Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for education : Research and development for the educational integration of technology in Eastern European Countries

The many ongoing educational projects among Eastern and Western European countries potentially bring various learning effects, the most common being cultural cross-fertilization. Nowadays the more student-oriented learning practices of Western Europe tend to reorient the more teacher-oriented model of Eastern Europe. The European initiative to support projects in the Tempus and the Copernicus stream can be seen as a substantial survival factor for educational institutes in Eastern Europe. The Tempus policy in terms of actions is exemplified in two parallel Copernicus projects on Telematics and Multimedia for Universities in Moscow, Kaunas, Kiev and Sofia. These projects reflect a European attempt to stimulate information and communication technology (ICT) in education. A major conclusion drawn from these projects is that opportunistic media plans for educational reform may finally turn out to be survival factors for the more traditional State-funded institutes rather than the market-oriented training companies that soon suffer from too fragmented investments and a lack of coordination.