Article archive

The LEONIE project has recently published an interesting short report as part of their observatory work on national and International evolution of learning systems entitled "Trends and Drivers of Change in Learning Systems". This report serves as a useful point of departure for discussions related to the (r)evolution taking place in learning systems and places the educational comunity firmly in the driving seat.

The VUB - Vrije Universiteit Brussel - has taken the initiative to establish a Brussels University and Industry Network with leading industrial partners, called CROSSTALKS. In this forum, key corporate leaders and visionaries close the gap between academy and industry and other key areas in society by organizing structural high profile networking. The CROSSTALKS Network aims at creating an exchange dynamics to enable regular confrontations of views through thematically and privileged encounters beyond specific disciplines and with the active participation of key players from all levels of society. On eof their first initiatives is the publication of a status and vision document on Economic, Social & Cultural Scenarios inspired by Free and Open Source Software. The book is available from the Crosstalks website.

Sally Reynolds attended the EC Bridge conference in Beijing in March and also met several people active in the Chinese eLearning sector in preparation for the focus that this year's Online Educa Berlin will have on China.

Between 7th and 14th March 2005 Citizen E teacher workshops took place in Italy, Poland, Belgium and Ireland. In total 63 teachers participated in the workshops. They received more information about the Citizen E project, learned how to use the Citizen E platform and exchanged ideas about possible twinning activities and action projects they could set up in the upcoming months.

It is almost becoming a cliché: the spate of images on web sites and television, in computer games, videoclips, movies and commercials affects young and old. Because young people of today are not always duly conscious of how to deal with the massive input of images in a well-considered way and how to see through the audiovisual communication strategies, education focuses increasingly on audiovisual training. This research report, "Audiovisual training in Flemish education 2004", an initiative of the Flemish Initiative for the Audiovisual Arts and the Cultural Unit of the department of Education (Flemish Ministry), tells us where we are in Flanders.

On 23th February Anneleen Cosemans gave a presentation on the Flemish launch event of the eTwinning initiative. eTwinning offers schools throughout Europe the opportunity to set up eTwinning activities. Through their portal teachers have access to a partner finding tool, a communication platform and loads of ideas and examples.

On 17th and 18th February the Citizen E project partners gathered in Mayo Education Centre, Ireland, to develop a workshop for the Citizen E teachers. On Thursday evening, after a long working day, the Irish hosts organised a buffet reception to launch Citizen E in Ireland on which they invited MEP Marian Harkin and people from other educational bodies.
For more information please consult the project web site where you will find the latest news about the project.

Innovate is a great new bimonthly, peer-reviewed online periodical published by the Fischler School of Education and Human Services at Nova Southeastern University, USA. The journal focuses on the creative use of information technology (IT) to enhance educational processes in academic, commercial, and government settings. Innovate also run regular webcasts, membership is free, visit Innovate for more information.

On 25th January Flemish teachers participating in the first round of Citizen E activities gathered in the Katholieke Hogeschool Sint-Lieven in Gent. After a short introduction of the project and its main partners they received information on the virtual platform LDU with which they will work during the project. At the end of the meeting the group already did a short brainstorm on the kind of mini-projects they could organise in their school. For more information on the project, go and have a look at the project web site.

The SchoolCast consortium led by ATiT had a successful Pilot Qualification Review in Dublin on 14th January with ESA when the lab version of the SchoolCast Schools Content Delivery System was successfully demonstrated. SchoolCast will now be trialed for a 14 week period with a schools network in Ireland over both satellite and terrestrial networks. Also see schoolcast.atit.ie