Project Description

RuralSchools – Rural schools virtual communities

Period: 2010-09-01 – 2012-01-31 (12 months).

Funded by: Empresa

 

“Rural Schools Virtual Communities for Education in the Cloud” is a research project carried out by the Supercomputing Center of Galicia (Spain) and funded by HP Labs in California (USA).

We intend to design, implement and evaluate an exciting experience in rural schools: using cloud computing as a means of sharing, learning and getting the most out of tight IT resources located in a small rural school network in the NorthWest of Spain, Galicia. This will be a pilot to learn the best ways to get cloud computing to be really useful for rural schools anywhere, and we intend to share our results, products and findings with the same spirit we get from others: Open Source.

logo rural

The main objective of this project is to test a cloud-based solution to provide rich media e-collaborative and learning services to disperse rural school networks.

This objective can be split into the following specific goals:

  • To design and develop a cloud-based Open Source software and hardware solution suited for kids, teachers and parents in small rural schools.
  • To test this solution in a real environment with rural schools in our region.
  • To evaluate the solution from a technical point of view and from our users point of view.
  • To contribute with our findings to other communities with similar needs (small communities, dispersion, poor bandwidth).

 

 

Lectures

  • On March 11, 2011 we were invited by HP to present our project Rural Schools & Cloud Computing on the HP Catalyst, meeting in New Delhi, India.

 

Awards

  • Project Rural Schools & Cloud computing, finalist for EGANET: Under the category of Digital Education 91 nominations were submitted, and our project was selected among the 4 finalists.
    • Eganet article about the project.
    • Seventh Eganet Awards.
  • CESGA’s “Rural Schools” project gets through the first round of the international renowned awards Educared
    • International award Educared 2011.
    • CESGA’s web article.
  • “Rural Schools” CESGA finalist in the Educared prestigious international awards.
    • International award Educared 2011.
    • CESGA’s web article.

 

  • “Rural Schools” winner in the Educared awards.
    • Winners Modality A, category II.
    • CESGA’s web article.
    • 13/09/2011: Article  in the newspaper  EL Correo Gallego “El colegio rural de Boqueixón Vedra logra el cuarto puesto”.

Ganadores Educared

Video created to celebrate the award received in Educared international awards, performed by children and teachers from schools in the CRA Boqueixón-Vedra.

 

Press

  • Yolanda Neira, principal of school CRA Boqueixón Vedra, in official presentation event of Rural Schools & Cloud Computing Project to the media, accompanied by Galician ministers of Education and Innovation, and HP representative.
  • 11/04/2010: Article on Xunta de Galicia web.
  • 07/07/2010: Article in the newspaper La voz de Galicia “Un proyecto gallego de aprendizaje on-line será financiado por HP Labs”.
  • 08/07/2010: Article “Las escuelas gallegas impartirán clase desde las nubes” in the La Catedral Innova technological web of the City of Madrid.
  • 10/08/2010: HP press release “Los laboratorios de I+D en California financian unproyecto de e-learning del CESGA para la mejora de las escuelas rurales.”
  • 15/08/2010: Article “Boqueixon se convertirá en una Comunidad Rural Virtual en Cloud” in RedPeriodistas.com.
  • 12/12/2010: Article in the newspaper El Correo Gallego “El CRA Boqueixón-Vedra será un referente de la educación cloud”.
  • 11/04/2011: Yolanda Neira, director of the CRA Boqueixón-Vedra, in the press conference presenting the project Rural Schools & Cloud Computing, Santiago de Compostela.
  • 11/04/2011: Article in the newspaper Galicia Hoxe “La Xunta estudia implantar en el rural el proyecto educativo en red de la unitaria de Boqueixón”.
  • 12/04/2011: Article ““Computación en la Nube” escogído por HP como una de las tres mejores iniciativas del mundo” en RedPeriodistas.com.
  • 12/04/2011: Article in the newspaper Galicia Hoxe “Boqueixón “en nube””.
  • 12/04/2011: Article in the newspaper El Correo Gallego “Interesan en EEUU las aulas por Internet del rural gallego”.
  • 12/04/2011: Article “Silicon Valley premia las aldeas gallegas” in the newspaper El Faro de Vigo.
  • 12/04/2011: Article in the newspaper La voz de Galicia “Un proyecto educativo gallego, entre los mejores del mundo”.
  • 12/04/2011: Article in the newspaper El Correo Gallego “É moi enriquecedor. os nenos de cada escola vense agora case todos os días a través de videoconferencia”.
  • 19/04/2011: Article “La educación en ‘nube’ llega al rural gallego”  in the newspaper Xornal.
  • 21/04/2011: Article in the “Tierras de Santiago” section of El Correo Gallego newspaper.
  • 11/09/2011: Article in the newspaper EL Correo Gallego “La ‘nube’ del CRA Boqueixón Vedra, entre los finalistas de un premio mundial”.
  • 13/09/2011: Article in the newspaper EL Correo Gallego “El colegio rural de Boqueixón Vedra logra el cuarto puesto”.
  • Artículo “BOQUEIXÓN ‘EN NUBE” en la revista de la Delegación Institucional del CSIC (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones científicas) en Galicia .

 

  • Honours Board in the newspaper EL Correo Gallego for CRA-Vedra Boqueixón by this project.

 

 

More info

  • Information about the project on the website of City Council of Vedra.
  • Information about the project on the website of City Council of Boqueixón.
  • More info about the project: http://rural.cesga.es