What is gvSIG Educa?

"If I can't picture it, I can't understand it (A. Einstein)"

gvSIG Educa is a customization of the gvSIG Desktop Open Source GIS, adapted as a tool for the education of issues that have a geographic component.

The aim of gvSIG Educa is to provide educators with a tool that helps students to analyse and understand space, and which can be adapted to different levels or education systems.

gvSIG Educa is not only useful for the teaching of geographic material, but can also be used for learning any subject that contains a spatial component such as history, economics, natural science, sociology...

gvSIG Educa facilitates learning by letting students interact with the information, by adding a spatial component to the study of the material, and by facilitating the assimilation of concepts through visual tools such as thematic maps.

gvSIG Educa provides analysis tools that help to understand spatial relationships.

gvSIG Batoví

gvSIG Educa arose out of the gvSIG Batoví distribution. This distribution is driven by the Ministry of Transport and Public Works (MTOP) of the Republic Of Uruguay, and is developed by the gvSIG Association and the Faculty of Engineering at the University of the Republic (UdelaR). It is based on gvSIG and is focused on the use of GIS in educational settings bound to PlanCeibal (Uruguay). The idea arose in response to the concerns of developing an educational application for issues relating to geographic information. This initiative has arisen within the context the work of the MTOP in the group responsible for promoting IDE Uy (Spatial Data Infrastructure of Uruguay).

Education is a top priority for the current Uruguayan government and the MTOP intends contributing towards this. The original proposal was to develop a digital atlas, to which the National Survey Department (D.N. Top., one of the departments of the MTOP), through the GIS Department, upped the ante and proposed creating a GIS for educational purposes to be used under the CEIBAL Project.

The purpose of the agreement (signed on March 21, 2011) between the MTOP and the gvSIG Association is to develop a powerful educational tool that enables primary and secondary education students to understand space, to easily interpret maps, to learn through play, and to learn free technologies.

gvSIG Batoví Blog: http://gvsigbatovi.wordpress.com/

Ceibal Project Web Portal: http://www.ceibal.edu.uy/Articulos/Paginas/gvsig-batovi-resumen.aspx

CEIBAL Project

Through the Educational Connectivity/Basic Computing for Online Learning Project (CEIBAL) initiative launched on 14 December 2006 by the President of the Republic, the Uruguayan government, in an historic decision, took on the challenge of distributing free laptops to all children of Common Education (grades 1 to 6) and their respective teachers in public schools across the country. The said project is part of the Equity Programme for Access to Digital Information (PEAID) and has, as its universal goal, access to computers and internet in the first level of the Uruguayan education system. The Office of the President and the Laboratory Tecnológico del Uruguay (LATU) were initially responsible for the central coordination of the CEIBAL project, which also includes the participation and co-direction of the National Administration of Public Education (ANEP), the Ministry of Education Culture (MEC), the Agency for Electronic Government and Information Society (AGESIC), the National Research and Innovation Agency (ANII), and the National Telecommunications Administration (ANTEL). From October 6th 2010, students and teachers of public secondary education (Secondary and Technical Schools) also began receiving their laptops, signifying the progress of the CEIBAL Project to this education level. The project is currently coordinated by the CEIBAL Centre for the support of the education of children and adolescents.

Ceibal Project: http://www.ceibal.edu.uy/

Institutional Portal Ceibal: http://www.ceibal.org.uy/