of this type of service. The company was founded in 1997 and now takes in about US$ 4 billion annually.

In July, Intel and OLPC announced a joint agreement to take the benefits of technology to countries in development by using the synergy between their programs. Intel joined the OLPC board in which several IT big-rollers participate. Among them are Google, AMD, Red Hat, News Corporation, and Bright Star itself.

Source: Diario El País

Editor's Note:

The bold-faces are mine, and not in the original article
Where it's stated that "in the Cardal school in the department of Flores" - "Flores" should be "Florida" (thanks to Gabriel Menini!)

Press: "Offers of U$S 205 and U$S 270 for laptops for Plan Ceibal"

2007-09-17T13:54:00.000-03:00

(Translated from
Prensa: "Ofertas de U$S 205 y U$S 270 por laptops del Plan Ceibal", published by Enrique Placé on Sept. 14th, 2007.)

"LATU opened yesterday (Sept. 13th, 2007) the bidding offers for Plan Ceibal's computers. Brighstar offered laptops for U$S 205 and Grupo Positivo from Brazil offered laptops between US$ 270 and U$S 300 depending on the type of machine.

The special technical committee of Uruguay's Technological Laboratory (LATU) and the National Administration of Public Education (ANEP) finished the studies of the technical offers from both companies and yesterday noon opened the economic offers. The person in charge of the bidding, former national director of industry, Miguel Mariatti, said to El País that the information about the offers will be made public after being evaluated at the LATU's board, so he declined to give details at this time.

However, from sources related to this bidding El País learned that Brighstar Uruguay SA concentrated its proposal on terminals XO for kids, with 256Mb of memory, running open software (Linux), while Positivo offered computers with 256 Mb of memory also with Linux, and 512 Mb of memory with Windows platform from Microsoft. This company made a much broader proposal that included servers, connectivity, contents, network support, training for teachers and students, and availability of educational portals.".

Complete article at: Diaro El País (in Spanish).

A day in Villa Cardal

2007-09-14T10:18:00.000-03:00

This slideshow is made with photos taken yesterday by Pedro "el paseante", during a trip to Villa Cardal. An enjoyable art!

a

Get the photos!

2007-09-12T00:52:00.000-03:00

Here are the photos uploaded to Cardal's school blogs with XO laptops. In addition to the published ones, there are many pictures form "draft" posts of the blog that can be seen here.

No more words.

School's blog	Photos	Show
4th form's blog	Photos	Show
5th form's blog	Photos	Show
6th form's blog	Photos	Show

Updated: Now we also have:
1st form's blog
2nd form's blog
3rd form's blog

The wallpaper of Cardal

2007-09-01T22:00:00.000-03:00

Thanks to the contribution of Fernando Cormenzana, now we have an excellent wallpaper with pictures taken in Villa Cardal. Clicking the image you can see it in complete size for downloading.

Opening of bidding offers is delayed until next Thursday

2007-08-24T19:01:00.000-03:00

As informed in the portal, we will have to wait one more week to know how the bidding proposals for the equipment of "Phase I" of the project are.

New Content - Kid Power!

2007-08-12T12:33:00.001-03:00

(Translated by Alec McLure from "Nuevos contenidos: ¡los niños al poder!")

In the last few weeks I've been visiting Villa Cardal on a regular basis to provide support to school teachers (see pictures of a recent visit, here are some others taken by Fernando Cormenzana). The goal is to help them do new tasks with the laptops - tasks that sometimes require either some technical knowledge or English-language skills. English is still the main language both on the internet and on XO (just look at eToys).

Last week we worked with 4th and 5th graders to upload photos to a blog. You can see the first attempts at http://cardal-ceibal.blogspot.com/. Note that this is a first, experimental attempt. There was no time for any graphic design or to pick favorite pictures - some of the entries haven't even been reviewed yet by the teachers ( e.g., an entry that a student uploaded from home.). Anyhow, although there's not much to be seen yet, it gives us a glimpse of the potential of child-developed content.

This adds on to our other initiatives (such as email) that have slowly been growing in the student population- among other experiences, it has allowed them to contact Brazilian children who are having similar experiences.

In a world where Spanish-language content is increasingly consumed although not much produced (for example, Spanish is in ninth place in Wikipedia's article count) it's a good sign to have this new generation of content creators. All that's missing is to have teachers join in in the revolution.

Birth of a cow in Villa Cardal

2007-08-11T22:01:00.000-03:00

This video was taken by a student of Fourth Year of the school of Villa Cardal, with his XO computer. It is about a complicated birth of a cow.

It is worth remembering that Villa Cardal is a locality of great farming activity (“capital of the milk river basin of Uruguay”). This work is part of a series of activities that we are making in the school relative to the work in the "tambo" (dairy farm).

Equipment Bid Deadline Extended by One Month

2007-07-25T23:25:00.000-03:00

Upon request from participants in the official bidding process a one-month extension has been granted. This means that the official presentation and unsealing of bids will now take place on August 24th.

The option to grant justified bid extensions was specified in the original call for bids document.

Additionaly, a new call for bids for the provissioning of school servers has been issued. This call complements the former one, giving a chance for other suppliers to make their proposals for this "more standard" resource.

The Intel – OLPC Agreement - Information and Speculative Predictions

2007-07-15T15:52:00.000-03:00

(Translated by Alec McLure from Información y futurología del acuerdo Intel - OLPC, published by Pablo Flores on 7/14/2007)

The announcement of the agreement reached by OLPC and Intel gives rise to much speculation as to how the OLPC project will continue and how it will impact Uruguay and other countries joining this initiative.

Let's begin by analyzing just what is in this agreement. There's not much official information, but what is clear is that Intel will join OLPC's board of directors. (The roster will now consist of representatives from AMD, Brightstart, Chi Lin, eBay, Google, Intel, Marvell, News Corporation, Nortel Networks, Quanta Computer, Red Hat, and SES Astra.)

Like all OLPC corporate associates, Intel will bring some capital when they join the project – this hasn't yet been detailed in public. This is what's known up to now.

Words from some of the lead players:

"Intel joins the OLPC board as a world leader in technology, helping reach the world's children. Collaboration with Intel means that the maximum number of laptops will reach children," said Nicholas Negroponte, founder of One Laptop per Child.
"This agreement will make computers get to children faster," said David Cavallo, Latin America Director of OLPC.
"Joining OLPC is a further example of our commitment to education over the last 20 years and our belief in the role of technology in bringing the opportunities of the 21st century to children around the world," said Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel.

The leads seem happy. What does this agreement imply? We still can't be clear on it. Ideally both parties would synergistically achieve better-quality equipment at a lower cost. This can take time, which doesn't mean that they would be able to reach agreements on time for immediate needs, such as Uruguay's Call for Bids.

As an example, this call for bids asks the bidder to be established in Uruguay, which would be a challenge for OLPC. In this sense, a joint proposal would make it easier to meet this requirement.

With what laptop? Surely it will be some version of the XO, since it already has better specs to meet the project's requirements, such as the wireless mesh, the camera, and the tablet PC format. OLPC is way behind on software, though, and Intel could provide an interesting and immediate boost, integrating its Skoool educational systems.

And the OS? A Windows/Sugar dual boot proposal would not surprise me – this would be an interesting option from an educational standpoint.

Another theme is cost. With the elimination of competition, countries are not well protected given the lack of options and negotiation possibilities. I hope that with Intel's injection of capital and new possibilities for economy of scale, OLPC may be able to meet its initial promise to sell the laptops at $100. It would be an excellent way to demonstrate their seriousness and be a key factor in purchase decisions in many other countries.

Following are other aspects of the vision of the future in the agreement pointed out by Luis Ramirez in his blog:

AMD – Intel's main competitor and the ones in charge of producing the AMD chip must be quite affected by this alliance. One speculation is that XO's first generation (planned to be available in the next few months) will have AMD's processor and that maybe the second generation (planned for production in 2008 and commercialization in 2009) will have some kind of Intel chip.
Intel could stop producing the Classmate PC (currently being sold in Chile and other countries) in exchange for providing its processors to OLPC beginning in 2008. Let's also recall that OLPC recently announced plans to develop commercial products in addition to the XO laptop. This apparently fits in to not only to the projects goal of eventual self-sufficiency, but also to be able to complement it with other OLPC-style servers and equipment.

Thoughts on the Bidding Process

2007-07-09T14:21:00.000-03:00

(Translated by Alec McLure from Comentarios acerca del llamado a licitación 7/07/2007, published by Pablo Flores)

In a previous post I did some initial commentary on the bidding process for Phase I of the Ceibal Project. I'm going to provide a more detailed summary here, now that I've had the chance to read the bidding document in more detail.

First of all, one notices the enormous amount of work involved in considering a project of such complexity. This results in requiring projects proposals with a very wide scope. In this post, I'm only going to mention a few of the points that seem to me to embody the spirit of the call to bids, which doesn't mean that I'm not leaving many important aspects out.

Ceibal Project's Objectives
First, the bid document makes all the project's expected results very clear:

Provide internet connectivity to 100% of school-age children both in their schools and in their homes.
Put our country on the cutting edge as applies to the use of technology for the learning and formation process.
Close the technology gap in regards to access to information and knowledge.
Give access to culture, plurality, and opportunity without economic predetermination.
Put Uruguay in place as the first country in the world with internet coverage over 100% of its territory and in the highest percentage of homes.

Wow! A very ambitious project!

Proposal Requirements:
Three types of hardware must be included in the proposal: Notebooks, servers for the schools, and connectivity devices.

The Notebooks:

Explicitly must be portable, lighweight, and resistent.
Battery life must be 4 hours during "regular use"(navigation on a program that opens a new web page every 30 seconds). Currently I don't think that any of the candidates' prototypes meet this requirement.
Must have integrated WiFi.
The Operating System:

Must be included in the notebook's price
Takes into account its hard disk and memory usage
It must be able to use its applications in stand-alone mode (i.e., must not need to be constantly connected to the web). This helps to mitigate the intellecutal property risks I was mentioning in a previous post .
An integrated hardware security system is required which should deactivate the notebook if it's stolen.

It asks for applications which can function in a collaborative way among the notebooks connected to the web.
The camera, along with some other hardware and software components, are optional but mentioned as pluses in the proposal. By what I've seen in Cardal, the teachers get a lot out of the still and video cameras. I hope we don't lose that.
Although optional, it's considered a plus to have "open and modifiable" software.
An interesting detail is that they must have been made less than 120 days ago, thereby ensuring that if they make new models, they won't stick us with the leftover old ones. :)

Servers:

Install one or more for each school.
Minimum storage capacity of 80 Gb. Daily incremental backup.
Include web-content filtering software.
Software and updates up to 2010 included in the price.
Optionally, powerable by solar energy.

Connectivity requirements:

Requests wireless coverage for the homes in the schools towns.
Proposals must be developed taking into account three basic "model configurations" - schools with 150, 450, and 750 students.
The schools in Villa Cardal, San Jacinto, and Sarandí Grande are proposed as connectivity testing sites before the proposal's delivery date. Successful testing there adds positive points towards adjudication.

The company that wins the bid must be established or will need to establish itself in the country.

The bid proposal also requests bids for technician training and equipment support. The equipment must have a warranty.

If a bidder, for strategic reasons, would like to somehow subsidize their offer, this must be explicitly indicated and the sums involved must be divulged.

Adjudication
The technical proposal counts for 60% of the final score, the economic proposal for the remaining 40%. The bid document indicates a wide range of factors that affect the score. In any case, it keeps options for further bidding processes or direct negotiation with the bidders open if it turns out to be convenient.

Timelines

The bid refers to two phases: a first phase with 100,000 notebooks and a second phase (optional purchase) which adds on another 50,000. In any case, the bid asks for pricing on 5,000 notebooks, which opens the possibility of purchasing more from the winning bidder, if convenient.
There is a set of shipping dates: October 1st, 2007, January 1st, 2008, April 1st, 2008, July 1st, 2008, October 1st, 2008, January 1st, 2009, April 1st, 2009, July 1st, 2009, October 1st, 2009. LATU - through its project commissions will set how many notebooks and servers will be requested in each case.
It's not 100% clear when the first delivery will be, since both the proposal delivery date and the adjudication process can be delayed if it's considered convenient to do so.

Conclusions

Bidders are required to provide proposals on complete solutions that deliver notebooks, servers, and connectivity to different types of population.
LATU's flexibility to work in the private domain is used to advantage to encourage competition, thus obtaining a better price.
It's clear that whoever wins this bid is well-positioned to continue with the whole project (that's to be expected - it wouldn't make sense for half the equipment to be of one type and the other half of a different type - unless expected results are not obtained.)
Organizational tasks, educational proposals and a part of the techno-logistic tasks are reserved for the project's organization. For the rest of the tasks, my understanding is that expectations are that the winning bidder will become a participant in the project.

Uruguay's Florida department is next

2007-07-05T12:19:00.000-03:00

(Translated from Se viene Florida, published by Pablo Flores on 7/05/2007.)

The next objective of the project is to expand to all of the department of Florida. This means giving computers to all its kids and teachers, as well as providing connectivity infrastructure in all its schools and in as many homes as possible.

I don't have the exact numbers now, but we are talking about more than 100 schools (many of them called "rural", with only one classroom and one teacher), about 500 teachers and 10,000 kids. The total population of Florida is close to 70,000, half of whom live in the capital city Florida, most of the rest live in smaller cities, and 12,000 live in rural areas.

Many things are going to be tried out for the first time (in Uruguay and in the world) when this expansion phase is finished. For the first time locations in a critical social context will be reached. Also, larger cities will be covered (Cardal has less than 2,000 inhabitants). The challenges are many.

From the educational point of view, a training meeting for the department's teachers is being organized for next week. Attending this event is voluntary, as it surely will be for all similar meetings. Given that many activities will be performed in the workshop modality, the openings are limited, but it is hoped that many will be interested in attending and the event will be repeated at different occasions.

This expansion is expected to be performed between August and September. For this, the bid will have had to have been adjudicated.

More information about Florida (in Spanish):

Summary about the department.
Local government webpage.
Information from the National Institute of Statistics (to see the data you have to download a .exe!! :-( don't worry it's not a virus, by executing the file some excel spreadsheets are uncompressed).

Call for bids for the phase I of the project, in English

2007-07-03T01:32:00.000-03:00

As I mentioned before,the international call for bids for Phase I of the project has begun.

Now there is a version in english available. Access it here.

Institutional video of the project, now subtitled in english

2007-06-27T20:06:00.000-03:00

Thanks to Alec McLure, now we have the first institutional video of the Ceibal Project subtitled in english. Enjoy!

It's started the bid for buying the first computers... and more

2007-06-16T17:33:00.000-03:00

(Ver este artículo en español)

Yesterday it was published the sheet of the international bid for the purchase of the necessary equipment for Phase I of the Ceibal project. Its terms can be read in this pdf (in spanish).

Some items I hilight:

It's not only for buying laptops. It also asks for software, school servers, connectivity devices and a proposal for qualification, support and maintenance.
3 configurations of schools (of 150, 450 and 750 students) are proposed, so that offers include laptops, servers, connectivity, etc. This is fundamental to analyze different technological options (for example connectivity with mesh network Vs. solely through Access points)
It looks for buying 100,000 computers, to be solicitd in different stages.

On the 27th of July the envelopes will get open…

A meeting with parents at Villa Cardal

2007-06-05T22:13:00.000-03:00

(Translated from Reunión con padres en Villa Cardal, published by Pablo Flores on 6/03/07)

Last Friday we had a meeting at Villa Cardal with the parents and teachers of the kids that attend the school. Several of the project collaborators gathered in a classroom to inform advances in the project, but mostly to listen to opinions, comments, criticism... to have some feedback on how this community is experiencing the arrival of the laptops. From this meeting I compiled several phrases that I want to make public in this blog.

The parents

The meeting congregated a lot of parents, we didn't count them but I estimate they were over one hundred. The great majority of them didn't have a computer at home.

I was surprised to see how grateful this town is. With a lot of humility they told us their experience.

Some of the most touching phrases that were heard:

"My daughter's dream was to have a computer and I had never been able to buy one."
"The world has entered my home."
"It's incredible how much was advanced in these days, kids are not afraid."

This type of comment arised over and over from parents, that unanimously stressed the motivation and enthusiasm they saw in their kids.

Some of the comments were related to the impact of the laptop's arrival to their home:

"It demands more time from us, to show their achievements with the computer and to teach us."
"They don't want to skip class because they are afraid they would teach something new about the computer."
"It unites the family, they don't like to work alone."
"It increases communication in the family."
"He hasn't turned on the other computer anymore."
"They watch less TV."

They also talked about the way in which kids use the computer:

"First grade kids handle everything in a visual way. Although they don't know how to read, they surprise us with the easiness they handle it."
"I have 4 kids at school", ... "I see they have the same enthusiasm at all ages."
"The sister wants to help him, and he doesn't let her because he wants to achieve it by himself. Sometimes this brings fights."
"They have taken photos of the whole family and everything they see."

Some parents also made proposals, like elaborating a "basic manual for parents", or having the opportunity to attend courses and learn the contents loaded in the laptops.

The teachers

The teachers and the school director also told their experience. They are learning how to take advantage of the laptops to teach together with the kids and the project's team.

"We promoted helping the classmate, explaining what one knows..."
"Reading and orthography were incentivated enormously."
"Little kids that didn't stand out in the past surprised us with their command of the machine, they also teach their classmates."
"I had good experiences putting two kids working in the same machine, so they can discover together helping each other and there is not a big difference with the time it takes to each one of them to complete the activity."
"Some kids get distracted in class making other activities in the computer, so we take it away for one day as a punishment."

Complains and problems

The main aspect to solve in Cardal is the lack of Internet access from homes. Although several Access Points were installed in different places, it is still not easy to connect from most of the houses. The phrase "... and we are waiting for Internet" was repeated by most of the parents. Teachers also had some difficulties with Internet, because apparently not all the time there's good connectivity inside the school.

Apart from that, in the last few days we registered the first computer break-up; as a consequence of a brother's fight, during the struggle the screen broke. For some days the kid will be without a computer until we determine if it is possible to repair it.

Conclusions

In Cardal we are in an experimentation and learning process in which there are still many points to solve. The meeting was very moving and, most of all, we perceived the gratitude from a town that is motivated by a new opportunity in their hands.

I finish with a phrase from Sylvia González, who coordinated and led the meeting: "It is a project of equity, it is base on giving technology access to populations that wouldn't have it otherwise." "We are all part of this. It is not only a technologic nor pedagogic subject, but everyone together trying to build something better."

P.S.: I'm waiting for photos taken at the meeting by some teaching students. I'll upload them as soon as I get them.

TV-journal note about the evolution of the project - In english

2007-06-05T13:48:00.000-03:00

In a previous post, I uploaded some videos of a uruguayan TV journal ("Subrayado"), reporting the evolution of the pilot project in Villa Cardal.
Now you can find an english translation of this videos thanks to the work of Alec McLure.

Enjoy! First segment, second segment, third segment.

Official project's website: www.ceibal.edu.uy

2007-05-25T23:35:00.000-03:00

With the lemma "a space to innovate", yesterday was launched th official web portal of the Ceibal Project: http://ceibal.edu.uy. More information in this post in spanish.

TV-journal note about the evolution of the project

2007-05-25T23:05:00.000-03:00

This note was made by the journalist from Channel 10 of Uruguay Pablo Silvera on May the 18th int the "Italy" School of Villa Cardal.
The first segment shows the impact of the project on the school and children.

In the second segment, the story of a family that lives in a "tambo" (I don't know how it is called in english, the place where cows are bred to produce milk). A uruguayan family as many others... except that they have 3 children at the school, so they get home with 3 laptops!

In the last segment there is the interview made to Sylvia González about technical aspects. The presenter starts saying "the Internet page of the Ceibal project receives 20,000 daily visits", referring to this blog :-) Somehow exagerated...

I also recommend, for seeing practical experiences of the laptops usage in brazilian schools, take a look at the videos in this post from olpcnews.

"Uruguay Could Become a Model for Low-Cost Laptop Programs"

2007-05-25T19:10:00.000-03:00

As I commented in a previous post, Vinod Sreeharsha is an independent journalist who was in Villa Cardal making a coverage during the launching of the pilot project. Here is the complete article he wrote - which has additional information to the one published in the Miami Herald.

International echoes of the starting of the project

2007-05-23T11:44:00.001-03:00

The launching of the pilot project in Cardal with OLPC laptops had international repercussion. Pictures of children, teachers and authorities appeared in pages from Uruguay, Brasil, Israel, United States, Germany, Italy, China and Japan, within others. The post "Villa Cardal, Center of worldwide attention", with its gallery of photos was linkd from more than 90 blogs worldwide an was at the top of digg for some hours, which took thousands of accesses to the blog from many places in the world.

In the map, points indicate places from where there were more than 30 accesses.

Within all notes made, I would like to emphasize the one from Vinod Sreeharsha, independent journalist who was in Uruguay those days to make a close coverage for Miami Herald. The article is very beautiful, it's good seeing with foreign eyes some of the experiences of those days.

New images of the Cardal pilot project, one week later

2007-05-21T20:35:00.000-03:00

(Translation of: Una semana después - Nuevas imágenes del piloto en Cardal. Thanks to Gustavo Fischer for the translation work)

I was fortunate to visit the “Italy” school at Villa Cardal yesterday, where last week the pilot of the Ceibal project was launched, giving XO laptops to all the children there.

View gallery of pictures and videos.

I could see live the long awaited scenes of classrooms where every child is working with his laptop. There was even a moment where some parents of the 6^th grade students asked to talk with the teacher, and she left the children doing some schoolwork with the computers to take the time needed to talk to the parents. When me and Walter Bender, who was there during a very brief visit to our country a few days ago, entered the classroom, they were all working quietly, although we didn’t take long to change that.

As we could see, the kids have taken tons of photos, played and entered the Internet, finding Youtube especially attractive, which has caused some headaches to the LATU personnel in charge of the bandwidth. The teachers have found some very interesting activities to use the computers, which we will refer to later in some other post.

To our presence was added Pablo Silveira from Channel 10, who did some very nice coverage for news program Subrayado. You can see the video of last week’s coverage made for the project launch here:

I see a school that has changed a lot in its usual routine, and that is facing the challenge with strength. The children accompany the effort with much enthusiasm, so much so that absentee levels have dropped significatively.

Now this blog is in english

2007-05-21T19:25:00.000-03:00

(el blog en español se muda a http://proyecto-ceibal.blogspot.com. Recomiendo ver la bienvenida al nuevo blog)

Welcome to this non-official blog about Ceibal project, by which uruguayan government intends to give one laptop for every scholar child in our country.

This blog started in spanish in february 2007. In that moment, the only organization publicly interested in supplying equipments for the project was OLPC, with its XO computers. Since then, many things have changed. Firstly, there have appeared competitors of XO, competing for providing computers for uruguayan children. Additionaly, in last weeks it started an important international interest about the project in the international comunity, which demanded information in english. Finally, I've had the chance to get involved personally in the project, in the Follou-up & Research area.

All this made me decide to use this blog for publishing posts in english, and starting a new one: http://proyecto-ceibal.blogspot.com, for infrmation in spanish. In spanish, only old posts will remain here.

Everyone is invited. Not only for reading and commenting; you can contribute to this blog in several ways:

Translating posts from the blog in spanish, or if you are interested in translating to another languagem you can also propose it.
Writting posts. If you show me that you are really interested in the project and have information to contribute, you can be a part of this blog.
Sending interesting information about what is happening in Uruguay and other places of the word, press releases, etc.

In any case, send me a mail.

El blog en español se muda.

2007-05-21T18:18:00.000-03:00

Este es el último post en español en este blog. A partir de este momento el blog en español será http://proyecto-ceibal.blogspot.com, quedando este blog únicamente para entradas en inglés. Recomiendo ver la bienvenida al nuevo blog.

Espero que todos los seguidores de este blog encuentren en este cambio la mejora que se busca en la organización de la información.

Saludos,
Pablo Flores

"Villa Cardal vive con entusiasmo el Plan Ceibal"

2007-05-20T09:00:00.000-03:00

Artículo de prensa del diario El Observador:

"Los 160 niños que integran el piloto están aprendiendo a usar los ordenadores. Ya los usan para estudiar, pero también los integran en su vida extra curricular. Los maestros también se ponen a tono y los padres se muestran conformes".

Destaco y comento algunos párrafos interesantes:

Las computadoras portátiles, sin embargo, ya comenzaron a transformar el aula en Villa Cardal. "El poder de esas máquinas es impresionante" señaló el director de la escuela, Marcelo Galain, al destacar que las computadoras tienen una batería con una duración de 12 horas.

Gracias a todas las innovaciones que se incluyen en el hardware el laptop es verdaderamente de bajo consumo (algo que veremos muy próximamente en todos los nuevos laptops comerciales).

El director indicó que los estudiantes recibieron sus computadoras un día antes de un feriado nacional pero que asistieron a clases el día de asueto para comenzar a utilizarlas.

Yo hubiera hecho lo mismo ;-)

Hubo algunos problemas técnicos de menor cuantía cuando se comenzaron a utilizar las computadoras, y aunque ninguno de los maestros tenía mucha experiencia con ellas, pronto se dieron cuenta que los niños cuyos apellidos llevaban acentos tenían problemas para ingresar al sistema pero el problema fue resuelto con prontitud.

Interesante. Justamente, todos estos problemas son parte de la idea del plan piloto, ver qué problemas se encuentran en el uso verdadero fuera de los laboratorios y qué soluciones se pueden implementar.

"Las computadoras portátiles se hablan mutuamente de manera automática, tienen un chat de voz, se pueden compartir archivos y todo esto se puede hacer entre las computadoras de este tipo sin necesidad de la Internet", indicó Bender al hablar sobre el diseño. Además, agregó que "si cualquiera de estas computadoras llega a tener acceso a la Internet, todas pueden compartirla".

Es la parte que más me agrada del proyecto, lo bien que está pensada la comunicación entre los niños que usan las laptops, permitiendo que se puedan comunicar perfectamente entre ellos sin necesitar acceso a Internet (pueden hacer hasta una suerte de video conferencias sin necesitar una infraestructura adicional).

Galain indicó que ahora observa que los estudiantes están más involucrados en aprender que lo que estaban antes. "Algunos niños a quienes no les gustaba o no querían escribir, ahora se van familiarizando con el procesador de texto", agregó.

Aunque al final aclaran que la idea no es que dejen de aprender a escribir con lápiz, esta herramienta les permite acceder a un mundo para explorar de infinitas posibilidades. Por lo pronto nunca más se sorprenderán al ver una computadora, y a su vez, empezarán a comprender determinados conceptos sobre las redes inalámbricas (wifi) y la construcción de comunidades de usuarios que compartirán sus conocimientos sin necesidad con esto de ser tildados de "piratas".

Artículo completo en Observa

Una semana después - Nuevas imágenes del piloto en Cardal

2007-05-19T10:54:00.000-03:00

Ayer tuve la suerte de visitar la Escuela Italia de Villa Cardal, donde la semana pasada se lanzó el primer piloto del proyecto Ceibal, entregando laptops XO para todos sus niños.

Ver galería de fotos y videos.

Pude ver en vivo las tan esperadas escenas de aulas en que cada niño está trabajando con su laptop. Incluso en un momento, llegaron unos padres de alumnos del grupo de 6to año, que tenían que hablar con la maestra, y ésta para poder tomarse el tiempo necesario dejó a los niños haciendo actividades en las computadoras; cuando entramos a la clase junto a Walter Bender - quien estuvo ahí, durante la visita fugaz a nuestro país que hizo los días pasados - estaban todos trabajando muy tranquilos, aunque no demoramos mucho en alborotarlos.

Según pude ver, los niños han sacado toneladas de fotos, jugado y accedido a Internet, encontrando especial atractivo en ver videos en youtube - tema que le está causando algunos dolores de cabeza a la gente del Latu, dado que con esto matan el ancho de banda disponible. Las maestras también han creado interesantes actividades, a las cuales me referiré en algún momento en otro post.

A nuestra presencia se sumó la de Pablo Silveira de Canal 10, quien hizo una muy linda nota ayer para el noticiero Subrayado. A continuación se puede ver el video de la cobertura realizada por este medio la semana pasada, en el momento del lanzamiento del piloto.

Veo una escuela que ha cambiado mucho lo que era su rutina habitual y que está enfrentando el desafío con fuerza. Los niños acompañan con mucho entusiasmo, tanto que ha aumentado en forma importante el nivel de asistencia.

International praise for the Ceibal project

2007-05-18T21:38:00.000-03:00

(Translation of/Traducción de: Elogios internacionales para el proyecto Ceibal, published on 5/05/2007. Thanks to Gustavo Fischer for the translation work)

An international meeting took place from April 23 to 27th at OLPC headquarters at MIT, which included direct and indirect participants in the project at a worldwide level. Education authorities, financers and technical staff and most of those linked to OLPC attended a series of
workshops and conferences, many of them led by Nicholas Negroponte himself, in which important points of interest were discussed.

Uruguay had its own delegation as one of the six countries that are already working with the XO laptops, together with Argentina, Brazil, Nigeria, Libya, Pakistan and Thailand. In that context, on a workshop on the 24th, and in front of representatives from those countries and others interested in joining the project, Negroponte stated that Uruguay is one of the countries that are best structuring the OLPC project at the moment.

At the same time, Antonio Battro, education area specialist for OLPC stated that the Ceibal project is the one that best represents the project’s 1 to 1 philosophy by considering it a nationwide project.

The project was also presented at the Vatican and Harvard, receiving praise at both institutions.

These are really outstanding news.

La experiencia de la discordia

2007-05-17T20:15:00.000-03:00

El famoso artículo del New York times... Según la lectura de algunos medios, es la prueba de que dar laptops en las escuelas puede ser un total fracaso. Me refiero a la nota titulada "Seeing No Progress, Some Schools Drop Laptops", que fué publicada por el New York Times el pasado 4 de Mayo. Parte de la información de esa nota fué tomada por el semanario Búsqueda en su edición del 10 de Mayo, donde publica un artículo muy crítico que compara la experiencia norteamericana con lo que ese mismo día estaba comenzando en Cardal. Entre otras cosas el artículo de Búsqueda resalta los problemas de rupturas, hackers, pornografía y falta de uso educativo. Lo primero que me llamó la atención fue que no hubiera oído hablar nada de esa experiencia, según tenía entendido, el primer piloto 1-a-1 con niños se realizó en Costa Rica hace algunos años y hay pocas experiencias de este tipo. Mirando el artículo, veo que la "escuela" norteamericana es un secundario. En las fotos se pueden ver sus "niños". También veo que los laptops son tradicionales, no pensados para enfrentarse a la compleja realidad de un entorno de enseñanza.

Esta nota la tomó Emiliano Cotelo en la entrevista realizada a Juan Grompone y Héctor Florit el pasado 11 de Mayo - recomiendo mucho leer la entrevista, tiene pasajes muy interesantes, donde además de hacer referencia a este tema, se habla del proyecto desde el punto de vista educativo y se abordan muchos de los temas de interés general, como los actores involucrados y el futuro del proyecto.

Parece más que importante tomar todas las experiencias posibles como referencias de lo que puede salir bien y lo que puede salir mal en un proyecto de estas características. Es fundamental prever los problemas que puedan surgir, porque con el tiempo, con seguridad van a surgir. Yo no puedo ser objetivo, eso está claro... pero también está claro que Búsqueda no está siendo objetiva. Por el contrario, su artículo contribuye a desinformar.

Ver también:

Post en olpcnews relativo al artículo del New York Times
Respuesta de Nicholas Negroponte al artículo (esta respuesta fué publicada en el propio New York Times)

Competition between laptops, software and much more

2007-05-14T15:35:00.000-03:00

(traducido de/translated from: "Competencia entre laptops, software y mucho más")

It's esteemed that by the end of May it will get open the international bid for purchasing the first set of laptops in Uruguay. Through this, it is intended to buy the first 100,000 computers, destined to cover the totality of 4 states ("departmentos") of the interior of Uruguay. After the call gets open, there will be a period of approximately 2 months in which the interested ones will be able to present their proposals.
As it was indicated in a previous post, at the moment there are 3 firm competitors: OLPC/XO, Classmate and ITP-C. The terms that will decide who can compete and the way to designate the winner will be described in the bid terms, which is being elaborated by a committee specially designated for this aim. At this moment I do not have the names of the members to include them in this post, but I know it is a team of specialists in different areas - legal, technological, educative, etc. - with figures pertaining to different political parties and independent advisories.

Personally, the designated work party deserves me great confidence. Nevertheless, in such an innovating world-wide project, in which it seems that Uruguay has become one of the main points of battle - mainly between OLPC and Classmate, - the terms of the bid must be examined with a magnifying glass to avoid ungrateful surprises in the future. Some of the aspects I consider that we should have special care of are:
Base software. As Piscitelli says, this project is not a platform of promotion of free software. It cannot either force us to use only propietary software. The advantages of each one of these "worlds" must be put in terms of requirements for software. For example, enabling to install operating systems and applications of different software suppliers, that the source code of some applications can be acessed, etc.
Standards of interoperability. It cannot happen having to buy software - even worse if it can only be produced by one company - to be able to interact with th laptop, or some of its native applications. This means that the produced documents, as well as the applications that interact, must use interoperable formats.
Intellectual property (copyright, etc) of what is produced. It cannot be permited that the intellectual property of anything that gets produced with the laptops gets belonging to a private company. How could this happen? Let me put an example. Let's imagine that the camera application allowed us to publish the recorded videos in youtube with just a click. In that case we would be leaving part of the intellectual property of what was produced by the children to Google (according to what's specified in the terms of use of youtube). This case would not be serious, since the camera application is free software and if we don't like the terms of use, we could easily modify it so that it gets published elsewhere. However, if we were in a propietary application, we would not have this possibility. For example, the new versions of Microsoft Office interact with a service on the web called Office Live. Both softwares were designed altogether. What would happen if Microsoft remained with part of the intellectual property of the stuff published in Office Live? The same could happen with the platform used to publish the contents produced by the teachers and the children. To allow this would mean a loss in the educative sovereignty of the country.

Doing some futurology, I believe that in the mid-term these projects will force companies that produce propietary software to strongly change many of their licensing policies, if they wish to survive. In fact, Microsoft already has made it when started the "Unlimited Potential" program. But I believe that the changes will have to exceed the prices policies, going even to the way in which they treat intellectual property of an important part of their software.

There's a lot of discussion in the Web on the fact that XO is going to be able to run Windows. I would like seeing more that the subjects I'm raising here were discussed, as they really will define the course of educative projects 1 to 1 in the next years. It is an excellent moment for talking about it.

Competencia entre laptops, software y mucho más

2007-05-14T14:07:00.000-03:00

(read this article in english)

Se estima que a fines de mayo se abrirá el llamado a licitación internacional para la compra de la primera partida de laptops. Se pretende con esto comprar los primeros 100.000 equipos, con los cuales se busca cubrir en su totalidad a 4 departamentos del interior de Uruguay. Luego de abierto el llamado, habrá un período de aproximadamente 2 meses para que los interesados presenten sus ofertas.
Como se indicó en un post anterior, al momento hay 3 competidores firmes: OLPC/XO, Classmate e ITP-C. Los términos que decidirán quiénes pueden competir y la forma de designar el ganador estarán descriptos en el pliego, el cual está siendo elaborado en estos momentos por un comité especialmente designado para este fin. En este momento no tengo los nombres de los miembros para incluirlos en este post, pero me consta que se trata de un equipo de especialistas en distintas áreas - jurídica, tecnológica, educativa, etc. - con figuras pertenecientes a distintos partidos políticos y asesores independientes.

Personalmente, el equipo de trabajo designado me merece gran confianza. Sin embargo, en un proyecto mundial tan innovador, en que parece que Uruguay se ha convertido en uno de los principales puntos de batalla - principalmente entre OLPC y Classmate -, los términos del pliego deben ser examinados con lupa para evitar sorpresas ingratas más adelante. Algunos de los aspectos en que considero que se debe tener especial cuidado son:
Software de base. Como dice Piscitelli, este proyecto no es una plataforma de promoción de software libre. Tampoco puede obligar a utilizar un único software propietario. Las ventajas de cada uno de estos "mundos" deben ser puestas en términos de requerimientos del software. Por ejemplo, que se puedan instalar sistemas operativos y aplicaciones de distintos proveedores de software, que se pueda ver el código fuente de algunas aplicaciones, etc.
Estándares de interoperabilidad. No puede suceder que sea necesario comprar software - peor aún si éste lo produce una única compañía - para poder interactuar con el laptop, o alguna de sus aplicaciones nativas. Esto significa que los documentos producidos, así como las aplicaciones que interactúan, deben utilizar formatos interoperables.
Propiedad intelectual de lo producido. No se debe permitir que ninguna parte de la propiedad intelectual de lo producido en los laptops pertenezca en algún modo a una empresa privada. ¿Cómo podría suceder esto? Pongo un ejemplo. Imaginemos que la aplicación de cámara permitiera publicar con un click el video grabado en youtube. En ese caso estaríamos dando parte de la propiedad intelectual de lo producido por los niños a Google (de acuerdo a lo que especifican los términos de uso de youtube). Este caso no es grave, dado que la aplicación de la cámara es software libre y si no nos gustan los términos de uso fácilmente la podríamos modificar para que publique en otro sitio. Sin embargo, si estuvieramos en una aplicación propietaria no tendríamos esta posibilidad. Por ejemplo, las nuevas versiones de Microsoft Office interactúan con un servicio en la web llamado Office Live. Ambos softwares fueron diseñados en conjunto. ¿Qué sucedería si Microsoft se quedara con parte de la propiedad intelectual de lo publicado en Office Live? Esto mismo podría suceder con la plataforma de publicación de contenidos producidos por los maestros y los niños. Permitir esto significaría una pérdida en la soberanía educativa del país.

Haciendo un poco de futurología, creo que estos proyectos obligarán a mediano plazo a empresas que producen software propietario a cambiar fuertemente muchas de sus políticas de licencias, si desean sobrevivir. De hecho, microsoft ya lo ha hecho al lanzar el programa "Unlimited Potential". Pero creo que los cambios excederán a las políticas de precios, llegando a la forma en que manejan la propiedad intelectual de una importante parte de su software.

En la web se está discutiendo mucho el hecho de que XO va a poder correr Windows. Me gustaría que más que eso se discutieran los temas que aquí planteo, que realmente definirán el rumbo de los proyectos educativos 1 a 1 en los próximos años. Es un excelente momento para hacerlo.

Villa Cardal, Uruguay: Center of worldwide attention

2007-05-12T14:25:00.000-03:00

As this blog is receiving lots of visits from outside spanish-speaking countries, I decided to include some contents in english - well, some kind of broken-english, let's say ;-) . This is a very important moment for us, as we have been working hard to launch the project and get it right. I promise to write some articles in English describing our experience soon.

Last thursday was not just any day in Villa Cardal. This Uruguayan town with a population of about 2.000 was host more governmental and received more attention from the press than it had ever probably received in its history.
But what happened there was not only important for its citizens, nor for the country: It began the first experience of one-on-one computing that covers 100% of children in school. This is unprecedented.
The experience was incredible, there are many details to talk about and discuss that I promise to continue blogging in the next days. For now, you can see the gallery of photos that I took in the place.

Villa Cardal: Centro de atención mundial

2007-05-12T13:20:00.000-03:00

El Jueves no fué un día más en Villa Cardal. Este pueblo de alrededor de 2000 habitantes en el interior de Uruguay recibió autoridades nacionales y prensa, como probablemente nunca había sucedido en su historia.
Pero lo que allí sucedió no solo fué importante para sus pobladores, ni para el para el país: Comenzó la primera experiencia de computación 1 a 1 que cubre al 100% de los niños en edad escolar de una población. Esto no tiene antecedentes en el mundo.
La experiencia fué impresionante, hay muchos detalles para comentar que prometo seguir blogueando en los próximos días. Por el momento pueden ver la galería de fotos que tomé en el lugar.

"La web en el aire de Cardal" (diario El Observador)

2007-05-10T16:20:00.000-03:00

Transcribo algunos párrafos de una nota de prensa publicada hoy en el portal Observa:

"Cerca de 40 niños de la escuela Italia recibieron sus computadoras de la mano de varias autoridades del gobierno. En una semana los niños podrán acceder a Internet desde todos los puntos de la ciudad"

"En medio de gran expectativa y mucha alegría de los niños, el presidente Tabaré Vázquez junto a una gran comitiva de autoridades dejaron inaugurada la experiencia piloto del Plan Ceibal en la escuela Italia n° 24 de la ciudad de Cardal (en Florida), la que en los próximos días quedará conectada a Internet por medio de conexiones inalámbricas, a fin de que los alumnos puedan acceder a la web desde sus hogares."

"La algarabía de tener un PC en sus manos, algunos por primera vez, dejó copados a los chicos, que no esperaron para encender sus máquinas, introducir sus datos personales (la primera vez que se enciende hay que poner el nombre de uno y elegir los colores de la pantalla) y ponerse a experimentar con las X-O. Lo que más los entusiasmó fue poder sacarse fotos y filmarse con las webcam que vienen incluidas."

Para cualquier padre o adulto que preserve su "niño interior" se emocionará con solo imaginarse este momento tan esperado por los niños. Verdaderamente impresionante haber concebido como complemento al laptop la posibilidad de acceso a Internet desde sus hogares, extendiendo no solo la experiencia a los niños. Podrán estar en contacto en todo momento con otros niños en otros lugares, o estar en contacto con la escuela o con los maestros para seguir aprendiendo, pero también podrán compartir la experiencia con toda su familia. El mismo niño será un docente en su propia casa.

Las posibilidades son infinitas.

Presentación a la prensa del proyecto Ceibal

2007-05-08T23:52:00.001-03:00

Se realizó ayer (8 de mayo) una conferencia de prensa en el LATU, realizando una presentación del proyecto previa al lanzamiento del primer piloto del proyecto en Villa Cardal.

Realizaron una introducción y respondieron preguntas un panel integrado por:

Miguel Brechner - Director del LATU
Miguel Mariatti - Gerente del proyecto Ceibal - LATU
Ida Holtz - Directora de SECIU - AGESIC
Daniel Iglesias - Gerente de área de relacionamiento con la comunidad - Antel
José Clastornik - Gerente de HG S.A. - AGESIC
Juan Grompone - Director Interfase - Asesor en el área pedagógica.
Sylvia González - Gerente de área de proyectos de HG S.A. - Asesora técnica
Oscar Gómez - Consejero del Consejo de Educación Primaria
Luis Garibaldi - Director de educación del MEC
Hector Florit - Consejero del Codicen

Delante de ellos se exponían los 3 modelos de laptops que se han propuesto para el proyecto (OLPC/XO, Classmate e ITP-C).

En primer lugar Brechner presentó una cronología de los sucesos principales vinculados al proyecto, desde el surgimiento del concepto "un computador por niño" a partir de la propuesta de Negroponte en el foro económico mundial de Davos en 2005 hasta el momento.

Luego se explicó que los equipos a comprarse se definirán en llamados a licitación internacional, realizándose el primero próximamente. Para el piloto de Villa Cardal se utilizarán 200 equipos XO que fueron donados. Confirmó que tanto Classmate como ITP-C también donaron equipos.

En la introducción se tocaron varios temas generales del proyecto. Se puede descargar el audio de la introducción. (cuando pueda lo subo embebo en la página para poder escucharlo sin descargar)

Luego vino una tanda de preguntas y respuestas. Varias preguntas apuntaron a los costos del proyecto, los cuales no fueron especificados puesto que dependerán de los precios que se propongan en la licitación. Otro tema al que se apuntó en varias preguntas y se dejó bien en claro es que "las computadoras pertenecen a los niños", desde el momento en que se les entregan en adelante. Descargar el audio de las preguntas y respuestas.

Como conclusión general, se vió un equipo de trabajo muy sólido y coordinado - casi todos los miembros del panel respodieron preguntas, cada uno en su área -, alineados en objetivos claros.

Entrevista para podcast mexicano Eón 4.5

2007-05-07T10:34:00.000-03:00

El podcast mexicano Frecuencia cero - Eón 4.5, que se dedica a noticias sobre tecnología, me realizó el pasado 27/4 una entrevista dado el interés que les genera el proyecto OLPC y en particular su aplicación en países sudamericanos.

Pueden escuchar el podcast a continuación, o descargarlo aquí para escucharlo desde su computadora, celular o ipod.

powered by ODEO

Copio a continuación la información que adjuntaron en su sitio:

One Laptop Per Child se autodefine como un proyecto educativo para reducir la pobreza. En en Uruguay se busca acompañar estos objetivos a través del proyecto Ceibal, que dará una computadora XO a cada niño.

Inevitablemente se trata de un proyecto polémico. En Eón 4.5 entrevistamos a Pablo Flores, uno de los participantes más activos de este proyecto piloto.

Muchas gracias a Antonio Quirarte y su equipo por el interés. También agradezco a Enrique Place por el contacto.

LATU selecciona Analista-Programador para el Proyecto Ceibal

2007-05-06T16:26:00.000-03:00

La siguiente oferta laboral fué enviada a la Universidad Católica:

LABORATORIO TECNOLOGICO DEL URUGUAY

SELECCIONA

Analista Programador (Proyecto CEIBAL)

El puesto implica configuración de servidores, análisis de redes mesh, desarrollo de herramientas básicas para el análisis del funcionamiento de la red; pruebas en redes mesh.

Requisitos:
- Egresado o estudiante avanzado de la carrera Analista Programador
- Experiencia en Linux
- Experiencia en Redes de datos
- Conocimientos de inglés

Condiciones:

Contrato por 1 año
Carga horaria: 40 hrs. Semanales

Enviar cv a rrhh@latu.org.uy Ref. 16/07
Av. Italia 6201, RRHH LATU, hasta el miércoles 09/05/07

Elogios internacionales para el proyecto Ceibal

2007-05-05T12:53:00.000-03:00

En la semana del 23 al 27 de Abril se realizó en las instalaciones de OLPC en el MIT un encuentro en que reunió a participantes directos e indirectos en el proyecto OLPC a nivel mundial. Autoridades educativas, técnicos, financistas, gran parte de quienes están vinculados a OLPC se reunieron en una serie de conferencias y workshops, muchos de ellos liderados por el propio Nicholas Negroponte, en los que se difundieron y discutieron temas de interés.
Uruguay tuvo su representación en el encuentro, como uno de los 6 países que ya están trabajando con las computadoras XO - junto a Argentina, Brasil, Nigeria, Libia, Pakistán y Tailandia. En ese entorno, en un workshop del día 24 y frente a representantes de todos estos países y otros interesados a integrarse al proyecto, Negroponte dijo que Uruguay es uno de los países que mejor está estructurando el proyecto OLPC hasta el momento.

Al mismo tiempo, Antonio Battro, especialista del área educativa de OLPC, manifestó que el proyecto Ceibal es el modelo que resuelve mejor la filosofía del 1 a 1 por considerarlo un proyecto de inclusión a nivel nacional.

El proyecto fué presentado en el Vaticano y Harvard, recibiendo también elogios en estas instituciones.

Realmente es una noticia que merece ser destacada.

Inquietudes pendientes para empezar a enseñar

2007-05-04T12:59:00.000-03:00

Estamos a menos de una semana para que comience el primer piloto del Proyecto Ceibal, en Cardal. Los maestros ya están preparándose, también se está concientizando a los padres de los cambios que se vienen y se prepara un lanzamiento con bombos y platillos.

Es lógico que existan muchas inquietudes, dudas y también problemas sin resolver, aún a esta altura (después de todo, no podemos dejar de hacer las cosas "a la uruguaya").

El software de XO está bastante estable desde la versión 385, ya incluyendo contenidos interesantes, indicando correctamente el estado de la batería y permitiendo almacenar fotos y video - no solo capturar para después perderlo, como sucedía anteriormente. Un gran problema que está pendiente es la falta de un buen manejador de archivos en la interfaz Sugar. Por ejemplo, las fotos que se sacan no se pueden eliminar o mover fácilmente a una memoria USB. Esto alarma a los maestros, que saben que los niños saldrán a tomar fotos compulsivamente. Parece difícil que los niños llenen el disco flash de los laptops tomando fotos de 640x480, deberían tomar miles de fotos, pero herramientas para administrarlas, así como todos los otros documentos que puedan generar, se hacen necesarias en forma urgente. Actualmente la única forma es utilizar la terminal linux que provee el sistema, pero esto no puede ser manejado por cualquiera, menos aún por quienes tienen poca experiencia - o ninguna - en el uso de computadoras, como niños y maestros. La solución a esto está planeada en la herramienta "Journal", que actualmente se encuentra en sus últimas fases de desarrollo, pero aún no es confiable para instalarla masivamente. Esperamos ansiosamente el Journal.

Un prototipo de cómo será el Journal.

Otra clara preocupación no es tan específica del laptop XO, sino que corresponde al potencial del acceso a Internet por los niños: cómo cuidar a dónde acceden, de los virus, fraudes online y especialmente de la pornografía. XO fue diseñado con especiales cuidados desde el punto de vista de seguridad, que minimiza los daños que puedan provocar los virus. Los aspectos que dependen de la navegación que realicen los usuarios, deben ser resueltos con filtros centralizados, para lo cual en nuestro país se extenderán los actualmente utilizados por ANEP. Esto no quita que quien tiene acceso a un Access Point inalámbrico por un enlace a Internet contratado en su casa, por ejemplo, no pueda navegar sin restricciones, pero esto ya viene sucediendo con todos quienes hoy en día acceden a Internet. El tema es complejo y siempre acecharán peligros en la red, más aún en la medida que sea accedida por incautos niños. Microsoft Uruguay, en otro paso coherente con su estrategia de insertarse en el proyecto, lanzó ayer con mucho ruido su iniciativa "Navega protegido en Internet"... Tienen claro que es uno de los temas que se pondrán sobre el tapete en los próximos tiempos.

Mucho serviría que los colegas que ya están teniendo experiencias en Brasil y Nigeria nos contaran, más allá de lo contentos y excitados que están los niños, los problemas que se les están presentando y cómo los están resolviendo. Me asusta solo ver en la web las cosas lindas que suceden en las pruebas con niños; para que todos aprendamos lo máximo posible deberíamos tener todas las caras de las experiencias... Sino las analizaremos cuando empecemos a vivirlo en Uruguay.

Nicholas Negroponte, una de las 100 personas más influyentes del mundo, según Time

2007-05-03T22:39:00.000-03:00

La revista Time ha sacado este año su clásica lista de las 100 personas más influyentes del mundo. En el puesto número 81 de la lista aparece Nicholas Negroponte, director de OLPC. Sin duda esto se debe al ruido que está haciendo a nivel mundial el proyecto en el último año - pese a que la idea de OLPC se anunció a comienzos del 2005, Negroponte no había aparecido anteriormente en la lista de Times.
Con OLPC, Negroponte no solo ha liderado la creación de un laptop. Ha influído en el mercado mundial de Tecnologías de la Información, llevando a una fuerte competencia mundial para la fabricación de computadoras de bajo costo y su utilización para la educación.
Más allá de las distintas visiones que se puedan tener sobre esta persona (y el proyecto), sin duda ha sido un catalizador para este cambio cultural que comienza, que solo podremos medir de aquí a algunos años.

En este link se puede ver un video (de no muy buena calidad :-S ) de su disertación realizada en el Leadership Forum recientemente. Aquí se pueden leer (en inglés) algunas de sus respuestas a varios temas técnicos, logísticos y comerciales de actualidad que muchos nos planteamos.

Polémica: Inesperado giro del Proyecto OLPC/XO

2007-05-02T07:44:00.000-03:00

Hace pocas horas se han dado varias interesantes declaraciones desde dentro de la directiva del Proyecto OLPC, fundamentalmente a través del propio Nicholás Negroponte.

Paso a resumir los puntos principales:

El proyecto está migrando hacia una estrategia Mixta: usará la versión actual de Fedora GNU/Linux, como así también la posibilidad de utilizar cualquier otra versión (lo que tira por tierra todas las teorías conspiratorias del creador de Ututo), incorporando ahora la posibilidad de usar Windows.
El precio actual de la "laptop de 100 dólares" es de 175 dólares: han habido cambios en la administración de costos del equipamiento, incrementando la memoria y la velocidad de las últimas versiones de hardware, como así también la aceptación de entrega de menos unidades (lo que disminuye la "economía de escala") y la asignación de 1 dolar de cada equipamiento entregado sea retribuido al proyecto.
El Proyecto alcanzará no solo a los países subdesarrollados: han mostrado interés las escuelas norteamericanas por lo que han cambiado la estrategia a estudiar la posibilidad de entregar menos unidades y variar enormemente el precio final (manejando cifras de 300 dólares según el caso).

Creo que la parte que más está causando malestar entre varias comunidades de usuarios que apoyan el proyecto es la frase "La OLPC no es una campaña de promoción para el Software Libre", habiendo cambiado esencialmente algunos conceptos e ideas que manejaba el mismo Negroponte desde la concepción del proyecto (libertad de acción, costos, licenciamiento, rendimiento del software, etc).

Esto último es seguro que correrá como reguero de pólvora por Internet generando todo tipo de reacciones opuestas por parte de los activistas.

Fuente: Edu.car

Otras opiniones:

Nuevos equipos, nuevas opciones. ¿Extender el plan Ceibal a secundaria?

2007-05-01T11:07:00.000-03:00

Las opciones, en lo que a computadores se refiere, son cuatro hasta el momento: XO (OLPC), Classmate, ITP-C y las provistas por Outlet Mayorista.
El gobierno pareció apostar desde el primer momento a XO, al menos fue la que el presidente mostró en diciembre del año pasado al lanzar el Proyecto Ceibal, además de ser las utilizadas en el primer piloto en Cardal.
Classmate (comentada en un post anterior) realizó su presentación oficial en Uruguay la semana pasada, de la mano de Sonda, Intel y Microsoft. Entraron con mucha fuerza, mencionando la posibilidad de extender el proyecto a secundaria y con frases del tipo "el precio no será un obstáculo".
Por su parte ITP, un participante de origen israelí, ya está comenzando un plan en el que donará 50 máquinas ITP-C para realizar pilotos en escuelas rurales del país. Estas máquinas son muy portátiles, no tienen teclado sino una pantalla sensible al tacto, utilizan una versión de Windows-CE y vienen provistas de interesante software educativo desarrollado por ITP.
Finalmente, Outlet Mayorista, empresa de la que no se encuentra mucha información (ni en la web, ni en guía telefónica, para empezar), propone utilizar computadoras refabricadas. Tomando en cuenta las características particulares del proyecto, que necesita equipos portátiles, robustos, con buena conectividad, de bajo consumo, etc., esta no parece ser una buena opción - más allá de que probablemente sea la que utilice más mano de obra nacional. Otro de los problemas de esta opción es que llevaría a "importar chatarra", ya que se necesitaría comprar a otros países las computadoras que ya no utilizan debido a su obsolesencia, para refabricarlas.

Como señaló Grompone en nota realizada a El Observador, la decisión de cuáles computadoras utilizar "es un problema de precios". Lógicamente, esto dentro del marco de que sirvan para los objetivos del proyecto, lo cual claramente se cumple al menos con XO y Classmate - más allá de hacia dónde vaya el corazoncito de cada uno. No deja de ser una lástima que aún no tengamos la decisión tomada, lo que impacta, entre otros, en las empresas de software nacionales que quieran comenzar a desarrollar para estas nuevas plataformas, las cuales pueden ser pioneras a nivel mundial. Pero no se puede negar que la competencia puede beneficiarnos, aprovechando nuestra voluntad de ser el primer país que otorgue al 100% de sus niños computadoras. Solo resta esperar que el juego siga siendo limpio entre competidores.

El 10/5 es el lanzamiento del primer piloto

2007-04-27T14:26:00.000-03:00

Ya se está dando la capacitación a inspectores de primaria y docentes de informática, lo cual continúa con actividades de capacitación a maestros de Cardal.

El 8/5 se brindará una conferencia de prensa dando los últimos detalles y el jueves 10/5, con la presencia del presidente Vazquez se hará la primera entrega de laptops a todos los niños de la Escuela Nº24 "Italia" de Cardal.

Hay algunas noticias más relacionadas con otros pilotos, que subiré cuando tenga un rato.

¿Cómo participar del proyecto Ceibal?

2007-04-27T14:09:00.000-03:00

¿Cómo participar del proyecto? Esa esa pregunta me la han hecho ya varias veces, gente que me conoce personalmente y tantos otros que me han contactado a través de este blog. Algunos involucrados en el proyecto con que he hablado, me han comentado que les ha sucedido lo mismo. Ceibal es un proyecto que genera mucha atención, expectativas y ganas de participar. Pero lamentablemente, salvo en casos particulares como la oferta laboral publicada la semana pasada y los convenios con la Universidad que se están haciendo, no hay una forma directa de incorporarse.

Pese a los 50 millones de dólares anunciados de inversión, el proyecto es muy austero. La mayor parte de este presupuesto está destinado a la compra de los laptops y otra buena parte se va en conectividad y logística. Esto deja poco margen para inversiones en grupos de investigación o apoyo a áreas complementarias - como la industria del software y de contenidos. Sin embargo, el que la mayor parte del grupo de trabajo esté formado y que el estado no vaya a poner más plata en el proyecto no significa que tengamos que mirarlo de afuera. Para empezar, cualquiera de nosotros puede iniciar un emprendimiento privado en su área de interés. Muchos organismos - en el momento se me ocurren CSIC, PDT, Prosperitas e IDRC - financian proyectos de innovación o los apoyan - como Ingenio - y no me caben dudas de que estudiarán con especial atención los que estén vinculados a Ceibal. También sé que el UyLUG está promoviendo un acuerdo con el Latu para desarrollo de software libre para los laptops - aunque lamentablemente aún no lo han anunciado públicamente en su página.

En definitiva, mi consejo es que quien crea que tiene buenas ideas y tiempo para dedicarle al tema, no se quede de brazos cruzados y comience a trabajar por su cuenta, ya sea programando, compartiendo información o elaborando propuestas. Personalmente, el haber elaborado este blog me ayudó a acercarme a algunas autoridades y actualmente me han confiado parte de la elaboración de un sitio oficial del proyecto Ceibal (el cual anunciaremos más adelante).

Ahora, más que nunca, las ideas al poder!

Los integrantes del Proyecto OLPC (EEUU) - Parte 2

2007-04-27T01:00:00.000-03:00

Continuación de la primera parte del documental producido por Red Hat sobre el Proyecto OLPC en EEUU.

Download this video: [ogg]

La verdad que me encantan las oficinas tan "minimalistas" con sus "paredes pizarrones" por todos lados ;-)

Esta información fue extraída del blog de Eduardo Silva (Chile). Eduardo es colaborador en el proyecto OLPC a través de Google.

Los integrantes del Proyecto OLPC (EEUU) a través de una producción de RedHat

2007-04-25T12:20:00.000-03:00

Primera parte de un video producido por la empresa de Red Hat, la cual está muy vinculada al proyecto al colaborar con desarrolladores e investigación y porque además las laptops incluyen una versión de su producto Fedora Core GNU/Linux.

También se puede apreciar -casi al final del video- que en el equipo de trabajo participa el "famoso" Marcelo Tossati (brasilero) quién trabajó en Conectiva (ahora Mandriva), asignado por el mismo Linus Torvalds para ser el responsable de mantener una de las ramas del kernel GNU/Linux.

Cómo enfocar la discusión de OLPC Vs. Classmate

2007-04-24T12:43:00.000-03:00

La alternativa de utilizar Classmate hace surgir el debate por el sistema operativo y las aplicaciones: ¿Es bueno utilizar aplicaciones desconocidas en el mercado, como las que propone OLPC? ¿No es mejor el modelo de Classmate, que propone utilizar herramientas más usadas en el mercado hoy - como Windows y Office?

En primer lugar, vale la pena aclarar que tanto OLPC como Classmate pueden correr Windows y Linux - en ambos casos se han hecho pruebas exitosamente. De hecho, OLPC incorpora un slot de SD-cards a pedido expreso de Microsoft. Sin embargo, parece claro que OLPC está pensado para correr su propia versión de Fedora con entorno gráfico Sugar, mientras que Classmate está asociada a su versión reducida de Windows. Esto se debe al modelo educativo planteado en cada caso y seguramente también a los modelos de comercialización que cada uno maneja, los intereses en juego, etc.. Personalmente el negocio que está haciendo cada uno de estos gigantes (el MIT, Red Hat, Google, Intel, Microsoft...) me interesa únicamente como curiosidad y para entender el fenómeno, pero me tiene sin cuidado quién se lleve la mayor tajada. Sí me importa analizar en qué nos impacta a nosotros.

Classmate propone un modelo parecido al que la mayoría de nosotros usamos en nuestros PCs: Tener un paquete completo de oficina, usar outlook para el mail y msn para chatear. Por su parte OLPC se acerca más al modelo de aplicaciones impulsado por Google: Las aplicaciones ofimáticas son mínimas y se deben complementar con aplicaciones web, usar gmail para el correo y el chat puede ser por una aplicación liviana o por google talk u otro servicio web similar.

Un argumento que he visto en la web y en la prensa es que OLPC es peor porque no permite utilizar "las herramientas que se utilizan en la vida real" y que ésto les traerá problemas a estas generaciones de niños cuando tengan que salir al mercado laboral. Lo primero que me pregunto es: ¿Cómo serán el software en ese momento, digamos en 10 años...? Es difícil de prever, sobre todo pensando que hace 10 años la web gráfica recién nacía, Microsoft empezaba a darse cuenta del potencial de Internet disponiéndose a competir con Netscape y Google todavía era un proyecto universitario. ¿Le estamos enseñando las herramientas que necesitarán a nuestros niños dándoles Office? Ese argumento solo parece defender los intereses de Microsoft. Obviamente, la competencia también tiene sus razones comerciales, pero eso es problema de ellos, nosotros debemos centrar nuestras decisiones en los objetivos estratégicos que nos llevaron a crear el proyecto Ceibal, como la reducción de la brecha digital, la educación y la inclusión social.

Un punto que impactará más en nosotros es el enfoque que dan a la construcción del software - y también el hardware - en cada caso. Classmate tiene un enfoque propietario: Las aplicaciones tienen su código cerrado, las modificaciones las realizan las empresas, financiándose a partir de la venta de licencias y servicios. OLPC por su parte tiene su principal fuerza de desarrollo en el MIT y ha seleccionado un grupo reducido de empresas que colaboran con el proyecto, a las que se suma la comunidad mundial de desarrolladores de software abierto. Este enfoque ayuda a la mejora constante de las aplicaciones - trascendiendo el interés económico que éstas tengan - y a que no se disparen los costos de tener buen software educativo en la computadora.

¿Esto quiere decir que no van a haber negocios y dinero detrás de OLPC? Esa pregunta puede dar para una mayor discusión, pero mirando quiénes vienen inviertiendo en el proyecto, parece claro que no. Tanto Red Hat, Google o News Corp. parecen tener claro que van a obtener beneficios del proyecto, que no estarán ligados a la venta de licencias sino a otros modelos de negocio que ellos saben manejar. Ahora nos toca a los uruguayos tener la inteligencia de saber hacer nuestro negocio también.

Invitados a este blog

2007-04-22T12:11:00.000-03:00

Tengo la buena noticia de haber coordinado con algunas personas vinculadas al proyecto o interesadas en él, para participar con sus aportes en este blog.
Por lo pronto me ha confirmado su participación Enrique Place, que desde su excelente blog ha seguido el proyecto de cerca y siempre tiene datos e informaciones interesantes para aportar. También me prometió su participación Sylvia González, asesora técnica del proyecto Ceibal.
De paso, aprovecho para invitar a participar a todos los que crean que tienen aportes para hacer sobre el proyecto, este busca ser un espacio de encuentro y discusión.

Oferta de trabajo

2007-04-22T11:47:00.000-03:00

En el Gallito Luis de hoy aparece una oferta de trabajo para participar en el proyecto Ceibal. Hay que apurarse porque reciben los CV hasta el lunes (extrañamente, el aviso no aparece en la página del Latu).
Actualmente el Latu tiene un convenio con la Facultad de Ingeniería (UdelaR) para incorporar pasantes, por donde ya han ingresado varias personas que se están trabajando en el proyecto y tengo entendido que ingresarán más. También Latu está negociando convenios con las universidades, inicialmente para apoyar trabajos de posgrado relacionados con el proyecto.

Classmate entra al ruedo en Uruguay

2007-04-19T15:39:00.000-03:00

En varios países la asociación entre Microsoft e Intel que promueve la utilización de la computadora Classmate para la enseñanza está siendo considerada como una alternativa a OLPC.
Copio a continuación la noticia publicada en Plan B (19/05/07) en noticia titulada "Ofrecen una alternativa al proyecto Ceibal":

La empresa de software Microsoft ofreció a las autoridades de la enseñanza llevar a cabo un proyecto piloto similar al que ya se está realizando conocido bajo el nombre Ceibal.
El gerente general de la empresa, Eduardo Mangarelli, dijo que están en conversaciones para implementar un proyecto que permita la introducción de las tecnologías informáticas y la conectividad en internet a niños de escuelas públicas.
Ese proyecto se realizaría en conjunto con los aportes de la emprea Intel, señaló.
En tanto, fuentes de la enseñanza reconocieron la existencia de contactos la la empresa y de la propuesta de implementar una experiencia piloto, pero advirtieron que hasta el momento no se han establecido los plazos o las características de ese proyecto.
Mangarelli explicó que este proyecto consistiría no solamente en software que permita la conectividad, sino en el uso de materiales con contenidos educativos especialmente diseñados para facilitar la tarea de la enseñanza.
Fuera de esta oferta concreta realizada a las autoridades de la educación, aseguró que Microsoft ya ha destinado recursos para la capacitación especializada en materia de recursos informáticos de 4 mil docentes uruguayos de todo el país. (Gracias a Enrique Place por la noticia)

Algo de esto ya lo había adelantado Ultimas Noticias el 10/04/07, al indicar que Intel, la israelí ITP y la uruguaya Outlet Mayorista tienen interés en proveer las computadoras del proyecto Ceibal. Esta información también fué referida por Búsqueda en la edición del 12 de Abil.

Classmate se parece más a un notebook tradicional, está pensada para correr Windows (aunque al igual que OLPC puede correr tanto Linux como Windows) y, al igual que OLPC tiene un modelo educacional detrás. He leído opiniones, como este artículo, que indican que el modelo de Classmate está más orientado al docente y el el OLPC más orientado a los niños. Conociendo poco Classmate, me da la impresión que parece una computadora para "niños mayores" - por ejemplo liceales - y también para gente grande que no necesite grandes prestaciones de hardware -por ejemplo, como computadora de viaje parece ideal.

Pase lo que pase, el que haya diversidad de opciones parece bueno, todo depende de cómo se aborde el tema. Habrá que estar atento a lo que pase.

Ya comenzaron los pilotos en escuelas de Brasil y Nigeria

2007-04-14T15:27:00.000-03:00

Fotos de la experiencia en la "Escola Estadual de Ensino Fundamental Luciana de Abreu" en Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil. Obtenidas de este post.

Y estas son de la experiencia en Nigeria. Obtenidas de cnet. Prestar atención a las condiciones del salón de clase.

Noticia sobre "Un computador por aluno" en Brasil

2007-04-13T15:36:00.000-03:00

Muy buena esta nota realizada por O Globo en Brasil que muestra cómo en un breve espacio de tiempo en un noticiero se puede informar sobre el pryecto, dando perspectiva y aprotando datos concretos.

Me gustaría ver más notas de este tipo en la prensa uruguaya.

En dos o tres semanas comienza el primer piloto en Cardal

2007-04-13T15:15:00.000-03:00

El semanario Búsqueda de ayer informa:

Grompone reconoció que el proyecto está "atrasado" y que el plan piloto que debía comenzar el lunes 9 en la escuela públicadel pueblo Cardal, el Florida, de unos 150 alumnos, se posetergó "para dentro de dos o tres semanas".

En otra parte de la nota titulada "Gobierno licita compra de cien mil computadoras para poner en parcha el plan 'CEIBAL' en Primaria", se refiere al tema educativo y de las ATD:

Los maestros, que presentaron fuertes críticas cuando se anunció el programa el 14 de diciembre por parte del presidente Tabaré Vazquez, aún mantienen sus "dudas". Reconocen, empero, que una reciente decisión del gobierno de dejar en el ámbito del Consejo de Educación Primaria (CEP) las principales decisiones pedagógicas, constituye un "avance" sobre la forma en que se venía discutiendo el plan.

Respecto al software utilizado por las máquinas, el artículo solo recoge palabras publicadas en el diario Plan B, en que Frances Van Hall critica el uso de linux dado que "es un programa que no es fácil" y que "el día que (los niños) salgan al mundo y se enfrenten con los otros programas no van a saber qué hacer". Lamentablemente no informa nada sobre la versión especial de linux usada por XO ni de la nueva interfaz propuesta pensada especialmente para el aprendizaje de niños. :(

La Asamblea Técnico-Docente del viernes pasado

2007-04-04T10:54:00.000-03:00

Poco o nada se vio en la prensa acerca de la Asamblea Técnico-Docente (ATD) que el viernes pasado sesionó en las escuelas de todo el país, donde entre otros temas se discutía la postura de los maestros ante el proyecto Ceibal.

Las ATDs existen desde hace muchísimos años, tanto en primaria como en secundaria como ámbito de discusión de temas de interés docente. Yo tuve la experiencia de vivir ATDs en secundaria como docente... sobra el escepticismo de que sirvan para algo pero se asiste porque son obligatorias... hay una fuerza enorme por conservar todo como está... es difícil discutir los temas con seriedad. Esa es mi experiencia, que dudo que cambie mucho en primaria.

Como información previa a la ATD se distribuyó entre los docentes una lista de 5 temas a discutir, uno de los cuales era el proyecto Ceibal y además se distribuyó este informe sobre el proyecto. Es muy interesante leerlo. Cada uno podrá sacar sus conclusiones... las mias es que es muy tendencioso, mezcla datos objetivos con opiniones, tiene mucha información inexacta, así como falta de datos fundamentales.

Lamentablemente no tengo información sobre las resoluciones que se tomaron en las ATD. Considerando el informe que recibían los maestros, parece difícil que sean muy favorables al proyecto Ceibail, aunque tampoco creo que haya surgido una oposición asérrima porque todos nos hubieramos enterado por la prensa.

Respecto a los maestros, hago una reflexión. El uso de computadoras por todos los niños sin dudas trae cambios en el aula. Muchos maestros necesitarán horas, muchas horas de trabajo para poder usar las máquinas y aprender a enseñar con ellas. Todavía no está claro cómo se va a realizar la capacitación ni qué apoyos tendrán los maestros, muchos de ellos fuera de esta era de tecnologías e internet pero con excelentes atributos docentes. También existirán los que no les interesa la calidad de la educación, pero eso es un tema aparte. Espero que a los buenos maestros no les falte apoyo para concretar las mejoras a la enseñanza que el proyecto busca.

Creo que que haya más y mejor información sobre el proyecto es la única forma de que las opiniones no se formen en base a datos desvirtuados. Solo así se puede plantear una discusión seria, con argumentos y realidades a la vista. En un país que se quiere cambiar dándole tecnologías de la comunicación a todos los niños es lo menos que podemos esperar.

Plan B: Artículo interesante y mala información

2007-03-30T12:50:00.000-03:00

En la portada de ayer del nuevo diario uruguayo "Plan B" apareció el titular "El Plan Ceibal sigue provocando polémicas", acompañado con la frase "Ahora discuten sobre el origen de las computadoras para los niños". Pero lo que me llamó más la atención era la foto que tenía al lado, absolutamente desactualizada de uno de los primeros prototipos de XO, con la manija al costado.

Adentro tiene un artículo interesante titulado "Laptops de la discordia: piedra fundamental de las nuevas generaciones", que da bastante información sobre el proyecto y las distintas opiniones existentes al respecto. Lamentablemente viene acompañado de 8 fotos más, 6 de las cuales corresponden a prototipos viejos y tiene un montón de datos inexactos, como que "utilizan monitores de tinta electrónica", casi olvidando la conectividad inalámbrica, no mencionando la cámara y el stylus-area... Temas que no son tecnicismos, por ejemplo el mesh y la interfaz Sugar son un piedras angulares del proyecto.

En momentos en que el proyecto está en plena discusión pública me encanta que se publiquen artículos de prensa acerca del proyecto Ceibal (ojalá hubiera más difusión seria!), pero sería bueno qus se tuviera más prolijidad en la exposición de datos que sirven para la formación de la opinión pública.

Piscitelli: "La escuela tal como la conocemos ya no va más"

2007-03-27T20:55:00.000-03:00

Realmente recomendable el artículo de Alejandro Piscitelli - Gerente del Portal Educativo educar.ar y principal responsable del proyecto OLPC en Argentina - titulado "Complejo, sí; absurdo, no. Discutible, sí, defendible también".

Creo que compartimos el espíritu de no ser sordos a las críticas y la discusión, pero con una fuerte convicción de que se trata de un proyecto revolucionario para la educación y que, con todas las dificultades que tiene por delante, cambiará positivamente las nuevas generaciones.

Copio a continuación la frase final del artículo.

Sinceramente, en una era con el grado de tecnologización que caracteriza a la nuestra, cuando los nativos digitales les sacan cuerpos de ventaja a los adultos en la reinvención y reapropiación de la tecnología, y donde dispositivos como la OLPC por fin vienen a tender puentes entre generaciones y entre competencias desiguales y asimétricamente distribuidas, la terapia de shock tiene quien la implemente y un buen planteo de recepción/reinvención tecnológica tiene una oportunidad como nunca antes sobre la Tierra.

Uruguay, un país wireless grecias a Ceibal

2007-03-24T20:17:00.000-03:00

En entrevista hecha por Emiliano Cotelo al ministro de Industria y Energía Jorge Lepra, se habló sobre el proyecto Ceibal:

EC - Hemos hablado de industria, de energía, brevemente de minería, pero el ministerio que usted encabeza también se ha involucrado en asuntos que en principio se podría pensar que no tienen nada que ver con esos rubros. Ustedes están jugando un papel importante en el proyecto Ceibal, “Una computadora un niño”, inspirado en el “One laptop per child” de Negroponte y el MIT. ¿Por qué y qué es lo más nuevo? El ingeniero Juan Grompone nos informaba hace unos días que ya están en Uruguay las primeras 200 máquinas que se van a empezar a testear.

JL - Es verdad, llegaron las primeras 200 computadoras, que incluso han sido una donación. Se va a hacer una prueba piloto en El Cardal, en Florida (un pueblo que tiene una sola escuela con 250 niños). El ingeniero Miguel Mariatti va a dirigir el proyecto desde el LATU (Miguel Mariatti fue director de Industrias en el primer período, junto a nosotros).

En una reunión con el ministro Brovetto, el ingeniero Brechner y yo John Negroponte estaba reticente a instalar este programa en nuestro país porque se pensaba primero en los grandes mercados (Brasil, Argentina) y lo convencimos de que en Uruguay, por su tamaño (otra vez las ventajas del tamaño), en tres años podemos darles a todos los niños en edad escolar y a sus maestros un computador, algo que es imposible en otros países. El programa se está instalando en Ruanda, Brasil, Nigeria, Libia, Tailandia y Uruguay.

EC - Tuvieron que convencer a Negroponte de que valía la pena llevar adelante la iniciativa en Uruguay.

JL - Sí (aquí viene mi experiencia anterior con empresas estadounidenses), le hicimos jugar el estudio del caso instalado por Harvard hace muchos años. En Uruguay se puede medir rápidamente, en un país de 600 kilómetros de largo por 400 de ancho se puede ir midiendo el resultado del experimento, mientras que en países como Brasil, Argentina o Nigeria va a ser muy difícil instalarlo en corto plazo y medirlo.

EC - Uruguay no estaba en la agenda inicial del proyecto.

JL - No estaba. Otra cosa muy importante: cuando terminemos de instalar esto Uruguay va a ser un país sin cables, va a ser el primer país wireless, vamos a estar en red prácticamente en todo el país.

Videos sobre OLPC

2007-03-24T20:03:00.001-03:00

Revisando el material que hay en YouTube sobre OLPC, lamentablemente me encontré con casi ningún video sobre experiencias con niños, la reacción de grupos de niños ante el laptop... El video sobre Ceibal es de los pocos que muestra esto.
De todos modos hay algunos videos interesantes, creé un Channel en YouTube donde se puede ver una selección: http://www.youtube.com/pflores
También recomiendo ver el video con la presentación del proyecto OLPC por Nicholas Negroponte en http://www.netevents.tv/docuplayer.asp?docid=75

Ventajas para USA del proyecto OLPC

2007-03-24T19:25:00.000-03:00

Acerca de teorías conspiratorias y demás.... mucho se habla por la web de posibles intereses de los Estados Unidos detrás del proyecto OLPC. Muchos comentarios surgen de que John Negroponte, ex director de la CIA, una de esas personas que no parece dar puntada sin hilo es hermano del padre del proyecto OLPC, Nicholas Negroponte.

Más allá de presunciones de planes para dominar el mundo, vale la pena hacer el ejercicio mental de evaluar en qué aspectos este proyecto, pensado para aplicarse en países subdesarrollados, beneficia al país creador.

Algunas ventajas visibles para USA:

Este es un proyecto de gran innovación tecnológica, que ya está abriendo puertas a un nuevo enorme mercado de computadores portátiles de bajo costo. El know-how de mayor valor agregado queda en USA.
El MIT viene consiguiendo gracias a este proyecto gran apoyo económico para investigación y desarrollo, así como un importantísimo posicionamiento político.
Los países participantes seguramente generarán deuda externa con USA para pagar la compra de computadoras, cosa que no le viene nada mal a Estados Unidos en su situación actual.
Google sacará un enorme beneficio económico de los clicks que los niños harán sobre sus anuncios. Además, al utilizarse su plataforma USA asegura que el centro de la web seguirá en su país. En el tercer mundo seguiremos juntando plata para ensanchar nuestros enlaces con el exterior.

Todo esto no quiere decir que el proyecto no sea beneficioso para nuestros países, de hecho estoy convencido que así será, pero se deben cuidar algunos aspectos... El tema da para mucha discusión.

Visión crítica de Google y OLPC

2007-03-24T19:01:00.000-03:00

Navegando se pueden encontrar todo tipo de visiones sobre OLPC. Me parecieron particularmente interesantes los comentarios del blog de danieloso, con un encare muy confrontativo hacia el proyecto.

Algunas de las críticas apuntan al uso de Google como página de inicio, y a la visión del negocio que ésta y otras empresas tienen detrás de OLPC. Un comentario al respecto: No es obligatorio tener Google como página de inicio, de hecho seguramente en la mayoría de los países se utilice un portal propio como inicio. Lo que sí es cierto es que todo lleva a que se utilice GMail y todo su paquete de servicios accesorios (talk, docs&spreadsheets, etc.). Esto se debe a una razón muy sencilla: ¿Qué alternativa hay para tener un buen servicio de mail, antispam, buena capacidad de storage, etc. con costo 0, que además me permita manejar mi propio dominio? Lamentablemente no hay muchas...

Eso me recuerda a la introducción de computadoras en las aulas uruguayas, que vinieron con Windows y Office (formando éstos parte del programa oficial de enseñanza, de paso). La causa: Una enorme donación de Microsoft... quién podía decir que no?

Google no ofrece su plataforma ni apoyó con 2 millones de dólares el proyecto porque sí. Evidentemente, hay grandes intereses y está seguro de poder recuperar con creces su inversión. El mercado de la publicidad que se puede atar a estos laptops es enorme.

Se buscan inversores que viabilicen hacer proyectos locales o regionales para tener plataformas propias y que el negocio no se lo lleven a otros países.

Video institucional del proyecto

2007-03-23T10:53:00.000-03:00

Aquí está un video sobre una de las primeras experiencias que se realizaron con niños uruguayos.

gnash: La posibilidad de ver flash en el laptop

2007-03-06T14:23:00.000-02:00

La web sin flash no es lo mismo. El plugin de Flash player en los navegadores, no solo permite ver banners animados. Permite ver gran cantidad de páginas web con alto dinamismo e interactividad, así como embeber en páginas web los videos de YouTube y otros.
Originalmente el navegador que corre sobre Sugar no incluye un plugin para flash, lo cual recorta la web enormemente. Una de las principales razones para esto es que no se trata de un sistema abierto, sino que es software propietario de una de las empresas más importantes de software: Adobe.
Por suerte, un grupo de trabajo ha conseguido portar gnash, una "versión gnu" de flash. Por el momento, este sistema trabaja con el formato de Flash 7 (Adobe flash player ya va por la versión 9), pero es un buen avance. Estos muchachos demuestran su sistema corriendo al viejo y querido Max Headroom en XO.
Esperemos que surjan muchos más trabajos en esta línea!!

Para qué tiene XO un slot para SD-card?

2007-02-28T17:13:00.000-02:00

Escondido en la parte inferior derecha de la pantalla, hay una pequeña ranura. Esta es para poder insertar tarjetitas de memoria SD-Card, las cuales pueden almacenar capacidades de hasta 8Gb.

¿Para qué está esta posibilidad? Como el propio Negroponte admite, fue por solicitud de Bill Gates, para poder correr Windows en los laptops. Actualmente Microsoft está trabajando en desarrollar una versión de su famoso sistema operativo para que corra en XO.

Sin embargo, parece interesante las posibilidades que puede dar. Insertando la SD-card se podría fácilmente bootear otro sistema operativo, pero también en cierto sentido se podría trabajar sobre el laptop como si fuera otra máquina: con otro software, otra configuración, etc.. Parece interesante para que el laptop pueda ser usado por toda la familia.
Otra utilidad puede venir por la venta de SW grabado en las SD-card. El futuro dirá...

Emulando el SW del XO en un PC

2007-02-28T14:31:00.000-02:00

Estuve jugando un poco con los "emuladores del laptop". Básicamente hay 3 formas de emular el XO desde una PC:

Desde máquina virtual con QEMU
Desde máquina virtual con VMWare Player
Corriendo aplicaciones de Sugar, tanto desde Windows como desde Linux

Veamos las diferencias de cada opción.

Desde máquina virtual con QEMU
Esta vendría a ser la "opción oficial". El proceso (aquí descripto en detalle) básicamente consiste en Instalarse QEMU (puede ser en Linux o en Windows), se recomienda con el acelerador KQEMU, luego bajarse una imágen del sistema operativo de XO (es un archivo .img) y correrla.

Tiene buena performance y rápidamente se puede acceder a cada release que va saliendo, dado que se publica directamente en la página.

Desde máquina virtual con VMWare Player
Para quienes tienen Windows, ya tienen instalado un VMWare Player y quieren darle una vichada al entorno de trabajo de XO, pueden bajarse algunas de las versiones de máquina virtual disponibles. No todo los release tienen creada la imagen para VMWare, alguien tiene que haber transformado la imagen para QEMU en imagen para VMWare. Por ejemplo, creé una imágen del release 239 (18/01/07) aquí. Lo bajan, lo ejecutan con VMWare player y voilá. No conseguí hacer funcionar en este emulador el sonido ni los puertos USB.

Corriendo aplicaciones de Sugar
Esta opción no sirve para probar el entorno Sugar en sí, sino aplicaciones que corren sobre él, en realidad cualquier aplicación que corra con PyGTK. Aquí hay instrucciones para hacerlo en Windows.
Más adelante subiré más información sobre los resultados en este caso.

Como comentario general, me pareció que con cualquiera de estos emuladores se trabaja más rápido que con el propio laptop.

Ubicación en Google Earth de primera escuela del proyecto Ceibal

2007-02-26T15:18:00.000-02:00

Fiorella Haim subió al Google Earth Community la ubicación de la escuela del primer piloto, a realizarse a partir del mes de Abril. Es el el departamento de Florida, el pueblo se llama Cardal y tiene unos 150 niños aprox.
Página en Google Earth Community.

Comentarios de Alejandro Atchugarry sobre Ceibal

2007-02-25T12:24:00.000-02:00

Es uno de los políticos que parece más libre de opinar "despartidizadamente" sobre los temas nacionales. Sin que nadie se lo preguntara, hizo referencias al proyecto ceibal en una entrevista que le realizara el semanario Voces del Frente en su edición del 22/02/07.

En primer lugar, hablando del mercosur y luego de la educación dice "En Chile, para el año 2010, el exámen de inglés va a ser obligatorio en primaria. En EE.UU. que tiene una bella escuela pública se han declarado en alarma porque se están quedando atrasados y resolvieron que 37.000 profesores universitarios vayan a lo que equivale a primaria y primer cíclo de secundaria nuestro a reforzar aritmética, dísica y ciencias básicas. Uruguay ha dado un paso que me parece bueno, que es inscribirse en el programa de una computadora para cada escolar. Si pensamos en un país abierto, la cuestión no es sólo si un idioma o el otro, sino todo lo que sea posible."

Más adelante, al ser preguntado sobre sus perspectivas sobre la enseñanza en el país, dice "...Veo también con preocupación que cuando el gobierno dió el paso de inscribirse en el programa OLPC aparecieron quejas, generando una falsa oposición. ¿Y los bancos? ¿Porque los bancos están mal no les vamos a dar la oportunidad a los niños de tener acceso al programa? No se trata solo de un chiche. Varela tomó la escuela americana de ejemplo para brindarnos una escuela abierta, de formación republicana. Fué un gran esfuerzo de todo el país."

Computadoras baratas de EEUU son "dominación cultural", dice Proyecto UTUTO

2007-02-24T19:47:00.000-02:00

Parece que un uruguayo ha salido a despotricar por el mundo en contra del proyecto OLPC. Se trata de Daniel Olivera (a quien desconozco). Algo de esta información se puede leer en aquí y una respuesta bastante fuerte aquí.

Me parece muy importante mirar las opiniones en contra del proyecto y sobre todo las visiones que tratan de desmistificarlo como "proyecto mágico" para transformarlo en un desafío enorme para cambiar la forma de educar y aprender en el mundo entero... Lo cual con seguridad trae problemas y riesgos.

Los argumentos de Olivera parecen muy débiles, al menos los que aparecen en la nota. De todos modos parece interesante empezar a mirar con lupa qué enseñanza se va a impartir, qué pasará con la globalización de los contenidos, la invasión cultural y la soberanía educacional de los países. A modo de ejemplo, Google y News Corp. están invirtiendo millones en servicios web y contenidos para OLPC... y en nuestros países, que es donde se deberían generar los contenidos?? Me temo que muy poco más que pagar las máquinas y desplegar la red.