digital

As a part of the project “A web portal for teaching about European Integration”, a cycle of seminars about ICT in education will be hold at the Blau Museum (Barcelona) from 18th to 22nd February 2013 under the title “New technologies in education”.
Registration at:  http://europeineducation.eu/

The University of Lleida is leading this partnership in collaboration with the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) and professionals from other educational institutions.

The project receives funding from the Jean Monnet Programme (Lifelong Learning Programme) of the European Union. Our goal is that of developing a web platform addressed to secondary level students about European Integration. We focus in the three main aspects related with European Integration teaching: History, Economics and Geography.

This event is in English and Catalan.

CEN WS-LT will formally kick off the project with a one day workshop in January (provisional date 16th of January 2013) in Brussels.

Virtual and physical meetings will be organised to work towards achieving a common reference framework for European textbook marketplaces by means of three main development phases:

• Public call for User Requirements Scenarios from a wide range of interested stakeholders
• Identification and evaluation of existing interoperability standards and specifications, and
  scoping the potential of developing of an abstract eTernity ecosystem
• Based on the state-of-art analysis, consider developing a shortlist of specifications supporting an
  eTextbook ecosystem. This will be made freely available to public and private initiatives seeking
  guidance on the design and development of truly interoperable textbook marketplaces
• The open eTernity technical meetings will be announced on this website

Europe faces up to 700.000 unfilled ICT jobs and declining competitiveness. The number of digital jobs is growing – by 3% each year during the crisis – but the number of new ICT graduates and other skilled ICT workers is shrinking. Our youth need actions not words, and companies operating in Europe need the right people or they will move operations elsewhere.

Today, the Commission is issuing a call to action to companies, governments, educators, social partners, employment service providers and civil society to join us in a massive effort to "turn the tide". Young Europeans should have the tools to enter digital careers or to create jobs as entrepreneurs.

European Commission Vice President Neelie Kroes said: "The digital skills gap is growing, like our unemployment queues. We need joint action between governments and companies to bridge that gap. The ICT sector is the new backbone of Europe's economy, and together we can prevent a lost generation and an uncompetitive Europe. So I am expecting concrete pledges by companies, everyone I meet will be getting the same request. The Commission will do its bit but we can't do it alone – companies, social partners and education players – including at national and regional level - have to stand with us."

The Commission will collect pledges on new jobs, internships, training places, start-up funding, free online university courses and more. Companies such as Nokia, Telefónica, SAP, Cisco, HP, Alcatel-Lucent, Randstad, ENI, Telenor Group, ARM, as well as the CIO community, CEPIS (Council of European Professional Informatics Societies) and Digital Europe are in the first wave of those committing to act. On 4-5 March the Commission will include pledges received from partners and build them into the launch of a Grand Coalition for Digital Skills and Jobs at a major pledging conference. The conference is open to all who want to actively support this common cause.

We seek active collaboration in areas like industry-led training, assisting labour mobility, certifying skills, improving school and university curricula, raising awareness, and creating an entrepreneur friendly environment for start-ups.

One concrete area for action could be training vouchers. Successful German and Spanish voucher based training models provided jobs for 60-70% of the 20,000 participants and we should seek to replicate and scale up this idea on a European scale.

Other key elements of the Coalition will include mobility assistance. Such assistance is likely to range from English language learning support to facilitating mobility for unemployed persons and standardised certification of skills, via a transformed eCompetence Framework available in all 23 official languages of the EU.

In recognition of the job creation potential of web start-ups, the Commission is also launching Startup Europe, a single platform for tools and programmes supporting people wanting to set up and grow web start-ups in Europe.

For more information

Hashtag: #digitalskills

Digital Agenda website

The international Conference LINQ 2013 is taking place on May 16th and 17th, 2013 in Rome, Italy at the Headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
This year, LINQ 2013 and its motto "Innovations and Quality: The Future of Digital Resources" addresses and invites experts active in the field of Innovations and Quality in Lifelong Learning (LLL): potential points of access to this field include 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. Interested researchers are thus welcome to submit their work on conference topics (in detail below) by March 4th 2013 (extended paper submission deadline).
For the latest information on the conference, visit the LINQ Facebook page and the LINQ Twitter account. Direct enquiries and full papers can be sent to LINQ Manager Mrs Anne-Christin Tannhaeuser, at the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE), Germany, via e-Mail to: anne.tannhaeuser (at) icb.uni-due.de.