equal access
UNESCO Mobile Learning Week 2013
The event aims to explore mobile learning as a unique and significant contribution to achieving the Education for All (EFA) goals of increasing education access, quality and equality. MLW 2013 will focus on three particular EFA goals as they relate to mobile learning:
- Improving levels of adult and youth literacy: how mobile technologies can support literacy development and increase reading opportunities
- Improving the quality of education: how mobile technologies can support teachers and their professional development
- Achieving gender parity and equality in education: how mobile technologies can support equal access to and achievement in basic education of good quality for all, in particular for women and girls
MLW 2013 will consist of the following events:
- Symposium on Mobile Learning (open)
18-19 February, Paris
This two-day conference constitutes the backbone of the MLW and will feature keynote speakers, demonstrations of mobile content and technology, and thematic breakout sessions.
- Senior Policy Makers' Forum (invitation only)
20 February, Paris
UNESCO, in partnership with the GSMA, will host an invitation-only meeting of high-level government officials to discuss issues relating to mobile learning and policy.
- MLW Webinar (open)
21-22 February, virtual
The Webinar will allow people outside Paris to discuss topics related to mobile learning. It will be moderated by leading thinkers in the field of ICT in education. Selected mobile experts will present their projects and will field real time questions from online participants.
Officials from Ministries of Education, international experts and practitioners in mobile learning, as well as representatives from major partners in the field will share innovative ways of learning with, and through, mobile technologies, and how they can be used to achieve the Education for All goals and improve the quality of education.
Virtual Mobility: the value of inter-cultural exchange
Virtual Mobility makes European and worldwide available to those who are not able to benefit from existing, physical, international exchange programmes, and therefore benefits a wider community.
In this paper, we reformulate the concept of Virtual Mobility and introduce the Movinter Modelling Framework, which supports HEIs in designing and implementing an integrated use of Virtual Mobility to enhance the internationalisation of study experiences.
The paper closes with recommendations on how to extract the potential of Virtual Mobility in the next decade. We must continue to question why Virtual Mobility is important, and pay attention to the unexploited potential of this idea, in order to: (1) democratise access to an international, transdisciplinary and multicultural study experience, now available only to a relatively small minority of students, thereby contributing to social cohesion; (2) produce stable collaboration among teaching and research teams, and their institutions, building on recognised complementarities and specialisations through networking activities; (3) make the practice of joint titles, at various academic levels (undergraduate, master and doctoral programs) and with diverse modalities (master classes, single subjects, seminars and workshops) a reality, even before a full institutional recognition of academic titles from other countries are in place; and (4) link European universities/HEIs to each other and to universities/HEIs in other parts of the world.