For new technologies to transform education, the first step is to make them accessible to all schools. This is a major challenge for a country as vast and complex as Brazil, but one that is yielding positive results. One such solution was presented during the meeting at the Open University between the Brazilian delegation that traveled to Bett UK and researchers from the British university: the pilot project of the National Research Network (RNP), in partnership with Bedu.Tech, which brought internet access to more than 500 public schools in the North and Northeast. 

The premise of the project, developed by the federal government, is to provide reliable, high-speed internet access to every area of each school. “This allows the internet to become part of the daily teaching and learning routine for both teachers and students,” says Andrei Amaral, the project manager who gave the presentation to the group of educators. 

The schools participating in the pilot program were located in both rural and urban areas, but had no internet connection until they joined the program. According to a survey by MCom, there are 8,000 Brazilian schools eligible to participate in similar initiatives. 

“We selected suppliers that offered Wi-Fi solutions that met our requirements. We chose a very good technology from Cisco, which is a global market leader, and worked with an integrator, Bedu.Tech, which handled the installation at the schools,” said Amaral. 

As the project manager explained during the presentation at the Open University, one of the key factors for success is that school staff have a single channel for reporting problems, regardless of whether they stem from hardware, the internal network, or the network that connects the school to the Internet. 
 

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