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Learning
through TV and Internet in Mexico
By Diego Cevallos,
Inter Press Service |
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 MEXICO
CITY, 10 March (IPS) - At the World Education Forum to be held
in Dakar in April, Mexico will share its 32 years of experience
in teaching by television and its more recent advances in the
use of satellites and Internet in education. |
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| The
Telesecundaria project makes secondary-level education available
to students at 14,000 rural schools. |
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| For
the past five years a government-owned satellite has broadcast
educational programming throughout the country, and to other
Latin American nations as well; and some 3,300 schools are linked
to a new network over the Internet. |
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Mexico
is at the vanguard of several data transmission and broadcasting
technologies for educational use, Sofialeticia Morales, director
of international relations at the Secretariat of Education,
told IPS. Morales will be one of Mexico's representatives
at the Apr. 26-28 Dakar meeting.
|
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| Sponsored
by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation
(UNESCO), the World Education Forum will draw delegates from
all five continents to assess the advances made in education
since 1990. |
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| The
Forum follows a two year exercise by governments to critically
assess their progress and identify more effective and appropriate
strategies. Preparatory meetings for the region included the
Recife, Brazil, meeting of the nine most populous developing
countries -- Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia,
Mexico, Nigeria and Pakistan -- and in the Dominican Republic.. |
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| ''The
progress made by each country in education will be presented,''
said Morales. ''Although special papers have not been called
for, Mexico plans to share the work it has been doing with the
new technologies.'' |
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| Telesecundaria,
the oldest project of its kind in Latin America, reaches one-third
of Mexico's five million secondary school students. It is especially
important in rural areas, where the number of students finishing
primary school makes it unfeasible to build separate high school
facilities. |
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| With
a television set, a VCR and audio-visual material, high school
students, in groups of less than 25, follow the courses with
the guidance of a teacher. |
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In 1995, Telesecundaria was renovated and extended to
primary school and technical teaching as well, through the System
of Educational Television Via Satellite (EDUSAT). |
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| Some
33,500 reception centres, with decoders and television sets,
were set up throughout Mexico. They receive nine channels of
educational programming, four of which are run by the government
and five by the Latin American Institute of Educational Communication.. |
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| The
programmes, which are broadcast to some 30,000 schools throughout
Mexico, contribute to teacher training, adult education and
the development of educational curricula. |
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| ''For
a large country like ours (100 million, with a 10 percent illiteracy
rate), what we have is still not enough, but we are making great
progress through the use of the satellite,'' Satmex 5, which
belongs to the Mexican state, said Morales. |
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| Through
various agreements, Mexico also broadcasts educational programming
to several countries in Central America, as well as to the Hispanic
community in the southern United States. It also has the as-yet
untapped capacity to broadcast to the entire American continent.
|
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| Satmex
5 broadcast 25,000 hours of educational programming in 1999. |
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| As
part of the EDUSAT project, this year Mexico will set up Latin
America's first library of educational videos, with some 100,000
videos, to which teachers and students will have access. In
the future, it will be made available over a computer network.
|
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| In
the past two years, the Mexican government created the Scholastic
Network of Educational Informatics, in an attempt to take advantage
of the Internet to link schools nationwide and enable that technology,
currently used by less than one percent of students, to be extended
throughout the country. |
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| Some
3,300 schools are already linked to the network, said Morales,
who added that the programme was being developed with support
from the government, parents groups and private institutions.
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| ''In
the past few years, Mexico has made important strides in taking
advantage of the new technologies and devoting them to the service
of education, which means that in Dakar we can help other countries
join in the effort,'' she said. |
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| This
article is free of copyright restrictions and can be reproduced
provided that Inter Press Service is credited. |
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