Mérida,

July 29, 2009 (Venezuelanalysis.com) - This week the Venezuelan Education Ministry

began its program, dubbed Project Canaima, to provide primary schools with mini

laptops, and incorporate the technology into the education system.

While

schools are on vacation this week, the ministry will be conducting workshops

for teachers on using the computers as educational tools. Starting in September,

when the school semester begins, the ministry anticipates providing 50,000

laptop computers to over 1,150 schools nationally.

The

batch is the first in a total of 350,000 computers that Portugal has

agreed to send to Venezuela

as part of an oil trading agreement between the two countries. Venezuela also

hopes to set up its own assembly plant for the mini laptops as part of a technology

transfer agreement.

The

computers will run on the open source operating system Linux, while the Education

Ministry together with the National Centre for Information Technology are

working together on designing education programs for the computers. The

computers are made for children, both in size and durability, and come with

wireless internet access and flash memory instead of a hard drive.

President

Hugo Chavez said in March, "We're going to put computers in the classrooms. The

teachers will have their computers connected and every desk will have a

computer, every child will have a little computer."

According

to World Internet Usage, 29.9% of Latin America's

population have some kind of access to the internet.