Open Distance Learning

Penelope Constanta-Fanouraki
Institute of Computer Science - FORTH

European school education, from elementary to university, differs greatly from member to
member country. The basic problems include the variety of languages used, the inheritance and
the individual characteristics of each country.

Currently, the educational systems of member countries do not take into account the fact that the
European Union will soon start forming one nation with the first step being the currency
unification. The European school education system will have to accommodate these political
changes.

At present, most efforts have been limited to student exchanges among the member countries.
It, also, exists a plan for unification of educational certificates across the european union.
In this talk I will try to outline the usage and the role of WWW in education in order to form a
pan-european educational system. Such a system could present information in all european
languages, could connect and give material to a digital library system, take into account students
with special needs, etc.

A first, primitive in a way, effort of such a method was introduced in the project "Deep Inside a
Computer" presented during the "European Week for Scientific and Technological Culture 1995".