OLPC Uruguay: Successful Completion Of National Blogging Competition

tus ideas valenTus 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:

  1. Elimentary schools and Junior high school students involved in Ceibal Plan project using XO laptops are eligible to participate.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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:

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.

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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)

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