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Webinar: eSafety
The webinar will give an overview of eSafety: the issues young people are facing, some of the resources available to schools and ideas for delivering some key messages to young people in school. 1:1 computing in schools raises new eSafety challenges of which the teachers should be aware of. This webinar provides an opportunity to ask questions about this sensitive matter.
The webinar will take place on Friday 17 February 2012 at 3-4:30pm (CET). We will use the Elluminate virtual platform.
The presentation will be made by Karl Hopwood who is an e-safety expert. He is a member of UKCCIS (UK Council for Child Internet Safety) and sits on the working groups for better education and public awareness. Karl has worked for a number of key players in the UK and abroad including CEOP (Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre), BECTA (British Educational and Communications Technology Agency), the European Commission and several Local Authorities within the UK.
EU Wednesday Webinar- 'China: a strange superpower in the making'
China is no longer the developing country it once was. Beijing’s weight in global affairs is mounting by the day as it stands at the helm of the world’s most successful economy and displays ever more financial prowess.
In the past 30 years the Chinese economy has quadrupled in size and some expect it to double again over the next decade. China’s military clout is equally on the rise. In 2008 it evolved into the world’s second highest military spender. On these accounts, China is increasingly perceived as the only country emerging both as a military and economic rival of the US, and thus generating a fundamental shift in the global distribution of power and influence.
While this is true, China still faces many weaknesses and challenges. Its military power, in spite of rapid modernisation, continues to lag behind America’s, especially in terms of power projection capability.
So China is both weak and strong. The great unknown is whether China’s successful trajectory is sustainable over the decades to come. Whatever the outcome will be, China is most likely to be a strange superpower.
Virtual action learning: What’s going on?
At the start of the inquiry, October 2006, existing technologies for VAL seemed very limited in what they could deliver and suggested a simple six-form model of potential sorts of VAL. In less than 2 years, there have been considerable advances both in technological developments and in the levels of usage. What was cumbersome is becoming more accessible, more user-friendly yet sophisticated and is increasingly offering viable alternatives to f2f collaboration.
However, despite these technological advances, with more examples of VAL practice going on than we thought, simple technologies such as email and audio-conferencing are proving successful.
VAL emerges as a variety of action learning in its own right with its own strengths and weaknesses. The practitioners of the various approaches to VAL frequently assert different potential benefits from this way of doing AL. Just as VAL should not necessarily be measured against f2f AL, so one must caution against making assumptions that any one form is necessarily better than any other, even where communication possibilities appear to be restricted. Opinion is divided on whether VAL is a substitute for f2f AL or whether it has advantages that may lead it to being preferred over f2f AL. These arguments await further research and exploration.