A Term With Plan Ceibal

Saturday, I traveled about two hours east to the city of Maldonado with Mariana and Diego, who work with Tus Ideas Valen, for a blogging workshop at School 93. Diego told me that the school was in a poor area-- a "critical context." The school itself is relatively new, though, and while there was definitely less "stuff" around than in a typical American school, nothing struck me as a really huge disparity except the lack of desktop computers--no longer an issue because of Plan Ceibal. There were two parts of the workshop. A class of kids were in one room, and a group of teachers were in another. My job was to film the workshop, which was nice because I got to hang back and observe without being completely useless.

Mariana taught the kids' workshop. I'm not sure how long this school has had laptops (they were phased in over a few years), but the kids seemed to know their way around the computers and the Internet well. Many of them had stickers of cartoons or fútbol logos on their laptops. They all had email addresses and more or less knew what a blog was. More importantly, they seemed comfortable exploring and Googling things to figure out what they didn't know. Mariana started by asking them what a blog was, why someone would make one, and how they are different from other websites. One of my favorite moments was when she asked a few kids their fútbol team preferences, then asked, "if Cristian and Ana both have blogs about fútbol, but Cristian roots for Nacional and Ana roots for Peñarol, are they the same?" Loud chorus of "NO!" Then they set about learning how to set up a blog. The EduBlog software isn't ready yet, so they used Blogger, the same tool I'm using for this blog. It was Saturday, and they had come to school just for the workshop, but none of them seemed at all bored or eager to leave. Mariana, who has a master's degree in technology education, told me it was ideal when the students taught each other, and that's exactly what happened. Even though they each have their own laptop, they spent a lot of the time walking around, looking over each other's shoulders and learning from each other. This is an advantage of the small, durable laptops--it would be harder to do that in a computer lab with desktops, or even regular (fragile) laptops. It was a cool dynamic that you don't see that often--kids can't usually walk around and check out each other's math worksheets.


While Mariana talked about what a blog is, most of the kids already had their laptops open and were surfing around as she talked. It didn't seem to keep them from paying attention, though, and that really is how you learn about the Internet. They're very eager to learn a little bit and then go play with it, while the adults tend to want more specific instructions. The kids were so excited to show their teacher their blogs, and even more excited when he suggested they go downstairs and teach the adults what they had learned, like they're doing here:


Diego spoke to the group of adults, and went into more detail showing how different parts of Blogger work. My first impression was that the adults looked frustrated and weren't having as much fun as the kids were. I can't understand everything that's being said, so I don't completely trust my interpretations, but it would make sense. Andrew told me that like in the US, there is often a generation gap, where the students know more about the computers than the teachers. Not all of them had computers to try things out right away; a lot were taking notes on paper. But when the kids came downstairs to show them the blogs they'd made, the room got a lot more lively. Before we left, Diego and Mariana signed a certificate for each kid saying they had completed a blogging workshop.

On the way back, we stopped in a little town on the coast called Piriapolis. We drove up a small mountain, which had great views from the top.



Then I went to the miniJAM I wrote about before, that focused on the arts. Many people there were artists and teachers who hadn't been involved with ceibalJAM before, so there was a presentation about what ceibalJAM does and how the arts are incorporated. Then everyone got to experiment with a table full of XOs (and their art-related applications):



On Sunday, I went to another fútbol game. This one was between Montevideo's two most popular teams, Peñarol and Nacional, so it was even crazier than the last one. Games between these teams are called "el clasico," I guess because it's a classic rivalry along the lines of Yankees-Red Sox. The most intense fans tend to congregate behind the goals, but we were on the side. When I saw all the fireworks people were setting off, I decided I was glad. Here's the Peñarol side as their team jogged onto the field:


I've been doing some translation work this week. When we get a few technical issues resolved, I'll be editing down the video from the workshop, and hopefully posting some of it here. Tomorrow I'm helping out at an event called FLISOL, whose name translates to Latin American Free Software Installation Festival.

On Sunday, I went to a huge street market on Tristan Narvaja that takes place every week. It sells pretty much anything you can think of. For example: produce, meat, flowers, books, toys, typewriters, Michael Jackson posters...

...puppies and kittens...



...all the shoelaces you could ever want...


...piggy banks shaped like Homer Simpson?



I also tried a torta frita. It's deep fried dough with sugar, basically like American fried dough, but crispier. It's delicious and really cheap and definitely terrible for you.


But I've been doing actual work too. Up to now, a lot of it has been stuff I do on my own on the computer. My hostel has wifi, but it's not always super conducive to getting work done, so I started looking for someplace with free wifi that wouldn't mind me working for a while. There doesn't seem to be a library near me, and although you can get espresso and cappuccinos at a lot of restaurants here, there aren't many of the kind of coffee shops where you can just hang out. The solution, it turns out, is McDonald's. I'm kind of embarrassed by how much I like it here. They not only have the delicious hot chocolate and nice couches I wrote about before, but also free wifi, outlets, discarded newspapers for practicing my Spanish, and as far as I can tell, the only bagels in town. Believe it or not, it actually seems to be a community meeting area with a nice friendly vibe. I still don't understand why people would eat the burgers here! Now we have a semi-permanent office downtown, though, where I'll work from 9 to 1 each day.

Saturday, I went to a miniJAM. This is an event organized by CeibalJAM where a group of volunteers gather to discuss a few things that need to be done and then work on them. This meeting focused on organization and content for CeibalJAM's website. Most people were working on technical aspects, but others were working on communications-related stuff, and one guy was shooting video. The meeting space is a building that will eventually be a small art museum.


The miniJAM this Saturday will focus on applications for the XO that allow students to create art in various ways, as well as figuring out how CeibalJAM can incorporate artists and designers. So, one of my current jobs is to make artistic masterpieces like this:


I'm testing out a bunch of new art-related applications, figuring out which ones are buggy, and taking screenshots and writing descriptions of what you can do with each so we'll have a summary for Saturday afternoon. For example, this program (TuxPaint) still has English directions in a few places, which could confuse the kids, so I take note of issues like that while I get in touch with my inner six-year-old. On Saturday morning, I'm visiting a school for the first time to help out with a blogging workshop in Maldonado, a small city east of Montevideo near Punta del Este. My work with Flor de Ceibo is supposed to start on Monday. I'll be part of two of their groups--one working in rural areas, and another working in the city of Rivera on the Brazilian border--I'm excited to see some more of the country!

My work with Plan Ceibal has been gradually starting this week, but isn't completely underway. At first, I was just familiarizing myself with the XO laptops and learning how they work. The first thing I noticed was that these computers are not designed for Uruguay--they have American plugs (so will always need converters), and all the information in the "help" section is in English. Here's the home screen--the XO logo surrounded by logos for all the different programs.


There's a Wikipedia link, Skype, "Tortuga Art," which is like Logo, a calculator, a chat program, a text editor, a web browser, a paint program, and a bunch of games that are less clear to me. One, called "Pippy," seems to teach some basic programming--not something I learned in elementary school! But the games aren't big, pretty, multilevel programs like Oregon Trail or Gizmos and Gadgets or the other supposedly educational games that caused everyone to fight over computer time when I was in elementary school. There's a simple maze game, a tetris game that uses math, a quiz game about cities in Uruguay, etc. I guess the Internet connection is probably the most important thing, but it still seems weird that these games are so much more basic than what American students were playing a decade ago.

I'm still figuring out exactly how the different volunteer groups fit together. Pablo mostly coordinates CeibalJAM, which is a group that works on programs for the XO computers. He also directed Blogging Desde Infancia, which apparently has now been replaced with Tus Ideas Valen (something along the lines of "Your Ideas Have Value"). Yesterday I met Cesar and Nathalie, who are working with this group. CeibalJAM provides technical help to Tus Ideas Valen. Flor de Ceibo is separate, and works with kids in the classrooms using what software has already been developed. I haven't started any work with them yet. Hopefully soon.

So far, the schools participating in the blogging project have used tools like Wordpress and Blogger, which are free and accessible but definitely not designed for six-year-olds. So CeibalJAM has written its own version, called EduBlog, which is much simpler and has features designed for the classroom. For example, rather than sending a forgotten password to an email address, a teacher can restore access. However, the site is still very buggy, and the user guide is very brief. So, my current job is to test all the different parts of the site to figure out where the bugs are, and to work on English and Spanish versions of two user guides--a detailed one for teachers, and a simpler one for the kids. Unfortunately, at the moment the home page won't even load, so I haven't gotten much done today.

Cesar and Nathalie asked me what I was most interested in working on, and said that there are tons of jobs and almost everyone's a volunteer so I should make sure to tell them what I enjoy. I had no idea what to say (not in English, and definitely not in Spanish), because I don't really know how the organization functions or what jobs there are to do. But it sounds promising! I'm supposed to have dinner later with Andrew, who has been working with Plan Ceibal since he graduated from Union College last spring. I'm looking forward to hearing what he's figured out.

Since I got back from Punta del Diablo, I've mostly just been exploring the city. My work with Plan Ceibal started yesterday, but I'll put that in a separate post.

Saturday, I finally spent an extended period of time with people who aren't fluent in English. I took a trip to the historic section of the city with two friends from the hostel, Julieta from Argentina and Ricardo from Brazil. At cross-country camp in high school, we used to play a game called Mad Gab. It has phrases like "These If Hill Wore" printed on cards, and you have to say it over and over again until you figure out that you're basically saying "The Civil War." Once you get the answer, it seems extremely obvious, but until then you can't make any sense of the sounds. This is more or less how I feel trying to decipher the accent here. It's frustrating to have the vocabulary but not be able to use it. But it's slowly getting better, mostly thanks to people like Julieta who happily repeat themselves five times, snail-pace. Ricardo is fluent in Spanish, but he speaks a little more slowly since it's not his first language, which was great news for me. I felt like my Spanish improved more in one day than it had in the previous week. We walked down Avenida 18 de Julio, the main street of Montevideo's downtown, then through Ciudad Vieja along a pedestrian street called Avenida Sarandí to the port. There were various interesting things along the way.

This is an entrance to the subway. Except, wait...Montevideo doesn't HAVE a subway system. When you go downstairs there's a small art museum...filled with giant anime prints, interestingly. I couldn't understand much of the attendant's explanation of how this came to be, but everyone seems to think it's a great joke.


Located on an apparently arbitrary street corner, between a sandwich stand and an ice cream stand, is a small fountain surrounded by a metal fence with thousands of locks attached to it. The legend is that if a couple writes their initials on a lock and attaches it, they will return to the fountain and, according to the sign, "their love will be forever locked."


This is the Plaza de Independencia, Montevideo's main plaza (though there are tons of smaller ones). The statue is General Artigas, the "father of Uruguay's independence." His tomb is beneath it. Behind the statue is a stone gate that leads to Ciudad Vieja--it's what's left of the wall that used to surround the entire city.


The area around the port has lots of shops and restaurants, which were crowded since it was the day before Easter. They all seemed to serve the same things for the same prices, so we picked a random one. They gave us slightly smoky-tasting bread with a delicious sort of salsa made of peppers, onions, and tomatoes in oil. I had gnocchi (common here; many people have Italian heritage) with tomato sauce. It looked tasty, but I have to say I'm not a huge fan of Uruguayan tomato sauce--it involves more salt than tomato.

On Sunday, I went with a group from the hostel to a soccer game. There is a fierce rivalry between Montevideo's two main teams, Nacional and Peñarol. The hostel staff informed me that I would be rooting for Peñarol. This game was between Peñarol and a less-cared-about team, Cerritos, so the crowd was less intense than at a Nacional-Peñarol game, but still way beyond any American sporting event. The stadium was surrounded by riot police, and the fans went way beyond chanting the team name and yelling randomly--they sang (screamed) actual songs. I couldn't understand much of the lyrics, but I did catch plenty of the swear words my Argentine friends taught me last week.




Yesterday, I walked to Montevideo's newest mall, Punta Carretas Shopping, because I'd heard the grocery store there had more unusual stuff (tofu was too much to hope for, but there was "pan arabe"--pita bread). The mall itself was extremely expensive, but surprisingly entertaining. There are a few American chains--Reebok, Nike, Columbia, Lacoste, and an Urban Outfitters--but mostly names I didn't recognize. A lot of signs are in English, though. At first, I thought this was catering to expatriates, who probably make up a significant chunk of the people willing to pay the ridiculous prices. But then I saw this:


No, it doesn't mean something different in Spanish.
And this:


"Invierno" means winter. I guess they're not looking forward to it. But it's just barely the start of fall...

There's also a McDonald's. According to people who eat meat, Uruguay is a fantastic place to get high-quality beef cheaply. McDonald's has crappy meat, and here, it's not particularly cheap, but they're everywhere. I think they're actually considered kind of trendy. They all seem to have McCafes as well, which is considered some of the best coffee you can get (no Starbucks here yet). One of the blogs about Uruguay that I read before coming said that their hot chocolate was really good, so I decided to check it out. The menu called it "submarina" and said it was warm milk with a bar of chocolate that you mix in. I was already pretty impressed. Then the girl gave me the milk in an actual glass with a saucer, on a pretty wooden tray, with a free glass of seltzer water and a little cookie. At McDonalds?!


There were leather couches too. American McCafes aren't this classy, are they? At least they were playing 50 Cent. There are limits.

I'm trying to upload more photos to Flickr, but the Internet isn't incredibly fast so it takes forever. Tomorrow I'll write more about the cuteness of the XO laptops (and about the work I'm doing on them).

Since I got to Uruguay, everyone has been telling me that I HAVE to go to Punta del Diablo, preferably while it's still summer. It's a fishing village on the east coast with a year-round population of about 500 people, but as many as 20,000 during peak season, and it's considered a more laid-back alternative to glitzy Punta del Este. A lot of Montevideo shuts down the week before Easter, and my work hasn't started yet, so I figured it was a good time to check it out. Tuesday morning, I caught a bus from Tres Cruces, Montevideo's main terminal. I was not expecting a comfortable ride, but it turned out to be more like the Dartmouth Coach than the buses I took in Peru. The bus was half empty, there was air-conditioning and wifi, and we arrived ahead of schedule! And at about $15 for the 3.5 hour trip, it was way cheaper than the Dartmouth Coach.

The village is definitely touristy--the areas around the beaches are lined with restaurants, ice cream shops, and stalls selling crafts. Still, I'm used to "touristy" in foreign countries meaning "Americanized," and Punta del Diablo definitely is not. It's mostly aimed at Uruguayan and Argentinian tourists, so signs are still in Spanish, the food is still typically Uruguayan, etc. Even packed with tourists, it still feels like a village--all the roads are dirt, there aren't any chain stores, and the lone ATM is hidden behind a restaurant on the edge of town. It has a bit of a hippie surfer vibe. This is part of the main road:



I stayed at a small hostel called Elida Elena on the hill above the main beach. It had a big porch with hammocks and a panoramic view of the Atlantic. The staff includes several Uruguayans, an Australian, and an American woman who turned out to be from Hanover! Here's part of the view:



On Wednesday, I visited a small national park called Santa Teresa, a few kilometers down the coast. It's named after the fortress within it, built by the Portuguese in 1762, which is now full of exhibits and open to tourists, but for some reason, still run by soldiers. The historical exhibits were cool, but the views of the countryside over the fortress walls were cooler. It also has HUGE, practically empty beaches.



I went with three guys from Buenos Aires who were staying at the same hostel. Two were studying computer science, and the other had graduated and worked as a game programmer, so we had a fun nerdfest. Their English was excellent, and they asked me questions I didn't know the answers to...anyone know what the difference is between a fort and a fortress? When I asked how they became so fluent, they said that even though they just took classes in school like I have in Spanish, they're also always surrounded by English movies, music, and computer stuff, so they get to practice all the time. This makes a lot of sense, and makes me feel somewhat less incompetent when everyone's English seems to be better than my Spanish. They also taught me some handy Spanish slang, in case I need to curse someone out.

My actual work is supposed to start on Monday, when all the Easter festivities are over. Before then, I'm hoping to check out the annual Montevideo criollas--big rodeos!