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Reaching Out
As of 11 April 2009, there were 699 participants from 59 countries registered in the Second Virtual Congress of GP/FM. More than half of these participants hailed from just four countries, namely Portugal, the “host” nation, Brazil, India and Turkey.
The popularity of the Virtual Congress in those aforementioned countries has surely a lot to do with the effort of our enthusiastic colleagues in the International Advisory Board, to whom we're deeply grateful. However, the International Advisory Board comprises members from 12 different countries, which means that our reach is necessarily limited, since we don't have an official representative in all 192 nations recognized by the United Nations.
As the Virtual Congress becomes further established and gains reputation, credibility and its proper place amidst the international scientific community of General Practice/Family Medicine, its worldwide recognition will speak for itself.
Until those days come, we consider it is important to continue to pursue new paths in order to take the Virtual Congress to even the farthest and far-flung corners of this planet, including the African Portuguese Speaking Countries, whose levels of participation have been disappointingly low.
That is why we've decided to put virtual networking and active participation in popular community networks in on top of the agenda. We now have our page on Facebook, Twitter, Ning, LinkedIn, and our discussion forums during the Congress will be set up in the BMJ Publishing Group’s brand new global professional networking platform for doctors called doc2doc, which has managed to attract doctors from more than 110 countries. Our presence there will also help recruiting new participants and reaching out to new audiences.
We could have settled for a local, regional, national, or even European event. But no, we've decided to set the bar right up there, and aim to be at the top of our game and become a global player. This will present us with many more obstacles and difficulties, but with an even greater number of new opportunities.
Finally, despite all the buzz of virtual networking, there's still nothing quite like the old “word of mouth”, so telling a friend or a colleague about the Virtual Congress will go a long way for sure.
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Tiago Villanueva
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Dr. Tiago Villanueva
Organizing Committee
Portugal
tiago.villanueva@
virtualcongressgpfm.com
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E-learning now is the soul of all educational methods in Saudi Arabia
The 21st century has its own challenges and demands. Indeed, one of those demands is clear and pressurized to all educational gurus in the world to change their direction towards e-learning and off course, Saudi Arabia is one of those countries. Certainly this paradigm shift is motivated by the many benefits e-learning offers.
Today almost everybody knows that e-learning has outstanding advantages to the trainer or organization like reduced overall cost and learning times, increased retention consistent delivery etc. Indeed, the learner also has some remarkable advantages for examples; learning on-demand, availability, self-pacing and interactivity etc.
In Saudi Arabia, the e-learning growth is being driven by the Saudi Ministry of Education's initiatives for the integration of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and the education sectors from the grass root level, including pilot e-Classrooms in five secondary schools in Riyadh. There is another project established for this purposes and the name of this project is “WATANI Schools’ Net project”, this project is also going to establish local area networks within every educational directorate.
There is also major transformation of traditional education in most universities of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and it is expected by 2010 majority of the universities to switch to a system of e-learning. The Saudi Ministry of Higher Education has established National Centre of E-learning & Distance Learning, known as the ELC, to organize the change and prepare e-learning material. The Higher Education Ministry has set up a repository for e-learning material to help universities adopt the system even the E-books for different subjects will be available soon. Academics in the universities have agreed to adopt e-learning and ready to take training to pursue further in e-learning and they are also interested to empower them being a part of some virtual congress/seminars or conferences.
Well much e-learning is admired, but machines will never completely eliminate human instructors and other forms of educational delivery. It is important is to know clearly what e-learning advantages are exist and how we can incorporate these into our educational methods.
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Abdul Sattar Khan
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Dr. Abdul Sattar Khan
International Advisory
Board
Saudi Arabia
sattar.khan@
virtualcongressgpfm.com
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