El Salvador is the smallest country in Central America, with a population of 6.5 million. At 80.2%, the literacy rate is the fourth highest in Latin America. Median age of Salvadorans is 21.57 years.
World Links in El Salvador
With funding from the Taiwan International Cooperation and Development Fund (ICDF), World Links has worked to increase the skills and opportunities of this young population using information communication technology (ICT) to foster new approaches to learning. Over the past six years, World Links and ICDF worked together globally to provide skills training programs benefiting thousands of youth, including programs in Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, andEl Salvador.
The World Links/ICDF partnership is implemented in close collaboration with the El Salvadoran Ministry of Education. The Ministry of Education initiated ESCUELA 10, a program closely aligned with WL’s objectives, which provides ICT resources to teachers to improve educational outcomes throughout El Salvador. The program currently operates in 400 schools across the country. Most of the schools participating in the World Links/ICDF program are ESCUELA 10 schools.
The World Links program in El Salvador was officially launched on March 25, 2003, which quickly led to the development of the Phase I Workshop: "Introduction to the use of Internet for Teaching and Learning." In this first workshop, 34 teachers participated, along with 11 pedagogical advisors, and technical personnel from the Department of Education: Program School 10, Educational Professional Development, and Educational Technologies. The workshop trained the participants to become familiar with Internet tools and their application in education: management of e-mail, discussion forums, educational search engines, development of collaborative projects through virtual networks.
In September of 2003, Phase II Workshop: "Telecollaborative Learning Projects," was delivered. 33 teachers and 20 advisors participated from the Programa Escuela 10. A main workshop objective was for the teachers to design a collaborative project and then develop it with another educational institution of the country. The participants returned to their educational centers and replicated what they learned with their students and fellow teachers. This cascade methodology helped World Links allowed us to reach hundreds of additional teachers and thousands of additional students.
Phase III training on “Curriculum and Technology Integration” took place in December 2004. School teachers from through out the country came to participate. During the workshops, teachers were taught to create, incorporate and facilitate innovative classroom practices that integrate networked technology and curricula. Using World Links experiential teaching methodology, participants created at least one collaborative publication that reflected the week’s activities and encouraged future collaboration. One of the highlights of the training was when the teachers from El Salvador had the opportunity to interact with teachers from Macedonia, Brazil and Taiwan via video conference to discuss the potential uses of ICT as a collaborative tool in education. Another key outcome of the December workshop is the World Links Salvadoran online newsletter which can be accessed at http://www.iearnlatina.org/boletin.
A second round of Phase III workshops was held in late June and early July 2006 in which 50 teachers received direct training from World Links. As a direct result of these trainings, there have been 34 national collaborative projects that have taken place in El Salvador and 14 international collaborative projects undertaken with partners in Taiwan. An additional 9 new collaborative projects have been initiated since the Phase III workshop in June.
With additional ICDF Funding for January 2006- June 2006, World Links completed its final activities for the El Salvador Program.
