management

The MEDEA Awards 2010 have been launched with the publication of a brand new website which features samples and stories from winning entries in 2008 and 2009.

Online submissions are welcome up to the closing date for receipt of entries which is 31 July 2010. This European awards scheme recognises, rewards and encourages excellent use of media in education and attracts entries from all education and training sectors. Last year more than 250 entries were submitted and they included cartoons, videos, media repositories and animations.

The overall winner of the MEDEA Awards 2009 was announced by Maruja Gutierrez-Diaz, Advisor to the Director of the Lifelong Learning Programme, European Commission on 4 December during a well attended reception in Berlin.

It is Know IT All for Primary by Childnet International (UK), which was represented at the prize-giving ceremony by Lucinda Fell, Policy and Communications Manager, who graciously accepted the bronze MEDEA statuette as well as hardware and software sponsored by Avid and Adobe. In addition to the overall winner, the MEDEA Award for Creativity and Innovation 2009 was won by Daisy and Drago by Terakki Foundation Schools (Turkey) represented at the awards by Özge Karaoğlu.

Traditions Across Europe by Istituto Comprensivo “Don Bosco” (Italy), represented at the awards by Gina Mango won the MEDEA European Collaboration Award 2009 and a special jury prize was given to Eyes on the Skies by European Southern Observatory (ESO) (Germany) in recognition for what the judges described as “a superb example of the value high quality video imagery can bring to an educational production”. For more information visit the MEDEA web site

The MEDEA Secretariat announced today the 8 finalists for the annual MEDEA awards. These are in alphabetical order: Daisy and Drago by Terakki Foundation Schools (Turkey), Eyes on the Skies by European Southern Observatory (ESO) (Germany), INgeBEELD by CANON CULTURAL UNIT (Belgium), Know IT All by Childnet International (UK), Les TIC en Classe by VISION FUTURE (France), Planet SciCast by NESTA (UK), Studiecoach by the Dutch Open University (The Netherlands) and Traditions Across Europe by Istituto Comprensivo “Don Bosco” (Italy). The overall winner will be announced during the MEDEA Awards Ceremony on 4 December 2009 in the Hotel InterContinental in Berlin.
 
This year the competition attracted 254 entries from 39 countries which was a significant increase in entries compared to last year. The finalists were chosen by a jury made up of 76 education and media experts from 26 countries who assessed the MEDEA entries in October.  All finalists will attend the Awards Ceremony on Friday 4th December 2009, where they will have the chance to win the main MEDEA Award as well as several other prizes, including software sponsored by Adobe and AVID.

If you would like more information about these awards, visit the MEDEA web site.

The kick-off meeting of the EUscreen project took place this week in the impressive home territory of Beeld en Geluid (Sound and Vision) in Hilversum, The Netherlands. This new project funded in part through the European eContent Plus Programme is a Best Practice network which brings together 27 partners from 17 EU member States as well as Switzerland in order to provide access to a highly interoperable digitised collection of television material.

This three year project will result in an interoperable EUscreen platform, including a core collection of 35,000 television items. Partners include 18 core content stakeholders, these are European broadcasters and television archivists like DR in Denmark, Deutsche Welle, RAI in Italy,  VRT in Belgium, Television de Catalunyo, RTE in Ireland, ORF in Austria, INA in France and many others.

ATiT is a partner in this project and will be responsible for exploiting use of these materials in the educational sector.

Entries to the annual MEDEA Awards have been arriving daily to the MEDEA Secretariat in recent weeks and more than 250 were received by the competition deadline of 30th September. The highest number of entries have been submitted by French organisations with organisations in Italy, UK and Germany also submitting a significant number. Judging will begin in mid-October and the organisers hope to have a list of finalists available at the beginning of November.

The number of organisations supporting the promotion of the MEDEA Awards for 2009 is growing, and MEDEA now has contact points in almost 20 European countries. Recent organisations to join include Masaryk University Brno in the Czech Republic, the Estonian e-Learning Development Centre, Webstroom in The Netherlands and CSP - Innovazione nelle ICT in Italy. To see the full list, check out the list of partners on the MEDEA web site.

Staff from University of Hull and ATiT met in Hull last Thursday to work on the pedagogical framework which will be used in the EduTubePlus project. This framework will build on the work of both partners and will match in part the selection criteria used to categorise video clips describing the different activities video can support in the classroom.The framework will be used both as a way to make available examples of good use of video in the classroom as well as a way for teachers to create their own learning scenarios using video resources.

A meeting of the Re.ViCa partners including Nikki Cortoos and Sally Reynolds from ATiT took place on Tuesday 21st in EuroPACE when the team spent the day working on the final outcomes of the project. The extensive project wiki on the topic of Virtual Campus will be made public during the M-2009 conference, being held on 7-10 June 2009 in Maastricht in the Netherlands.

The team are also working on a series of Critical Success Factors to be made available in the project handbook, due to be published in September along with a comparison of European and Non-European Virtual Campuses.

The next meeting of the project’s International Advisory Committee will also take place during the M-2009 conference.

If you would like to be added to the mailing list to receive updates from the project team in the form of monthly newsletters, visit the project web site.

The call for entries to the MEDEA Awards 2009 is now open with the launch of the new MEDEA Awards web site. Two new awards have been added to the annual MEDEA Awards for 2009, the MEDEA Award for Creativity and Innovation and the European Collaboration Award. This year the Awards will also be fully supported in French and German as well as in English and those submitting entries can also use a fully automated online system to make their submissions.

The deadline for entries is 30 September 2009.

The first Dialogue in the series, Uncovering Barriers to Women’s Political Leadership: Virtual Dialogues Leading to the International Colloquium for Women's Empowerment took place on Thursday 22 January.

This Dialogue featuring an interview with President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa's first democratically elected female president, pictured here during the Dialogue. More than 100 people took part from locations in Liberia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Sierra Leone and Tanzania. Using facilities provided by the GDLN network, this event used both videoconferencing and live streaming to connect the sites. Participants included the Minister of Women Empowerment of the Republic of Indonesia, Prof. Dr. Meutia Hatta Swasono and Minister for Industries, Trade and Marketing in Tanzania, Hon. Mary Nagu.

More information about these Dialogues is available on the Virtual Dialogues web site.