contact:
yama@adinet.com.uy
webpage:
www.oocities.org/yamaplos
Close by our farm there was a multi-level, one room school, with, in 1997, 7 students. Their most sophisticated piece of equipment at that time was a (broken-down) record player, and a just installed telephone
Being already very involved in Information Technology,in the city, I had to do something for these rural neighbors of mine.
First I brought my computer a few times. Tested their phone - it worked for internet,
at a whooping 2.400 bytes per second ( 10-20 times slowler than usual lines at that time !).
Eventually we obtained a donated computer to use as their own.
Then I got them involved in several international internet-based projects.
- They exchanged letters with new friends in 3 continents
- They had their names send to Mars by the NASA
- And here, in the picture, they are holding Millie and Yago. Millie is a toy echidna that
as Olimpic Mascot
was traveling around the world, coming all
the way from Australia. Yago Serpent was their own travel buddy, starting its own trip
to discover the world, ready to accompany Millie in its way home.
The bottom line was that with a bit of ingenuity and effort, it was possible to bring end-of-the-century activities to a school whose practices had changed but very little in the last 50 years, and get these students to broaden their horizons.
Rappel in CampoAventura
As a business, my attempt at building and running an Adventure Activities Camp in Uruguay was a failure
But it was quite a a success for all those that made use of its facilities and programs. Adventure activities facilities and programs that are safe, challenging, an available are quite uncommon in the Third World. And yet the educational benefits to young people in building self-esteem have no parallel.