1. INTRODUCTION

The present document proposes a network of human competence to support Community action on the use of technologies in education and training. The network, which is proposed in agreement with the principles set out in the 1983 Resolution of the Council and the Ministries of Education, draws on the experience gained in over six years of activity of the Commotion in this area, and of more than for years of operation of the Euryclée network, and aims at satisfying the fast changing needs of the Member States regarding the exchange of information and knowledge in all matters that concern the uses of technology in education and training.

A number of features make the network quite different from other networks currently operating within the Community.

• unlike conventional database services, it does not work just as a repository of information, but also as a platform for collaboration and exchange;

• unlike specialised networks, which serve a minority of selected members, it is aimed at a very diversified and wide audience;

• it is not intended just for the exchange of information, but also, and very much, for the exchange and creation of knowledge, in a cumulative process of mutual help and shared perception of problems and needs;

• it provides a flexible common platform for the establishment of permanent and genuine forms of association and collaboration between the actors of the education and training processes and the worlds on industry and services;

• it aims at the achievement of full financial self-support after a consolidation period of a few years;

• apart from providing standard electronic mail, it enables the transfer of binary files, thus permitting the exchange of virtually any sort of data including spreadsheets, pictures, diagrams, all sorts of programming code, and texts of any length, format and character set;

• access to the network by unskilled users is fairly straightforward, requiring no more ability than the one needed to use a simple menu driven programme;

• it bases is technical infrastructure upon the use of low cost, entirely mature, highly accessible and totally widespread technology, so it can be implemented and put into operation right now, instead of depending on future results of ongoing research projects or pending agreements on coming standards.

• the one of fulfilling the fast changing needs of the European Community regarding the effective transfer and dissemination of information and knowledge on the use of technology in education and training; and

• The one of exploring the opportunities afforded by technology, not at the level of costly and highly sophisticated solutions, but at the level of the solutions that can now be implemented at low cost and put at the service of the masses.

Also, by providing services to a very large and diversified audience, across the whole of the European Community, the network fully embraces the spirit of a recent communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament on the subject of Trans-European Networks, which stresses the need of Community action to promote the expansion of demand and the stimulation of market awareness as a prerequisite to the attainment of the level of infrastructure required by the advent of the Internal Market.

Finally, by offering the means that enable high levels of interplay and collaboration to be established between the worlds of education and industry, the network entirely supports the recommendations put forward in a recent report produced by the IRDAC (Industrial Research and Development Advisory Committee).
 

2. THE NITS PROGRAMME AND EURYCLEE

The creation of the NITS (New Information Technologies in Schools) initiative resulted from the 1983 Resolution of the Council of Ministers of Education relating to the introduction of new information technologies in education. The first action programme to implement this resolution, for the period 1985 to 1987, was adopted on 14 December 1984. Subsequent programmes were adopted annually. Even before the approval of the 1983 Resolution, and with the legal base of earlier resolutions and measures, two seminars for decision makers took place, in Marseille (December 1983, Information Science and Education), and in Newcastle Upon Tyne (July 1984, New Information Technologies in Education).

Since the adoption of the 1983 Resolution, a large number of initiatives were carried out, namely::

• a series of meetings aimed at pooling the experience of the Member States concerning the introduction of information technologies in the curriculum;

• programme of exchanges and visits intended mainly for those training teachers, in order to broaden their practical and professional experience;

• a number of comparative studies in order to increase the transferability of software and teaching programmes and to identify better the educational value of the various hardware systems; and

• a process for exchanging information and experience data, which materialised into the Euryclée Network.

A recent review of the activities, outcomes and achievements of the NITS programme has demonstrated the success of those initiatives, and has shown the existence of wide experience in the field of information technologies in education throughout Europe. However, the same review has shown that, in the opinion of most of the National Programme Coordinators of the NITS programme and of the Euryclée Directors, there is still room for improvement, mainly because:

• attitudes to technologies in education have changed considerably since the NITS programme was conceived in 1983, and some of the original assumptions behind NITS (...) may no longer be so relevant; and

• the existing experience needs to be pulled together within a European perspective.

• a key concept now is "how to" apply new technologies in learning, but as the NITS programme was designed with a different emphasis, it is difficult for it to satisfy the currently perceived needs;

•  The greatest value of the NITS programme was the knowledge and understanding gained trough informal contact with peers from other countries (it is the process, rather than the product, that has proved most valuable);

• most seems to have been learned from managing and taking part in international cooperative projects, emphasising again process over product;

• the provision of electronic mail boxes on Telecom Gold greatly facilitated effective communications (...).

All these findings have been taken into careful consideration in the proposal that is put forward in the present document, and their implications for the creation of a better solution can be recognised, in many instances, as being present in the overall philosophy of the whole document.

3. OTHER EC PROGRAMMES

With the completion of the Internal Market in view, a broad consensus has emerged as to the central role to be played by education and training in the overall development of the Community. Indeed, as the speed of obsolescence of knowledge sets the pace for lifelong education, softening the boundaries between regular education and professional training, the population seeking education, at all levels, and in varied forms, is increasingly dramatically. The strengthening of the prospects of adequacy of the citizens to their professional functions and to the pressures of a society of global interdependence and change as become an issue of momentous significance. Thus, the renewed importance attached to the social dialogue, with education and training as central issues, has become an integral part of the dynamics of Community towards a decisive investment in human resources. In the light of the Article 128 and Article 235 of the Treaty of Rome, this new dynamics is supporting a number of Community programmes in the fields of education, training and youth, designed to improve the quality of human resources in the Community and in the wither Europe:

•  ERASMUS (Council Decision of 15 June 1987), aimed at increasing the number of students spending an integrated period of study in another Member State, promoting cooperation between universities in all Member States, and increasing the mobility of teaching staff;

• PETRA (Council Decision of 1 December 1987), which focus on the initial vocational training of young people and their preparation for adult and working life;

• COMETT (Council Decision of 16 December 1988), which reinforces training schemes aimed at the development of highly skilled human resources for the industrial and technological development of a unified Europe;

• LINGUA (Council Decision of 28 July 1989), which promotes a quantitative and qualitative improvement in foreign language teaching, with a view to developing foreign language competence within the Community;

• EUROTECNET (Decision of 18 December 1989), which aims at exploring the impact of technological change on vocational qualification and training systems and in identifying new skill needs in the workforce;

• TEMPUS ( adopted by the Council on 7 May 1990), which promotes the collaboration in the field of higher education with Central and Eastern Europe;

• FORCE (adopted by the Council of 29 May 1990), concerned with the development of continuing education and training in firms and designed to support innovation in training management, methods and facilities;

• ARION, the programme of study visits for education specialists, aimed at improving the knowledge of each other’s education systems;

• IRIS, the Community Network of Training Programmes for Women, which promotes the exchange of experience regarding the specific training needs of women, as part of the second action programme for the promotion of equal opportunities for women, launched within the 1987 Recommendation concerning women’s access to vocational training; and

• the Young Worker’s Exchange Programme (Council Decision of 16 July 1988), which enables young people aged between 15 and 25 to take part in a wide range of exchange activities.

Community programmes based upon other legal bases, such as Article 130 (G(d)) of the Treaty of Rome, also contain important education and training components and bear most relevant implications upon the general education and training policies of the Community and of the Member States. Apart from grants and bursaries awarded to cover training actions within some programmes of the second Framework Programme of Community activities, such as SCIENCE, bridge, or BRITE/EURAM, some advanced research projects within the framework of ESPRIT specifically address issues closely related to education and training. Finally research into the development and use of technology based education and training tools has been a specific objective of DELTA, the European Community Programme for the Development of European Learning through Technological Advanced, which should now be converging steadily towards the fulfilment of the expectations expressed by the educational and training communities.

The multiplicity of programmes that has just been described suggests a major effort of rationalisation and coordination from the Community , so that all possible opportunities for streamlining and collaboration are explored. A very recent document presented by the Commission addresses this problem at length in the context of vocational training, proposing a framework of action that also include the exchange of information and experience. The present report, although not directed uniquely to the concern of rationalisation, obviously takes it as a primary issue, making of the network proposed in the following paragraphs what is believed to be a key instrument for increased streamlining and collaboration across the whole spectrum of education and training in the European Community and in the wider Europe.

4.THE ADVENT OF ON-LINE COMMUNITIES

One may distinguish two quite different categories of on-line information systems: the ones were the flow of information is mostly between the system and the individual user, and the ones which operate as a central cross-roads for information exchange. On-line data base systems typify the first category, which is also represented by most of the videotex based services. The second category is illustrated by the so called bulletin board systems (BBSs for short), which provide the key concept for the proposal, in this document, of a low-cost, widely available, network to support Community action in the strongly cross-disciplinary field of technologies in education and training.

Bulletin board systems, also known as computer bulletin boards, begun as on-line spaces where, like in their wall-bound cork counterparts, one could "post up" notices to be read by anyone. From a technical point of view, the setting up of a BBS requires very little: a small computer, connected through an interface to a standard telephone line, and a piece of software that enables outside computers to call and have access to the memory areas where the notices have been put. The shared part of memory that inspired the concept of bulletin board soon gave way to more elaborate memory areas, managed in ways that enabled the setting up of private memory slots: the electronic mailboxes of registered users, i.e. computer based "pigeonholes" were electronic mail messages can be sent and held until the recipient calls and collects them.

The shared access to bulletin board systems and the ease of use of electronic mail led naturally to the creation of BBS spaces for information exchange on specific topics, the so called forums (also known as special interest groups, or, less appropriately, conferences). Some big information services inspired on this principle currently offer to their members hundreds of forums on topics as varied as politics, business management, education, desktop publishing, product support, sports, and entertainment. Although forums vary considerably from BBS to BBS, a common format for a forum includes three types of on-line space: the message board, where members can post up public messages and exchange private electronic mail; the libraries, which contain downloadable text files and software programmes within the forum topic; and the conferencerooms (or just conferences), where debates on special themes within the topic of the forum are conducted and stimulated, over a period of time, by a guest speaker or moderator.

The access to these services by the users is extremely simple. They just need to have their personal computers connected to the telephone network through special low-cost interfaces called modems. Inexpensive communications programmes that drive those modems will dial up automatically the numbers of the nodes they wish to access, and once the communication is established an opening menu will be displayed on their screens. From then on they just need to select on the menu any of the available options, and eventually navigate from menu to menu, in a most intuitive manner, to explore the facilities offered to them. As to the composition of the messages they wish to address to other users or to the system, they just need to resort to the usual commands of conventional word processors. It should be mentioned, to help assessing the magnitude of the challenge contained in the massification of these services in the United States, that their expensive proliferation has driven the leading world manufacturer of personal computers into including a modem at the corresponding communications programme, free or charge, in the micro computer it has just launched for the mass market of the American home consumer (significantly enough, the version of the same computer currently being sold in Europe does not include such facilities).

The person who oversees the activities of a forum, welcoming new members, maintaining the message board and libraries, providing help, and hosting conferences, is called a sysop (short for SYStem OPerator). For the purpose of our document it is useful to stress that running a forum is equivalent to being assigned a memory space in the hard disk of the computer where a BBS is installed. Given the user friendliness of the existing BBS management software, no special technical skills are required from the sysop, whose real competence must be in the topic which is going to be explored in this forum. For instance, a forum on Education for Handicapped Children requires a sysop capable of screening and organising the messages posted up on the message board, of keeping an updated library selection of on-line documents and software relating to the education of handicapped children, and of inviting the appropriate speakers or moderators to conduct the on-line debates that take place throughout the year.

It is also useful to point out that to become a sysop one does not need to be, and usually is not, physically near to the computer where the BBS is installed. In fact, most of the sysops operate in their spare time, from their own homes, using inexpensive personal computers from which they call the computer where their forum is being run. This is the standard way for a sysop to launch new activities (i.e., feed new, inspiring, documents into the forum), read the messages received from the forum users, and carry out the daily or periodic housekeeping and organisation of files.

A further improvement in the BBS concept came about when individual BBSs started to connect to each other on a regular basis, thus constituting networks of BBSs. To decrease the costs of communication while enabling the exchange of messages and files across the world, automated message and file routing became standard facilities of the BBSs, which now carry out their exchanges in compressed files at the hours and through the links that enable lower costs. The two types of facility that became standard to support automated message and file routing are netmail, which handles the messages being exchanged between users connected to different BBSs, and echomail, which enables a user to enter a message into a given BBS and have it echoed to some, or all, of the other BBSs. With these facilities, the users of different BBSs may communicate with each other at a fraction of the costs they might have to support if connecting directly, and they may participate also at low cost, in any events taking place on other BBSs of the network. Of course, echomail conferences can be run on any topic, and plea-for-help services can be made to operate very efficiently if the netmail replies are used in response to echomail requests.

Launched mostly as small enterprises by computer communications enthusiasts, bulletin boards quickly proliferated as extremely active platforms for the exchange and dissemination of information across the world. At a time when endless official debates on the international standardisation of communication services keep many institutions from defining their urgent strategies for communication in the international arena, and when much needed transfrontier services have to contend with different or incompatible technical standards, amateur users of BBS networks exchange all kinds of information across the world, most often from their own homes, with incredible small computers of all types and makes, without requiring anymore standards that the ones already in existence and anymore physical lines than the ones provided by the ubiquitous international telephone network, or, at the most, by the packet switching network. This as been, in fact, one of the major reasons for the choice of the BBS concept as the foundation for the proposed network. It represents, indeed, a paradigm of accessibility to all, off simplicity of use and of independence from geographical, technical or any other barriers that finds no equivalent in the realm of computer communications.

5. THE PROPOSED NETWORK

It is proposed that a European network of computer bulletin boards for the support of education and training be set up, operating at two levels, European and national. The national level may, in turn, accept more than one regional bulletin board. While subsidised by the Commission of the European Communities, the network shall complement the financial needs of its operation by establishing itself as a non-profit commercial venture and seeking revenues from national and European sponsors and clients.

The network will be managed by a head bulletin board, which can be located anywhere in Europe. This node will act as the main contractor with the European Commission, and will be responsible before the European Commission for the good operation of the whole network. The other European nodes of the network will be partners in the contract.

5.1.The network users

On-line access to a node, or to the whole network, shall be made available, in each country, to all parties concerned with the use of technologies in education and training. This will be a very large audience, including policy makers (at national, regional and local levels), teacher and parent associations, teacher training institutions, schools, teacher trainers, teachers, parents, students, the private sector and the general public.

When registering as members of the system, the various types of users will be assigned different access rights to the services available. Thus, for instance, teachers may have access to all forums but a few reserved for policy makers, and students and parents may not have access to forums which are being run for teachers and policy makers. On the other hand, a forum may, whenever it wishes, open some of its services to a broader spectrum of users. This may be the case, for instance, of a conference being run in a forum for policy makers but where the participation of teachers and parents is particularly desired (initiatives of this type may be announced beforehand in the general news panel of the bulletin board, or in the panels available for the various categories of users).

Access rights to some of the services, the right to exchange messages between network nodes, and the rights to run forums or any other services within a bulletin board, or across the whole network, may require the payment of fees. Thus, when a software producer runs a forum on a given node (or across the whole network), he will be charged a fee that covers the expenses and contributes to the revenues of the node (and of the network). On the other hand, a number of users may be entitled to access and run services free of charge when the corresponding expenses are covered, for instance, by subsidies received from the European Commission. This may be the case of a set of teacher training institutions from a number of countries, running a European forum on teacher training, or of a group of schools which propose to run a European on-line exchange programme for a given period of time.

5.2.The network structure

Figure 1 illustrates a simplified diagram describing the proposed network structure. The various nodes may exchange information between each other through both the packet switching and the telephone networks. As calls may be established at any time, from any node to any node, and from any end-user to any node, the geometry of the network, as well as its pattern of usage, are completely variable. The diagram illustrates the six possible types of communication that may take place across the network, i.e., between:

                A - network nodes,
                B - user and his national or regional nodes,
                C - a user and any node outside his region or country,
                D - users connected to the same local node,
                E - users, local and remote, communicating through the same node, and
                F - users communicating remotely through their local nodes.

Although a single, large, European on-line information service could be set up instead of a network of small bulletin boards, a number of reasons favour the establishment of the second type of structure. First of all, as the service is expected to be used by a very large audience in each country or region, the question of addressing such an audience permanently, with a perfect knowledge of the local culture and educational and training reality, is of primary importance. This requires that a small nucleus of educational experts responsible for the management of each node, in each country or region, be capable of animating the activities locally, and of organising most of the initiatives and materials in tune with the local culture and needs. The obvious result is that most of the traffic will take place between the local users and that nucleus. As, at the present stage of technology use in Europe, the on-line traffic coming from individual users is most likely to travel through the telephone network rather than through the packet switching network, the difference in cost between a user connection to a national node and the connection to a service located elsewhere in Europe may be decisive: the inexpensive European service for the masses, which we are aiming at, might easily become an exclusive service for a few!

Another reason in favour of a networked solution is that it makes possible an easier, faster, and cheaper start-up and growth. From a technical point of view, the setting up of a small or medium sized bulletin board system is relatively simple and inexpensive. Provided it is fitted with a convenient hard disk, the microcomputer to be used does not need to be at the cutting edge of technology. It may even be one of the personal computers many institutions are currently putting aside on account of their lower performance or poorer screen resolution. The software needed to turn that computer into a small or medium sized bulletin board is also inexpensive (actually, one of the most popular and better tested packages in existence is available for free, as public domain software). As the growth of such a system, it is quite easy to implement it in small incremental steps, by increasing disk space or connecting other small computers to the initial one, in fine tune with the patterns of demand coming from the user community.

An additional reason for a networked solution relates to the higher levels of entrepreneurship and flexibility that can result from a self-contained technical set up. For instance, a node wishing to provide a new service, like the access to a set of local data bases, may easily implement what is called a "door" to his bulletin board, without the need to depend on a technical decision coming from elsewhere in Europe.

5.3.The role and functions of the network

The major role of the network is to run a broad spectrum of activities supporting and stimulating the involvement of all actors of the educational and training processes, across Europe, in a common effort to increase the knowledge and understanding of how technology can be exploited and managed in education and training.

As the developments of technology, and their social and economic impacts, influence the education and training systems in a multiplicity of ways, the above role should be clearly understood in its polymorphic nature. In particular, the network should take as much as possible a multidimensional approach in the definition of its activities, including its operation as a meeting point between the actors of the European educational and training systems and the participants in the European programmes - like ERASMUS, PETRA, COMETT, LINGUA, EUROTECNET, TEMPUS, FORCE, ARION, IRIS, HELIOS, SCIENCE, BRIDGE, BRITE/EURAM, ESPRIT and DELTA - that, one way or another, cross the boundaries between education, training and technology.

Finally, one should also bear in mind that the building up of a fruitful relationship between the worlds of education and technology - i.e. of demand and supply, as far as the use of technologies in education is concerned - has much to gain if a platform is established to spur exchanges and close collaboration between them. This constitutes another function to be fulfilled by the network, with implications that may be decisive for the development of viable and active European market of educational software, materials and services.

In order to fulfil such a varied set of roles, the network should provide a broad range of functions, including:

• the dissemination of timely, even if scattered, information:

• to decision makers (on developments, programmes, outcomes, resources, strategies, evaluation, policies, events),

• to trainers and teachers (on approaches, techniques, practice, materials, contents, events),

• to parents, students, employers (on opportunities, social impacts, long term consequences, events), and

• to the private sector (on needs, expectations, opportunities, events);
• access to databases of structured and more stable information on the use of technologies in education in the individual Member States , in European projects, and in countries outside the European Communities (databases on institutions, projects, experts, services, materials, documents, opportunities);

• access to the forums being run in the various nodes of the network on subjects as varied as Evaluation, Courseware Development, Teacher Training, Classroom Integration of Technologies, Distance Education, Hypermedia, Education and Training for the Handicapped, Experts Systems in Education and Training, Science Education, Learning History and Geography, Natural Science Education, Vocational Guidance, Standards, Quality in Education and Training;

• the provision of an infrastructure for the exchange of information between the users of all nodes that integrate the network, including the regular routing (every night, in principal) of all relevant information from each node to all the others;

• support, and in some cases the initiative, in the preparation of meetings, conferences, workshops, courses, summer universities (by making possible the early exchange of documents and the joint on-line preparation of manuscripts, or by hosting preliminary on-line debates);

• the supply of a backbone for the running of collaborative projects, such as the development and versionning of courseware and software (the use of the binary file transfer facilities of the bulletin boards enable an extremely effective exchange of software modules, prototypes, software tools produced for the project, code, diagrams, and all forms of analysis and design documentation);

• the supply of a privileged channel for the distribution of teaching materials and provision of interactivity in support of satellite TV based distance training courses;

• the provision of an infrastructure for the joint production of reports and studies for future publication, and support for the translation of textbooks and other documents resulting from EC projects or made available for dissemination by any other country or countries;

• support to the organisation of study visits (by enabling all preparatory contacts, the exchange of information about the contents of the visits, the specificities of the country or institutions being visited, and the professional profiles of the visitors, who may even engage in personal communication before and after the visit takes place);

• the provision of facilities for the establishment of links between schools throughout Europe;

• access to the national administrations of the Member States, which, as active users and suppliers of information, may run forums, or have them run on their behalf (this is not unprecedented, even in the educational world - the Office of Educational Research and Improvement of the United States Department of Education is one of a number of examples);

• the provision of assistance to the users (requests may be answered by the staff of the receiving nodes, be posted up on the message board of the node, or be echoed to the network with a request for help - the response may be a straight answer by someone capable of replying, an indication of who might be of assistance, or the suggestion of a source of information that might be of use).

5.4. The roles and functions of the nodes

The roles to be fulfilled by each node are natural consequences of the roles and functions established above for the whole network. Some of them, however, should be recalled here, in order to facilitate a better understanding of how each individual node is expected to perform. The more relevant ones include:

• managing the message board facilities of the system, so as to enable the setting up, for the various users, of mail boxes with the appropriate levels of access;

• keeping an updated board library, with an inventory of relevant documents for supply (mainly on-line, but also in paper form, when justified) and with a stock of selected public domain software, shareware and demonstration packages available for download;

• keeping up an dynamic programme of activities throughout the year, namely in the form of on-line conferences and debates conducted by top level invited speakers (some of these conferences may lead to the publication of proceedings for wide dissemination);

• stimulating the creation of pertinent special interest groups capable of running their own forums on the board;

• supporting collaborative software development projects across Europe, by complementing the access to its messaging system with a binary filetransfer facility allowing the transfer of software modules, prototypes, tools, and relevant code;

• participating in the regular netmail and echomail services of the network;

• developing a marketing policy to promote its services in the country or region where it operates and, across the network, in the countries or regions where its national services may be required (this policy should include the publication of a paper-based newsletter, for wide dissemination to all interested parties);

• preparing translations, into their own languages, of documents emanating from the network or from projects supported by the network and likely by the present special interest for a wide audience in the countries where they are operating.

• administrating the whole network, under contract with the Commission;

• stimulating the activities of the national and regional bulletin boards;

• giving to the partners all possible assistance regarding their full contribution to, and use of, the European dimension of the network;

• marketing the network facilities across Europe (including in this effort the publication of a newsletter);

• supervising the operation of the netmail and echomail services across the system.

The proposed network is intended for operation with high efficiency and easiness of access at relatively low cost. For this reason, it seems unrealistic to anticipate, at the present stage of development of technology, the provision of any form of systematic language translation in the system. This does not mean that computerised language translation cannot be integrated at a larger stage, when it becomes available with acceptable results and reasonable costs. Nevertheless - and in spite of the fact that, when that will happen, the high degree of computer support afforded by the network will make such an integration quite easy -, it is a facility that should not be foreseen for the near future.

In spite of this, at least temporary, shortcoming, the language issue is one that finds most favourable ground for innovation within the proposed network. Indeed, if one remembers that a forum, in a given, in a given BBS, can be run from anywhere in Europe (in fact, from anywhere in the world), one may easily anticipate, for instance, an interested party from a given country organising on-line conferences or running forums in its own language at a node located in a country where a different language is spoken. One may imagine, for instance, a Spanish speaking forum conducted from Spain, and running on a node in the United Kingdom or in Germany for a British or German audience interested in innovative methods for learning Spanish language and culture. Along the same principle, one may easily conceive the Alliance Française, the British Council, the Göethe Institut, or any other of their counterparts across Europe, running forums in other Member States, or even broadcasting permanently updated educational material to forums they set up in all of those countries.

One aspect regarding specifically the support to foreign language learning is the very flexible use that can be made of the network to launch and maintain projects within the EC programme LINGUA. It should be remembered, in this respect, than apart from providing channels for the exchange of documents and software, the text and binary electronic mail facilities offered by all bulletin boards enable quite fast and efficient joint authorship of documents, as well as of software.

Of course, many of the forums may set up their libraries so as to include documents (and software) in more than one language, and conferences may be organised with invited speakers communicating from any part of the world and expressing themselves in any language. In fact, when the participants can read a number of foreign languages but cannot express themselves in such languages, as is often the case, a conference may easily take place in a blend of languages, each participant writing in his (her) preferred language. Also, in a forum dedicated, for instance, to opportunities for training or further study in the various countries of the Community, it is quite natural to find a library where the documents, prospects, and notices are written in different languages, depending on the countries from where the informations came and where the opportunities exist.

It should be stressed, as well, that is technically straightforward to set up the opening menus of the bulletin boards so that they ask the user in which language he wishes to navigate the system. Thus, he may confidently visit the various forums and libraries, identify any activities or documents written in a language he can read, pop in to a conference that may sound familiar, and eventually browse through the keywords of documents he may wish to download and have professionally translated. This kind of multilingual user interface is, in fact, a quite common practice in the amateur bulletin boards of some countries, when, as is usually the case, the participation of foreign users is actively sought.

Relatively less common, but particularly needed in a network of bulletin boards like the one proposed, is the availability of on-line spell checkers and thesaurus. These are, indeed, most useful in helping people overcome their inhibitions when writing in a foreign language (as well as in their own language, as a matter of fact!).

In addition, on-line multilingual glossaries on the specific subjects of the forums should be made available, not only to facilitate communication between people from different countries, but also to ease the understanding between specialists and non-specialists of the forum topics.

5.6. A role and place for the other EC programmes

From the description given earlier of the various EC programmes that interact with the use of technologies while bearing relevant implications upon the general education and training policies of the Community and of the Member States, one may easily understand now how simple it is to provide, by means of the proposed network, a common platform with three basic assets:

• the one of contributing to the improvement of communication within each one of the programmes;

• the one of spurring the dialogue and stimulating the almost non existent and much needed cross-communication and collaboration between those programmes; and, above all,

• the one of enhancing the relationship between such programmes and the wide world of technology use in education and training, which is represented - in its components of both demand and supply - by the very large and diversified user population of the proposed network.

• it enables the transfer of binary files, lending it self to the exchange of texts, diagrams and pictures of any formats, software modules, prototypes, software tools, spreadsheets, digitised sound, and any other information that can be coded in binary;

• it provides a unique platform for regular on-line exchanges with the world of industry and services, a priceless benefit, not only for educators and trainers, but also for the research teams that operate in the areas of technology use in education and training; and

• it is specifically designed to operate in multilingual and multidisciplinary environments, with the facilities of on-line spell checking, dictionaries, glossaries and thesaurus that have been mentioned in the previous paragraph.

One of the interesting aspects of the proposed network relates to the way in which it may contribute to the establishment of a closer , and mutually advantageous, relationship between the worlds of education and of industry and services. Often requested to subsidise educational ventures for which it can hardly see a tangible return, the private sector may find in a European bulletin board network for the support of education and training a much more visible and rewarding opportunity to achieve its own aims and ends while closely collaborating with the educational world.

This is particularly true, first of all, for the hardware and software companies with a serious commercial interest in the educational sector. For them, the network offers an easy and cost effective way of addressing a large audience specifically targeted to technologies in education and training. Considering the absence of a European journal or of any alternative channel in which to advertise in such a field, the access to the network, even if only for conventional advertisement of products or services, may represent to many companies an already invaluable opportunity.

However, the advantages companies may gain from the use of the proposed network go far beyond the simple access to space for conventional advertisement. Indeed, not only can the advertisement be made much more elaborate and relevant to the user needs, but many other services can be set up in the network without additional difficulty. For instance, when announcing a new software package, a company may make available a demonstration version, to be freely downloaded from the library of a relevant forum. Apart from enabling a much better promotion of the package, this saves the user the inconvenience of having to wait for a mailed copy before he can take an informed decision to buy. When various competing products are available for demonstration, this facility also enables a user to shop around almost instantly, with the obvious convenience of saved searching time and timely decision making.

On-line user support is another extremely important advantage of a network like the one proposed: the simple use of an electronic mailbox enables a firm to respond efficiently to the on-line requests of help and advise received from its clients. This sort of facility, which is already being operated from bulletin boards in a few countries, even enables firms to maintain 24-hour-a-day support services based on the hearing of experienced free-lancers who call the mailbox from time to time and reply directly to the user requests.

A few more examples of uses that may be made of the network by industrial and commercial firms, both to provide and to receive service, include the acceptance of mail orders, replies to enquires about products or services, the searching of lists of calls for tendering (namely the ones put up by national or regional administrations), and the carrying out of market research projects.

In all these examples, and in many others that easily come to mind, one should not forget the added convenience and savings that may result from the flexibility of electronic means. For instance, a user wishing to enquire about a given type of product or service may send a single message, and have it automatically broadcast to the mail boxes of all the relevant firms across the network. Also, as the information exchange is supported by computerised means, all the messages, dates, times, orders, requests, replies, numbers and length of calls - in a word, virtually any kind of data - can be automatically filed by the user, timed, fed into accountancy programmes, processed for invoicing or payment, merged into documents, or used for statistical and previsional purposes.

This whole spectrum of conveniences may easily justify the running of entire forums by some of the more prominent firms, and may thus contribute significantly to the revenues of the network and of its nodes. This may be an important complement to the revenues received for hiring mail boxes, forum areas, public disk space, and network use in general, and may become, after some time, a confortable form of financial self-support for the network and for most of its nodes.

Apart from the firms which hold a particular interest in the worlds of education and training, almost any other firms may take advantage of becoming at least occasional users of the system. On the one hand, they may find it helpful to learn about specialised trainers or training institutions, or about staff training opportunities being offered, they may need to search data bases of people looking for jobs, they may wish to look for consultants in specific areas, like technology based on-the-job training, or they may even find opportunities for their business. On the other hand, they will have a platform to publicise their offerings of jobs, or to advertise any training opportunities they may be making available, for instance, to recent graduates.

If stimulated by a convenient set of activities, the network can also provide a powerful contribution to the strengthening of the cooperation between education and industry, along the lines recommended in a recent report produced by the IRDAC (Industrial Research and Development Advisory Committee) Indeed, the improvement of the general image of industry in the world of education, the improvement of the image of the individual firms "specialist" careers, the stimulation of the interest of more students in specialist subjects, the improvement of the local image of firms which are foreign subsidiaries, the personal development of staff from industry through the involvement in educational establishments, the use of the expertise of teachers seconded to industry to question education and training policy and practice, the contact between industry and young people, and the development of social conscience of the integration between education and the world of work, are examples of activities that can be successfully initiated and, some of them, maintained through the network.

Finally, it is not unlikely that, to the obvious benefit of the user community, new commercial ventures and jobs flourish around the network, namely in the form of specialised consultancy services, run by skilled people who may even be operating from their homes, some of them at the odd hours when specialised support is often more valued.

5.8. Funding, costs and assessment

During the first years of its operation the network should be supported mainly by EEC funds, particularly to cover the activities that enhance the European dimension and lead to substantial added value, but the strategy for financing should be aimed at the achievement of financial self-support after a pilot period of a few years. The Ministries of Education, of Employment and of Youth of the individual Member States may also represent important sources of funding, namely to support the wide range of services that the nodes will be providing in the national interest. Other sources of income, to be explored as the network consolidates, include fees paid by the industrial and commercial users, subscription and connection charges paid by individual users whose activity is covered by public or EC subsidies, licensing rights of the publications resulting from the activities of the network and financial contributions from public and private sources. The future achievement of financial self-support does not exclude of course, keeping the Commission, and many of its programmes, as privileged clients of the network.

The staffing of the nodes may vary considerably from node to node, depending on the needs and patterns of usage in each country or region. Typically, a node will have, apart from its head and his (or her) administrative support, a small body of experts on education and training that help him (or her) defining and running a dynamic programme of on-line activities. If a high degree of professionalism is put into the management of the programme, so as to avoid any operation gaps, this people can easily operate from their own homes, in their spare time, without even needing to leave in the same town. This basic team will, intern, be responsible for the identification of highly qualified sysops to run the various forums. The sysops of non-commercial forums will, in principle be hired by the node for agreed periods of time. In the small nodes, the head of the node and his team may run all the forums without needing to resort to any external sysops. Mainly during its launching period, but also occasionally, throughout the year, namely when upgrading the system, the node will have convenients incounting with the help of an expert on computers and communications.

Apart from the question of staffing, two more specific issues need to be addressed when analysing the network from the point of costs: equipment and communications. As far as the equipment is concerned, it seems wise to start with reasonably modest configurations, since the lack of habits of regular on-line access in most of the countries suggests likeliness of a slow start. So, unless a preliminary survey of the market suggests a concentration of traffic in a node from the very beginning, the microcomputer to be used, at least in the initial years of operation of the node, does not need to be at the cutting edge of technology, and may even be one of the machines many institutions are putting aside as outdated. Also, the software needed to turn that computer into a small or medium sized bulletin board is also relatively inexpensive, and may even be free, if a popular public domain package is used. As to the growth of such a system, it may be quite easy to implement it in small incremental steps, by increasing disk space or connecting other small computers to the initial one, in fine tune with the patters of demand coming from the using community.

A discrimination of the components of the communication costs that are met by the nodes and by the users may be carried out by referring to the diagram of Figure 1.

• The communication between nodes (type A) is paid by the originating node. For cheap operation it should use the packet switching network at the lower-cost speeds available (1200 or 2400 bits per second, at present, for communication between European countries) and compress the files before transmission. It should be noted, however, that, if technical reasons inhibit the access to the packet switching network by a node, the communication can still be established through the telephone network, although at comparatively higher costs.

• When a user communicates with a node (communication types B, C, D and E), he meets the charges of his call. He may use either the packet switching network or the telephone network.

• If a user sends a message to remote by dialling up his local node (communication type F) - that is, if he resorts to netmail or echomail -, the communication costs between nodes are charged to that local node. This implies that each node must establish a policy for such cases, e.g. charging the users for the service provided, or defining limits for the length of time (or number of kilobytes) to be allocated per day or per week to a subsidised user.

• the electronic transfer of a full double-spaced A4 page of text, which holds roughly 2000 characters, takes about 10 seconds;

• if the same text is send as a compressed file, the transfer time may be reduced to between 2 and 5 seconds;

• a full-screen black-and-white picture may take a few seconds to be transferred;

• a full-screen colour picture takes usually between 1 and 5 minutes;

• a public-domain, fully operational, educational programme occupying 180 Kbytes of memory may be transferred, in compressed form, in about 12 minutes;

One of the interesting aspects of the proposed network relates to the way in which it lends itself to easy and objective assessment. As far as costs are concerned, the major components - manpower and communication bills - are easily computed. As to the benefits, most of the measurable ones can be periodically calculated by simply operating on data that are fed automatically into the log files of the network computers: number of users of each node, average connection times, number of members of each forum, average length of on-line sessions on the various topics, number of conferences, number of people contributing to them, average length of their contributions, number of files downloaded, number of messages exchanged between users, number of messages exchanged between countries, preferred topics in the exchanges between countries, preferred foreign correspondents for the users in a given country, number and average length of messages written in a given language, number of users belonging to the various professional profiles, patterns of communication between users belonging to the same and to different professional profiles, are just a few examples of indicators that can be calculated in almost no time to monitor permanently the degree of accomplishment of the network and of its nodes.

Of course, by combining some of the above indicators into more elaborated ones, and by cross-correlating a few of them, the assessment may be taken much further, and even transcend the simple evaluation of the success of the network, to become a valuable source of information on patterns and trends in all matters that relate to technology and education and training across the European Community and the wider Europe.

6. CONCLUSIONS

A proposal has been put forward for the creation of a network of human competence to support Community action on the use of technologies in education and training. A number of unusual features make of this network a cost-effective and most flexible platform for the exchange and creation of knowledge and information between the members of the very large European population concerned with the improvement of education and training, in all their multidisciplinary aspects. The network promotes innovative and effective forms of association and collaboration between industry and education, bridging the functional and cultural gaps that traditionally separate those two worlds. It also provides a unique meeting point where the actors of a large range of European programmes, representing the worlds of education, training, technology, research, industry and services, can engage into most productive forms of dialogue and collaboration. It aims at the achievement of full financial self-support after a consolidation period of a few years, and carries in its technical infrastructure the means to monitor in permanence its own performance and impacts.

References

Books, reports, and other documents, of all natures (including on-line files), helped the author develop and consolidate the ideas expressed in this report. A list of the most relevant ones is provided below, both to give an overview of the influences received and to help the reader interested in becoming more acquainted with the details of some of the subjects discussed in the report:

BIX, BIX user manual, BIX/McGraw-Hill Inc., Peterborough, 1990.

Bowen C. and Peyton D., The Complete ElectronicBulletin Board Starter Kit, Bantham Books, New York, August 1988.

Calnek L., Networking in Education, EMIS Consulting, Regina, (available as on-line document UNIBAS.TXT), Education Forum, CompuServe, March 4, 1988.

Centre de Recherche Public Henri Tudor, RESTENA: A short presentation of the Réseau Téléinformatiquede l’Education Nationale, colloquy Telematics: an Opportunity for Intercultural Education and Communication, Luxembourg, March 26-28 1990.

Commission of the European Communities, Task Force: Human Resources, Education, Training and Youth, Guide to the EuropeanCommunity programmes in the field ofEducation, Training, Youth, Brussels, November 1989. 

Commission of the European Communities, Memorandum on the Rationalisation and Coordination of Vocational Training Programmes at Community Level, COM(90) 334 final, Brussels, 21 August 1990. 

CompuServe, CompuServe Information Service Users Guide, CompuServe Inc., Columbus, 1988. 

CompuServe, CompuServe Magazine, CompuServe Inc., Columbus (many issues). 

Council of Europe, Using the New Technologies to Create Links Between Schools Throughout the World, Colloquy on computerised school links, Exeter, 17-20 October 1988. 

Dvorak J.C. and Anis N., Dvorak’s guide to PC telecommunications, Osborne McGraw-Hill, Berkeley, 1990. 

Dylander B., Proposal for Setting Up a Euryclée Association, Danish Center for Education and Information Technology, Copenhagen, September 3, 1990. 

Education Forum, CompuServe, List of education BBSs, (on-line documents EDUBBS.TXT), Education Forum, CompuServe, May 10, 1987. 

Education Forum, CompuServe,: Statewide BBS networking in Montana the Big Sky Telegraph Project, on-line conference with special guest Frank Odaz, April 21, 1988 (on-line document BIGSKY.CO), Education Forum, CompuServe, May 8, 1988. 

ERIC Clearinghouse on Information Resources, On-line Information Services for Secundary School Students: A Current Accessement, (on-line document DIGO78.IR), Education Forum, CompuServe, June 1989. 

Figueiredo A., Some considerations about teacher training and joint product development, research and evaluation, and support structures within a new european programme for technology utilization in education, 28 November 1987. 

Figueiredo A., A Framework for Research within a New European Programme for Technology Utilization in Education, 25 January 1988.

France Telecom, L’indispensable pour communiquer avec son ordinateur, Marabout, 1990. 

Grossi I., The Euryclée Database Project on NIT in Education for the Italian School System, EURIT90, Herning, Denmark, April 23-27, 1990. 

Hedtke J. V., Using Computer Bulletin Boards, MIS Press, Portland, 1990. 

Jarrett D. (editor), The comms book, Sigma Press, Wilmslow, U.K., 1989.

Lake D., Proposal for the Creation of a School-based Messaging System, (on-line document COMMUN.BBS), Education Forum., CompuServe.

Mason R. and Kaye A., Mindweave: Communication, Computers and Distance Education, Pergamon Press, 1990.

Menning M., L’indispensable pour MINITEL, Marabout, 1989. 

Ministère de L’Education Nationale et Ministère des Affaires Culturelles, Draft Resolutions of the colloquy Telematics: an Opportunity for Intercultural Education and Communication, Luxembourg, March 26-28 1990.

NICET, New Information Technology in Schools, Report of activities 1 Sept 1989 to 31 Jan 1990. 

Ohler J., Why Distance Education? The New Student and the Transformation of Schooling (on-line document OHLER.PAP), Education Forum, CompuServe, May 1990. 

Pelon P., L’Europe de l’Information, ESF éditeures, Paris, 1990. 

Platteeuw E. and Moyson M., The Role and Function of the Euryclée Centers (electronic message on Telecom Gold), Euryclée Flanders, July 20, 1990. 

Poly A., NEPTUNE, Information (draft nº3), Février 1988. 

Schmidt K. H., An Introduction to Telecommunications in Education, pre-conference paper prepared for the colloquy Telematics, an Opportunity for Intercultural Education and Communication, Gateway, Luxembourg, March 26-28 1990. 

Steele R., New Information Technologiesin Schools - an Overview of the Commissions Programme 1983-90, May 1990. 

Steele R., Strategy Approaches forthe Use of Information and CommunicationTechnologies in Education and Training, Report, October 1990.

Unità Italiana Euryclea, Banca DatiEURYCLEA - manuale di riferimento, CINECA, Dipartimento di Tecnologia dell’Informazione, Casalecchio di Reno, Bologna, Giugno 1990.