Home > News - Local Teaching Program Makes Debut In Brazil

Local Teaching Program Makes Debut In Brazil Noella Blacquiere (edited by Vital Knowledge Software) - Miramichi Leader, November 5, 2002 MIRAMICHI - A Miramichi company, Vital Knowledge Software Inc., recently hosted a special guest from Brazil for two weeks as part of a joint business undertaking with Methodist University of Sao Paulo. The educational software company has been working for the past year with Luciano Venelli Costa on translating its award winning Teachers' Tech Tutor series into Portuguese. Costa arrived from Sao Paulo on October 21, to complete the project. This is the first time he has been to an English-speaking country. With a population of 19,000,000, Sao Paulo, in the south of Brazil, is the third largest city in the world. The collaboration between Vital Knowledge and the University began two years ago at an information technology conference in Vancouver, BC. The university's director of information technology, Davi Betts, and co-ordinator of continuing distance-education, Luciano Sathler, met Michael Cormier, president of Vital Knowledge, at this conference. Betts and Sathler were very interested in the teaching program that Vital Knowledge was promoting, but there were a couple of problems. Normally, the program is delivered on a CD Rom. The first problem was the fact the CD is normally produced in English. The second problem was that the Brazilian teachers couldn't all be gathered together at the same time. This is where Costa came into the picture. "We had a problem. Teachers could not be in our classes because of scheduling. We noted that we needed a way to teach them at different times," said Costa. Costa, an electrical engineer, came to Canada to translate the program into Portuguese. A Teacher And A Student Costa has worked in the Information Technology (IT) industry for ten years and has been teaching at the university for six. During the day he is a project manager and three nights a week he teaches. Costa is also a student at the university. "People here are very warm and friendly. Very good," said Costa. While Costa was here working, he missed the election in his country. He has to explain to his government why he missed it. "People say we are under-developed but we are teaching the Americans how to vote. You use your identification card and then just put the number of the candidate in the computer and you have voted. Within two hours, we know who our new president is," he said." It was a good election." Costa is also studying for his masters-degree in management. His thesis is on the fluency of information technology. It was easier for Costa to come to New Brunswick to fine-tune the product than it was for Vital Knowledge to send someone to Brazil. Not only did the program have to be translated from English to Portuguese, but it also had to reflect the culture of Brazil. "We will be selling this product like a course - a learning community around the product," he said. "The course will be based on the product; like a book, for example. For me it is an experience. We are creating a partnership more than a product," says Costa. "We will probably be creating together again some day." Teacher's Tech Tutor Teachers' Tech Tutor is the complete "Technology Training Solution" package designed for the computer novice teacher to meet technology proficiency standards, and the needs of schools, districts, provinces and states. Teachers can use this self-paced, easy-to-use professional development resource to overcome the barriers to technology and gain basic technology skills.

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