ASPECT kick-off meeting

On 1 and 2nd September 2008, project partners came together in Vienna for the first meeting of the 30-month ASPECT project.

In the coming months, ASPECT partners will be producing more detailed work plans for each of the project’s work packages. By February 2009, it is anticipated that there will already be project deliverables outlining the ASPECT approach to: federated search and harvesting; and multilingual vocabularies, including automated translation services. A Best Practice Report for Content Use will also be produced in the first six months along with a customized version of a content portal (European Schoolnet’s Learning Resource Exchange) for the 40 schools in the project.

Later in 2009, teachers in four countries (Belgium, Lithuania, Portugal, Romania) will start to provide feedback on ASPECT work and test how the implementation of standards and specifications leads to the improved discovery and re-use of LRE content.

The first ASPECT meeting was organised in tandem with the kickoff meeting for iCoper, another new Best Practice Network being supported by the European Commission’s eContentplus Programme. Partners from both projects met together in order to explore potential areas of co-operation.

While ASPECT is examining how to develop best practice as standards and specifications are applied to educational content for schools, iCoper is more focused on the Higher Education sector. In addressing the standards’ community and policy makers, however, it will be important that both projects carefully consider each other’s results and recommendations. It will also be particularly useful if both projects can develop synergies between their respective dissemination activities.

Later in 2008, the ASPECT web site will be announcing the first workshops and other events for organizations wanting to know more about the work of the project. So, if you are interested in standards and specifications for educational content, register now and we will keep you updated!