Article archive

The VISCED project, for which ATiT is responsible for dissemination, just released the first 2012 edition of Virtual Schools and Colleges Newsletter, which contains a variety of articles and reports related to the use of ICT in secondary and post-secondary education for 14-21 year olds in Europe and elsewhere.

Article titles include: Webinar aimed at helping US policy-makers develop policy on K-12 online learning, EurODL paper on Virtual Schooling through the eyes of an at-risk student, Finland's approach to education, Multidisciplinary research project on learning receives million euro funding from Tekes and Technology, Funding Policies and Teacher Education Key Topics Discussed at Global Conference. Read this and more online.

Last week on 26 January, the Kick-off meeting for the European MEDEAnet project took place in the Irish Institute in Leuven, Belgium. This 3-year networking project resulted out of the success of the MEDEA Awards, an annual competition that encourage innovation and good practice in the use of media (audio, video, graphics and animation) in education. The motivation behind MEDEAnet is first of all to extend the reach of the network of the MEDEA Awards by providing opportunities for local events linked to the MEDEA Awards and to involve not only early adopters, but also mainstream practitioners in networking opportunities.

MEDEAnet partners will organise workshops in 7 countries sharing best practice with the input of MEDEA Award winners and finalists; provide a 12-part series of public webinars on related topics; publish an annual report on media literacy, skills in educational media production and the use of media-based teaching resources; promote knowledge building and sharing amongst practitioners and roll-out a large-scale dissemination and exploitation strategy on media and learning. Secondly, plans to establish the MEDEA Foundation as a legally constituted membership organisation in 2012 are underway. MEDEAnet, which is supported under the European Commission's Lifelong Learning Programme, involves partners who either have a national or a large-scale regional brief and who are mandated to support innovation in teaching and learning as part of their organisational responsibility. Through them this network will reach teachers and trainers who are less skilled and motivated to use media-based learning approaches.

The first 2012 issue of Media & Learning News has just been published and in it you can read articles such as 'Media Literacy – a View from the US', 'Belfedar, a fun way to learn to cooperate and manage conflict', and a feature article about the Merchant of Venice, one of the MEDEA Awards 2011 winners, on which you can read more in 'Having fun and learning accountancy at the same time'.

Other highlights include a 'New initiative on Lecture Recording', Tools of the Trade:  Animation, what software or tools to use…', the 'New Voices in Media Education event in London' and 'Commonwealth film competition about relationships'. As always, you will find plenty of other news, notifications and announcements related to the use of media in education and training in this issue.

People from 13 organisations in 12 countries got together in Dublin this week for the launch of a new project in science teaching. SAILS (Strategies for Assessment of Inquiry Learning in Science) is all about putting in place assessment strategies to support inquiry based science education in Europe at second level (students aged 12-18) and is a key development in the enhancement of innovative STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) teaching.

Speaking at the launch of the SAILS project, Minister for Education Ruairi Quinn, spoke about the importance of innovation in this area and praised Dublin City University for taking this initiative. SAILS is a 4 year support action funded under FP7, ATiT are partners in this project with responsibility for dissemination. Initial information about SAILS is available from the project website.

Aimed at enthusiastic educators who would like to create their own educational video materials, this week-long residential course organised by ATiT combines theoretical and practical elements and will raise your awareness as to the value video can bring to teaching and learning. On the summer course which takes place from 2-7 July, you will work in a small team to produce your own educational video programme and this process is interchanged with theoretical sessions and visits. The course culminates with a public showcase of the videos produced by the different teams to an invited audience.

Funding under both the Comenius and the Grundtvig programmes are available to cover the costs of this training course as part of the in-service training grant offer. Grants cover the cost of the course, travel and full accommodation.  If you are interested in the July course then apply to your national agency before 16 January. More information about the course and how to apply for funding is available from the ATiT video training course site

The December issue of Media & Learning News was published yesterday. In it you will find news about the winners of the MEDEA Awards 2011 and a feature article on "Developing media literacy skills for science communication", as well as information about the iTEC Designing the future classroom project, and an insight into the International Clearinghouse on Children, Youth and Media based in Sweden.

You can also read about The Center for Media Literacy in the US and the Media & Learning Conference in Brussels which attracted 298 people from 39 countries,as well as plenty of other news items, notifications and announcements related to the use of media in education and training.

The winner of the MEDEA Award for professionally produced educational media is the Belgian entry Monkey Tales Games and the winner of the MEDEA User-Generated Award 2011 is the Austrian game The Merchant of Venice. Both winners were announced during the MEDEA Awards Ceremony which took place on 24 November 2011 as part of the Media & Learning Conference in the Flemish Ministry of Education and Training in Brussels.

The European Collaboration Award 2011 was awarded to The European Chain Reaction by Qworzó Primary School (Belgium) and this year’s special Award recognising excellence in the use of media to support volunteering was awarded to Changing Lives by Drogheda Special Olympics Club (Ireland).

A further prize for the audience favourite which was voted on during the MEDEA Awards Ceremony was given to Monkey Tales Games. You can read more about the awards and the winners, finalists and those which were highly commended by the 75-person strong judging panel on the MEDEA Awards website. The closing date for receipt of entries for MEDEA Awards 2012 is 17 September 2012.

298 people from all over the world participated in the Media & Learning Conference on 24 -25 November in the Flemish Ministry of Education in Brussels. This conference organised by ATiT and the Ministry brought together educational broadcasters, policy-makers, practitioners, educational media producers and researchers in a packed 2 day event that included screenings, discussions and demonstrations. Supported by the European Commission's Lifelong Learning Programme and with the help of sponsors like Adobe, Liberty Global and Telenet this event combined presentations about existing media-rich teaching resources and experiences with debate and discussion about future trends, drivers and developments.

Networking was at the heart of Media & Learning and the size and nature of this conference meant that there were no shortage of opportunities for making new contacts and planning collaborations. Media & Learning also featured the MEDEA Awards and included the prize-giving ceremony for this annual competition now in its 4th year. Keep up to date with Media & Learning 2012 on the conference website.

The 9 finalists for the 2011 Annual MEDEA Awards were announced on 28 October 2011.

The finalists are (in alphabetical order): Armi di distruzione di massa by ITIS Avogadro di Torino (Italy), Changing Lives by Drogheda Special Olympics Club (Ireland), IMPRINTING by Scuola Secondaria di Primo Grado “Brofferio”, Asti (Italy), INgeBEELD by CANON Cultural Unit (Belgium), Monkey Tales by Die Keure and Larian Studios (Belgium), The European Chain Reaction by Qworzó Primary School (Belgium), The Merchant of Venice by University of Education Salzburg (Austria), Twig by Twig (UK), and Werner Heisenberg by INTER/AKTION GmbH (Germany).

This year the competition attracted 115 entries from 28 countries and the overall winner will be announced during the MEDEA Awards Ceremony which takes place on Thursday 24th November during the Media & Learning Conference 2011 in Brussels.

A further 13 entries were highly commended by the international jury. All those entries which are finalists as well as those who are highly commended will be added to the MEDEA Awards’ media gallery of showcases highlighting excellence in the use of media to support teaching and learning.

For more information visit the MEDEA Awards site.

On 12 October 2011, ATiT attended the eCulture Forum 2011 in Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland, where the RURALeNTER project, in which we are partner which has been building capacity through ICT in rural areas for 2 years now,  received much attention and was included in the programme with a presentation called "Socio-digital inclusion in Europe". Project partners of "RUeNTER", presented their activities such as the research of citizens' ICT needs in rural areas in Austria, Greece, Romania, Spain and Switzerland and the blended learning trainings on the topic of public services and ICT services (with localised content), and the online portal where the training resources are freely accessible to those interested.

The RUeNTER project is funded by the European Commission under the Lifelong Learning Programme and a final partner meeting was also held on 13 October in the modern building of the School of Business and Engineering (HEIG-VD, St Roche) in Yverdon-les-Bains. As ATiT is the leader of the Quality Assurance and Evaluation workpackage, we presented the progress in our evaluation work, which followed a methodology including a peer review process of the project’s deliverables and the deployment of several online questionnaires to receive feedback from different RUeNTER actors throughout the project.

You can visit the project website and the training portal. If you would like to receive the project's final online newsletter, please send us an e-mail with your details.