SECTOR DESARROLLO RURAL

Many virtual study programs are mainly text based, using HTML, PowerPoint, or PDF documents. Multimedia technologies have been investigated for many years and eventually found their way into practice. Today a wide spectrum of instruction modes is available, including the following:

Virtual Classroom: A virtual classroom is a learning environment created in the virtual space. The objectives of a virtual classroom are to improve access to advanced educational experiences by allowing students and instructors to participate in remote learning communities using personal computers; and to improve the quality and effectiveness of education by using the computer to support a collaborative learning process. The explosion of the knowledge age has changed the context of what is learnt and how it is learnt – the concept of virtual classrooms is a manifestation of this knowledge revolution.

Hypertext courses: Structured course material is used as in a conventional distance education program(ARORA, 2007). However, all material is provided electronically and can be viewed with a browser. Hyperlinks connect text, multimedia parts and exercises in a meaningful way. Video-based courses are like face-to-face classroom courses, with a lecturer speaking and Power point slides or online examples used for illustration. Video-streaming technologies is used. Students watch the video by means of freeware or plug-ins (e.g. Windows Media Player, RealPlayer) in 2007 through new online education platforms. Audio-based courses are similar but instead of moving pictures only the sound track of the lecturer is provided. Often the course pages are enhanced with a text transcription of the lecture. Animated courses: Enriching text-oriented or audio- based course material by animations is generally a good way of making the content and its appearance more interesting. Animations are created using Macromedia Flash or similar technologies. These animations help understand key concepts and Also allow for better retention of learning. Web-supported textbook courses are based on specific textbooks. Students read and reflect on the chapters by themselves. Review questions, topics for discussion, exercises, case studies, etc. are given chapter wise on a website and discussed with the lecturer. Class meetings may be held to discuss matters in a chat room, for example. Peer-to-peer courses are courses taught "on-demand" and without a prepared curriculum. A new field of online education has emerged in 2007 through new online education platforms.

5.2 CYBER SCHOOL

A virtual school or cyber school describes an institution that teaches courses entirely or primarily through online methods. Though there are tens of thousands of commercial and non-accredited courses available online, the term "virtual school" is generally reserved for accredited schools that teach a full-time (or nearly full-time) course of instruction designed to lead to a degree. Virtual public and private schools serving every grade level including graduate programs may elect to pursue accreditation through various regional and national organizations. Accredited schools must meet rigorous standards as defined by the issuing organization and are designed to insure that students are receiving the highest quality instruction and education. Examples of organizations that issue school accreditation include: Middle States Association of Schools and Colleges, Northwest Association of

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Accredited Schools All student services are conducted through Internet technology. The virtual school differ/contrasts from the traditional school through the physical media that links administrators, teachers and students and is an alliance of public distance learning schools. Many states in the United States have their own virtual school, and many of them have students numbering in the thousands. By providing a student's social security number the person is then entered into a database where they can choose which classes they want to take.

6.Virtual Classroom Advantage

In this paper, technology refers to both the hardware and software to provide the basic infrastructure for e-Learning. This includes components for networking (e.g. access points and links to the Internet) as well as client computers and software for basic services (e.g. e-mail, file sharing, web pages etc.). Technology also refers to servers that could be used for centralized data/program storage. It does not include specific e-Learning software intended purely for the purposes of pedagogy, which is covered under 'applications'. However, the underlying technology is intended to have the capabilities to support e-Learning applications.

In the context of rural areas, following factors are important:

* Technology (both hardware and software) must be cheap but robust enough for rural conditions. In essence, it must have an excellent cost/benefit ratio.

* Open-source software is most suitable as it is free for use under the GNU public license.

* Given the harsh conditions (e.g. dusty environment) in rural areas, it is necessary to develop a programme/policy for the type of equipment used, how to best protect equipment, and how to monitor breakdowns and associated costs, with a desire to continuously improve utilization/lifespan of equipment.

* Given limitations in cost, it is impossible to ensure a 1:1 student to computer ratio. Indeed, this is not even done in well-funded public schools in developed countries. Instead, given the requirement to minimize costs, it is best to maximize technology utilization to ensure a good cost/benefit ratio, e.g. by having a computer lab.

* Bandwidth in rural areas is often very expensive. OSS is chosen not primarily to reduce costs, but to increase the flexibility to modify and test and develop appropriate materials. The flexibility also makes it possible to adjust to small bandwidth. Network-side--Server Server is a freely available Linux-based server that is intended to meet the ICT requirements of e-learning application. It can be used to drive networks that have in excess of 100 client computers.

* Documents: Staff can work with their own documents and share them among each other in workgroups. Staff can simply copy relevant files to student folders. There are hourly backups of all documents on the server and it is easy to restore lost documents.

* Web: Internet access is provided on every computer with 'safe' access. The school has its own website, which is easy to manage. Pupils have their own webpages, supervised by teachers. An internal website may be used for access to web-based educational software.

* E-mail: Webmail is available with access control depending where the use is. An unlimited number of e-mail addresses/aliases are possible. All mail is scanned for computer viruses.

* User management: Very simple account creation and management of pupils, groups of pupils, faculty teams, working groups, staff, etc. Promoting pupil accounts or groups to the next grade is easy and can be done with a couple of mouse clicks.

* Programs: When users log in they automatically get their programs (i.e. roaming profiles). It is very easy to manage and assign software for groups and individuals. CD images can be stored on the server and played everywhere. This is useful in rural environments, where CD/ DVD-ROM drives break down easily.

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* Security: Backups are made automatically, removing the hassle of doing so manually. For Windows computers, there is a free virus scanner. The school's management system (i.e. financial administration, pupil administration) has a double backup.

* Hardware/System: 'Older' client computers are sufficient and good performance is achieved on an 'older' server computer. Free programs are used to protect against viruses and spam. Offsite management of the server is possible with a safe/encrypted connection.

* Documentation: The server is documented fully. There is also client installation documentation and end user documentation.

Content management systems:

A content management system may be used by educators to create and manage online courses for rich interaction. It has many useful features expected for e-Learning purposes:

* Content managing (resources),

* Quizzes with different kinds of questions, * Database activities,

* Chatting, * Glossaries * Whiteboard

The client-side solutions are computers used by pupils/teachers to access the network. The two suggestions presented in this paper are traditional desktop/laptop computers. Traditional desktop and laptop computers Most educational institutions around the world maximize utilization of ICT equipment by having computer labs where students can log into computers and do their work. The use of computers in the classroom can be rotated among pupils, or if there are a sufficient number of computers, a computer lab could be operated so that pupils could go whenever they desire. Videoconferencing is a real time communication medium, conducting a meeting in a virtual conference room between two or more persons present at different locations by using computer networks to transmit audio and video data. In this system AudioVideo data is transmitted from Instructor to Students which are allocated for the particular training. Basically this module handles Real-Time data which are shared between numbers of users on network. To implement this module JMF API used which is directly supported for RTP session. This module also provides an area on a display screen that multiple users can write or draw on.

Whiteboards are a principal component of teleconferencing applications because they enable visual as well as audio communication. This module implemented by using Java Shared Data toolkit which directly supports for drawing shapes, text and colors etc. The communication between Instructor and student is through RTP protocol. Here we are using RTP, FTP and TCP for implementation. Information(NIKAM; GANESH; TAMIZHCHELVAN, 2004) about the Sessions running is with the server within that network.

Desktop Capturing As the name of project the desktop capturing module require to capture the remote side desktop to monitor and control the activities. This particular module uses by Instructor or Trainer to monitor the students desktop to control the activities which are not required for that session. Desktop Capturing implemented by using Robot class of JAVA API.

Question/Answer Sharing

This module is simple way of communication within number of clients by using text data. This particular facility of the system required for students to post the queries to the instructor in between sessions. Usability of E-Learning System Making an e-Learning system usable basically involves two aspects: technical usability and

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pedagogical usability. Simply put, technical usability involves methods for ensuring a trouble-free interaction with the system, while pedagogical usability aims at supporting the learning process. Both aspects of usability are intertwined and tap the user's cognitive resources. The main goal should be minimizing the cognitive load resulting from interaction with the system in order to free more resources for the learning process itself. A prerequisite for doing so is the usability engineer's detailed knowledge about human learning in general and learning goals and processes in a content domain in particular. The paper mostly emphasizes on Technical Usability.