ABSTRACT

Educational systems are facing the challenge of new tools offered by enabling Network Technologies. The speed of the technological evolution in communication networks is impressive, but traditional vocational training systems are still not taking advantage of this evolution either as a training tool or as a subject itself. Putting this together with the slow pace of evolution of vocational education, we witness a gap between the classroom and the job practice, which is even wider in non-urban regions that are less privileged and sometimes of low priority for central administrations. To deal with this, Network Technologies can be regarded as enabling technologies that support new knowledge delivery approaches using independent-of-time-and-space learning paradigms. Their independence from space enables education actions to take place in any geographical location, and, thus, the inherent handicaps of nonurban areas in this field may be treated.