Pan European

The "eScouts" project fits European guidelines with regards to Digital Divide reduction and LLP (Lifelong Learning Programme), and implements innovative ICT practices with a special focus on groups in risk of exclusion. The curriculum will be based on a blended learning environment inspired by Web 2.0 and teaching methods focused on end users.

The project includes three main phases:

-Training groups of young people to become teachers of ICT, and thereby reduce the default prohibitive nature of new technologies for the elderly.

-Training the elderly to become mentors for young people, providing them with support through life experiences and values, with a focus on employability.

-Training facilitators of intergenerational learning, to be key actors and mediators of the two groups.

Learning is becoming more and more individualized and self-managed. Personalization helps foster engagement and supports awareness and motivation. The 2013 EDEN Annual Conference thus explores themes such as “Engaging and challenging learners” „Enhanced learning experience by participation and collaboration” or „Joy, Fun and ICTs”. Prof Mitra’s talk on self-directed learning was posted on TEDTalks last year, with high edutainment potential. In this talk, he tackles one of the greatest problems of education -the best teachers and schools don't exist where they're needed most. In a series of real-life experiments from New Delhi to South Africa to Italy, he gave kids self-supervised access to the web and saw results that could revolutionize how we think about teaching:

http://www.eden-online.org/nap_elgg/pg/blog/read/3435/sugata-mitra-the-childdriven-education-video

Academics, researchers, practitioners gather every year at the EDEN Annual conferences to discuss the latest developments of e-learning, open and distance education. In Europe, despite economic and social pressures, there is a collective drive towards realising the creative potential.

Registration to the Conference is now open: http://www.eden-online.org/2013_oslo/registration.html

Vice-Presidents Neelie Kroes (Digital Agenda) and Antonio Tajani (Industry and Entrepreneurship) and Commission members László Andor (Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion) and Androulla Vassiliou (Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth) also attended the launch of the Grand Coalition held today in Brussels, which is part of the Commission's drive to make Europe more competitive.

President Barroso said: "The Grand Coalition we launch today is an essential part of getting Europe's economy back on track and finding jobs for some of Europe's 26 million unemployed. I applaud those companies who have signed up today. If, together, we can turn the tide and fill the growing number of ICT vacancies, we will see a much wider impact across the whole economy. We want to empower Europeans to fill the jobs that will drive the next ICT revolution."

Europe cannot afford to leave employment opportunities like this unexploited. Today's announcement builds on the groundwork laid by Vice President Kroes in collecting initial pledges on new jobs, internships, training places, start-up funding, free online university courses and more from technology companies, governments, educators, social partners, employment service providers and civil society organisations at the World Economic Forum in Davos (see IP/13/52).

Initial commitments from stakeholders have been endorsed with over 15 companies and organisations signing up to the Grand Coalition. Among the first pledges to come to life is a new online learning platform for young people called the Academy Cube and a new training module for energy smart grid installers.

The Commission has sought pledges in the following key areas:

• Training and matching for digital jobs – to help ensure the skills people are getting are the skills business needs;

• Mobility – helping those with skills get to the place where they're needed, to avoid shortages and surpluses in different towns and cities;

• Certification – making it easier to prove to an employer what skills one has, regardless of the country;

• Awareness raising – so that people know the digital sector offers rewarding and enjoyable careers to both women and men;

• Innovative learning and teaching – so our education and training systems expand and improve to give more people the skills for success.

President Barroso also called on organisations to follow the example of the early pledgers. The Commission has a role to play, but actions like industry-led training, assisting labour mobility, certifying skills, improving school and university curricula, raising awareness, and creating an entrepreneur friendly environment for start-ups need the active engagement of all stakeholders.

The Commission is also launching Startup Europe, a single platform for tools and programmes supporting people wanting to set up and grow web start-ups in Europe.

StartUp_EU http://startup-eu.net/ is an EU project for schools to motivate secondary school students by replicating the excitement and creative innovation of a new start-up company. The project will create an educational game to develop entrepreneurial skills for secondary school students. They will learn about entrepreneurship through an online game and competition that will be judged by entrepreneurs, with prizes.

We invite your school to take part in the game that starts on starts on 1 April 2013, it is for students 14 to 18 years of age. Just write to us and we will send you full details or you can download the teacher instruction document and complete the form and return to us  https://www.box.com/s/wg8hfe58lzouw34swz9v

Please note we have limited places available for schools across all of Europe, so please respond as soon as possible.