The Web, like paper, should be a universal medium, in which it is possible for all kinds of information to exist.

    Tim Berners-Lee, Technology Review, July 1996

Motivation

The following factors were identified as crucial for the success of the project:

• informatization of curricula,
• networking and multimedia,
• teachers' education,
• staff support for the IT at schools,
• establishing the life-cycle of the IT equipment.

Principles

• decentralization: responsibility of server administrators for local organization and operation;
• standardization: agreement on common solutions to common problems that simplifies the support and the usage of the network services;
• non-mandatory use: the network only provides services, but it is users' decision to use them;
• logical organization: the user accesses the information through the content labels (addresses) and it is system's responsibility to arrange physical connections (URL). This simplifies changes in services and their relocation;
• openness: any server with educational contents can join the network.

Benefits

• shrinkage of time and location;
• platform independence;
• local use of viewers and servers; their capability can be further extended by use of plug-ins (Acrobat, Corel CMX, ...), external viewers (RASMOL, GSView, ...), and tools (Java, VRML)
• cooperation (inside the school, among schools, international) -- exchange of products and materials, projects, competitions, ...;
• activation of school potentials;
• information becomes more public and in time;
• distance learning.

Architecture

SEN consists of three levels:

Upper Level - Ring of Entry Servers:

consists of a small number of entry servers that have knowledge about the structure of the Network and direct the user to the proper server/material. All entry servers are equivalent - they provide the same information about the Network. This ensures the robustness against failure of an individual server and the distribution of workload.

Lower Level - Information Providers:

consists of ordinary servers that actually provide the information. For some time some information providers will be hosted at other organization's servers.

User Level

consists of users/schools with the Internet access.

Entry Servers

1. Entry servers are appointed by the RO Program Committee:
   FMF, Z[, Z[(new look), FRI in MS.
2. Duties of entry servers are:
   • to keep information about the current status of the SEN and the list of services the Network offers, and to provide access to these services;
   • to offer additional information services;
   • to guarantee uninterrupted work, trained staff, and sufficiently powerful equipment (computers, disks, communications);
3. All entry servers have the same structure of information about the SEN - system services:
   • a system service is maintained at a selected entry server - its staff becomes service's maintainer; maintenance can be delegated to the third party;
   • a maintainer has complete responsibility and right to update the service;
   • system services are mirrored at all entry servers.
4. Entry servers may offer their own information as ordinary servers.
5. If a certain entry server is not fulfilling its duties it loses its status.

Services of Entry Servers

• catalog of educational material (see also Explorer);
• distribution of educational products; (similar to c|net);
• information about national and international events related to education;
• list of servers related to education in Slovenia and the world;
• list of books and magazines from the field of education;
• list of addresses of education related people (subscription is voluntary and explicit);
• newsgroups, conferences, and mailing lists;
• electronic publishing (e.g. Omre`na NiT);
• handbooks, recommendations, instructions (Logo), tutorials, dictionaries (CS, math), ...;
• information of the Info{ol system; announcements, advertisements and other documents;
• support for (self)education of teachers.

Ordinary Servers

1. To become a member of the SEN, an ordinary server applies to the maintainer of the List of ordinary servers. The application contains:
   • URL of the entry page of the server;
   • e-mail address of the server administrator;
   • postal address, phone number, fax;
   • basic data about the server: type of computer, operating system, server program, public phone numbers to access the server, work schedule;
   • brief description of the information it offers.
   See also the application form.
2. On the entry page of the ordinary server has to appear the emblem of the SEN and the connection to the closest entry server. Somewhere on the server also has to appear the list of all entry servers.
3. Responsibilities of ordinary servers are:
   • to inform maintainers on entry servers about the changes in the offered material;
   • in case of a change, to update the list of entry servers

Services of Ordinary Servers

• better (quicker, cheaper) information for pupils and teachers;
• easier distribution of educational software and other materials;
• motivation for pupils and teachers for active use of the Internet and participation in the development of SEN;
• cooperation among schools.

Some Problems and Solutions

• The alphabet (^[@) problem: Unicode would probably be the right solution, but it is still not the Internet standard. Thus Latin 2 is an alternative answer. Another solution will be provided by the OpenType fonts and the FACE attribute in the HTML tag FONT;
• Language questions: Slovene / English !?; reviewing of SEN pages !?;
• The growth of the Network is encouraged by:
  • establishing of school servers and sharing of servers - logical servers;
  • education of users and administrators;
  • preparation of unified tools for the support of servers;
  • enabling all users to contribute to the growth of the SEN;
  • organizing competitions and projects for preparation of WWW compositions and materials;
  • changing the role of a school library into an information center;
  • introduction of class computers linked to the Internet.
• Privacy and protection of intellectual property: personal data are included into the SEN only with an approval of an individual. Copyrights have to be respected.

Tools, like Trubar,

• automatize the life of catalogs - they can be developed by users; the catalog maintainer can take the role of the editor;
• also a user-nonprogramer can easily establish catalogs with data of her/his interest on her/his server.

Acknowledgments

The design of the new look is by Zarja Vintar; realization by Ale{ Stru`nik and Jernej Vi~i~.