PROJECTS GENESIS AND QUORUM
Client Profile: President, Republic of Costa Rica; Ministers of Education in various Latin American countries
Opportunity: As part of a campaign promise, the President of Costa Rica requested that 13+ technology vendors propose a turn-key solution to place computers in the K-12 public schools at a national level. As IBM General Manager, Education Industry, I took the lead in designing the solution.
Idea: Dr. Seymour Papert, Director, Learning and Epistemology Group, MIT Media Lab, the IBM Costa Rica Senior Executive, Armando Gonzalez and his team, and I developed the breakthrough proposal. The solution we proposed was inspired by Dr. Seymour Papert's theory of constructionism, based on the premise that children build knowledge easily when they are actively engaged in creating projects that capture their interest. As a pioneer in the use of computers in education, Dr. Papert had developed Logowriter, a programming language for children. This tool provided a playful way for children to design their projects on a computer by programming the movements of a turtle on the screen to draw shapes, pictures, and other designs.
The central idea over and above the Costa Rican proposal was to create a sustainable project - called Project Genesis - that would enhance children's creativity and rational thinking skills in all of Latin America. It included the creation of an IBM Latin America Education and Research Center (LAERC) in Costa Rica to provide training and consulting services to Latin American teachers and Ministries of Education. IBM made a significant investment to create the LAERC to ensure the countries' projects were successfully implemented.
The LAERC was run by a highly talented and motivated management team that learned directly from Dr. Papert and his team how to implement the constructionism theory in the Latin American K-12 schools. The LAERC management team's role included working with the IBM K-12 managers as well as their clients (comprised of teachers and Ministries of Education) in each country. The effort of knowledge-transfer started with our first Latin American client, the Omar Dengo Foundation in Costa Rica. IBM sponsored the training of the first group of Costa Rican teachers at the MIT Media Lab once the contract was signed by the Minister of Education in Costa Rica.
The results attained have been unsurpassed anywhere in the world in scope and impact because:
the initial version of Project Genesis in Costa Rica inspired 13 additional Latin American government officials to launch pilot projects, 7 of which evolved into larger national projects, i.e. Brazil, Panama, Chile, Mexico, Uruguay, Peru, and Venezuela.
Project Genesis was a high impact strategy transforming the way over two and a half million students learned in over 1,000 schools, how they thought about themselves and their possibilities, and how 12,000+ K-12 teachers taught.
Project Genesis inspired the funding of another project - named Project Quorum, developed by the University of Pensacola - to connect the schools in Latin America through the IBM Network. This allowed children from various countries to communicate and work together on projects about the migration of birds, the creation of cities, and other fascinating projects.
a new market segment for IBM was created yielding over $130M in revenue, establishing IBM as the undisputed market leader for over a decade.
years later, Costa Rican government officials credit the national technology in education project for helping transform Costa Rica from an agricultural country to a technological one. In addition, several Costa Rican leaders claim that the Costa Rican software industry emerged as a result of the millions of children that were exposed to a new way of learning. The Costa Rican project has continued to evolve under the leadership of the Omar Dengo Foundation and the Costa Rican Ministry of Education.
Photo: This photo of a 4-year old child, embodies Dr. Papert's idea that children learn more effectively when they take an active role as builders and designers. "Joyful learning was life. That has become for me the model in thinking what kind of learning environment we want to build for children. Playfulness as an intellectual goal is appropriate for learning."(Seymour Papert, Boston Globe).
Photo: Lago Arenal, Arenal, Costa Rica