Summary of Plan Ceibal Film - Essay Example

?Summary of Plan Ceibal Film Miguel Brechner is one of the the men behind one of the most ambitious technology based educational projects in Uruguay known as Plan Ceibal. It was conceived in December 2006 as an inclusion program based on the principles of equality, technology, and learning. Using social inclusion, the belief behind the initiative is that they will be able to have a positive impact upon the education and infrastructure of Uruguay. The plan was to ensure that the students in primary school would have a ratio of 1:1 when it came to information and communication technologies. Calling itself a start up, Mr. Brechner explained that by not taking a risk on the education and early technology training of the Uruguayan children, a whole generation was lost every year since they were prevented from experiencing equality and social inclusion. They did this by enacting active policies within the state. The initiative took great pride in being able to separate policy making and management while conceptualizing the project. The steering committee was involved in policy making while the management of the program was assigned to a separate and specialized institution. This was a feather in their cap because they were able to prevent the politicians in the country from meddling with management and the managers in the government were also unable to meddle when it came to policy making for the program. This was accomplished even though the states within the country were ill prepared to host a program of this magnitude. The program had to overcome such adversities as the fear of teachers that the students would know more than they did about technology, which, as everyone knows, is a given fact in our day and age. The teachers had to become comfortable with the idea that by using computers in class, the students will learn faster and will learn more but, the teachers still hold on to the power and authority that they traditionally had in the classroom. Since 2007 the program has deployed a total of 450,000 computers. These computers were distributed to various students from the first grade and all of primary school to the third grade of secondary school. In total, the computers were deployed to a total of 9 grades in public schools. Servers and connectivity were installed in over 2,500 schools and high schools. The man behind the program proudly announced that 99 % of students participating in their program had internet access in all their facilities with 40% not needing to walk more than 300 meters from where they live in order to have free Cibal internet access. Their current program includes transferring the ADSL programs of the schools to fiber optic for better bandwidth and applications. The company made sure that their network access would be publicly available in the most common places such as schools, hospitals, housing complexes and the poorest areas of Uruguay. The program has successfully trained 26 thousand teachers using portals and tv channels to further enhance the training that they received in their 4 year education courses. Total expenses per year for an average student in the program is $100. Included in that cost is the amount of maintenance for the computer, server, and other necessary components for the program. Amazingly, the total expenses on the program so far is less than 5% of the total education budget of the entire country. The results of the program are quite promising. First of all, Mr Brechner emphasized that the importance of the project could be measured in terms of it actually having been accomplished. The program also had direct and indirect impacts. In numbers, he said that the program has 450.000 impacts, which is the equivalent of the number of students who are participating in the program. He claims that the expenses of the program were worthwhile because of the motivation that the children got to go to the school and study. By offering each student his own laptop, the student miss less classes and they do their work much more proficiently. The laptops brought education equality to the children of the poorest areas because they could already access the same information as their better off counterparts. The program encouraged the students to discover their technological talents for themselves. The school now became the center of activity of every town and neighborhood. The teachers now became motivators who were now technologically advanced just like their students. While 68% of the Uruguayan population now have computers, 70% of the poorest also have computers these days thanks to the Ceibal Plan. Through the Ceibal Plan, having a laptop and internet connection Uruguay became a right instead of a privilege. These days all of the Uruguayan society and businesses are backing the project. The responsibility of the program is to allow students to have access to the programs that will allow them to learn and will make life simpler for the teachers by giving them tools to help them. My Thoughts Coming from a country where there is a great digital divide when it comes to technological studies and access, I cannot help but admire the success of Plan Ceibal. These people made the “One Laptop, One Child” policy a reality and made it a success story to be admired by the whole world. These sponsors were movers and shakers who knew that the future of their country rested in the hands of the future generation, but in order to ensure that success, they needed to equip the students with the proper instruments to do so. It makes me wonder about how much backward the first world is fast becoming when compared to their third world counterparts. Who would have thought that a country such as Uruguay, known as a third world, would be able to enforce a program of this magnitude that would make them the envy of the rest of the affluent countries? I can only hope that some people in our country can take notice of the success of the Ceibal Plan and try to recreate it into an education policy that could actually work for the under privileged students of our country. After all, with free education comes the right to access all of the instruments that will help make that free education program a success. In this day and age, that means ensuring that every child has access to a computer and internet. Indeed, Mr. Brechner was right when he said that owning a laptop and having internet access should be right instead of a privilege these days. Without internet access and laptops, it would be impossible to educate children in our schools using the most up to date information possible. Read More