Platform
Digital Agenda for Europe - new online platform launched
A new online platform has been launched to discuss the Digital Agenda for Europe. Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission, published the news in her blog.
The forum of the Digital Agenda Assembly is an online space for discussion and feedback to prepare the Digital Agenda Assembly 2012 ("DAA12") on 21-22 June in Brussels, as well as the review of the Digital Agenda for Europe ("DAE"), planned for adoption in October.
Join the discussion, provide comments and launch new discussion topics.
What is the Digital Agenda?
From the official press release:
“The European Commission launched in March 2010 the Europe 2020 Strategy to
exit the crisis and prepare the EU economy for the challenges of the next decade. […]
The Digital Agenda for Europe is one of the seven flagship initiatives of the Europe 2020 Strategy, set out to define the key enabling role that the use of Information and
Communication Technologies (ICT) will have to play if Europe wants to succeed in its ambitions for 2020.
The objective of this Agenda is to chart a course to maximise the social and economic potential of ICT, most notably the internet […]. Successful delivery of this Agenda will spur innovation, economic growth and improvements in daily life for both citizens and businesses.”
The Digital Agenda and e-learning
For the purpose of boosting the economy a list of planned actions has been put together, some of which relate directly to e-learning, others influence e-learning indirectly.
Pillar VI is exclusively focussing on enhancing e-skills, but other categories of actions, such as Pillars I (Digital Single Market) and IV (Very Fast Internet), also contain actions which could have an imapct on the European e-learning market.
One of the actions most relevant to e-learning - Action 68 - calls on member states to mainstream e-learning in national policies. The Commission in turn will raise awareness on the benefits of adopting e-learning, sharing knowledge about results, practices and solutions available in Europe and laying the foundations for future plans.
The elearningeuropa.info community members have gatherred a variety of materials about this topic. Join the elearningeuropa.info community about 'Mainstreaming eLearning in National Policies' to contribute to the discussion.
Access the online forum of the Digital Agenda Assembly online space and post your views.
3rd European Summit on the Future Internet
The 3rd European Summit on the Future Internet focuses on some of the most relevant topics to boost international collaboration. What is the future of Internet and its many applications? How to combine the interests of platform developers, apps and service providers and future customers? Which of the applications, such as cloud computing, future media, and e-commerce, the customers are most willing to adapt? Which applications will generate new business opportunities? How Internet can be utilized in solving grand challenges, like environmental change, health care and aging, and transportation?
After the two very successful editions in 2009 and 2010 organized by SnT, it is a great pleasure to jointly carry out the 3rd European Summit on the Future Internet. The program as it is being conceived will represent a unique opportunity to understand the future ahead and confront your views with those of a carefully selected panel of extraordinary speakers. This 3rd European Summit on the Future Internet will provide top speakers and influencers as well as interesting and current topics according to the main theme of the whole event - towards Future Internet international collaboration.
MERMIG
MERMIG is a powerful, Web based collaboration platform which serves as a common working space for modern organisations. MERMIG was carefully designed to allow a community of users produce share and disseminate information, archive documents, organise interaction and meetings, structure business processes, etc. All is needed is an internet connection, a username and a password.
CeBIT 2012 - the heart of the digital world
CeBIT is the digital industry's biggest, most international event. Thanks to its unique combination of exhibition, conferences, keynotes, corporate events and lounges, CeBIT represents an unrivaled tool for doing business and sealing deals.
More than 4,200 companies from over 70 countries participated at CeBIT 2011, including many firms which returned after a break of several years, such as Xerox, Canon, Epson, Siemens Enterprise Communications, HP and Motorola.
UCF's openSpace
openSpace is University College Falmouth's platform for making teaching materials free to learners all over the world through Creative Commons. This is your space to explore, experiment, develop and grow...a place where your learning and your knowledge is shaped through your interactions, peer feedback and collaboration with others interested in the same subject. It's about you participating in an active community of learners. The journey is as important as the destination.
elearningeuropa.info launches its new user oriented platform
elearningeuropa.info, the European reference portal on education and technology, has launched on Thursday May 12, 2011 its new platform. It is designed and built user-centered and it contains participatory tools to communicate, share and discuss.
The new platform is the result of a year’s work of careful planning and design, from the elearningeuropa.info team, with a focus on developing the technological solution most suited to user requests and aimed to facilitate a better flow of ideas and interaction.
The European Commission initiated elearningeuropa.info nine years ago, to support the transformation of education through technology. Available in 21 languages, it has now become a key forum for the generation and presentation of ideas.
elearningeuropa.info has more than 35.000 registered users with an average of 16. 000 monthly visits.
Thanks to this large user base the portal provides great opportunities for research and exchange of ideas and information amongst researchers, practitioners, students and policy makers across Europe. The portal re-launch will also benefit from the use of the latest cutting edge open source technology: A new Content Management System (CMS) has been deployed based on the award winning ‘Drupal’.
The portal’s online journal ‘eLearning Papers’ will be presenting its new visual identity and structure in the new platform. A leading publication in its field, the journals five annual issues are guided by an Editorial Committee chaired by Tapio Koskinen, Head of New Solutions at Aalto University Professional Development.
Some of the new sections the portal will be launching are blogs, which offer users the chance to express their opinions and insight as well as a dedicated TV Channel which offers users the possibility to find the most relevant and highest quality videos about education and technology in one place.
In addition, users will be able to create communities and working groups around themes and topics of interest and use these privileged spaces to display their content to a wider audience. These communities are the ideal space for co-creation and sharing ideas. Our first communities are up and running with discussions and insight into Language Learning and Social Media; Open Education and virtual worlds and gaming. Join us to explore them and share your experience.
Visit us at: www.elearningeuropa.info
Contact us at: contact@elearningeuropa.info
Web 2.0 Learning Environment: Concept, Implementation, Evaluation
The learning environment we present consists of several components (modules) that are well-known Web 2.0 applications such as wikis, weblogs, social bookmarking services and RSS feeds. The section describing the implementation of the environment in a use case at the Darmstadt University of Applied Science focuses on the specific didactic contribution the particular learning modules render towards the entire learning arrangement. The article explains the didactic potential of the wiki platform in more detail, since it serves as the integrating module (or learning centre) of the learning arrangement.
Our learning environment was tested and evaluated during the “Social Software” seminar held in the information science study course at Darmstadt University of Applied Science in 2007/08. A questionnaire-based survey reveals interesting facts regarding the success of the practical implementation of the Web 2.0 arrangement with respect to the motivation and learning outcome of students. The survey was supplemented with some non-formalized feedback in a concluding discussion. With these results in mind this paper finally provides some remarks on the potential of the learning environment in broader educational contexts.
The full text of this article is available in English and Spanish. The Spanish version is made possible our partner, the Organisation of Ibero-American States for Education, Science and Culture (OEI). // El texto integro de este artículo está disponible en inglés y castellano. La versión castellana ha sido posible gracias a nuestro socio, la Organización de Estados Iberoamericanos para la Educación, la Ciencia y la Cultura (OEI).
Learning Roadmap Studio: new approaches and strategies for efficient learning and training processes
Thus, a prototype application, named Learning Roadmap Studio (LRMS), has been developed and deployed at Aveiro Norte Polytechnic School of the University of Aveiro, in order to suppress gaps in learning processes and to power better learning and training. It represents a new challenge for the University of Aveiro for higher education and is already being tested. At its core is the concept of “learning roadmaps” that act upon two fundamental axes: education and learning. For the teachers, it aims at becoming a self-supporting tool that stimulates the organization and management of the course materials (lectures, presentations, multimedia content, and evaluation materials, amongst others). For the students, the learning roadmap aims at promoting self-study and supervised study, endowing the pupil with the capabilities to find the relevant information and to capture the concepts in the study materials. The outcome will be a stimulating learning process together with an organized management of those materials.
It is not intended to create new learning management systems. Instead, it is presented as an application that enables the edition and creation of learning processes and strategies, giving primary relevance to teachers, instead of focusing on tools, features and contents.
Download the full text here
Didactic architectures and organization models: a process of mutual adaptation
In a knowledge society where time to market is fast and competence domains are widened and in rapid evolution, organizations are forced to move towards the so called enterprise 2.0 model, characterized by an intensive use of blogs, wikis, social bookmarking and RSS. These organizations have a flat structure and are based on the principle of autonomy. This article asserts that in these contexts, training and vocational systems based on the same principles - namely autonomy, informal style and an open approach - can be implemented. In other more traditional frameworks, formal eLearning based on LMS platforms will continue to represent an effective solution: as long as users do not become familiar with the functionalities offered by 2.0 technologies and thus become actors of change.
The document is structured in three parts: The first chapter analyses four different didactic architectures, highlighting the differences between eLearning 1.0 and eLearning 2.0; the second chapter describes organizational models and introduces the relation with the didactic architectures, and the third chapter highlights the process of mutual adaptation between didactic architectures and organization models.
Self-Regulated Personalized Learning (SRPL): Developing iClass’s pedagogical model
Among the basic questions confronting the development of iClass, the model we present underscores the importance of issues such as the decline of rational, strategic and mindful thought processes by insisting on the need for developing self-regulated reflective learners who are able to make informed choices and plan their learning process according to their own needs, interests and preferences.
By developing adequate tracking, profiling and matching capabilities, ICT can materialize the dream of several generations of educators and thinkers. In this paper we argue that the development of a system geared towards the personalization of learning must be accompanied by the development of a set of pedagogical methodologies on three levels. However, since the realization of the SRPL goals in European schools depends to a large extent on the usability of the pedagogical methodologies, the major effort for future development based on SRPL will have to focus on refining and further operationalizing them based on the evaluation of pilot experiments with teachers in schools.