policy-making

Sa délégation a deux missions principales : accompagner les citoyens pour mieux maîtriser les technologies de l’internet et aider les entreprises en particulier les PME du secteur de l’internet à se développer. C’est à la jonction  de ces deux missions qu’a été créé le premier portail de service public d’internet sur mobile : Proxima Mobile (www.proximamobile.fr), qui permet notamment d’avoir accès à des services éducatifs, surtout à destination du supérieur mais aussi du secondaire.

Pour Bernard Benhamou, ce sont principalement les habitudes d’usages avec l’arrivée et la croissance des terminaux mobiles (smartphones, tablettes…) qui ont modifié le monde de l’internet ces cinq dernières années. C’est l’ensemble de ces outils qui vont bientôt précédés les ordinateurs qu’il faut réussir à maîtriser et à apprivoiser.

D’autre part, il ajoute que dans cette croissance exponentielle, il est important que les citoyens ne soient pas uniquement consommateurs de produits exportés ; il faut parvenir à développer un écosystème en France et en Europe. Il rappelle à ce sujet que le continent européen est le premier marché mondial en matière de services mobiles au sens large !

Face à ces évolutions, il est donc important que l’éducation soit préparée et pour cela, elle ne doit pas être seulement actrice mais aussi conceptrice de ces changements.

Alors qu’auparavant le citoyen n’était amené à utiliser internet que dans son travail, il se retrouve aujourd’hui  à l’utiliser, presque malgré lui, dans son quotidien. Des services autour de la culture, du tourisme, des transports…, autant de domaines qui vont l’amener sur le web, sans parler des réseaux sociaux.

Environ 18 millions de personnes utilisent le mobile connecté en France. Certaines catégories sociales restent encore en marge de ces nouveaux usages. Mais Bernard Benhamou va au-delà du facteur économique dans ce constat ; la complexité de l’outil peut être dissuasive pour des personnes qui n’ont pas été formés sur ces usages. C’est le cas par exemple des séniors.

La Délégation travaille dans ce sens afin d’accompagner avec des outils simples ces personnes isolés.

Et il ajoute, en guise de conclusion : «La simplicité est un principe démocratique pour les temps à venir».

Neelie Kroes said: "I want out-of-the box thinking. I want to know what the Commission can do to facilitate media's contribution to our democracy and economic growth. The digital revolution is turning media upside down: how can we use the digital Single Market and other tools to capture the potential of this new dynamic?"

The Commission will be looking for Forum members to foster debate throughout 2012, by bringing ambitious personal thinking to the Forum rather than homogenised industry or company views.

The Forum draws on the knowledge and experience of more than 20 personalities from the publishing, broadcasting, advertising, telecommunications, equipment manufacturers, social media and online industries. Members of the European Parliament and representatives of the Council of Ministers have a standing invitation to participate in this Forum

EU Media Futures Forum topics

The debate on the futures of media industries in Europe will address questions such as:

1) What are the big trends in the media industry in Europe and globally?

2) What is the impact of these trends on business models, competition, pluralism and content creation in Europe?

3) What are the main opportunities and barriers in creating a digital media content market in Europe? What needs to be done to attain or overcome them?

4) How can the European media industries best benefit from the technological developments to enhance their competitiveness globally?

5) What are the conditions for sustainable business models that can deliver quality journalism?

For more information

Digital Agenda website: http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda

The Media Task force website:

http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/media_taskforce/index_en.htm

The audiovisual and media policies website:

http://ec.europa.eu/avpolicy/index_en.htm

Neelie Kroes' website: http://ec.europa.eu/commission_2010-2014/kroes/

Follow Neelie Kroes on Twitter: http://twitter.com/neeliekroeseu

Annex

Members attending first meeting

Chairman, Christian van Thillo, CEO of De Persgroep

Annet Aris, Adjunct Professor of Strategy, INSEAD

Nicolas Gaudemet, Vice-President Strategy, Customer Research & International Development, Orange Content & Digital Services

Emmanuel Gabla, Member of the Conseil Supérieur de l'Audiovisuel, France

Patrick Grueter, Vice-President, Disney

Jesper Hermansen, Deputy Permanent Secretary of the Danish Ministry of Culture

Paul Hofheinz, President, The Lisbon Council

Lauri Kivinen, CEO, Yleisradio Oy (YLE)

Rhys Nölke, Vice-President Business Development, RTL Group

Prof. Caroline Pauwels, Director of the Center for Studies on Media, Information and Telecommunication, Free University Brussels

James Powell, Executive Vice-President and CTO, Thomson Reuters

Dominik Skoczek, Director, Intellectual Property and Media Department, Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage

Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO, WPP Group

Rob de Spa, Director of Content and Editorial Development, Wegener Media

Prof. Ed Steinmueller, Science and Technology Policy Research, University of Sussex

Xavier Vidal-Folch, Deputy Director, El Pais

Marc de Vries, CEO, Hyves

Piotr Walter, Vice-President and Deputy CEO, TVN S.A.

Dr. Andreas Wiele, Member of the Board and President BILD Group and Magazines, Axel Springer

Confirmed as Forum Members but not attending first meeting:

Matt Brittin, Vice-President Northern and Central Europe, Google

Oscar Bronner, Editor-in-chief, Der Standard

Julien Codorniou, Head of Platform Partnerships, Facebook

Ruud Hendriks, Independent consultant

Erkki Ormala, Vice-President Technology Policy, Nokia

Gavin Patterson, CEO, BT Retail

David Ripert, Vice-President Content, Dailymotion

The 2014-20 programme – known as Horizon 2020 – would bring all of the EU’s research and innovation funding programmes under a single umbrella. This will make it easier to turn scientific breakthroughs into innovative products and services that improve people's daily lives and create business opportunities.

The proposals earmark funding for three key objectives:

• €24.6 billion to keep Europe a world leader in science. The European Research Council, which funds fundamental research by some of Europe’s most outstanding scientists, will see a 77% budget increase.

• €17.9 billion to secure European industry's leadership in innovation. This includes investment in key technologies as well as help for small businesses needing access to finance.

• €31.7 billion to address popular concerns in areas such as:
  • health, demographic change and well-being
  • food security, sustainable agriculture, marine and maritime research and the bio-economy
  • secure, clean and efficient energy
  • smart, green and integrated transport
  • climate action, resource efficiency and raw materials
  • inclusive, innovative and secure societies

To cut red tape, the Commission plans to simplify reimbursement procedures for EU-funded research projects, reduce the paperwork involved in preparing a research proposal, abolish unnecessary checks and audits, and shorten the time between acceptance of a research proposal and receipt of the grant.

Many key elements from the current programme will continue, such as investment in key enabling technologies like nanotechnologies; initiatives to bring together academia, research centres and business; international collaboration, and funding for young researchers.

The plans will be discussed by ministers and MEPs with a view to agreement before the end of 2013.

More on Horizon 2020

What is the role of education in meeting the goals of the Europe 2020 strategy? What are the targets of Europe 2020 in relation to education?

Education, training and skills are really crucial areas for development if the goals of Europe 2020 are to be met, and this has become even more important since the financial crisis. For instance, by 2020, at least one third of all the jobs in the EU will require fairly high skills, so we need a significant and sustained investment in training people. Looking at the five benchmarks of the Europe 2020 strategy, we now have an education benchmark set at European level. That benchmark states that by 2020, early school leaving (dropping out before completing compulsory schooling) should be reduced to less than ten per cent. And 40% of the people aged between 30 and 35 years old should have a tertiary education degree.

Is there a strategy to ensure that that these goals are met?

Both benchmarks are being analysed, and implementation measures are being looked into by the [individual] countries, so very soon we will have country recommendations which will be published, showing which countries are committing themselves in order to reach those two benchmarks. As for how effective Education and Training Europe 2020 has been so far, we are still at the [preliminary] stage where we are working with the individual countries to ensure that their country recommendations are leading to that benchmark.

What plans are in place for ensuring that the EU has enough of those high skills noted in the Europe 2020 strategy?

Well, it’s not just about more skills; it’s also about the right mix of skills, a good variety. We need to focus on skills that up until now have been less stressed in education, and this is where we need good communication and the coming together of the world of work (industry) and the world of education which, to date, largely have different discourses. What education is trying to achieve and what industry is trying to achieve don’t always fit. We need to listen to business and industry, telling us that Europe is suffering from a very serious skills shortage in certain sectors, in particular in healthcare, ICTs and several vocations like technicians and carpenters. We also need many more entrepreneurs, and thus entrepreneurship education, creativity and innovation are becoming essential competences which are requested by industry and often called “soft skills”. So to develop these transversal competencies and to ensure that there is variety in the overall skill set, we need better forecasting for future jobs and to find new forms of cooperation between business and training. In bridging the gap between education and stakeholders, we have established higher education-business forums and school-business forums as a way to look at how those two worlds can cooperate better.

The last domain we work on, which is very important, is employee mobility. In the case of true mobility, you are looking at developing skills necessary on a global scale, such as being autonomous, learning languages and developing team-working skills. These are the sorts of skills addressed by the Erasmus and Leonardo programmes. In sum, it is important to keep investing in education and training. It is a shared responsibility between Europe’s members.

Do you see any major challenges to achieving these ends?

Achieving those benchmarks is indeed challenging. For example, the profile of an early school leaver is complex. It’s not only educational problems that are to blame. Social matters influence early school leaving. There is never any one cause, so if a country wants to act, it has to take multiple measures. All the same, attainment is improving, and though that 40% target for tertiary schooling is quite a challenge, it is still not as high as in the United States which is perhaps close to 47%, I think.

Innovation is an important feature of the Europe 2020 Strategy. The last few years have seen a number of promising technological developments for the classroom, but their uptake has often been limited. What is preventing the use of more innovative methods in the classroom, and what can the European Commission do about this?

People recognise that the role of ICT is important, but it’s not yet used widely for daily learning and teaching. In other sectors, like e-government, e-health and e-inclusion, technology has really transformed the sector much more in such a way that new services and new ways of working have developed. This is not the case in education. There is a serious implementation gap in formal education. There have been a number of studies outlining the extent of the problem, for example the Schoolnet study and the EURYDICE survey on the uptake of ICT in schools in Europe. They all describe the seriousness of this implementation gap and the huge difference between the use of ICT by youngsters at home and at school. The difference is really shocking in that at home with their parents, children use ICT extensively and innovatively, but this isn’t the case in the educational setting. It’s not only in primary and secondary schooling; even in higher education ICT use is limited or used only in very traditional ways.

A key problem behind the poor uptake of ICT use is insufficient pedagogical training and teacher professional development. There is not enough focus on the use of ICT to change their teaching practices, so they simply never acquire sound pedagogical strategies to use ICTs in the classroom. With only basic ICT skills, teachers lack confidence and feel that they are underperforming. They may even feel their students are more able than they are.

So you’re saying that the main problem of poor ICT uptake lies in teacher education?

We’ve seen that in the northern countries teachers in primary schools are starting to receive better training, but we need to promote a new pedagogical approach because if you don’t know how to bring it into your teaching practice, you can’t get to the point of uptake. Digital competences are not really part of the curricula at present and don’t appear in the learning outcomes, and if you look to assessment on its own, you don’t find ICT supporting assessment. Surmounting this barrier requires a systematic approach to engage all the actors in education: the school, the parents, the learners, the support people, the head teacher and the teachers. Everyone has to have a view and vision of ICT and how it can enhance teaching and learning. But it must also show up in assessment methods, in professional development, in curricula and in leadership. So you need a whole system approach because if you don’t do that, if you just focus on one barrier, you don’t get there, and that’s maybe why this area has such a huge problem. It is a complex issue.

That gives us a fair understanding of the underlying issues in teacher training, but what practical steps are needed to remedy this? What is the European Commission doing to assist teachers, trainers and policymakers in integrating ICT in education and training?

Empowering Educators for Creative Learning is the title of the ONLINE EDUCA BERLIN 2011 session where the European Union will launch a new initiative entitled Creative Classrooms / Creative Learning Environments. The second term refers not only to primary and secondary education but all formal learning settings. So we’ll be looking at the diversity of innovative classroom practices all over Europe. One of them, One Laptop Per Child, opens the way for increasing ICT uptake by enabling a child to own a computer for use at home and at school. While policymakers and decision makers have lots of ideas, they don’t necessarily know what works in practice at grassroots level.

Creative Classrooms / Creative Learning Environments will be about dialogue between all stakeholders, using a bottom-up approach for people to share ideas about the strategies being implemented in classrooms across the Continent. We’re focusing on current practices rather than what might be possible in the future.

We also have the Lifelong Learning Programme for education and training, encouraging open coordination between member states. For example, we have new a working group ICT and Education, launched in October 2011, where 24 member states discuss the major barriers, teacher professional development and how to bring better digital competence into the curricula. We’re looking at how each country tackles the issues by discussing what works in practice so that we learn from each other. This working group will ultimately develop an evidence-based policy handbook, so it ties in neatly with the Creative Classrooms initiatives where we look at practical, grassroots approaches for improving education and training.

There is also the Training of the Teacher programme, and under the Lifelong Learning Programme, we have the e-twinning project which promotes bilateral cooperation. It involves about 150 000 teachers learning how others use ICT in the classroom. The final instrument of note is the e-learning portal which is an excellent resource for those seeking information, ideas and access to the many research papers conducted on these important matters of ICTs, education and training towards Europe 2020.

POL26 Empowering Educators for Creative Learning: A European View will be held on Thursday, December 1st at 14.00 – 16.00. Lieve Van den Brande will present a paper entitled EU Policy for ICT in Education: A New Initiative on Creative Classrooms / Creative Learning Environments.