audiovisual

The DIVERSE Conference held this year in Aberystwyth University in Wales from 24 to 26 June brings together an active community of practitioners all engaged in developing innovative visual educational resources.

This year the sharing of educational video material was really high on the agenda with Obadiah Greenburg from YouTube describing YouTube EDU, Olaf Schulte from ETH Zurich presenting the Opencast community and the Matterhorn project and the team from the University of Amsterdam talking about ZOEP - this is the space to watch for how, and perhaps more importantly,  where educational videos in higher education will be found in the future.

Taking place in the lovely and surprisingly warm surroundings of coastal Wales, this community of practitioners provides a rich resource of know-how and expertise in the field of educational technology and multimedia production. You can follow the conference live here.

The EduTubePlus consortium launched the project web site this week where you can get up to date news and information about this new eContent Plus project. EduTubePlus brings together 17 European organisations and companies including ATiT to create a European curriculum related video library and hybrid set of e-services for the pedagogical exploitation of video in schools.

At this stage of the project, the partners are engaged in building up the selection criteria to be used in selecting videos for inclusion in the new library, a pedagogical framework for the effective use of video in class as well as creating the design for the web portal architecture. A meeting for the partners involved in the pedagogical aspects of EduTubePlus took place 4/5 November in Brussels.

ATiT is a proud founding member of the MEDEA Awards 2008, which just announced its last Call for Participation in a press release.

The MEDEA Awards 2008 is entering its final weeks for accepting submissions as the closing date for submissions is 30th September 2008. The MEDEA Secretariat, which is organised by ATiT, has already received submissions from 15 countries and the number is growing. This is the final chance for those among Europe’s educational and creative professional producers, amateurs, supporting staff, students and teachers to submit an educational project in which media (moving images, sound, media-rich applications, virtual simulations …) plays a vital role.

Five finalists will be invited to Berlin for the Awards Ceremony on Thursday 4th December 2008, where they will have the chance to win the first MEDEA Award. Prizes for 2008 will include the award itself and hardware to the value of 6,000 Euro.

You can download the press release (PDF) and visit the web site for more information:

http://www.medea-awards.com

We are delighted to announce our involvement in a new initiative called EduTubePlus which will create a European curriculum related video library and hybrid e-services for the pedagogical exploitation of video in classrooms. This initiative, supported under the European Commission's eContentPlus Programme will start in September and is being led by the Research Academic Computer Technology Institute in Greece. ATiT has a specific role to manage the pilot implementation of these services in schools through setting up and managing several integrated learning activities designed to exploit the available resources. This builds on other work carried out by the ATiT team including workshops and training activities held in the context of VideoAktiv and eSTREAM. EduTubePlus involves partners in France, UK, Belgium, Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Austria, Romania, Hungary, Finland and Germany.

Two members of our Organising Committee, Clive Young (University of St Andrews, United Kingdom) and Helle Meldgaard (The Danish IT Centre for Education and Research (UNI-C), Denmark) gave an engaging and excellent presentation about the MEDEA Awards 2008 at the DIVERSE 2008 Conference.

In this presentation Clive and Helle look at the trends in video and multimedia and how we can use new technologies and media for education.

They also refer to the MEDEA press release (23th May 2008) in which the Prize Sponsorship was announced. Five finalists will be invited to the Award Ceremony that will take place on 4 December in Berlin and will have the chance to win the first MEDEA Award. Prizes for 2008 will include the award itself and hardware to the value of 6,000 Euro.

The recorded presentation can be viewed online thanks to Collegerama, where a list of all presentations is available.

The Indonesian Minister of Education, Dr. Bambang Sudibyo, recently launched the large-scale BERMUTU Programme to upgrade teachers via an extensive videoconferencing network. This network, utilising sites from the GDLN and Inherent networks, linked 15 locations across three different time zones stretching from Aceh in the western tip of Indonesia to Jayapura in the east. Support and training for the participating sites was provided by Mathy Vanbuel and Sally Reynolds during a two week long visit to Jakarta culminating in the event which took place on 18th December.

ATiT, in collaboration with several partners has recently launched the MEDEA AWARDS to encourage innovation and good practice in the use of digital moving images and sound in education. The award will also recognise and promote excellence in the production and pedagogical design of media-rich learning resources. These materials will typically be delivered online via internet or virtual learning environment and used as an integral part of a programme of study. The award is open to anyone working with or in European education at all levels. We welcome participation from producers, teachers, academics, support staff and students. Find out more on the MEDEA web site http://www.medea-awards.com

ATiT produced a DVD with the video proceedings of the ESHRE Campus 2007 on "Adenomyosis, a reproductive disorder" held in Leuven on 19 and 20 April 2007. This course, organised under the auspices of the ESHRE Special Interest Groups “Reproductive Surgery” &
“Endometriosis & Endometrium” attracted specialists from all over Europe as well as from Israel and USA.

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.

Equipped with a budget of 400 million euro the MEDIA Programme of the European Union aims at strenghtening the competitiveness of the European audiovisual industry and therefore brings support both before and after production. MEDIA co-finances training initiatives for audiovisual industry professionals, the development of production projects (feature films, television drama, documentaries, animation and new media), as well as the distribution and promotion of European audiovisual works. The Programme entered into force in January 2001 and will continue its efforts until the end of 2005. Further information can be found on the European Union web site or by contacting the media desk in your country (contact details are on the web site).