ICT Training of Maestros of Primary Schools Located in Barrios Carenciados in Argentina. A Twofold Challenge: How They Can Master New ICT Technologies and Transform the Way They Teach

C. OSVALDO RODRIGUEZ

Conferencia; HCI International 2011; 2011

Internet access is becoming available in many schools of Argentina´seducational infrastructure. This represents a challenge for the primary schoolteachers. They have to teach children digitally motivated, visually stimulatedand socially connected yet most teachers have been exposed very little to ICTtechnologies.An important task is how to train these teachers that not only need to masterthe new ICT tools in very short time but also transform the way they teach,guide their students and interact with their communities.Schools in poor neighborhoods (barrios carenciados) unfortunately do notreceive the full capacity that today´s technology can provide, nor in resources orsupport. This makes the challenge particularly difficult and their training shouldprepare them for this situation.In this paper we describe the work of two years in Escuela 502, where wehave implemented state of the art multimedia laboratory in order to researchpossible alternative training methodologies. We describe results from the innovativeexperiences obtained and point that online learning technologies canserve as a powerful and cost effective tool to carry out teachers training