Cristina Kirchner is shown with the OLPC

PUNTOGOV - The Chairman attended the official announcement of the delivery of 60,000 laptops from One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) in the province of La Rioja to all children and primary teachers.

It was the missing picture: President with the laptops of the One Laptop Per Child Foundation (OLPC). Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner saw these teams in La Rioja, where he led a ceremony of laptops two different programs. On the one hand, the netbooks that the national government provides technical high school students. And on the other, the familiar green and white machines OLPC, but as part of a government project Rioja that by the end of the year will deliver 60 000 of these laptops to students and teachers of primary schools in the province.

The head of state had been this year in several acts of Equality Connect program with another netbook model that bid in the education market: The Intel Classmate, which markets the company in the country Exo.

The case Rioja means for OLPC its massive landing in the country after the unsuccessful attempts that took place during the administration of former President Nestor Kirchner came to these computers to schools. These negotiations included the presence in the country of U.S. technology guru Nicholas Negroponte, who promoted the educational computers under the famous but unfulfilled concept of a laptop for $ 100.

The educational and technological project announced Wednesday in La Rioja is not part of the Equality Connect program that promotes the national government to state secondary schools across the country. According PuntoGov could find, this project will set the bidding in August and does not include the distribution of computers in primary schools, which means that each province or municipality must choose which model to adopt for primary school places.

The President gave the netbook's national plan for the Provincial School of Technical Education (EPET) No. 2 "Brigadier General Juan Facundo Quiroga" and the School No. 65 in the town of Famatina, with which it communicated by teleconference.

A La Rioja you are a total of 2,291 netbooks to 13 schools. Of these, four have already received all the equipment (763 computers), and other 4 schools (527 laptops) will be receiving before the end of August. The five remaining schools will receive a total of 1,246 computers by the end of the school year, the ministry of Education. All these machines are part of the national plan for technical high schools.

But the President did not fail to appear in some photographs with the OLPC, as seen

Strictly speaking, the act of delivery of these computers was in the context of another presidential activity in La Rioja, whose main purpose was a tribute to Monsignor Enrique Angelelli, killed during the military dictatorship in the framework of the Week of Human Rights.

Taste Rioja

The software is called Rioja school "Joaquín V. Gonzalez "in honor of the politician, historian, writer and educator, who ruled his home province and was the founder of the University of La Plata and High Education Institute of Buenos Aires. The initiative aims to remember the delivery of educational laptops to all primary school population in rural and urban state-run, private and municipal.

The program is supported by OLPC, thanks to an agreement signed between this entity and the Government of La Rioja in December last year to purchase 60,000 XO laptops 1.5, Uruguay implemented the same through its Plan Ceibal and several countries like Costa Rica, Colombia and Peru.

The program is led by Minister of Education, Science and Technology, Walter Flores, the director of Educational Planning, Sonia Torres, and the director of Primary Education, DELFOR Raul Tapia, who will face the task of implementing an educational model based on free software and the machines have "Sugar" in their operating systems.

This is the first cooperation agreement signed with an OLPC province of Argentina. It is planned to replicate the agreement in Catamarca, Corrientes and Mendoza. Thus OLPC "continues to advance its mission of providing every child on the planet access to information that aims to reduce the digital divide," they said in a statement of the NGO headed by renowned specialist Battro Antonio.

The delivery of the laptops in La Rioja will take place in stages later this year for each child and teacher will have his laptop. The provincial government believes that this initiative will have a very good reception throughout Rioja society as these children will become agents of change within their families and their communities. The minister of Education's Office, Alberto Sileoni, referred to the model chosen by La Rioja as "one of the provinces that are doing art in Latin America", according to local media said in April.

Claudia Urrea, PHD in Education from American University MIT, will be responsible to train faculty in La Rioja, and Martin Langhoff, OLPC will be responsible for the technical deployment of the program Joaquin V. Gonzalez.

Expansion in Bolivia

Flores Minister held meetings on July 19 with municipal and educational Bolivian town of Yacuiba (Tarija department, bordering Salta and Jujuy) in order to showcase and highlight the benefits of the program. According to media reports, both Governor Beder Herrera and Flores Rioja "committed a technical team to train and implement the program to reach Yacuiba at no cost. This is for the socialization of the project. We want Yacuiba is the first municipality in Bolivia to develop the project, "said Mayor Yacuiba, Bru Cavero.

Flores referred to that meeting as "a very positive experience, and specified that" this interest leads to Bolivia to work in counseling so that they materialize a similar experience. "

According to a statement from the education portfolio, Flores said the impact of this educational model is generating and said: "The La Rioja, in this regard, we are making art because our province is equipped with a model that today is interesting for another jurisdiction" adding that "the region of Atacama in Chile, and other Argentine provinces as Catamarca, Corrientes and Mendoza are seeking advice."

By Sabrina Diaz Rato
of PUNTOGOV: http://puntogov.com/nota.asp?nrc=2451&nprt=1