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News and Background Information on the Conference | |||
 Generation Y, or the Millennials, are featured throughout this year’s ONLINE EDUCA BERLIN 2008 conference programme. People involved in learning and training from all parts of the world seem to be concerned about what is going on in today’s classrooms. The presentations and discussions held at OEB 2008 will show a great variety of aspects of this global phenomenon.  They are easy to use, offer full text search and let you carry around tons of knowledge in your pocket: e-books. For many years now, members of the e-learning community have awaited the “final breakthrough”, but problems on the technical side and users’ reservations have hindered e-books’ development on the path to becoming an efficient tool for mobile learning, as well as for everyday reading purposes. Recently, though, new e-book devices have entered the market, and the industry is making an unprecedented push toward helping e-books live up to their perceived potential.
Has the day of the e-book finally arrived?  The oil and gas industry is a knowledge-intensive business. As one of the biggest players in the field, Royal Dutch Shell has traditionally set a strong emphasis on knowledge management and community collaboration to improve its operations. Since 1997, Shell has been utilising a variety of electronic tools to build a global network, triggering multidisciplinary discussions among employees. To promote the firm’s constructivist philosophy, Shell is currently introducing the virtual learning environment (VLE) Moodle for 120,000 Employees. Implementation lead Dr Sebastian Graeb-Konneker will speak at OEB 2008 in great detail about the large-scale project and his blended-learning approach.  Over 1.83 billion calls made by 14.3 million mobile-telephone subscribers in the second quarter of 2008 - the Portuguese are clearly a phone-savvy nation. The potential a widespread and personalised tool like the mobile phone offers for learning has been discussed by e-learning and education experts for several years. Carla Ganito, researcher at the Portuguese Catholic University, has now produced a profound study of the mobile entertainment market in Portugal, putting special focus on usage trends in schools. At OEB 2008, she will share her findings.  Ton Zijlstra describes himself as a networked individual in a networked world. With a background in electronic engineering and the philosophy of science, he has been working in knowledge management for ten years. He focuses on increasing people's ability to act through the effectivity of their knowledge work, learning and tools, previously for a consultancy firm in the Netherlands, and, since the end of 2007, as an independent consultant. At OEB 2008, he will join Clive Shepherd in a discussion on Generation Y.  While important, the bottom-up creation of content is not everything, says Clive Shepherd. The British e-learning expert and consultant fully supports the Web 2.0 principle but sees an important continuing role for top-quality, top-down content that complements user-generated content and 'rapid content' produced by subject experts. The complementary roles of centralised and democratised content is a topic he is highly interested in at the moment, and he will discuss the various aspects of this phenomenon - among others - at OEB 2008.  Could an SMS calamity management programme reflect reality? The University of Aberdeen tried to find out more on the impact of SMS for learning and developed an inventive mobile course called “Flood Disaster Management Simulation” to drive instantanious reaction and decision-making power among its students. Sarah Cornelius from the University’s School of Education will present the appealing real-life simulation at OEB 2008.  Gone are the days when archaeology students had to dig up clay shards in the blazing midday heat in an abandoned village somewhere in the desert. Instead, they can sit safe and sound behind their computers at home or anyplace else and simply log on to Second Life (SL). The University of Leicester’s Media Zoo Island provides a creative 3-D online environment in SL specifically set up for the University’s archaeology students.  Will today’s teaching soon be a thing of the past? Learning authorities worldwide are concerned with what is happening in today’s classrooms as a new generation of technically savvy students enters universities and corporate training centres. OEB 2008 fuels the debate by bringing together education thought leaders from more than ninety countries for a fervent discussion of Generation Y. Tomorrow's leaders will be scrutinised throughout the 2008 agenda and feature prominently in the numerous studies and best-practice examples from universities, schools and corporate training worldwide. This newsletter provides you with this year’s conference highlights…  How can a company add value to its business with e-learning? This question will be handled from very different angles by the presenters of this year’s Industry Round Tables at OEB 2008. The innovative applications that will be presented in this context are designed for employee programmes, institutional education as well as customer retention. Experts come from the medical, biotechnical, pharmaceutical, banking and financial sectors, including Harry Wittenberg from Apple, USA, Dr Mario Po from the Local Health Service Department in Asolo, Italy and Dr Piotr Rypson from Bre Bank in Poland.  Students from all over Europe can now interact online cooperatively to deal with bullying and victimisation in schools. Researchers from five European countries have developed avatar@school, an online environment for virtual role-play games where teachers and pupils can train peer mediation techniques to prevent violence at school. The games have been created in a Second Life environment and use real-life scenarios from schools. Matteo Bertazzo from the project leader CINECA, the interUniversity Computer Center, will present avatar@school at OEB 2008.  Russell Stannard, Principal Lecturer at the University of Westminster, uses screen recorder software to teach students and give feedback on essays and presentations. Once started as an experiment in Stannard’s course on English for Academic Purposes, the video feedback method has become very popular amongst students and teachers all over the university and has been extended to a whole variety of courses.  Games Atelier, a web-based environment for the creation of mobile location-based games for students, will be launched at the beginning of 2009 in the Netherlands. Students will be enabled to create their own mobile games on topics of their choice. The gaming activities can be part of the history or citizenship education lessons at Dutch schools. The authoring environment, which was developed by the Dutch mediaLab Waag Society in cooperation with five secondary schools and the Amsterdam city department of social development, will be introduced at OEB 2008.  Digital storytelling is an efficient way of framing complex situations and helping audiences to make sense of what otherwise may be highly challenging connections in a rapidly changing workplace, says Dr Matthew Murray, Senior Learning Manager at PricewaterhouseCoopers. At Online Educa Berlin 2008, he will depict creative, flexible and practical methods for designing and developing engaging e-learning for Gen Y learners.  The “Millenials” or “Generation Y” are on everyone’s lips today. Commentators contend they are fast, result-oriented and impatient in regard to reaching their targets. In the context of the European eLene TLC Consortium, Ineke Lam from the IVLOS-Universiteit Utrecht, the Netherlands, took a closer look at the topic. Her aim is to show how to optimally prepare universities for the ne(x)t generation of students. At OEB 2008, she and Magda Ritzen from IVLOS-Universiteit Utrecht, will give further insights into the eLene project and a related study conducted by researchers from six European countries.  Using videos for learning is no big deal anymore, but their flawless integration into a learning environment often seems to be hard to realise. At the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, Alex Strømme used videos in his biology courses. The short clips were accessible via the university’s LMS and could also be viewed on mobile phones. Learning whenever and wherever one wanted to finally became a reality in Strømme’s courses. The parallel research he carried out also showed that students really embrace these new possibilities.  “Only if leaders encourage knowledge about the technology will the rest of the organisation follow suit”, is the credo of Saul Carliner, a longstanding consultant for e-learning solutions in corporate surroundings. In his soapbox session at OEB 2008, Saul will put forward a methodology on how to optimally prepare those responsible for e-learning deployment in order to prevent costly failures.  After its successful launch at the 2007 OEB conference, the MEDEA Awards 2008 are now in full swing. The new European initiative aims to encourage and recognise excellence in the educational use of audio-visual media. While still accepting submissions, the organising committee announces further details about the MEDEA Awards ceremony taking place alongside this year’s OEB.  “The most significant problem in education today is the problem of significance itself”, says Michael Wesch, cultural anthropologist at Kansas State University. As an active teacher, he experiences the challenge of making learning meaningful and of inspiring his students every day. The researcher will hold a keynote speech at this year’s OEB and will contribute to one of the event’s overriding themes, “Meeting the Learning Needs of Generation Y”.  This year’s conference is all about interaction and exchange. The conference organisers have strengthened this focus by optimising the programme structure and by introducing new session formats. Expert Sessions, Soapbox Sessions and a brand new Bloggers’ Session mark some of the highlights participants can expect this year.
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