Activities supporting Ceibal Project begin in Sarandí Grande

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

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"

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

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

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

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"

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

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"

(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

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!

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

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

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!

(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

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

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

(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

(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

(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

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.