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Ey thanks for sharing your experience. I appreciate your perspective as a father. My experience is from the teachers training side: as part of the University o

Ey thanks for sharing your experience. I appreciate your perspective as a father. My experience is from the teachers training side: as part of the University of Buenos Aires, I taught programming classes to high school teachers. I think that having a computer is much better than not having it. It makes no difference for kids with access to computers, but there are kids that doesn’t have that. For those kids it may do a difference. My main complain of the “Plan Conectar Igualdad” is about the cost of incompetence. As you mention there is a lot of capable people that wants better education, but when resources are not very well aligned and plans like this are at the risk to die in each economic down turn, I wished a much better approach rather that giving the netbooks and wait for a miracle.

ericol 7y ago
> but there are kids that doesn’t have that Yes, totally agree here. Obviously was far from my experience (In my house there've been for years now more computers than people, and that's not even counting cellphones). But I couldn't agree more with what you are saying: For an incredible lot of kids was not only the first contact with a computer; it was also completelly unrestricted. Regarding incompetence, I think there was some sort of desconnection from reality from a lot of people in key places: I think way too many people thought that just dropping the netbooks would be enough (Like in Ethipia) without even considering cultural and social constraints. It still baffles me that it is heralded as a success by a lot of people from the previous government; yet, I think that the move by the current government to scrap it completely - instead on making the effort of fixing the problems - was utterly stupid. There was a lot of energy, effort and knowledge by a lot of incredible hard working and knowledgeable people put into making them work. Also, I never gave them much of a cursory look, but I think the machines were _really_ configured to be a powerful assistant to education: It's demise in the end was mostly due to - failed - politics... Just like with socialism ;)
- stebann 7y ago
  "Conectar" was my introduction to computers. When I was a teenager I felt that some people were really making an effort to bring new opportunities but many didn't appreciate it, like teachers who couldn't figure out configuration stuff and just dismissed the effort by the government and personnel who worked in the program because they thought We (many poor children in the "Interior") wouldn't have any kind of curiosity about them. Don't misunderstand me but I used to heard things like "No entiendo para que lanzaron este programa si estos chicos nunca van a ser programadores o van a trabajar de éso"... Of course I can talk about it, It just wasn't about throwing computers to us and expect us to hack our way to success. I think that by mid 2020's Argentina will have much more literate computer users and many people with more expertise in a variety of things, and with that new context We will do better by recycling good ideas and reviewing mistakes from the past.
  - ericol 7y ago
    Exactly. very well put. > We (many poor children in the "Interior") wouldn't have any kind of curiosity about them. This.They were actually disguising their own ignorance behind these kind of arguments. That, as well, is totally contrary to the idea of educating.
- stebann 7y ago
  "...yet, I think that the move by the current government to scrap it completely - instead on making the effort of fixing the problems - was utterly stupid..." Yes, they should have tried to improve the program. But they didn't, the current government it just marketing. They really disappointed people.

ericol 7y ago

> but there are kids that doesn’t have that Yes, totally agree here. Obviously was far from my experience (In my house there've been for years now more computers than people, and that's not even counting cellphones). But I couldn't agree more with what you are saying: For an incredible lot of kids was not only the first contact with a computer; it was also completelly unrestricted. Regarding incompetence, I think there was some sort of desconnection from reality from a lot of people in key places: I think way too many people thought that just dropping the netbooks would be enough (Like in Ethipia) without even considering cultural and social constraints. It still baffles me that it is heralded as a success by a lot of people from the previous government; yet, I think that the move by the current government to scrap it completely - instead on making the effort of fixing the problems - was utterly stupid. There was a lot of energy, effort and knowledge by a lot of incredible hard working and knowledgeable people put into making them work. Also, I never gave them much of a cursory look, but I think the machines were _really_ configured to be a powerful assistant to education: It's demise in the end was mostly due to - failed - politics... Just like with socialism ;)

stebann 7y ago
"Conectar" was my introduction to computers. When I was a teenager I felt that some people were really making an effort to bring new opportunities but many didn't appreciate it, like teachers who couldn't figure out configuration stuff and just dismissed the effort by the government and personnel who worked in the program because they thought We (many poor children in the "Interior") wouldn't have any kind of curiosity about them. Don't misunderstand me but I used to heard things like "No entiendo para que lanzaron este programa si estos chicos nunca van a ser programadores o van a trabajar de éso"... Of course I can talk about it, It just wasn't about throwing computers to us and expect us to hack our way to success. I think that by mid 2020's Argentina will have much more literate computer users and many people with more expertise in a variety of things, and with that new context We will do better by recycling good ideas and reviewing mistakes from the past.
- ericol 7y ago
  Exactly. very well put. > We (many poor children in the "Interior") wouldn't have any kind of curiosity about them. This.They were actually disguising their own ignorance behind these kind of arguments. That, as well, is totally contrary to the idea of educating.
stebann 7y ago
"...yet, I think that the move by the current government to scrap it completely - instead on making the effort of fixing the problems - was utterly stupid..." Yes, they should have tried to improve the program. But they didn't, the current government it just marketing. They really disappointed people.