TY - JOUR T1 - Results and experience from the application of a common methodology for Users Requirements Specification in Distance Education using Telematics JF - Journal of Technology and Teacher Education -JTATE, AACE, Vol. 6, Issue 1 Y1 - 1998 A1 - Christos Bouras A1 - Paul Spirakis A1 - P Lampsas A1 - G Tsakarissianos A1 - J Garofalakis A1 - K Antonis A1 - N Kastis A1 - S Kontogiannis AB - The cooperation of the Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) and the Educational communities, is recognised as a necessity that must result in the adaptation and tuning of the education processes in terms of pedagogical methodologies, school infrastructure, human resources development and organisational restructuring, in order to efficiently absorb and utilize technological developments. The ICT community has to realize the significance of the users’ needs, the difficulties of the intervention to an old and traditional process. And the need to view their technology applications not only as a technical exercise. The initial phases of the TRENDS project, which are described in this paper, resulted in an agreed common methodology for carrying out the necessary investigation of the user needs in secondary education. This methodology, which was followed more or less in all participating countries, produced answers to questions concerning the role of the educators and their basic training, their familiarity with technology, education policies from a trans-European perspective, the content, forms and aims of further training, the distance training of teachers in the use of new technologies, the motives, incentives and organisational schemes for enhancing re-education, the needs of the educational environment and technology-based training, the needs of the educators in practical didactic methods, etc. ER - TY - CONF T1 - Conclusions on the Analysis of User Requirements concerning the use of ICT in the Didactic Process T2 - ED-MEDIA/ED-TELECOM 97, Calgary, Canada Y1 - 1997 A1 - Christos Bouras A1 - Paul Spirakis A1 - P Lampsas A1 - G Tsakarissianos A1 - J Garofalakis A1 - K Antonis A1 - N Kastis A1 - S Kontogiannis AB - The co-operation of the Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) and the Educational Society, is deemed necessary for the adaptation and tuning of the didactic process in terms of pedagogical methodologies, school infrastructure, human resources utilisation and organisational restructuring. The use of ICT in the classroom should be viewed as a highly influencing tool that will support the educators’ effort for interaction with their students, rather than as a technical exercise. The initial phases of the TRENDS project, which are described in this paper, resulted in a widely accepted common methodology, that complies with the international standards for determining the User Requirements in the Secondary Education. The major results emerged from this survey are presented here, as well as some common axes that deal with the application of ICT in the didactic process. JF - ED-MEDIA/ED-TELECOM 97, Calgary, Canada ER - TY - CONF T1 - TRENDS: Training Educators through Networks and Distributed Systems T2 - EDEN Conference 1996, Futuroscope Poitiers, France Y1 - 1996 A1 - Christos Bouras A1 - Vaggelis Kapoulas A1 - Paul Spirakis A1 - G Tsakarissianos A1 - N Kastis AB - The TRENDS project aims at the in-service, distance training of 2,400 school teachers in Secondary Education, and the use of Information Technology and Telematics in the learning process, by six countries (Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, and United Kingdom). The training process will be implemented by flexible and distance learning methods, through the development and use of an in-service school-based training system, which will be based on multimedia telematics and existing mature network technologies, and the establishment and operation of a European Teacher’s Training Network, consisted of six interconnected National Sites (Training Centre, schools and teachers per country). Each Training Centre in the Network will act as service provider to the schools and the teachers. The major aspect of the project is to provide the educator and their trainers, with various services including : e-mail contact with other educators and trainers, access to multimedia information, forums for the discussion and debate on educational projects, access to curriculum-related information for the educators, and multimedia teletraining for the conduction of lessons over the network. Due to the nature of the planned services and applications, the network infrastructure that will be used for the realization of the TRENDS, must offer high speed, multicasting, trans-European interoperability and certified quality of services. JF - EDEN Conference 1996, Futuroscope Poitiers, France ER -