EDEN Network of Academics and Professionals (NAP)

1. Personal News
- Alan Tait, Dean of Faculty of Education and Language Studies at The Open University UK, Vice-President of EDEN and Chair of the EDEN NAP Steering Committee has been awarded the title Professor of Distance Education and Development;
- Jean-Michel Lacroix has been appointed as new Rector for CNED - Centre National d'Enseignement a Distance, France
- Marc Laborde, CNED, France and Andrea Karpati, Eotvos Lorand University, Hungary have been invited to join the relaunched Open Classroom Working Group. They both accepted with pleasure the invitiation. The next full meeting of the Open Classroom Working Group will take place in October, in Poitiers.

2. The Fifth Open Classroom Conference "Teachers' Professional Development - addressing eLearning, Innovation and Quality in Schooling" will take place 5-7 October in Poitiers, France. The conference will start on the afternoon of 5 October, with an opening session at 6 p.m., and end 7 October Friday afternoon with a closing roundtable discussion followed by lunch.

3. The elearningeuropainfo portal published an article with the title "Experts Urge an Increase in European Education Research" in which David Segarra made an interview with Claudio Dondi and Nikitas Kastis, EDEN Executive Committee members. You can read the article by clicking here.

4. We are pleased to announce that, as in previous years, the Proceedings of the 2005 Annual Conference held in Helsinki, Finland "Lifelong E-Learning - Bringing e-learning close to lifelong learning and working life: a new period of uptake" are now accessible in electronic format for members of EDEN. If you would like to receive information about how to access the papers, please send a message from your email address as it is registered on the eden-members mailing list, with the subject: 'Proceedings download request' to the EDEN Secretariat addressed to cser@eden-online.org.

5. Upon the invitation of the European co-ordinator of the China-Europe Public Administration Programme (CEPA), funded by the EU and the Chinese government, EDEN joined the workshop in Helsinki, organised for a Chinese educational delegation, consisting of representatives from the China National School of Administration and the Chinese Ministry of Personnel. From EDEN Carl Holmberg introduced the Association and presented the European e-Learning scenario and trends.

6. On the password protected NAP Members' area a new page has been established to enable members to see the archives of the previous issues of the EDEN Newsflash circulated since last September. For details, visit: http://www.eden-online.org/nap

7. We are delighted to welcome the following new institutional members who joined EDEN since March 2005:

Business Administration College, Riga, Latvia
In-Service Training Trust (ISTT), Zambia
Russian Pleakhanov Academy of Economics, Russia
Salzburg Research Forschungsgesellschaft M.B.H., Austria
"Politechnica" University of Timisoara, Romania
International Business School, Botevgrad Bulgaria
University of West Bohemia, Czech Republic
Norwegian Networked University, HSH, Norway
CONFORM - Consorzio Formazione Manageriale, Italy
Tomas Bata University in Zlin, Czech Republic

8. Let us draw your attention that the deadline for 1st phase of the SkyWatch contest has been extended until 30 September. You may remember that earlier we invited you to take part in the scientific contest organised by the "SkyWatchers" in the general field of astronomy and astronomical observations. The project in general aims to raise public awareness for scientific and technological developments by motivating the wider public to actively participate in the process of realizing the beneficial impact of science and technology on our day-to-day lives. Detailed description of the contest can be found at: www.sky-watch.org/contest.htm. The award ceremony will take place during the European Science Week (21-25 November, 2005), in Athens, Greece.