The European Schoolnet Partnership (EUN)

The European Schoolnet Partnership (EUN)

www.eun.org

EUN is providing key inputs to the eMapps.com research in the areas of education policy, user needs, the creation and management of learning objects and evaluation.

EUN www.eun.org is a unique public-sector consortium funded by 26 education ministries and supported by the European Commission. Its office with some 35 staff in Brussels serves the needs of education policy-makers and researchers, schools and suppliers. The EUNs very raison dêtre is to create synergies between sovereign national partners and to manage by consent, creating added value through economies of scale and pooling resources and expertise for the benefit of each partner. Such legitimacy and trust – and a pre-existing outreach that does not need funding – is a key attribute of the EUN. EUN exists to help develop learning opportunities for young people across Europe through communication and information exchange at all levels. Its activities are determined by the needs of the ministries of education, the European Commission, and industrial partners, including the publishing and ICT industry (e.g. Apple, Sun, IBM, Cisco, Philips). The aims of the EUN are designed to meet the evolving needs of teachers and learners and to align with national and Commission forward plans.

These are:

• To build a rich, multi-lingual European community for innovation and collaboration in educational policy and practice;
• To act as a seamless European gateway to national and regional education networks and their resources and services;
• To foster technical innovation, interoperability and common standards;
• To build a strong and effective EUN providing synergy and European added value in a networked world.

The EUN links the best possible experience in working with teachers in a European setting. This experience has been gained in large-scale activities such as eSchola, Spring Day (involving more than 5,000 schools in a single event), myEurope (2,000 schools), ValNet, The ENIS network of innovative schools, the Virtual School, eWatch, dotSAFE, etc. Its well-established networks, task groups and committees ensure a strategic and high level coverage and impact in the Union, candidate countries and other continents. The mission of the EUN is European, of course, and all its work aims to complement and join up national initiatives; thus the European dimension is to the forefront in the project. Through its various projects and networks it provides communication channels to over 5,000 actively participating schools in the 26 countries and all European schools and teachers through the ministries themselves.

European Schoolnet has taken a lead in research and development of a child-friendly, access-controlled, collaborative system based on Open Source technologies linked to the EUN portal, in addition to the central, freely accessible, moderated activities and awareness initiatives on the highly visible public section of the portal. The portal receives as many as 250,000 visitors a day (March 2003) and so offers an effective pre- existing dissemination platform alongside the school and ministry networks. Since its creation in 1998, EUN has successfully managed around 30 international projects, with as many as 55 partners.