Article archive

The Social Applications for Lifelong Learning (SALL) conference takes place on 4-5 November in Patras, Greece. This conference will feature the outputs of two European projects, SoRurall (Rural Social Networking for Lifelong Learning) and SimSafety ("Flight Simulator" for Internet Safety). It is being organised by the Research Academic Computer Technology Institute (RACTI) and the Hellenic Open University in Greece. More information available from the conference website.

This month's newsletter includes a feature article on the educational outreach programme of the San Francisco Film Society which will be celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2011. It also includes a description of the programme for the Media and Learning conference in November 2010 which combines a variety of presentations, discussions and online activities. The tools and services section contains an article about developments in camera technologies which are making high quality video recording far more affordable for educational video producers. The newsletter also contains a reminder about the grant deadline for taking part in an educational video production workshop for teachers and trainers in Leuven, Belgium in February 2011 - the closing date for grant applications is 15 September. Other articles include news about a new WEBTV service in Italy launched by CSP and an introduction to MEDEA's new national contact point in Bulgaria, Zinev Art Technologies Ltd. (ZAT).

During a one week visit to the Philippines, Mathy Vanbuel assisted the Local Government Academy (LGA) of the Philippines in their process of evolution towards the implementation of learning, knowledge brokering/connection, knowledge exchange, and innovation technologies in their capacity building strategy. The visit consisted of a three day intensive training workshop on e-moderation, content conversion and videoconferencing, which took place at the LGA Training Centre in Los Banos. A visit to the LGA Resource Centre in Region 7 in Cebu concluded this week.

The closing date for the MEDEA awards is coming up soon and so we invite all producers of media resources to submit their entries by 31 July. Entry to the MEDEA Awards is free!

This year there are two main MEDEA Awards, the MEDEA Overall Award and the European Collaboration Award. The European Collaboration Award recognizes excellent media-based productions and projects that come about as a result of European cross-border collaboration. This year the organisers are making a distinction between professional and non-professional producers, awarding the best entry in each category.

You can submit your entry in French, English or German and once your entry is completed, you can then follow its progress online. Find out more from the MEDEA Awards website.

A group of teachers from the Italian School, Fondazione Maddalena di Canossa in Bergamo, took part in a two day workshop on the 'Creation and Adaptation of Video Resources for Use in the Classroom' on 1-2 July. This workshop was organised as part of the preparation work for the forthcoming pilot testing of the EduTubePlus platform which begins in September which will involve these Italian teachers as well as teachers in 8 other European countries.

This workshop was organised by Armando Persico and Iolanda Riseri from FMC. Despite the glorious sunshine, the teachers worked hard to create their first educational video clips on the topics of mathematics and organ music which will hopefully be the first of many made by them.

The workshop was given by Anneleen Cosemans and Helena Bijnens on behalf of ATiT.

On behalf of the ESHRE Special Interest Group Reproductive Surgery, ATiT produced a 3 hour long live interactive satellite TV broadcast of surgical interventions on Tuesday 29 June 2010. This session was coordinated and moderated by Professor Stephan Gordts from LIFE Leuven. The programme connected three operation theatres in the Hospital  Maternité Schiltigheim, IRCAD Strasbourg, with an audience of about 1000 participants of the ESHRE conference in one of the large auditoriums of the Fiera di Roma. Amongst the operating surgeons were Prof. Dr. Arnaud Wattiez abd Dr. Joseph Nassif (IRCAD  Strasbourg), Dr. Sara Brucker (Uni-Frauenklinik Tübingen), Dr. Rudi Campo, (LIFE Leuven), Dr. Antoine Watrelot (Part-Dieu Lyon), Dr. Guardin and Dr. Hummel (IRCAD Strasbourg).

More than 6 cameras, 2 SNG links and 2 satellite channels were used to capture and transmit the images of the gynaecological interventions in the best possible quality. Operating surgeons answered questions from the audience while demonstrating innovative surgical techniques and procedures. Amongst the cases were Deep endometriosis, Vaginoplasty Rokitansky, Hysteroscopic septum, Endometriotic cysts, Laparoscopic myomectomy, Transvaginal ovarian drilling and finally Tubal anastomosis.

The programme, sponsored by Karl Storz lasted for more than three hours and was received very well by about a thousand viewers. The viewers in the auditorium were impressed with the scientific quality of the programme as well as with the technical and organisational quality of the live transmissions.

About 60 broadcasters and others interested in the re-use of video resources met in Mykonos, Greece on 23-24 June. The objective of this workshop was to discuss various metadata schema and initiatives against the background of the EUscreen project which is creating an online resource with more than 30,000 video clips drawn for the archives of European broadcasters. During this meeting, the project team presented the selection criteria that has been drawn up to categorise video resources which will be sorted into 14 primary categories like 'Environment and Nature', 'Politics and Belief, etc...

This video content, which will be made available via Europeana, will also be organised into comparative virtual exhibitions comprising selections of materials from different broadcasters under specific topics, e.g. Eastern European Television vs Western European Television.  Trials using the EUscreen approach will begin in Autumn, 2010. ATiT is a partner in EUscreen, supporting the take-up of these materials in the educational sector.

For a detailled report on the workshop see the EUscreen website.

ATiT staff recently met in Spain with partners of RURALeNTER, a project funded by the European Commission under the Lifelong Learning Programme. "RUeNTER", as it is also known, is analysing the needs regarding public services and ICT services of citizens of four rural areas in Austria, Greece, Romania and Spain. The identified user needs will be addressed through training workshops taking place in the first half of 2011 and a supporting online portal with training support materials and social network functionalities.

During this second partner meeting, which took place on the sunny and beautiful premises of the University of Barcelona Spain, all partners discussed their progress and planning for the next stage of the project. ATiT is the leader of the Quality Assurance and Evaluation workpackage and we presented our evaluation methodology during this meeting which includes 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.

To find out more about the project, visit the project website. If you would like to receive the project's six-monthly online newsletter, please send us an e-mail with your details.