Social Insertion
Throughout its existence, the PPGEE / UFPA has improved its various forms of social inclusion, contributing greatly to the social and technological development of the State of Pará and the Amazon region itself. Among its various forms of action to provide social inclusion can be highlighted:
- Because it is the only Doctoral Program in Electrical Engineering in the Amazon region, the PPGEE forms human resources in all the states of the region. In this way, the student body of the PPGEE has citizens of the great majority of the states of the Amazon;
- Because of its multidisciplinary performance, the PPGEE receives graduates from several areas of knowledge, not restricted to electrical and telecommunications engineering (e.g.: computing, mathematics, physics, statistics, economics);
- The PPGEE forms, at Master’s and Doctoral levels, teachers of the different public and private HEIs in the region, such as: UFRA, IFPA, UFAM, UFT, UNAMA, UEPA, CESUPA, IESAM, UFAP, UFOPA, ULBRA, IESPES and UNIFESSPA . In addition, the PPGEE trains professors for the UFPA framework itself.
- PPGEE professors have led projects with a strong connotation of social / digital inclusion aimed at improving the quality of life of the society in which the PPG is inserted, such as: (a) NAVEGAPARÁ - Digital Integration and Inclusion Program of the State of Pará; (b) Observatory of Information and Communication Technologies in Health Systems and Services of the State of Pará: analysis and systematization of technological resources used to support systems management for teaching workers in different contexts of SUS; (c) Police.Net Information Management Systems in the Military Police of Pará; (d) Project implementation of a sensor network for management of buffalo herds; (e) Diagnosis of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) of companies installed in the Industrial Districts of the State of Pará; (f) Design of a database system that integrates the databases of the vaccination stations via Digital TV using as a return channel the NavegaPará infrastructure; (g) Proposed cooperation between the Ministry of Health and the Federal University of Pará in the areas of information and communication technology; (h) Installation of a solar pumping system with photovoltaic solar energy, with capacity for 18,000 liters / day, in the community of Pedra Grande / Cotijuba; (i) Installation of a photovoltaic system with 2 kW of installed capacity, for electrification of the community of Itancoã, in the Municipality of Acará;
- Reception and training of human resources from African and Latin American countries, including: CAPES / AULP - Development of skills and training of human resources in Information and Communication Technology at the University of Cape Verde (UniCV);
- CAPES / Pro-Amazon: Development of Competencies and Training of Human Resources in Restoration of Degraded Areas in Settlement Projects in Amazonian Areas, aiming to produce Research aimed at the analysis of succession of land use, vegetation cover and soil quality in regions of settlements in the South and Southeast of Pará.
- RNP / CTIC: A framework for developing and providing interactive applications for SBTVD: A case study on Telehealth using NavegaPará's telecommunications infrastructure as a return channel. Since the implementation of the Brazilian Digital TV System - SBTVD, there have been many possibilities for applications that are not restricted to improving audio-visual quality. The primary purpose of the SBTVD implementation process is to provide a standard that provides both high-quality video transmission and 'digital inclusion' for part of the population currently living on the margins of the 'information society'. In this scenario, SBTVD is a fundamental resource, since it aims to provide a standard capable of providing services, such as: telehealth, tele-education, and interactivity to, for example, conduct surveys, online purchases and videoconference. However, there are still a number of obstacles to the provision of content and implementation of a return channel for the SBTVD end user, especially in regions with little telecommunications infrastructure. This project presents a joint alternative to enable the implementation of a public repository of interactive applications (called Ginga AppStore), together with the elaboration of a prototype architecture for return channel, from NAVEGAPARÁ public network. As a case study, a typical telehealth application (ZéGotinhaTV) for vaccination control is presented, which enables the future development of decision support for public health policies.
- FAPESPA: Planning and Evaluation of Performance of Access Technologies for Digital Inclusion in the State of Pará: Approaches Based on Measurements and Modeling. This project has the purpose of investigating technological alternatives for data transmission, which have favorable characteristics when the objective is to provide digital inclusion. In particular, considering regions that are difficult to access, given their geographic specificities, and lack of telecommunications infrastructure. The result of this investigation may be used by the Government of the State of Pará to assist in the planning of construction of access network infrastructure within the NavegaPará project.
- In addition to students' funding from CAPES, CNPq and FAPESPA, the PPGEE, from the capitation of external resources for RD&I projects, funds about 30% of its students, with grants from the execution of such projects. This action allows several students in situations of social vulnerability to have minimum conditions to attend the PPGEE / UFPA.
Interfaces with Basic Education
Basically, the PPGEE has insertion in basic education from two major actions:
1. Teacher training of state and municipal networks, in order to improve the critical mass in primary and secondary education;
2. Conception of the NavegaPará Program, which, among other actions, connected more than 500 public schools (state and municipal) throughout the territory of Pará, providing improvement of the teaching / learning process, from the availability of broadband network in such schools.
3. Realization of several projects that support the learning, that have interface with the public network of primary and secondary education. Among these, we can highlight:
- Student Reporter: The Press in School and Community (Funding – Ministry of Communications):
Description: Among the great challenges for the Amazon region, especially the State of Pará, in the coming decades is the construction and materialization of a model that will enable rural youth to be trained to improve the Human Development Index (IDH). In this scenario, the proposal aims to train young people from rural areas of five municipalities in the region of Bragança (Bragança, Viseu, Traquateua, Cachoeira do Piriá and Augusto Corrêa) with general purpose workshops (office softwares and metareciclying) and specific with the Educational Institution of Communication (Bragança-PA) partnership, which performs training activities in the broadcasting system to a lesser extent.
- Citizen Technology: An ICT Based Program for Social Transformations through University Extension (Funding – Ministry of Communications):
Description: Communication and Information Technologies (ICT) allow radical transformations in society, provided they are properly mastered and used. The proposed program is aligned with the extension actions of the Federal University of Pará (UFPA) and, especially, its College of Computer Engineering, whose pedagogical project was reformulated in 2010 to contemplate the indissolubility of teaching, research and extension. The program uses state-of-the-art technologies in voice recognition and synthesis developed at UFPA to transform the reality of people with special needs with regard to computer use. The program also invests in the process of social inclusion through digital inclusion. It can be noticed that the number of digitally excluded reaches 70% in the Northern Region. In order to combat this reality, the program motivates students of higher education to develop extension activities that are essential for their personal and professional training and, at the same time, take advantage of the synergy to promote important actions such as face-to-face training in infocenters, not presential using Moodle software and the action of socially recognized organizations such as the Republic of Emmaus Movement and the Association of Oncology Support Volunteers (AVAO).
- NAVEGA SABERES / INFOCENTROS - Basic Computing and Computer Programming Olympiad for Elementary and Middle School students from State Public Schools (Funding: Department of State for Development, Science and Technology and UFPA):
Description: The modern means of communication, especially the Internet, increasingly provides a differential in the learning and professional training of citizens, and Pará, being one of the largest states in the country, has great difficulty to spread these means of communication to the population. This diffusion has been increasing thanks to Government actions, such as the NavegaPará Program. Along with these actions, there is a need to provide more opportunities for the population to be digitally included in the world of Information Technology. Digital inclusion through training in basic computer science and programming for students of the state schools of the Metropolitan Region of Belém. Conducting a State Computer Science Olympiad to evaluate the training and motivate students to follow the area of information technology.