RURALENTER: CAPACITY BUILDING THROUGH ICT IN RURAL AREAS

The today society, especially the western world, is stamped by “lifelong learning”. This matter results because of an increasing technological development primary in the Information Communication Technologies (ICT). These technological developments build the basis of creating new effective and efficient systems that allows a higher productivity or quality and decrease the production cost, which is necessary for a stable and healthy company. The goal of these new technologies are also providing more possibilities for the “common” user, so that they are able to be updated about sociological and sociographical changes in an easy and cost reduced way over the internet. So ICT allows a wide range of possibilities, also for providing educational technologies. In this context ICT can contribute to achieve a universal education across country borders, through transferring education and training, and offering improving conditions for lifelong learning. So ICT allows encompassing adults that are not participating to the formal education process, and improving their professional skills (UNESCO, 2009), because skills are today the main factor for wealth in a society.
In the past the focus led more in the education of the youth, but because of the demographic changes in most of the European countries, this is not enough anymore. Next to well educated young adults, also the middle-aged adults are important for the advancement of a society. But for the older population a different and specific approach is required, because the established ways of education like they are known from schools are not so effective for these people.
For the education there is another challenge to be faced in the learning environments. There exist too many differences for educational strategies in urban and rural areas. The education in urban regions is often not such a big deal, because here you find organisation like adult education centres, where adults all ages can learn new skills or bring their knowledge in special disciplines up-to-date. In difference to urban regions, rural areas do not have such organizations. In rural areas the only bigger access to information is often the internet. So for offering a similar education opportunity like in urban regions, a new approach is required, preferable by using IC Technologies, because here it does not matter, if you are using them in urban or rural areas.
The European project RURALeNTER has investigated in its research work ways for conveying knowledge through established ICT methods especially for adults and elderly population in rural area. This Paper will introduce the RURALeNTER project and the research results, on which researcher of seven European countries are involved in different roles, to create an approach for providing lifelong learning in rural areas. The outcome approach will be tested and used amongst others in Spain, Austria and Romania. The goal of the project is to try and provide an approach for adult education in rural areas. This approach is supported by developed central IC Technologies to provide an information exchange between the adult people, but also with their contact person/trainers.