OLPC is grateful to the Grupo Lafise for its continued support for the One Laptop Per Child program. Thanks to its generous donations, OLPC continues to change the world, one child at a time.
El proceso inició con una etapa de ideación a partir de un reto de innovación: ¿Cómo empoderar a los niños y las niñas como agentes de cambio usando las herramientas tecnológicas para ayudar a sus familias a superar su condición de pobreza extrema?
Posteriormente se realizó la fase de pilotaje, a la que se unió ChÃa, un municipio de avanzada, cuyo lema en el Plan de Desarrollo es ser un territorio inteligente e innovador; además de una Zona Libre de Pobreza Extrema.
En este momento crucial se pusieron en marcha las estrategias planteadas con las familias de la Red Unidos del municipio, con el objetivo de empoderar a los niños y niñas de 7 a 13 años como agentes de cambio dentro del proceso de corresponsabilidad familiar para superar las trampas de la pobreza.
Fueron nueve (9) meses de trabajo con los niños, las niñas y sus familias en los cuales se desarrollaron múltiples encuentros presenciales que involucraron a todos los participantes en la estructuración de proyectos que harÃan realidad los aprendizajes adquiridos. Igualmente, durante la ejecución del proyecto, los niños y niñas jugaron los tres videojuegos diseñados especialmente para facilitar el aprendizaje de logros relacionados con las dimensiones de nutrición y dinámica familiar.
Gracias a este proyecto se logró generar una cultura de uso de las nuevas tecnologÃas al interior de cada hogar. De la misma manera, se obtuvieron importantes aprendizajes relacionados con la dinámica familiar: la importancia del diálogo,  no lastimar fÃsicamente, compartir más tiempo en familia, comunicar lo que se siente y lo más relevante, las familias conocieron las rutas y estrategias para prevenir y enfrentar el abuso sexual infantil.
Respecto a la nutrición, los participantes adquirieron mejores hábitos de manipulación de alimentos y aumentaron el consumo de frutas y verduras.
Cabe resaltar que se logró un nivel de participación en los encuentros presenciales, del 73% en niños y niñas, y del 64% en los padres de familia, con un 94% de permanencia de las familias en el proyecto.
El juego desde un entorno digital (videojuegos), y un entorno fÃsico (la lúdica en los encuentros de aprendizaje), conectó a los participantes de todas las edades con los objetivos del proyecto generando co-responsabilidad y apropiación comunitaria, aspectos claves para la sostenibilidad de los proyectos sociales.
My name is Reyna Flores. I teach a combination of multigrade grades third through sixth at the little school Miguel Larreynaga in Tipitapa.
I hope that, like me, other teachers could have the opportunity to have the XO valuable pedagogical tool for improving the education of our children.
When working with the XO I tell my students that this computer is our “green little friend.” It includes great applications we call activities. We use them in any subject, and something else… We already have Internet! which allows us to enter the world of information.
Now, I want to share the pedagogical aspect in class:
As I teach four grades, the XO has been very important to increase the ammount of information, documents and materials that reinforce learning. I used to have difficulties when I taught geometrical bodies to third graders because there are children who have no geometric kits, then the activity called Paint Activity allows them to draw them.
When learning language arts, we use information obtained from Wikipedia and the children of the upper grades elaborate didactic schemes with the Maze activity as an alternative to reading techniques.
In physical education a stopwatch is needed to record the time-distance speed according to each student’s age. The XO has one.
In cultural and artistic expression we have no access to a marimba or the sounds that the student must know so here we come to the TamTamMini activity.
In science class, using the Record activity, children make their community tours taking pictures of what they believe is part of the environment and even pollution issues.
I also believe that the XO supports students who have some learning difficulties. For example, a child in third grade had pronunciation problems with the consonants L and R, so I asked him to write a list of words using the Sara activity, this way, the student could improve his diction.
At the end of each period, children take their homework and they relax with activities and Games that help them increase skills and mental agility.
Courage, dear colleagues! Let work for the children in Nicaragua. Lets focus on endeavor, affection, good will and the mystique that has always characterized teachers.
I invite other teachers to participate in the column “Teachers speak” because we must all learn from others’ experiences.
And a few months ago Karen Cator, Educational Technology Director at the US Department of Education, replied to a question from Miguel at a learning technology conference. She shares a few views from her Department, from Secterary Arne Duncan‘s interest in Uruguay’s leadership in empowering children, to issues of how long it takes to transition to such a program in our world of independent, federated states. Some states are saying that ‘by 2014 they want to be like Uruguay in terms of… laptop access‘.
La República recently published an article on the history of Plan Ceibal and how it is seen and referenced by programs in other countries:
Nuestro paÃs es consultado constantemente por otros estados interesados en aplicar el programa de “una computadora por niño 
Uruguay tiene presencia mundial no solo por el fútbol. El Plan Ceibal hace que nuestro paÃs tenga una presencia importante en grandes eventos. “Hace algunas semanas, fui a un congreso con veinte mil personas en Estados Unidos, y el primer dÃa no dejaron de hablar de Uruguayâ€, explicó Miguel Brechner.
One of the Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations is to offer a sound elementary education to all children of the world by the year 2015 and to increase their access to information and communication technologies. One Laptop Per Child has worked since 2006 on this urgent educational mission in collaboration with public and private organizations in some forty nations, mostly in developing countries.
The great diversity of educational environments – or the lack of them – is the principal challenge here, and needs careful programming based on local conditions and human resources. OLPC is founded on five principles: ownership, early ages, saturation, connectivity and free and open source collaboration. This is the result of decades of research and development in advanced centers of study, and the XO laptop and the Sugar platform are two remarkable products of this international collaborative work. Other products will come soon as OLPC evolves to give answers to the increasing demands of education.
The central question is how to scale up the OLPC program from a town to a province to a country, in order to satisfy the educational requirements of different student populations. The agenda is getting more complex with the expansion of the geographic area involved. The local authorities must establish a detailed agenda in several steps, to provide a sound educational program to different cohorts of students, continuous training of teachers, and distribution of laptops to all children and teachers. Also the implementation of servers and internet connectivity in schools and public places, the logistics of repair or substitution of the laptops, etc. This whole process is part of a dynamic “cultural evolution†that produces a great variety of results, some unpredictable and innovative.