The origin of the Intelligent Virtual Agents conference dates from a successful workshop on Intelligent Virtual Environments held in Brighton, UK at the 13th European Conference on Arti?cial Intelligence (ECAI'98). This workshop was followed by a second one held in Salford in Manchester, UK in 1999.Subsequent events took place in Madrid, Spain in 2001, Isree, Germany in 2003 and Kos, Greece in 2005. Starting in 2006, Intelligent Virtual Agents moved from being a biennial to an annual event and became a full ?edged international conference, hosted in California. This volume contains the...

This text is based on the experiences of the International Extension College in developing distance teaching. It begins by reviewing the world problems of educational quality and quantity, and then examines the ways in which print, broadcasts and group study have been used to train teachers and improve classroom education.

Based on a major three-year research project, this book makes clear how planners have frequently failed to understand real human needs. It also provides a portrait of the resilience and generosity of spirit which went at least some way to compensate for the deprivations of inner-city working-class life.

What knowledge will citizens need in the future? In this text, the author argues that policy emphasis on lifelong learning should shift from questions of access and participation to questions of knowledge and pedagogy.