Page 7 - Teleduca

PREFACE

Héctor Mario Carril
Chairman, Working Group on Basic and Universal

Telecommunication Services, CITEL/OAS

Education is essential for strengthening democracies, fostering
the human being and equality among our peoples. Furthermore,
it is the key to econo mic growth and poverty reduction. To
accomplish these goals, education must be made available to
everyone. Without discriminating as to gender or age, including rural inhabitants, the
handicapped, indigenous peoples and minorities no matter where they live, whether it be the
Pampas, the Andes, the Plains, the Marshlands or the great urban centers in our Americas.

Tele-education is the use of information and communication technologies to promote
Distance Learning. Thus, promoting the development of projects geared towards fulfilling
the telecommunication needs of the most isolated areas and of the citizens with the fewest
resources is one of the main objectives of CITEL and of the Universal Service policies in the
region. Therefore, basic telephone services and the benefits of the new technologies will be
within their reach. Especially those related to tele-education, tele- medicine and Internet
Access.

That is how our Presidents understood it at the Summit of the Americas held in Quebec who
stated in their declaration: "…Improved education policies and increased investment in our
education systems will help reduce income disparities and close the digital divide in our
Hemisphere. Our collective hemispheric efforts will be more effective through innovative
uses of information and communications technologies to connect our governments and our
people and to share knowledge and ideas. Our statement, Connecting the Americas,
underscores this conviction..."

The objective for publishing the Book on Tele-education in the Americas is to provide
information about developing distance education on the continent. It is our hope that this
book will promote access by professors, students, educational organizations and
administrators to new technologies applied to distance learning. Collaborate in the
preparation of new teaching methods and allow a better establishment of policies that help to
reduce inequality in the access to knowledge and the technology gap in our Americas.

I wish to thank CITEL for giving me the responsibility of carrying forth this project; the ITU,
the Inter-American Cooperation and Development Agency and the administrations of the
Member States for the valuable cooperation that they afforded me; Mr. Juan Jose Cataldo,
ITU expert, for his editing, layout and graphics work on the CD-ROM; Mrs. Omayra Parra de
Marroquín and Mrs. Kim Mallalieu, CITEL experts for their contributions on the Andean
Community and the Caribbean respectively; Ana María Martínez and Sergio Chedid, CITEL
experts for writing the print version; and, Professor Saad Chedid, Rapporteur of the Tele-
Education Working Group for his help with the Coordination efforts.

We will never be able to bring knowledge to our people if we fail in our efforts to provide
them with adequate and ever improving communications available also for access to
education. Achieving the objectives of social policy involving universal access/service and

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