In Latin America, there are concerns about the educational system. A lot of students there are not getting the education that they deserve, and that means that they won’t be able to compete with others out in the world.

Many people there drop out of school, repeat a grade, or have other problems, and they spend more time doing family oriented things like scrapbooking with Cricut than actually working at their jobs and their schooling. Scrapbooking can be a fun family activity, but it shouldn’t take the place of work or education. It should be saved for times when there are no other duties that have to be completed so that nothing else gets neglected and everyone has time to participate.

The INTEGRA strategy: creating a Network of Innovation Centres

The INTEGRA project aims at developing and improving capabilities of Latin American institutions to use, manage, and leverage ICTs in teaching and administration.

The Demonstration Project will create a Network of Innovation Centres (CedeI - Centros de Innovación) devoted to experimenting with the use of the new technologies in educational or administrative activities, promoting continuous training activities for teachers and technicians, and providing services to schools in their area of influence. The Network’s initial core of 20 schools will be selected on the basis of minimum requirements in terms of: technical infrastructure (hardware and Internet connectivity); teachers with sufficient training and motivated to participate in innovative projects; and commitment from school boards and directors.

The selection of these 20 centres will not preclude other schools from participating in the network if they so wish.

Through INTEGRA, a core group of educational institutions will be able to

• modernise and integrate their existing communication resources,
• promote the application of multimedia technologies in teaching activities,
• stimulate the use of the digital materials for the common production of new didactic contents and innovative projects,
• design and provide training for teachers, technicians and school governors,
• spread and multiply the outputs of the project to a wider number of LA institutes.

Ensuring “contagiousness” and intelligent adaptation of different experiences.

In order to ensure that concrete results are achieved, the project will draw on successful European and Latin American experiences. Large-scale initiatives represented in the project are: the Dschola project in Piemonte-Italy, the XTEC network in Catalunya-Spain, the National Centre for Technology in Education-NCTE- in Ireland; Red Enlaces in Chile; the Educ.ar portal in Argentina and the Programa de Conectividad Educativa in Uruguay.

As the project develops, direct contact between colleagues in Europe and Latin America will ensure suitable “contagiousness” and intelligent adaptation of their different experiences.

Active involvement of educational authorities

The participation of educational authorities ensures that INTEGRA activities complement the initiatives of national and local governments.

Recommendations for public policy concerning the introduction of the new technologies in the educational system will be drawn up during the final phase of the project.

The project develops in function to two objectives.