No subject

to be trained on any new educational tools. They found it important to
include the XO training in the normal structure of the educational
system. There are a lot of traditions on how to do things, role of
teacher, supervisor etc. and those need to be respected in order to
avoid conflicts.

The training is done by the IT department and teachers with
specialization in ICTs for education.=20

The emphasis is on how to teach with the XO, not the technical aspects
of how the XO works. The teachers don't want to be technicians and are
not comfortable with technology. That said, they have to be comfortable
using the tool (XO).
=09
The best way to train in technology is to start with small groups. After
initial training they created working teams to visit school during class
time.  After a few training sessions, the teachers felt comfortable with
the XO and didn't need further technical support.

There is a vision of school based portals and regional and national
sites for collaboration. Some may be cached or served from the school
while others are served centrally. They have open issues with managing
teacher accounts and needing too many passwords so the portal design
work is ongoing.

There was a lot of interest in blogging but so far all Villa Cardal blog
messages were given to a single technician who then posted them.

See the Villa Cardal blogs at:
http://www.blogger.com/profile/06134894806578234196

The kids want to keep on blogging!

However UI issues are a barrier. Pablo and I wrote up an overview of the
challenge and a set of requirements to address them at:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Requiremientos_Para_XO

Please comment and add to it as needed.

They want help from the community to build new software to address these
needs. I want to create a team of supporters for this deployment.=20

If you want to help, send me an e-mail or sign up at:
http://groups.google.com/group/uruguay-XO-coordination

We need developers, project managers, artists, UI designers, Spanish
speakers and anyone else interested in helping out.

If we can be responsive to this first request we can develop a close
relationship and we can learn a lot from each other about how to make
the XO a success around the world!

Other technical and infrastructure comments:
- School server must be the gateway for all internet traffic as for
security (firewall/NAT and filtering). The filtering is done by
Dansguardian.

- There is no web caching done on the school server right now.

- Each school in the project must have internet access. Most schools
have 1 Mb/s. Cardal has 2 Mb/s. BW is set depending on size of the
school. So far, no problems reported with internet access or bandwidth.
That said, not all children can be connected at the same time. That
problem was solved by teachers coordinating so that classes take turns
using the WAN.

- The mesh was not worked well but it is getting better with each build.
They just started to use some mesh capabilities but in general it has
not been a critical need and they don't currently use activities that
require a mesh.

- They have updated the laptops a few times using the automatic update.
The updating system is not so easy... They're still working on it. Now,
some updates are automatic, others not.

- There has been a lot of demand to support Flash.
=09
Here are some other links on the XO roll out in Uruguay:
Main project blog:  http://olpc-ceibal.blogspot.com/=20
Main public project page:  http://ceibal.edu.uy/=20
Uruguay based volunteers group working on the next roll out:
http://www.rapceibal.blogspot.com/

Thanks,

Greg S