Estudio comparativo y completo de la oferta de software libre para centros de educación primaria

La Organización de Estados Iberoamericanos para la Educación, la Ciencia y la Cultura (OEI) pretende llevar energía solar y acceso a internet a más de 66.000 escuelas en Iberoamérica, la mayor parte de ellas ubicadas en zonas rurales y de difícil acceso. Con el proyecto “Luces para aprender” se quiere reducir la brecha digital y poner fin al aislamiento de las comunidades rurales, facilitando su acceso a las tecnologías de la comunicación, con el fin de favorecer su desarrollo educativo, económico, social y cultural. La OEI que coordina el proyecto “Luces para Aprender” se dirigió a TEDECO (Tecnología para el Desarrollo y la Cooperación), que es un grupo de cooperación al desarrollo de la Facultad de Informática de la UPM, para solicitar asesoramiento en la parte software a instalar en el proyecto. Surge la necesidad de dotar de sistema operativo a los computadores que tendrán las escuelas beneficiarias de este proyecto. Por lo tanto, se ha decido crear un sistema operativo que consiste en una distribución GNU/Linux que se adapte a las necesidades de dicho proyecto. Esta distribución va acompañada de un manual de usuario y una guía de instalación para facilitar la implantación en los respectivos centros. Se pretende que la distribución esté disponible en un repositorio web y además esté basada en la filosofía de código libre y abierto. ---ABSTRACT---The OEI (Organization of Ibero-American States for Education, Science and Culture) hopes to provide solar energy and Internet access to more than 66.000 schools in Ibero-America, most of them, located in rural zones and of difficult access. With the project “Luces para aprender” (lights to learn), they would like to reduce the digital gap and put an end to the deprivation of the rural communities, supplying access to the Information Technologies, with the aim of contributing to its educative, economic, social and cultural development. The OEI that coordinates "Luces para Apreder" project, requested TEDECO (Technology for Development and Cooperation), which is a group of development cooperation of Facultad de Informática of the UPM, to advice in the part of software installation in the project. There is a need for an operative system that the computers will have in schools that will benefit from that project. Therefore, it has been decided to create an operative system that consists of a GNU/Linux distribution adapted to the needs of the project. That distribution will be accompanied by a user’s manual and an installation guide to help the implementing in the centres. The distribution is supposed to be available in a web, and moreover, will be based on the philosophy of free and opened codes.

Empowerment Evaluation in Spain: The Critical Friend Role in Working with Rural Communities

Rural communities in Cuenca (Spain) are characterized by a great social dislocation, mostly due to the low population density in these areas. In this way, the existence of groups of citizens able to be active agents of their development process is a critical aspect for any community-based development process in this Spanish region. The Institute of Community Development of Cuenca (IDC) has been working with this type of groups for the last 30 years focusing on the organizational empowerment of the rural communities. Main tools in this process have been the empowerment evaluation approach and the critical friend role when helping the groups to achieve their objectives and reinforcing them. This chapter analyses the empowerment process and how the critical friend role is nourished by the facilitator figure.

A Porposal: "Agro-ERASMUS"

The rural population is getting smaller as percentage of the total population in the countries. There is a constant depopulation of rural areas to urban areas. The most extreme data are in countries like USA, where the rural population is 1.5%, from which 1% of that amount is part time and only 0.5% full time. On the other side, we have countries with more than 50% rural population. Related to training, cultural development, business and specific weight in society, rural residents have no significance in their societies. As they are few, and separated across the territory they have no influence on their societies. Comparing the USA farmer with one from the EU, we see that the American one is a businessperson and the European one, in most cases is a farm worker. To reduce this gap between these different farmers, we believe that we must train the new generations of children belonging to farming Europe. They must have a common language, English; they must know other countries culture and farming systems, live and network with other young Europeans colleagues,future young farmers. It is what we have coined as AGRO-ERASMUS. A project to be placed within the EU Common Agriculture Policies. The project must be designed before its implementation. Even some previous experience should make better viability. It should make use of a network of agricultural universities in several European countries. Each university would build a "farm school" where young people would learn "English?, and visit and work in small agricultural practices with a correct use of the time. One important subject dealing with should be agribusiness. The procedure based on the ?Farm School? (F-S) experience, should start with young people from 13 years up to 18 years. Their attendance, every summer, to the F-S should be rotated between different countries besides their own. The first and second year, with young people 13/14 years old, the Farm School would last less than three weeks in an English speaking country (Ireland, UK or someone else). They should live with a local family the time they stay outside of the Farm School (F-S). This two years period must be devoted to learn and become familiar with the English language and cultural differences. The rest of the four years left, the Farm Schools will have longer duration and be placed in other countries from the network. The living way would be in multinational teams of young people where the only spoken language would be English. After six years of summer oexistence speaking English and learning new competences and skills with colleagues from other countries, we would have a great team of young and future European farmers, able to travel free and confident through the whole Europe and ready to be engaged in productive, commercial and research activities. These new young farmers may revive European agriculture and would not look any more like rural habitants, but international business-farmers, professionally speaking. In a brief survey among the assistants to the Fifth International Academic Conference titled "Alternative Income Sources in Small Agricultural Holdings of the European Union" held in Krakow (PL) in June 2015, participants from universities and countries like Poland, Hungary, Rep. Czech, Portugal, Romania, etc., expressed the necessity of addressing this problem in a new and bold way.

Planning and community development: case studies

Planning and Comunity Development: Case Studies, presents the findings of the inter-university Seminar held on 28?29 July 2011 and organized by researchers from the Technical University of Madrid and the University of California, Berkeley, who were fortunate to have the presence of the renowned Professor John Friedmann. Professors, researchers and PhD students from our research groups presented their works as scientific communications that were enriched by the debate among the different researches who attended the Seminar. All of them appear in the picture below in front of the gate of Haviland Hall at UC Berkeley. This book analyses the concept of planning and its evolution so far, leading to the conceptualization of governance as an expression of the planning practice. It also studies the role of social capital and cooperation as tools for the community development. The conceptual analysis is complemented by the development of six case studies that put forward experiences of planning and community development carried out in diverse social and cultural contexts of Latin-America, Europe and North America. This publication comes after more than 20 years of work of the researchers that met at the seminar. Through their work in managing development initiatives, they have learned lessons and have contribute to shape their own body of teaching that develops and analyses the role of planning in public domain to promote community development. This knowledge is synthesized in the model Planning as Working With People, that shows that development is not effective unless is promoted in continuous collaboration with all the actors involved in the process.

Social involvement for community development in rural areas of Cuenca, Spain

Community development must be accompanied by a social involvement process which creates functional groups of citizens capable of taking responsibility for their own development. It is important that this process promotes the structuring of all population groups and provides the appropriate institutional and technical support. The present paper addresses these issues based on over 25 years of experience by the Association Instituto de Desarrollo Comunitario de Cuenca in revitalizing rural areas of the Spanish province of Cuenca. This paper analyses the social involvement process encouraged by this association, the relationships between public institutions and local associations, the role of these associations and the difficulties encountered in the rural areas. The long-term perspective of this experience provides some keys which can be used to successfully support the process of social involvement ―such as information on its characteristics and methodological tools―, establish local associations and create sustainable partnerships that foster the growth of leadership within the community development process.

The technofusion project for fusion technology development: opportunities for the inertial community

The new Spanish installation for fusion research (Technofusion) has been approved by both the national and regional governments. Funding up to 80-100 M€ will be invested in the construction of seven laboratories to cover many aspects relevant to fusion technology development. This work discusses their utility for inertial fusion research.

The technofusion project for fusion technology development: opportunities for the inertial community

Technofusion will be the new Spanish singular scientific-technical installation for fusion research. The research activities will be focused on seven areas of materials research considered the most relevant ones for further technological developments of fusion energy. In principle, most of the infrastructure in Technofusion will be useful for both, magnetic (MC) and inertial (IC) confinement fusion communities and most of the research and developments carried out for one of the fusion concepts will be valid and transferable to the other. However, some aspects related to first wall materials strongly differ in MC and IC approaches. This is due to the very different typical ion energy and deposited powers in both cases.