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Virtual Public University of Brazil is presented in Brazília

Last January 19, a committee of deans from Brazilian government universities presented a project to create the Virtual Public University of Brazil - Unirede - to the Minister of Science and Technology, Ronaldo Sardenberg, and to the Minister of Education, Paulo Renato Souza.

RNP General Coordinator, José Luiz Ribeiro Filho, took part in the solemnity. A consortium of public universities constituted last January 6 and composed of 33 institutions will create Unirede. Their goal is to offer a set of strategic applications specially geared to the Program for the Recovery of Public Education at the Higher Level, disseminating assisted education by interactive means over the Internet, videoconferences and other educational media. Initial anticipated cost for the project is US$10 million that will be financed through funds from the Information Society Program.

Unirede will offer its applications through the installation of info-highways and integrated media to meet the demand for higher learning at the undergraduate, graduate, post-graduate, extension course or continued educational levels. The first of its programs will offer teacher-licensing courses for applicants wishing to teach at the grade school or high school level nationwide. The objective is to provide instruction for 100 thousand applicants a year.

The new RNP backbone, the RNP2, will act as the connecting infrastructure between institutions, enabling them to use applications based on Internet networking technology as a platform for long distance teaching. Each university is expected to set up a hub comprised of a Point of Presence (PoP-UV), a Creation and Diffusion Laboratory (LAB-UV), an Integrated Media Lab (LMI_UV) and a Workshop (OF-UV). All hubs should be endowed at the very least with equipment infrastructure to make connections and communications, to provide access, development and training, as well as to provide communications lines, and back up and development personnel.

At the moment RNP is involved with the creation of two work teams. One is being set up by the Unirede consortium and will study and define technical aspects of the Internet platform accessible to long-distance teaching. The other team is being organized to attend to the Information Society program and identify areas of common interest for the Unirede projects.

[RNP, 02.01.2000]