LOGICIEL SANS FRONTIERES

In general terms, nations that have taken the step of introducing computing into the curriculum, in whatever form, will identify the shortage of educational software as one of the reasons why development is slow, children and teachers are not motivated and the technology is being under-exploited. The cost of developing new educational software is rising rapidly and even in the English or Spanish speaking worlds, where the numbers of potential users are large, the economies of scale are not sufficient to encourage developmental growth. The last 2 or 3 yr have seen the implementation of a number of projects aimed at increasing the access to software in a variety of languages and cultures. The authors review a number of these projects, particularly the European Community initiative EPES (European Pool of Educational Software), involving 12 nations and 15 languages. A number of barriers such as machine configuration and language, cultural and curriculum issues, graphics, written language and character sets, documentation and machine capacity are addressed. None are found to be insurmountable. The ownership and copyright issues in the European and world-wide context are considered together with the publishing opportunities. In conclusion, the authors argue for a wider network of educational software exchange both within Eastern and Western Europe and the other five continents. To achieve this ideal, some standards need to be agreed and these are considered in the conclusions.