How can Plan Ceibal Land into the Age of Big Data?

Abstract

In 2007, Plan Ceibal became the first nationwide ubiquitous educational computer program in the world based on the 1:1 model. It is one of the most important programs implemented by Uruguay’s Government to minimize digital divide and is based upon three pillars: equity, learning and technology. As of 2007, Plan Ceibal has covered all public schools, providing every student and teacher in kindergarten, primary and middle school with a laptop or tablet and internet access in the school. To date, Plan Ceibal has close to 700,000 beneficiaries, each with their own device. Since 2011, the Plan has focused on providing the learning community with a wide range of digital content to enhance the teaching and learning process, most notably Learning Management Systems, Mathematics Adaptive Platform, remote English teaching and an online library. Today, Plan Ceibal operates and integrates a large scale of databases fed by a number of management and educational activities. This abundance of data presents a great challenge and a large opportunity to exploit and transform mass data into rich information. The main goal of this article is to describe the most relevant data sources and present an ongoing data analysis research grounded by a case study. In addition, this paper suggests next steps required to implement a learning analytics strategy within Plan Ceibal. If well exploited, this evidence based data can be used to support and improve the current technology and learning educational policies.