elearning_label_learning_and_society
ICELW
ICELW works to improve online learning so that it makes a measurable difference in workplace performance and morale. Anyone with an interest or background in workplace eLearning is invited to attend and participate in the conference, which will take place in New York City from the 12-14 of June 2013.
The ICELW program cover a variety of topics relating to e-learning in the workplace and the use of technology to improve job performance, in the form of demonstrations, mini-seminars, case studies, interviews, debates, presentations, and panel discussions.
Book about Personalized Learning Environments - "Entornos personales de aprendizaje: claves para el ecosistema educativo en red"
Linda Castañeda and Jordi Adell are the editors of "Entornos personales de aprendizaje: claves para el ecosistema educativo en red", a book about personalized learning environments (PLE) published under a Creative Commons licence.
The book (only available in Spanish) aims to give the reader an introduction to the concept of PLE ecosystem and the pedagogical ideas underpinning it. It also shares some relevant experiences that exemplify how it can be used in all levels of education and how research is approached from different PLEs perspectives.
The publication includes texts of experienced educators and researchers, such as Jesús Salinas, Oskar Casquero, Ricardo Torres Kompen, Cristina Costa, Ismael Peña-López, Lola Urbano, J. Daniel García, Fernando Trujillo Sáez, David Álvarez, Juan Sánchez, Francisco Fernández, Victoria Marín, Carlos Santos, Luis Pedro, Ana Isabel Vázquez-Martínez, Mª Paz Prendes, Alec Couros, Gráinne Conole and Graham Attwell.
The International Institute of Social History Guidelines for Preserving Research Data
The International Institute of Social History (IISH) is an organisation with the strategic objective to facilitate the collection of data for carrying out the long-term research programmes of Global Labour History and Global Economic History.
The collection process is often a collaborative research effort and the IISH aims to become a trusted digital repository of data collections that are significant to social and economic history.
The “IISH Guidelines for preserving research data: a framework for preserving collaborative data collections for future research” is a study carried out in the framework of SURFfoundation’s SURFshare programme, focusing on how to determine what research data should be preserved for the long term and what data should not.
The purpose of the IISH Guidelines is to:
- provide a framework for the understanding and increased awareness of preservation requirements for research data collected by collaborations;
- provide concepts needed by non-archival entities (individual researchers, research collaborations, publishers) to be effective participants in the preservation process;
- suggest selection criteria for the long-term preservation of research data;
- provide a framework for identifying requirements, use cases and data flows necessary for interfacing collaboratories and trusted digital repositories.
17th May. Events in Spain to celebrate Internet Day 2013
The World Information Society Day, also known as Internet Day, is observed every year on 17 May since 2006. The main objective of the day is to raise global awareness of the possibilities offered by new technologies and promote widespread Internet access, reducing the digital gap.
This year, the day will be celebrated throughout Spain with conferences, training sessions, competitions, online games and many other activities.
Universities will invite middle and high school students to virtually visit their premises and ask questions about their academic future.
The main event of the day will be held in the Spanish Senate in Madrid, where a high level panel debate will discuss about sustainable creativity and several awards will be handed.
All activities will be promoted and commented in Twitter with the hashtag #DiadeInternet
19th EUNIS Congress - ICT Role for Next Generation Universities
The 19th edition of the EUNIS Congress is an ICT conference centered on the theme of higher education in Europe, which will be held in Riga (Latvia) from the 11-14 of June 2013.
EUNIS 2013 is the 19th congress in a series of conferences aimed at audiences from higher educational institutes. The following keynote speeches will be the centerpiece of this year's event:
- Richard Katz (President at Richard N. Katz & Associates) -
- "IT Leadership and Governance for Next Generation University"
- Voldemar A. Innus (Owner and principal of VAI Consulting, Pendleton, NY, USA) -
- "Innovation, incubation and the future of ICT in support of the academic mission"
- Ian Dolphin (Executive Director at Sakai Foundation)
- "The CIO and Finding the Future Technology Ecosystem Fit For Your Organization"
- Dr.Jan-Martin Lowendahl (Research Vice President at Gartner, Higher Education Strategies)
- "Opening Up Education – The European Commission initiative towards more ICT and OER in Education and Training Systems in Europe"
- Ricardo Ferreira (Policy Officer at European Commission)
- "Technological Tools for distance Collaborations"
- Greg Palmer (Executive Director at University of Pennsylvania, MAGPI (the Mid-Atlantic Gigapop in Philadelphia for Internet2))
- "Current status of Open Source and Kuali for administrative systems and the “Marketecture of Community”"
- Jennifer L. Foutty (Executive Director at Kuali Foundation)
- "Management Trends in Educational Institutions"
- Greg Mathers (RTU Riga Business School,Director of Accel Performance Consulting)
- "TERENA initiatives and the future of online video in Higher Education"
- Vicente Goyanes (Head of IT-Media technical assistance for University of Vigo & Campus do Mar, member of the TERENA Technical Committee and the Opencast Boarda)
Building open bridges: collaborative remixing and reuse of open educational resources across organisations
“Building open bridges: collaborative remixing and reuse of open educational resources across organisations” is a paper published in March 2013 by the University of Nottingham (UK) exploring new creative collaboration practices related to OER.
Authors Tim Coughlan, Rebecca Pitt and Patrick McAndrew explore in this paper practices that, developed as a set of course materials, were released as OER from the UK, remixed for a US context by a cross-organisational, cross- cultural team, and then reused in a broad range of educational settings. The approaches taken during these remixing and reuse activities as novel forms of creative collaboration are also analysed.
Researchers identify how openness has provoked novel inter- organisational collaboration and forms of ownership. They also define forms of open practice that need support and present issues that should be considered in devising and supporting open projects in education and beyond.
Perspectives on Open and Distance Learning: Open Educational Resources: Innovation, Research and Practice
“Perspectives on Open and Distance Learning: Open Educational Resources: Innovation, Research and Practice” is one in a series of publications by the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) examining Open Educational Resources (OER).
The book, initiated by the UNESCO/COL Chair in OER, describes the movement in detail, providing readers with insight into OER’s significant benefits, its theory and practice, and its achievements and challenges.
The 16 chapters of the volume, published in May 2013, have been written by some of the leading international experts on the subject and are organised into four parts by theme:
- OER in Academia: describes how OER are widening the international community of scholars, following MIT’s lead in sharing its resources and looking to the model set by the OpenCourseWare Consortium
- OER in Practice: presents case studies and descriptions of OER initiatives underway on three continents
- Diffusion of OER: discusses various approaches to releasing and “opening” content, from building communities of users that support lifelong learning to harnessing new mobile technologies that enhance OER access on the Internet
- Producing, Sharing and Using OER: examines the pedagogical, organisational, personal and technical issues that producing organisations and institutions need to address in designing, sharing and using OER
European MOOC Summit
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.
EduSenior offers a free course on Senior Education
The EduSenior project aims to improve the quality of educational institutions that currently are offering courses and activities or wish to implement a learning activity aimed to senior learners (65+ or retired).
Supported by the European Commission’s the Lifelong Learning Programme, EduSenior is offering from June to September 2013 the free online course “Senior education: A Quality of Life approach to assessing educational institutions”, targeted to professionals, decision makers, students and, in general, anybody interested in the topic of adult and senior education.
The virtual classroom will open on May 27th, and the course will start on June 3rd. The course is 100% virtual and will be offered in English and Spanish (different groups). Participants will also have the option to choose the intensity which best suits their needs:
- A 4 months course: June - September 2013.Average time required: 8 h. per week
- Or a 2 months course: June - July 2013. Average time required: 16 h. per week.
The course is organised by the Senior Citizens’ University (Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Spain) and the Akademia im. Jana Długosza (Jan Długosz University, Częstochowa, Poland) and is part of the EduSenior project “Evaluation toolkit on seniors’ education to improve their quality of life" (QEduSen).
The topics to be addressed during the online training sessions are:
- Introduction to the needs and requirements of the elderly and potentialities of education
- Analysis of educational factors that help increase seniors’ competences and increase their quality of life, with real examples and other case studies.
- Introduction to the evaluation process to increase quality in an institution.
- Application of the EduSenior evaluation toolkit
The online registration to participate in this course will remain open until 26 May.
TEL-Map project survey about technology supported, innovative learning practices
The TEL-Map European project, funded by the European Commission, has launched a survey about technology supported, innovative learning practices.
TEL-Map is a Coordination and Support Action focussing on roadmapping activities for innovative forms of learning. A roadmap can be understood as a ‘strategic lens’, through which future developments in a domain or an organisation are analysed for the purpose of channelling available resources wisely.
The aim of this new survey is to collect the views of teaching professionals to inform future roadmapping activities by probing certain statements with regards to their likelihood, desirability and – when it comes to policy measures – their feasibility.
There is no need to be an expert in all areas addressed to answer the survey, as the objective of TEL-Map is to get feedback from people with as diverse backgrounds as possible.
Question blocks have been created for each of the following innovative practices:
- Gamification: using game mechanics and elements of game design in non-game contexts in order to motivate learning. Controversial issues evolve around 'hunting for points as a distraction of learning', neglect of demographic particularities, availability of gamification strategies.
- Free Massive Open Online Course: bringing existing courses to an extended audience by driving technological and economical innovation. Controversial issues evolve around funding models, accreditation, high attrition rates and possible ways of highly automated learner support.
- Flipped classroom: inverting classroom situations so that the lecture part is moved from school to home and the exercise part takes place at school. Controversial issues evolve around managing differences between learners being more or less successful doing their homework, which requires fundamentally new types of in-class activities.
- Seamless Learning (Ubiquitous Learning): obliterating borders between different technologies and learning formats such as formal and informal learning or individual and social learning. Controversial issues evolve around the ownership of learning tools and data generated by learners' activities, or the potentially invasive character of learning technologies to the detriment of a balanced life style.