Totally "Online” High School for People at Educational Risk

• Main Author: Giancarlo De Agostini
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Institut Veolia Environnement 2010-02-01
• Series: Field Actions Science Reports
• Subjects: distance learning; education; internet; online; open source; replication
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/factsreports/376

The Iberoamerican Virtual Foundation (http://fuvia.org) is dedicated to providing e-learning solutions to universities and other institutions that may require it. It is develops a pedagogical, methodological and technological online High School model based on WEB2 tools, which could be easily replicated elsewhere, and is delivered completely through an online ICT technological GNU open source platform, implemented completely online through the “Colegio Virtual Iberoamericano” (http://cvi.edu.ec), which caters to vulnerable students at pedagogical risk who for different reasons were not able to finish their secondary education. The selected students receive scholarships, thus tuition is totally free. The Iberoamerican online High School Project started on October 2004 with UNESCO support, implementing the last six years of High School in four specialties, with student ages being between 16 and 65, located in almost 50 communities both rural and urban-marginal. We are also working in four detention centers of young law violators and with young men and women from street gangs through community centers. Thus far our strategic alliances (over 20) are with central and local governments, and national and international Foundations. In the near future we plan to: extend the online High School coverage to the rest of the Country in order to help decrease the digital divide gap and the student drop out rate from high school (nearly 80 %); replicate the experience in the rest of the region and in other countries in Africa and Asia; and develop a complete professional online digital Library service and a functional online student orientation Department.