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During a one week visit to the Philippines, Mathy Vanbuel assisted the Local Government Academy (LGA) of the Philippines in their process of evolution towards the implementation of learning, knowledge brokering/connection, knowledge exchange, and innovation technologies in their capacity building strategy. The visit consisted of a three day intensive training workshop on e-moderation, content conversion and videoconferencing, which took place at the LGA Training Centre in Los Banos. A visit to the LGA Resource Centre in Region 7 in Cebu concluded this week.

The MEDEA Awards team has been busy with redesigning the MEDEA website and producing a media gallery with best-practice showcases that, thanks to the MEDEA:EU project, includes recorded interviews with the 2009 award winners, finalists and participants in the Highly Commended category. These interviews are now available on the  MEDEA YouTube Channel.

Visit this channel to see excerpts from 2009 winners and interviews with the representatives of Know IT All for Primary Schools, Daisy and Drago, Traditions across Europe, Eyes on the Skies, Planet SciCast, INgeBEELD and Neu in Berlin. You can embed the interviews on your own website or blog and by logging in you can subscribe to our channel, rate the interviews and let us know what you think of them by adding your own comments!

WEBstroom, a Special Interest Group of the Dutch SURFfoundation that focuses on streaming media in higher education, organised a meeting in the Netherlands on 11 February 2010 about user generated content. Among other highly interesting and relevant presentations about best-practice examples, Nikki Cortoos presented the MEDEA Awards and included a selection of online showcases featuring user generated online video.

WEBstroom is a MEDEA National Contact Point in the Netherlands and has recently moved its discussion group to LinkedIn.

On 15 January 2010 EUscreen launched its website (www.euscreen.eu) where all public documentation produced within the EUscreen project will be made accessible, along with links to specific sites and documentation about EUscreen technological issues. An important role of the website is also to capture and publish the social dynamic of the EUscreen user community and to enable sharing data and expertise with the targeted user communities and with the public at large. The site also provides links and information about activities related to the eContentplus Programme as well as articles, fact-sheets, project descriptions and specific PowerPoint presentations related to project activities and results.

The latest newsletter from the Re.ViCa project team is now available from the project web site. Stories this month include an update on how the country reports are being evaluated and the current state of the wiki on Virtual Campuses as well as a description of how the work on refining the list of Critical Success Factors is progressing.

This month's newsletter also includes several announcements and links to recently published Virtual Learning resources. For more information about Re.ViCa, visit the project web site where you can also apply for a password to access the Virtual Campus wiki which will be launched publicly in June.

The Centre for Research and Innovation in Learning and Teaching in the National College of Ireland recently launched their new National E-Learning Laboratory (NELL).  This new facility for measuring User-Screen Interactions enables researchers to observe, record and analyse the behaviour of users interacting with e-learning resources. It will allow researchers to systematically explore and improve the use of learning and knowledge-based technologies. The laboratory consists of sophisticated hardware and software that can observe up to four participants simultaneously.It also has four analytical stations for researchers. User behaviour and screen interactions are investigated using combinations of video and audio recording, screen-capture, precision keyboard & mouse logging and eye tracking. For more information visit the NELL site.

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

Learn@Work is a Socrates Minerva project (2005-2008) focusing on the use of ICT to enhance the induction and continuing support for learners in the workplace. Together with Glasgow Caledonian University, Dublin Institute of Technology, Aalborg University, and The Institute for Future Studies in Innsbruck, ATiT developed pilots and models for training in companies, especially for newcomers. 

The project's main aim was to explore the synthesis between the theories, conceptual frameworks and practices of distance learning, e-learning, work based learning and work placed learning in order to provide the training community with practical examples guidance on the design and implementation of e-supported learning at work.

This State of The Art Report was edited by Marie Bijnens and Mathy Vanbuel and was published at the end of the project in 2007. It contains an overview of the theory on work-based learning and e-Learning on the work floor, and illustrates the theory with extensive descriptions of the pilot applications that were built during the project lifecycle.

More about the Learn@Work Project on the Project Website.

Mathy Vanbuel was invited to participate in the Fe-ConE (Framework for eLearning Contents Evaluation)  conference in Vilnius (Latvia) on October 10th 2007. During the meeting Ms. Claire Belise, Mr. Graham Attwell and Dr. Minna Lakkala presented their views on intercultural issues in e-learning and e-content. Read their position papers on the eLearning Europe Portal.

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the creation and use of web-accessed digital video and audio throughout the education sector. The pedagogical vision is clear: only when video and audio have become routine components of education and e-learning will we have an educational environment that reflects the media-rich world in which we now live. The VideoAktiv Handbook on Digital Video and Audio in Education is designed to assist in creating and using audio and video material for educational purposes. This handbook is one of the products of the VideoAktiv Project, and available also from the VideoAktiv website, where you will find additional useful resources on the use of video in higher and further education. Print copies can be obtained by sending an email to videoaktiv@atit.be.