Waisman,Thais, MD,MBA – PUC-SP

The COC – SISTEMA INTEGRADO DE ENSINO, from Brazil is a universe of 86s units spread out around Brazil and it is composed from K2 to K12 courses and a faculty. COC has more than 100.000 active students and a population of ex-students and parents that reaches 2 million People. It is an example school in how technology can be used to support teaching and learning process in perfect harmony. Take advantage of technology that includes web based training, computer based training and others since 1995, COC has been introducing new products every 06 months, in order to reach all the community at the same time, with the same high level learning process and taking advantage of regional skills and all community participation wherever they are in the geography basis. The main reason is to bring everybody into a virtual learning community and putting this tool available for everybody without excluding the family opportunity to learn. And to teach or share their experiences, expertise, knowledge.

Some of the products are:

• the Future desk – a class room with special design of PCs in the desk (an unit wit desk and PC integrated) for each students,
• Virtual reality class sessions – 36 "movies" that include Sciences, chemistry, geography and other titles with live interaction among the movies and the students that are able to turn it in any direction, stop, pause, ask question and so on.
• 3D classes of biology, Sciences, chemistry
• CBT with all the curriculum in

The new products from are COC is introducing in the WBT basis are:

• COC community programs to support on site classes as PLANTÃO ON LINE - a 24 hours doubts sessions where the students booked themselves according to a previous schedule. It includes the curriculum, the topics and the teacher who will be in this chat room answering the questions. The new is regard to those subjects as math’s and Sciences where the answers can’t be just answered written in a keyboard, but need some draws or other explanation. So the teachers use a digital white board – as MIMIO connected to a PC. When the question must be answered with graphics, equations or another tool, the teacher draw it on the 7Mimio and transfer it to the internet and the chat room, immediately and the student is able to follow the explanation step by step. It decreases the mistakes and extra on site classes at least 25%.

• Exchange programs – annually, a group of students spent 70 days outside Brazil in an exchange students program. In order to not loose their curriculum, the COC developed a method that includes CBT, WBT, Plantao on line and live examinations made with Brazilian teachers that go with the students. With this method, this group doesn’t stay behind the regular class and follow the contents by Internet with their class.
• COC owns the fifth more important education Software Company that develops specially programs for the students and also sells to the competitors.

Concluding, the 2 million communities are integrated in any level and the family is studying together. COC is a pioneer in its segment and a case example as a Brazil genuine school that is leveled by international parameters and it is beyond the edge in technology, ODL products and pedagogical methods.

CTBC Telecom is a private Brazilian telecommunication company which belong to an Algeria Group Holding ( U$ 750 MM company, which 70% comes from CTBC) that is in the ODL market in the educational and health segment with the Telemedicine projects.

Since last year, this company has been investing in the distance learning market and developed e-learning software to be tested in the COC – its customer. This software is based in three pillars:

1. Easy of use
2. Friendly
3. ASP solution

As a telecommunication company, provide new solutions for their customers and respect the market needs is their goals, since they are in the fixed phone, cellular phone, wireless solutions, ASP, data center, call center, optical fiber back bone, WA solutions and other

This software is installed in CTBC server and is open to be customized through the customer needs and wishes.

CTBC Telecom has gained a lot of recognition and experience with the Internet transmissions, videoconference and wide and Internet solutions in the education market.

TV Cultura is an educative TV in Brazil with a national reach. The government sponsors this TV and their focus is bring information to the People, specially kids. The audience belongs to economic classes as A to D.

The case study refers to a media convergence environment that integrated TV program, Internet and booklets. The objective was take to all students in Brazil the opportunity to get in touch with the curriculum that would be asked for an examination. As the students from public schools are in disadvantage compared with the one from private schools, we came out with this national project, since 350.000 students made subscription for the ENEM (national examination for the High school, that can qualified for the public universities that are really good).

The ENEM is based on 05 competencies (05 groups of knowledge) that have to be worked out in to skills. The regular subjects in the regular curriculum don’t count as the only learning need, but the ability and skills to solve problems that involve all the knowledge acquired during life inside and outside school.

We developed guide contents with the teachers from COC and we made the TV programs based on the competencies. So, every day the students had a 45-min TV program with 2 or 3 teachers and others guest to discuss the competencies. Each program was replied 3 times a day in different schedules. During the programs, the teachers invited the students to visit the web site and there, free of charge, they could get all the texts, contents, magazines, newspapers, songs, movies, relevant contents and information about the ENEM. Using the distance learning by Internet tools, we open five

Chat rooms for each competency and 05 forums to discuss themes regarded to those subjects.

Also the Plantao On line was enable, the students had a chance to talk to the teachers synchronic and also in asynchronous basis – email.

In a documentation area, all the contents were saved as .doc or .pdf file, so the students could download the texts and studied wherever and whenever they would like to.

TV Cultura is an open channel and also the web site was an open one.

We were expecting 5% visitors in a 450.000 students universe (less than 1/10 have internet access) and we were quite right about the numbers: around 57.000 visited the home page, but only students navigating in the web site, 700 answered the texts and get more than once in the web site.

From the TV Cultura records, we get the daily audience: around 12.000 people a day mostly in the first and second schedule (the third schedule at 01 am was too late according to the research).

Conclusions:

1. It was the first media convergence project including internet and TV in the learning education scenario in Brazil
2. A communication strategy was missed by the sponsors because the TV script did not include a call for the web site
3. The web site home page was too busy and the brazilian people still don’t have the culture of filling forms in the internet, so even it was a free web site, the students got a little bit uncomfortable in this first page. As far as we figure out that in the firsts days , we changed and we get more subscriptions.
4. The TV programs were too long and not so focus in learning or guiding the students, but discussing the ENEM benefits, so we must change this action too.
5. The teachers talking in the TV must have some kind of experience with in TV, otherwise, the students get bored and do not follow the teacher.
6. Texts in the internet must be quick, so students answer the questions right away, without thinking about, in an impulsive reaction.
7. The lay out has to talk to the students, I mean, focus on in the target is a good choice and this was a strength in this project..
8. This program generates another one that will take place the hole year, preparing students for the university.
9. I consider a success, because in the main Universe, we had 450.000 students but less than 1/10 had Internet access and we got almost 6% of this public subscribed in the web site, without any propaganda.

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Bellow, some numbers form the server:

Shows the number of visits for each day in the analysis period. Weekdays are shown as blue bars and weekends as red ones.

Visits by day of week
Shows the average number of visits for each day of the week over the analysis period.

Visits by hour of the day