FCCN continues to support the community in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, bringing technology and knowledge to the homes of students, researchers and teachers. Here's a reminder of the services that could be useful in the context of distance learning and teleworking
We live in confinement again and continue to follow the indications of social isolation. Distance learning remains a useful tool for learning and is also just a click away.
As with the last lockdown, the FCCN unit of the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) is taking action on several fronts and continues to want to bring technology and knowledge to the homes of students, researchers and teachers, seeking to provide and improve the experience of its activities.
Remember the services FCCN that could be useful to the teaching and research community in the context of distance learning and teleworking.
Hummingbird
Colibri was the most relevant service in the previous confinement, which, due to massive use had the licensing reinforced, by 1111%, and a progressive reinforcement of the infrastructure at the service front-end level. It ensures an enabling environment for holding meetings, group work, classes and distance tutorials. The service enables videoconferencing sessions with capacity for 300 participants per session, audio, video, text, images, whiteboard and screen sharing. Sessions can also be recorded for later recording and availability through the Educast service.
Between March and June 2020 (school term) we counted 1,055,970 sessions Colibri. As a model of comparison, during the whole year of 2019, we had a total of 30.847. In terms of participants, the number reflected in this period is 15.865.364, as compared to 2019, where we had a total of 206.586.
Educast
Educast allows users to easily record, edit and publish educational videos (lessons or training) on a platform or webpage. The published content can be revisited whenever you want, and can be embedded in college or school pages.
The service recorded, between March and June 2020, 10.583 videos produced, while the annual total in 2019 was 2.179 videos. The number of views reached in the referred period, 1.369.077, concluding that, in only 4 months, the annual total of 2019, which had reached 1.019.568 views.
NAU - Always Learning
Although the Colibri and Educast services clearly stood out the most in the first containment, it is also important to highlight the NAU platform, a support tool for teleworking, distance learning and acquisition of knowledge in a new professional area.
A platform for online courses, in MOOC format (Massive Open Online Course), which can be used by institutions and companies for the training of teleworkers. NAU registered between March and June 2020, 73.248 new participants, 112,247 registrations and issued 54.438 certificates.
Learn about the various courses available at Nau at: https://nau.edu.pt
Videocast
With the service Videocast service, you can streaming one-to-many video streaming, in a self-service self service, that the community can use whenever they want, configuring their own sessions.
Through this service, the content is shared in a simple way, through a web page with integrated chat, being possible to share a class or training with all those who have access to the transmission link.
Filesender - Send (big) files
Another service that also served as support during the first confinement, and that you can continue to use and abuse, is Filesender. A service to exchange large files, securely, with a maximum limit of 100 GB.
Filesender recorded between March and June 2020, 31,124 uploads, while the annual total in 2019 was 39,898 uploads.
b-on - Online Knowledge Library
b-on makes unlimited and permanent access to thousands of journals and e-books published by some of the main international publishers available to students and researchers, in order to complement their biography.
We recall that, in the context of the current pandemic, several publishers (b-on and non-b-on) continue to make many of their content/collections available in open access, especially in the area of virology and COVID-19.
In the first lockdown, FCCN reinforced the capacity of its main services, not only in terms of infrastructure and licensing, but also in terms of human resources, with the aim of ensuring the shift from face-to-face to online. The quick, agile and productive way in which the needs were met was aimed at enabling the community to maintain its activity, namely in the operationalization of distance learning scenarios, group meetings, information sharing and teleworking. We are continuing to work so that together we can offer important assistance to maintain teaching and research activity in the exceptional circumstances that the country is going through.
For more information visit www.fccn.pt or contact our specialist teams.
Stay safe!
