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EDEN Newsflash Archives

EDEN Newsflash - January 2010

Dear EDEN Member,

We hope you had a peaceful and relaxing Christmas break and are fully refreshed for a good start in 2010.

The opportunity offered by digital media and social networking leads to the development of new organic learning environments. A major challenge is how to turn these environments into instrumental knowledge? The 2010 Annual Conference to take place in Valencia, Spain, will be addressing these issues. Keynote speakers: Martine Bean, Vice-Chancellor, The Open University, United Kingdom George Siemens,Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute, Athabasca University, Canada Andy di Paolo, Executive Director, Stanford Center for Professional Development, Senior Associate Dean, School of Engineering Stanford University Ciaran McCormack, Creative Director, IADT: Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Ireland EU Commissioner for Digital Media (to be invited) Venue of the event will be Universidad Politecnica de Valencia. Please, check the conference pages for details. Submissions both in English and Spanish are welcome!

2. News from the EDEN Executive Committee

Martine Vidal, Vice President of EDEN, member of the Executive Committee since 2005 has resigned, for personal reasons, from the 1st of January 2010. We thank her committed work during the past years, especially the greatly appreciated role in organising EDEN's Research Workshop in Paris in 2008 and the editorial work for the EDEN Book. Martine's contribution in the EC has always been very effective and highly valued.

3. EDEN-IMS Global Learning Consortium Collaboration

Following discussions at the Gdansk 2009 Conference between Rob Abel, CEO and Alan Tait President, a collaboration agreement has been concluded between IMS Global Learning Consortium (GLC) and EDEN. IMS GLC is the leading non-profit member consortium focused on creation of standards to support technology enhanced learning. It conducts an annual awards and recognition program called Learning Impact in which the use of technology is evaluated for its impact on improving access, affordability and quality of learning. EDEN and IMS GLC agreed that some top research papers submitted for the Valencia 2010 Annual Conference would be selected to be forwarded as finalists ino the IMS annual LIA Award competition that will occur in conjunction with the IMS Learning Impact Conference to take place in 2011.

4. EDEN- reciprocal membership

We are delighted to inform that, after successful three year co-operation, the Reciprocal Membership Agreement with EFMD, The European Foundation for Management Development has been renewed for another 5 years' period. The collaboration between the two Associations includes, among others, seeking opportunities to jointly organise conferences of mutual interest, publish events news and offerings through respective websites and publications and inviting each others' representatives to different committees.

 

5. Fresh articles in

The newly published articles in the European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning are:

In case you like these and previous articles at EURODL, feel free to recommend them for reading to your colleagues on your social networking account and use the RSS service of the Journal to be informed as soon as new articles get published. As EURODL has a rolling issue, all submitted articles passing the peer reviews get published instantly.

6. Education for All - Global Monitoring Report

The aftershock of the global financial crisis threatens to deprive millions of children in the world’s poorest countries of an education, the 2010 UNESCO Education for All Global Monitoring Report warns.

The Report, developed annually by an independent team and published by UNESCO, assesses progress towards the six Education for All goals to which over 160 countries committed themselves in 2000.

The world is not on track to achieve the goal of universal primary education by 2015. Using a new measurement tool – the Deprivation and Marginalization in Education data set – the report explores the extent of acute disadvantage, using an ‘education poverty’ threshold of four years in school. The Fast Track Initiative, the centrepiece of multilateral aid for education, needs fundamental reform.

The authors of the report call on the UN Secretary General to convene a high-level pledging conference in 2010 to address the financing shortfall.

7. e-Skills Week 2010

The European e-Skills Week 2010 was launched as part of the EU e-skills strategy.

Public authorities, ICT companies as well as schools and students are working together to organise a range of exciting events, training sessions, school visits, competitions and more, to underline the importance of ICT skills in today’s society, and to demonstrate the wide range of job opportunities in the field.

The culmination of the campaign will be the European e-Skills Week taking place in the first week of March 2010 to raise awareness of the growing demand of highly skilled ICT practitioners and users within the industry.

8. EDEN Secretariat: Environmentally conscious office

As result of common interest and commitment which we discovered with enthusiasm, the Secretariat staff decided to develop our headquarters into an environmentally conscious office. Following a systematic self-evaluation, a series of measures have been implemented, not only checking and changing the related office functions (less copying/printing, use of recycled paper, selective waste collection, energy saving measures, etc.) but also purchasing environmentally friendly detergents, measures to improve ergonomic and healthy workplaces, and even encourage colleagues to use bike and public transport instead of cars.

In the future, having reached a reliable operation in this respect, we shall include a modest indication on the EDEN „Green Office” in our communication.

9. News from EDEN member organisations and partners

EdReNe - Educational Repositories Network - 4th strategic seminar: March 24th-26th 2010 in Barcelona, Spain.

Participants will present and discuss current status on educational repositories and digital learning resources with a focus on recent developments and cases that we can all learn from. The synthesis reports about the four overall EdReNe themes; repository strategies, standards and interoperability, engaging users and producers, and rights issues, provide a basis for the seminar, which is to produce consolidated statements and recommendations on these areas.

Invitation and agenda will soon be available at the project website, where you can find results and details of previous seminars under "List of public deliverables".

University of Leicester - wishing to grow its provision of high available to campus-based, part-time and distance learning students, announces vacancy for Educational Designer post, focussed on design of materials for supporting postgraduate students. A three years fixed term contract will be offered to the successful applicant.

Closing date: 12 February 2010. For further information and to apply on-line, please visit the institution's website.

Re.ViCa - Reviewing (traces of) European Virtual Campuses

Highlights of the latest Re.ViCa Newsletter:

10. Highlights and readings

 

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Please, be kindly reminded that the archive of previous Newsflash issues can be found at the EDEN NAP Members’area, further you have free electronic access to the latest EDEN conference proceedings at the Downloads page.