[Sugar-devel] EduJAM day 1.5 Tour of Uruguay

[David Farning]

In the afternoon, our visit to the school was rained out. Instead we went to
a local festival, after which two teachers joined us on the bus. There is a
reoccurring theme of, "There is no benefit in complaining about the hurdles,
they are part of life. Let's, get the job doing."

As this series of post is dedicated to helping the technical side of the
project support the education side. The fascinating takeaway was how the
availability of the Aurora project is enabling other education projects.

The region we are visiting has been suffering from migration issues as
people move from agricultural regions to the urban centers because of the
availability of opportunities. One issues is the low attendance and
completion of residents to secondary education.  Historically, secondary
education required that student take a bus which was paid for by the parents
to attend high school.

Now, with the connectivity made available via the Aurora projects and
widespread  exposure of computers via the OLPC projects, adults are saying,
"Hmmm, is it possible for me to finish my high school education using these
tools?"  The local teachers are saying sure we can do this via a virtual
platform using existing tools such as Moodle.

The most interesting takeaway for me was the statement that content was not
an issue.  One teacher responded, "We are high school teacher. We understand
the required content and curriculum. We work with it every day." These
teacher just want the tools to distribute that content they already have.

Another couple of superstar teachers:)