[IAEP] Sugar Digest 2009-09-16

[Gerald Ardito]

Walter,

Your report from the meeting from Washington is inspiring. Particularly, the
"what are we waiting for."
As you know, I am in the process of documenting similar outcomes as part of
a doctoral study for a deployment here in the US. It would be great, though,
to work with these folks to see the bigger picture of what's happening.

I also think the total cost of ownership piece is particularly eye-opening.

Gerald

On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 10:26 PM, Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com>wrote:

> === Sugar Digest ===
>
> 1. At the urging of Yama Ploskonka, I went to Washington to the
> Interamerican Development Bank (IADB) to attend a seminar
> [http://www.iadb.org/news/detail.cfm?Language=English&id=5654],
> “Reinventing the Classroo: Social and Educational Impact of the
> Incorporation of Technologies” as part of an ICT for education
> program.
>
> The stated workshop objectives were: " (i) Understand development
> experiences and case studies national projects for the integration of
> Information Technology and Communication in education systems, (ii)
> Discuss how these projects impact on student learning and in
> developing countries, and (iii) Share about challenges of evaluation
> and monitoring initiatives at national and regional levels."
>
> My objective was to catch up with people leading the various efforts
> in the region in order to acquaint them with what we are doing at
> Sugar Labs.
>
> I missed the opening remarks, but was able to attend the panel
> discussions: one about implementations and one about “lessons and
> challenges.”
>
> It seems that still too many people see ICT as a goal of rather than a
> means to learning, but it was nonetheless great to get a clearer
> picture of the various projects in the region.
>
> Miguel Brechner, director of LATU and the force behind Project CEIBAL
> [http://www.ceibal.edu.uy/] in Uruguay, gave a passionate talk about
> all that they have accomplished. The bottom line: It is possible, so
> what are the rest of  you waiting for? Among Miguel's “Lessons from
> Uruguay” was a detailed break down of the total cost of ownership
> across four years: US$ 276. This includes the cost of the laptop,
> connectivity—every child in Uruguay gets free Internet access
> ($31/child/year), servers, spares, maintenance, logistics, delivery,
> operating costs, et al. Uruguay has already distributed 380,000
> laptops to more than 2000 schools and trained more than 18,000
> teachers. They have 500 support teachers and 1500 support volunteers
> helping with training and deployment. In terms of evaluation, there
> has been little opportunity to report any longitudinal assessments of
> impact of the deployments are relatively recent, but the early
> indicators are worth noting:
>
> * The teachers are driving the change;
> * There is an increase in attendance;
> * There is an increase in overall motivation ;
> * There is more motivation to do homework ;
> * There is less time spent watching television;
> * There is an increase in parent involvement ;
> * There is more motivation to go to school ;
> * There is an increase in self-esteem ;
> * There is an increase in interest in learning.;
> * There is a dramatic drop in repeated grades;
> * There is an increase in basic skills to use computer;
> * There is an increased trend to collaboration and sharing ;
>
> 220,000 homes now have computers through Project CEIBAL. Computer
> penetration in the the poorest households exceeds the  national
> average.
>
> Jorge Pedreira , deputy minster of educational Portugal described
> Magalhães , which is being deployed nationwide in Portugal. It is a
> project of inclusion that is leaning heavily on telcom industry
> partnerships to provide subsidized laptops and connectivity. There is
> an emphasis on ICT training and school administration enhancements
> through ICT. For the elementary-aged students, there is a local spin
> the Classmate PC. They have reached 370,000 students with a dual-boot
> machine: Windows XP and Caixa Mágica. (Sugar runs on their hardware—I
> made sure to show the  deputy minster at the coffee break.) Their
> strategy is: ICT changes education and thus society and this project
> is a way to get ICT into the classroom .  Pedreira made the point that
> we need to assess assessment as the children have  new competencies
> that are not part of the standard metrics.
>
> Alicia Banuelos, Rector at La Punta University described the San Luis
> Digital Project in San Luis, Argentina. San Luis is a wealthy
> province—wealthy enough to self-fund a comprehensive program that
> includes connectivity and computing throughout the community. For the
> younger children, they have instituted 1-to-1 computing also using
> Classmate PCs (~7000 computers) running Windows XP. She reported some
> improvements in language and math scores—she emphasized that the
> improvement was in both rural and urban schools. She also mentioned
> that every child is learning chess. Not sure how that impacts the
> control, but what out Viswanathan Anand.
>
> The final project review was by Alayde Maria Pinto Digiovanni,
> Superintendent of education in the State of Paraná, Brazil . Their
> program is classroom focused: no laptops, but large displays in every
> classroom. They use exclusively free software and free text
> books—which has cause lots of friction with the publishers.
>
> === Help wanted ===
>
> 2. Simon Schampijer and our amazing release team are in the final
> phase of the [[0.86/Roadmap#Schedule|0.86 release cycle]] for more
> details—the release is scheduled for Friday. Please test and please
> report any issues you find. The BugSquad is still available to triage
> bugs.
>
> Note that we are now hosting our bug tracker at http://bugs.sugarlabs.org
>
> === In the community ===
>
> 3. [http://softwarefreedomday.org Software Freedom Day] is 19
> September. There are celebrations from Boston
> [http://groups.fsf.org/wiki/Boston_Software_Freedom_Day] to  Bogata
> [http://softwarefreedomday.org/teams/SFD_Bogota] to Melbourne
> [http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/melbourne].
>
> 4. Donna Benjamin reports that [http://open-edge.info  Open Edge
> 2009]: The Australian Open Education Forum is 9 October at
> [http://open-edge.info/our-venue-sceggs SCEGGS] in Sydney.
>
> ===Sugar Labs===
>
> 5. Gary Martin has generated a SOM from the past week of discussion on
> the IAEP mailing list (Please see
> [[File:2009-Sep-5-Sept-11-som.jpg|SOM]]).
>
> -walter
> --
> Walter Bender
> Sugar Labs
> http://www.sugarlabs.org
> _______________________________________________
> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>
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