Bringing Elementary Schools of Trás-Os-Montes e Alto Douro Region on the Net

The project Apoio às Escolas (AE) has for principal objective to give strong support to the elementary schools of Trásos-Montes e Alto Douro (TMAD) region, in what concerns to the Internet’s use as a learning tool. During project’s first stage, we have adopted the visit—working session—visit method. By doing so, we have worked simultaneously with teachers and students at the school (we worked with 72 schools, and more than 276 teachers and 3000 students). The method described is unique in the TMAD region, and is being extended to other Portuguese regions. We fulfilled three groups of working sessions and noticed that in the schools where we have directly contacted the teachers the participation ratio was higher. The topics covered in these working sessions were: web navigation, web search, email, IRC, personal home pages construction, and videoconference. We also produced introductory support manuals and an Internet portal (Espiguinha—www.espigueiro.pt/espiguinha). In the project’s second stage, we still adopt the visit—working session— visit method. We are now working with more than 1200 schools from elementary schools to high schools, more than 1700 teachers from elementary school and more than 13000 students. Parallelly, we participate with Netmóvel unities in trade fairs, bookseller's fairs, fun fairs, rock festivals, fashion events, etc.. With the help of the so far obtained results, we can conclude that a large number of teachers are motivated for the Internet use and apprenticeship. We may also see that the smaller the number of teachers by school the larger the ratio of assisting teachers to the working sessions. A web site to help teachers, students, and parents, with pedagogical strategies and activities is also described, from which we point out a group of dynamic on-line exercises. We think that this site may help increment Internet’s use as a learning tool.