Uruguay/OER

By James Kay, Sero

Policies Survey notes:

Uruguay's Education Portal EDUCA provides access to OER for teachers. In addition, la Universidad de la República has called for proposals based on the use of ICT and OER. Furthermore, a series of videos about popular science topics has been created and aired on Uruguay National Television and YouTube.

Plan CEIBAL (Conectividad Educativa de Informática Básica para el Aprendizaje en Línea) (Educational Connectivity of Basic Informatics for Online Learning) includes development and use of OER to support classroom activities and independent learning.

When it comes to the provision of publicly funded learning resources in digital format, there are important differences between educational levels. 75% corresponds to At pre-university level, the figure is 75%, but at university level the figure drops dramatically to 5%.

Overview

Uruguay, officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay (Spanish: República Oriental del Uruguay), is a country located in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to 3,460,000 people, of whom 1,700,000 live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area. An estimated 80-88% of the population are of mostly European and/or mixed descent. Uruguay's only land border is with Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, to the north. To the west lies the Uruguay River, to the southwest lies the estuary of Río de la Plata, with Argentina only a short commute across the banks of either of these bodies of water, while to the southeast lies the South Atlantic Ocean. Uruguay is the second smallest country in South America, larger only than Suriname. The economy is largely based on agriculture (making up 10% of GDP and the most substantial export) and the state sector. According to Transparency International, Uruguay is the least corrupt country in Latin America (along with Chile), with its political and labour conditions being among the freest on the continent. Uruguay is one of the most economically developed countries in Latin America, with a high GDP per capita and the 47th highest quality of life in the world. Uruguay is South America's most secular country. It has no official religion and church and state are separate.

Further information

For further general information see Wikipedia:Uruguay/OER.

Education in Uruguay/OER

For a general description of education in Uruguay/OER see Education:Uruguay/OER.

e-learning

For a description more focussed to e-learning see E-learning:Uruguay/OER.

Uruguay participates in the MOOC Camp initiative, which is led by the US Department of State and hosts facilitated discussions around massive open online courses (MOOCs).

Internet in Uruguay/OER

Internet Statistics:

- Internet users: 968,000 (2007)

- Internet Hosts: 480,593 (2007)

- Internet Service Providers (ISPs): 5 (1999)

In Uruguay, you can access the Internet mainly by using DSL services, provided by the state owned telco company (ANTEL), or one of the different Wireless ISP (which have a tendency to be more expensive because of high taxation and radio spectrum licenses costs). As an option, some shopping malls and other commercial business offer WiFi access at their location. Cyber cafes are very common throughout the whole country, and very inexpensive (from about US$ 0.4 an hour). 3G mobile internetm which is offered by all the mobile phone companies with rates of up to 3 Mbit/s - the 3G charges are similar to ADSL rates. Slower mobile internet service (EDGE and GPRS) is also offered by all mobile phone companies at very low flat rates. ANTEL, a telco company owned by the government, charges U$S 50 a month (about U$S 600 a year) for a 1536 kbit/s/128 kbit/s ADSL service. That is one of the most expensive DSL services in the region (which includes Argentina, Brazil and Chile), while wages in Uruguay might be lower than in said countries. Also, the services dynamically changes the IP address of the customer every 12 hours, making it difficult to use for tele-working. Antel enjoys a monopoly in the basic telephony area, and has successfully prevented other competitors (such as Cable companies) from entering the Internet service provider business. ISP are then forced to use other technologies, such as radio, to get to customers. Usually, the taxation and licensees for radio spectrum are also very expensive, in a way to artificially not allow these ISP to be cost competitive with Antel DSL service. (2)

OER Initiatives in Uruguay/OER

Uruguay has no consolidated OER policy. The use of open licences is not common. However, there are a couple of OER initiatives in the country.

National OER initiatives

As mentioned above, Project Ceibal aims at a new Plan Ceibal Digital Library, to include 100+ books and other educational materials (such as those from the Khan Academy), hosted on local school servers. (2) It is not clear from the information on the ReVica/VISCED page whether this proposed digital library might be an OER.

Institutional OER initiatives

The University of the Republic and the Catholic University of Uruguay are fellow members of an international project called OportUnidad. Institutions from Latin America and the European Union participate in this project, which seeks to create a common ground in higher education by increasing the use of open educational resources (OERs) and practices (OEPs). OportUnidad started in January 2012 and ends in June 2014.

References

1. ReVica/VISCED page for Uruguay (http://virtualcampuses.eu/index.php/Uruguay)

2. ReVica/VISCED page for Project Ceibal (http://virtualcampuses.eu/index.php/Project_Ceibal)

Reports

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