Enciclomedia is a program of the

Secretaría de Educación Pública The Mexican Secretariat of Public Education ( in Spanish ''Secretaría de Educación Pública'', ''SEP'') is a federal government authority with cabinet representation and the responsibility for overseeing the development and implementation of ...

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

. It was the original idea of Dr. Felipe Bracho Carpizo in 1988 when he was the Director of Oriented Research of

National Council of Science and Technology National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, ce ...

.Enciclomedia
, ''Antecedentes'' Dr. Bracho in the late 1980s requested the collaboration of the

National Polytechnic Institute National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, ce ...

and with the help of Eliseo Steve Rodríguez Rodríguez, then a student of the

Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México The Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (Mexico Autonomous Institute of Technology), commonly known as ITAM, is a private university. It is one of Mexico's most important institutions of higher learning; highly prestigious in the social sc ...

developed the first prototype. The collaboration resulted in the creation of a system called SARCRAD (initials of "Sistema de Administración de Recursos Conceptuales y de Referenciación Automática Difusa" or System of Administration of Conceptual Resources and Diffused Automatic Referenciation) by Rodríguez. Enciclomedia is based on SARCRAD, a system that complements lessons from the free textbooks provided by the federal government with videos, text, virtual visits, sounds and images. Years later the National Pedagogic University, the

National Autonomous University of Mexico The National Autonomous University of Mexico ( es, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, UNAM) is a public research university in Mexico. It is consistently ranked as one of the best universities in Latin America, where it's also the bigges ...

, Infotec and the Secretary of Public Education built the prototype that later incorporated content from

Encarta ''Microsoft Encarta'' is a discontinued digital multimedia encyclopedia published by Microsoft from 1993 to 2009. Originally sold on CD-ROM or DVD, it was also available on the World Wide Web via an annual subscription, although later articles ...

provided by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

thanks to an existing collaboration agreement between the Secretary of Public Education and

. Later on the Coordination of Educational Information Technology of the ILCE (which is the responsible body for producing the free textbooks) integrated resources, activities and audiovisuals generated by projects such as

Red Escolar Red is the color at the long wavelength end of the visible spectrum of light, next to orange and opposite violet. It has a dominant wavelength of approximately 625–740 nanometres. It is a primary color in the RGB color model and a secondar ...

, Biblioteca Digital, Sec 21, Sepiensa and material designed exclusively for Enciclomedia. The Enciclomedia project was ultimately abandoned. The Mexican government had to pay continuing licensing fees to Microsoft for the core Encarta technology, the Mexican software development effort had added few new interactive functions, and the Mexican editorial development effort found that adding "digital objects" (new topics) was difficult compared to open projects like Wikipedia. A developer who tried to save the added editorial content in the open project Encicloabierta (Encyclopedia Open) faced trial for misuse of "copyrighted materials".

References

1988 establishments in Mexico Education in Mexico {{mexico-edu-stub