EDEN Network of Academics and Professionals (NAP)

Dear EDEN Member,

Keynotes in Valencia

Martin Bean, Vice-Chancellor, The Open University, United Kingdom

Martine Vidal, Chief Editor of the Journal "Distances et savoirs", France
"Distances, and the Pursuit of (Learning) Happiness"

George Siemens, Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute, Athabasca University, Canada

Andy DiPaolo, Executive Director, Stanford Center for Professional Development, Senior Associate Dean, School of Engineering Stanford University, USA

Maruja Gutierrez-Diaz, Senior Adviser, European Commission, Directorate General for Education and Culture and Brian Holmes, Head of Department, Education, Audiovisual & Culture Executive Agency
"ICT for Education in Europe and the new EU2020 Strategy - Policy and Practice"

Ciaran McCormack, Creative Director, IADT: Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Ireland
"User-generated Content in the Classroom ... Preparing our learners for the future?"

Bernard Luskin, Provost and CEO for global eLearning Programs, Touro College and Touro University, USA
“Exciting”: E-Learning and the Big “E”

Sanna Vahtivuori-Hanninen, Project Manager, University of Helsinki, Media Education Centre, Finnland
"Innovative educational use of ICTs and media in Finland
Strategy and road map, creative models and practices"

The Conference City: Valencia Valencia is the third largest city in Spain, containing a dense monumental heritage but its landmark is undoubtedly the City of Arts and Sciences an avant-garde and futuristic museum complex. The Conference will be hosted by Universidad Politecnica de Valencia (UPV), flagship innovative University in this dynamic region, offering highly valued modern, flexible degrees for the local industry as well as internationally. The Conference Dinner and EDEN Dancing will be organised on 11 June in the famous "Les Graelles" restaurant, in the center of the city, near "Jardin del Turia". Besides the gastronomic pleasure, live jazz band and Discomovil will ensure the entertainment for the delegates. Valencian people seems like they really like surprises, on this link you can have an insight into the Valencian Market Hall.

Valencia Town Hall

2. New EDEN Vice-President We congratulate to Antonio Moreira Teixeira, Professor of Universidade Aberta, Lisbon as he has been elected by the Executive Committee as a Vice-President. From 1991, Antonio is a Professor at the Portuguese Open University (Department of Education and Distance Learning) and a researcher at the University of Lisbon (Philosophy Center) since 2004. He is serving the EDEN Executive Committee since 2008.

3. New Members

EDEN welcomes the following new institutions having joined the Association since March 2010:

• Boston University,USA
• Aarhus School of Business, Denmark
• SOFAD - Société de formation ŕ distance des commissions scolaires du Québec, Canada
• LSI Information Technology Learning Center, Hungary

4. Renewal of NAP Members' Area

Counting back: the renewed EDEN NAP (Network of Academics and Professionals) Members Area on the web will be opened mid-May!

The idea of the renewal and development of NAP Members’ area was raised by the NAP Steering Committee. The overall objective with the renewal was to create well-functioning attractive and professionally useful features that will

• promote the communication and social networking and also increase the coherence of members in EDEN as a learning community
• help in finding partners within the membership
• increase the usability of the NAP area, providing information for members and opportunities for professional actions
• allow members to build up personal portfolio, include documents, activities’ related data, resources, blogs, photos, etc.

For the new area the open source social network tool Elgg will be applied. Based on the information about members, a so called “EDEN Portfolio” (including membership data, conference attendance, presentations, functions fulfilled in the Association, etc.) of each NAP Member will be created and displayed in the new Members’ Area.

The NAP Steering Committee had an audiomeeting on 21 April.
It was found that quite a high number of EDEN institutional members do not use (or to small extent only) the possibility of nominations of NAP members from their institution. Please be kindly reminded that the institutional membership in EDEN includes for no extra fee the nomination of up to ten individuals who become members of the EDEN Network of Academics and Professionals and enjoy full membership services. You are encouraged to check at your institution (eventually check with the EDEN Secretariat) how to increase for no cost the number of colleagues served by EDEN.

5. Elig Advisory Board

Secretary General of EDEN, Andras Szucs was invited to join the ELIG Advisory Board. The Secretary General of the European Learning Industry Group, Richard Straub, chairs this board which provides input to the Group in the following areas: Access thought leadership; Expert feedback on projects or topics under review; Input on public policy priorities; Input on its research agenda; Market intelligence from the user perspective.

6. Co-operation Agreement between EDEN and ORION

We are pleased to announce that during their online meeting the Executive Committe approved the proposal to sign the collaboration agreement between EDEN and ORION, Association of the Universities in Latin-America (Red de Universidades y ONGs Latinoamericanas, del Caribe y Europeas). More information about the Association and about its projects are available on this link.

7. The Open University - Call for Chapters: Collaborative Learning 2.0: Open Educational Resources

The Knowledge Media Institute is currently producing a book on Collaborative Learning 2.0: Open Educational Resources. Researchers and practitioners interested in submitting chapters are invited to submit on or before May 15, 2010. For details visit: http://books.kmi.open.ac.uk/cl2oer/

8. Learning for All - Online Educa 2010 Call for Papers

Under the banner of Learning for All, this year's Online Educa Berlin 4 themes include the pillars of innovation: Learning Content, Learning About Learning, Learning Ecosystems and Learning Environments. The Conference's Call for Papers is open until 14 May 2010.

The aim of this year’s programme will be to move from discussion to learning, from theory to practical action, and from silo or sector mentality. More details on the Call, its Themes and related submission formats are available here.

9. News from EDEN Member Organisations and Partners

Anadolu University - Third International Symposium on Open and Distance Learning and ICEM 2010, October 6-8, Eskisehir, Turkey

IODL & ICEM 2010 Joint Conference and Media Days is an international meeting, organized by Anadolu University and The International Council for Educational Media. The mission of this event is to bring administrators, designers, instructors, researchers, learners, producers, policy makers and others to discuss the issues and trends in the field of open and distance learning. You can read more here.

The Observatory on Borderless Higher Education - 2011 Global Forum

The Forum titled "Levelling the International Playing Field: A New Global Regionalism for Sustainable Partnerships, Student Mobility and Open and Distance Learning" will be organised 30 March -2 April, Banff, Alberta, Canada, in co-operation with Athabasca University.

The Call for Papers was released in March and is available at the Observatory website.

10. Highlights and Readings

• belonging to the largest lively networking European professional community of high reputation in open, distance and e-learning
• access to EDEN's database of institutional and individual members and co-operation partners from all European countries on the password protected NAP Members area
• institutions can delegate up to 10 individual members in the NAP
• benefitting regularly from the professional development supporting activities of the Association
• attending annual and issue-based conferences at reduced fees, promoting instant establishment of partnership and conceptualisation of projects
• free access to the electronic versions of the latest EDEN conferences, downloadable from the website and not available from anywhere else
• buying EDEN publications at a 50% discount
• access electronic Members’ Dissemination Space, for efficient distribution of information
• joining online forum to discuss problems and ideas with partners
• using "matchmaker" service, for the rapid reach of the right partners