Europe gets new challenges in the field of learning technologies and standardisation. CEN/ISSS Learning Technologies Workshop (LTWS), the European Standardisation Body, holds open meetings regularly in Europe.

In one of his presentation about standardisation attempts the chairman Erik Duval portrayed the state of affairs like 'herding cats'. To illustrate it, he showed a video clip of cowboys herding wild cats on prairies. In his opinion, the video draws an analogy with the situation in the field of standards and learning technologies. In this scenario the Learning Technologies Workshop plays the role of cowboys, and the wild cats are the vendors and other actors in the field. For the audience this was a moment of relief to notice that even though the work has to be taken seriously, it is possible to remain tongue in cheek.

The work carried out in the CEN/ISSS workshop comprises areas like:

• Educational modelling languages (EML)
• Standards for Learner Information
• Quality Assurance in eLearning
• Metadata (LOM) and Vocabularies related work
• Interoperability frameworks for exchange of school management information (SIF)
• Access for all to learning resources
• In the area of vocabularies (lead by Frans Van Assche, EUN) the working group has finalised a
• Repository of Taxonomies and Vocabularies for a European Learning Society. The repository is used to store vocabularies in the field of education. Volunteers are called to contribute and register the vocabularies they use in the educational field.

A new comer at European level is the working group on the issues of Accessibility. This means barrier-free access to everybody regardless of their capacities. The working group aims to ensure access to learning resources for groups like deaf and visually impaired people, as well as intellectually challenged ones. More and more organisations work in the field. In the workshop a Finnish project called Verkkosalkku (Webfolder), a learning environment to meet the needs of special groups, gave a presentation of their product.

More information:

• CEN/ISSS Learning Technologies Workshop (LTWS)
  http://www.cenorm.be/isss/Workshop/lt/
• On workshop items:
  http://www.cenorm.be/isss/Workshop/lt/open-meeting-july-2002/sessions.htm
• Vocabularies Registry:
  http://www.cenorm.be/isss/LT-vocabulary/vocrep.html
• Verkkosalkku (Webfolder)
  http://www.verkkosalkku.net/main.asp?sid=1&sivu=9&kpl=5&o=9
• Cedefop:
  http://www.cedefop.gr/
• Prometeus:
  http:// www.prometeus.org
• IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee
  http://ltsc.ieee.org/wg12/
• ISO/IEC JTC1/SC36:
  http://www.iso.org/iso/en/stdsdevelopment/tc/tclist/TechnicalCommitteeDetailPage.TechnicalCommitteeDetail?COMMID=4997
• Carnegie-Mellon, Learning System Architecture Lab (US)
  http://www.lsal.cmu.edu/

EUN members participation are Frans Van Assche and Riina Vuorikari