The introduction of ICT (Information Technology and Communication for Education) in education has become part of everyday players in this sector, both in Europe and the world. In Latin America, Uruguay took the initiative in 2007 to provide public school students in the country and their teachers with laptop computers and Internet connections in schools. The measure known as "Plan Ceibal" is initially the primary and has recently been extended to secondary education, as part of a national development policy based on scientific and technological innovation.

The cost of education

It is obvious that education has a cost. Companies must thus be willing to take in solidarity costs of policies and institutions contributing to the development of ICT. To assess these costs, especially in the case of Plan Ceibal, we have a gross (see " One computer per child: how much does it cost? "). We learn that the Plan represents CEIBAL cost about 0.3% of GDP, or about 5% of the education budget in this country.

It is reasonable to ask whether it is really worthwhile to spend such sums. To answer this question it is necessary to evaluate the impact of the educational program implemented. This assessment also has a cost and is part of the actions financed by a loan of $ 6 million over 25 years with the Interamerican Development Bank (see " IDB aprueba consolidar prestamo y para el Plan Ceibal ampliar "[IDB approves borrowing for the consolidation and extension of the Plan Ceibal] ). Indeed, one of the objectives of this loan is to "develop strategies and tools for monitoring and evaluating the impact of educational and social plan [CEIBAL], integrating the development of institutional and technical capacity (... ). " One result of this evaluation process is presented in the form of a study: " En el camino del Plan Ceibal ".

A long-term evaluation

Regarding education, the assessment to be carried out is long term. However, partial results are already available.

Thus, Uruguay, various studies were performed to measure the impact of the Plan Ceibal, as can be seen in Uruguay: publication of reports on the Plan Ceibal .

At the level of Latin America, finally, assessment instruments are introduced, for example, with the Laboratorio Latinoamericano de Evaluación of Calidad de la Educación (LLECE) .

To return to Uruguay, Lidia Norbis Barboza , teacher and researcher in education sciences at the Instituto de Educación of the University de la Republica (Montevideo), states that this country was built with the " Monitor Educativo of Primaria ", an evaluation system of educational indicators in primary education introduced by the ANEP, the Administración Nacional de Educación Pública :

"For example, a major positive trends is the decline of four points of repetition in children. In other words, the percentage of repeaters the first to sixth class of general education schools has decreased by 10.3% to 6.3% for the period between 2002 and 2009 ". (Source: list OLPC Uruguay ).

This development calls for an initial comment from Lidia Norbis Barboza:

"It's very encouraging to see what happens at the repetition of children in schools located in a highly unfavorable, with a repetition rate that dropped to 6% in urban schools and 4% in schools rural. (This evaluation system is quantitative, descriptive, making it impossible to explain the factors affecting the repetition, which is the consequence of multiple factors). "

Thus, the perspective is that "this kind of evaluation system achieves a system snapshot at a particular time and allows integration of results of process aprentissage scientific developments in the subjects, languages, mathematics, etc.. "Said Lidia Norbis Barboza.

In addition, information can be refined by school and school-bound map data. In this way, through the Geographic Information System (MIS / GIS) in place, we can learn more about the school attended by Lucas (in " The school sustains development "), who was questioned by Fernando Da Rosa Morena , lecturer in communication sciences at the University de la Republica (Montevideo), in his post " Mas Alla del aula CEIBAL "

Thus, to the methodology of the evaluation is implemented. Remains to have the necessary perspective.

But there are already enough to compete, if necessary, in another area of excellence, the process of elucidation illustrated by the game "divisio n Especial Detectives", designed for the Plan by the company CEIBAL Trojan Chicken .

This is also the game that allowed this start-up of Montevideo to be winning the contest of ideas Rayuela , initiated by the organism of the same name from the project CEIBAL: a way to help improve the impact of ICT in schools since it is Uruguayan, for players to use their knowledge and geography, history, math, language and logic.

Luckily, we have to help us meet the challenges of tomorrow an entire generation of young (" Gurises "Uruguayan Spanish) that are already in a good school!

  Laboratorio Latinoamericano de Evaluación of Calidad de la Educación
 -LLECE-