Work in progress - new challenges to educate in isolated areas in the Amazon

Studies show that distance education is a viable way to offer education to places that have difficulties in access to quality education. In the Amazon State, Brazil, some projects have gained notoriety for their emphasis on providing effective education at various high school and higher education levels in remote cities. We aim at providing mainstream inclusion to people who live in hard-to-reach cities. The aim of the work in progress described in this paper it the investigation of alternatives to use an e-learning management system within an interactive TV scenario. We plan to use the TIDIA-AE platform, which allows synchronous and asynchronous collaborative distance learning supported by traditional and high-speed networks, integrated with the interactive digital TV platform under development in Brazil. As a result, we plan to provide a proof-of-concept prototype tool to be used by institutions in their educational activities. One of the tasks is the customization of the TIDIA-AE software platform taking into account some requirements for its use in a region as the Amazon, which presents very limited good quality network access. Our proposal takes advantage from the fact that interactive digital TV will be available and able to reach the target area. The work includes: investigation of the requirements, proposal and evaluation of alternatives, development of the proof-of-concept prototype and experimentation within potential scenarios. The work will be summarized in a report discussing the feasibility of using TIDIA-Ae and Interactive Digital TV as integrated platforms to support the distance education in the Amazon state. The project is work in progress, and we plan to submit it to the pilot classroom group for tests in mid-2010.