EUROPEAN SCHOOLNET NEWS ISSUE 2006/16

IMPORTANT CHANGES AT EUN
Earlier this month Ulf W Lundin announced that he is leaving his post as Executive Director of the European Schoolnet. On 21 September 2006, the Board of Directors and the Steering Committee confirmed the appointment of Marc Durando as Executive Director at their meeting in Brussels .

Ulf’s departure comes at the end of a period in which he saw through the development of European Schoolnet (EUN) from a vision to the thriving and respected organisation it is today. EUN was set up in 1997 following a decision by Ministers of Education. The full European operation started in September 1998 when the EUN Office was set up in Brussels

Marc Durando, EUN new executive director Marc Durando takes up his duties as Executive Director on 25 September 2006 and, together with the Chair, Odile de Chalendar and the Steering Committee, will lead EUN’s work to continue the promotion of the European dimension in education and to put ICT at the heart of teaching and learning in Europe’s schools…

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XPLORA RELEASES NEW PORTAL, NEW KNOPPIX DVD
European Schoolnet has launched at the end of September a new and improved Xplora portal as well as a new version of its Xplora DVD Knoppix, providing further and improved tools to the science teaching community.

The new portal includes enhanced usability and accessibility, clearer navigation and cleaner user interface while the DVD, now in its 1.2 version, provides updated science education material and software useful for science teachers.
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FIRST WEB EXPERIMENT IN EUROPE DELIVERED TO GYMNASIUM ISERHAGEN
Xplora, the European gateway to science education set up by European Schoolnet, has delivered to Gymasium Isernhagen in Hannover, Germany the first web experiment in Europe.

The ceremony took place on 8 September 2006 with the Mayor of Isernhagen, representatives from the commune and the developers. The web experiment was made possible using Remote Controlled Laboratories (RCL) developed by the University of Kaiserslautern and INTEL..
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NEW RELEASE OF THE EUN COMMUNITY
An improved version of the EUN Community portal was released over the summer. Now in its seventh year, the EUN Community is a free online collaborative platform aimed at schools and institutions that want to set up and run collaborative online projects.
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MELT TO KICK OFF IN OCTOBER
MELT will officially start on 1 October 2006 and will have its kick-off meeting on 12-13 October in Brussels. MELT is an eContentplus programme which brings together 20 partners from 14 countries. MELT (a Metadata Ecology for Learning and Teaching) is a Content Enrichment project coordinated by EUN.
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CALIBRATE PARTNERS MEET IN WARSAW
CALIBRATE partners had their third project meeting in Warsaw on 7-8 September 2006. The aim of the meeting was to take stock of the work done for the launch of the first version of the CALIBRATE portal, for the 70 schools participating in the project validation exercise.

The project is on target to link six learning content repositories from Ministries of Education by the end of September 2006.
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LIFE PROJECT SURVEYS TEACHERS’ ACCESS TO LEARNING RESOURCES
A recent LIFE survey found that only 30% of surveyed learning resources repositories in Europe contain resources matching national or local curriculum requirements. The LIFE surveys attempts to study the way teachers access and search digital learning resources.

To complement this survey, Insight has launched a poll to find out if teachers look for learning resources that match the curriculum provided by or if they have other search criteria.
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ETWINNING CSS PUBLISHES THREE NEW BOOKS
During the summer months two sets of publications, relating to eTwinning have been published, the eTwinning Book titled ‘Learning with eTwinning’ and the first in the series of papers produced by the Pedagogical Advisory Group on ‘Reflections on eTwinning’.
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ETWINNING WORKING GROUP TWO MEETS IN BRUSSELS
The first eTwinning meeting of the new school year took place in Brussels on 7 September 2006 between the Central Support Service (CSS) and representatives of the National Support Services (NSS). The meeting brought together members of the eTwinning Work Group two which deals with matters of pedagogy and quality issues.
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EUN SUBMITS PROPOSALS FOR A GRANT TO EUROPEAN ASSOCIATION
European Schoolnet has responded to the call for a grant to European Association. The European Association grant purpose is to support the functioning of association active in the field of education and training.

The EUN proposal requested financial support for three aspects of ongoing policy and practice work in strand 2 of the EUN Work Programme.
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EUN SUBMITS PROPOSALS FOR EXTENSION OF ETWINNING SERVICES
Over the summer, European Schoolnet has submitted a proposal to the tender for an extra contact for eTwinning (2006-2007). It concerns the extension of the Central Support Services for eTwinning provided by EUN for the year 2006-2007. The additional services covered in the proposal include organising eTwinning development workshops for teachers, an eTwinning camp, eTwinning publications and a further set of eTwinning events.
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Upcoming EUN meetings:
27-29 September: ICT Cluster peer learning visit to Luxembourg
12 - 13 October: PIC meeting (The Hague)
12 - 13 October: MELT kick-off meeting (Brussels)
29 September - 1 October: Pedagogical Development Workshop (Nottingham)
19 - 21 October Pedagogical Development Workshop (Lisbon)
20 October: Board of Directors (Brussels)
3-4 November: ESLN final conference (ESHA conference Rome)
14 November: Steering Committee (Brussels)
17 - 19 November Pedagogical Development Workshop (Malmo)
23 November eMAPPS.com project review (Helsinki)
5 December: CSS-NSS Meeting (Brussels)
6 December: General Assembly EUN Partnership ( Brussels)
6 December: Presidium (Brussels)
7-8 December: EMINENT: European Schoolnet 10th year anniversary conference (Bruges, Site Oud Sint-Jan, Belgium)
19 December Calibrate project review (Brussels)
8 or 9 January 2007: Steering Committee (London)

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