EDEN Network of Academics and Professionals (NAP)

EDEN Newsflash - Special Edition 2010

Dear EDEN Member,

1. Call for Proposals 2011

We would like to draw your attention to the recent call for proposals to the Lifelong Learning Programme. This covers a range of education and vocational education and training. The main deadlines are as follows:

• Comenius, Grundtvig –In-service Training: 14 January 2011 / 29 April 2011 / 16 September 2011
• Comenius Assistantships: 31 January 2011
• Leonardo da Vinci –Mobility (including the Leonardo da Vinci mobility certificate): 4 February 2011
• Erasmus –Intensive Language Courses (EILC): 4 February 2011
• Jean Monnet Programme: 15 February 2011
• Comenius, Leonardo da Vinci, Grundtvig –Partnerships: 21 February 2011
• Comenius –Comenius Regio Partnerships: 21 February 2011
• Grundtvig –Workshops: 21 February 2011
• Comenius, Erasmus, Leonardo da Vinci, Grundtvig –Multilateral projects, Networks and Accompanying Measures: 28 February 2011
• Erasmus –Intensive Programmes (IP), Students mobility for studies and placements (including the Erasmus consortium placement certificate) and Staff mobility (teaching assignments and staff training): 11 March 2011
• Grundtvig –Assistantships, Senior Volunteering Projects: 31 March 2011
• Transversal Programme –Key activity 1 –Study visits: 31 March 2011 / 14 October 2011
• Transversal Programme –all other activities: 31 March 2011

For further details about the specific programmes, please click here.

As ever, EDEN is ready and able to assist its members in successfully completing the application process. We will do this by acting as a consortium member to strengthen the partnership and dissemination dimension of the project –under any co-funding programme.

EDEN has developed service packages and tools in the area of dissemination, exploitation and community building, as well as in internal project evaluation procedures. It has been widely recognised that these services are particularly valuable during the proposal evaluation phase, but they are also of great benefit over the actual lifetime of the funded projects. The packages can be highly individualised and tailored.

One of EDEN’s greatest strength is its acknowledged status as a prestigious European Association, with nearly 200 institutional members, over 1100 individuals in its Network of Academics and Professionals, and a prodigious contact base (we have a mailing list of nearly 12,000). EDEN is also renowned for offering opportunities to present its projects at its annual conferences and/or bi-annual research workshops and open classroom conferences (subject of the theme and focus of the project concerned).

Therefore, should you find any or all of the above mentioned services important to your application, we encourage you to consult EDEN for potential ways of collaboration. To receive assistance from the Association is a fundamental entitlement of your EDEN membership.

For further information and indicating request for project involvement, please contact Ildiko Mazar.

2. Honorary Doctorate degrees award

EDEN would like to express its compliments and congratulations to Michael G. Moore (The Pennsylvania State University, USA), Borje Holmberg (Central Institute for Distance Education Research - FernUniversität in Hagen, Germany) and Otto Peters (Central Institute for Distance Education Research - FernUniversität in Hagen, Germany) for being awarded with Honorary Doctorate degrees by University of Guadalajara in Mexico on 25th November in recognition of their pioneering work in establishing the theory and the scholarship of distance education.

3. News about EU projects with EDEN involvement

FREE –Fostering Return to Employment through Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Creativity

EDEN invites you to join and bring your community to collaborate with the FREE project on its gradually expanding public Facebook Page that offers references to useful business guidance in different EU countries, shares relevant videos and online articles, and promotes interesting courses and seminars. If you find it beneficial to follow the activities of such an online community, please 'Like' and recommend the page and be encouraged to initiate thematically relevant threads of discussions and/or share your own projects' findings and public resources. The FREE project partners will make sure that there will always be valuable new content additions and activities that are worth your attention.

Learning 2.0 for an Inclusive Society - Links-up Goes Online

Links-up is research project about how ‘Web 2.0’technologies –e.g. social networking software –are changing the face of education and training for disadvantaged people. The project puts together a picture of the ‘landscape’of ‘Learning 2.0 for Inclusion’by reviewing what has been done in the academic and research field, and reviews what has been done by practitioners working on the ground in projects that have been using Web 2.0 to work with disadvantaged groups. It uses a series of ‘action research’experiments, collaborating with ‘host’projects working in the field, to evaluate the added contribution Web 2.0 can make to practices that use learning to support social inclusion. We invite you to visit its newly launched website and share your experiences by registering and adding your good or bad practices on the field.

HEXTLEARN Leaves the Project Format Behind: the Academic Success Story in Web 2.0

As the project financing and research activities ended in October 2010, the European online community of experts and practitioners in quality for HE Institutions at www.hextlearn.eu arrives to a milestone in its existence. The EU project is now turning into a self-sustaining online community with over 350 experts participating. The online community offers free but well-moderated access to Higher Educational Institution's practices in evaluation methodology for using ICT in education, a unique virtual peer-reviewing tool and methodology and the experts to run a full quality analysis focusing on these issues. It also opens doors to other initiatives on the field by group activities such as SEVAQ+ project group or EQUNET project group.

EDEN remains involved in the community and invites all members to take a look and make use of this useful community resource: http://www.hextlearn.eu/

EquNet – Enhancing Equitable Access to Higher Education

The EquNet/CEPS joint symposion, hosted by the Centre for Education Policy Studies - CEPS at the University of Ljubljana was held on 22-24 November 2010. The event brought together a panel of experts in equity from throughout the European Union and the Western Balkans while the focus of their discussions were on the following three topics: Conceptualising Equity for Policymaking; Universal Higher Education, diversity, society and equity; Equity in Higher Education systems, mechanisms and financing. Presentation abstracts are available on the CEPS web-site, information on the EquNet project, its further activities and events and on the soon to be published first EquNet report, the "Evolving Diversity" can be found in the EquNet page.

You are also invited to be part of the EquNet social community by joining EquNet Facebook Page, where you can regularly receive up-to-date information on the development of the project and present your own ideas in the topic of equity in Higher Education.

4. Summer School focusing on different aspects of the science learning landscape
3rd - 8th July 2011, Crete
organised by Ellinogermaniki Agogi and the Univeristy of Crete

Inquiry-based science teaching approaches and school’s synergies with informal science learning environments are very topical issues in today’s science education. This year’s summer schools are successors of a number of very successful similar training courses organized in recent years.

The three summer schools are focusing on the following topics:

1. Best Practices in Inquiry-Based Science Education (IBSE)
2. Discover Open Science Resources: Technology Enhanced Science Education and Science Content Organisation
3. Natural Europe: Use of Natural History and Environmental Cultural Heritage Digital Content for Education

More details on the summer schools are available here.

For further information and advice, please, contact Sofoklis Sotiriou (Ellinogermaniki Agogi, sotiriou@ea.gr) and/or George Neofotistos (University of Crete, neofotistos@physics.uoc.gr).

5. Highlights and readings

• Agenda for new skills and jobs: EU sets out actions to boost employability and drive reform

• Interview with Morten Flate Paulssen, President of EDEN, on the Portuguese television

• Creativity and Innovation in Europe: from a shared vision to a common action plan
  A document produced by the Learnovation Roundtable

• Online public consultation on the promotion and validation of non-formal and informal learning:

  More information about the consultation can be found on the website of DG Education and Culture: http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/education_culture/consult/learning_en.html

• Proceedings of the EdReNe’s 5th seminar in Copenhagen are now available from the EdReNe website

6. Some food for thoughts with the winter approaching :)

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