The Book “Distance Learning in Brazil: Best Practices 2006” was prepared by the Brazilian Association for Distance Education  (ABED), the host of the  22nd World Conference of the ICDE  held in Rio de Janeiro at the end of 2006, in collaboration with ICDE and Pearson Education. The aim was to make available an overview of distance learning efforts currently underway by the time of the conference which shows Brazil at its best in distance education, in situations of school, university, technological, corporate and continued learning, and offering examples from the different geographical regions of this vast country.

The practice of distance learning, like so many other endeavors in the developing world, is an activity that sometimes seems like confronting a permanent obstacle course. The discontinuity of legislation, of institutional policies and of funding; the higher costs of sophisticated imported equipment and software; the problem of working in a minority language (less than one percent of the material on the web is in the Portuguese language); the relatively incipient experience of widespread, democratic access to higher education; and the shortage of professionals with mature experience in creating and operating distance learning, are all problems which beset this approach to capacity building in the developing world. Hence, the achievements of the institutions represented in this volume are worthy of very special attention.

All 2,600 members of ABED received a circular letter inviting to the submission of a two-page abstract, in English, describing the significance and experience of the case. Some forty-five abstracts were received,  and were sent to a council of about thirty international specialists in distance learning involved in ICDE. Twenty cases were approved by the council and they are contained in this volume.