european commission

A week-long course entitled ‘Using Video to Support Lifelong Learning’ is being organised in the Leuven Institute for Ireland in Europe in Belgium from 14 February 2011. This course will provide participants with the basics of video capture and editing as well as training on how to publish video materials online.

Aimed at enthusiastic newcomers, this course will also address issues to do with video as a learning tool and how best to use video at all levels of teaching and learning.  One of the goals of the course will be for participants to create their own educational video resource during the week-long workshop.

Partners from the SoRuraLL initiative which is testing the viability of various types of social networking tools met in Krakow, Poland on 3-4 June to discuss the progress of the pilot activities taking place in different parts of Europe. Part of their meeting was held in the Raba Wyzna Telecentre in the Rokiciny Podhalanskie region, a rural area about an hour from Krakow.  This area is currently suffering a lot from flooding in the region and the meeting served as a good opportunity to find out more about the needs of rural populations when it comes to ICT and the ways in which social networking tools can help to relieve isolation and provide useful community services to the region.

RURALeNTER is an initiative which will review the types of ICT services available in rural communities in Greece, Austria, Romania and Spain with a view to finding out just how much rural citizens know about the value such services can have.

It will also develop and deliver a generic training curriculum in these countries focusing on how to prepare rural adults to use and exploit ICT services, by means of blended learning models.

This initiative is partially supported under the Lifelong Learning Programme and will create a set of policy recommendations to policy makers and regional authorities about the ways in which rural citizens can take advantage of ICT services.  ATiT staff are involved in the evauation of this initiative. Find out more from the RURALeNTER website.

This conference, entitled Media & Learning: towards the era of digital fluency is being organised as a collaboration between the Flemish Ministry of Education and the European Commission Directorate-General for Education and Culture and will take place in the Flemish Ministry of Education Headquarters in Brussels to co-incide with the Belgian Presidency of the European Union.

Organised by ATiT in Brussels, 25-26 November, this conference will bring together practitioners and policy makers in a two day event which will highlight the latest developments, services and digital and media competences in education and training. This event will incorporate the annual MEDEA Awards and interested individuals, project teams, institutions and organisations are invited to submit proposals to give presentations, demonstrations and workshops at this conference, the closing date for submissions is 1 June 2010. Visit the conference website for more information.

The latest edition of the Re.ViCa newsletter is now available and includes analysis and information about a host of different developments related to virtual campuses worldwide. It includes a short retrospective on the Learning and Technology World Forum 2010, a report on the recently announced partnership between the Ohio and Minnesota higher education systems and an analysis of the role and impact of the HEFCE Online Learning Task Force.

The newsletter also contains an announcement about the work that will continue to be done by the Re.ViCa team in 2010-2011 as well as a series of announcements about reports, publications and other recent developments related to the virtual campus phenomenon.

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

ATiT has recently joined a new project called Rural Social Networking for Lifelong Learning (SoRuraLL) which will investigate the potential offered by social networking tools and platforms to those living in geographically and socio-economically disadvantaged rural areas.

More specifically, SoRuraLL will develop and implement experimental learning approaches examining the potential offered by these new trends and tools for the alleviation of the socioeconomic disadvantage suffered by rural populations in Europe, and in particular for the enhancement of rural citizens’ opportunities for effective and meaningful lifelong learning.

ATiT will be responsible for managing a trial involving schools in the East Clare region of Ireland. This is a Lifelong Learning Programme project (KA3) involving partners from Greece, Germany, Poland, Bulgaria, Spain and Belgium. The kick off meeting of the project took place in Patras, Greece on 29-30 of January 2009.

Partners taking part in the recently launched EduTubePlus project met in Athens on 11 and 12 September for two packed days of meetings and discussions about arrangements for this new initiative. Organised by project manager Elina Megalou and her team from the Research Academic Computer Technology Institute of Greece who are leading this project, the convivial atmosphere in Athens proved to be an excellent setting for this meeting which attracted all 16 active members of the EduTubePlus consortium from 12 different European countries.

The purpose of EduTubePlus is to establish a European curriculum related video library and to set up hybrid e-services for the exploitation of video in class. This includes both professionally produced video as well as user-generated video. ATiT will play a role specifically in the piloting of the service and in the support and delivery of various training related activities in relation to user-generated video.

Initial work in the project includes the establishment of selection criteria for video material  to be included in the library as well as the setting up of a common access platform capable of supporting multilingual access and retrieval. A web site for the project will be online shortly and will provide easy access to the latest information about the project as well as all public reports and resources. EduTubePlus is supported under the European Commission's eContent Plus programme.