Todos Conectados

Todos Conectados is demonstrating and documenting this core challenge: Despite virtually everyone on Earth having the mental and physical capacities to live well, at least 1.2 billion people in 111 countries are not able to meet even their basic needs, reports the UN. Even worse, twenty percent of the world’s children under the age five worldwide are stunted—permanently limiting their mental and physical capacities. For no fault of their own, their families and communities lack the understandings and the resources required to build meaningful lives for their children, themselves, and their neighbors.

In Guatemala, where OLE currently works, nearly half of all the people lack access to resources needed to meet basic needs. This crisis does not result from lack of knowledge or resources. Both are plentiful. The root cause is that the dominant social structure throughout our world is designed to concentrate power and, knowledge. Exacerbating the crisis, most learners are subjected to an archaic, industrial model of education that does not address their needs and interests. It treats most of us as “recipients” of a fixed product, not as curious seekers and creators of our own pathways.

The problem of such avoidable poverty is worsening throughout the world as changes in climate increasingly disrupt life everywhere, for the rich as well as the poor. Remote communities in countries like Guatemala are especially threatened. Basic needs—solutions-focused learning, water, food, health care, shelter, and security—all become harder to secure.

Humanity thus requires a radical increase of community-centered problem solvers working in teams generating solutions for their constantly changing environments. There is no shortage of those with the necessary motivation and talents. What they most need is help in learning how to get started with the resources they have and—working together—increase those resources in order to solve their problems and take advantage of their opportunities. Such is the mission of Todos Conectados.

Todos Conectados is demonstrating and documenting that remote communities can identify many of their problems and solve them.  We work with a national perspective and use the following steps to bring Todos Conectados to a new nation. 

1.   Identify Leadership. OLE’s first step is to identify a strong indigenous organization that understands Todos Conectados and is eager to assume responsibility for scaling and sustaining the program when OLE is no longer directly involved.  In Guatemala that organization is Grupos Gestores (https://www.gruposgestores.org.gt).

In Guatemala, OLE included its partner organization Uayki in Peru (https://uayki.org). It was already aligned with the Todos Conectados program, has a large quantity of Spanish language digital learning resources and a team with strong technical skills needed to install the program’s infrastructure.

2.   Select a Pilot.  With our national partner, OLE searches for a community that is eager to become engaged in Todos Conectados and has the needed profile including its location, size, leadership, and security. 

3.  Build the infrastructure. OLE’s team works with its community partner to install the technical infrastructure: including: a Raspberry Pi server, solar panels, Internet connection, printer, laptops, Chromebooks, and wi-fi network.  Planet (Personal Learning Assisted with Network Empowered Teams) software is installed with the digital Community Library where we are in the process of introducing AI tools. The community’s tech team is formed and learns how to maintain the system. Completing this work can take up to a month.

4.   Launch Smart Basic Learning Tools. Learning Teams of ten members or less are encouraged to use the new  enroll in five personalized Basic Learning courses:

a.   My Words (read, write, present)

b.   My Numbers (collect data, analyze, present)

c.   My Health and Nutrition (read, plan, act)

d.   My Rights and Responsibilities (read, plan, act)

e.   My Futures (read, plan, act)

Each member creates their personal Kindle-like “MyPlanet.”  

When they repeat their course, learners receive a Todos Conectados Certificate of Basic Learning. In San Pablo certificates were received by 175 learners.

5.   Listen Actively. The communities agree to track the well-being of their community with annual surveys.  Questions include:

a.   What do you like best about living here?

b.   What do you like least about living here?

c.   What changes would you like to see?

        They present the results for discussion at a community meeting.  (Final Report)

6.   Implement Solutions. Community members are encouraged to form gender-balanced teams to propose solutions to a problem or opportunity identified by the survey.                  In In San Pablo at a community meeting where the teams presented their proposals, a local panel of judges chose three of the proposals to share US$6,000. (Final Report)

7.   Reach Out. The community is asked to contact another community it believes is ready to become a new Todos Conectados community. San Pablo has identified a community that will help  identify adjustments the model that need to be made for it to be scaled more broadly.

This video presents a 5-minute overview of Todos Conectados. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpDTYmZfjfY

Todos Conectados empowers people, especially youth and women, who are living in remote parts of the world, where they are being harmed by poverty, disease and violence. Our goal is to give them access to the knowledge and the resources they require to free themselves, their families and their communities from these harms and to create communities where they all can thrive.

Communities become participants with others in a like-minded network. While the program focuses upon youth and women from whom the “returns on investment” for their community are fast and large, the program is designed to be inclusive of all ages, backgrounds and orientations. Virtually everyone thrives by becoming engaged with others in meaningful thought and caring action.

We have demonstrated and documented the effectives of Todos Conectados in the remote Guatemala Highland village of San Pablo.  The positive program outcomes are set forth in the attached report (Final Report).  

We are now organizing a second pilot with a different set of challenges as a way to prepare to expand this program to at least ten communities in the San Marco municipality on to way to scaling this transformational approach throughout Guatemala.

In responding to this question, let me, Richard Rowe, first provide a personal context.

 In 2007, when I was President of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Foundation, an idea born at the MIT Media Lab, our goal was to provide every child their own personal computer: the $100 laptop. While that has not yet happened, OLPC can be credited with stimulating the commercial development of low-cost personal laptops.  However, during my time with OLPC, it became increasingly clear that simply distributing laptops to children was not enough. We needed changes in the education system itself. Rather than the dominant top-down system of standardized learning, learning with technology could become much more meaningful, powerful and connected for each learner.  We needed open course software, working on multiple operating systems, that enables learners of all ages to create personal learning pathways of their own. With the right software we could create a learning system that enables each person to choose what and how they learn. It can support connected team learning rather than isolating learner in front of a screen, OLE was established with that mission: open, personalized team learning participating in a global network. For that purpose we created the open software Planet (Personalized Learning Achieved with Network Empower Teams)  

Todos Coectados uses OLE’s first Spanish language version of the Planet software.   It is a bottom-up system rather than a top-down system. designed to put. Learners in charge of what and how they learn.  Leaders become guides advisors, mentors, rather than directors.

Planet provides a framework of personalizing goals and pathways.  It identifies the essential skills that enable personalized learning to occur. But, when successful, each learner experiences a sense of agency, purpose and meaningful connections with others.

Thus, to your question about how “well-positioned” we are.  Todos Conectados in Guatemala has a multi-dimensional team of guides designed to enable each community and each learner within those communities, to solve their most urgent problems, set a pathway for their future and take action to move in those directions.   San Pablo’s leaders are the most important members of the team, closely followed by guides and mentors from Gurpos Gestores. The Uaiki team provides guidance for the evolution and maintenance of San Pablo’s learning technology and ongoing course improvements and development.  OLE continues to improve the core Planet software and provides guidance concerning San Pablo’s plans for its futures.  

The Final Report of the San Pablo pilot of Todos Conectados (https://bit.ly/todos2023) provides evidence of the effectiveness of this approach.  Our next step is to demonstrate that it works in the very different kinds of challenges that exist in Guatemala. 

OLE has taken a small step by demonstrating the effectiveness of Todos Conectados in San Pablo. We are planning to launch a second Todos Conectados community with more challenging issues, We believe this is an important incremental step for learning how to evolve Todos Conectados into an adaptable approach that can be customized, scaled and sustained in different kinds of villages throughout Guatemala. 

We hope Solve will be able to connect us with individuals and organizations who are thoughtful about, and experienced with, ways to empower remote communities, enabling them to solve their problems and take advantage of their opportunities.  We also want to learn about things to avoid despite such good intentions.

Our solution, Todos Conectados, is innovative in several ways, addressing the problem of inadequate access to quality learning and resources for underserved communities with a unique, holistic approach.

Open-source and scalable: Both our Planet LMS and myPlanet app are open-source, allowing developers and organizations worldwide to contribute, adapt, and deploy our solutions to suit their specific needs. This collaborative approach fosters continuous improvement, enabling our platform to grow and evolve with changing requirements. Emphasizing open-source principles allows us to create a global community of contributors who can help enhance and expand the platform for the benefit of all users.

• Offline-first approach: Unlike conventional online learning platforms, Todos Conectados focuses on an offline-first design. This ensures that learners in areas with limited or no internet connectivity can still access learning resources, courses, and AI chatbot interactions. By employing a mobile database solution like Realm, we enable seamless synchronization between the myPlanet app and Planet LMS whenever connectivity is available.

• Edge computing with Raspberry Pis: Our solution leverages edge computing, running AI models on devices like Raspberry Pi 4b and gaming laptops with dedicated graphics cards. This enables us to deliver powerful AI functionalities without relying on constant internet access or high-end hardware, making it suitable for resource-constrained environments and underserved communities.

• Smart evaluation of tests and essays: We are working on implementing AI-powered models that will enable smart evaluation of tests and essays without heavily relying on human expertise. This addresses a previous weakness in our solution and promises to reduce the need for human labor in grading, promote consistent and unbiased evaluation, and enhance the overall learning experience for both learners and educators.

• Community-centered problem-solving: Todos Conectados empowers communities to become problem solvers, fostering a culture of teamwork and collaboration. By providing the tools and resources needed to tackle local challenges, we enable communities to create sustainable solutions and seize opportunities that arise, ultimately driving positive change at the grassroots level.

• Adaptable to diverse needs: Our solution is designed to cater to the diverse needs of learners and communities, allowing for customization and adaptation to local contexts and personal needs. By considering cultural, linguistic, and educational variations, we ensure that our platform remains relevant and effective in a wide range of environments.

In summary, Todos Conectados is a pioneering solution that combines open-source principles, an offline-first approach, edge computing, AI integration, smart evaluation, and community-centered problem-solving to deliver a flexible, efficient, and inclusive learning platform. By catering to the diverse needs of learners and communities in underserved areas, our solution has the potential to catalyze broader positive outcomes and inspire further problem-solving innovation.

Over the next five years we are seeking to scale Todos Conectados in Guatemala to at least 100 communities.  This will involve ten "circles" of ten communities, each with an mentoring organization that supports the develop and connecting of these commuities to each other and to Guatemala as a nation.   We expect to achieve that by demonstrating in our second pilot that Todos Conectados can be scaled and sustained in a cost-effective manner,

OLE's Planet provides extensive data on the learning activiies of each registered member including survey tools for tracking changes in the community and a system for maintaining confidential personal health records.

OLE's theory of change is based on the understanding of what is important to humans.  We believe that, to thrive, humans require a sense of agency and purpose and that, most of all, they need meaningful connections with others.  Power, meaning and connections are the three essentials for a satisfying life.  Everthing else is driven by these three requirement, 

Of these three, meaningful connections with others seems the most important, This is where communities become releveant to our theory of change.  When communities provide an environment where people feel they belong and where they have friends that are important to them, they adopt the values and practices of their community.

These principles as well established by religions, sports organizations and government,   

The core technology that powers our solution is a combination of modern programming languages, databases, and hardware, which together create a robust, accessible, and user-friendly platform.

• Programming languages: We use a variety of programming languages, including Angular, TypeScript, Java, and Python. These languages allow us to create efficient and scalable code that is easy to maintain.

• Databases: We use a variety of databases, including CouchDB and Realm. These databases allow us to store and manage data in a way that is efficient and secure.

• Hardware: We use a variety of hardware, including Raspberry Pi and gaming laptops. This hardware allows us to deliver powerful AI functionalities without relying on constant internet access or high-end hardware.

In addition to these core technologies, we also use a variety of other technologies, such as:

• Artificial intelligence (AI): We use AI to provide personalized support for learners and coaches. For example, we use AI to grade essays and tests, provide feedback on assignments, and recommend resources to learners.

• Machine learning (ML): We use ML to improve the performance of our AI models. For example, we use ML to train our AI models to recognize patterns in data and to make predictions.

Here are some specific examples of how we use these technologies:

• Planet: Our learning management system (LMS) is built using Angular and TypeScript, providing a scalable and maintainable application. The backend relies on CouchDB, a NoSQL database that offers efficient data synchronization and replication capabilities, making it suitable for distributed environments. For easy deployment and management, we use containerization technology, such as Docker and Vagrant, which allows us to run the LMS on various platforms, including Linux and Raspberry Pi. You can find the Planet GitHub repository at: https://github.com/open-learning-exchange/planet

• myPlanet: The myPlanet Android app is developed using Java, a widely-used programming language known for its platform independence and versatility. The app utilizes Realm, a mobile database solution, for local data storage and seamless synchronization with uPlanet when connectivity is available. This ensures that learners can access resources, courses, and AI chatbot interactions even in offline environments. The myPlanet GitHub repository can be found at: https://github.com/open-learning-exchange/myplanet

We work with a highly diverse group of organizations throughout the world and in each case connect closely with their leaders.  Our organizaiton includes people from Nepal, Kenya, Ghana, Peru and Guatemala.

OLE's business model is to present its mission, goals and achievments to individuals and organizations that support our efforts to improve the quality of life for as many as possible.  We focus particularly on obtaining support for activities that help those who are are greatest risk.   

At the same time we seek to persuade the public and their government officials that it is in their best interests over time to ensure that everyone has access to the basics -- air, water, food, health care, learning, shelter and security,

We believe that these basics that shojuld be supported as a public responsibility rather than as enterprises whose main goals are to maximize their own personal wealth.

We wll continue to use demonstrations of our effectiveness at helping communities thrive to persuade public and private organizations to support and expand our work in the direction of thesse becoming public services.

We have received grants from USAID, UNHCR, and foundations such as the Hewlett Foundation, family foundations and individuals.