[IAEP] Development Bank seminar (was Re: Sugar Digest 2009-09-16)

[Edward Cherlin]

On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 7:35 PM, Gerald Ardito <gerald.ardito at gmail.com> wrote:
> Walter,
>
> Your report from the meeting from Washington is inspiring. Particularly, the
> "what are we waiting for."

+1

> 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.

But I didn't. Wonderful. What information can you share? I'm talking
to Gov. Pat Quinn's office in Illinois about such projects.

> 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.

I intend to write a refutation of several armchair analyses done
without any notion of in-country costs, like $31/year for public
Internet.

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

Walter, is there a proceedings volume from this meeting?

Are there presentations online? The agenda is at

http://docs.google.com/gview?a=v&q=cache%3AGaKi4FLCAAkJ%3Awww.iadb.org%2Fdocument.cfm%3Fid%3D2139732+%22Pinto+Digiovanni%22&hl=en&gl=us&pli=1

Publications referenced?

Can we talk with the presenters about, say, MIT Press or FLOSS Manuals
putting out a book?

Can we see about getting some of these people invited to education,
tech, green, and ICT4D conferences in the US and elsewhere to spread
the word? (I'm on staff for PyCon. I'll talk to them.)

Do you have contact information for the presenters?

>> === Sugar Digest ===
>>
>> 1. At the urging of Yama Ploskonka,

+1 Thanks, Yama.

>> 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 Classroom: 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,

http://www.uruguaydailynews.com/news.php?viewStory=3607
Several Countries Interested Plan Ceibal
Posted: Monday, August 17, 2009 11:20 am

Governments and universities in several countries are interested in
learning about Uruguay’s Plan Ceibal, which distributes free laptops
to school children, said the plan’s director Miguel Brechner.
Authorities in Colombia, Paraguay, Peru, Haiti and Rwanda expressed
interest the program. Brechner recently visited Rwanda to display its
achievements.

>> 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.

http://www.osor.eu/news/pt-ministry-orders-review-of-translations-of-applications-open-source-school-laptops

Portugal is in the process of distributing laptops to about 500,000
school children. These so called Classmate PCs are meant for children
between six and nine years old and come installed with a tailored
version of GNU/Linux as well as a Windows XP partition.

The Portuguese GNU/Linux distribution 'Caixa Mágica 12 Mag' is based
on Mandriva GNU/Linux. According to  Paulo Trezentos, one of the
developers at Caixa Mágica, GNU/Linux is proving successful. "We have
reports that it is being preferred over the Windows alternative."

So far about 300,000 of the laptops have been delivered to schools.

>> 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.

http://www.xnargentina.com/news.php?nid=11&lang=en

	July 01, 2008
Wavion Wins a Wide-Area Wi-Fi Project in San Luis Province, Argentina
Wavion™, the University of La Punta, responsible for the San Luis
province network design, and Xiden Networking today announced the
deployment of Wavion WBS-2400 Base Stations in the province of San
Luis, Argentina.

“We are proud to be the pioneers in providing wide-area, free internet
connectivity in Argentina,” said La Punta University Rector and San
Luis Minister of Development Alicia Bañuelos, “This is the first
deployment in Argentina where Internet connectivity is provided for
town-wide coverage. We believe that this project will foster economic
development and tourism in the province and will help close the
digital divide by enabling the children in the province to access the
internet at school and at their homes.”

>> 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.

http://buscatextual.cnpq.br/buscatextual/visualizacv.jsp?id=W023769&tipo=completo&idiomaExibicao=2

http://www.c3sl.ufpr.br/en/projetos_prd.html
O Centro de Computação Científica e Software Livre (C3SL) é um grupo
de pesquisa do Departamento de Informática da Universidade Federal do
Paraná, registrado no Diretório de grupos de pesquisa do Diretório de
grupos de pesquisa do CNPq.

The Center for Scientific Computing and Free Software (C3SL) is a
research group of the Department of Informatics, Federal University of
Parana, registered in the directory of research groups in the
directory of groups research grants.

The capital of Paraná is Curitiba, famed for its bus system, but
actually the site of much more impressive achievements. See the DVD, A
Convenient Truth.

>> 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.

-- 
Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin
Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination.
http://earthtreasury.org/