[IAEP] Brazil deployment

[Jecel Assumpcao Jr]

David Farning wrote:
> Does anyone have information or contacts on the Brazilian referred to in http://lwn.net/Articles/280419/ ?

The article presents UCA (One Computer per Student) as a subproject
within ProInfo, but this wasn't the case the last time I checked.
PronInfo is a government program from the 1990s which evolved from
previous projects going all the way back to the mid 1980s. The focus has
been on computer labs and teacher training.

UCA was started in 2005 to evaluate the OLPC proposal and several pilot
programs were started in selected schools. Three different machines were
tested: OLPC XO B2, Intel Classmate 1 and the Encore Mobilis. In
December of 2007 the government tried to buy 150,000 more machines for a
pilot program involving 300 schools. The Classmate from Positivo won the
public "auction" with an offer of $360 per laptop while OLPC came in
third at $420 per XO. The government was unhappy with the result and
cancelled the whole thing. They are supposed to try again this November
and hope to get a better price this time.

I keep a list of links relating to this in
http://www.merlintec.com:8080/laptop (the page is in Portuguese; sorry
about that).

If you need more information, I would be happy to help.

-- Jecel