Presentation

"If I were the Minister of Education, I would do the following concerning DE..."

According to the National Council of Education, 66% of the Brazilian municipalities do not have higher education available. Everyone knows that DE in Brazil develops further than the attendance teaching and those formed by this learning modality reach most significant results in relation to those who have studied conventionally. Also, distance learning contributes for the democratization of advanced knowledge in a country where this percentage embarrasses us.

In Brazil, it is very common that those responsible for "supervising", "monitoring", "regulating" or "deciding" about the allocation of resources involving the DE, know little about the history, the nature, the real benefits and the worldwide successes already achieved by distance learning. So, nothing better than a little help from those who better understand it: members of the community of professionals on DE in the country. Thus, ABED wants to stimulate its members (and other stakeholders) to think with boldness, imagination and challenging spirit about measures that a State Minister could adopt to catapult the DE to a position of real highlight, contributing to the qualitative growth of Education in the country.

We remind you that the 21st CIAED, as in previous editions, will accept scientific papers, presentations, roundtables and short courses proposals related to the wide range of issues involving the practice of DE. We suggested this theme to encourage contributions concerning possible actions from the current and future Ministers of Education in Brazil, in order to promote the expansion, the quality and the role of inclusion that DE represent inside and outside the country, at all levels of learning. Besides the range of events offered by the XXI Conference, the Program Commission has decided to conduct a gathering of ideas. A special judge will select the top three texts submitted for approval (that must not exceed the limit of 500 words each), which will be awarded during the meeting in Bento Gonçalves / RS. The texts submitted should be sent via email to the address papers@abed.org.br until April 30th, 2015. If this action raises great interest, it will be possible to organize one or two roundtables on the subject proposed. All the ideas considered to be of value by the commission will be published at ABED website.

Brains to work!

Fredric M. Litto
President of ABED