English for Everybody - Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia

Name of Project: English for everybody

Shipping Address: Calle Motacu # 2360 – Santa Cruz de la Sierra – Bolivia

                 Fedex and DHL available

                 Phone number:  059 – 3 – 3414451

Team leader: Mario Alberto Olivares Mederos

Number of Laptops: 10 (ten) to begin, until the project is tested and ready.

Loan Length: 12 months.

2- Team Participants

     Names & Contact Info: Ms. Ana Carola Alvestegui Alexander –

       email: carolaalvestegui@hotmail.com

                  anacalvestegui@gmail.com

      phone: 059-77077011 

      Mr. Mario Alberto Olivares Mederos-

     email: olivares45@gmail.com

               olivares45@hotmail.com

     Employer:  On Line Center

Past experience: Both with a vast experience in teaching English as a foreign language to children, adolescents and adults.

During the past 4 years, Ms. Carola has intensified English language teaching classes, while Mr. Mario is fully dedicated to tutoring in English, Math, Social Studies, Geography, History and Business, preparing students for University of Cambridge International Examinations.

3- Objectives:

Project Objectives: Since we are teachers and not computer experts, programming our courses will take at least a year. After that and if we are successful, we will start courses on other subjects.

Why English? The Bolivian government announced two days ago, the new teaching program for Bolivia. (This government is a Socialist-Indigenous supporter and is very strong now).

All schools in Bolivia will have to change all history books as “liberal” heroes will be eliminated, replacing them with indigenous martyrs and every school will have to teach 3 languages: Spanish, an indigenous “originary” language (guarani for this region) and another foreign language, preferably English. Laptops will be of great help as we can show many other things than through a conventional lesson. If in the future we can buy a projector, it will close our idea of future teaching by being able to show films, videos, etc.

We have been contacted by people who represent the future local authorities in order to know more about our project and we have full support from whoever wins.

4- Plan of Action

     Plan and Procedure for achieving the Stated Objectives:

Our plans are to program an English Course for Primary, Middle and High School students. We will practice all the time with the private students we already have until we are certain it works properly. This will take approximately one year and after that we will request more Laptops according to the gradual increase of students and teachers. There are more than 200,000 students in government schools here in Santa Cruz. After that, this program will be available to all Bolivian students and to all Spanish speaking countries.

5- Needs

     Why is the project needed?

                       Because it was always needed in this poor country and now with 

                       more emphasis, as by law students will have to learn English .

                       We believe this will insert more Bolivians into the civilized world, 

                       thus eliminating present inequalities. 

     Locally?  As explained before, it will be local at the beginning but open to 

                       the world if anybody wants to implement it. 

XO Machines We still don’t know how they are but we have been told that they are made simple for students.

We are requesting only 10 as we are going to work for nearly a whole year in programming and adapting our courses to the Laptops. Rebuilt Laptops we believe will be fine, if they work properly.

6- Sharing Deliverables

     Project   We intend to constantly inform our works (pros and cons) through

                       email or where OCPC wishes us to do it.

                       Before we put into effect our project we would like to have 

                       OCPC’s approval, since this, if it works properly, will benefit a lot 

                       of children throughout the world.

                       We are still trying to get in touch with other groups so that we can 

                       learn from their experiences. 

7- Quality/Mentoring

                       Anything that adds to our project will be appreciated, even critics

                       or corrections. Maybe in the future somebody can come up with 

                       an improved method or system and we are all going to benefit from

                       these findings.

                       Since we are going to offer our project to local authorities at the 

                       beginning, we suppose they are going to take the necessary steps  

                       in order to put our project to work.

                       An experienced mentor from the OCPC/Sugar community will be

                       of great help for us. For instance we need help now in learning

                       how to work in the classrooms with XO laptops in different 

                       subjects. 

8- Timeline

                       We will be working during, at least, the first 10 months in

                       programming and testing progress with our private students,

                       so when we get to start at state schools, we will have no 

                       objections or at least very few. Then we will have to start

                       training classroom teachers in working with the laptops,

                       explaining to them that this system is for them to improve

                       their teaching skills and the students’ learning abilities.

                       After this, it will be a lifetime project hopefully.

                       Finally, we agree to pass the laptops to a local OCPC group or

                       other interested contributors in case we do not have need for

                       the laptops anymore or in case our project progress stalls.