Abstract:

Between actual challenges in countries associated in the Visegrad group belongs the effort to increase the attractiveness of agriculture. One possibility represents the introduction of new prospective areas with comparative advantage for the V4 countries such as - agrotourism, small and family farms, energy from biomass or biogas production. However, for the development of the sector is also very important to "attract" young people, because this sector is significant with growing average age of farmers and workers.

Nowadays information technologies such as Web 2.0, virtual reality, smart devices and social networks make a significant impact on the life of young people. In addition, these technologies impact increasingly also the areas where they were only marginal until recently. One of such areas is the field of agriculture.

The project AgriEdu supported by the International Visegrad Fund aims to highlight the importance of agriculture and increase the attractiveness of the rural area in the Visegrad countries especially for young farmers, laying the emphasis at innovative forms of education form and content of which resonate with the contemporary generation of young people.

As part of the project, with mission to enable access both to the already existing training courses as well as the new courses developed on the basis of analysis of the actual needs of modern agriculture – e.g. permaculture, marketing through web applications, legislation, new common agricultural policy or the introduction of new technologies in agriculture – was established the Educational information portal of the Rural platform.

The form of prepared learning materials is based on the analyses carried out in the course projects RUBIGAS and EBBEY. The conclusions of these surveys clearly confirmed that the farmers demand concise and consistent information that is available in one place, accessible anytime and anywhere – preferred are especially mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, and traditional learning management systems, multimedia, web 2.0 technologies (especially social networks and blogs).

The article is focusing at the Educational information portal and at initial analyses for the development of training materials. Simultaneously, it introduces two courses oriented at renewable energies and clean technologies in agriculture which have been developed as a part of the projects RUBIGAS and EBBEY.

Keywords:

Agriculture, biobased economy, innovative learning, Educational portal of Rural Platform, ICT.