Plan Ceibal

Here is another article Mari wrote, but the folks over at Latin American News Dispatch weren´t too interested.


Latin America is inspired as Uruguay´s pioneering program Plan Ceibal celebrates 4 years of success distributing more than 450,000 free laptops.

Uruguay is the first country in the world to provide free laptops to every child in public elementary schools.

In late 2006, encouraged by the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project, Uruguay´s ex President Tabaré Vazquez launched Plan Ceibal - the first project of its kind in the world. The purpose of this social-educative project was to ensure every primary school child receives a free personal laptop by the end of 2009. Last month, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) approved a 25-year, US$6 million loan to expand the project into secondary schools.

Plan Ceibal started as a pilot project with 150 laptops donated by the OLPC project. Children and teachers of a school in Villa Cardal, a small town 80 km outside Montevideo, tested the small XO laptops in their classrooms. Shortly after, the Uruguayan government started distributing the laptops in rural and poor communities only reaching the capital at the final stage of the deployment.

The XO model laptops utilized in Plan Ceibal are small, durable and easy to carry. The built-in wireless connection allows children in classrooms to connect to each other as well as their teachers and their schools.

According to Michael Trucano, the World Bank's Senior ICT and Education Policy Specialist, “since the rollout of Ceibal commenced, eight-year old children now have the same level of computer literacy that 18 year olds demonstrated just a few years ago.”

A recent survey in Uruguay published by Grupo Radar finds there are currently 470,000 XO laptops in approximately 300,000 homes. As a result, nearly 75,000 adults have started using the internet in their homes after being introduced with the XO laptop.

Since the introduction of Plan Ceibal there has been an increase in household computer acquisitions. According to Grupo Radar, 69% of households own a PC, increasing 7% in Montevideo and 11% outside the capital over the last year. Nationwide, internet use has increased to 1.6 million users out of a total population of 3.2 million people.

With the success of Plan Ceibal, some Latin American countries such as Peru and Argentina have already adopted similar plans to distribute free laptops to children in public schools. The South America public education system is stepping forward to a new technological era.