Certainly, the Uruguay , this small country wedged between two giants, Brazil and Argentina, do not cease to surprise. It took less than 2 years to this country to deploy nearly 300,000 XO laptops in schools, as part of Plan Ceibal . This plan of "Conectividad Educativa de Informática para el Básica Aprendizaje in línea", whose guidelines were summarized in a reference guide for parents and educators, took place in four phases in succession, starting with 200 XO in a pilot school, then expanding to the Florida Department and other departments within the country, and finally to the capital, Montevideo.

It is a laboratory of ideas and a space scale experiments in many fields, such as David Sasaki points out in this article and this one ):

• the first deployment ,
• the creation of manuals ,
• the establishment of a support network , consisting of volunteers,
• the establishment of connections wifi around schools,
• the establishment of service centers ,
• creating an economic base with tenders, such as the repair of XO,
• creating a community of bloggers school ,
• building a community of developers of activities for schools,
• integration of the tool XO in the pedagogy of teachers.

On this last point recently, a primary school teacher, Norma Rosamel Ramirez Mendez, recounts his experience in his blog . She describes the trigger she had, by attending training on the learning environment Etoys , available on the XO form of activity :

By attending the third course of Etoys-face, I had a click in the area of the brain, finally there. And I said, 'EUREKA! It would be great for the natural sciences! '.

Finally, the primary school teacher, who is more familiar than any new technology, and whose job is precisely to teach, began to imagine implementing educational training that she attended. By trial and error, it finally arrived this:

That is why today, managing to lead the steam that I had designed and which escaped the kettle: changes of state of matter, the intervention of heat as a variable, the water vapor in the air ... I began to rejoice with joy, jumping almost!

C'es t from that click that this teacher may consider creating a class for animation that illustrates a physical mechanism (with an illustration in the first video). It is in the context of this personal victory that this teacher was selected, along with other colleagues participating in the Plan Ceibal, to participate in July, to meet international Squeafest in Porto Alegre!

This is an opportunity to exchange experiences, to enrich teaching practice in schools in Uruguay and elsewhere. This will also be one of the many contributions of the South, to reduce the digital divide, in line with the participation of Miguel Brechner, the Laboratorio Tecnológico del Uruguay ( LATU ), which is the prime contractor Plan Ceibal to share the experience gained in Uruguay with Rwanda , on the occasion of the introduction of the OLPC program in the country.

made up of volunteers