ITC based participatory learning for indigenous children in Chiapas, Mexico1 one of the winning projects of the Digital Media and Learning competition 2009 , an initiative of  HASTAC supported by the MacArthur Foundation  Project summary  Indigenous Chiapas population is one of poorest of Mexico. The government has created a parallel school system to attend the particular needs of indigenous children. The system is called CONAFE, for Educative Enhancement National Commission. Our project will produce pedagogical sequences, lesson plans and multimedia materials that enhance CONAFE's curriculum with constructionist activities that imply Problem-based and project-oriented participatory learning in which students produce and share materials and learning outcomes. We will choose two rural schools in which all the relevant actors (parents, children, instructors) would be willing to participate. The project will prepare instructors and students in the use of the technology and in constructionist participative learning strategies, so that they are able to use these activities in and out of the classroom to enhance student development. The learning materials will be used during the one year school cycle and the researchers will record both the learning process and learning outcomes. The computers will remain with the children; we expect that during and after the project, instructors and students will invent new ways of using the technology. These new uses will also be recorded as part of the project.  Technological artifacts. This will be a research experiment in "one to one laptop" use of ICT for development (ICT4D). Initially we considered the XO1 from the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) MIT project, but finally choose  the Intel Classmate Convertible running Sugar, the child-friendly GUI and constructionist activities developed initially by the OLPC foundation and now by Sugar Labs. ...more ... Main challenges. Most of the CONAFE schools have no electricity or internet access (we plan to set up a wind turbine+manual power to charge the power-efficient laptops); the children can read Spanish but mostly talk and often write in the Tzotzil language (we have localized a translator); no knowledge of even the existence of computers for most of the children and their families ... more... Main facilitating factors. The CONAFE curriculum already is constructivist and each child is given a paper exercise book with plenty of constructivist and constructionist, collaborative and reflective activities --however, some facilitators do not follow the book and have a tendency towards instructionism. CONAFE facilitators are indigenous, young, high school students eager to use technology... more... For more detail on the project please see the full project proposal to.  the Digital Media and Learning Competition.; or a 3-page version of the proposal in Spanish Background on the OLPC project - "It is not a laptop project. It is a learning project", insists its founder, Nicholas Negroponte of MIT's Media Lab. The learning that should happen comes from the learning methodology, the software and the deployment strategy in thousands of schools... more...    The Tzotziles people - a pdf book (in Spanish) published  by the United Nations Program for Development.  Project planning and development - most of it is in the "Sofware and learnning activities development" page, in Spanish. Summaries will be provided as news in English, and some other documents in English later on in this space.  Lesson plans and new Sugar software activities - in Spanish - click here. Feel free to share. Project final results - presented at the Washington D.C. meeting organized by HASTAC in May 2010.  Final project report - version in English followed by one in Spanish Short (2 min) and long (7 min) YouTube videos Long video in Spanish Heredia, Y. & Icaza, J.I., "Technology based participatory learning for indigenous children in Chiapas schools, Mexico". Journal of Information Technology education: innovations in practice. Vol. 11, 2012. http://www.jite.org/documents/Vol11/JITEv11IIPp251-270Heredia1118.pdf Note: the results reported above cover one school year. The project was later extended until September 2010 when we trained the new instructors and instructor's tutors for the next school year. See the project blog. Cascadas de Agua Azul (Blue Water Waterfals), Chiapas 1 - The material on this web site is based on work supported by John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation under prime grant no. 08-91858-000-HCD and the Regents of the University of California. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation or The Regents of the University of California. We also gratefully acknowledge the support of Intel Corporaton in giving us quick access to the Classmate machines with a special discount, and for donating cellular modems and internet access for the schools.

Principal Investigators

Yolanda Heredia (P.I.) - Director, Graduate School of Education, Virtual University, Tecnológico de Monterrey, México  (project leader). Contact: yheredia **at** itesm.mx

Jose I. Icaza (co-P.I.) - Professor at the Center for intelligent computing, Monterrey Campus, Tecnológico de Monterrey. 
Contact: josei09 **at** gmail.com

Project collaborators

Marcela Gómez - Coordinator of research center on education, Graduate School of Education, Virtual University, Tecnológico de Monterrey

David Jiménez, Lucero Quilla, Miguel Angel Salazar and Jorge Garza-Riaño. Engineering in Computational Technology undergrad students.

This site license: (cite the homepage URL). Includes linked-in Google Docs documents and spreadsheets.