The Basic Computer Science Educational Connectivity Plan for Online Learning, better known as the Ceibal Plan, is on everyone's lips for leaving Uruguay as the benchmark in distance education, in times where the coronavirus contrasted countries who already worked with an online education system and the countries that did not.

In 2007, the delivery of computers to all children and adolescents in Uruguay had begun, and two years later, 100% of its public school students owned a device with which they could connect to the Internet for free. Thirteen years passed, and the classes through videoconferences became essential to continue with lessons while the students protected themselves in their houses from the spread of the coronavirus. On June 29, Uruguay resumed face-to-face classes, but the experience with the Ceibal Plan in the era of forced online learning left many lessons.

Convergencialatina talked with Federico Morales, Manager of Logicalis Services, and Federico Rodríguez, Account Manager of the same firm, which since 2010 has been working with the educational project after winning a tender together with Cisco. Given the problem of not having enough English teachers in Uruguay to teach classes throughout the country, Logicalis established a platform through which lessons were taught with teachers located in Montevideo, but also in other countries, such as Argentina, Chile or Thailand.

It was worked together with the British Council, which elaborated the academic part of the curriculum and trained teachers. Because in addition, the dynamics of teaching children from 8 to 14 years old at a distance was something totally new for both teachers within schools and for children. The local teacher in general did not know English, so the staff had to be trained to interact with the students. “There was a time when we installed three schools a day, with three crews traveling across the country and mounting the entire infrastructure on school classrooms, of which many of them were not prepared to have a solution of this characteristic mounted. That first stage was extremely challenging from the infrastructure part, "Morales recalled.

For Rodríguez, the replication of the Ceibal Plan scheme in other countries would require certain political decisions, above technological ones. “Every government that knows about Ceibal's existence instantly arouses the interest to replicate it, because as a project it is very interesting. But there are drawbacks that go beyond technology. Today, one of the keys to success is how its creation was handled politically from the first moment. The way in which the political system managed to present it and achieve a consensus of all the contributions to go forward was very ingenious. Without that, I have my doubts that it exists as it is today. Thus, when a country tries to replicate it (we have had many offers to help in the construction of a native Ceibal), when those kinds of difficulties begin to arise. The complex thing is not how to manage the videoconferencing equipment; the complex thing is that the whole system accompanies the creation of a project like this.”

In health, a centralized database. The Coronavirus National Plan implemented from the Uruguayan State in health material was nourished by all the advances previously achieved around the Salud.uy strategy. Under the concept that “the data” moves, and not people, that is, that “the data follows people”, a centralized database is used to track the infected: the collected information is dumped there in a virtual web assistant, in the mobile application Coronavirus.uy (the first in the region to contact the Apple and Google Bluetooth tracking system), in a Call Center and in a State WhatsApp.

As Pablo Orefice, Director of Health at Agesic Uruguay reported during a virtual event in early July, other support systems that contribute to this base are the available beds and respirator survey system; residential inventory and country visit forms; and the National Electronic Medical Record (HCEN, in Spanish), which groups data from laboratories, emergencies, assistance in outpatient clinics and hospitalizations.

The Uruguayan HCEN is another pioneering development in Latin America. The adoption plan established in 2017 for the more than 100 establishments in the country aims to reach 100% of health system users this year, and 90% of health events registered in HCEN. “More than 11 million queries so far accessed the HCEN platform. Of the 14,000 medical professionals currently in Uruguay, 12,000 have already used it. Some 270,000 documents "traveled" from one establishment to another and were shown for a doctor to see," said Orefice.