EDEN Network of Academics and Professionals (NAP)

1. New President in EDEN

The Annual General Meeting held on 16 June in Naples approved the election of Professor Alan Tait, Dean, Faculty of Education and Languages Studies, The Open University UK as next President of EDEN.

Alan has served as Vice-President and Chair of the Network of Academics and Professionals in the Executive Committee during the past years.

We wish lots of success to Alan as President of the Association!

The EDEN family in Naples celebrated with overwhelming love the leaving President, Ingeborg Bo who was in office for four years.

2. Welcoming new Executive Commmittee member

Professor Morten Flate Paulsen, Director of Development, NKI Distance Education, Norway was unanimously elected as Member of the EDEN Executive Committee at the Annual General Meeting in Naples. Morten has got his Doctorate of Education from the Pennsyilvania State University and Master of Science in Engineering from the Norwegian Institute of Technology.

We congratulate Morten and welcome him warmly in the Executive!

3. Over 1000 members in EDEN Network of Academics and Professionals (NAP)

We are delighted to welcome the one thousandth individual member in NAP, who is Steven Verjans from the Open Universiteit Nederlands. Steven was warmly greeted during the Welcome Reception at the Naples Conference by Alan Tait, Chair of the NAP Steering Committee, presenting him a gift and a certificate on the occasion.

The Conference provided good opportunity for institutions and individuals to become member of the Association. We welcome the newly joined institutional member, University of Geneva and individual member of EDEN, Professor Michael Grahame Moore.

4. 2007 Annual Conference - Naples, 13-16 June 2007

The conference this year again attracted high number of participants from all over Europe and, in increasing number, from other continents. With the over 550 delegates, the over 180 theme-relevant presentations and the ten workshops this conference has resulted a memorable success, thanks also to the high attention and active participation of the international professional and academic community.

There was a particularly excellent panel of keynote speakers this year. The keynote presentations can be read at the conference website.

5. The EDEN online membership survey is in progress and the Executive Committee was informed about the first results. At the Annual General Meeting members keenly confirmed that to open such a survey was timely and the Secretariat was encouraged to further continue collecting feedback on the activities and services provided and on how members think EDEN could improve the ways of serving the community.

Dear Member!

You are invited to fill in the questionnaire located at the NAP Members' area, which will take less than 10 minutes.

You can use the login: nap-member and the password: napraforgo

We hope to be able to summarize and make available the final results for members based on as many opinions as possible, in September. Please, remind any colleagues who may be interested to contribute, about the availability of the survey.

6. real LEARNING in VIRTUAL worlds - EDEN Sixth Open Classroom Conference

EDEN will organise its sixth Open Classroom Conference in Stockholm, 24-26 October 2007. The event, focusing on school-level distance and e-Learning, aims at offering an opportunity to present, be informed about and join the European dialogue about how families, teachers, experts, authorities and societies at large are experiencing and handling the changes that are leading towards Real Learning in Virtual Worlds.

The Call for Papers is open, deadline for receiving submissions is 20 July. Would you face difficulties in meeting the deadline, upon request by e-mail to the EDEN Secretariat, extension may be granted.

The best papers submitted will be offered publication possibility in the European Journal of Open, Distance and E-learning (EURODL).

7. First LOGOS Open Workshop

In the framework of the 11th European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries (ECDL 2007), 16-21 September, Budapest, Hungary, the EDEN involved LOGOS - Knowledge-on-Demand for Ubiquitous Learning project partners are organising their 1st Open Workshop entitled "Cross-Media and Personalized Learning Applications on top of Digital Libraries" (LADL 2007).

The objective of the workshop is to discuss roles and functions of digital libraries as content providers within e-learning applications and services as well as the development of e-learning systems and application for cross-media delivery of learning experiences.

8. First ONLINE EDUCA MOSCOW Conference, September 30 – October 3, 2007
Reduced Rates for EDEN Members

Online Educa Moscow will be an event in the framework of the Online Educa conference series, attracting strategists and practitioners from all over the world. The event looks into latest developments in technology-enhanced learning and gives a particular focus on regional issues within the CIS countries, such as languages, cultures and access to technology.

Since EDEN has a special arrangement with the organisers, our members will receive the special rate of 400 EUR instead of the standard one, which is 500 EUR. Make sure you use the special association code AC 311 on your application form. Get further information and the application forms from the conference web site.

9. News from Polycom

Following the good collaboration and partnership which developed with USDLA, the United States Distance Learning Association and Polycom Inc., at the 2007 Annual Conference, we are pleased to share the information that Polycom is now offering the Video Media Center (VMC) 1000, an appliance-based solution that gives educators and IT administrators a comprehensive control center to manage the complete video content lifecycle: from creation, capture and encoding, to portal publishing and webcasting, to storage and archiving. The VMC is ideal for distance learning video communications content. For the entire story, please visit their website.

We wish all EDEN Members and Partners very good summer holidays!