classroom

After a year of hard work, the EduTubePlus partners met for their first annual meeting in Rome on the 15/16 October to review progress and plan for the coming months. This meeting took place in the historical Sala 1 - the first radio studio used by RAI. It was a fitting location given the importance placed on educational content by RAI from the early days of the station during the reconstruction following World War II which continues to this day.

The first version of the EduTubePlus platform is almost ready and video content is being segmented and prepared for incluson. At the same time pedagogical scenarios utilising video material from the library are being prepared. Planning for the first user trials is now underway and will involve schools in Greece, Hungary, Italy, Finland, Belgium and the UK.

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.

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.