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August 28, 2005
Source: El Mercurio from Valparaíso
By Evelyn Cánepa
Hoping to repeat the success that Chile's Web Regatta enjoyed last year, an online competition which involved around 5,000 students from all over Chile, Newtenberg is already working on the second version of this event, to take place in 2006. Both teachers and students will participate in a contest which has been designed in the shape of a sailing expedition.
In the words of José Flores, Creative Director of Newtenberg, a company which develops tecnological solutions that back the communication and coordination of actions among people, "the idea is to repeat the virtual contest next year, with a national event, as well as regional events, to fortify the identities of those areas and to achieve the integration of students, teachers and families, through a game that makes them take part in the construction of a new way of making education".
In the first version of Chile's Web Regatta, students from around 500 schools were able to play on the Internet for a whole month; they set up crews in which teachers became captains and students were sailors who set off in their ships in order to explore worlds like The Island of the Universe, The Island of Earth, The Island of Origins and The Island of Mankind.
Mr Flores commented that the second version of this event includes several surprises. "A difference from the first competition is that, this time, the Regatta starts at a pier and in a yachting club where we'll open spaces for the students from different schools to meet each other and to establish friendship bonds, as we believe that globalization begins by enlarging your neighborhood to the district, then to the region and on to the planet!", he stated.
Also, he said that this time they'll highlight the building of contents by the students themselves. "There will be several new challenges, aimed at making the whole school participate in the competition, and we'll publish the best works in the Diario Web del Futuro [Web Newspaper of the Future], as a supplement from a printed medium. We want the children to start working right now in the task of building the world they themselves imagine", he added.
And if we are speaking of expectations, Newtenberg's Creative Director told us the challenge is to triple the amount of participants, and to reach 1,500 schools all around Chile. "Even when there are only ten participants per school, we hope to involve the whole school community in this version. We are also making preparations to have international guests and to start generating friendship links with other countries in the region", he announced.
Newtenberg Digital Publishing has developed a series of initiatives which aim to contribute in the building of a better society. In this direction, we would like to highlight the efforts made by the company trying to recover Chile's national heritage: the original issues of Chile's first newspaper, La Aurora de Chile (1812 - 1814) are available online. This original project made them win the prize by the National Fund for Arts, FONDART, in 2002. www.auroradechile.cl
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