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Democracy cannot exist without both offline and online freedom of expression, according to Stavros Lambrinidis, EU Special Representative for Human Rights. To that end, the EU must uphold its norms, principles, and values in both offline and online worlds, he stressed. In his speech, delivered at the Tech @State High Level conference, Lambrinidis outlined the EU's action plan for reaching this objective. 

One of the next steps will be to develop and publish a set of EU guidelines on freedom of expression—online and offline—that will include the protection of bloggers and journalists. The handbook will help unfurl the EU's view on the restriction of freedom, access to the Internet, and the arrest of bloggers, already made public through repeated condemnation of such acts. 

Other planned action includes sending clear political messages against increased internet censorship, and possibly curbing the export of materials intended for internet monitoring and/or telecommunication surveillance in violation of human rights. The EU has already adopted sanctions prohibiting the export of this kind of technology to Syria and Iran, in hopes of preventing authoritarian regimes from using them against human rights defenders.

This conference will take place in Prague, Czech Republic, 23 - 26 July 2013 as part of the IADIS Multi Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems (MCCSIS 2013) Prague, Czech Republic 22 – 26 July 2013.

* Keynote Speakers (confirmed):
Thomas C. Reeves, Professor Emeritus of Learning, Design, and Technology, College of Education, The University of Georgia, USA
Doc. Ing Jan Lojda, President of the Czech Association of Distance Teaching Universities, Czech Republic

* Conference background and goals
The IADIS e-Learning 2013 conference aims to address the main issues of concern within e-Learning. This conference covers both technical as well as the non-technical aspects of e-Learning.
The conference accepts submissions in the following seven main areas: Organisational Strategy and Management Issues; Technological Issues; e-Learning Curriculum Development Issues; Instructional Design Issues; e-Learning Delivery Issues; e-Learning Research Methods and Approaches; e-Skills and Information Literacy for Learning.

* Format of the Conference
The conference will comprise of invited talks and oral presentations. The proceedings of the conference will be published in the form of a book and CD-ROM with ISBN, and will be available also in the IADIS Digital Library (accessible on-line).
The conference proceedings will be submitted for indexing to INSPEC, EI Compendex, Thomson ISI, ISTP and other indexing services.

* Best Papers
The best papers will be selected for publishing as extended versions in the IADIS International Journal on WWW/Internet (ISSN: 1645-7641), in the Interactive Technology and Smart Education (ITSE) journal (ISSN:1741-5659) and also to selected journals (i.e. IADIS International Journal on Computer Science and Information Systems (IJCSIS - ISSN: 1646-3692) including journals from INDERSCIENCE Publishers.

* Types of submissions
Full papers, Short Papers, Reflection Papers, Posters/Demonstrations, Tutorials, Panels and Doctoral Consortium. All submissions are subject to a blind refereeing process.

* Topics related to e-Learning are of interest. These include, but are not limited to the following areas:

• Organisational Strategy and Management Issues
• Technological Issues
• e-Learning Curriculum Development Issues
• Instructional Design Issues
• e-Learning Delivery Issues
• e-Learning Research Methods and Approaches
• e-Skills and Information Literacy for Learning

To see more details and subtopics, please see the attached document or visit the conference website.

Open Praxis is now accepting papers on the special theme of Learning assessment in open, distance and flexible education. This focus is on innovative ways of assessing students' performance in open, distance and flexible education. The journal will accept contributions that address aspects such as the following: