eQNet - Quality Network for a European Learning Resource Exchange Guest

eQNET is a three-year (September 2009-2012) Comenius Multilateral Network funded under the European Commission’s Lifelong Learning programme. The project is coordinated by European Schoolnet and involves 9 Ministries of Education or agencies nominated to act of their behalf. 

• European Schoolnet (coordinator), BE
  
• ANSAS, Agenzia Nazionale per lo Sviluppo dell’Autonomia Scolastica (former INDIRE), IT
• ITC, Centre of Information Technologies in Education, LT
• DGIDC, Direcção Geral de Inovação e Desenvolvimento ê Curricular, PT
• BM:UKK, Bundesministerium für Unterricht, Kunst und  Kultur, AT
• Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic, SK
• DZS, Centre for International Services, CZ
• Statens Skolverk, SE
• Norwegian Centre for ICT in Education, NO
• KlasCement, EduCentrum vzw, BE
  

The primary aim is to improve the quality of educational resources in European Schoolnet’s Learning Resource Exchange for Schools that was officially launched as a public service for schools in December 2008 and which currently offers almost 130,000 learning resources/assets from over 25 providers.

As a pan-European service, the LRE particularly seeks to identify resources that ‘travel well’ across national borders and can be used in a cultural and linguistic context different from the one in which they were created. eQualityNet will do this by establishing a network consisting of policy makers and practitioners (teachers) that will develop and apply ‘travel well’ quality criteria to both existing LRE content as well as that to be selected in future from national repositories.

The vision driving the LRE is that a significant percentage of high quality resources developed in different countries, in different languages and to meet the needs of different curricula can be re-used at European level. A sustainable platform for the exchange of that content is consequently needed.

eQualityNet will provide “a forum for joint reflection and co-operation” related to the exchange and re-use of educational content and allow network members to:

• Better share information and expertise particularly related to ‘travel well’ quality criteria (pedagogical, technical and IPR factors)
• Develop new frameworks (including a network of expert teachers) to:
  
  • improve the quality of resources and metadata in both national repositories and the LRE, including the growing volume of user-generated content/metadata
  • improve the multilinguality of LRE content as a result of the translation of metadata, making use, where appropriate, of automatic metadata translation approaches and technologies.
• Enable schools (including those in the Commission’s eTwinning initiative) to participate in a Community of Practice (CoP) related to the use digital resources at European level.

Major results will include:

• the development of ‘travel well’ quality criteria to more easily identify resources with the potential for cross-border use;
• the practical application by teachers of these criteria to >3,500 resources in the LRE;
• ‘showcases’ of the best of these resources in a “Travel Well” section of the LRE portal;
• where necessary, the enrichment of selected resources with new/better metadata (including translations);
• a Community of Practice for teachers around these resources.

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NEWS ON THE PROJECT 

Travel well: how to share and reuse educational resources across borders? 

What makes some educational resources more useful for different cultural and linguistic contexts? This is a difficult question to answer but, in a number of its projects, European Schoolnet has found that some resources in its Learning Resource Exchange have the potential to “travel well” and can be used cross-border in different educational contexts. Now we are trying to define “travel well” quality criteria so that Ministries of Education and other LRE content partners can more easily identify those resources that can be easily shared and reused by teachers and learners across Europe. Read more here

European Schoolnet news (Issue 45 - December 2009)

European teachers are increasingly using digital learning resources as part of their teaching activities. Digital learning resources are made available to teachers through educational portals and digital libraries in many European countries. But can teachers use learning resources that originate from a country different than themselves? Or learning resources that are in different languages than that of the teacher or learners? Read more here