Representative Beto Preto has until Monday (17th) to reach a settlement in impropriety case
Former Paraná Health Secretary negotiates with prosecutors, potentially avoiding conviction impacting political rights.
Tempo previsto
16/4/2025
Curitiba Moonshot Event urges educators to rethink traditional practice via innovative active methodologies.
The Moonshot Education Teachers' Room Journey, held this Saturday (21st) in Curitiba, is aptly named. It is a journey, a "remarkable event or circumstance". Around 30 people, from different backgrounds and cities across Brazil, attended the lectures by professors Marlon Brunetta, Paulo Tomazinho, and José Motta. The three, partners at Moonshot, have been together since the mid-2010s, when they understood that "education, sometimes, smells of mothballs". The provocative phrase is Motta's. He was the last to speak. Objectively, they deliver these contents: Jigsaw Classroom, Team Based Learning, and Design Thinking. And much is heard about "active methodologies". What is striking is that these educational technologies don't necessarily depend on software or hardware beyond an available mind and, perhaps, a piece of paper for note-taking. It has long been understood that "a classroom full of computers can be very old-fashioned", as educator and writer Luca Rischbieter reminds us.
There are real problems to be solved in the classroom. There are even enough problems to occupy the minds of educators for a lifetime. One of them is segregation. While we are used to reading news reports about the consequences of the childhood cruelties of bullying, the issue becomes more dramatic in this scenario: the inclusion of black children in schools with a history of racism. The "Moonshot boys", as I affectionately call them, are looking at this.
And in this, education and political communication meet: in the challenge of engagement". The child may be at school, they leave home, get on the bus, and arrive at school, but their attention may not be there", explains Tomazinho. Having students "think, pair, share" is a method for them to participate in the construction of knowledge. By feeling part of this construction, the chances of knowledge retention and the creation of solutions for the real world would increase.
Physicist and Harvard professor Eric Mazur, according to the story told at the Journey, began to listen to what his students said about his content. And he realized that it wasn't what he had written in his lesson plan, which led him to change the way he worked. This professor is one of the theoretical and practical references for the boys.
As for me, I experienced a role for which I seek awareness. After pleasant and intelligent hours, we, the participants, were challenged to perform an activity x. At the end, I realized how arrogant I can be in my assumptions about "who needs this content". Something very similar happened to me while reading the Gospels. Before, I used to think: "That's right, Jesus, tell those Pharisees off!", until I understood that I am the Pharisee.
The beauty lies in the light way the Journey brings awareness.
Leia insights sobre a interação de humanos com modelos de linguagem de IA, e sobre os ODS no Brasil. Lab Educação 2050 Ltda, que mantém este site, é signatária do Pacto Global das Nações Unidas.
Engagement thrives focused on minds, interaction, not just hardware.
Boost participation, critical sense meets the global quality education goal.
Former Paraná Health Secretary negotiates with prosecutors, potentially avoiding conviction impacting political rights.
Federal Congressman for Paraná, Beto Preto (PSD), has until Monday (17th) to accept or reject a deal with the Public Prosecutor's Office (MP). The summons was ordered by the 1st Court of Public Finance of Apucarana (PR), relating to a case of administrative impropriety.
As a condition for closing the case, the MP proposes that Preto compensate for damages and pay a fine of R$ 25,000. In the lawsuit, the prosecution points to losses to public funds caused by a fraudulent bidding process in 2013, amounting to R$ 127,194.43.
Beto Preto headed the Health Department in Paraná during the pandemic. It was then that he made a name for himself in the election that took him to Brasília. He is currently on Governor Ratinho Júnior's shortlist for succession to the Iguaçu Palace. If convicted of an act of impropriety, he could have his political rights suspended.
According to the Public Prosecutor's Office, Beto Preto, then president of the Intermunicipal Consortium of the Ivaí Valley (Cisvir), contributed to a bid-rigging scheme by assisting a criminal organization led by the deceased businessman Marcelo Cernescu.
The then-president approved a bidding procedure without considering several irregularities. The scheme involved, according to the MP, shell companies and the contracting of services considered unnecessary because they should have been provided directly by the public administration.
In the initial petition, the prosecution describes illegalities in the bidding process for the contracting of an object described as "unnecessary, costly, and flagrantly illegal".
Furthermore, the elements gathered in the investigation indicate that, to achieve the illicit objectives, regardless of the contracting municipality, a similar modus operandi was employed, consisting of a joint effort between public officials and businessmen of the group to "assemble" bidding processes for the contracting of an unnecessary, costly, and flagrantly illegal object, whose acts bear clear indications of concealment.
—Initial petition of the Public Prosecutor's Office.
For the MP, the items in the bidding process do not justify hiring a private company, and it is a mere artifice "unequivocally created for the diversion of money from public coffers".
Congressman Beto Preto even had his assets frozen, along with the other defendants. Due to a change in the Administrative Improbity Law approved in 2021, the judge in the case ordered the unfreezing of the assets.
Micro-doc reveals Jenin camp reality, a symbol of Palestinian resistance in the West Bank.
Ten Palestinians were killed and one hundred injured by Israeli military forces in one of the largest operations against Palestinians in the Jenin refugee camp in years.
Israel has illegally occupied the West Bank, where Jenin is located, since 1967. This represents 56 years of illegal occupation, violating international law.
Palestinians are the largest refugee group in the world. They have lived in refugee status for 75 years, both abroad and within Palestine itself, without the right to return to their regions of origin or even to move freely within their own country.
Palestinians have the right to resist the illegal occupation, the expulsion from their homes, and the chronic violence to which they are subjected.
We, writer and journalist Cassiana Pizaia, and analyst and journalist Vinícius Sgarbe, produced a micro-documentary about Jenin over a year ago, following two trips to the Middle East.
