Productions

The VISCED project, for which ATiT is responsible for dissemination, just released the first 2012 edition of Virtual Schools and Colleges Newsletter, which contains a variety of articles and reports related to the use of ICT in secondary and post-secondary education for 14-21 year olds in Europe and elsewhere.

Article titles include: Webinar aimed at helping US policy-makers develop policy on K-12 online learning, EurODL paper on Virtual Schooling through the eyes of an at-risk student, Finland's approach to education, Multidisciplinary research project on learning receives million euro funding from Tekes and Technology, Funding Policies and Teacher Education Key Topics Discussed at Global Conference. Read this and more online.

The first 2012 issue of Media & Learning News has just been published and in it you can read articles such as 'Media Literacy – a View from the US', 'Belfedar, a fun way to learn to cooperate and manage conflict', and a feature article about the Merchant of Venice, one of the MEDEA Awards 2011 winners, on which you can read more in 'Having fun and learning accountancy at the same time'.

Other highlights include a 'New initiative on Lecture Recording', Tools of the Trade:  Animation, what software or tools to use…', the 'New Voices in Media Education event in London' and 'Commonwealth film competition about relationships'. As always, you will find plenty of other news, notifications and announcements related to the use of media in education and training in this issue.

People from 13 organisations in 12 countries got together in Dublin this week for the launch of a new project in science teaching. SAILS (Strategies for Assessment of Inquiry Learning in Science) is all about putting in place assessment strategies to support inquiry based science education in Europe at second level (students aged 12-18) and is a key development in the enhancement of innovative STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) teaching.

Speaking at the launch of the SAILS project, Minister for Education Ruairi Quinn, spoke about the importance of innovation in this area and praised Dublin City University for taking this initiative. SAILS is a 4 year support action funded under FP7, ATiT are partners in this project with responsibility for dissemination. Initial information about SAILS is available from the project website.

The December issue of Media & Learning News was published yesterday. In it you will find news about the winners of the MEDEA Awards 2011 and a feature article on "Developing media literacy skills for science communication", as well as information about the iTEC Designing the future classroom project, and an insight into the International Clearinghouse on Children, Youth and Media based in Sweden.

You can also read about The Center for Media Literacy in the US and the Media & Learning Conference in Brussels which attracted 298 people from 39 countries,as well as plenty of other news items, notifications and announcements related to the use of media in education and training.

On 30 September 2011, the September issue of the Virtual Schools and Colleges Newsletter has been published last Friday, a newsletter published by the VISCED project. Containing a variety of articles and reports related to the use of ICT in secondary and post-secondary education for 14-21 year olds in Europe and elsewhere, this issue includes an article extolling the value of online learning for gifted students in the US, a new report on Learning and Innovation through ICT at school in Europe and a Virtual School Symposium (VSS) taking place in the US. Among other interesting articles, you can also read the latest blog post by Paul Bacsich, VISCED's project coordinator, entitled "Hidden virtual schooling" as well as an article about the first meeting of VISCED International Advisory Committee that took in Portugal. You can read the issue at the VISCED project website.

The European Policy Network on School Leadership brings together ministries of education, associations, capacity building organisations and experts who are actively engaged in advancing leadership in European schools.

This network is being supported by the European Commission for a 4 year period and will provide mechanisms to share knowledge and experience in school leadership initiatives as well as providing opportunities for identifying further research opportunities in this field.

The network is being led by FORTH in Greece and the kick-off meeting for this network involving more than 30 partners took place in Heraklion, Crete on 6-8 September.

ATiT are a partner in this network and will be responsible for putting in place portal services for the network providing collaboration and communication services to its members.

The 9th issue of Media & Learning News includes news from the US about how students created a lecture capture and note-taking device, Nikos Theodosakis raises a few issues in his article 'Participation: Social Media's Invitation to Learners'. You can also find out about a report on the use of educational videos and digital learning materials in every class in The Netherlands, and read the final installment in our 5-part series on 3D, about displaying and viewing. Very important in this newsletter are the reminder about the MEDEA Awards deadline which is set on 16 September 2011 and the online publication of the Media & Learning 2011 Conference programme. To read all this and more, visit the newsletter's web page.

In this month's issue, articles included are about the launch of the European Film Gateway website, a feature article on Producing video for teaching and learning - Is there a best way to produce educational video?, news about the loss of an important science video repository with the end of AthenaWeb.org, an update on Dutch Policy on media literacy and digital skills. Also in this issue, are an announcement of the TrueTube and Moviestorm schools video competition, a feature article on Connecting those using Geo-media and Geoinformation in Schools, and plenty of other news items, notifications and announcements related to the use of media in education and training.