The flagship of the first government of Tabaré Vázquez, the Ceibal Plan, turns ten years old. As a tribute, the president decided to hold tomorrow's council of ministers in Villa Cardal, the town of Florida where the first computers were delivered.
Since that first distribution of equipment, with the objective that every student should have a PC, progress has been made towards achieving coverage of 85% of students in the education system. In public schools and secondary education, the figure includes all students and teachers.
Beyond nuances, the expansion of the plan, which includes a batch of 564 thousand devices in operation, found unanimity of voices in the political spectrum. "Ceibal, which was introduced without going through the decision of ANEP, has meant a very important advance in terms of computer inclusion," summarized Senator Pablo Mieres in the interpellation he made to the Minister María Julia Muñoz last Wednesday, April 26.
Perhaps the most obvious result, said Miguel Brechner, leader of the project, is that "equity has been achieved. A decade ago, "only 9% of children in the poorest households had access to a computer, now the supply is well over 90% of that population.
Equity, according to Brechner, also refers to the possibility of accessing online materials. In 2016 there were 287 thousand textbook downloads and 40 million online activities were carried out on the mathematics platform. Mieres himself highlighted it in the interpellation: "In terms of pedagogical inclusion, it has made progress in distance English teaching (80 thousand children learn by videoconference), it has promoted technological laboratories (in 352 centers and will seek to expand it to 400 this year), it has promoted a deep learning network, it has promoted an adaptive mathematics platform and it has promoted online formative assessment".
However, the legislator criticized that "the Codicen, by inaction or directly as a result of a blocking strategy, has curbed the potential for the Ceibal Plan to become a cross-cutting powerhouse of changes to the system.
In this sense, computer scientist Ida Holz, who participated in the origins of the plan, admitted that changes in teaching methods go hand in hand with the interests of the teacher on duty.
Studies conducted by researchers from ORT and Catholic universities, midway through the process, revealed that a third of teachers felt that technology and pedagogy did not go together. Another third were committed to educational innovation through digital platforms and the last third were in "limbo".
Brechner criticized that these reports are based on obsolete data and that technological progress requires further updating. As an example, he cited the incorporation of computers in doctors' offices, a very new practice "even though PCs have been available for some time.
Another study accessed by El País, which will be published in July, concludes that four out of ten teachers say they "have an inadequate Internet connection at their workplace". And among teacher-training students, the figure rises to six out of ten respondents.
"I respect people's perceptions," said the president of Ceibal, but "we must not confuse a look with what is reality". For Brechner there was a time when "one had a fixed disk of five megabytes and thought he was God". Now the connection in an educational center "is 60 megabytes per second. In some hours of the morning, as well as in the afternoon, "there are up to 120 thousand people connected at the same time, that is a brilliant engineering work".
In any case, Brechner did not want to be dazzled by the achievements and pointed out that "the most difficult thing is not the years that have passed but the years to come". The president of the Plan said that it is necessary to deepen the learning network and personalize education more. "There is only personalization in mathematics and English, but we have to have that way of teaching in reading-comprehension in Spanish." In addition, "it will be necessary to impose even more computational thinking".
One of Ceibal's latest milestones was the creation of the Jóvenes a Programar program, which this year added more than 1,000 young people between the ages of 17 and 26. "It's a complement to formal education," Brech-ner said. "Now we are working with UTU and UTEC to see how we can continue to grow.
The project "is not Brechner dependent".
The Ceibal Plan celebrates ten years and Miguel Brechner celebrates ten years in Ceibal. The engineer, who adopted Nicholas Negroponte's idea of "one computer per child", said that the project is able to "keep walking alone: it is not dependent Brechner". In the Los Ceibos building, where Ceibal is headquartered, 293 employees work, and the average age is 34. Women represent 52% of the workforce and the general manager is Fiorella Haim. The headquarters has 3,200 square meters and is located in the LATU Exhibition Park. Although it uses public funds, Ceibal has had its legal status since 2010.
Source: El País
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