collaborative learning
First Keynote Speakers for LINQ 2013 Announced
The 2nd European Conference on "Learning Innovations and Quality" (LINQ 2013) has announced several high-ranking speakers to be present during the event on May 16th and 17th at the Global Headquarters of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome, Italy.
The 2nd European Conference on "Learning Innovations and Quality" (LINQ 2013) has announced several high-ranking speakers to be present during the event on May 16th and 17th at the Global Headquarters of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome, Italy. Figures such as the esteemed Prof. Dr. Rory McGreal and Prof. Dr. Fred Mulder, both UNESCO chairs for Open Educational Resources (OER), as well as Christian-Friedrich Lettmayr, Director of the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (CEDEFOP), will contribute their experience to the conference. Their support of LINQ’s continuing mission to examine the intersections between learning innovations and quality will provide an excellent framework for the state-of-the-art research and project work collected through the LINQ call for papers and projects, ended on March 4th.
“Rory McGreal and Fred Mulder have long been crucial pioneers in the development of Open Educational Resources as UNESCO Chairs,” says Christian M. Stracke, LINQ Conference Chair and international ISO Convener for learning quality from the University of Duisburg-Essen. “We will be honoured to greet them at LINQ 2013 and to learn from their professional and academic expertise. Likewise, Christian-Friedrich Lettmayr’s familiarity with the inner workings of CEDEFOP will prove incredibly valuable to practically situate the newest research efforts submitted to LINQ 2013. We are certain that the discussion at LINQ 2013 will benefit enormously from their presence.”
More than 150 researchers and practitioners have answered the LINQ 2013 call for papers and projects and the contributions of the highest quality will make the conference programme insightful and exciting. Early-bird registration at the reduced rate of 90€ will remain open until March 31st, 2013. All interested parties active in the fields of new learning methods and design, Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL), quality standards and certification, human resources development, competences and skills, digital resources, learning materials, and online collaboration and communities are encouraged to register for LINQ 2013 and take part in the continuing development of learning innovations and quality. For more information on specific registration requirements and other matters, please visit the conference website at www.learning-innovations.eu.
Overview of the important dates:
- End of early-bird registration period (90€): 31st of March 2013
- Conference Programme Ready: April 2013
- Conference date: 16th and 17th of May 2013
For the latest information on the conference and to submit any pre-conference feedback, please visit the LINQ Facebook page at www.facebook.com/LINQConference and follow the LINQ Twitter account at www.twitter.com/LINQ_Conference.
The Knowledge Volunteers
"The knowledge volunteers" (TKV) project joins older and younger people in a cross-generational initiative focused on promoting digital skills among the elderly.
“The knowledge volunteers” (TKV) project is currently running pilot programs in Italy, Spain, Greece, Czech Republic and Romania. It promotes didactic/organizational ICT learning methodology for elders, a model that has been defined and successfully applied at a local level by Italian partner Fondazione Mondo Digitale. It also encourages a peer-to-peer approach between experienced volunteers and new older students. The inter-generational approach is built on the active role of young students, who act as their elders’s teachers. A special didactic toolkit can be downloaded for free here.
Hackers Teach Programming
Codecademy is an online interactive platform that offers free coding classes in programming languages like Python, JavaScript, and Ruby, as well as markup languages including HTML and CSS. To motivate users to participate, the site offers feedback, badges for completing exercises, as well as a function that keeps track of a user's total score and displays it to others. The site also allows anyone to create and publish a new course using a Course Creator tool.
Intergenerational Learning Circle for Community Service
eScouts foments intergenerational learning exchange between elderly and youth volunteers—elders benefit by learning digital skills, while youngsters obtain guidance to help navigate life’s challenges.
The "eScouts" project fits European guidelines with regards to Digital Divide reduction and LLP (Lifelong Learning Programme), and implements innovative ICT practices with a special focus on groups in risk of exclusion. The curriculum will be based on a blended learning environment inspired by Web 2.0 and teaching methods focused on end users.
The project includes three main phases:
-Training groups of young people to become teachers of ICT, and thereby reduce the default prohibitive nature of new technologies for the elderly.
-Training the elderly to become mentors for young people, providing them with support through life experiences and values, with a focus on employability.
-Training facilitators of intergenerational learning, to be key actors and mediators of the two groups.
New Transgenerational Visual Literacy
Project NTVIS brings together youth and seniors to cooperate and foster new intergenerational learning content.
The aim of the NTVIS project is to support exchange of knowledge and skills between the elderly and young people. Seniors will provide knowledge on a topic they feel comfortable with, and young people will prepare tasks/presentations on the same topic but using mobile applications and media communities.
This way, both parties will benefit: young people are taught something new and will benefit from the knowledge and experience of older people, while seniors will gain the necessary basics of mobile applications and social media. These experiences will be collected, described and analyzed in framework of the project. The NTVIS project aims to prevent the effects of digital and social exclusion.
END 2013 Conference - Last Call For Abstracts
The International Conference on Education and New Developments—END 2013 has issued a 2nd Call for Abstracts. This will be the last call: participants will have until 29 March 2013 to turn in new submissions.
END 2013 - International Conference on Education and New Developments will be accepting abstract submissions until 29 March 2013, and authors will be notified starting on 26 April 2013. The conference will be held 1-3 June 2013 in Lisbon, Portugal, and registration is open until 17 May.
EDEN 2013 Keynote Sugata Mitra Wins TED Prize 2013
Prof Sugata Mitra, Education scientist and keynote speaker of the EDEN's 2013 Annual Conference, wins TED Prize for his answer on the future of learning. Mitra’s $1 million seed money helps to fund the School in the Cloud in India this very year. This school will serve as both an education and research center to further explore approaches to self-directed learning. It will be managed by cloud technology, but with an adult supervisor always on hand. The plans for the school will be open-sourced.
Learning is becoming more and more individualized and self-managed. Personalization helps foster engagement and supports awareness and motivation. The 2013 EDEN Annual Conference thus explores themes such as “Engaging and challenging learners” „Enhanced learning experience by participation and collaboration” or „Joy, Fun and ICTs”. Prof Mitra’s talk on self-directed learning was posted on TEDTalks last year, with high edutainment potential. In this talk, he tackles one of the greatest problems of education -the best teachers and schools don't exist where they're needed most. In a series of real-life experiments from New Delhi to South Africa to Italy, he gave kids self-supervised access to the web and saw results that could revolutionize how we think about teaching:
http://www.eden-online.org/nap_elgg/pg/blog/read/3435/sugata-mitra-the-childdriven-education-video
Academics, researchers, practitioners gather every year at the EDEN Annual conferences to discuss the latest developments of e-learning, open and distance education. In Europe, despite economic and social pressures, there is a collective drive towards realising the creative potential.
Registration to the Conference is now open: http://www.eden-online.org/2013_oslo/registration.html