P-Lat-A: Plataforma Latinoamericana de Aprendizaje

Most schools in Latin America are located in rural communities with poor and ethnic backgrounds where teachers are isolated, less qualified and excluded from policies and practices of the educational system. They don´t have access to technologies that are important for the creative processes and that help the development of 21st century skills. They lack basic infrastructure and, most times, knowledge in how to use their resources in learning environments.

Our solution consists of an accessible technological platform that integrates different innovative, open and free learning tools, like block-based programming, accesible electronics, distributed mechanical designs and more importantly, a guide for educators with activities to implement these technologies to the classroom, aligned to the official educational standards in LatinAmerica.

This solution promotes more and better multicultural networks, an accesible and diverse tool/mindset for designing learning processes that will greatly impact rural teachers, students and communities in Latin America. 

Lack of creative long-life learning infrastructure, knowledge, networks, tools and solutions designed for their context.

There are about 520 indigenous cultures, with more than 400 languages and they represent about 50 million people, on Latin America many schools are in rural communities with poor and ethnic backgrounds.

These rural towns don't have access to important technologies for new
workforce skills (like design, art, or code skills) they lack basic
infrastructure such as computers or internet, have limited resources
and, even if they have some technological tools, they miss knowledge in
how to use them in learning environments.

On Latin América cities the average of people who has at least 10 years of
formal education is about 50% on rural zones is only about 20%.

Many local education or international learning systems don't have on count the rural and ethnic cultures and context, sometimes with impositive and obsolete models, or made for technologies they don't have.

The experience we have gained in the last years, designing programs, training, workshops and field work helped us identify the main problems faced by the education system, both locally in Yucatán and across Latin America with the Fab Lab Network. Educators are the core of the system and the ones responsible for creating an engaging learning experience for our youth. Therefore, through them, proposals like ours can have exponential impact on their communities. 

Our solution seeks to work with Latin American educators with a positive attitude and open to innovate in the educational system, who work outside the cities in schools with bad quality internet or without it; with few computers / laptops available or with obsolete computer rooms (unfunctional space distribution and not updated equipment). For this prototype, we specifically target teachers in the rural areas near Mérida, Yucatán (Mayan zone).

Our solution is a social and technical platform thath consists in two main products:

1. An inexpensive, high level and easy to setup, use and mantain technological system that integrates a LoRaWAN communication hardware, internet and some innovative, open and free learning tools:
   

   1. Already deployed block-base coding languages (Microblocks and Snap!), available for any OS (Linux, Windows, Mac, Chromebook) computers and many electronic boards (Like the accesible ESP32 boards) with translation support. Also with many libraries already builded for diverse electronic components and software (like Mozilla IoT (secure and free Internet of things)
      

   2. A work in progress interaction station node, designed with digital fabrication mechanical parts (inspired and based on projects like Multiplo and Lofi robots), an electronic board (Not yet defined wich one) and compatible electronic components. (When deployed, their designs and build instructions will be available for download). 
      

2. A guide for teachers with learning principles and activities aligned to the curricula and official educational standards in Latin America. This product will be co-designed with potential users of the platform (rural teachers) and educational innovation institutions (Fab Lat Kids, REET, Fab Lab Yucatán and EHE Tec de Monterrey).

This platform is focused on the Latin American and the Caribbean context
in different aspects: the selection and availability of the materials, 
the characteristics of the educational system, and the respect for cultural characteristics of each region (language, needs, and expressions)

The platform will allow to interact people with other people, interactions stations, computers, smartphones and tablets on other cultures, contexts and places, from bottom-up builded networks with many easy-to-learn design options.

Our solution is an innovation.  

Since most technological platforms do not provide with guidelines and material for the classroom, we will give educators both the tools and the knowleddge to adopt these technologies as learning tools applied to the content required by Secretaría de Educación Pública.

Our solution is a unique and novel conjunction of existing free and open technologies: Microblocks and Snap together with LoRaWAN, applied to constructionist educational materials, co-designed with Latin American rural teachers.

The technical part of the integration of thechnologies (creation of a library that connects LoRa with Microblocks, for example) will be developed by experts. However, the material will be co-designed by the rural educators with researchers, fabbers and pedagogues.

In contrast to similar projects, all the products we generate will be designed for the Latin American context: they will be in spanish and other dialects (first mayan) and aligned to our educational system and standards. Our solution will be the first one in the world to offer this. 

In addition, the educational philosphy approach for this tech system (constructivism and lifelong learning) is also something not very explored in public schools in Latin America. 

Finally, we have the potential to go exponential. We belong to the Latin American Network of Fab Labs, which counts with many experienced collaborators, making this model easy to replicate in different countries in the near future. 

Activity 1: Development of a complete library for Microblocks to be used with a compatible educational board/shield. Integration of this board with a LoRa transceptor and multiple GPIO's for plugging different sensors and actuators.

Output 1: Easy to deploy glocal educational and professional networks with minimun infrastructure

Outcome 1: New generations of learners with 21 century skills and, most important, with more curiosity about present and future tools that allows them build integral solutions and cultural expressions, making happier communities.

Activity 2:  Co-design of a  including manuals and learning kits based on Seymour Papert´s constructionism, STEAM approaches, and Design Thinking together with potential users and educational institutions aligned with Latin America educational standards.

Output 2: A bottom up initiative and knowledge about how to deploy human and technical networks on the rural environments, and the firs connections and results of the proposed system.

Outcome 2: High tech products and services (inventions, art, games, etc) from the communities and for communities and the whole world.

Even though we have served over 300 educators in the last years with different approaches and technologies, this specific integrated solution is brand new and not serving people right now. The parts of the solution, however, are already active or in beta version, reaching a wide number of people.

• Microblocks and Snap! are world distributed coding languages. Supported by the National Science Foundation of U.S. and the Software freedom conservancy

• There are 143 Countries with LoRaWAN Deployments

• The Fab lab Network, where we develop learning projects, has over 1750 digital fabrication labs in 100 countries. In Latin America there are about 450 Fab Labs and we activelly collaborate with 25 of them in 12 countries. 

Once we prototype the proposal, we seek to implement the solution in 3 rural zones of Yucatán with at least 20 teachers each, during the first year (60 teachers). 

The goal is to double the number of users of the platform each year, reaching about 2,000 rural primary and high school teachers in 5 countries of Latin-America (Peru, Brasil, Venezuela, México and Chile) in the next five years. 

We have two main goals for the next five years:

First, we seek to keep improving and complementing the platform in two ways: language (offer this solution in other dialects besides mayan) and content (for example, we can add elements to the library to use other kind of sensors). 

Second, we plan to implement this project in 5 countries of Latin America, in collaboration with Fab Lat Kids and the Fab Lab Network. 

We have experience in working within a distributed organization such as the Fab Lab Network. Also, Microblocks and Snap! are open platforms, and we have full support of their creators. These two facts, make very easy for us to replicate the solution. Our collaborators in Peru, Venezuela, Chile and Brasil, can easily use our method to translate the project to other dialects, and also, they can complement the platform with new features, making this project a distributed glocal effort. 

The biggest barrier we have found (and we know we will find in this project) is a cultural one, a matter of attitude. We find many educators either intimitated by technology; skeptical about the potential of technology as a tool for educating; or simply resistant to new ways of learning. 

Another obstacle is accesibility. Many rural communities, specially in the mayan zone, are far from the city, connected only by not paved roads and there is no public transportation to get there. Therefore, our interaction with these communities will be punctual and finite. (we cannot stay there for many days, come and go daily and they cannot visit the city often). 

We also face the financial barrier. Even though the hardware (anthena, communication devices, boards and sensors) are cheap and the software is free, we will need resources for updating the content, communicate and give maintainace. 

The cultural barrier is the bigger issue we are tackling. Offering educators a technological platform that is user friendly (designed for them), in their language and applied to the clasroom, will facilitate the transition to new educational models. 

In addition,  we will co-design the educational materials with them, ir order to build confidence and create a solution that completely serves them: a technological tool they can appropriate. 

Regarding accesibility, our strategy is to make the project run and grow wihtout us.The implementation period lasts 6 months, where we will do co-design and training sessions on site, followed by semi-remote support until they gather the knowledge and confidence to run the program and fix technical issues by themselves. We will also count on smart phones to communicate and give remote support. 

The financial barrier is more complex. With this fund we plan to cover all the components of the platform. However, it should be sustainable. 

One of our strategies is to seek for local gobernmental support that can overtake the platforms, follow-up and help dissemination.  However, we first need to protoype the proposal and have the first success cases, in order to show the impact. We have previously worked with gobermental instances, which makes this strategy probable to happen if we put together a strong project. 

Regarding the resources for expanding to other countries, we lay in a distributed network, where collaboration leads to create strong bridges, knowledge and practices, that facilitate that each node generates its own local financial resources. 

Last year we developed a 4-month program about new technologies in the classroom, with tools like Microblocks and early versions of the interaction station, we were working directly with educators outside of the capital of
Yucatán, which gave us great insights about developing and deploying
technological tools to empower classrooms, regarding of infrastructure,
internet connection or tools and materials available. Also we started a first network with them with available and active support.

The actual state of the platform are going to be used on the arqueo-ecological park Xoclán inside the Ya'axtal area in Mérida, Yucatán, México. This within the framework of the project Reto Ciudad Sustentable recently winner of funding, this project has a workshop series where children will design solutions for the advance of the SDG's.

Also we' are working and waiting for results for other contests including some parts of the solution.

Here you can have a look at pictures from our previous work. 

3 part-time staff (multi-functional profiles (Digital fabrication and electronics design, Learning workshops design, Administration and Management)

2 contractors (1 instructor and 1 accounter)

We are a team of designers, educators and engineers with a passion in delivering person-centered solutions in the context of our communities. We work with a shared teaching philosophy consisting in providing safespaces where experimentation, trial and error, and passion-powered learning are skills fostered between each other. 

The team have being part of networks of educators and makers in Latin America (Fab Lat Kids) that work directly with Fab Labs and makerspaces by reducing the gap between society and creative learning through digital fabrication.

Last year we developed a 4-month program about new technologies in the classroom working directly with educators outside of the capital of Yucatán, which gave us great insights about developing and deploying technological tools to empower classrooms, regarding of infrastructure, internet connection or tools and materials available. Link to the website of the project.

About the technical aspect of the project, most of the tools (block-programming curricula, LoRa technology) have been tested with our local communities of educators and we gathered feedback from previous educational projects with this approach. The opportunity over the actual project will be to fast-connect and deploy the different technologies in the context of the communities. For this we have partnered with the creators of Microblocks and Snap!, that will mentor us during the project. We believe this will lead into rapid feedback and deployment of the technological features of the project.

Microblocks: Developers and educators of block-programming software that will mentor us during the project.

Snap!: Developers and educators of block-programming software that will mentor us during the project.

Fab Lat Kids: Latin American network of Fab Labs, conformed of educators, makers & tech-enthusiasts, where we share digital-fabrication educational lessons and experiences.

REET: Local network of cultural spaces and lifelong learning environments (schools, art spaces) that organizes regular meetings and discussions on new ways to engage with creative learning.

Scopes DF: STEM Education and digital fabrication platform for educators where we upload replicable activities and resources. One of our lessons, FabStory, won the Chevron STEM Award last year.

SEGEY (Yucatán Secretary of Education): They will help us by providing us the spaces to deliver the project directly to the educatos outside of the city. They had helped us with projects like the Fab Lab Móvil before.

Fab City Yucatán: Civil Association that works on the global initiative of Fab City. They will help us by using their network of people, content and spaces to develop this project.

Escuela de Humanidades y Educación, Tec de Monterrey: They will mentor us on the pedagogical and educational content of the project.

Our business model is a cooperative model, where our key cutomers are the educational, entrepreneur, social or art institutions (mostly governmental), in specific, the ones who serve rural populations or communities.

Our products are diverse technical and human goods and services around a novel platform thinked for learning or educational pourposes. Many of them are selled together on complete projects, and include:

• Technical services and goods around the platform, that include design, fabrication, setup, maintenace and repair, of all or some of his components
• Education / learning goods and services for all or some of the platform elements including teacher guides and workshops, product design / fabrication, professional accompaniment and support.

We provide these products throw cooperative designs with the communities we learn their real need from them and we propose a diverse set of tools for the solutions design, in that process we and the communitites gain experiences, knowledge, and products they can use modify and share.

Our beneficiares (and cooperative members) are the rural schools and teachers who help with time and knowledge on the design process of the product (emphatyze, ideate, define, test) and get direct benefits of it, improving their educational methods, tools, and curriculum, also implicit on the activities they create discussion and even solutions for real needs they may have.

Now our bussines model and the social enterprise are integrated, and works with sustained funding projects.

The resource strategy overlap with the operating strategy. While we apply activities, we learn and design more products that can be selled to other potential clients (Educational, art, etrepreneur institutions). Also our resource strategy includes continually searching for more opportunities and potential clients, it can be a new technology product, or a crowdsourcing service.