Claudia Urrea inspires educators to reflect on what’s worth learning

Over at Edutopia, Suzie Boss covered Claudia’s recent keynote at PBL World, the annual project-based learning conference. From her writeup:

When Claudia Urrea was growing up in Colombia, her family made a point of doing projects together. Whether they were focused on fun — “building the coolest kite” — or more practical household matters, projects taught her the value of learning by doing. “Projects move students from being told what to do to owning their learning,” says Urrea.. Instead of thinking about “what I learned today and might use someday,” Urrea says, “help them see that what they learn today they can use today.” And for many years to come.

The whole piece is worth a read, with nods to Papert, Scratch, and the OLPC mission. As is the rest of the PBL World coverage. Now if only they’d put the video of Claudia’s talk online!

Argentina embraces OLPC, supports Bolivia

This week, Argentina’s president Cristina Kirchner oversaw the launch of the La Rioja deployment and the handout of XOs to roughly 2,000 students.  This was the public start to the 60,000-student deployment announced this spring, named the Joaquín V. González program after the distinguished politician and educator.  The program will provide an XO to every primary school student and teacher in the province by next year.

Sabrina Díaz Rato reported on the event, with shout-outs to Claudia Urrea and Martin Langhoff, who are currently in Argentina helping the learning and technical teams of the project get off to a good start. But the most interesting part of the article comes at the end, where she summarizes related efforts by Walter Flores, Argentina’s Education, Science and Technology minister.

Christina Kirchner presenting an XO to a young girl

Christina Kirchner presents an XO to a vested young girl

Flores sees La Rioja’s program becoming a model for an implementation that is interesting to other regions, and mentions some specific neighboring provinces looking for advice – the Argentine provinces of Catamarca, Corrientes, and Mendoza, Chile‘s Atacama region, and the Bolivian municipality of Yacuiba.
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