From patrick.schouller@inria.fr Thu Mar  6 10:05 MET 1997
X-Sender: schoulle@nuri.inria.fr (Unverified)
Date: Thu, 06 Mar 1997 10:01:53 -0600
From: Patrick Schouller 
Subject: PARTENAIRE ISRAELIEN POUR LOGICIEL MULTIMEDIA

Shalom,

	Please find attached a description of the MACAM98 - Teachers'
	Colleges Network.
	You may note that this project is part of a large effort by the
	Israeli government is the area of educational telematics and
	multimedia.
	We would apprecaiate if collaborative arrangements may be worked
	out with Eruoepan institutions in fthe framework of the
	European Commission initiative in this area. We would be
	particularly interested in joining an actual working
	consortium already supported by the Commission.
	Following the new status of Israel as a member of the IV Reserch
	Frmework of the European Union new ooportunities for collaboration
	with Eruopean partners are open to us.
	If the short description of our activities attached rise your
	interest please get in touch.

	Regards,
	Dov

				Dov Winer
				Director
				Development Team
				MACAM98
				http://mofet.macam98.ac.il/~dovw/dovw.htm



                   MACAM98 - THE NATIONAL ISRAELI TEACHERS'
                               COLLEGES NETWORK

                                   Dov Winer
                  Director, Development Team, MACAM98 Network

       INTRODUCTION

       The establishment of the Teachers' Colleges Network is an initiative
    of the Mofet Institute - Research and Development in Teachers Training,
    part of the Teachers' Education Division of the Ministry of Education
    and  the MAHAR98 Authority. The network established during the school
    year of 94/95 has now 24 Colleges connected to the network and 2,600
    users. When completed the network will service 36 Colleges all over the
    country; when fully operational,  tens of thousands students and
    teachers will be directly connected and many more users in the network
    will enjoy its services.

       THE NETWORK

       The network was established as part of the Global Internet and is
    connected to the Israeli Academic Network (ILAN). The establishment of
    such network has several aspects: defining its architecture; defining
    the services; procurement of hardware, software, lines, specialized
    manpower and know-how; training the support  personnel; establishing
    and maintaining the network services. All these tasks were considered
    subordinate to the following goals:

       1. Navigation of the global network as epistemic sailing. The Global
    Internet actually maps the knowledge producing world. Significant
    training and educational activities related to technological education
    take place in its framework The network and its tools were planned so
    as to allow to students and teachers the capabilities necessary for an
    easy and visually oriented navigation of the global network.

       2. Experiencing the heterogeneity of educational experiences offered
    by the network. An explicit goal in designing the network was to give
    teachers and students the opportunity to experience the extensive
    variety of approaches, projects, technologies and experiments where
    Computer Mediated Communications (CMC) plays a central role in
    education, training and technological education. The rational was that
    faculty as well as students should be given the opportunity to choose
    the means and approaches best adapted to their educational goals and
    personal styles.

       3. The development of new curricular paradigms. These should be
    based on original modules for education, training and technology
    dissemination in the different disciplines using the communication
    infrastructure provided by the network and the rich resources available
    in the global Internet. The rational behind this goal is that networks
    and their services are essential components of the environment of the
    future teacher; their use would be best if the development and
    dissemination will be carried out by experienced teachers of teachers
    using their accumulated pedagogical experience and providing them with
    the tools and infrastructure for meeting the challenge to create new
    curricular paradigms.

       THE DEVELOPMENT TEAM

       The Development Team (DT) for the network was established at the
    same time when the first elements of the network were being put in
    place. The team was constituted by 26 experienced teachers from the
    participating colleges. DT members received the training needed for
    using the basic tools for connecting to and navigating the  network.
    Among these were included the establishment of a TCP/IP connection
    using SLIP/PPP; using mail, mailing lists and mailservers; using file
    archives and file transfer tools; searching the network for email
    addresses, mailing lists, institutions, catalogs and databases,
    information services; the use of different interfaces for Usenet News;
    using menu driven information services like Gopher and hypermedia
    integrating tools like WWW through different browsers; basic training
    needed to work in an Unix environment. The completion of this basic
    training phase included training for establishing and maintaining
    information services using the HTML3 (Hypertext Marking Language). The
    exploratory learning that characterizes work in the network was focused
    on materials relevant to the disciplinary and curricular interests of
    the DT members. In the second phase the DT was grouped in sub-groups
    which developed instructional materials - manuals, working sheets and
    structured experiences for introducing new users in the use of the
    network.

       The next phase in the work of the DT focused in the development of
    experimental CMC curricular projects.. Teams were established in
    content curriculum areas like Tanakh (Bible and Jewish Studies),
    English as a Second Language, Arabic, Mathematics, Biology and
    Chemistry . An additional curriculum group in charge of the Pedagogical
    orientation for new teachers; several experiments for distance support
    of these new teachers using  CMC are under way; they include both the
    Virtual Seminar format; and individual tutoring by the College
    teachers.
       Several projects are experimenting with the integration of
    discussion groups (virtual seminars); software libraries; menu driven
    gophers; hypertext based WWW homepages; WAIS and Glimpse based
    databases in the different content areas. DT members have taken
    responsibility for two main tasks:

       1. Training of additional  groups of teachers in their Colleges;
       More than 500 Teachers in the different Teacher Training Colleges
    have undergone a training program  similar to that of the Development
    Team. It can be already be noticed that following the introduction of
    this massive training program several initiatives concerning the
    establishment of virtual seminars, CMC courses, curricular hyper media
    pages are being initiated at the local level.

       2. Development of curricular materials  and ancillary CMC projects -
    communities of practice transcending Colleges and Schools.
       The Development Team staff is now engaged in the development of
    "Telematic Learning Environments" in the following areas:

       * Science for future science teachers: Water as the
         interdisciplinary focus for training teachers for the Junior
         High-school.
       * Experiments and Demonstrations for teaching the physiology of the
         senses
       * Mathematics for the primary school
       * Integrated distance teaching of English and Internet tools.
       * Teaching English as a Foreign Language
       * Pedagogical Orientation for field training of new teachers
       * EZARESHET: CMC support for high-school students as pedagogical
         training for future teachers.
       * School based computer mediated communication projects
       * Tanach and Talmud
       * Internet Supported Scientific Writing for Teacher Educators: The
         Middle East as an interdisciplinary focus.

       The tasks for Development Team members include the moderation of a
    workshop in each of these areas; the development of a Web were relevant
    educational resources are gathered and given access; the reporting of
    the results obtained in the professional literature.

       The present project allows for experimentation with the creation of
    genuine communities of practice within the Teachers Training Colleges
    realm; in fact it replaces College learning with participation in
    communities of practice outside individual colleges or even the
    teachers training colleges realm. There are radical implications of
    this approach both for Teachers Training as well as for the schools
    role in society. 	The present project creates a context of discovery
    for teachers of teachers an new teachers to explore the possibilities
    inherent to the new communications technologies. The radical
    implications for the new kind of school that will emerge in this new
    context of application of these technologies, the new curricular
    paradigms, the development of ancillary conceptualizations needed to
    orient this effort - all these will emerge as this teachers focused
    project is disseminated into the wider educational system.

       The experience accumulated so far in this project points to the need
    to develop new socialization processes that may enable the future
    teachers to play successfully the new roles demanded by a networked
    environment where quick technological changes and information overload
    are current characteristics. Among these new roles we can refer to:

        * Group Moderator for virtual and face-to-face work and learning
          groups.
        * Multimedia Producer.
        * Epistemic Pilot in a situation of information and knowledge
          overflow.
        * Technology Pioneer.
        * Anxiety manager

    INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION

       The MACAM98 has been presente in several international forums. An
    outgrowth is the proposal for Euro-Mediterranean Joint Teachers and
    Trainers Develpment Teams. This proposal has rised considerable
    interest and have been discussed in the preparatory workshops  and was
    included in the agenda of the Rome Ministers conference held last May
    (establishing guidelines for the Euromediterranean Partnership Policy)
****************************************************************
                        Patrick SCHOULLER
MINISTERE DE L'INDUSTRIE DE LA POSTE ET DES TELECOMMUNICATIONS
	  Direction Generale des Strategies Industrielles
	     3/5 rue Barbet de Jouy 75353 PARIS  07 SP
Telephone : + 33 1 43 19 34 25
Telecopie : + 33 1 43 19 35 51
****************************************************************