Rising Voices » OLPC Uruguay

Rising Voices: 2010 In Review

Rezwan — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 19:57:27 +0000

2010 was an eventful year for Rising Voices and its community. Théophile Kouamouo, one of Francophone Africa's leading bloggers and the project leader of the Rising Voices grantee Abidjan Blog Camps, had been arrested for publishing a newspaper report and was released after spending two weeks in prison. HiperBarrio from Colombia won the First Community Journalism Award given by Antioquia University in the category of Best Community Web platform.

The community bade farewell to the outgoing Director of Outreach, David Sasaki and welcomed the new Director Eduardo Ávila.

This year Rising Voices, in collaboration with the Heinrich Böll Foundation, awarded microgrant funding of up to €2500 to three Egyptian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to train citizen media to underrepresented groups in Egypt so that they can voice their opinions.

Now let us look at some of the notable news of the grantees community we featured in the Rising Voices website in 2010.

Featured Bloggers:

Throughout the year we interviewed bloggers from different Rising Voices projects and here is a list of those features.

Shinetsetseg (Shinee) Sukhbaatar

Shinetsetseg (Shinee) Sukhbaatar from Nomad Green Project in Mongolia
Olzod Boum-Yalagch from Nomad Green Project in Mongolia
Saki Golafale from Ceasefire Liberia project in Liberia
Nat Nyuan-Bayjay from Ceasefire Liberia project in Liberia
Nora Catalina Urquijo from HiperBarrio project in Colombia
Yesenia Corrales from HiperBarrio project in Colombia
Edgar Andres Yana Lisme from Voces Boliviana in Bolivia
Getutza from Blogging The Dreams Project in Romania
Tahina Rakotomanarivo from FOKO in Madagscar
Ahmed Awadalla from Exploring Taboos project in Egypt
Randa AbulDahab from the Women of Minya Day by Day project in Egypt
Sara Abd Al-Maktari from the Empowerment of Women Activists in Media Techniques (EWMAT) project in Yemen
Award Winning OLPC (XO) laptops Bloggers from Uruguay - Part 1, Part 2

The New Grantees Of 2010:

Barcamps And Conferences:

Otgonsuren Jargal presenting Nomad Green at the Global Voices Citizen Media Summit 2010 in Chile. Image by Krzysztof Pawliszak/GV. CC BY

The Global Voices Citizen Media Summit 2010 took place in May at Santiago Public Library in the capital of Chile. Four Rising Voices projects were presented during the two days of the summit. Here is a two part report (Part 1, Part 2) highlighting the presentations and the reactions from the members who attended the conference.

Photo of Catalina Restrepo speaking at BarCamp Santa Cruz. Photo used with permission by BarCampSCZ.

Catalina Restrepo of the HiperBarrio project in Medellín, Colombia was invited to speak at BarCamp Santa Cruz, Bolivia in January. The event also featured Hugo Miranda of Voces Bolivianas from Bolivia.

This year members of HiperBarrio were invited to the Campus Party in Colombia and was told to do something different, use the pin hole camera technique to record the activities of CampusBlog.

Contests:

In February the Best Of Malagasy Blogs (BOMBS) 2009 awards were announced. Several bloggers from FOKO, the Rising Voices grantee in Madagascar, won the awards.

Empowerment Of Women:

With the help of a Rising Voices microgrant, the project “Empowerment of Women Activists in Media Techniques” is teaching blogging to female politicians, activists, and human right workers in Yemen to bring them in global conversation.

Ghaida'a Al Absi, the project leader, says: “EWAMT project is like a candle with other candles, which are lighting up the darkness in Yemen.”

Blogger Ahmad Awadalla of “Exploring Taboos” project conducts sexuality education workshops in Egypt and wrote about discussions about the topic of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) with his students.

Language:

Ruben Hilary of Voces Bolivianas project, with some local volunteers of El Alto, Bolivia, established the virtual community Jaqi Aru. The goal of the Jaqi Aru website is highlighting and spreading Aymara language in internet through creation of digital media contents, which involves translation, use of multimedia and social media tools.

Culture, Travel And Lifestyle:

Bus shaped balloon at the Festival de globos de La Loma 2010

The citizen journalists of the Rising Voices grantee Hiperbarrio shared some photos and videos of the Balloon festival of La Loma (Festival de globos de La Loma 2010).

Nine citizen journalists from Nomad Green in Mongolia visited Taiwan to learn more about Taiwan's social and environmental issues and local cultures and receive citizen media training.

Sustainability:

Hiperbarrio from Colombia finally got its legal identity this year as a nonprofit corporation. This allows the organization to continue to grow as they can be hired by public and private institutions for outreach activities. According to an agreement between the EPM Foundation Network and HiperBarrio from Colombia, citizen media outreach activities in 3 new communities in 3 libraries of Medellín (Villatina, La Esperanza and EPM) were started in 2010.

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation awarded Ceasefire Liberia project a $10,000 grant to start a new arm called Ceasefire. This project will focus on creating a citizen media project for African immigrant and African-American youth in Staten Island based on the Ceasefire Liberia model.

Thanks to the bloggers of the different projects of Rising Voices we could read many stories from Liberia, Madagascar, Ivory Coast, Mongolia, Romania, Colombia, Yemen, Republic of Congo, Egypt, Kenya, Bolivia, Ukraine, Uruguay, etc. Some Rising Voices bloggers also participated in and contributed for the Blog Action Day 2010 and the One Day On Earth initiatives. We hope to continue hearing from them. The ‘Introduction to Global Citizen Media Guide' has been translated in Macedonian and Albanian.

We wish the members of the Rising Voices Community and our readers a happy and prosperous 2011.

Blogging Since Infancy: Ceibal Plan Is A Success Story

Rezwan — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 05:39:10 +0000

Image Courtesy One Laptop Per Child. CC BY

Uruguay’s national OLPC project Plan Ceibal provided an XO ($100 laptop) to each of the 395,000 children in primary school from 1st to 6th grade across the country’s 2332 public schools. The government invested $100 million in these laptops and the last laptop was handed over last October.

The acronym “Ceibal” stands for Basic Informatic Educative Connectivity for Online Learning (Conectividad Educativa de Informática Básica para el Aprendizaje en Línea) and was chosen for the ceibo tree's symbolic meaning to the Uruguayan people. (One Laptop Per Child)

The laptops have been rolled out to high schools for free and under a different financial scheme, to private schools. Michael Trucano at EduTech blog informs:

There is a complementary educational television channel. Schools serve as centers for free community wi-fi, and free connectivity has been introduced in hundreds of municipal centers around the country as well. There are free local training programs for parents and community members on how to use the equipment.

With the help of a Rising Voices micro-grant, Blogging Since Infancy project announced several awards at a national blogging competition for the OLPC users - the primary students. Some of the awards included sponsorship of the winners to attend special courses on educational use of blogs, video editing and other skills.

On October 15th the Workshop for the training of teachers arranged by Ceibal has ended. It started on June 17th and a total of 16 days, eight hours per day were spent on this training. From the project blog:

It also emphasizes the creation of more Teacher Blogs where they have shared their experiences.

Their work will be reflected in the Ceibal Fair which will take place between 15 and 19 November in Florida, Sarandi Grande, Fray Marcos and Cardal where rural schools and colleges in each area will participate.

Another workshop was conducted in coordination with the school of music to empower the use of xo laptops in this discipline. You can learn more about the workshops here.

The Plan Ceibal project not only provided the laptops but also created localized software for them using local talents and resources. Miguel Brechner of Plan Ceibal evaluated the project's success during his TEDxBuenosAires talk:

“A lot of the data we gathered points to one thing: it was worth it. It was worth it because kids are more motivated when they go to school. It was worth it because they are more motivated to do homework. It was worth it because they are not repeating grades where we have been able to measure. It was worth it because we gave thousands of children identification documents since we did not give a laptop unless they had some sort of national ID, or at least the parents' ID. So in that sense the children were properly identified.

It was worth it because it increased self esteem in a lot of children. A lot of children learned about photography, about film, about music… At last, it was worth it because we have transformed a privilege, which was to own a computer in the year 2006, to a right.”

Christoph Derndorfer mentions Uruguay as the Switzerland of Latin America and lists evaluation of six criteria for successful implementations of ICT for Education projects. The Plan Ceibal ranked well in all of them and has become a success story to be replicated in other parts of the world.

Rising Voices And World Cup

Rezwan — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 11:29:22 +0000

“Soccer is deceptively simple and endlessly complicated. It satisfies the soul and frustrates the intellect. It is at the same time rewarding and maddening–it is without doubt the greatest game mankind has ever invented” - Unknown

People say that the World Cup soccer (football) is a truly International event. The bloggers of many Rising Voices projects across continents have written about it to show their passion.

Ariniaina from Madagascar writes in her blog Dago Tiako how Malagasy kids are inspired by the World Cup:

Last saturday, while waiting for the ICE Club meeting, in the playground of EPP (Public Primary School) Analakely, I was attracted by children’s shouts of joy. They were 5 guys and 1 girl playing football. Their ball was special. They made it by themselves. They winded a rope round some used plastic bags and pieces of rag and that’s it. They seemed to have their own rules but repeated from time to time , I guess, words they could hear on radio or TV ‘corner’ and ‘penalty’. They were so cute:

Lova Rakotomalala writes how Africans are coping with Ghana's loss against Uruguay ending all hopes for an African nation from reaching the world cup finals.

Despair city, a whole continent gasping in disbelief.

Pablo Flores from Uruguay uploaded some stunning pictures of the world cup football craze in Uruguay as fans gathered to watch the Ghana Uruguay game in big screens:

Jonathan Alvarez from Blogging Since Infancy project is delighted:

Uruguay among the top four in the world!

From Bolivia Hugo Miranda comments on the loss of Brazil in the hands of Netherlands:

This is football

Brazil played beautifully the first 12 minutes, with a touch of ball, with turns, to the attack. Robinho was disallowed a goal which was a warning that the goal came at 10 minutes, Robinho made him an excellent filtering before Felipe Melo.

Then started another game, many faults, very nervous, Brazil lets it go, many complaints, though it made some good moves, but not topped.

The second half we saw another Netherlands: Robben, Van Persie, Sneijder, finally and played a large stand, Robben failures, win, rush and Brazil fell in the game ..

Netherlands 0-1 Brazil

Simão | MySpace Video

Read the Global Voices special coverage to learn about the impact of World Cup 2010 across the world.

Blogging Since Infancy: Blogging Workshops In The Schools

Rezwan — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 16:17:17 +0000

Uruguyan Children With OLPC laptop. Image Courtesy Pablo Flores

Ceibal Plan is a program of the Uruguyan government to provide one OLPC computer to every school children from 6 to 11 years (350,000). The infrastructures being developed includes wifi internet access in school and public spaces.

Pablo Flores writes about the idea of Blogging Since Infancy project:

Bloggers Since Infancy is an idea that arose at a particular moment in Uruguay’s history in 2007, when the Ceibal Plan started to change our educational vision of children and the role that we must take as a society. At that time, the first stage of the plan was the distribution of laptop computers (OLPC XOs) with access to the internet for all of the children and teachers of the only school of the small interior village called Cardal.

Harnessing the potential of computers, an experimental school blog was created, which included photographs, texts, and schoolwork made with the computers and internet in class.

Pablo tells how the Rising Voices Micro grant influenced the Blogging Since Infancy project:

The microgrant provided by Rising Voices in 2008 proposed to provide blogging workshops in various parts of the country, as a contest of featured blogs, as a way to provide incentives to blogging. It was a simple idea, but with a complex implementation because it meant to be proactive in new places and bringing it to the school and society, after a long distance relationship. For that reason, the project took on different characteristics, posing a constant debate about social participation in education and in particular, Ceibal Plan. In a way, the Rising Voices microgrant was the engine for this discussion and for various actions that took place later.

In 2008, CeibalJAM community was created to learn more about Plan Ceibal’s technologies and to help develop software for the OLPC laptops. It was built with virtually no financial support, based on volunteer effort. CeibalJam has arranged regular meeting and its seventh event took place last month.

CeibalJAM has been awarded the Prix Ars Electronica 2010 in the digital communities category. Prix Ars Electronica is one of the most important awards in the field of digital culture.

Pablo Flores continues:

Finally in 2009, thanks to the push provided by another social organization, Tus Ideas Valen (Your Ideas are Valuable), which implemented the First National Blog Contest, where 10 featured blogs written from the Ceibal Plan computers were given prizes.

We had covered the awards of the blogging competition and subsequently featured some of the winning blogs (Part 1, Part 2)

Bloggging workshop in school. Image courtesy Gabriela Correa

Some of the awards of the competition included special courses on educational use of blogs, video editing and other skills for the respective schools which won. On Saturday April 17, parents, teachers and students of the Escuela 93 de Maldonado - (School 93, Maldonado) took part in two workshops on blogging which was conducted by Diego F. Eng Roselli and teacher Mariana Herrera. Here are some photos of the workshop.

This video shows snippets from the first workshop.

Rising Voices At The Global Voices Citizen Media Summit 2010 In Santiago, Chile (Part 1)

Rezwan — Wed, 19 May 2010 17:49:38 +0000

The Global Voices Citizen Media Summit 2010 took place earlier this month at Santiago Public Library in the capital of Chile. Over 200 people from 60 countries attended the summit, which was well covered in the media. Four Rising Voices projects were presented during the two days of the summit.

Nat Bayjay presenting presenting Ceasefire Liberia at the GV Summit. Image by Kowshik Ahmed, CC BY

On the first day of the summit (May 6, 2010) Nat Nyuan Bayjay, the project manager of Ceasefire Liberia captivated the audience with his lively presentation. Ceasefire Liberia, a multimedia project, is publishing citizen media reports from the ground to put Liberian Diaspora in touch. Here is a video of his presentation uploaded to YouTube by Jakub Gornicki:

You can read a short summary of the presentation here.

Otgonsuren Jargal presenting Nomad Green. Image by Krzysztof Pawliszak/GV. CC BY

Later that day Otgonsuren Jargal presented Nomad Green to an audience which knew little about Mongolia. Nomad Green is training Mongolian citizen journalists how to use social media tools to report on local environmental news in multiple langauges. Here is a short summary of the presentation.

Pablo Flores presenting Blogueando desde la Infancia (Blogging since infancy) project. Image by Adri021. CC BY

On the day 2 of the summit (May 7, 2010) Pablo Flores from Uruguay presented Blogging Since Infancy project. Pablo Flores of Ceibal, the governmental organization in charge of distributing OLPC laptops in Uruguay, organized a series of workshops and a blogging competition to encourage the laptop-toting children taking up social media tools like blogging. Here is a brief summary of the presentation.

Yesenia Corrales presenting Hiperbarrio. Image by Adri012. CC BY

Yesenia Corrales presented HiperBarrio, an outreach collective of Colombian bloggers, to the audience. Instead of engaging in violence, these bloggers are publishing history of their community and drawing collaborative maps. Here is a short summary of the presentation.

“As long as you express, we are free human beings.”

Here is another compilation of video snapshots from the summit by Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional de Chile:

In our next feature we will publish reactions of some members of the Rising Voices projects, who took part in the summit.

Blogging Since Infancy: Award Winning XO Bloggers - Part 2

Rezwan — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 06:33:06 +0000

In December, 2009 we reported that the Rising Voices grantee OLPC Uruguay (Blogging Since Infancy) co-sponsored and supported the first ever national school Blogging contest for students in Uruguay who use OLPC (XO) laptops. In the second post of the series, we are highlighting three blogs among the 10 award winning blogs.

Here is the blog of Escuela 68 de Sarandí Grande, 6to año - (68 de Sarandi Grande School, 6th year) from Parque del Plata, Canelones, Uruguay, which received a special jury award. In a blog post they describe how the Plan Ceibal project and the XO laptops for children impacted their school, family and their community:

The Plan Ceibal changed the way we study at school because whenever we need information on any topic we open the XO and seek in Internet. Our laptop has also some educational programs like Tortugarte for Geometry; Etoys, with which can create presentations; Tam Tam Mini to learn music; Write, to practice production of text; Library, to read multiple tales and poems of national authors and many more activities.

The arrival of laptops (XO) also changed the families a lot. Having a computer at home is a novelty for those who did not have a computer at home and now they have a tool of many possibilities to learn. For those who already had a PC, its also a novelty, because XO has different programs and many new things.

Its also a great change for the communities involved, because now children gather in squares for logging into Internet and study what the teachers had prompted them. Thus they don't need to go to a cybercafe and spend money to obtain reading materials.

The Plan Ceibal constitutes a great education reform and it is a breakthrough for country's future. (Machine translation)

In another post we learn about some of the most visited places in Parque Del Plata town alongwith pictures of these wonderful locations. We are informed about a lady from a Spa located between Parque del Plata and Atlántida, who has approximately 40 cats living with her.

Some of the students shared how does it feel to leave school after the classes are finished.

A new school year has began. So the new group delivers their first post on March 24, 2010.

Students from last year initiated this blog, and we continue this in 2010. We are a tight group of 13 girls and 16 males. We like to participate in mixed games. Our favorite music is ‘cumbia eg La Zorra'.

Now let us look at the blog of Escuela 34 de Young, 6to año- (School 34, Young, 6th year) from Salinas, Canelones, Uruguay. The pupils posted the history of Salinas town in that blog.

The whole class went out one day to enjoy the beach.

In this post you will find some photographs how the students are learning to dance. Here are some videos of their (tango la cumparsita) dance rehearsal .

This is the blog of pupil Maximiliano Angel Brun. He likes soccer and Taekwondo.

And last but not the least this is the blog of Escuela 93 de Maldonado, 5to año B - (School 93, Maldonado, B 5th year).

On October 15, 2009 the students of classes 3 to 5 of the school visited a doctor to learn about healthy food. The students interviewed Doctor Julio Orsi about healthy eating.

He told us to eat a variety of foods, preferably homemade. A tip for buying - we should look on the packaging whether the food is made with animal fats. Also we should take a pint of milk daily.

The school now has a new blog. To celebrate the March 8, International Day of Women, the students interviewed Mary Bordon of auxiliary service of their School.

The photos of the celebration marking 15 year of the school were also posted in the blog.

What we are witnessing in Uruguay is a new phenomenon. The students of grade 5 or 6 are expressing themselves via blog using their XO laptops. I wish if other countries could follow Uruguay.

Blogging Since Infancy: Award Winning XO Bloggers - Part 1

Rezwan — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 18:47:26 +0000

Last month we reported that the Rising Voices grantee OLPC Uruguay (Blogging Since Infancy) co-sponsored and supported the first ever national school Blogging contest for students in Uruguay who use OLPC (XO) laptops.

In the first post of a new series, we will highlight three blogs among the 10 award winning blogs. Jonathan Alvarez of Escuela 47 de 25 de agosto, Florida - (School 47, 25 August, Florida) got the first prize for the best individual school blog. Jonathan interviewed Rodrigo Martín Muñoz Salomón, renowned football player of the Club Nacional de Football team, over phone:

Rodrigo Munoz, Image courtesy Jonathan
11 - How do you feel when you go down the street and ask you for autographs?

“Proud because people makes you feel good, that things go well in the team.”

12 - Why did you put as the nickname “POPI”?

“Because when I was in the eighth grade, I had hair like Popi Flowers and my teammates got me the nickname POPI.”

Jonathan also posts some tips on how to be a journalist. An excerpt:

You have to be well informed on a lot of things. To do this, every day listening to radio reports and television helps. Read newspapers and news from Internet portals, and see exactly what is happening around you.

You must always tell the truth about the real facts. And above all, never take anything for sure until we have sufficient evidence.

Tell the facts as they happened, without comment, so that readers can draw their own conclusions. In some cases such as editorial, column or criticism, to which we refer in another note, you can give your opinion.

Jonathan and Roberto

Earlier Jonathan interviewed Roberto Musso of the El Cuarteto de Nos music group.

The students of Escuela 5 de Salto, 6to año - (Jumping School 5, 6th year), which won the First Prize for the best school for class blog, wrote about a video conference they attended in the University of the Republic of Salto Uruguay on the 20th of November, 2009:

We were invited by the Autonomous University of Chile to participate in a video conferencing from Uruguay, as part of its fourth congress teaching.

The teacher talked a little, with two Chilean practitioners on the (XO) platform, their different functions and tools. We also featured how we use the XO.

Then the teacher showed them some slides and talked about the experience with Dokeos. (machine translation)

Oscar Munoz. of the Escuela 5 de Salto, 6to año, which won a special jury price, writes:

One day our teacher gave us a piece of news about entering a contest with xo [..]. The idea was to prepare a project which ensures that everyone have a message for good oral health.

The idea convinced us all and it was well planned with the teacher. Then we all had a great anxiety to know the result. After waiting and waiting the day came. The teacher came with a smile from ear to ear, we all thought something happened, and the result was that we were first in the contest, we primeroooooooos!! And won the grand prize. We will go to Montevideo for two days - all expenses paid for trips to important sites. (machine translation)

Escuela 1 de Trinidad, 6to año - (1 Trinity School, 6th year) writes on the Ceibal Fair:

We attended the Fair Ceibal in which there were many exercises on the XO (OLPC laptop). Programs in TortugArte, E-Toys, Write (stories), Blogs. Here we show you a picture:

Students at Ceibal Fair

Here is a video interview posted in the blog of Escuela 1 de Trinidad, 6to año, in which Claudia, a mother of three school children talks how the XO laptops are used by family members too.

OLPC Uruguay: Successful Completion Of National Blogging Competition

Rezwan — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 21:49:16 +0000

Tus Ideas Valen (Your Ideas Are) is the contest of ideas and projects for the incorporation of innovation by the young people of Uruguay. Tus Ideas Valen arranged the First ever National School Blogging contest for students. This event was supported by Plan Ceibal and Rising Voices grantee OLPC Uruguay along with many other organizations.

The highlights of the rules of the competition were:

Elimentary schools and Junior high school students involved in Ceibal Plan project using XO laptops are eligible to participate.
The participation will be by teams that represent the class to which they belong, may be more than one team per class. The number of team members is free.
The blogs must contain at least 10 entries (news) in total on the following topics: a) the impact of the Plan Ceibal on school, family and community, b) production and employment of people living in your area , c) local stories, tales and legends in your area, people in your neighborhood or region, d) features of your urban environment and geographically,) your school (or your high school), your class and what you learn every day. f) interviews the camcorder using the XO, especially tales of grandparents g) each notice shall be illustrated at least one photo taken with the XO. Teachers and professors are advising and supporting team members to carry out their blogs.
Prizes will be awarded to the best blogs. The awards are the latest generation cellular 3.7g phones and workshops

A large number of schools/students participated in the competition and 10 blogs were honored with several awards including special courses on educational use of blogs, video editing and other skills. The last date of the submission was extended to November 8th from October 31st.

The jury comprised of Prof. Rodolfo Pilas, Mr. Raul Etcheverría, Mariana Herrera and Prof. César Barretto Luchini. No school from the capital Montevideo managed to win.

Here is a list of the Blog finalists:

First Prize for best individual school blog:

Jonathan Alvarez of Escuela 47 de 25 de agosto, Florida - (School 47, 25 August, Florida)

First Prize for the best school for class blog:

Escuela 5 de Salto, 6to año - (Jumping School 5, 6th year)

Special Jury Awards:

Escuela 1 de Trinidad, 6to año - (1 Trinity School, 6th year)
Escuela 93 de Maldonado, 5to año B - (School 93, Maldonado, B 5th year)
Escuela 68 de Sarandí Grande, 6to año - (68 de Sarandi Grande School, 6th year)
Escuela 34 de Young, 6to año- (School 34, Young, 6th year.)
Escuela 136 de Salinas, 5to A - (School 136, Salinas, 5th A)
Escuela 153, de Parque del Plata 6to C. - (School 153 in Parque del Plata the 6th C.)
Escuela 60 Arrozal 33, Treinta y Tres - (School 60 Paddy 33, Thirty-Three)
Escuela 107 de Salto, 5to año. - (107, Falls School, 5th year.)

An award giving ceremony was arranged on Saturday December 19, 2009 at the Plaza Matriz in the capital Montevideo. Here is a video of the ceremony [es]:

Ceibal Florida Blog reports:

The Minister of Education and Culture Maria Simon attended the award giving ceremony who stressed the importance of the initiative of Tus Ideas Valen told attendees that her children had visited the blogs created by the participants and they seemed very good.

Please check out the participants' blogs. The local newspaper La Republica wrote about Jonathan:

Jonathan received the award for best country single school blog. With more than 6,000 hits, Jonathan's blog became one of the meeting points of those who want to know more about Ceibal Plan and the work of Jonathan and his school.

Images courtesy Tus Ideas Valen blog and Ceibal Florida Blog. All translations were done by machine translation (Google translate)

[Video] Interview with Pablo Flores

David Sasaki — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 16:32:42 +0000

You will need Flash 8 (or higher) and a javascript enabled browser to view our videos.

The day after Pablo Flores gave his presentation at the Ars Electronica Symposium about cloud technologies and education we were able to sit down with him for a few minutes to find out more about his projects and his current year-long sabbatical in which he will be visiting OLPC projects around the world and creating a multimedia website which compares his observations from one to one computing programs in different countries. You can find out more about the Blogging Since Infancy project and explore the blogs of participating teachers and students.

Rising Voices at Ars Electronica and Highway Africa

David Sasaki — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 08:39:56 +0000

It was a busy weekend for three Rising Voices grantee projects as representatives from Blogging Since Infancy, Voces Bolivianas, Abidjan Blog Camps, and HiperBarrio all spoke about their projects at major international conferences.

Voces Bolivianas

Elia Varela Serra and Eduardo Ávila speaking at the Digital Citizen Indaba

Eduardo Ávila, executive director of Voces Bolivianas, was invited to share his experiences at this year's Highway Africa conference in South Africa, the largest conference for journalists from across the African continent. Speaking with Elia Varela Serra from Maneno.org, Ávila presented Voces Bolivianas as a case study of how citizen media projects can welcome under-represented languages to online conversation by adapting open source tools and collaborating with volunteer translation networks. A re-cap of the session on the Digital Citizen Indaba blog:

Just as in most African countries Internet access in Bolivia is still concentrated in major urban centres, where people have Internet at home or at work. “This not only leaves out the rural resident and lower social economic sectors but also indigenous groups and women”, says Eduardo Avila, Executive Director of Bolivian Voices. But in addition, Eduardo argues that there has been an online resurgence of indigenous languages in Bolivia.

Ávila also participated in the roundtable discussion “Are people ready to have their own means od disseminating information within their communities?”

Abidjan Blog Camps

Nadine Tchaptchet-Kouamouo from Abidjan Blog Camps, a collective of bloggers from Ivory Coast who are holding regular workshops and events to bring new bloggers into their midst, was also at this year's Highway Africa conference where she was awarded the “Best Woman ICT Reporter” prize. Looking back on her time in Johannesburg (where she stayed longer than she had expected), Nadine writes:

I do not regret having tried the “way of life” of this great country of South Africa, whose level of development can be frustrating for us, but can also inspire us in our own development. Starting with representatives at the community level (women, children, youth, etc …) it is necessary for us to see farther, think bigger, and envision the best …

Blogging Since Infancy, Uruguay

Pablo Flores from Plan Ceibal, Uruguay's One Laptop Per Chile project, and Blogging Since Infancy presented at this year's Ars Electronica Symposium on Cloud Intelligence. Pablo asked the audience to consider how those who have the most to gain can benefit from the information amassing online. The value of intelligence, after all, is in solving problems facing society. Flores points to housing, nutrition, and education as three major social issues which can be improved with more access to better information. In order to bring intelligence and information from the cloud to everyday citizens in Uruguay, for example, they need a network of connectivity and devices.

Flores points to a class which set up a blog to interact with fellow students across the border in Brazil. Of course such pen pal projects have existed for decades, but the blogs allow the students to interact in real time and incorporate other tools to learn Portuguese and Spanish. His presentation concludes by emphasizing the importance of avoiding black boxes - technological gadgets which function properly, but don't allow us to understand how they function. Plan Ceibal values open source technologies as a way of promoting curiosity so that students are encouraged to look “inside” the programs and adapt them to their cultural needs.

Ethan Zuckerman live-blogged Pablo's presentation. Pablo's conference statement was published in the Ars Electronica 2009 Catalog.

HiperBarrio

HiperBarrio was represented at Ars Electronica by Álvaro Ramirez, Gabriel Jaime Vanegas, and Diego Gomez. Álvaro's presentation introduced the history and evolution of HiperBarrio and how the group of young bloggers and citizen journalists in San Javier La Loma have managed to maintain a sense of community while still introducing new members to remain open and inclusive. He stressed that HiperBarrio re-thinks the roles of libraries as more than just places to consume culture produced at the institutional level; but rather that they should serve as collective laboratories to produce and publish culture from the grassroots. HiperBarrio served as a model for Chile's national library network as it re-thought the role of its libraries for the digital era, and was also presented in the application by Fundación Empresas Públicas de Medellín which eventually led to a $1 million grant from the Gates Foundation. (Ramirez points out that none of the $1 million is currently budgeted for HiperBarrio or similar grassroots new media training programs.)

Álvaro referenced the story of Suso as an example of how citizen journalism is forming a process by which the young people discover more information about their own community and become invested in its future. He also pointed out media production is providing an appealing alternative to gangs and drugs for the community's young people. An article in Colombia's El Tiempo newspaper adds:

The project was presented to the public at Ars Electronica with a video which highlights the important role HiperBarrio plays to help young people find alternatives to crime, violence and drugs in a region that has been marked by the drug trafficking, guerrillas and paramilitaries.

“When people have no access to media, and are given the opportunity to tell their stories and show who there are, then they take that opportunity,” Ramirez said to the public.