Caterina Gasparini

There are a growing number of initiatives that try to bring together schools, teachers and students from different countries. Web based projects are undoubtedly one of the most powerful teaching tools in the next future.

Despite of recent Virtual School closure,  European Schoolnet is one of the most successful European web based initiatives. MyEurope, E-Twinning or Spring Day in Europe are projects that try to promote the European dimension at the schools. Global Gateway is a British web site that tries to enable teachers and students to engage in partnerships.

However, in the future, we have to go further. What about on line lessons prepared by teachers from different countries? How enriching would be to work with colleagues that come from different traditions and styles of teaching!

Internet is globalising education and, therefore, students will learn in a new learning environment. This change will go beyond students forums and will be very positive for the most gifted and talented students.

I agree on the importance of having students from different countries cooperating and actually meeting on the Internet. The Springday event we organized in 2003 in my school was based on a series of videoconferences with students from the UK, Sweden, Turkey and another school in Italy to discuss issues such as the European Constitution, European values, European languages, etc. Schools sent each other the questions they had prepared a few days before the event so as to get ready to give their answers during the videoconference.

It worked perfectly well above our expectations and the debate developed beyond the original questions to include values such as tolerance, mutual understanding, immigration, peace and war (it was a hot question at the time), etc. Students interacted freely, with no control from their teachers who did not take part in the debate and it was extraordinary to see and hear young people who had never met or spoken to each other before that day speak "the same language", compare their ideas and find they all agreed on the importance of common values such as peace and tolerance. The event concluded with invitations to "actually meet" and continue the dialogue.

The vast majority of material on the Internet is not designed for pupils of a school age and unless pupils are taught the skills necessary to search the internet effectively they often become frustrated as they search in vain. (..) However the most pressing concern is the passivity of many pupils involved in Internet research. The temptation to cut and paste chunks of unread text is seemingly too hard to resist for many pupils resulting in the acquisition of knowledge without the processing that is so vital for a deeper understanding.

I find the method described extremely accurate and precise. However, if selecting and limiting the number of the sites to be used can prove to be very useful with younger students who need more guidance, more experienced learners should be left free to use as many web resources as they need, provided they list all the sites used in their research.

I don't think that cutting and pasting activities are so passive as they imply thinking skills such as organising and summarizing, which are usually present in every research activity. To what extent the product is original or not is another question, but textbooks or paper resources present the same problem as ICT ones.

What I meant by this was that the traditional paradigm of education is of a teacher standing at the front of the class transmitting knowledge to his or her students. Behind the teacher will be a visual aid. Traditionally this was a blackboard but over the next few years it will become a whiteboard. This pattern is indeed unchanged for over 2,000 years. It is a model that was used by the Greeks (although Socrates rebelled against this model).  If an Ancient Greek could be transported into the 21st century, a great deal of what he saw would be highly confusing. The one thing he would recognize immediately would be a school classroom.

"Perhaps with the increased personalization and individualization of learning, we can return to a Socratic dialogue between novices and experts in a mass education system rather than in one where education was for the privileged minority (...). One of the significant features of dialogue is that it emphasizes collective, as opposed to solitary, activity." (Michelle Selinger, Connected Schools, Cisco Systems)

I think that these words express the essence of education and the changes taking place in education now. Students teaching other students, students teaching their own teacher because they have become expert in a specific field, four-year-old children sharing knowledge with their own grandparents should be the normal practice of a teaching/learning process which will never end as it is based on dialogue and mutual exchange.

The fact that the information is now coming at us in digital form, and often in the form of sounds and pictures, doesn't really change this fundamental task we've got as teachers.

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I agree, but the question is complex. Not only are we overloaded with information, but it comes in different forms and teachers should take account of this fact. This makes their task, which has not changed, more complicated: they have to be able to access information in the same forms as their students do and this involves becoming ICT users. Not all teachers agree on this aspect of teaching, some tend to refuse learning how to use ICT in general and at school in particular.

Also the question of how much ICT literate a teacher should be is open to a lot of different interpretations: how much does a teacher need to know about a kind of software in order to use it appropriately?

John,

Please, what does TES stand for?

We badly need a dictionary of acronyms 

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TES stands for Times Educational Supplement

http://www.tes.co.uk/

I can also take care of women from Russia provided I can cope with this huge task …….

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Maybe you already know about the Russian airwomen who flew bombers during WW2 in the war skies of Europe. There was nothing like that in either the American or the British Air Forces. The Germans called them "the night witches". It seems that only Queen Elizabeth's father knew about their deeds and sent the Russian government some presents which they never received.

My source is in Italian:

Marina Rossi, Le streghe della notte - Storie e testimonianze dell' aviazione femminile in U.R.S.S. (1941-1945),

Ed. Unicopli, 2005, 192 pag, 16 euro

Although we don’t want evaluation to become a bureaucratic monstrosity, I think that it is important that we have more than just a set of numbers and ticks for the evaluation. Ideally there should be reflection and constructive comment/suggestions from participants. It would be enormously helpful if everyone involved in the project thus far could post some reflections on the Toulouse seminar, the project thus far, and their thoughts on future priorities, directions, things to keep in mind. These comments are much more helpful than grades/ticks in terms of providing a basis for formative evaluation

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Thank you all for inviting me to take part in the meeting: I found it very interesting and I think it is a good example of how European projects should be led (my compliments to Richard). The general impression one gets is that you have set clear objectives and adopted appropriate methods to reach them.

Anyway, the fact that you have all known each other for a long time before starting this project gives you the opportunity not to lose much time in getting things agreed. This is a pretty ideal situation for a project.

The question of evaluation is one of the crucial aspects of all European projects for they really involve producing lots of paper that teachers, rightly, find less important than the project content itself. I have rapidly read the form attached by Richard and I think that points and ticks will represent anyway a meaningful evaluation, though I think there should always be the opportunity of adding some personal comments (about aspects not taken into account or no more than 2/3 suggestions for future events of the type).

Another priority, as Terry suggested, is always keeping in mind all the features of the final "product" you are expected to realize on the basis of your proposal: this does not mean some aspects cannot be changed, provided there is a good explanation for changing them. There is always a distance between the original proposed result and what is actually realized in the end: I think that's the best feature of all projects!

The new paradigm: learning by sharing connected knowledge

Teachers are called to change their attitude to ICT, which should not be considered a tool but be integrated into their teaching. Michael Young, the founder of the UK Open University, saw teachers as educational companions who accompany students on part of their learning through life. The stress is less on the content of learning than on the learning process itself, which must teach young people to become expert learners. The final target is learning to learn and the quality of the learning process is more important than the quantity of knowledge imparted.

FROM INFORMATION TO KNOWLEDGE

“We are living in a Knowledge society, in which connectivity allows us to access all kind of information at unprecedented speed and in multiple format” (Michelle Selinger - Executive Advisor Education – Cisco Systems)

Connectivity is our present and our future: young people know that and are used to living in a digital, web-based world in which they are constantly in contact with other people and communicating via emails, SMS text messaging, chats, etc. They are also naturally multitasking and able to write an email while watching TV, listening to music, etc.

However, the way we get information raises several issues concerning its quantity and quality.

We are being overloaded with an incredible amount of information, from which it seems difficult to select what we are looking for. Besides, not always can we immediately assess the value of the information we get. Young people in particular tend to move from one screen to another, whether it is a TV screen to a PC screen, without making great distinction between them: at the same time the differences between virtual reality and non-virtual reality seem to be less definite, the boundaries between fiction or game and reality are less clear, so that it may become nearly impossible to separate them.

In this scenario the main task of school is to teach learners to:

• locate relevant information and judge the credibility of sources,

• become experts learners,

• learn how to think critically.

CONNECTED INTELLIGENCE

“Rather than thinking of cognition as an isolated event that takes place inside one’s head, cognition should be looked at as a distributed phenomenon, one that goes beyond the boundaries of a person to include environment, artifacts, social interactions, and culture” (E. Hutchins & J. Hollan)

According to one of the principles of distributed cognition, in our world cognitive events are not encompassed within a head but happen in the interactions among many brains. Consequently, distributed cognitive processes are the key to select information and build knowledge. Connectivity accelerates the process through the volume of interactions which can be activated. If the Web is a shared medium linking each type of contents, the Internet enables one-to-one, one-to-all and all-to-all connectivity to be used for sharing knowledge.

The process is:

• connective but not collective,

• intersubjective, involving direct person-to-person interactions,

• collaborative rather than competitive,

• promoting autonomy within the connection.

The process is at the origin of Virtual Communities and Forums, where often firsthand information is shared in order to acquire real knowledge through exchange and collaboration.

THE NEW PARADIGM OF LEARNING

“WHAT, HOW AND WHY ONE NEEDS TO KNOW” (J. Hollan)

The sentence could originate the following question: “What, how and why school needs to teach in order to reflect the world outside?”

1. THE ACTORS OF THE LEARNING PROCESS

All trends go into the direction of:

• connected intelligence, because computers make minds work together;

• learning communities of learners, experts, tutors, open and enlarging outside schools to include institutions, cities and countries;

• new roles: schools as learning hubs and teachers as knowledge managers;

• no age-related or grade-related but competence-related classes

• curricula developing through a community need rather than a national dictate. In particular European curricula seem to be possibly developing along two paths, one concerning the whole European community, which involves discovering the fundamental values on which European identity and the idea of Europe was born, the other taking into consideration local aspects. The “Oral history” project, where local people act as oral sources, is an example of how local human resources can be integrated into the curriculum.

2. THE RESOURCES

They should have the following features:

• multimedia: ICT makes it possible to examine and also analyse simultaneously different representations of the same content, which can be presented in various formats on different multimedia supports (texts, pictures, photos, diagrams, maps, timelines, statistics, videos, graphics, audio documents, etc.).

http://www.makingthemodernworld.org.uk/ is an example of how various types of material can be presented together dynamically.

• incompleteness (or unfinished state): the education resources published on the Internet should be shared and accessible also to be modified, updated, corrected, developed, widened.

• flexibility: the content should be made available in small units, and filed into a database. So it would be possible to organize it according to a plurality of criteria of pertinence and recover it also in a non–linear way through different approaches. The content could be assembled either by the teacher or the learner.

• interactivity: information is not presented but knowledge is “discovered”. Interactivity is not identified with the physical activities like clicking, dragging or typing in required when using ICT material, but with the mental activities involved. Learning by using ICT implies a lot of mental processes which help develop mental attitudes and skills. Presentations require the ability to have a clear view of the global content so as to be able to organise it into segments. Linking and mindmap building develop the ability to organise, classify, summarize, connect pieces of knowledge, find solutions.

• virtuality: teacher and learner can meet in flexible (not fixed) virtual time and space in addition to traditional classrooms and tutorials. Besides, also real learning space inside schools should be differentiated: there should be lecture theatres for talks to large groups, classrooms where it is impossible for teachers to take centre stage, small group rooms and quiet rooms.

3. THE LEARNING PROCESS

It tends to be:

• active + cooperative = interactive;

• connected (not isolated) and networked (but not collective);

• student-driven;

• based on intelligence instead of memory;

• problem-based;

• in the form of an open project or a discovery, with no predetermined correct solutions;

• creative, involving students as designers and producers of teaching materials;

• cyclical (not linear): open and developing like an enlarging spiral, to include more LEVELS of skills, knowledge and expertise according to the level of competence of the learners as in video games, where different levels of competence are required to progress. Knowledge is enlarged along two dimensions: in depth - from simplicity to complexity - and in width through links. This type of structure should be reproduced in the resources provided on the Internet;

• cross curricular: it might involve the blurring of subject boundaries;

• personalized, differentiated and flexible, so that learning can be tailored to meet the different needs, taking account of different learning styles and learning preferences or interests, but also of different learning paces.

ICT TO EDUCATE FUTURE HISTORIANS?

“Under electronic conditions, the delay between project and realization is shortening” (Derrick De Kerchove)

With a descriptive, not prescriptive approach the following tools could be used:

• web quests;

• simulations, to be realized also by means of videoconferences, chats, which would make them even more interactive;

• games;

• a preponderance of open projects, with no predetermined correct solutions (project area).

Learning through open projects in particular would be really student-driven and could be organized according to the following guidelines:

• history would be discovered by teams of learners who would produce material in order to share their discoveries with the learning community. This would increase the motivation of the students, who would have a really active role in the learning process;

• students would have to analyse sources, evaluate and select information, check its truthfulness, produce their own material. This implies the availability of a great amount of resources, but requires that they practice personal information processing through analysis, evaluation and synthesis, which leads to the development of critical thinking;

• the work plan would include the following phases:

- providing basic/essential input /information;

- activating learning through cooperative discovery;

- providing more information on demand;

- publishing the end result.

From a behavioural point of view, this pedagogical model encourages participation and collaboration and promotes autonomy and responsibility.

The site http://www.malignani.ud.it/WebEnis/aer/sezione/index.htm is an example of material realized after the model described: students were given the main task (presenting the Aeronautical Engineering Department of their school) with the list of the required content and technical specifications. Apart from the preliminary phase, when the project coordinator collaborated with the students to form the groups and identify the persons responsible for the whole work and for the work of each group in a pyramid-like structure, the whole work was managed and realized by the students autonomously under the tutorship of their teachers who were ready to provide additional explanations and advice.

POSSIBLE PROBLEMS

1. TIME

Working by projects takes time at first, which may come into conflict with the necessity of covering the whole syllabus. Alternating “normal” teaching with project activities can be adopted with the aim of introducing new teaching models gradually. The time spent will be recovered when students learn how to discover knowledge, develop critical thinking and become more autonomous.

2. ASSESSMENT

Education should focus on learning outcomes that are measurable and demonstrable but it shouldn’t lock schools into a rigid curriculum structure. Exams where students have to write about topics could be replaced by the presentation of their education products: the stress would be more on doing than on writing. It seems anyway important to set minimum/basic objectives in terms of skills, knowledge and competence.

3. EQUIPMENT.

Technology should be accessible, appropriate and reliable and there should be teachers or technicians available to troubleshoot and maintain the infrastructure.

A number of people have mentioned Comenius as a source of funding. The ICT4LT project, which I have mentioned several times in this Forum, succeeded in obtaining funding (Phase 1) under Lingua A (European Cooperation Programmes for Language Teacher Training (1999-2000). Following restructuring of the EC funding programmes, we were advised to apply for an extension of the funding (Phase 2) under Comenius 2.1, Training of School Education Staff (2001). The main outcome of the project, a (free) collection of Web resources, can be viewed at http://www.ict4lt.org

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Essentially, I think the message that I am conveying is that this successful project was subject-driven and content-driven, not technology-driven.

In fact, if it had been technology-driven, it should have been proposed as a Minerva project. I think I read you have also worked for the European Commission as an evaluator of project proposals, so you must have quite a lot of experience in the field. I think the project management of the Lingua and Comenius Projects you mentioned was very good.

I have just a little experience for I submitted an Observation and Innovation Proposal (which was not approved) in May 2002 and started preparing a Minerva which was never finished. Then I wrote a Comenius 1.2, which was approved, and I have just submitted a Leonardo.

I think the starting point for every project is a careful identification and definition of the needs the project is addressing: do you agree?

Establish that there is a NEED for a Virtual School of the type that you propose. Conduct a proper needs analysis among potential staff and students and find out if such a school will really be in DEMAND. If you cannot come up with concrete evidence that there is such a need and a demand, a funding proposal will not get anywhere.

I am sorry, I think I was to first to use the words "not paid for" on the thread about the end of the VS. I just used those words because I once heard a teacher declare that she found it right to have the time spent to produce the material somehow rewarded.

I felt astonished, for I thought that having the opportunity of collaborating with the VS was rewarding enough.

At the same time I don't think at all it was a matter of being paid which brought the VS to an end.

I think the VS was simply not as efficient or productive as expected with respect to the money invested on it. So it had to be closed, but, as John says, collaboration can go on.

The new paradigm: learning by sharing connected knowledge

Teachers are called to change their attitude to ICT which should not be considered a tool but be integrated into teaching. Michael Young, the founder of the UK Open University, saw teachers as educational companions who accompany students on part of their learning through life. The stress is less on the content of learning than on the learning process itself, which must teach young people to become expert learners. The overall goal is to teach students “to learn how to learn” and the quality of the learning process is even more important than the quantity of knowledge itself. ICT is fundamental in the process not only because it makes it possible to present content on different multimedia supports at the same time and organise it in non-linear sequences but because it involves adopting a really interactive approach to learning. Interaction goes beyond the single learner and becomes cooperation, because the Web is a shared medium on which to share knowledge, information and the learning process itself.

Using examples on the Internet I hope to suggest what and how dynamic real-time developing historical education resources could be provided and shared by the learning community.

This is why I liked the idea of the Virtual School as it gave an opportunity to collaborate with teachers in other countries. Great as these meetings were, the primary objective, as far I was concerned, was to influence what went on in the classroom. (...)

What the VS did that was important was to put teachers together. This enabled us to share ideas, which in turn influenced our teaching.

John, I think you have come to the point here.

I still find it amazingly wonderful how teachers from different countries with different education systems can have the same ideas about teaching and learning. I think that the great meaning of the VS was to make teachers of the same subject meet and give them to opportunity of comparing curricula and all the other aspects of teaching in their countries.

(Anyway, actual meetings are always important, I discovered a few weeks ago that a Finnish teacher I had cooperated with on a "virtual" project is a man and not a woman as I had always thought. This doesn't seem to have influenced the quality of our work: could it be a topic for a thread?)

That's specific to England or the UK. My experience of the VS was of some very committed teachers, some of them, but not all, also talented at producing learning materials - but working in an unstructured and casual way, with no real sense of a shared purpose or audience. Worse, there was no real understanding of open and common standards.

I don't regret the killing off of the VS as it had become. I very much regret, and even resent, the way that my country and its agencies find squillions of pounds to waste with large organizations, but cannot do anything to secure and sustain the most talented of its teacher-writers.

Several friends have Web sites that, until recently, were free to all users. Now, in order to sustain their work, they have found themselves succumbing to the temptation to sell subscriptions, and thereby exclude many of their former users. I don't blame them, but I wish our state could find a way to pay them to keep the stuff open. I won't be doing what my friends have had to do (happily, I have no need to do so) - I will keep my learning materials free to the world. But it's no thanks to the UK's ministry and its agencies.

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Right, I agree. My experience with the Virtual School has been very short, officially starting in June 2004 to finish about a year later. The reason why there were only 2 Italian teachers in the VS before I joined it was that the Ministry or the Italian Agency in charge of selecting the teachers had never decided how to do it and so the few who joined had to leave because of lack of funding. I still have got no official appointment from the Italian Agency or the Ministry, although my participation in the only meeting I went to was financially covered (my work was not, nor did I expect to have it paid for, because I would have done it all the same and I hope I will go on doing it in the future).

I agree with Andrew when he writes that perhaps there was no clear agenda concerning all the teachers and departments involved, "no real sense of a shared purpose or audience", perhaps because the audience was too large and probably it was difficult to set common standards, but the purpose should have been clear to all of us and the use of ICT should have been mandatory.

This does not apply to my personal experience because the department I worked in set clear rules in its first and probably last meeting and I think they were respected.

I also resent the way national ministries spend our money and I am worried about the future because the VS was a structured active team, but European Projects like E-HELP have to be written and approved and do not last more than 2 or 3 years: what after? They may become isolated stars in a dark sky, while what we need is a systemic view and the opportunity of acting in a systematic way.

My choice in English:

Leonard Cohen

Bob Dylan

Johnny Cash

in French:

Jacques Brel

Leo Ferré

Georges Brassens

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My favourite Italian one:

Fabrizio De Andrè.

He also translated some songs by Brassens and Cohen.

One of the reasons why I come to the forum is to meet other people and read their opinions. I work in a school but there is not much time between classes to exchange ideas, or we teachers spend that time talking about anything but our job.

So I find it very interesting and useful to read what teachers from all over the world think about education, school systems, etc.

(I must also confess that, as a teacher of English, I find the forum an excellent language resource as an example of REAL English, which is not exactly what is being taught and learnt in Italian schools at present!)

I don't know if the forum can be improved, I find it so good as it is: maybe sometimes polls on special topics could be done to involve people's participation. They would take a shorter time than a post.

I find this idea interesting.  My present time available for creating publications is limited and I have no such project in mind, but I think the basic idea is strong.

Ray Blair

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Likewise, sounds like a great idea (although I think perhaps we should be moving away from paper-based dissemination of work). My time as an NQT is limited, but I'm sure that I could contribute in some way!

Doug

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It is a good idea, and I also agree that paper-based dissemination of work could be replaced by other means. I would like to contribute to it.

So many wise things have been written so far that it is not easy to add much more.

One of the major problems of our education system is that we prepare students for a world that no longer exists. (....) However, it is not enough to teach children the skills needed to exist in a modern society. We have a far more important job to do. We have to help them understand the society they are living in. That is very difficult when the vast majority of the adult population has no real understanding of what is really going on.

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I think it is right: most people don’t have a real understanding of what is going on. What teaching in particular, but education in general should provide children or students with is a critical approach to life. After all, we must teach them to be able to find the best solutions and solve the problems which will arise all their lives long, and not just in their personal lives, but in their job or public role within a company, a community, a country, etc. And they will have to do the same with their children or students, teaching them how to solve problems, take decisions, making choices, etc. which is what we all do most of the time.

Educators, not only teachers, should also be able to envisage the future, and when it is difficult to do so because our present is changing too fast, or we feel we lack correct information or our “wise” decision-makers seem to lead us astray, we must at least provide young people with tools so that they may be ready to face their future.

We have the whole past at disposal: not only history, but all the knowledge made up of snippets of contents which must not be simply transmitted to learners but presented as experiences, discoveries or examples of solutions which have been found so far, so that new generations may modify, and improve them.

As Elbert Hubbard said:  “The object of teaching a child is to enable him to get along without a teacher.”

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The literal truth of this story is unimportant.

(...)

I was lucky, I encountered a real teacher in the factory where I went.

(...)

I thought I had a responsibility to go into teaching and help those like me, who had been labelled as “non academic”.

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I agree. "Real teachers": that's what all children need. I couldn't count all the underachievers my colleagues and I have tried and managed to help. But I remember the case of a very brilliant student in my school about twenty years ago, when there was less communication between the families and the school itself: he lost his father suddenly while taking his exams and failed his oral test soon after the funeral. No teacher helped him, he had to repeat the year.

Now things have changed, we are always informed about students' problems, family situations, special needs. etc. We try to take into account mainly students' progress in education when evaluating their final results, and sometimes many of us in my school tend to give them another chance, before labelling them as "non academic".

I teach in a secondary school (an industrial technical institute) where girls represent about 5% of the students. This means that most classes are single sex and there may be one or two girls in the others. The presence of girls has a great influence on the general performance of the students: male students tend to be more self-disciplined and behave much better than when there are no girls in the class. Boys are also induced to study more and have better results: in fact girls are normally more diligent and boys don't want to cut a poor figure, especially if their female schoolmate is pretty! Anyway, I see from experience that students don't tend to classify subjects as more or less "effeminate", but rather as more or less hard, and maths is certainly the hardest one for most students, male or female ones, in all Italian school types.

The following is the site of the eTwinning initiative, which is part of the European Commission's eLearning programme:

http://www.etwinning.net/ww/en/pub/etwinning/index.htm

Giuseppe Ungaretti

VIGIL

A whole night long

crouched close

to one of our men

butchered

with his clenched

mouth

grinning at the full moon

with the congestion

of his hands

thrust right

into my silence

I've written

letters filled with love

I have never been

so

coupled to life

------------------

SAN MARTINO DEL CARSO

Of these houses

nothing

but fragments of memory

Of all who

would talk with me not

one remains

But in my heart

no one's cross is missing

My heart is

the most tormented country of all

------------------

I AM A CREATURE

Like this stone of

San Michele

as cold

as hard

as thoroughly dried

as refractory

as deprived of spirit

Like this stone

is my weeping that can't

be seen

Living

discounts death

Andy wrote:

The best use of ICT and the internet exploits interactivity, reduces the reliance on the teacher and allows learners to progress at their own pace - maybe these are some of the reasons why so many teachers oppose/resist it?

John wrote:

Ideally I would like to see students using the web to carry out individual research. This material would be fed back to the rest of the class as a result of the students acting like teachers.

I think John and Andy have really pointed out the real problems: teachers have to change their current paradigms about their role and their evaluation process.

I also think the real objective of teaching is not just imparting knowledge, but developing competence. Maybe the process of teaching/learning is more important than the content itself.

I would suggest the following ideas, based in part on my recent experiences during a students' exchange with a Norwegian school:

1. the amount of confidence teachers have with technology is not so important, as long as they are ready to rely on their students' technical skills in using ICT.

There can be a kind of mutual exchange of knowledge based on cooperation.

Anyway, you learn by doing: the first products needn't be perfect but what you learn from your "mistakes" will never be forgotten.

2. Students should become the real protagonists of the learning process: they must be given a clear task, a deadline, the opportunity of using ICT facilities (however old and faulty they may be) and they must be reminded that they will be responsible for their "product" in terms of time employed, end results, etc.

3. When referred to the specific subject (history), the task could be any of the activities which has been suggested so far: the ideal process should involve some knowledge being first imparted by the teacher, a lot of project work organized and carried out by the students and the teacher acting as an expert / tutor ready to give the students all the further information/support they may need.

I know from experience that all students participate: the teacher has all the time he needs to evaluate the participation and the work of each of them and the results can be very interesting.

I fear Gillmor is being over optimistic. I suspect that although the technology allows this to happen, most people will remain passive consumers of information being fed out by multinational corporations. However, I do believe that forum software does offer an opportunity for changing the way books are produced.

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I think this kind of approach could be used by E-HELP. For example, could this method be used to produce teaching materials? We could also use it to publish a book on e-learning for teachers. An individual could take responsibility for a particular subject (i.e. Online Simulations) and other members could feed in their views. The final article might publish all comments or might involve the person in charge of the subject, using this information to improve the original article.

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I think forums can change the way we approach, use and produce information, by giving everybody the opportunity to share with other people their critical contributions.

I am sure this kind of approach is perfect for exchanging, gathering and comparing information first and then for producing real knowledge material, which will be the result of what you call "collective intelligence" and should be more valuable as it would be the product of common interactive reasearch.

This could be the most common way to make reasearch in the future, but isn't this the original idea of which the WWW was born?

I believe the election of Bush is as significant as the decision by King Victor Emmanuel III in 1922 to appoint Benito Mussolini as leader of Italy. Mussolini made it possible for Franco and Hitler to gain power. However, I doubt if Bush will have this impact on the world. His views are unlikely to have any influence on important political leaders outside the UK and Italy. In fact, Bush’s victory is likely to make it more difficult for his supporters in Europe. Will he get any help at all if he decides to invade Iran, North Korea or Cuba? Blair might be tempted but it would be political suicide. One of the reasons why he is keen on an early election as it might pre-date these actions.

I don't think the situation in Europe when Mussolini became Prime Minister in Italy may be compared with what is happening in the USA and the whole world now. Anyway, there have been many changes in most Italian regional and town councils since the last national elections with a clear move of the electorate towards left-wing parties. I agree with David that time may have come for a larger Europe to become (more) independent from the USA, although it will be a long and difficult way.

..... English is a global lingua franca. There are, I know, daft people in Britain who think of it as theirs, and try to regulate it, and bemoan change. What they are regulating (or failing to regulate) is merely a national variety. But it's the international variety with which the future lies.

Yes, I agree that the future lies in the international variety. Sometimes I get confused, however. As a regular visitor to Canada, where I have relations, I slip into North American English almost automatically, as it avoids raised eyebrows, especially when talking about cars, but when I come home I find I am still talking about “gas”, “hood, “trunk”, “fender”, “windshield”, etc. North American English is now making such an impact on the variety that we speak on this island that I am no longer 100% which variety is which. I recently wrote an encyclopaedia article for Elsevier, who insist on US spelling conventions. No problem – easy if you set your spell checker to US English – but now I find myself writing “traveled” instead of “travelled” and failing to distinguish between “practise” (verb) and “practice” (noun).

Yes, I also agree that the future lies in the international variety.

Thank you, Graham, in fact most Italian teachers of English try to teach both 'pavement' and 'sidewalk', 'lift' and 'elevator', which means double work for their students who have got to learn two terms instead of one.

Anyway, it is really interesting to see how English is used, modified, enriched, etc. all around the world: as far as most English/American people can really accept its changing without regretting its original forms or imposing regulations as the French have been doing, it could become the "global" language of mankind.

This is what is already happening, and, as Anrew wrote, "Here might is right".

What about the other foreign languages, then? Will there be many people interested in learning them, if not for the sake of reading literary works in their original forms?