• To take part in the commemoration of Universidad de Santiago’s anniversary, the Sello Editorial Usach registered 165 publications up to July this year. The catalogue includes editions of the highest level that cover all areas of knowledge. Besides reflecting the scientific and literary work done at the University, the publications are an effective contribution to society in general.

As a contribution to the commemoration of the anniversary of Universidad de Santiago, the Sello Editorial Usach, the university press, registered 165 publications available in its catalogue, up to July this year.

These publications cover all areas of knowledge and reflect the scientific and literary work of the University and also external production. All these works are part of different collections, which are an effective aid to students and teachers and a contribution to spreading different areas of knowledge and to recovering the University’s historical memory, its protagonists and its more important events.

Recently, to make the access to reading resources easier, the Sello Editorial Usach started a new stage through editing books in digital format (PDF and ePub) that can be accessed online at www.e-libro.net through different electronic devices such as PCs, tablets and smartphones.

Through this development, “we achieve one of the aspirations that we expressed in our press development plan, we fulfill the commitment to our writers, and respond to the efforts of our Institution,” Dr. Luis Felipe Figueroa, Director of the University Press, explained.

Dr. Figueroa confirmed that, as of this year, all new editions will be available in printed and in the new digital formats. “We will gradually include in this new system all our work production since the foundation of this press,” he added.


Translated by Marcela Contreras

• Out of 532 valid votes cast in the ballot, candidate Rafael Labarca polled 13.5%; Víctor Parada, 10.5%; Ubaldo Zúñiga, 10.3%, and Ricardo Santander, 4.8%.
• After the vote counting, Juan Manuel Zolezzi Cid, who will assume the highest institutional position between 2014 and 2018, highlighted the “fair campaign process” and he confirmed his commitment to “taking the University from its current good status to a higher one.”
• Gustavo Robles, Universidad de Santiago’s General Secretary and President of the Electoral Board stressed that the Election Day was conducted in complete normality and respecting institutional policies.

A few minutes after 18:00 hours, Gustavo Robles, Universidad de Santiago’s General Secretary and President of the Electoral Board, made public the official results of the elections for Universidad de Santiago’s President that occurred on Tuesday 8th. In this process, Dr. Juan Manuel Zolezzi was the winner for the period 2014-2018.

The elected president will assume the highest institutional position for a third consecutive term after polling 232 votes, a 60.7% of the 532 valid votes cast in the ballot.

Candidate Rafael Labarca polled 13.5% of the vote (72 votes); Víctor Parada, 10.5% (56 votes); Ubaldo Zúñiga, 10.3% (55 votes); and Ricardo Santander, 4.8% (26 votes).

Following the vote counting and after an Election Day that strengthened the democratic and pluralistic principles that characterize this state and public university, Juan Manuel Zolezzi thanked his campaign team and said that the support he had in this election process “allows us to think big and take the University from its current good status to a higher one.”

“We hope that each member of this community feels part of the new administration that I will lead,” Dr. Zolezzi said.

The challenges of a new presidential term

When asked by U. the Santiago al Día about the main challenges of his new term as the University’s President, Juan Manuel Zolezzi said that the first task is to get “the institution accredited for the maximum possible period,” as the University is in the middle of the visit of the external peer reviewers and it aspires to the highest certification.

“We want to continue improving our facilities and our academic staff through new hiring, participation and projects, and to have a prominent role in strengthening public education in Chile,” Dr. Zolezzi added.

An organized and transparent election process

Gustavo Robles, Universidad de Santiago’s General Secretary and President of the Electoral Board, said the Election Day was “successful” and he assured that “it was developed in strict accordance with the law and the current applicable regulations governing internal elections.”

“This was an impeccable polling day, with no complaints and as an Electoral Board, we played our role as observers of this important democratic process,” Robles concluded.

Finally, the president of the Tricel, the Election Review Board, thanked everyone who made this election process at Universidad de Santiago “organized and transparent.”

Translated by Marcela Contreras

• The anniversary program provides a wide variety of activities organized to reflect on the present times and to plan the future of the University.
• The activities, scheduled for July and August, were started with a set of conferences devoted to the topic “Amores Indígenas” and the award ceremony for the University Social Responsibility certification.
• “In this program for the 165th Anniversary, we would like to highlight the contribution that our University has made to the country and to our culture. For this reason, we are focused on outreach activities, in which the community is invited to actively participate,” Sergio González, Vice President of Outreach and Engagement, said.

With more than twenty reflection, academic and artistic activities, our University readies itself to celebrate as of this week its 165 years of history contributing to our country.

The program for the anniversary, coordinated by the Vice Presidency of Outreach and Engagement, includes several activities starting on July the 1st until the end of August.

 “We want this occasion to be emblematic for all the community as it is a positive key moment for our University, not only because we celebrate 165 years of the foundation of the School of Arts and Crafts, but also because this anniversary coincides with the institutional accreditation process and the University President election process,” Vice President González said.

In the campus, it is possible to perceive a feeling of interest in the future of our University, what provides a favorable context to develop reflection and discussion activities about future plans.

“The activities are arranged in the context of our institutional reflection and are concentrated in a program that will be developed in July and August and maybe part of September; they are artistic and cultural activities of recollection and reflection,” Vice President González said. He added that idea is that these actions help to value our University’s historical heritage and its contribution since its foundation to the development of our country.

“This why the program is focused on outreach activities, in which we invite the community to actively participate,” the Vice President said.

For his part, Jorge Montealegre, Director of the Outreach Department and Coordinator of the Anniversary Program, explained that the schedule for the activities was built from the proposals submitted by the different academic units.

“We offer an outlook of the University’s activities that range from the debate on our hallmark in our research activities; to the traditional artistic expressions of musical groups, and to seminars like the set of conferences devoted to the analysis of indigenous people love expressions,” Director Montealegre said.

“It is not a nostalgic program- Director Montealegre explained- but a live one, that faces this 165 years looking at the present times and planning the future based on our reflections. The program is an invitation for people to get involved and participate.”

Director Montealegre added that, among the anniversary activities, there are two contests to which all the university community is invited to participate: The “Nuestra Historia en 165 Imágenes” Photography Contest and the “Tenemos Cuento” Micro-fiction Story Contest. In the latter, our University community’s children are also invited to participate.

We invite you to check the program and celebrate the 165 years of our University.

165th Anniversary Program.
http://www.usach.cl/aniversario

Photography Contest.
http://www.usach.cl/165imagenes

Micro-fiction Contest.
http://www.usach.cl/tenemoscuento


Translated by Marcela Contreras
 

• Dr. Gonzalo Acuña was elected president of the Chilean representation at the Computational Intelligence Society, which is part of the world’s largest professional and technical association in this field. Also, professor Acuña became Chile’s representative at the Latin American Computational Intelligence Society.

An academic of Universidad de Santiago’s Department of Informatics Engineering, Dr. Gonzalo Acuña Leiva, will preside for two years the Computational Intelligence Society (CIS) Chile Chapter, which is part of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the world’s largest professional and technical association dedicated to advancing technological innovation and excellence for the benefit of humanity.

Dr. Acuña was elected president of the Chilean representation of the IEEE-CIS, one of the world´s most renowned and traditional organizations, as it was the first organization founded in this field after the American chapters of computational intelligence and is made up of, at least, sixty academic members from different universities.

“Computational Intelligence relates to the ability developed by computers, for example, to imitate nature or biological processes,” Dr. Acuña says, pointing out that this field includes neural networks and genetic algorithms inspired by biological processes or the animal world, like the ants’ methods to solve problems or the flight of birds.

Although the IC concept seems to be related to Informatics, Dr. Acuña says that it has to do with dynamical systems and mathematical models and not necessarily with programming.

Computational Intelligence is not Artificial Intelligence

Dr. Acuña says that the concept of Computational Intelligence should not be taken for Artificial Intelligence, as the former refers to “mathematically modeled ideas that help to solve optimization problems and other engineering works. It refers to mathematical tools that are commonly used by computer programmers to solve different problems, as they can be applied to all imaginable fields.”

Dr. Acuña has been working in this field for several years and he has specialized in the study of neural networks, interconnection systems inspired by the animal nervous system functioning and SVM (Support Vector Machines), a group of supervised learning algorithms that can be applied to different areas.

At present, the academic is leading a Fondef project where he is applying this knowledge to mining industry.

“With this Computational Intelligence tools we are building predictive models for the availability of physical assets in mining industry, like shovels, large trucks or the enormous equipment required for mining operations that involve high maintenance costs. Therefore, if we are able to anticipate the equipment availability, mining industry can improve preventive maintenance and reduce costs,” Dr. Acuña explains.

Youngsters and Latin America

About his recent nomination as president of the IEEE-CIS Chile Chapter, Dr. Acuña says that the efforts are oriented to promote the Chapter and to motivate young people through CI Summer Schools, which are “the ideal opportunity for students preparing their dissertation work to participate, as leading figures in this field give presentations and many of our members offer tutorial sessions. It is the occasion when we meet as a community.”

Finally, there is also news about this field at a regional level, as two weeks ago, in a congress held at Bariloche, the Latin American Computational Intelligence Society was founded, where Dr. Acuña and an investigator from Universidad de la Frontera were appointed national representatives.


Translated by Marcela Contreras
 

• The National Institute for Standardization, an agency created by the Chilean Economic Development Agency (Corfo, in Spanish) to promote the use of standards in Chile, has certified Universidad de Santiago’s laboratory for Materials and Metallurgical Engineering Services for 4 years. This certification enables the laboratory to provide services for large companies both in Chile and abroad, particularly in the field of mining industry.
• Dr. Alfredo Artigas, director of the laboratory, said that this is a great opportunity, because it confirms the quality of the services provided and “it also strengthens our position in the market, increasing our capacities to compete as equals with any other institution.”

Recently, the laboratory for Materials and Metallurgical Engineering Services (Simet, in Spanish) of the Faculty of Engineering was certified by the National Institute for Standardization (INN, in Spanish) for 4 years, the maximum accreditation period given by this agency. The certification that will be valid until 2018 is under the ISO 17.025 standard that regulates testing and calibration laboratories, in this case, in the areas of metallurgy and materials science.

By the end of 2012, the laboratory restarted its accreditation process which was pending since 2006. For this purpose, it invested about 30 million Chilean pesos. After the assessment carried out by the INN at the end of 2013, Simet was accredited in summer 2014.

Assistance

Simet’s goal is to provide comprehensive technical assistance in the area of materials testing and analysis for mining industry, metallurgical industry and smelting plants, among others. At Simet, they mainly carry out metal tensile and hardness testing though its great potential lies in failure analysis for mining industry and mining industry suppliers, when their products fail. All this work is addressed through a comprehensive approach of quality control for all the processes involved which has distinguished Simet in a global and demanding market.

Regarding the accreditation, Simet’s director, Dr. Alfredo Artigas said that it is a great opportunity, because it confirms the quality of the services provided and “it also strengthens our position in the market, increasing our capacities to compete as equals with any other institution, both in Chile and abroad.”

Besides, Dr. Artigas stressed the importance of this certification, “as there are 2 or 3 laboratories that are certified in the type of testing that we carry out; therefore it will open doors for us to reach large companies, like the public transport company Metro, for example. You cannot take part in their tender processes if you are not accredited.”

In Dr. Artigas’s opinion, the most difficult part of this process was to persuade the team to participate, because it involves a significant change in the procedures, from the point of view of non-compliance with standards; equipment calibration; implementation of corrective actions in case of system failures, and strict requirements controlled by the INN. “Keeping the equipment calibrated is expensive, because it should be done once a year and the results have to be compared with the ones of laboratories in other countries. Handling all this is complicated,” he said.

About Simet

In 1998, tensile and fatigue testing machines were acquired through a Fondef project, and the laboratory started to operate. With this new equipment, the laboratory designed and signed a project together with the Society for Technological Development of Universidad de Santiago (SDT, in Spanish), an agency that provides technical and technological assistance and consulting services on professional training to manage these assistance services.

Today, the laboratory has a portfolio of about 200 customers, among which there are some alumni, thanks to the University’s help in job placing in the private sector, both in large and small companies. This yielded a return of approximately a million dollars last year.

However, Simet dos not only provide services for the private sector: the laboratory also lends its facilities and equipment to seven laboratory courses of the different programs of the Department of Metallurgical Engineering, graduate students, students working on their dissertations, and research projects, among others, what is in agreement with the quality goals set by the laboratory that involve never to neglect the educational role of the University.


Translated by Marcela Contreras

• By means of a Regular Fondecyt Project, researchers at the Faculty of Chemistry and Biology, led by Dr. Brenda Modak, are studying a treatment to protect the national salmon farming industry from the dangerous bacterium Piscirickettsia Salmonis, by using wild plants from the Atacama Desert.
• “Synthetic products have proved to be a problem where they have been used as they accumulate at the bottom of the sea. This is the reason why we refer to this as a sanitary challenge that national aquaculture has to face. Working with a natural compound will not only lead to a less invasive cure: there will also be less pollution in waters where it is used,” Dr. Modak stressed.

In the last decades, aquaculture in Chile has been constantly growing, placing Chile in the first place of producers in America, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Also, salmon production accounts for 76% of the national fish farming industry, according to the National Service of Fishing. For these reasons, infections affecting salmon farming at a national level can become a serious problem for the country.

“We are the world’s second leading country in salmon farming, after Norway. So, everything related to infectious diseases becomes important, even more, when it comes to Piscirickettsia salmonis, a bacterium that has killed about 50% of the salmon population in the country,” affecting an industry that generates more than 60 thousand jobs in the south of the country,” Dr. Brenda Modak stressed.

In order to find effective solutions to this problem, Dr. Modak, together with a multidisciplinary research team from Universidad de Santiago’s Faculty of Chemistry and Biology, are working on the Regular Fondecyt Project “Evaluation of natural products with potential antibacterial activity against P. Salmonis.”

“We are trying to test the activity of natural products isolated from plants against this bacterium (P. Salmonis), which has been difficult to combat with common synthetic antibiotics. However, our compounds have proved to be effective as antiviral drugs and immunostimulants for salmons, so this is where the idea of testing them in salmons already infected came from,” she said.

To develop the treatment, researchers will work with plants that grow wildly in the Atacama Desert, which produce a resin that covers the plants to protect themselves against the unfavorable environment in which they grow.

“We will extract the resin from the plant and then we will separate its different components. We have seen that the resin is made of two groups of compounds, from which we will take some samples and test them against the bacterium,” she said.

Three Universidad de Santiago’s laboratories are taking part in this study: the Laboratory of Chemistry of Natural Products, the Laboratory of Immunology and the Laboratory of Virology. First, the study of the extracted resin will be started until the pure compounds are obtained. This will be followed by the bacterial cell growth. Then, the in vitro work will be done, observing how the bacterium is affected by the compounds. Finally, in the in vivo work, salmons will be infected and then they will be given an injection with the elaborated product.

“Synthetic products have proved to be a problem where they have been used as they accumulate at the bottom of the sea. This is the reason why we refer to this as a sanitary challenge that national aquaculture has to face. Working with a natural compound will not only lead to a less invasive cure: there will also be less pollution in waters where it is used,” Dr. Modak stressed.
 

Translated by Marcela Contreras

• Universidad de Santiago’s Innovo Center was awarded these funds to run the Flexible Allocation Seed Grant Fund for four years in order to accelerate the development of innovative scientific and technological business ventures of international impact.
• “This grant is in recognition for the work done by the Center’s Business Incubator, which has dedicated itself to promote the innovation and entrepreneurship culture and has helped to create new technology-based companies,” Innovo’s Director said.

In order to strengthen scientific and technological business ventures, the Chilean Economic Development Agency (CORFO, in Spanish) awarded Universidad de Santiago’s Innovo Center 2,600 million pesos to run the Flexible Allocation Seed Grant Fund (SSAF, in Spanish) for four years. These funds will be earmarked for supporting innovative, high-impact start-up companies.

“The objective is to accelerate the development of local scientific and technological business ventures at an early commercial stage which are based on technologies in their last mile of development and have a potential international impact. We have 500 million pesos available for the first year and then, 700 million pesos every year,” Luis Lino, Innovo’s Director, explained.

These resources will be given to scientific and technological entrepreneurs through contestable funding. Those who are interested and meet the requirements will have to apply for it. For the business ventures that are granted SSAF funds, Innovo Center considers a first stage of international commercial validation. For this purpose, Innovo has 10 million pesos available, and for the second stage of commercialization support, it has 50 million pesos. Both stages require co-funding, as entrepreneurs will have to provide 25% of the total cost of the project.

“The contestable funding call will include entrepreneurs with technological projects, as well as other Chilean academic or research centers. The first call is scheduled between August and October this year and the projects will be evaluated according to their innovation degree, teamwork, technology development and their impact on the country,” Lino explained.

In Director Lino’s opinion, this grant is in recognition for the work done by the Center’s Business Incubator, which has dedicated itself to promote the innovation and entrepreneurship culture and has helped to create new technology-based companies.

Today, 33 companies are being incubated in fields like engineering, life science, biomedicine, and information technology with impact on industry. Some business ventures that are worth to mention are the development of a tidal power harvesting equipment, a biotechnological treatment for mining industry liquid wastes, the first electric car developed in Chile and a new energy dissipation system for buildings, among others.


Translated by Marcela Contreras

• President Bachelet made public a new government’s initiative in favor of education: it is the Programa de Acompañamiento y Acceso Efectivo para la Educación Superior (PACE), which goal is to help the most vulnerable students in Chile improve higher education access, just as Universidad de Santiago has been doing since 1992.
• At its first stage, the measure will benefit more than 7 thousand high school students. The Mineduc will take charge of the program and Universidad de Santiago, together with Universidad Técnica Santa María, Universidad Católica del Norte, Universidad de Antofagasta and Universidad Católica de Temuco will collaborate to implement it this year. During the ceremony, Juan Manuel Zolezzi, President of Universidad de Santiago, emphasized that “we will use everything that the State gives us to improve our Propedéutico Program.”

During a ceremony held at Palacio de La Moneda, President Michelle Bachelet, together with the Minister of Education, Nicolás Eyzaguirre, officially launched the Program for Accompaniment and Effective Access to Higher Education, (PACE, its acronym in Spanish), a measure that seeks to guarantee youngsters from vulnerable high schools and with the ability to study the access to higher education.

The initiative replicates the existing University Preparatory (Propedéutico) Programs in the country, an initiative that was pioneered by our University in 2006 and that was preceded by the bonus score to the admission test results added by Universidad de Santiago since 1992.

President Bachelet emphatically assured that “inequality in our country cannot continue. We have to give support to young people who exert themselves and who deserve it. Therefore, together with making deeper structural changes, we want to start now,” taking actions before the first 100 days of her administration.

“This program will provide academic, psychological and vocational support to the best students coming from schools and high schools in vulnerable areas so that they enter a university, professional institute or technical training center, if they want, and keep studying until they graduate,” the President said when she explained the PACE.

At a pilot stage, this initiative seeks to help 7,583 students who are today in third year of high school, in 67 educational establishments of 34 communes of the country.

These vulnerable youngsters and schools will be supported by 5 universities that have a Preparatory Program recognized by UNESCO, are members of the Cruch and have been awarded an Academic Leveling Scholarship for 2014. These institutions are Universidad de Antofagasta, Universidad Católica del Norte, Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María, Universidad Católica de Temuco and Universidad de Santiago, that drove this initiative.

Universidad de Santiago’s Preparatory Program to be strengthened

“Precisely today we start an important process: the expansion of the Propedéutico, that was created by Universidad de Santiago in 2006,” Universidad de Santiago’s President, Juan Manuel Zolezzi, proudly said.

He stressed that, although now it became a public policy, “we are not going to take away the funds that we have been assigning for this purpose since 2006. We are going to use everything that the State gives us to improve and enhance the program”, he said.

For his part, the Director of the Unesco Chair Program, Francisco Javier Gil, said that he was very happy because after several years “we have been heard”, referring to the Preparatory Program experience of more than 20 years in our corporation.

“What this program does is going to places where it is not possible to identify through other mechanisms those youngsters who have made the most of their learning opportunities. We identify them and invite them, since the first year, to dream of studying at a higher education institution, if they want to. Through this, the motivation to study develops and when adding motivation to the classroom, the entire educational environment gets better,” Professor Gil said.

A day to celebrate

Fernanda Kri, Academic Vice President of Universidad de Santiago, who also attended the ceremony, said that she was satisfied “because it is a policy that was mostly started at Universidad de Santiago, but mainly because it is an action going in the right way that will allow us to progress in equity and quality at the same time. Therefore, I believe this is a day to celebrate, but also a day to start working, because we know how to do it. If we want to increase the program’s coverage, we have many things to think together with the other universities and with the Ministry,” she said.

For his part, the Director of the Program at Universidad de Santiago, Máximo González, said that he was proud of “the number of capable youngsters, although they have not had the possibility of developing their talents until now.” He hopes that, in the future, Preparatory Programs will not exist. “When higher education will be free in Chile, these Preparatory Programs will not make sense anymore, because students’ merits and the work that they do during high school will be recognized by the School Grades Ranking, and the economic problems that they have will be replaced with free education. We are patient, optimistic and we believe that this step is a good signal in that way.”

Camilo Ballesteros, former Feusach’s President and current Director of the Government’s Division of Social Organizations, attentively followed the activity.

He stressed that this initiative expresses Universidad de Santiago’s spirit. “This evens the field up, giving all youngsters the same opportunities at entering higher education. It is also a recognition of the historical role that the University has played. First, in the 90s, with the bonus score for lower-income students and, today, with the Propedéutico. It is a recognition of the work done by the University.”

According to the President’s proposal, the PACE plans to include 339 vulnerable schools and high schools by 2015, with students from first to fourth year and by 2017, it should include all the most vulnerable educational establishments in the country.

Translated by Marcela Contreras

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• In the context of a series of seminars ran by the Department of Environmental Sciences of the Faculty of Chemistry and Biology, Dr. Ricardo Salazar informed about the scope of the research on treating waters contaminated by textile and pharmaceutical industry effluents through electrochemical methods.

In order to inform about the progress made by the Laboratory of Environmental Electrochemistry’s research group, Dr. Ricardo Salazar gave the presentation “Elimination of persistent organic pollutants in water by using electrochemical methods,” in the context of a series of seminars organized by the Faculty of Chemistry and Biology.

The activity gathered together academics and students who learned about the research being conducted at Universidad de Santiago with regards to eliminating organic compounds in water through advanced oxidation electrochemical processes. Particularly, the presentation referred to the Fondecyt project called “Degradation of dye-containing effluents from textile industry through electrochemical oxidation,” in which Dr. Salazar is the responsible investigator.

The objective of the study is to decontaminate waters that contain dyes and additives by means of electricity and solar energy, avoiding the use of chemical reactants.

“Today, we are working on the treatment of real samples of textile industrial effluents. To do so, we have built a pilot plant to treat larger volumes of contaminated water. We are also testing new electrodes for the process and we have extended the contaminant spectrum to pharmaceutical industrial effluents,” Dr. Salazar says about the status of the study, in which Dr. Julio Romero, from the Faculty of Chemical Engineering of Universidad de Chile, takes part as a co-investigator.

SERC Chile

Thanks to his achievements in this field, Dr. Salazar has accepted an invitation to take part as an investigator in a FONDAP project for the Chilean Solar Energy Research Center, SERC Chile, an agency that seeks to become a world leader in solar energy scientific research, with a particular emphasis in developing the potential of the Atacama Desert, Chile.

“I was invited as an associate investigator in the research line of “Solar Water Treatment”, which is coordinated by Dr. Lorena Cornejo Ponce, tenured professor at the Escuela Universitaria de Ingeniería Industrial, Informática y Sistemas (EUIIIS) of Universidad de Tarapacá. The idea is to contribute to the treatment of persistent organic pollutant-containing waters and their treatment through Solar photoelectro-Fenton degradation”, he says.

Translated by Marcela Contreras

• The Latin American Network of Educational Portals included the work done by Dr. Juan Silva, director of the Center for Research and Innovation in Education and ICT (CIIET, in Spanish), in a publication that gathers together renowned Latin American experts in this field.

Professor Juan Silva Quiroz’ work was selected by the Latin American Network of Educational Portals (Relpe, in Spanish) to be included in a recently published compendium that gathers several papers and reflections on the use of technologies in the educational process. The name of the book is “Mirada Relpe: Reflexiones iberoamericanas sobre TIC y Educación” (Relpe’s view: Latin American reflections on ICT and Education), and it started to be developed in 2011.

Dr. Silva reflects on the relation between Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and education policies, particularly in the incorporation of these ICT in the Early Teaching Training (FID, in Spanish) process, as he considers them a determining factor to improve the quality of education, by training professionals in this field and enabling them to understand these tools and implement them in the classroom.

Relpe’s initiative has the purpose of establishing a regional view on how technologies are understood in education.

In the same way, professor Silva highlights the international significance of this initiative, as it provides different points of view on this matter. “Two of us wrote about ICT in teacher training; other expert wrote about videogames and another one wrote on Personal Learning Environments (PLE), etc. It is then a wide variety of work subjects or problems about technology and education presented, referenced or argued by leaders in this field,” he said.

He also added that the book includes some subjects that should be addressed since university education, particularly, in teacher training.

Potential of ICT tools

Regarding the advantages of using collaborative tools like ICT, professor Silva said that most of the teachers, especially at university level, do not see the potential of ICT tools, in terms of having opportunities to share knowledge at a national and international level. Assignments and presentations, he explained, can be modified and improved and will always be available in Prezi, blogs and Wikis, for example, under the logic of Web 2.0.

He also said that these participative and collaborative models are very useful, especially in teaching, which is normally perceived as an individualistic work. “In the traditional model, the teacher presents knowledge and students receive it. On the other hand, in a collaborative model, the teacher acts as a facilitator, as a mediator, and students have an active role in their knowledge- building process,” he added

Nowadays, Dr. Silva is part of a commission set up by the Ministry of Education to address the inclusion of ICT in the training of future teachers, and soon he will publish a book about different experiences of using ICT in early teacher training in Latin American, thanks to a teaching innovation project of the Academic Vice Presidency and sponsored by the Ministry of Education’s Center of Education and Technology (CET, in Spanish).

Translated by Marcela Contreras