information society policy
Comparing Children’s E-safety Strategies with Guidelines Offered by Adults
This article was published on the Electronic Journal of e-Learning Volume 10, Issue 3, in 2012.
The ways our children are using Internet have changed significantly within the last five years: the Web experience is more personalised, social, open, self-regulated and oriented towards ripping, remixing, sharing, following, reflecting. As a result, also e-learning has recently become more social and open, involving the use of personal learning environments or social networks. We believe that the schools are not ready for this yet, as strategies and regulations supporting open learning are not up to date. It may seem easier to restrict the use of e.g. Twitter or Facebook rather than integrate them into the learning process.
Open content licensing for educators
The Open Content Licensing for Educators (OCL4Ed) is a free online workshop (3-14 December) designed for educators, students and education policy makers who want to learn more about open education resources, copyright, and creative commons licenses.
This workshop is an initiative of the Open Education Resource Foundation, an independent, not-for-profit organisation that provides leadership, international networking and support for educators and educational institutions to achieve their objectives through Open Education.
This workshop will:
- Reflect on the practice of sharing knowledge in education and the permissions educators consider fair and reasonable;
- Define what constitutes an open education resource (OER);
- Explain how international copyright functions in a digital world;
- Introduce the Creative Commons suite of licenses and explain how they support open education approaches;
- Connect with educators around the world to share thoughts and experiences in relation to copyright, OER and Creative Commons.
The course materials were collaboratively developed by volunteers of OER Foundation, WikiEducator, the OpenCourseWare Consortium and Creative Commons with funding support from UNESCO. The course will provide prerequisite knowledge required by educators to legally remix open education materials and help institutions to take informed decisions about open content licenses.
The workshop will take place from 3 to 14 December. Find more information here.
Call for Papers: IADIS e-Society 2013 conference
The IADIS e-Society 2013 (13-16 March) conference aims to address the main issues of concern within the Information Society. This conference covers both the technical as well as the non-technical aspects of the Information Society. Broad areas of interest are eSociety and Digital Divide, eBusiness / eCommerce, eLearning, New Media and E-Society, Digital Services in ESociety, eGovernment /eGovernance, eHealth, Information Systems, and Information Management. These broad areas are divided into more detailed areas.
For this new edition of IADIS e-society conference, you're warmly invited to submit your papers on one of the following subjects.
• Collaborative Learning
• Curriculum Content Design & Development
• Delivery Systems and Environments
• Educational Systems Design
. E-Citizenship and Inclusion
• eLearning Organisational Issues
• Evaluation and Assessment
. Political and Social Aspects
• Virtual Learning Environments and Issues
• Web-based Learning Communities
Types of submissions: Full and Short Papers, Reflection Papers, Posters/Demonstrations, Tutorials, Panels and Doctoral Consortium. All submissions are subject to a blind refereeing process.
Please submit your paper until 29 October 2012.
Discussing the increasing value of e-Skills in our society
One of the aims of this debate is to monitor key indicators and scenarios on the supply and the demand of e-skills and to benchmark national policy initiatives and multi-stakeholder partnerships in the European Union (and based on this analysis, to understand better the impact of the initiatives launched at EU and national level), to propose new approaches to remedy the situation and to identify better ways to foster multi-stakeholder partnerships to reduce e-skills shortages, gaps and mismatches.
On a similar fashion they will involve in studying the international dimension of the e-skills strategy (especially the efforts to promote ICT professionalism) and to assess the impact of globalisation on high-level e-skills requirements (ICT practitioners’ skills and e-leadership skills), as well as to analyse major policy initiatives and best practices in the world. This should help to understand better the international dimension of e-skills in order to better anticipate change, envisage possible future cooperation and improve efforts to develop e-skills for Europe.
Finally, there is a necessity for European guidelines and quality labels for new curricula fostering e-leadership skills based on market needs and best practices including industry led initiatives. The guidelines and quality labels should be compatible with the European quality assurance reference framework for vocational education and training. A pilot demonstration of the implementation of the proposed European guidelines and quality labels should be organised as well as a dissemination campaign.
Call for contribution: online dialogue on thematic focus and innovative format of WSIS Forum 2012
What are the key issues that need to be addressed at the WSIS Forum? Is there any room for improvement in terms of efficiency and effectiveness of the Forum?
The fourth edition of the WSIS Forum will take place from 14 to 18 May 2012. Within the framework of its preparatory open consultation process, UNESCO is organizing an online dialogue involving all WSIS stakeholders to discuss the thematic focus and innovative format of this event. The results of this consultation will feed into the overall agenda of the Forum and help organizers to improve the setup.
You can participate in the dialogue either by replying to a discussion board, or by uploading a video message. It will be open until 15 January 2012 at the WSIS KC –Knowledge Communities website (www.wsis-community.org).
Please note that a video message can be:
- recorded by mobile phone, webcam, digital camera, etc.
- up to 10 MB in size and
- up to 3 minutes in length.
For more information about the open consultation, please visit the WSIS Forum 2012 website at www.wsis.org/forum.
The WSIS KC – Knowledge Communities platform was created as a contribution by UNESCO to the World Summit on the Information Society. It is an open, global online social network committed to sharing solutions for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) through ICT for Development.
Language Learning by Adult Migrants: Policy Challenges and ICT Responses. Policy Brief
The use of ICT by adult migrants for learning the host country language (or second language, L2) is a topic which crosses three policy areas at EU level: immigration and integration policy; information society policy; and education and training policies. All three areas are currently addressed by flagship initiatives of the Europe 2020 Strategy. Second language acquisition by adult migrants is perceived as a crucial factor for socio-economic and cultural integration. Several EU Member States have actually introduced compulsory L2 requirements for migrants, and a major effort is underway by a large number of stakeholders to assist migrants in enhancing their L2 proficiency, even where no binding requirements exist. ICT has started to be used in this context and is looked at with increasing interest as a means of helping with both the quantitative and qualitative challenges of L2 education.
This report reviews the current challenges of L2 provision and provides examples where ICT has been implemented to by-pass or solve these challenges.