This third edition of the EDTC Conference  is part of the dissemination and support activities   for two projects by HegoBit Aldea involving  cooperation  today: psico-didactic and social integration of ICT in slums in the city of Puebla (Mexico) and Educational Inclusion in Guayaquil (Ecuador). By means of these Conferences reflection is  promoted on the different units (bits) that comprise these 2 projects on cooperation : education and development cooperation  , education and ICT, and ICT and university cooperation and development cooperation. Therefore, in these days we want to gather practical experience both in the field of virtual education (especially at the university and school level) and in the field of development cooperation.

The activity of development cooperation is closely attached (socially, historically and temporarily) to education. The latter is presented as the essence of cooperative actions to the extent that, to be honest, it must find those who are appropriate cooperation objective so that they gather the necessary knowledge to become autonomous subjects. This relationship between education and development cooperation has led to even more formal disciplines such as Education for Development, which has its field of action in the North.

Moreover, recently the integration of ICT in projects and the management processes and implementation of projects has focused the attention (often more formal than real) in the area of development cooperation.

In this sense, there are experiences showing that exploiting the potential of ICT can manage not only that the results of the existing cooperation schemes are optimal but also to open new fields.

Something similar can be noted in the educational sphere in its entirety, which is promoting more or less success with the integration of ICT. Today we are facing the implementation of the plan "School 2.0" which aims to empower this integration of ICT. In any case, as in the field of cooperation, there is already a widely diverse range of successful experiences and practices.

This process involves the challenge and the possibility of transforming the methodological guidelines of the educational process. So far the educational environment has left its marks through a wide range of good practice in the integration and use of ICT in various educational levels.

One of these good practices is to use virtual environments for teaching and learning. These environments enable the development of proposals based on self-reliant and self-directed learning materials, expert systems, case analysis and problem solving (PBL), collaborative learning, the visual representation in various e-learning platforms and standards and virtual communities (Coll and Monereo, 2008). And they are, at present, the proposals that have a greater presence among the most innovative educational projects (Palacios, 2009) and applied research (Ezeiza and Palacios, 2009).

ICT affect not only those who believe that knowledge transfer is a form of cooperation referred to our university status (student, PDI and PAS) but also all the agents involved in cooperation and those who address their action to educational targets. The effect is so real that even creates new social classifications. Native and digital immigrants are the new features that define people and education adopting the digital literacy term.

But beyond such evidence or theoretical contextualization we want to stress that the III EDTC aims to publicize and seek support for the implementation of concrete initiatives in the field of development cooperation. As noted above, there are 2 projects where HegoBit aldea participates and this Congress wants to contribute to them.

The first one, the social and psicodidactic integration of ICT in the slums of Puebla (Mexico) seeks to influence the learning processes of young men and women in the slums in Puebla and that’s why 5 classrooms in 5 high schools will be under way. Besides contributing to the technical equipment we mainly offer our experience as teachers and users of new technologies by participating in the educational and social design of these rooms as well as the implementation of training and evaluation.
 
The second one, Inclusive Education in Guayaquil (Ecuador) is implementing a high school. This high school is for adults who have not completed their secondary education and who have studied in Adult Basic Education programs, promoted by the Government and it is tailored to the needs of adults in the poor areas of the city. Among the objectives we encourage participants to use ICTs as tools for work and personal and social progress and to increase the number of low-income people that access to careers in formal business.

We hope that this Conference will be a place for the generation of knowledge on the use of ICT in education and development cooperation.  We hope that taken as reference these two projects we can also transfer this knowledge to more projects in the field of education and development cooperation.  
 
Ultimately, the III EDTC Congress intend to gather a set of teaching experiences, research, action-research and case studies that assist in the transfer of best practices to projects and collaborative efforts in education. They will focus on 2 Units or information bits:
• Development cooperation, education and ICT
• Virtual environments for learning and teaching