Page 9 - Teleduca

PREFACE

Hamadoun I. Touré, Director
Telecommunication Development Bureau (BDT)
Internacional Telecommunications Union (UIT)

It gives me great satisfaction to write the preface to this Book on
Tele-Education in the Americas, which is the fruit of a
cooperative effort between Telecommunication Development
Bureau (BDT) of the International Telecommunication Union
(ITU) and the Inter-American Telecommunication Commission
(CITEL) of the Organization of American States (OAS).

One factor which has motivated our organizations to work together on preparing this book has
been the great importance they both attach to tele-education. The First World Tele-Education
Symposium for Developing Countries (http://www.itu.int/ITU-
D/hrd/events/teleduc/index.html), organized by ITU in June 2000 in Manaus, Brazil, clearly
recognized the role that is played by tele-education in the development of remote areas.

If education is the key to economic and social development, then tele-education is the key to
bringing that development to everyone, and not only to urban and other privileged areas.. The
use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) brings down costs and frees
education from the constraints of distance. Tele-education may be considered as a means of
expanding traditional teaching methods.

For many years now we have been using ICTs for education and learning. However, recent
technical advances are radically changing the traditional landscape. New telecommunication
networks and services, including the Internet, are providing us with new possibilities. By
being able to access those services over bandwidths previously only available to television
broadcasting, we are able, through videoconferencing, to participate from a distance in
meetings and forums as if physically present.

The tremendous expansion of the Internet has been and continues to be the engine that drives
many services and applications, including tele-education. Developments in the area of
Internet2, broadband access, the new Internet protocol and the new generations of mobile
telephone (2.5 and 3) are set to drive those applications even further. High- capacity Internet
access, already commonplace in organizations and companies, is now finding its way into the
home through the telephone line (xDSL) and through cable television networks. These
technologies permit interactive access to multimedia services that represent a revolution for
tele-education as we currently know it.

Industry believes that e-learning would come to be the next killer application of Internet,
surpassing e-mail. This is already happening, but the possibilities held out by the new ICTs
are still not being intensively harnessed in the field of education, and new methods and
paradigms have to be developed if we are to reap the maximum benefit from this
technological potential. Technological development has a bearing on the way we travel),
work), relate to another (), and so on. In the same way, we have a responsibility to adapt the
ways in which we teach and learn in order to derive the greatest possible benefit from ICTs in
education.

VII