At the 2nd AGM in Germany on the 22 September 1995 it was agreed by members that the JANUS User Association should change its name as the project JANUS under which it was formed has now finished. The AGM gave approval for the JUA Board to decide a new name. After long discussion and widespread searching on the WWW, the board has decided upon - LearnTel - the European Network for Learning with Telematics. The emphasis will also be of a network rather than a more formalised association.
LearnTel is currently reorganising its resources onto a WWW server, for which it is planned to have one of the most comprehensive and up-to-date single point of access for developments in Telematics for Learning.
It is proposed that this resource will become part of the Global Inventory Project which is being managed by the EU Information Society Project Office. Initially most material will be in English, but there are plans to co-operate with other European organisations in order to develop a truly multilingual resource. Eventually as tools become available it is hoped that automatic translators will spread the knowledge and know-how collected in using telematics in education and training.
Recognising the urgent need to train more people in using telematic systems for learning, it is aimed that this WWW resource will become a vital point of reference for remote training the trainer courses.
The WWW site will contain the latest tools including Intelligent agent and Web-crawlers for searching for material world-wide It will also make use of the new Web Computer Conferencing software (see this issue) which is beginning to emerge as well new browsers like Hot Java.
For further information about these developments, email: LearnTel@open.ac.uk.