About this website

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Frequently asked questions

There is a list of answers to frequently asked questions here (in Spanish).

Background and development to date

The Guatemala National Base Curriculum (CNB) reflects a monumental effort of the Guatemalan Ministry of Education (MINEDUC). A decade and a half have passed since MINEDUC began developing a competency-based curriculum in 2004. Over that period the Ministry of Education has developed guidelines, curricular frameworks and evaluation tools for all levels from preschool to upper secondary.

As a result, the CNB today is spread over more than 50 volumes, even without counting its complementary resources. In addition, in recent years the Ministry of Education has developed at least 4 new baccalaureates and has thoroughly reviewed the lower secondary curriculum and begun revising the pre-primary and primary levels. This reflects the persistence of the national commitment to the CNB. But it also implies challenges for use.

To address some of these limitations and as a contribution to the Guatemalan educational sector, Vitruvian Consulting, LLC began transferring the CNB from the original PDF files —hard to download and use with limited connectivity and small screens— into the lighter, friendlier ​​Wiki format in April 2012. From that moment on, the user base has grown gradually. In January 2015 the site received 105,712 visits from almost 73,300 individual users. In January 2020 it received 289,001 visits from 178,973 individual users. The majority (82.1%) were users in Guatemala.

With the Covid-19 pandemic and the consequent quarantine the use of cnbGuatemala.org expanded even further. Everyone was looking for quality and accessible educational resources online. In July 2020, the site received 218,220 visits from 205,298 users, and the proportion of visitors from outside Guatemala increased: at this point only 62.8% were users from this country.

The expansion in the use of cnbGuatemala.org highlights a very real niche of need among educators for having an easily accessible version of the national curriculum.

Unique visitors per month to cnbGuatemala, January 2012 to August 2020 (source: Google Analytics)

In 2015 a group of education and international development professionals from Guatemala, the United States and other Latin American countries established Online Learning Initiative, a non-profit organization based in Washington, DC, to ensure the institutional sustainability of cnbGuatemala.org and, building on the lessons learned in Guatemala, promote the adoption in other contexts of Mediawiki and other open technologies for the management of curricular content and open educational resources, as means to reduce the educational and digital inequality gaps.

Institutional coordination and support

Through a Letter of Inter-institutional Cooperation signed on January 6, 2015, the Ministry of Education of Guatemala (MINEDUC) granted its endorsement for its own materials published on this site. MINEDUC has also supported our work through its General Directorate fur Curriculum (DIGECUR) and the development of content through its [http: //www.mineduc. gob.gt/digeduca/ General Directorate for Evaluation and Educational Research (DIGEDUCA)].

The US Agency for International Assistance (USAID), through its USAID|Reaula and Lifelong Learning projects supported various efforts between 2013 and 2019 to strengthen the site, including digitization of content, implementation of extensions, preventive maintenance and server support, as well as exploring institutional strengthening options for its long-term sustainability.

In 2015, a team of alumni of US Department of State assistance programs received a grant from the US Department of State Alumni Engagement Innovation Fund (AEIF) to align on the website educational resources for science in Primary school with the curriculum.

The online curriculum has benefited from the goodwill, support and collaboration of a variety of institutions, hereby gratefully acknowledged.

Nr.	Organization		Areas of coordination
1		Guatemala Ministry of Education	Endorsement of official content, content development, coordination and communication with officials and teachers
2		USAID | Reaula and USAID | Lea (Lifelong Learning) projects	Financing for teacher training, research on the use of the online curriculum, support for the identification of partners
3		Vitruvian Consulting, LLC	Digitization, site maintenance, instrument development, teacher training, research on the use of the online curriculum
4		Online Learning Initiative	Technical and financial assistance based on individual and organizational donations
5		Instituto Internacional de Aprendizaje para la Reconciliación Social (IIARS) (International Institute for Learning for Social Reconciliation)	Content and promotion in teacher training
6		Empresarios por la Educación (Business for Education)	Content
7		Fundación Sergio Paiz Andrade (Sergio Paiz Andrade Foundation)	Site promotion Equipment loan for content development and alignment of educational resources
8		Nómada	Site promotion
9		Population Council	Content
10		Department of State of the United States Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs International Exchange Alumni Fund	Educational resources

Implications

The online curriculum has important implications. From a technical perspective it lets teachers consult the curriculum in ​​a dynamic, efficient and relevant way. Of more interest from a pedagogical perspective it may contribute to the quality of education by directly and relevantly linking the curriculum with instructional resources that guide and support teachers to better develop their work in the classroom in the context of the specific competences stipulated by the curriculum.

The Wiki format in which cnbGuatemala.org has been developed offers the opportunity to build a community of users - both consumers and producers of information - in an ongoing conversation about the curriculum and its application, and from there contribute to the decisions about educational management and regulation. These same characteristics may also facilitate making the curriculum more relevant in specific territorial jurisdictions and with respect to different Peoples, their languages and cultures, while at the same time maintaining a national curriculum framework.

The online curriculum is not without its challenges. The biggest of these is the still weak internet penetration in rural Guatemala and the number of teachers and schools that lack computers and interenet access. However, these are access challenges that will probably improve as the country's communications infrastructure expands, and the education sector will be in a better position to take advantage of these improvements if in the meantime it strengthens the resources for use of the curriculum. By bringing together a broad alliance of organizations it will be possible to contribute to a community of educators that are both users and producers of information to improve educational quality in the classroom.

More information and collaboration

Maintaining and developing the online curriculum will become easier as more people and institutions get involved. If you want to help or need more information, write us at Online Learning Initiative or follow us on Facebook, [ https://twitter.com/OLIonlineEd Twitter] or LinkedIn.

Rights of use

The text and graphics presented on this site are the property of the authors indicated on their respective credit pages.

In the case of publications of the Ministry of Education of Guatemala, per the original license, all material can be reproduced in whole or in part for non-commercial uses, as long as the Ministry of Education —MINEDUC— and/or copyright holders are cited as the source.

Unless otherwise indicated, the content of the site and its tools are distributed under a Creative Commons BY-NC 4.0 license.