“Let’s Go Folks!”: A K 12 Special Program Beyond Social Parameters

“Let’s go Folks!” This is the appealing name of a project which main goal is to help students of K-12 to develop the necessary skills to choose careers like engineering that for many reasons is so necessary for the development of a country. São Vicente City Hall present administration has decided to implement a special program for K-12 in public schools of the city, which resulted in this project that so far has been showing good results. The project was designed and has been developed and implemented by Supportnet, a private enterprise in a joint venture with the education coordination of the town with the support of COPEC – Council of Researches in Education and Sciences. To increment the project there are what has been named as the “Fortress of knowledge” that is a special physical space created inside the schools where the students can spend some hours of the week learning in a complete new way, enjoying the art of building their own knowledge. The implementation started in February of 2002 and it has been dimensioned to serve ten thousand students per year and it predicts also the qualification of teachers and technical staff. It is based in an integrated educational method using computers as the tools to foster the learning process aiming the betterment of fundamental education system, the K-12. Top technologies, Internet access and a complete didactic material have been used with success. Engineers, pedagogues, social agents and others scientists and technicians involved with education have been working in the implementation of this new educational system. “Let’s go Folks!” has been appointed as an example of serious education policy by and for the community and so it is going to be amplified to serve the poor communities citizens of the town that are out of school and out of work market. In the three years ahead it will serve more than forty thousand students.