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By Tara Morris - July 2000
A new Web service for projects covering educational and training technologies under the European Commission's Information Society (IST) programme has recently been launched. Called PROACTe - Promoting Awareness and Communication Technologies in Education – the service gives users immediate access to information about educational technologies and research across Europe.
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PROACTe’s key objective is to become a central portal for raising awareness of education and training technologies in Europe and disseminating the results and products of the Education and Training Action Line under the IST programme.
PROACTe supports, valorises and facilitates the dissemination and take-up activities of the projects of the Education and Training Action Line, as well as implementing actions in support of consensus building between the projects. PROACTe also undertakes activities (targeting both the projects and a wide range of external players, end-users, providers, the press, and policy-makers) aimed at actively promoting the dissemination of information from the European Commission through clearly identified dissemination channels to the interested public.
The Internet is an essential tool for demonstrating and publishing the results of the Education and Training Action Line. The website is a central focus for the education and training community, providing up-to-date quality information on educational technologies from European Initiatives and beyond. PROACTe uses the Web as a cost-effective tool for involving as wide an audience as possible in its activities and promoting the education content of the Action Line.
As well as being a central focus for the projects, the information is provided in such a way as to maximise its audience and increase the Education and Training Action Line's market penetration. Links are being formed with other key initiatives to provide a well organised, comprehensive source of information on education and training and other related activities.
Specifically, PROACTe is establishing a World Wide Web presence for the Education and Training Action Line to:
In line with the philosophy of the Fifth Framework Programme, regarding user led policy development, the Education and Training Action Line website provides a forum for users to become involved in ground level initiatives. These will contribute to building new policies for the future priorities of education and training technologies.
PROACTe has contacted all the projects of the Education and Training Action Line and formed links to their websites. The website is networked to other sources of information at the EU level, content industries (INFO 2000, Internet Action Plan, Global Information Networks), audio-visual policy, cultural initiatives, education and training, and language (MLIS). PROACTe is also linked to national initiatives in the Member and Associated States as well as related services across the globe. The whole site is structured for ease of access and comprehensibility to allow browsers find the information they need quickly and easily.
As well as organising information categorised by the Action Line for those involved in projects, the site will also cluster information in other ways to enhance accessibility (for example by schools, universities, on-the-job-training and research). It is important to demystify the structure imposed by funding under the Fifth Framework Programme. The user needs to be able to find what they want, immediately, using their own terminology and without needing to understand the structure of the Fifth Framework Programme. There is a sophisticated fully functional search tool which will pick up on the classifications given to the data on site.
A key focus of the website is to provide information in a way which aims to promote and enhance the profile of the Education and Training Action Line.
PROACTe facilitates community building. This community building has the basic aims of:
The methods of approach varies depending upon the needs of the users: Some groups prefer closed restricted access between interested members whereas others have chosen public for a. PROACTe has made provisions for both. PROACTe will play an active part in identifying key topics for discussion in conjunction with the Commission and other players in educational technologies.
In order to attract people back to the discussions, PROACTe will monitor the information flow and send out digests to members of the community. This will have the benefit of maintaining the high profile of the Action Line and distributing the outcomes of important dialogues in the educational technologies community.
PROACTe co-ordinates its activities with other Support Projects and European Standards on publishing on the Web. Its overall aim is to ensure that it demonstrates good practice in relation to electronic publishing. PROACTe will publish the electronic versions of project deliverables received from the Commission as well as all other publications produced by this Action Line. All projects being supported by the Action Line are also able to publish their documents in this space. Documents are available in a variety of formats (RTF, PDF, Word, HTML).
PROACTe provides a "news" service to inform its audience of latest developments. Users can subscribe to receive the full news by e-mail, to receive headlines by e-mail once a week.
The news articles are updated weekly and reflect current trends in the field of educational technologies. Articles cover the latest policies/ initiatives, new book or journal releases, calls for papers, calls for proposals, relevant websites, etc.
Forthcoming events are also listed chronologically, linking to full conference details. Past events are also listed in an archive for reference.
The whole site is classified using metadata. This drives the advanced search features. At its simplest users can search the news, events, projects or the whole site using free text searches. They may further refine their search to sections or title, keyword or description to retrieve more specific information.
For the education and training research community, PROACTe aims to be a one-stop shop for all its information needs. Whether it is forging links, finding out about the latest news or cutting edge research, look first to PROACTe.
For further information please contact:
PROACTe
13b Avenue de Tervuren
B-1040 Brussels
info@proacte.com
<http://www.proacte.com>
Phone: +32-2-7438949
Fax: +32-2-7327111
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Tara Morris
Content Manager
PROACTe
tara_morris@ecotec.com
<http://www.proacte.com>
Phone: +32-2-7438949
Tara Morris is content manager for the PROACTe portal site.
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For citation purposes:
Morris, T "Educating Web Research", Cultivate Interactive, issue
1, 3 July 2000
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue1/proacte/>
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