european commission

MEDEA2020 is a new project supported by the European Commission's Lifelong Learning programme which will build on the experience of the MEDEA:EU project in further expanding the work of the MEDEA Awards community.

This project will expand the reach of the MEDEA Awards by involving partners in Italy, France, Spain, Ireland and Poland and will provide the resources to support an ever-growing community of practice interested in the use of media for teaching and learning. Concrete outcomes include national workshops, the continuation of the annual Media & Learning Conference, multilingual newsletters and the support of an online community of practice as well as an online searchable database of relevant materials.

ATiT will lead this project which will begin officially on 1 November.

The programme for the Social Applications for Lifelong Learning (SALL) conference taking place on 4-5 November in Patras, Greece is now online.

This conference will feature the outputs of two European projects, SoRurall (Rural Social Networking for Lifelong Learning) and SimSafety ("Flight Simulator" for Internet Safety).

The programme will include a presentation from Sally Reynolds on matching the communication needs of rural learners to Web 2.0 tools and services as well as a presentation about the experience of using social networking tools in Irish rural schools to be given by Jim O'Sullivan and Cara Roche. 

Registration for this conference is open, for more information visit the conference website.

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