eEurope and e-Education

Abstract

The Council of the European Union has just held a special meeting on 23-24 March 2000 in Lisbon to agree on a new strategic goal for the Union 'in order to strengthen employment, economic reform and social cohesion as part of a knowledge-based economy ' . In the Presidency conclusions it is stated that the European Union is confronted with 'a quantum shift' - resulting from globalisation and the chall enges of a new knowledge-driven economy. The EU is also concerned with the fact that more than 15 million Europeans are unemployed. One of the solutions to the challenge of both this 'quantum shift' as well as to unemployment is education - a specific kind of education - one which focuses on information technology. Such a vision of things to come has important implications as to whoever is involved in the planning and implementation of educational programmes in Malta, both within and outside schools. What the EU is telling us in very simple terms is: invest in IT. There are jobs in demand, but these are in specific areas, mainly in information technology. There is possibility of economic growth - but this is of a new kind: e-economy. All citizens must have the ability to live and work in an information society; one simply cannot afford to be IT illiterate. For this reason the European Council calls member states to: "ensure that all schools in the Union have access to the Internet and multimedia resources by the end of 2001, and that all the teachers needed are skilled in the use of the Internet and multimedia resources by the end of 2002".