Newsapaper Articles

Newspaper Articles: Delo, March 26th, 1999 Po slovensko
IEARN, an international net for more interesting learning TO MEET THE PRIME MINISTER OR TO GET ACCESS TO THE INTERNET IS BOTH EQUALLY DIFFICULT The Internet projects enable more interesting and better learning. - Which trees grow in China Silver fir, gum-tree, oak, maple, linden, birch, yew-tree and weeping willow. These are trees, presented on the Internet by the students involved in IEARN projects. Thus, the students in Argentina found out that oak in Lithuania symbolizes power; the Australian students learned that the ancestors of the Slovenes made the statues of their gods from linden-tree. About all these things they talked only by clicking the keyboards of their computers.
LINKING BEYOND HOSTILITY The conference for Middle and Eastern Europe and Asia that was held in Bled last week has shown that Slovenia is the most developed member of this net. Beside Slovenia, there are Baltic States as well as Romania on the top of the list, although these countries have considerable difficulties. Sometimes, for instance, their telephones don’t work. “IEARN started in 1988 as an experimental project in order to connect the USA and the Soviet Union.”, Mr Ed Gragert*, one of the American web pioneers tells us. “ The project consisted of connecting schools and students internationally using new technologies. Don’t forget that the world web has not existed yet. We started with simple E-mail.”	IT BEGAN WITH PETER COPEN It all began as his colleague Peter Copen realised that American students were not prepared for the 21^st century. Apart from that, everything he could see in the world were weapons, famine and cultural and linguistic ignorance. He thought the problems could partially be solved with contemporary telecomunication equipment, through which the pupils and their teachers in both countries could be linked. The experimental project lasted three years. It resulted in I*EARN, later expanded to 9 countries. In 1994 it was opened for all people who were interested in such a form of cooperation, and presented on the Internet. Today, there are approximately 300.000 pupils from the whole world involved in the projects every year.	LEARNING IS NOT EVERYTHING “The whole thing isn’t just about learning. We would like to teach our students how to become active learners and information managers to communicate with the world. As grown-ups they won’t be thinking about how alone they are and there is nothing they can do for a better world. They will know that they have friends everywhere in the world and together they can do a lot of things”, says Mr Ed Gragert and adds, Slovenia has big advantage over other countries: Slovene schools have much better access to the Internet as the schools in the USA. “In Slovenia, there a 450 schools involved in various projects. In the USA, there are 106.000 schools altogether, but only 6000 are linked to the Internet and just 10% from them are actively involved in our projects. We hope this number will increase next year, as the prestige Harvard University is starting to cooperate with us.”