Intercultural Microworld Courseware for Exploratory Learning, I.M.E.L.
Socrates, Open and Distance Learning (O.D.L), Directorate-General XXII: Education, Training and Youth, European Commission, Project No 95-25136-GR, 1996-1998.

Identity:

A C.T.I.-led R&D Project putting to the test for the first time the claim made by the component computing movement that specialized exploratory software can be developed by far more efficient methods than those achieved by stand-alone approaches. Even though the Project suffered from the discontinuity of the 'Open-doc' platform and had to start development of the E-slate desktop and escorting components from scratch with Java, some prototype components and software materialised, such as the 'vector' component designed by Prof. R. Noss through the Institute of Education, University of London, the database component and the query component co-designed by the lab and the C.T.I. group even though this was a 'small' Socrates ODL Project! These components were used by the Lab to design and implement an innovative educational activity, titled the "Communicating to Meet" Project, where the students of two remote classrooms jointly composed a proposal to meet each other. The activity was one of the first involving distributed project work with exploratory software. A theoretical framework synthesizing CSCL and constructionist research was considered by the Lab for the first time. Two of the Lab's research schools, Karavanas and Kalloni's Primary were involved in the Project.