intergenerational learning
Participate in this year's edition of generations@school!
After the great success of the 1st edition of generations@school during the European Year for Active Ageing and Solidarity between Generations 2012, we are pleased to announce the launch of this initiative’s 2nd edition!
generations@school competition invites teachers to organise an activity that brings pupils together with seniors from their communities to explore how dialogue between generations can contribute to a better understanding of each other. This encounter can be a debate on issues of concern to both generations or the launch of a joint project in which old and young cooperate on a more regular basis.
In 2012, more than 600 schools around Europe took the European Day of Solidarity between Generations (29 April) as an opportunity to invite older people into their classrooms. This year we suggest celebrating your generations@school activity on or around 29 April, but you can do it at any time before 30 June, the submission deadline for the competition.
Don’t forget to take photos or videos of the event! The materials produced (drawings, questionnaires, albums, etc.) will not only be a way of documenting the intergenerational dialogue, but also a means of sharing information with other European schools on what your class has done to take part in the generations @ school competition.
Imagine the ideal Europe for all generations!
As the European Union has designated 2013 as “European Year of Citizens” this year would be a good opportunity for teachers, pupils and older people to organise on or around the 29 April discussions about Europe, its past, its present and about what old and young can do together for building the Europe of tomorrow. What does it mean to be a European citizen? Which EU rights have we obtained through the process of European integration? How do the European citizens of tomorrow perceive these rights and how do they intend to make use of them? What kind of Europe should we pass on to the next generation?
All information related to this new edition of the generations@school competition, the awards that can be won and resources to help teachers in preparing their generations@school event can be found on this website: www.generationsatschool.eu.
Get ready to participate!
e-Learning şi reţele sociale în cadrul mentoratului pentru sprijinirea îmbătrânirii active
Mentoratul este un proces de dezvoltare a resursei umane, utilizat adeseori pentru a-i ajuta pe angajaţi să se familiarizeze cu locul de muncă în vederea unei mai bune integrări.
Formarea personalului la locul de muncă sau promovarea vârstnicilor în roluri de mentori pot fi modalităţi eficiente de a face faţă lipsei de personal, dar şi de a recruta şi atrage personal calificat şi de a stimula implicarea activă a angajaţilor în vârstă în viaţa organizaţiei. În acest articol ne-am oprit asupra câtorva aspecte ale mentoratului, în special asupra sprijinului tehnologiilor informaţiei şi ale comunicării pentru astfel de activităţi, oferind numeroase exemple în acest sens.
Generations At School
As part of the European Year 2012, we invite you to dedicate the European Day of Solidarity between Generations 2012 to bringing pupils and older people together to talk about what it means to grow up and get older, and to think about ways that the young and not so young can help each other to make their lives better.
During the week of 29 April, as part of the European Year 2012 generations@school project, every school across Europe is invited to open the doors of its classrooms to older people and to think about what an intergenerational dialogue could bring to education.
The best project from each country will be awarded with a prize.
Check out the competition rules and prizes and submit a photo of your event by 30 June 2012 via the generations@school Panoramio group.
Fot more information visit the generations@school website.
Why an intergenerational project at school?
• Recreating the link between generations makes it possible to promote intergenerational comprehension and respect.
• It can contribute to the development of individual competencies for a more inclusive society.
• Fostering intergenerational dialogue encourages joint collaboration: generations learn from each other.
• Intergenerational exchange significantly fosters solidarity, active citizenship and personal development, and strengthens teaching quality.
For more information about the educational dimension of generations@school and help with setting up your project visit the Resources section on the project home page.
EDEN 2012 Conference: “Open learning generations”. Call for Papers open!
In times of great challenges for Europe, all generations are called to act together, thus also to learn, to produce, share and preserve knowledge. The 2012 European Year of Active Ageing and the Solidarity Between Generations serves as framework for raising awareness, generating innovative approaches and disseminating good practice.
The EDEN Annual Conference will approach the key questions of learning methodology and technology focusing on the “Open learning generations”, the contexts of socially significant target groups: junior and senior e-learners. We will explore their learning cultures, technology use patterns and discuss new approaches in pedagogy and andragogy that respond to them.
Open learning for and amongst diverse generations
Innovative pedagogical models have been significant in empowering learners and their communities as co-producers in networked lifelong learning. Helping to spread educational resources as digitised content which accommodate different learning pathways, widening participation and promoting shared learning experiences between generations contributes to closing the technology gap.
Online and Social
The 2012 Annual Conference will be supported and accompanied intensively by social networking, sharing, online and virtual presence and involvement possibilities.
This will be strengthened by and implemented through the EDEN Members Portal: the NAP area on the web and its services.
Call for Contributions
All interested professionals are invited to take part and discover the conference themes by submitting their experience.
There will be opportunities for submitting and presenting papers, workshops, posters and demonstrations. At the Porto conference, virtual presentations, as a new form will be introduced. The conference allows openness in choosing the topics and in applying interactive formats and ways of presentations.
To learn more about the scope of the event and consult the themes, please visit the respective conference pages.
For details visit the Conference web-site and the Call for Contributions links.
Schedule and Deadlines
Paper Submissions - 10 February, 2012
Registration Open - Mid February
Notification of Authors - 31 March
Grandparents and Grandsons: poetics of an intergenerational learning experience
Nowadays, learners over 55 years old have to fight with a total new panorama, where most of their mental references have been modified, recomposed or disappeared. At the same time, the young generations encounter a fickle society, where it seems very difficult to establish a sense of belonging on a particular context, a fact that has direct consequences on the historical memory and the identity construction.
The following article presents a set of reflections across the preliminary outcomes of the project, emphasising its contribution to the improvement of the intergenerational learning process, particularly in terms of political dimension, roles and methodology. Finally, this paper proposes some recommendations, based on the previous results, not only for the improvement of the learning process but also, and especially, with the idea of facilitating an intergenerational learning model transfer.
Ageing Societies, Learning and ICT
In general, older people's learning motivation is related to improving their everyday lives, to keeping themselves active, to sharing their knowledge with others and to connecting with other learners. ICT can help in providing new and flexible learning opportunities, which connect older people with each other and with younger generations. For older people, learning usually takes place in informal settings rather than in formal education and it is driven by their own interests and needs rather than by formal requirements.
It is important to carefully develop both the content and conditions of the learning opportunities for older people. There is evidence that older people want to learn, but meaningful and real opportunities for this desired learning are scarce at the moment. More attention needs to be paid to developing relevant and accessible learning opportunities and more user-friendly tools adapted to older people. Supporting learner-centred opportunities and personal learning skills is becoming part of lifelong learning for everybody in the knowledge society, where older people make up one group of learners and mentors, interacting and integrating with others.
The whole role of learning is changing, together with the availability of a new wave of promising ICT applications and research is needed to determine how learning can best be supported and provided in an ageing society. This article is being published in the EuroPACE publication "European Networking and Learning for the Future. The EuroPACE approach." by Annemie Boonen and WimVan Petegem (eds.), Garant, Antwerp, November 2007.