Encantado, Stichting Movimiento! Onze stichting zet zich in voor onderwijs en gezondheidsvoorlichting voor plattelandskinderen in Uruguay. In samenwerking met lokale partners draagt Movimiento bij aan een Beweging voorwaarts die zich op het platteland heeft ingezet. Laptops en ontwikkelingssamenwerking? Op deze site vind je meer informatie over ons en de projecten.
Lees meer over Stichting Movimiento
On 26th of July Saludame was launched on the web portal of Plan Ceibal and on the site of our partner organization ceibalJAM! This makes the game available for all 380.000 children and their teachers in Uruguay to play and learn from the game for free. One can see the trailer of the game below.
Trailer of Saludame, made by JP Colasso.
Since the game is made under an open source license and the content is free of use as well, everyone is free to use and adapt it. We redirect to the Sugar Labs project environment, which one can find here. In the meanwhile different organizations in Uruguay continue working with Saludame. One can contact Movimiento or one of their partner organizations for more information.
Although Mark and Digna of Movimiento Foundation returned to Holland, the Salúdame project is still being evaluated. But above all, some interesting follow-up activities are developing at the moment that might scale up the project to a national effort. A short up-date.
First of all the Salúdame game and its educational content will be launched on the 26th of July on the portal of Plan Ceibal. This means it will be available to download for free for all 380.000 XO laptops in Uruguay, and beyond! CeibalJAM will present Salúdame on the ‘Feria de contenidos educativos del Plan Ceibal”.
Mid June we had a couple of meetings within ASSE, the biggest public healthcare provider in Uruguay, with among others dr. Cordoba (president) and dr. Noguiera (director of primary healthcare). Dr. Cordoba mentioned Salúdame as an “icon for the current health reform” and a strategy that suits the more community driven care approach that the reform beholds. Connecting Salúdame to Programa SIEMBRA, providing netbooks to all physicians in primary care, could offer the possibility to enhance health promotion by providing a connection to the community. At the moment technical and organizational opportunities are being explored.
Meeting in ASSE. From left to right: Mark, dr. Cordoba, Digna and Leticia.
Also the Ministerio de Salud Publica (MSP) has a continuing interest for adopting Salúdame. Programa Escuelas Promotoras de Salud, which already has profound experience with Salúdame, has started to arrange a joint effort with CEIP (the national council for primary education) in order to start a national program for health education within schools. Salúdame will form an integral part of this program, whereas MSP will be responsible to train health promoters in using the health promotion program as developed in the Salúdame project.
In short we have confidence that Salúdame will be continued on a larger scale after the initial effort of Movimiento Foundation and their partners. We will stay involved in the follow-up and soon we will publish the evaluation report of the pilot that has been performed in April and May 2011. We keep in touch!
After several weeks of training two teams of adolescents in the villages Biassini and Itapebi, they were challenged to become the first champion of the rural region in Salto. On the 5th of June both teams played on the concrete court of Biassini, being encouraged by their neighbors.
Both teams were quite equal, although Itapebi took a comfortable lead of 2-0 after an hour of playing. Although it was the team spirit of Biassini that made them win the third set, putting it to 2-1. A thrilling fourth set defined the champion, Itapebi winning the match with 3-1 and going home with the trophy. But it was Biassini who won the trip to Paso de los Toros, 400km away in the province of Tacuarembo. With the local supervisors we decided this due to a nearly zero absence at practices and a great dedication to learn and practice volleyball.
On the 12th of June we left in a mini-bus with 10 adolescents to play a game against the local team. Although losing all sets against a more experienced group, all were impressed and caught by this experience and new environment. In the late afternoon they could see the best teams of Uruguay playing 2 games. As the doctor would say afterwards, “the experience brought the group closer together, never forgetting this experience for many years”.
We thank the Intendencia de Salto for sponsoring the gas oil for the mini-bus. We left behind in each village 4 balls to continue practicing. And together with local actors we are finding a way to arrange a trainer to continue practicing, keeping together and stimulating this dedicated group of young people.
For the last week of the pilot (30th of May – 3rd of June) the children had picked a recipe from the digital library, which we cooked all together in the school. One of the school cooks was copying the recipes from the library, while the kids were cooking. The children had invited their parents to come in order to present them the posters, the game and all that they have learned during the past weeks.
Cooking all together in the class room.
Unfortunately only very little parents attended the invitation. It strongly depended on the existing relationship the school has with them, which in most cases was very little. Although of importance to also reach parents when promoting a healthy diet, it is a difficult and common issue having little involvement.
We estimated that less than 20% of the kids brought one of their parents; we can easily say, their mother. Interestingly the majority of the mothers we could speak to did see something of the game and the digital library. Their child had shown it at home. The presentation the kids gave to their parents, using the posters, doing a short act or responding to questions, was an acknowledgement that they understood and captured well the information.
One the kids (right) explaining the posters to the mothers (in the back).
Also we took questionnaires among teachers and children to evaluate their opinion and increased knowledge and attitude towards the theme (kids) and the tool (teachers). At the moment we are analyzing the more than 120 questionnaires, which we will later present.
School No 27, Paso Potrero, showing all presents.
As a reminder we gave to all the schools a collage of pictures taken in their school during the pilot. Two teachers, the one in Pepe Nuñez and in Paso Portrero, won a prize for being best teacher, based on how they involved themselves during the workshops and adopted the program. We thank all the schools and are grateful for all the gifts and whishes of the children when leaving each one of the schools. A special project and experience for every one of us.
As in the previous workshops, we used the blended learning method in the 10 class rooms to work on the topics of nutrients (week 6) and hygiene and water (week 7). A short description of how we have performed both workshops.
Nutrients
The lesson of week 6 was to understand what nutrients are (vitamins, carbohydrates, fat etc.), the importance of each one them and in which food one can find the nutrients principally. First we did a competition in groups, in which each group had to find answers to questions about these topics by searching purposefully in the digital library of Salúdame. The second part was making a poster, grouping different types of food and relating these to each nutrient.
The player has an event (the red icon below with the doctor’s face), saying the virtual kid is in need of vitamins. When clicking on the red icon…
…one can read in the digital library about the importance of vitamins. An a game suggestion is given: one should eat fruits and vegetables to prevent the event of happening again.
The last part was playing the game, taking consciousness of events that enter the game. Related to the topic this could be a doctor or parent entering the screen, saying that one should eat more vitamins or less fat (depending on the state of the bars). The player is the one to decide which food could resolve this, which we in turn discussed group wise and experimented playing the game.
Water
In week 7 we addressed the importance of water for the human body. The virtual kid doing exercise or being outside when the temperature is high causes the bar of water to decrease. After experimenting with the game, the kids saw and underlined this as well.
Alejandra is helping one of the kids to find out what is happening with the water bar.
But also some diseases that the virtual kid encounters will cause a faster decrease of the bar of water. Diarrhea, fever or sunstroke all causes the body to dehydrate, being in need of more water. Something we discussed plenary, read in the digital library and encountered playing together.
Concluding
At times it was difficult in both workshops to illustrate the effect of a certain event class wise (e.g. diarrhea or a lacking nutrient), since events cannot be provoked manually at the time we as educators wanted to have it. Sometimes we were playing for 30 minutes with the group, without any relevant event entering in any screen to take as example and discuss plenary. However interestingly we could often rely on the memory of the players, describing the effect of the event. Sometimes the kids would say: “yes, my character had diarrhea once and the next time I will give him some more water!” In this case the game was of great help to understand the problem (diarrhea) and after the workshop be able to help their character getting well soon (giving it water).
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