Educational multimedia software

1) OBJECTIVE

To help improve the quality and effectiveness of education and training systems and provide access to the information society for teachers, students and apprentices by giving them an insight into the use of these new tools and into training in the subject.

2) COMMUNITY MEASURE

Council Resolution of 6 May 1996 relating to educational multimedia software in the fields of education and training.

3) CONTENTS

The Council calls on the Member States to:

• develop or pursue their measures in the fields of research, experimentation, evaluation and use of new information and communication technologies in the education and training systems;
• step up initial and continuing training for teachers and training staff in handling educational software and on-line multimedia services;
• encourage research into learning products and processes, including distance education, and the creation and design of educational multimedia software, particularly in the context of partnerships between those active in education and publishers and firms in the multimedia sector;
• implement, if necessary, infrastructures to enable progressive access for as many users as possible within the education and training systems to high-quality on-line multimedia materials, software and services;
• adopt measures attempting to integrate information and communication technologies in the context of developing and promoting flexible forms of organisation in schools or universities, ensure equal access to multimedia applications and services and test the use of these new tools in combating social exclusion and failure at school;
• promote evaluation and dissemination of the best teaching practices based on multimedia.

2) The Council calls on the Commission to:

• carry out, with the cooperation of the Member States, a comparative study and follow-up of the most advanced pilot experiments in the use of educational multimedia products and services in Europe and worldwide and disseminate the results of this analysis to the Member States;
• take into account the fields of education and training in the context of its global initiatives concerning the information society;
• encourage, in particular, measures relating to information on European products and services in the field of educational multimedia software;
• encourage, in the context of Community programmes, pilot projects using, among other things, the networking of education and training establishments in the different Member States;
• establish a coordinated approach for its own measures relating to the field of educational multimedia software and encourage the dissemination of best practices at European level;
• present, by 31 December 1997, a report on progress made, obstacles encountered and additional measures necessary to implement all these measures by the year 2000.