Management

Last week on 26 January, the Kick-off meeting for the European MEDEAnet project took place in the Irish Institute in Leuven, Belgium. This 3-year networking project resulted out of the success of the MEDEA Awards, an annual competition that encourage innovation and good practice in the use of media (audio, video, graphics and animation) in education. The motivation behind MEDEAnet is first of all to extend the reach of the network of the MEDEA Awards by providing opportunities for local events linked to the MEDEA Awards and to involve not only early adopters, but also mainstream practitioners in networking opportunities.

MEDEAnet partners will organise workshops in 7 countries sharing best practice with the input of MEDEA Award winners and finalists; provide a 12-part series of public webinars on related topics; publish an annual report on media literacy, skills in educational media production and the use of media-based teaching resources; promote knowledge building and sharing amongst practitioners and roll-out a large-scale dissemination and exploitation strategy on media and learning. Secondly, plans to establish the MEDEA Foundation as a legally constituted membership organisation in 2012 are underway. MEDEAnet, which is supported under the European Commission's Lifelong Learning Programme, involves partners who either have a national or a large-scale regional brief and who are mandated to support innovation in teaching and learning as part of their organisational responsibility. Through them this network will reach teachers and trainers who are less skilled and motivated to use media-based learning approaches.

The winner of the MEDEA Award for professionally produced educational media is the Belgian entry Monkey Tales Games and the winner of the MEDEA User-Generated Award 2011 is the Austrian game The Merchant of Venice. Both winners were announced during the MEDEA Awards Ceremony which took place on 24 November 2011 as part of the Media & Learning Conference in the Flemish Ministry of Education and Training in Brussels.

The European Collaboration Award 2011 was awarded to The European Chain Reaction by Qworzó Primary School (Belgium) and this year’s special Award recognising excellence in the use of media to support volunteering was awarded to Changing Lives by Drogheda Special Olympics Club (Ireland).

A further prize for the audience favourite which was voted on during the MEDEA Awards Ceremony was given to Monkey Tales Games. You can read more about the awards and the winners, finalists and those which were highly commended by the 75-person strong judging panel on the MEDEA Awards website. The closing date for receipt of entries for MEDEA Awards 2012 is 17 September 2012.

298 people from all over the world participated in the Media & Learning Conference on 24 -25 November in the Flemish Ministry of Education in Brussels. This conference organised by ATiT and the Ministry brought together educational broadcasters, policy-makers, practitioners, educational media producers and researchers in a packed 2 day event that included screenings, discussions and demonstrations. Supported by the European Commission's Lifelong Learning Programme and with the help of sponsors like Adobe, Liberty Global and Telenet this event combined presentations about existing media-rich teaching resources and experiences with debate and discussion about future trends, drivers and developments.

Networking was at the heart of Media & Learning and the size and nature of this conference meant that there were no shortage of opportunities for making new contacts and planning collaborations. Media & Learning also featured the MEDEA Awards and included the prize-giving ceremony for this annual competition now in its 4th year. Keep up to date with Media & Learning 2012 on the conference website.

The 9 finalists for the 2011 Annual MEDEA Awards were announced on 28 October 2011.

The finalists are (in alphabetical order): Armi di distruzione di massa by ITIS Avogadro di Torino (Italy), Changing Lives by Drogheda Special Olympics Club (Ireland), IMPRINTING by Scuola Secondaria di Primo Grado “Brofferio”, Asti (Italy), INgeBEELD by CANON Cultural Unit (Belgium), Monkey Tales by Die Keure and Larian Studios (Belgium), The European Chain Reaction by Qworzó Primary School (Belgium), The Merchant of Venice by University of Education Salzburg (Austria), Twig by Twig (UK), and Werner Heisenberg by INTER/AKTION GmbH (Germany).

This year the competition attracted 115 entries from 28 countries and the overall winner will be announced during the MEDEA Awards Ceremony which takes place on Thursday 24th November during the Media & Learning Conference 2011 in Brussels.

A further 13 entries were highly commended by the international jury. All those entries which are finalists as well as those who are highly commended will be added to the MEDEA Awards’ media gallery of showcases highlighting excellence in the use of media to support teaching and learning.

For more information visit the MEDEA Awards site.

Partners in the E-ViEW consortium are preparing to roll out a pilot series of management courses early in 2012 aimed at work-based learners and are currently developing the approach which will taken for elements within these courses. As part of this preparation, ATiT staff helped to organise a meeting of eLearning experts to advise on the current set of plans and to support partners in their work. This meeting took place on 11 October in Leuven and involved partners from Poland, Portugal, Ireland and the UK along with experts from the Netherlands, Ireland, Estonia, Bulgaria and Portugal. Find out more about E-ViEW on the project website.

The programme for this year's Media & Learning Conference is now available and features a host of engaging speakers, topical discussions and screenings of excellent examples of media supported learning. The conference has three main themes; future trends and developments in media-supported learning, digital and media production skills and competences including media literacy, and the use and re-use of existing media resources in education and training at all levels.

Highlights of the conference include keynote presentations by Belgian child psychiatrist Peter Adriaenssens who argues that creative education is essential for the development of the brain and personality of children and Richard Harper, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, UK. Screenings showing excellent examples of media usage to support learning from Thomson Reuters in the UK, TV.Klasse in Belgium, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and finalists in the MEDEA Awards 2011 along with discussion sessions, workshops and demonstrations combine to create a packed programme of activities.

Registration is now open on the conference website http://www.media-and-learning.eu.

The DiVa project, which focusses on Good Practice for Dissemination and Valorization of Educational Projects, has recently published its final products: a handbook for project co-ordinators, a best-practice catalogue and recommendations, and the MEDEA Awards are mentioned in the best-practice catalogue thanks to the dissemination activities undertaken by the MEDEA:EU project, of which ATiT was the project coordinator. The successful actions of the MEDEA:EU project, the European Commission-supported project which helped to extend the European identity of the MEDEA Awards through a multilingual newsletter and the European network of national contact points, have been taken up and are being enhanced by our current MEDEA2020 project.

By carrying out European studies about successful educational projects and evaluating them based on certain criteria, the DiVa project has already proven to be very useful for new as well as already started European projects and through these publications everyone can now benefit from this collection of different and innovative ways to promote, disseminate, exploit and valorize.

On Wednesday 1st of June 2011, the MEDEA2020 consortium gathered at the Ramada Viking hotel in Waterford, to discuss the progress of this European Project. The project partners also participated in the EdTech conference where the MEDEA Awards were presented.