Project information
| Status | Finalist |
| URL | Go to website |
| Category | Education Formal education |
| Country | Colombia |
| Operational areas | Rural |
| Target groups | Children, Youth, Women, Men, Seniors |
| Fixed connection | DSL, IDSN, Cable |
| Wireless connection | WiFi, WiMax, Satellite conmutada |
| Access points | School |
| Interact | Landline Phone, Desktop Computer, Cellphone |
| Software License Types | Open Source, Proprietary |
Project location
Random images Challenge 2008
Virtual Consulting Rooms: A virtual communication channel to improve the social participation and inclusion of the rural populat
- Brief description
- "Virtual Consulting Rooms": Grant access to organized, reliable and safe virtual spaces, creating social networks interconnected by computer networks and basic opened technology, aimed to provide efficient responses, solutions and support; academic, pedagogical, technological and human development orientation to children, youth, teachers, adults, and natives of the rural areas of Caldas-Colombia. The Virtual Consulting Rooms are participative and interactive spaces.
- Vision, Objectives and Goals
- Vision of the project: The Virtual Consulting Rooms, as participative and interactive spaces, will eventually lead to the democratization of knowledge and information in such way that teachers, children, young people and adults of the rural areas of Caldas - Colombia, may have virtual, organized, safe, and reliable access to the necessary information and knowledge required to solve their problems and fulfil their needs regarding work, scholar, and productivity issues. All these goals will be reached by creating a great social network interconnected by a computer network. Objectives · To establish a large, participative, interactive, interconnected, and constantly growing social space by computer networks that will lead to the democratization of knowledge and information.· To provide teachers, students, and the whole community of rural schools new opportunities of acquiring easy access to information on their everyday needs and problems. · To provide teachers, students and the whole community with efficient and pertinent responses, support, help, and orientation within 48 hours.· To encourage the development of essential competences among teachers and students.· To provide teachers and students with ongoing training in the fields of ICT, Internet, information management, communication and collaboration. · To offer teachers, children, and young people the opportunity to expand their knowledge, contributing to their personal growth in every single aspect of their human activity. · To be a virtual communication channel to make up for the lack of information and specialized knowledge for the poor and vulnerable rural communities. · To establish a space for teachers and students to publish their class activities and experiences based on ICT. Goals The main goal of the Virtual Consulting Rooms is an exponential increase to 1000 rural communities by providing the schools with the necessary infrastructure for the project. Encourage the training of 2,867 teachers for them to use the tool properly. To attend the doubts, questions, problems and necessities regarding personal, academic, work, and productive issues of 35,820 rural children and young people, 3.256 teachers, and 32,890 farmers and natives. To create new Virtual Consulting Rooms that will help productive projects to be established and families to find other ways to collaborate through Internet, to improve their activities in the fields of: organic agriculture, special coffees and associations. To provide a fast and effective response to all the requests of those people looking for information and knowledge. The Virtual Consulting Rooms are looking forward to be the greatest, simplest, most organized, functional, and effective network based on open technology that provides support to the rural communities of Colombia, granting access to the information and knowledge that they would not be able to get in any other way.We are always looking for the “digital equity” and the democratization of information and knowledge, providing everyone with the opportunities to learn.
- How does ICT contribute to the organisational objectives
- The Coffee Growers Committee, a private non-profit organization, established as one of its primary goals the providing of support and help to the rural population of coffee growers with a low educational level and limitations on the proper access to information and knowledge they require, so they can have young coffee plantations, excellent quality, good profits, a safe environment, and competitive context. The ICT opens the possibility of well-informed coffee growers with infinite access to information and knowledge, with timeless communication disregarding locations and distance and overcoming the isolation problem. The Virtual Consulting Rooms are the best option to have an organized, sustainable and world-wide competitive coffee growing infrastructure. Internet is the main source of communication (action and interaction) and information to make up for the lack of training material, updated information, and specialized personnel in over 1000 poor and vulnerable rural schools in Caldas – Colombia. We are looking forward to reaching a democratic society of information, taking into account the cultural, social and political dimensions of our rural population. Our Internet Website has allowed us to: access a global world; to expand our vision to teachers, students, farmers and natives; permanent communication and exchange of information with their partners and specialists regardless of location and distance; research on different subjects; to encourage the implementation of technology and publication of some intellectual work. The Virtual Consulting Rooms are participative, interactive, and virtual space that have helped the rural, poor, marginalized and vulnerable population to get in touch with important scholars, investigators, and professionals of many areas of knowledge, allowing the contents to be dynamic, and updated.
- Transferability
The organisations that want to replicate our project should be "community-oriented". This means that they should adopt the project in total alliance with the community. The organisation should expect to accompany the schools for at least 5 years and be ready to grow the project and the number of schools involved if the results are satisfactory. The organisation has also understand that only external evaluation can validate the results.
- Project summary
- The "Virtual Consulting Rooms" are Internet based, organized, reliable and safe sites based on simple, intuitive, and open architecture, where an instant communication channel was established for experts to provide support and help to solve needs, doubts, problems and desires of getting knowledge and information in the academic, pedagogical, technological, work, personal, and productive fields of children, young people, teachers, farmers and natives in 855 rural communities in Caldas - Colombia. Experts, through the website of the Virtual Consulting Rooms, within 48 hours will provide help, advice, support, and orientation to the needs and requests of nearly 28,300 students and 2,437 teachers, and the members of those communities in general. The first part of the process consists in training teachers, students and leaders of the rural communities, in the technological platform, Internet, e-mail, chat rooms and blogs, for an effective use of these applications. These are the main principles of every step on the training process: a) Motivation and confidence: foster the interest to get acquainted with technology and learn how to use it properly. The goal is to answer questions like "What am I learning this for? For what I do this is not indispensable". It is also important to build up the confidence in their own capacities, to overcome the fear on the subject of new things, to get involved effectively in a new learning process.b) Interactivity: users are provided with constant support for them to feel accompanied. c) Learning based on their own requirements: solving their concrete problems, moving forward their own speed and appropriating the use of the computer tools in order to use them for their needs and interests. There is permanent interaction with the contextual group in which every participant may take advantage of the knowledge of his peers to be aware that the fact of "not knowing" is not a reason for exclusion, because everyone of them has the opportunity to learn with the support and help of the professionals in charge of the training and the application of suitable methodologies.d) Reduction of the social gap: to help with the inclusion and participation of the population in the various aspects of life: work, communication and interaction. Digital literacy is intertwined with personal support, participation, proper use of spare time, and other workshops for teachers, students and the whole community in general. The Virtual Consulting Rooms constitute a great network community that focuses on the search for answers (participation), sharing (generation of cooperative information and knowledge), interaction (commitment to the decision making process). In addition to the service of consultancy, there are several other activities and workshops available regarding software and web links to publish significant classroom experiences. Experts in computers and other different areas of knowledge, seek for, analyze, and select Web sites that provide a good data bank so schools can use those ones meeting their main needs and interests.
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