Using Remote Lab Networks to Provide Support to Public Secondary School Education Level Suenoni Paladini EGC/UFSC, Florianópolis, and UNISUL, Araranguá, SC, Brazil suenoni.paladini@unisul.br Juarez Bento da Silva EGC/UFSC, Florianópolis, and UNISUL, Araranguá, SC, Brazil Juarez.silva @unisul.br Gustavo Ribeiro Alves ISEP/IPP - Laboris, Porto, Portugal gca@isep.ipp.pt Benedito Renê Fischer UNESP, Rio Claro, SP, Brazil bfischer@rc.unesp.br João Bosco da Mota Alves INE/EGC/UFSC, Florianópolis, SC, Brazil jbosco@inf.ufsc.br Abstract The advantages of networking are widely known in many areas (from business to personal ones). One particular area where networks have also proved their benefits is education. Taking the secondary school education level into account, some successful cases can be found in literature. In this paper we describe a particular remote lab network supporting physical experiments accessible to students of institutions geographically separated. The network architecture and application examples of using some of the available remote experiments are illustrated in detail. 1. Introduction The Remote Experimentation Laboratory (RExLab) concept encompasses the access to resources to those who do not actually detain them. It is widely known the critical role that lab activities play in the formation of students, in particular in courses from the natural sciences area. In this context, RExLab represents a form for sharing resources, allowing costs savings for adhering educational institutions, besides contributing to student empowerment. The Brazilian Government is implementing a project named “One Student - One Computer” that aims to distribute laptops for all public school students, thus contributing for the digital inclusion of those youngsters. The goals established by the Brazilian Ministry for Education (Ministério da Educação do Brasil, MEC) , include: ● Computers distributed to all public schools, until 2010. ● Equip all public secondary schools by 2007, and then expand the access to technology to all junior level schools (5 th till 8 th grade), and later to all basic schools (1 st till 4 th grade). ● By 2007, create 5,000 laboratories in rural schools plus other 8,800 in urban schools (5 th till 8 th grade), in a total number of approximately 101,500 computers. ● Supply large bandwidth Internet to all (rural and urban) secondary level schools. ● The ultimate goal is to supply all 17,000 public junior schools with Internet access, starting with those that still have no access at all to the World Wide Web. 1