Virtual Campus for Public Health (VCPH/PAHO)

Specialization starts: Health Management for Older in its 2012!

This specialization in its 5th version starts in April and is proposed as a space for reflection and capacity building to improve programs and services aimed at older adults in Latin America and the Caribbean.

During the development of specialization, will have the continued assistance and support from their tutors, which will serve as a framework and guidance for further workin the management of programs and services.

Starts Training of Trainers Course for Physicians with a focus on Primary Health Carein its 2012!

Approaches, guidelines and practices in medical education have been renewed over time, living, often in contradictory ways, with approaches and practices. Have also been renovated and transformed the health needs of populations and changed thevery organization of health services. It is then necessary to rethink and reorientapproaches training practices of professionals serving the health needs and to the very transformation of health care.

In late February 2012 the team of the Virtual Campus of Public Health implemented a singleauthentication service that allows users to access all sites and classrooms with a single user account.

So if you have an account created in the Portal Regional, Regional or  Countries Virtual Classroom may enter the same username and password. Additionally the user account onthe Virtual Classroom PAHO Staff can access other sites with your account of PAHO.

On this graph you can see how the user interacts with the authentication server:

In mid-February 2012 successfully completed the migration of Virtual Public Health Campus to a newserver PAHO has pestaciones best in performance, security, bandwidth and speed which will givethe user a better experience to navigate through our portals and virtual classrooms.

Along with the server migration were updated versions of Drupal and Moodle platforms to their latest versions, giving users some advantages in using the systems.

With the migration has changed the addresses to your official domain, shorter and easier to remember.

Next we show some examples of changes in the VCPH web addresses:

The Global Health Program at the University of Chile invites you to participate in the Course of Social Justice and Public Health in Chile on Santiago, Chile from June 25 to July 7, 2012.

Combining classroom instruction with visits to grassroots or-ganizations, clinics and social justice historical sites, this 2-week intensive course will introduce undergraduate and gradu-ate students to the basics of global public health and social justice from a Chilean perspective.

Students will have the opportunity to learn from Chilean and American faculty about current issues in health and equity, and learn the skills to advocate for social justice and human rights in health.

Topics will include:

The Public Health Agency of Canada’s (PHAC) Skills Online Program received the Silver Canadian Award for Training Excellence in the eLearning category at the 2011 Canadian Society for Training and Development's (CSTD) Conference and Trade show.

The Bulletin of IH in the Virtual Campus of Public Health is intended to serve as a means for the dissemination and reflection upon selected topics in International Health and to provide information regarding the participants milestones and experiences in this new phase. The Bulletin aims to provide an iterative environment between the participants and the international community in order to:

a) provide information on the Leaders in International Health Program;

b) disseminate and reflect upon relevant topics related to health and international relations;

c) create a space for discussion and sharing of opinions;

d) share studies and information;

e) analyze news about public health issues; and

f) call attention to international treaties and agreements related to country team’s topics.

The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) has launched the call for applications for all its Member States for the Leaders in International Health Program Edmundo Granda Ugalde (LIHP) 2012.

Through a series of virtual and hands-on learning activities, the LIHP proposes to strengthen the capacities of professionals from public health, international relations and other areas so that they are able to better understand and act upon the international determinants of health in an increasingly globalized world.

During the last months of 2011 the Regional Team of Virtual Campus of Public Health has successfully completed the update of its Regional Nodes and countries, as well as virtual classrooms that are inoperation.

The Nodes of VCPH use "Drupal" as a means of Content Management System in their latest versions 7.8, 7.9 and 7.10

During the year 2011 will be held 29 regional courses in the Virtual Campus of Public Health, of which 19 corresponded to the mode tutorial and 10 with self-learning. All courses were also in Spanish language and 7 courses on English.

Preliminary data indicate that more than 1500 participants completed the educational process successfully.

Is scheduled for January of 2012 a break from teaching activities in the Virtual Campus, which will culminateduring the upgrade of the management and maintenance will take place on schedule.

The start of the activities of the VCPH will be from the second half of February.

Just published an interview with Dr. Jardines in the VCPH-Brazil Node, on the contribution of that country to the "Open Educational Resources" Network Virtual Campus of Public Health.

This interview was conducted in the framework of the International Seminar on Open Access to Knowledge inthe headquarters of the National School of Public Health "Sergio Arouca" Fiocruz Foundation, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Message from the Director of the Pan American Health Organization

Mensaje de la Directora de la Organización Panamericana de la Salud

Mensagem da diretora da Organização Pan-Americana da Saúde

Message de la directrice de l'Organisation Panaméricaine de la Santé

In the framework of the VII International Congress of Public Health 2011 "The holistic view of health as a challenge in the action strategies in Public Health" held from 23 to 25 November 2011 in the city of Cordoba, the transfer was made Node Coordination Argentina Virtual Campus from FLACSO to the School of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, National University of Córdoba.

As part of the Pre-Conference Workshops and chaired by Mr. Dean, Faculty of Medicine Dr. Gustavo L. Irico and the Director of the School of Public Health Dr. Juan Carlos would be a presentation of the VCPH Argentina Node including:

Under the I Regional Forum on Human Resources for Health and Indigenous Peoples "The Challenge of Interculturalism" will be held on November 22, 2011 Official Launch of New Regional Portal Virtual Campusof Public Health in Panama City.

The technical team of CVSP displayed during the launch of new products and benefitsportal that brings this new version is focused on the concept of web 2.0, in addition to an attractive design and easy navigation, the new portal has mobile version.

A joint initiative of the Pan American Health Organization, the Ministry of Health Canada, the Indigenous Fund and the Inter-American Development Bank in collaboration with the Ministry of Health of Panama, is held the First Regional Forum for Health HumanResources and Indigenous Peoples "the Challenge of Multiculturalism" in the Hotel ElPanama in Panama City, 21 to November 23, 2011.

This forum can be followed from the Internet via the following link:

http://www.livestream.com/paho/

For more info about the Forum and transmission visit the site:

What in your opinion the most interesting feature or trend in online education these days?

Morten Flate Paulsen: As coordinator of the European Megatrends Project, identified themegatrend most evident in online education was the development of small-scaleexperiments to large scale operations. Successful online education should be robust and sustainable. I worry so much that online education has been transient, with no success and far from sustainable. Therefore, the project identified and analyzed 26megaproveedores European e-Learning to 10 initiatives prominent e-Learning, which did not achieve outstanding goals.

The Knowledge Society tends to democratize knowledge. Free licensing movements, where the property is no longer central, but it created is accessible to the community, proliferate today. LEARNING REVIEW has investigated how this trend applies to educational resources.

The movement of the Open Educational Resources (OER or OER, its acronym in English) is basically the initiative to share digitized in an open and free for use in teaching, learning and research for educators and students around the world.

Pros and cons: the main characteristics of one side or the other. LEARNING REVIEW them about this comparative table as a look that defines what type of training is best foreach situation and learning style.

Arguably, the main reflection gave us this analysis is that the choice of a way to take atraining course strongly related to the style and pace of learning of each student.

On the other hand, not all online programs are the same: some offer greater collaborationbetween students and tutors through forums and chat rooms, while others are "loners." Soadd as a third element of comparison features in addition to online training tools appearwhen Web 2.0 (e-Learning 2.0).

Between September and October, the Virtual Campus of Public Health conducted an update of VCPH Countries nodes to version 7 of Drupal.

With a commitment to stay ahead in today's technological advances, the VCPH been achieved with the active participation of countries Webmaster Nodes VCPH migrate to the latest version of Drupal CMS, with extraordinary improvements that allow both users and administrators, enjoy a friendly environment with higher performance.

Besides keeping the contents, improved visual appearance of the nodes.

Among the main features of the new system are:

Rio de Janeiro, October 19, 2011 (PAHO / WHO) - High-level representatives more than 100 countries are meeting this week in Rio de Janeiro for the World Conference on Social Determinants of Health, an initiative of the World Health Organization (WHO) that aims to generate support policies and strategies to improve health by reducing social inequities.

On 10 and October 11, 2011 in Asunción - Paraguay, we launched an online course evaluation of risks to human health from exposure to chemicals, in Spanish.

This course develops within the framework of cooperation between Brazil and Paraguay to strengthen local capacities in assessing risks to human health from exposure to chemicals in contaminated areas.

This technical cooperation project aims to strengthen the capacity of countries to the process of developing public policies and human resource development in the application of methodologies for assessing risks to human health due to exposure to chemicals in the areas contaminated.

From September 15 to December 3 takes place the Virtual Course on Human Resource Planning for health systems based on PHC, lasting two and a half months and the Coordination of Pilar Navarro, Professor of the Andalusian School of Health Public (EASP) and Hernan Sepulveda, PAHO Regional Advisor.

Consistent with public policy requirements, the training program the following objectives:

From September 19 to 25 marks the beginning of the familiarization course Tutor Virtual Learning Network for Telehealth / BID-2011, for participants in the Telehealth Project led by the Ministry of Health of Brazil.

This course represents an area of ??systematic training of tutors for guidance and coordination of groups of networked learning in the field of Public Health with the support of Information Technologies and Communication Technologies (ICTs).

Panama, September 28, 2011 (PAHO / WHO) - With the objective of exchangingexperiences on the development of the first "virtual communication Diploma in public health risk" and identify a set of strengths and opportunities that contribute to the continuous improvement of this learning experience is held in Panama City a two-day meeting with participants in the cohort 2011.

Washington, September 14, 2011. 

"E-learning  is undergoing a constant process of expansion going forward in the coming years," according to blog about learning technologie: Magic Classroom . Through this article demonstrates the advantages of this modality in education, in recent times has been gaining strength.

The e-learning has become a tool but does not guarantee higher quality and faster learning by itself, allows the application of tools that make it achieve more effective learning.

On September, the Spanish magazine La Razón.es, published an article on Corporate Responsibility campaign Antena 3 Group, Live Online, which deals with the different micro television and radio broadcasting company with technologies to bring the whole society.

The article explains how thanks to new digital tools the people can participate in language courses or study at the university without leaving home.

To read the full article

Immersed in the Information Society and Knowledge, increasingly more users that are uploaded to "train" of Internet, new technologies, virtual social networks, virtual communities ... and this requires us to consider what role each of these possibilities (tools, resources ...) in learning.

"e-learning: use of new multimedia technologies and the Internet to improve the quality of learning by facilitating access to resources and services as well as exchanges and distance collaboration. " (Commission of the European Communities. Brussels: 2001).

10 and August 11, 2011 was held the Workshop "System Network for Education and Research Hospital and Node Virtual Campus of Public Health Strengthening Project Digital Health in the Republic of Panama" on the campus of the University of Panama, where he achieved the objectives of exchanging experiences on the hospital network for education and research and training in the use of the Moodle virtual platform to implement online courses in institutions.