europe

Novinky

Consultation on Opening Up Education Initiative Launched

17 August 2012

The consultation on "Opening up Education - a proposal for a European Initiative to enhance education and skills development through new technologies", will explore the perceived need for EU action to promote the use of open educational resources (OER) in education.  

From 13 August 2012 to 13 November 2012.

New technologies, in particular the internet, together with globalisation and the emergence of new education providers, are radically changing the way people learn and teach. Open access to education resources offers an unprecedented opportunity to enhance both excellence and equity in education. The EU aims to help both individual learners and education and training institutions in Member States to benefit from these opportunities and to increase their contribution to society.

 

In the last quarter of 2012, the Commission will present a Communication on Rethinking Skills aiming to increase the quantity, quality and relevance of skills supply for higher economic and social outcomes. This will, among other actions, announce a new EU Initiative on "Opening up Education": a proposal to exploit the potential contribution of ICTs and Open Educational Resources (OER) to education and skills development. This new EU initiative on "Opening up Education" will be the topic of a subsequent Communication in mid-2013.

 

View the consultation document pdf - 45 KB [45 KB]

View the questionnaire

Zoznam

Europeana Open Culture app

13 Jún 2013

Europeana, Europe’s digital library, museum and archive, has launched its first free iPad app. Europeana Open Culture introduces the public to hand-picked and beautiful collections from some of Europe’s top institutions, and allows people to explore, share and comment on them.

The app provides an easy introduction to Europe’s glorious art treasury through five specially curated themes: Maps and Plans, Treasures of Art, Treasures of the Past, Treasures of Nature and Images of the Past.

 

Europeana Open Culture presents stunning visual collections with large images - great for those smaller details - and a comment option that opens up the possibility for dialogue between many people exploring the same images.

 

The 350,000 images available through the app come from collections as diverse as:

  • Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh, UK
  • Rijksmuseum, The Netherlands
  • National Library of Poland
  • The Archaeological Museum, Portugal
  • Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
  • Digital Library of the Spanish Ministry of Defence              

All images included are either in the public domain or are openly licensed.

 

The app is built on the Muse platform. The platform’s code is open source, so, it is completely free to use and improve.

Novinky

32 Partners from 28 Countries Launch LoCloud - Local Content in Europeana Cloud

06 Jún 2013

LoCloud explores the potential of cloud computing technologies for Europeana, with a focus on small and medium sized institutions.

On 19-20 March, at the National Archives of Norway in Oslo, the LoCloud Best Practice Network project was officially launched. The meeting gathered 32 partners from 28 different countries to present, plan and discuss the activities of the project over the next three years. 

 

Content from small and medium local institutions such as museums, archives and libraries is still underrepresented in the digital European arena. Cloud-based technology could offer an affordable and user-friendly solution for making their content available on-line.

 

LoCloud aims to develop cloud-based technology and services to help small and medium local institutions to aggregate their digital resources and make them accessible on-line, via Europeana.eu, the European Library, Museum and Archive.

 

The project will explore the potential of a cloud-based technology infrastructure for aggregating local content. It will also develop a number of micro-services offering geo-location and metadata enrichment, multilingual vocabularies for local history and archaeology, a historical place name gazetteer and a Wikimedia application to handling relevant ‘crowd-sourced’ content.

 

As a result of the LoCloud’s activities, access to over 4 million items of digital content will be made available through Europeana.

 

LoCloud relies on a large group of technical partners, content providers, aggregating services and partners with specific expertise which make together a very strong consortium. Gunnar Urtegaard, from National Archives of Norway, project coordinator, underlined during the meetings close: "If we can keep it simple for content providers, keep simple for users and remove all the complexity in-between, then this project has the potential to be a great success."

 

Contact LoCloud:

Gunnar Urtegaard
gunurt@arkivverket.no

National Archive Norway/Riksarkivet

Box  4013 Ullevål stadion
0806 Oslo

Norway

 

 

About LoCloud:

 

Europeana.eu provides access to the digitized content of Europe's galleries, libraries, museums, archives and audiovisual collections. It currently includes over 26 million books, photographs, paintings, films, sound recordings and archival resources from more than 2,200 institutions in every European member state.

More information can be found at http://www.europeana.eu/portal/.

 

LoCloud is one of a suite of projects, funded by the European Commission, to develop Europeana and enhance its contents. It will explore the potential of cloud computing technologies for Europeana, with a focus on small and medium sized institutions. It aims to support them in making their content and metadata available to Europeana.eu. To this purpose a set of services and tools will be developed to help to reduce technical, semantic and skills barriers and to enhance Europeana.

 

LoCloud aims to build on the achievements of two earlier Best Practice Network projects: CARARE,  in establishing a repository-based aggregator for Archaeological and Architectural heritage; and Europeana Local, in its work with local institutions and their regional and national aggregators, which has resulted in the contribution to date of well over 5 million items to Europeana.

 

The LoCloud web site will go live at the end of April at: www.locloud.eu.

 

LoCloud is co-funded by the European Commission's  ICT Policy Support Programme.

Udalosti

3rd Corporate Universities & Ac@demies Summit

03 Jún 2013

At this large-scale event, consisting of 2-day summit and 1-day post-conference workshop, 25+ forward-looking top-level experts will focus mainly on creative design and development of corporate universities, management and leadership skills for a successful mature corporate universities. Furthermore participants will benefit from 3 parallel streams, smaller group discussions and one-of-a-kind digital learning, learning technology & corporate education exhibition.

Novinky

À propos MOOC: EU2C - the European Union explained

14 Máj 2013

À propos MOOC: CIFE in cooperation with the Jean Monnet Chair for Political Science of the University of Cologne would like to develop web-based online courses on the EU. Have a close look here.

CIFE in cooperation with the Jean Monnet Chair for Political Science of the University of Cologne would like to develop web-based online courses on the EU.

 

Have a close look at https://moocfellowship.org/submissions/eu2c-the-european-union-explained-by-two-partners-cologne-and-cife Find the green "Abstimmen" (vote) button and CLICK.

 

We are applying for technical support to create a web-based online course on the EU.

 

The more clicks, the better our chances! Thanks for your support!

Udalosti

European MOOC Summit

06 Máj 2013

Many European universities are engaging in MOOCs-related initiatives. Some host their MOOCs on US platforms, while others are developing their own platforms. What strategies do European universities employ?

The École Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) will host a meeting in June in preparation for the Fall 2013 Summit regarding Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) at European Universities. 

The questions to be discussed include:

Why do European Universities engage in MOOCs? In which languages are they produced? Which audiences are targeted? How effective have the first MOOCs experiences in Europe been? Why should Europe have its own platform? How do MOOCs build upon existing online learning activities? How do regional, national or European governments see their role? What is the impact on mobility of European students? Which research initiatives are launched in Europe? What are the new business opportunities? 

Key actors will gather at EPFL for two days of sharing information. On the first day, participants will have 5-10 minutes to present the state of affairs in his or her institution, i.e., what has been achieved so far and what are the key challenges. The second day will be structured around the themes that will emerge from the first day, such as those mentioned above.

Udalosti

Launch of the first pan-European MOOCs Initiative

24 Apríl 2013

Partners in 11 countries have joined forces to launch OpenupEd.eu, the first pan-European MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) initiative, with the support of the European Commission.

Around 40 courses, covering a wide variety of subjects, will be available free of charge and in 12 different languages in the portal www.OpenupEd.eu, officially launched on 25 April 2013. The initiative is led by the European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU) and mostly involves open universities based in France, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, UK, Russia, Turkey and Israel.
 
11.00 h Welcome by the host, Jos Rikers (OUNL)
 
Three short presentations:
Androulla Vassiliou
 
European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth
Fred Mulder
 
Chair EADTU Task Force on Open Education
UNESCO Chair in Open Educational Resources at OUNL
Will Swann
 
President EADTU (European Association of Distance Teaching Universities)
 
Chat Session / Discussion with the press, led by Jos Rikers, with:
Fred Mulder
Will Swann
and including:
Xavier Prats Monné
 
Deputy Director-General of the Commission's Education and Culture directorate
 
Closing at 12:00 h
Novinky

The European Commission welcomes the launch of the first pan-European university MOOCs initiative

24 Apríl 2013

Partners in 11 countries have joined forces to launch OpenupEd.eu, the first pan-European MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) initiative, with the support of the European Commission.

Around 40 courses, covering a wide variety of subjects, will be available free of charge and in 12 different languages in the portal www.OpenupEd.eu, officially launched on 25 April 2013. The initiative is led by the European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU) and mostly involves open universities based in France, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, UK, Russia, Turkey and Israel.

 

Androulla Vassiliou, European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth, launched the European MOOCs initiative in a webcasted international press event hosted by the Open Universiteit in the Netherlands. “This is an exciting development and I hope it will open up education to tens of thousands of students and trigger our schools and universities to adopt more innovative and flexible teaching methods”, she said. “We see this as a key part of the Opening up Education strategy which the Commission will launch this summer.”

 

Professor Fred Mulder, chair of the EADTU task force on open education and UNESCO chair in Open Educational Resources, is leading the initiative. "Our aim is to respond to the need for a more accessible system of higher education, which puts the learner at the centre. The European MOOCs will provide quality, self-study materials and a bridge between informal learning and formal education", he stressed.

 

For EADTU President, Will Swann, “the pan-European MOOCs initiative shows our collective passion to further innovate.”

 

The OpenupEd.eu free online courses range from mathematics to economics, e-skills to e-commerce, climate change to cultural heritage, corporate social responsibility to the modern Middle East, and language learning to writing fiction. Each partner is offering courses via its own learning platform and at least in its home language. Courses can be taken either in a scheduled period of time or anytime at the student's own pace.

 

All courses may lead to recognition: a completion certificate, a so-called badge, or a credit certificate that may count towards a degree. In the latter case, students have to pay for the certificate, with the cost ranging from € 25 to € 400.

Zoznam

EUNEC statements on the European Commission Communication ‘Rethinking education'

23 Apríl 2013

The European Network of Education Councils  (EUNEC) has issued a statement as a reaction to the European Commission’s recent Communication “Rethinking education: Investing in skills for better socio-economic outcomes.”

On 20 November 2012 the European Commission published a set of policy recommendations to reinforce the cooperation between EU Member States and give a new impetus to education policy. The most important part of the proposal is the Communication “Rethinking education: Investing in skills for better socio-economic outcomes”, where the EC takes the opportunity to gather all aspects of European Education and Training policy in an encompassing framework and to give some new impetus.  

 

As a first reaction to this Communication, EUNEC issued on April 2013 a document with comments and recommendations regarding the EC’s text, stressing the need for a broad approach of education and training policy.

 

“Sustainability, social cohesion, equal opportunities and a development oriented approach are as important as the labour market orientation. EUNEC cannot support an approach to Education and Training that is exclusively labour market oriented”, says the statement.

 

The lack of attention to the role of school communities and school groups in the Communication and the lack of transparency of the decisions are also issues of concern for EUNEC.

Novinky

Online Master in EU Studies

27 Marec 2013

This Master in EU Studies is offered by the Centre International de Formation Européene (CIFE) and the University of Cologne through a combination of e-learning and face-to-face sessions (mainly during weekends in Berlin, Brussels, Istanbul, Rome and Budapest).

This Master in EU Studies Online, a two year programme, gives participants a working knowledge of recent developments in the European integration process and the skills to negotiate within an international context, to draft reports, to plan and manage international projects, and to present their ideas in a transnational legal dimension. Deadline for the online application is 5 September 2013. A limited number of scholarships are awarded to eligible candidates to cover part of their tuition. More information, see: http://www.eu-online-academy.org/