International Bureau of Education

From 13 September to 2 December 1999, IBE/UNESCO organized a listserv (discussion forum on the Internet), the objectives of which were to:

• put up for discussion part of the Teachers’ Handbook which had been drafted as a result of research work on the topic of "The teaching of history and geography for learning to live together", the subject of a preceding contract between IBE/UNESCO and the Department of Geography of the University of Geneva; and
• try out a new teacher-training tool.

The following topics were discussed: identity, places of national significance, frontiers, peace, globalization, sustainable development, democracy, foreigners, other cultures, stereotypes, humanism and nationhood.

The netforum was managed by the IBE and animated by the Department of Geography of the University of Geneva. This report is intended to draw the lessons from the operation recalling the ways in which the forum functioned and giving the IBE all useful information together with a series of recommendations with an eye to a possible extension of this training method.

• The netforum procedures
  
• Evolution of the "living together" forum
  
• Recommendations

IBE would like to thank the Department of Geography of the University of Geneva, particularly the two moderators of the forum, for its work in carrying out this first experiment, on behalf of IBE, in long-distance discussion