technology
Change in Education - Call for Papers! - ESSIE Annual Convention 2012 - Leuven Belgium
CALL FOR PAPERS: CHANGE IN EDUCATION
Official ISBN publication: "ESSIE Annual Convention 2012: Change in Education”.
PAPER SUBMISSION DEADLINE:
- 31 January 2012
THEMES I
• Innovation Ecologies and Learning Ecosystems
• Digital Learning Resources and Learning Clouds
• Transformational Educational Leadership
• Alternative and Diversified Learning Spaces
• Shifts in Teaching, Learning and Assessment
• Web 2.0, Wiki and Social Technologies
• Open Access, Resources and Standards
• Internet Security, Privacy and Safety
• Breakthroughs in Learning and Neurosciences
Visit the Website: Call for Papers
Submit your paper THE LATEST on 31 January 2012
Aalto University presented by CNBC Europe
Online Educa Berlin 2011 to unleash new cultures of learning
Online Educa Berlin 2011 will explore radically innovative approaches to learning in the digital age. The world's largest global e-learning conference for the corporate, education and public service sectors will be presenting the latest examples of best practice in ICT-enhanced learning from November 30th to December 2nd in Berlin.
This year's exciting range of expert keynote speakers includes Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the European Commission and Digital Agenda Commissioner, Douglas Thomas, author and professor at the University of Southern California, and John Bohannon, journalist for Science magazine and visiting researcher at Harvard University.
At Online Educa Berlin 2011, Neelie Kroes, the European Union's Digital Agenda Commissioner and a key supporter of open source software, will provide details of European initiatives to encourage innovation in the ICT sector. One of the seven flagship initiatives of the Europe 2020 Strategy, the Digital Agenda for Europe aims to deliver sustainable economic and social benefits from a digital single market based on fast internet and interoperable applications. Nicknamed "Steely Neelie" for her tough approach as Competition Commissioner with large corporations like Microsoft, Kroes aims to deliver broadband for all European citizens by 2013.
Douglas Thomas is a leading expert in the development of online cultures, having authored and co-edited several influential books on computer hackers and new technologies. In his most recent work, "A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change", Thomas and his co-author John Seely Brown call for a fundamental reassessment of our learning models. He argues that knowledge is fluid, and offers practical steps towards developing new learning cultures driven by imagination, innovation and play.
John Bohannon's research projects and column for Science magazine have explored the impact of technological innovation on the processing and storing of information. In his current research, Bohannon is looking at how the Google effect is shaping new learning cultures. He is identifying examples of best practice in how teachers and education providers can manage our increasing reliance on online resources and networks.
Additional keynote speakers at ONLINE EDUCA BERLIN 2011 include Miles Templeman, Honorary Fellow at Liverpool John Moores University and Director of the Institute of Directors; Peter Nowak, technology commentator and author of "Sex, Bombs and Burgers"; Ruth Martínez, Strategic Consultant in learning innovation at ELEARNING3D and Huw Morris, Professor and Pro Vice-Chancellor at the University of Salford.
About Online Educa Berlin
Online Educa Berlin is the key annual networking event for the international e-learning and technology-supported learning and training industry, attracting and bringing together experts in the vanguard of technology-enhanced learning from around the world. Online Educa Berlin attracts over 2000 participants from more than 100 countries world-wide.
Online Educa Berlin 2011, the 17th International Conference on Technology Supported Learning and Training November 30th - December 2nd, 2011
VVOB
The VVOB is the Flemish Association for Development Cooperation and Technical Assistance, a non-profit organisation. Commissioned by the Flemish and the Belgian governments, we contribute to the quality of education in developing countries. Our core business is to provide technical assistance in educational projects and programmes. This way VVOB supports local capacity building as a means to stimulate sustainable development and poverty reduction.
Promoting teachers competencies on integration of ICT in teaching and learning
ICT integration in education is a thematic priority for the Flemish Association for Development Cooperation and Technical Assistance (VVOB). VVOB is using a range of support strategies for ICT integration in education in different countries around the world. A crucial factor in these strategies is capacity development on ICT integration among teachers, teacher educators, educational managers and policy makers.
This capacity development includes the provision of strategic and technical advice, the facilitation of training, knowledge building and sharing, and the facilitation of effective partnerships amongst various stakeholders.
In South-East Asia, VVOB has education programmes with an ICT component in Cambodia and Vietnam. In these programmes, Teacher Education Institutions (TEIs) are the main partners. VVOB believes that dedicated educators will always be essential for any successful ICT4E initiative, since they are the key to the appropriate and effective use of technology. In both countries the work aims at the use of ICT to enhance classroom teaching and student learning by teachers’ (and/or teacher educators). Different ICTs are introduced (referring to Technology Knowledge). Educators are encouraged to reflect on pedagogical aspects (referring to Technological-Pedagogical Knowledge) and to apply and try out certain approaches in subject teaching (Technological-Pedagogical-Content Knowledge) (see also: www.tpack.org). As argued by Ng, Miao & Lee (2010), too often the approach to ICT integration in teacher training is the one-off crash course on computer literacy. VVOB goes beyond this by engaging educators in exciting learning trajectories on integration of ICT in their day-to-day teaching practice. A guiding principle is to start from the existing curriculum and only to introduce relevant tools and materials that can enhance or even innovate teaching and learning. The TEIs and especially schools in both countries are still coping with limited ICT resources. However, optimal use of existing resources could result in creative solutions.
In Cambodia
In 2009 the Ministry of Education developed an ICT master plan in collaboration with UNESCO. One of the components of the plan is the introduction of interactive multimedia for teacher training.
VVOB Cambodia helps to implement this part of the ICT master plan, and focuses on the development of ready-made multimedia learning materials, specifically for science teacher trainers. These materials mainly include animations, simulations and video clips, and are produced in collaboration with teacher trainers and ministry officials to ensure ownership and quality control.
The materials match the curricula and are contextualized. The set of technical competencies to operate these multimedia applications is minimal, which helps to lower the barrier for use. Support materials have been developed to guide the teacher trainers in how to create most added learning value by use of these interactive applications. This added value is achieved through application of student centred approaches, whereby students are encouraged to reflect upon abstract and complex concepts. Student teachers acquire a superior conceptual understanding of their subject topics and construct knowledge in an interactive way.
Over 200 interactive multimedia applications have been prepared, and a team of trainers consisting of 20 teacher trainers and educational officials are being trained in the use of these applications. They share and transfer their skills to their peers during nation-wide workshops and the follow-up of these workshops, reaching a total of more than 100 teacher trainers. This allows them to improve their teaching and to close the digital divide, learning how to use ICT in an effective manner.
This website freely shares the learning materials developed by VVOB in cooperation with its partners. Although the site is bilingual (Khmer/English), most of the materials available are in Khmer as they are intended for use in the Cambodian teaching curriculum.
The emphasis is on providing interactive multimedia and video clips in order to integrate ICT in teacher training practice.
In Vietnam
VVOB Vietnam focuses on training teachers and teacher educators on the use of ICT to activate students in the learning process. A training package on “ICT for Active Teaching and Learning (ATL)” was developed with a core group of teacher educators of five TEIs. More than 500 teacher educators have been trained. They developed lesson plans integrating ICT, and invited peers to observe and evaluate their teaching practice. At the end of the 3-year programme the use of ICT in teaching practice significantly improved in these TEIs (see impact study: www.vvob.be/vietnam/). As a result also pre-service students are more exposed to effective use of ICT. Following up on the Next Gen Curriculum development workshop from UNESCO Bangkok, VVOB Vietnam is involved in the development of an ICT curriculum for pre-service teachers - in collaboration with Hanoi National University of Education (www.hnue.edu.vn) and the Vietnamese National Institute for Education Sciences (www.vnies.edu.vn).
In 2011 the “ICT for ATL” package was used for training of almost 3000 in-service teachers in lower-secondary schools. Training was supplied by the provincial Departments of Education and Training following the VVOB approach on “ICT for ATL”. Each module of the training package, introduces a technology-enhanced instructional design together with technical instructions and manuals for the tools. It complements this with examples and case studies on the use of these tools in classroom teaching in Vietnam. These illustrations consist of videos, lesson plans and teacher materials as well as links to relevant resources and research papers on instructional designs in a Vietnamese context (www.vvob.be/vietnam/). Pending assessment by the Ministry of Education and Training, the training package will be included in a reference list for national training materials for in-service teachers.
The interactive training package on “ICT for ATL”, developed by VVOB and its partners, can be consulted online in Vietnamese as well as in English. The ambition of this platform is to collect and share examples of integration of ICT in classroom teaching, not only from Vietnam, but from educators from all over the world.
Further information
VVOB is the Flemish Association for Development Cooperation and Technical Assistance. “Education for Development” is VVOB’s motto and its overall objective is to contribute to sustainable poverty reduction and to a more equal world with increased opportunities for all. The organisation’s main objective is to sustainably improve the quality, efficiency and effectiveness of education and training in developing countries. VVOB is currently active and has well established partnerships with Ministries of Education in ten countries in Africa, Asia and South America.
European Conference "Innovation for Digital Inclusion"
The Conference “Innovation for Digital Inclusion”, organized within the framework of the official programme of the Polish Presidency of the European Union, is meant to provide:
- an overview of the most innovative and effective e-Inclusion initiatives in the EU and,
- in a wider context, to facilitate a discussion on the importance of the e-Inclusion policy to the delivery of the Digital Agenda for Europe.
This event is a great opportunity for both a practical level learning and for establishing a standard based on the good practices coming from national, regional and local levels.
Participants to the conference and representatives of the eCommunity (including the Big Idea, DAA workshop participants and MS e-Inclusion ad hoc group as multipliers) will write collaboratively a Gdansk roadmap. This would be a bottom-up process and a draft is to be proposed to Commissioner Neelie Kroes in mid-September for possible endorsement.
It is expected that the outcomes of the conference will also include an agreement between the partners from the EU member states to undertake a joint realization of a digital literacy promotion project.
Emerging Practice in a Digital Age
Emerging Practice in a Digital Age explores how colleges and universities are embracing innovation and using emerging technologies to enhance learning in a climate of economic pressure, changing social circumstances and rapid technological change. Aimed at those in further and higher education who design and support learning, the guide draws on recent JISC reports and case studies to investigate how the emergence of new and more powerful technologies together with an increase in personal ownership of these technologies are changing the way we connect, communicate and collaborate, and how these changes can benefit learning. The focus of this guide is on emerging practice rather than emerging technology.
eLearning Papers 27 Designing for learning. Call for submissions open!
The 27th edition will focus on Designing for learning. How can teachers develop new approaches to the design of learning activities and whole curricula that takes account of the new complex, technologically enhanced learning contexts? Deadline for submissions: 21 October 2011. Publication foreseen in December 2011. Guest editor: Gráinne Conole, University of Leicester, Head of the Beyond Distance Research Alliance.
New open, social and participatory media clearly have significant potential to transform learning and teaching. The emergence of these technologies has shifted practice on the Internet away from passive, information provision to active, user engagement. They offer learners and teachers a plethora of ways to communicate and collaborate; to connect with a distributed network of peers, and to find and manipulate information. In addition there are now a significant range of free educational resources and tools. However despite this, technologies are still only used marginally in an educational context. Learners and teachers lack the necessary digital literacy skills to harness these new technologies.
This new learning context raises some thought-provoking issues. In a world where content and services are increasingly free, what is the role of formal education? What new teaching approaches and assessment methods are needed? How can we provide effective learning pathways to guide learners through the multitude of educational offerings now available? How can teachers develop new approaches to the design of learning activities and whole curricula that takes account of this new complex, technologically enhanced context? What assessment strategies are appropriate?
Falconer and Littlejohn (2008, p. 20) argue that there are three challenges facing teachers: i) the increasing size and diversity of the student body, ii) the increasing requirement for quality assurance, and iii) the rapid pace of technological change. Conole (2004) has argued that there is a gap between the promise and reality of the use of technology in education and that there is little evidence that education has changed fundamentally.
Much use of technology appears to simply replicate bad classroom practice resulting in simple Web page turning (Oliver, 2000). Similarly Masterman (2008a, p.210) argues that the lack of uptake of technologies is due to a number of factors: lack of awareness of the possibilities, technophobia, lack of time to explore the use of technologies, aversion to the risks inherent in experimentation and fear of being supplanted by the computer. Agostinho et al. (2008: 381) suggest that the uptake of the use of high-quality ICT-based learning designs in higher education has been slow.
Factors include: low levels of dissemination of ICT-based learning projects, lack of ICT-based learning examples to model, lack of time, support and training. Sawyer (2006, p. 8) argues that the impact of the significant investment in computers in schools has been disappointing. There are few studies that show that computer use is correlated with improved student performance. Similarly Koedinger and Corbett (2008, p. 61) write that as new technologies have emerged many hoped that they would have a radically transformative effect on education, but in reality the impact was much less than expected.
The gap between the potential and actual use of technology is a paradox and this is at the heart of the growth of a new area of research that has emerged in recent years. Learning design research aims to better understand this mismatch. It focuses on the development of tools, design methods and approaches to help teachers design pedagogically effective learning activities and whole curriculum, which make effective use of technologies.
Two recent edited collections provide a useful overview of the field of learning design (Beetham and Sharpe, 2007; Lockyer et al., 2008). Conole (forthcoming) defines learning design as follows:
A methodology for enabling teachers/designers to make more informed decisions in how they go about designing learning activities and interventions, which is pedagogically informed and makes effective use of appropriate resources and technologies. This includes the design of resources and individual learning activities right up to curriculum-level design. A key principle is to help make the design process more explicit and shareable. Learning design as an area of research and development includes both gathering empirical evidence to understand the design process, as well as the development of a range of learning design resource, tools and activities.
This call focusses on learning design. Learning design as a term is being used in a number of different ways, this special issues aims to clarify these different perspectives. Arguably, designing for learning is one of the key challenges facing education today; it offers a potential solution to address some of the challenges outlined above. It provides a methodology to help guide and support teachers in the creation of effective learning interventions and resources, which harness the potential of social and participatory media. Papers are welcome on any aspects of learning design, some suggested areas of focus are listed below:
- What are the implications of new social and participatory media for education and how can they be harnessed more effectively to support learning?
- What are the different ways in which learning interventions can be represented?
- How can social networking and other dialogic tools be used to enable teachers to share and discuss their learning and teaching practices, ideas and designs?
- What are the implications for learners, teachers and institutions of new social and participatory media?
- What new pedagogies are emerging as a result of the use of new social and participatory media?
- How are Open Educational Resources being design, used and repurposed?
- What are the implications for formal institutions of the increasingly availability of free resources, tools and even total educational offerings, such as Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs)?
Papers of the follow types are welcome:
- Reviews of aspects of the latest learning design results.
- Empirical studies and evaluations of learning design interventions.
- Policy papers and briefings, particularly looking at the implications of new social and participatory media for learning and teaching.
- Papers on different learning design methodologies and representations.
- Reports and evaluation on learning design visualisation tools.
- Reports and evaluations of pedagogical planners.
- Empirical studies on the nature of social and participatory media, their key characteristics and how they can be used by learners and teachers.
- Case studies on how learners and teachers are using technologies and associated design implications.
- Theoretical underpinnings of the field of learning design.
- The relationship between learning theories and learning design.
- Critiques of the relationship between learning design and related fields, such as instructional design, pedagogical patterns and learning sciences.
The article submission closes on October 21, 2011 The provisional date of publication is December 2011.
For further information and to submit your article, please contact: jimena.marquez@elearningpapers.eu
Guest editor
Professor Gráinne Conole, University of Leicester, UK.
See the complete guidelines at: Instructions for writers
Schulhomepage AWARD 2012
Die Erstellung einer Schulhomepage erfolgt fast immer im Rahmen freiwilliger AGs, in denen sich Schüler und Lehrer über den regulären Unterricht hinaus einsetzen. Ziel des Schulhomepage AWARDs ist es daher, die vielen hervorragenden Leistungen und den großen Einsatz der Schüler und Lehrer für Ihre Schulhomepage zu würdigen und die besten Internetpräsenzen zu prämieren.
Allen Teilnehmern winkt nicht nur der Titel „Beste Schulhomepage des Jahres 2012“, sondern sie können auch Preise im Gesamtwert von über 5.000 Euro gewinnen.
Jede Schule aus Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz kann teilnehmen.
Anmeldeschluss ist der 20.01.2012.