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"Uruguay may only have 3.3 million inhabitants, but this South American country has distributed more than half a million free laptops to its students and teachers over the last five years.\u00A0This achievement is one of the results of\u00A0Plan Ceibal, a highly ambitious initiative inspired by Nicholas Negroponte's non-profit project, One Laptop Per Child (OLPC).\r\n\r\nAs OLPC\u00A0explains\u00A0on its site, &amp;quot;the acronym &amp;quot;Ceibal&amp;quot; stands for Basic Informatic Educative Connectivity for Online Learning (Conectividad Educativa de Inform\u00E1tica B\u00E1sica para el Aprendizaje en L\u00EDnea) and was chosen for the ceibo tree's symbolic meaning to the Uruguayan people.&amp;quot;\r\n\r\nPlan Ceibal got its\u00A0kickstart in 2007\u00A0with a decree of then President Tabar\u00E9 Vazquez, which detailed the program's ambitions and was soon followed by a pilot project.\u00A0It was also determined that the computers would be inexpensive XO-1 devices, previously known as &amp;quot;$100 laptops,&amp;quot; which quickly earned the nickname of &amp;quot;ceibalitas.&amp;quot;\r\n\r\nhttp://youtu.be/qMeX2D4AOjM\r\n\r\nBy 2009, the program had completed its full rollout throughout Uruguay, which became the first country in the world to have given one laptop to every primary school student. At the time, 350,000 kids and 16,000 teachers had received a &amp;quot;ceibalita.&amp;quot;\r\nBuilding social equity through ICT\r\nDistributing laptops on such an unprecedented scale served a higher purpose: bridging the digital divide in a country where income inequalities and regional contrasts are stark.\r\n\r\nWith 1.8 million of Uruguayans living in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area, it was particularly important for the program not to neglect rural schools - and bring them the Internet connectivity they were usually lacking.\r\n\r\nAs a matter of fact, one of\u00A0Plan Ceibal's goals\u00A0was to provide each school with a wireless Internet connection which the XO devices could use, in addition to installing outdoor connectivity points in public places.\r\n\r\nWhile early studies pointed out difficulties in that respect, a recent\u00A0consultancy report\u00A0co-authored by Canadian educational change expert\u00A0Michael Fullan\u00A0notes that virtually all schools now have Internet access, with initial connections being progressively replaced by optical fiber.\r\n\r\nThis new report also touches an interesting point by calculating the financial burden of Plan Ceibal, which is not as high as you may think:\r\n\r\n&amp;quot;The cost of the CEIBAL program has been modest: the 4-year TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) is approximately $400 for four years, $100 per year per child. This figure includes the laptops, replacement of laptops after 4 years of use, repairs, Internet costs, administrative costs, fiber optic costs, robotics, planned video conference facilities, the portal and platforms (plataforma) for LMS (Learning Management System) as well as digital resources for mathematics, reading and other subjects. The cost figures also include initial training provided for teachers to familiarize them with the technology and how to use it.&amp;quot;\r\nWhat's next: Changing learning\r\nAccording to Fullan, the implementation of Plan Ceibal can be divided in two periods: the early years, during which its main focus was social justice, and a second phase, which started in 2010, with the intent to foster the educational use of technology.\r\n\r\nThis evolution\u00A0also echoes previous studies which praised Plan Ceibal's impact on the digital inclusion of children who didn't have another computer and of their family members, but noticed that XO devices hadn't yet reached their full potential in school.\r\n\r\nFor instance, a\u00A0report\u00A0on the impact of the plan on teaching practices in primary schools interviewed teachers and schoolmasters, many of which pointed out problems that resulted in a limited use of the &amp;quot;ceibalitas.&amp;quot;\r\n\r\nSome of the difficulties they mentioned were logistical, with a\u00A0fairly high proportion\u00A0of the laptops becoming temporarily unavailable due to poor maintenance or technical issues - a problem that Plan Ceibal is now addressing by providing online how-to guides and\u00A0improving access to repair facilities.\r\n\r\nMore worryingly, teachers complained that they felt inadequately prepared to use the XOs in their class.\u00A0Conversely, the report deplored that creative uses of the devices were uncommon; when teachers did integrate them into their lessons on a regular basis, it was often in a traditional blackboard teaching style.\r\n\r\nThis led Plan Ceibal to adopt several measures to further support teachers, for instance by offering digital resources to encourage best practices in the classroom.\r\n\r\n\r\nFrom lab to hub?\r\nThe fact that Plan Ceibal hasn't yet reached its full level in the classroom gives an indication of the disruptive impact it can have on teaching. For instance, vertical models are being challenged by the XO devices, which encourage group learning and put children in a position where they can teach concepts to their teachers and parents.\r\n\r\nTwo recent additions to Plan Ceibal also feature\u00A0educational content that could boost Uruguay's ranking in the tech world: a brand new robotics program and an initiative to teach English remotely, in partnership with the British Council.\r\n\r\nIt is also worth noting that the XOs include several basic programming applications to initiate kids to coding, such as\u00A0Scratch, Python-based\u00A0Pippy\u00A0and\u00A0LOGO-inspired apps like\u00A0Etoys\u00A0and Tortugarte (Turtle Art).\r\n\r\nThis means that Uruguay is about to widely democratize English language and IT skills, while generalizing affordable broadband access through its large-scale fiber-to-the-home initiative, which is\u00A0led\u00A0by government-owned operator ANTEL.\r\n\r\nAll these factors can contribute to fuel the country's tech sector, including its growing number of gaming startups, which were recently highlighted\u00A0in The New York Times.\r\n\r\nIn its article, the NYT notes that Uruguay is circumventing the small size of its internal market by looking abroad: &amp;quot;Encompassing the video game companies, software development in Uruguay has evolved into a $600 million industry, making the country Latin America\u2019s leader in per-capita software exports.&amp;quot;\r\n\r\nWhile this isn't a direct result of Plan Ceibal, it will be interesting to see how Uruguay's first fully digital-native generation manages to catalyze this growth as it enters the workforce over the next few years.\r\n\r\nImage credit:\u00A0PABLO PORCIUNCULA\u00A0/ AFP / Getty Images"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://thenextweb.com/la/2013/04/07/uruguays-one-laptop-per-child-program-impact-and-numbers/>