Our life tempo is amazingly fast. Reflection on developments and achievements is a rare appreciated possibility these days. When stepping into the position of President in 2016, I called for community collaboration and active contribution to ensure the representation of community needs and wishes. The talk came into action very soon with the exponential growth of events and collaborative links that can hardly be summarised on a regular basis in such blog posts…
The EDEN community is a very special one, acting and living without borders, neither geographical nor political ones, working out how to foster the change and improvement of teaching and learning in the digital age, how to scale transformation up into digital education practices established for the good of digital and networked society.
EDEN life circle spins very fast, almost all of it dedicated for creating, reflecting on and discussing the experiences of digital learning and teaching in Europe. The discussion takes place through EDEN chats, webinars, virtual and physical events and personal meetings. Discussion results are brought to the EDEN NAP and the Council of EDEN Fellows and strategic links between needs and EDEN actions are made with the decisions at EDEN Executive Committee meetings:
EDEN EC meeting in Rome, Roma Tre, February 21-22, 2019
The year started with the attendance of the Forum for the Future of Learning organized by the European Commission in January 2019, in Brussels. Proposals for the most important areas that should be addressed and should benefit from the digital education initiatives. ET2020 DELTA working group met in Luxembourg, and then in Brussels, to discuss how digital game-based learning can enhance lifelong learning for people at any age, developing their learning skills, coding skills and digital skills to create things. The EDEN community may further address the questions of how and when games may better motivate and engage learners, or promote their engagement in science education and work for the industry – and many more. Questions pending for EDEN PhD symposia and the Council of EDEN Fellows.
The ICDE Lifelong learning summit was also attended by EDEN colleagues and friends:
Alan Tait, Ebba Ossiannilsson, Airina Volungevičienė, Lillehammer, Norway, 2019.
Keynotes invited the audience to express their courage in (dis)agreement to use driverless cars, or to become explainers of artificial intelligence for future employers and users of everyday household equipment for smart living! – what are the elements of artificial intelligence that should be integrated into digital learning spaces today? And who should propose them?
As Teemu Roos from the University of Helsinki highlighted, there are too many myths around AI, and it is our role to research and demystify those. EDEN will follow this up, as the Bruges Agenda has already been set up for discussions on AI as well.
March started with the third Open Education Week with webinars organized by EDEN in Europe which received high attention from online community members and also high-quality feedback from the participants of the events with appreciation expressed towards the topics selected and the panellists and the presenters invited to the webinars of the week.
This year, 5 webinars with 370 registered participants were held. The participants came from 38 different countries, including 16 countries from outside Europe (with the majority coming from Canada, Argentina, South Africa and Australia).
Opening of the week.
Altogether 28 facilitators contributed to the successful implementation of the ambitious program! The records of all 5 webinars can be viewed on the EDEN website and following these links:
- Education 2030 – Open knowledge, skills, attitudes and values in Europe and the world
- The story of the Open University in Europe and the world
- Ongoing initiatives for Open Education in Europe
- OER quality assessment
- Researching openness – an evidence-based approach
All slides used by the presenters are available on EDEN’s Slideshare page.
The records of the sessions have already been reviewed by 1051 authentic viewers, and the numbers continue to grow. Records have been successfully used by all stakeholders as useful resources in Higher Education curriculum, formal and non-formal events, training sessions and workshops all around the world.
April started with the SELFIE Forum in Madrid. #SELFIE_EU dream team is ready for #SELFIE_Forum2019 where 185 teachers, students, policy makers & education experts from all over Europe will learn from each other on how to support schools for making the most of digital technologies for learning.@EUDigitalEdu @EU_ScienceHub
More photos and information on SELFIE at https://twitter.com/pankampylis and twitter #SELFIE_forum2019
Decision makers from EU member states, experts and NGOs will discuss further development of the tool, opening it up for further stakeholders, higher education institutions, consultancy companies, training providers and other types of organizations. Specific aspects of the school community were discussed, and further perspectives and benefits of the self-reflection of education organizations in order to become digitally competent were addressed.
To be continued in EDEN Bruges…
There is one pending news for EDEN community – on EDEN operation cross – borders in a European way!
News to come in the next blog post, after our next EDEN EC online meeting in April.
