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News and Background Information on the Conference | |||
 This issue features a round table discussion with Jaan Netzow, IBM Germany, Gareth Greenwood, IBM UK, and Bert de Coutere, IBM Belgium. They are all involved, in one way or the other, with the development, sales and support of software for collaboration - particularly in the workplace. Can IBM applications replace Facebook as a ‘managed social network’? Should managers have the right to change employees’ personal profiles? All this and more at this round table discussion.
 Education Highway, the largest educational portal in Austria, is expanding its service by including the Norwegian Online Learning Platform Fronter. This new service, which was launched in Salzburg on November 22, will ensure that the Fronter platform is available to all schools in Austria.  In the EU, training vocational teachers and trainers has become one of the main objectives of occupational training policies. Quality assurance and innovative teaching methods are considered indispensable. At Online Educa Berlin 2007, the European Training of Trainers Network (TTnet) will discuss the linked potential of IT-based learning environments and give best practice examples. 
© ETF A round-table discussion on Thursday, November 29th aims at sharing experience and knowledge with conference participants on the role of the private sector in education and training reforms. The focus will be on sharing cases of good practice from the European Learning Industry Group (eLIG) and on partners from the Mediterranean as well as on identifying areas for future co-operation between the private and public sector.  How does European citizenship and youth involvement converge in New Media? Radio Web Europe, a pioneer project of seven EU Member States promoting dialogue on European issues, provides the answer to this question. The multimedia podcasting service offers new ways to form and express opinions in a pan-European debate. Gonzalo Santamaria, one of the co-ordinators of Radio Web Europe, will present this project at Online Educa Berlin.  Access to the educational system needs to be made easier and more attractive, if participation in higher education throughout Europe should rise considerably, claims Ben Janssen, Secretary to the Dutch National Initiative “Long Live Learning!” At Online Educa Berlin 2007, Ben will discuss “The Role of Technology in Supporting Cradle-to-Grave Learning” in his keynote speech. 
© RCSI “It depends on what you make of it” is something most Moodle users have internalised. In recent years, the popular learning environment, which provides a methodological frame for which the user supplies content details, has undergone accelerated development. At Online Educa Berlin 2007, Eric Clarke of the Royal College of Surgeons, Ireland will outline the platform’s use in a medical school setting.  Using Second Life for educational purposes is one of most exciting trends in the field of technology-enhanced learning. But what is behind all the hype? What are the actual benefits of Second Life for learners as well as for trainers? Various sessions at Online Educa Berlin will explore the use of virtual worlds for educational purposes.  When learners are actively engaged in hands-on activities, they often gain a better understanding of the underlying principles and enjoy the learning process more. The Online Educa Berlin 2007 demonstration sessions put this theory into practice. Learn more about two of this year’s topics in the following short preview of the Gym2Learn Tool, presented by Giuseppe Chiazzese, Institute for Educational Technology, Italian National Research Council, and MathsAid, presented by Anna Nes Gustavsen, VOX, Norway.  Corporate University Xchange, a leading benchmarking and corporate-learning research firm, would like to invite you to participate in a short, five-minute interview at Online Educa Berlin. The interview will be added to a new collection of learning-industry videos that include thought leaders from Microsoft, Telefonica, UBS and many others at tv.corpu.com. 
© Falko Matte - Fotolia.com Cyber attacks and preparing to fight a cyber attack will be key topics for discussion at “The Third International Forum on E-Learning for Defence and Security” on November 28th at Online Educa Berlin. General Johannes Kert, Military Representative of the Estonian Delegation to NATO and former Commander of the Estonian Armed Forces, will speak at the Forum about lessons learned from the cyber attacks that Estonia faced earlier this year. Another great edition of Sounds from the bazaar - brought to you in conjunction with Online Educa Berlin. After an introduction by Graham Attwell, you can listen to Jay Cross talking about Informal Learning. Ulf-Daniel Ehlers tells us about his idea for “Research without Borders” and Claire Belisle talks about her research on information and digital media. The blog spot features Ismael Pena Lopez’s brilliant ICTlogy blog. Enjoy!
 Environment protection and conservation is a global matter. However, knowledge management in this area is still in its infancy when it comes to internationally standardised learning opportunites. In collaboration with the e-learning consultancy common sense, the United Nations Environment Programme developed and implemented MENTOR, a web-based learning platform. Arndt Bubenzer from common sense provides insight into the concept and practical use of MENTOR in the field of environmental education.  eCollaboration will be the key theme of IBM Germany´s presentations at this year’s Online Educa Berlin. In a private customer briefing room, IBM experts will give lectures on the benefits of informal learning processes.  A project has begun to bring the European heritage online through a single portal. In September 2007, 70 senior managers and technical experts from museums, archives, audio-visual collections and libraries across Europe came together to plan the European Digital Library (EDLnet). At Online Educa Berlin, EDL’s Head of Communications, Jonathan Purday, will give further insights into the large-scale initiative.  To control electronic devices from a distance is an essential part of our everyday lives. We open car doors using remote controls on our key chains; we also switch TV channels and operate dozens of other gadgets using this technology. But how can remote control be used in distance learning programmes? Find out at this year’s Online Educa Berlin: Prof. Dietmar Kennepohl will present his approach to remote laboratory teaching, which enables students to take part in laboratory work and even to control experiments in real time via the Internet.  Brian Durrant claims that a strategic and collaborative procurement approach has enabled London local authorities to save millions of pounds while ensuring high-quality infrastructure in all London schools. He has helped to transform the way that services are acquired by schools in the UK, creating an organisation in the London Grid for Learning (LGfL) that has aggregated 2,600 schools within the London area into a single buying unit, generating significant cost-savings and accelerating the deployment of new technology.  Eedo Knowledgeware is a rapidly growing learning software supplier. They provide flexible solutions for global organisations and companies worldwide to manage knowledge transfer across their organisations. Eedo representatives will feature with two recent case studies in this year’s Online Educa Berlin programme. We have asked John Hudson, Eedo Knowledgeware President and CEO, what current trends he sees in corporate training.  Corporate language training is the leading online service for corporations, large organisations and language schools that need to improve the business communication skills of a global workforce. Over 500 corporate clients and 4.5 million students worldwide use CLT as the efficient and flexible approach to improving language skills for both career and personal growth. Readers of the ONLINE EDUCA News Service can now sign up for a free one-month subscription to an English language course with Europe´s leading online language service.  Organisations have to manage change processes constantly to compete at the global market. This requires changes to talent management and learning opportunities with the organisation as well – a challenge to learning experts and trainers. The International Training Centre of Thales Netherlands decided to develop a new learning-service concept to be better able to deal with these challenges. Delft University of Technology was the co-operating partner when Thales worked on its new concepts.  According to a recent survey by Deloitte Consulting, online learning capabilities will provide global enterprises with a competitive edge to develop people around the world. In his new book, 25 Best Practices in Learning & Talent Development, Dr Nick van Dam, Global Chief Learning Officer for Deloitte, broaches the issue of building up holistic leaders in a globalised and networking world.  Combining work and family is one of the biggest challenges of our time and not only for an “e-worker” like Patricia Ceysens, Flemish Minister for Economy, Enterprise, Science, Innovation and Foreign Trade, Belgium. The challenges can be met with the efficient use of technologies, says Ceysens, who will hold a keynote in the Opening Plenary of this year’s Online Educa Berlin. Governments and political leaders like herself are challenged to lay the groundwork for ICT literacy and quality education… Welcome to the second of the special series of Sounds of the Bazaar autumn shows. This series is being produced in conjunction with Online Educa Berlin by Graham Attwell from Pontydysgu. In each edition we feature some of the themes and speakers from this year's Online Educa conference. In this show we feature two contributors to Online Educa. Ruth Rominger is Director of Learning Design at Monterey Institute, USA. She spoke to us about the development of Open Educational resources, social authoring, sustainability models and much more. Steve Wheeler will also be at Online Educa. He is part of a panel looking at the potential of Multi User Virtual Environments, including Second Life, for learning. In the interview, Steve talked about the development of a project on sexual health in Second Life. Enjoy!  For Welten, market leader in offering interim professionals for banks and insurance companies in the Netherlands, traditional in-service training - although highly valued - appeared not to be enough to provide optimal service. To foster knowledge sharing and ubiquitous learning the company decided to build its own Wiki. Welten was supported in this project by Online Training Experts from Andriessen en Partners. Paul Westeneng will talk about the Wiki Welten at Online Educa Berlin...  Serious games, mobile learning, computer simulations and virtual learning worlds will be the key themes at ‘Innovate to Compete’, the conference sessions chaired by Fabrizio Cardinali, the co-chair of the European Learning Industry Group (eLIG) and CEO of Giunti Labs. Cardinali invites CLOs from leading corporations such as Volkswagen, Ikea, Ericsson, Schlumberger and L’Oreal to talk about the challenges for corporate learning in today’s knowledge society.  The University of Applied Sciences Berlin (TFH) and the Kyrgyz Technical University of Bishkek (KGTU) are cooperating to build up a Bachelor’s study programme in the fields of mechanical and electrical engineering. Online study modules are being used to improve the language skills of teachers and students in this unique project. 
VHA @ FU Berlin In 2006, the Freie Universität Berlin became the first university outside of the United States to offer access to the Visual History Archive of testimonies from Holocaust survivors and witnesses held by the Shoah Foundation Institute of the University of Southern California. Breaking new ground in teaching and research, the VHA combines its aim of preserving history for future generations with the use of innovative e-learning tools.  Manresa, a Catalonian city of about 75,000 inhabitants, makes use of a simple but convincing teaching principle. Since 2001, the City Council has provided an ICT training plan for the elderly that combines technologies like PDA, GPS, Google Earth, Google Maps and flickr. Because computer literacy seems to be one of the basic skills of young people, the organisers thought it would be a good idea to match different generations and change common roles: The students would be the teachers and the seniors would be the students! Project Manager Marta Serra will give some insights at OEB.  Online Educa Berlin has teamed up with Sounds of the Bazaar to produce a series of podcasts in the run up to this year’s conference. Listen to our first edition, featuring conversations with Stephen Downes, Vijay Kumar and Toru Iiyoshi…  In 2006, the UK Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) published the report Beyond eLearning: Practical Insights from the USA on the state of e-learning in the US. Surprisingly, for most companies that took part in the survey, games-based learning then was either a non-starter or merely an interesting discussion point. Eighteen months on, with the phenomenon of Second Life and more 'noise' around serious games, Euan Mackenzie, co-author of the report, asks the same questions again. At Online Educa Berlin, he will reveal what has happened in the interim, contrast it to developments in other countries and look at where games-based learning may be heading. As an 'appetizer', he has provided some food for thought...  Online Educa Berlin will feature several presentation and discussion sessions about how blogs and wikis are being used to stimulate reflective practice and collaborative learning in universities and other institutions of higher education. Sarah Guth from the University of Padua, Italy, has introduced wikis into her language teaching courses – with interesting results …  A stunning 99 percent of all European businesses are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). In fact, this rubric encompasses 23 million businesses that provide jobs for 75 million Europeans. Bringing e-learning as part of continuing education and training into this huge market remains a challenge. Online Educa Berlin features examples of robust e-learning models from Belgium, Finland, Greece and Spain aimed at meeting the needs of SMEs regardless of size or sector.  Helping teachers to become democratic leaders with a strong presence in the classroom - whether physical or virtual - is the main aim of Ingemar Svensson, project manager at the Swedish Agency for Flexible Learning. He will give further insight into the work of his institution in the session “Teacher Training and the Use of ICT” on Thursday, November 29.  Nearly all types of communication technology can be used as educational accessories, depending on the initiative and imagination of the organisers and teachers. Radio broadcasts in particular have great potential if combined with the Internet for the asynchronous delivery of content, says Professor Costas Tsolakidis from the University of the Aegaen. His team has developed a programme to help teachers in rural areas of Greece perform their duties in an innovative way using Internet Radio. Prof. Tsolakidis will present this experimental project in detail on Friday, November 30, in the presentation session “Applying ICT and Traditional Media in Schools.”  Sue Todd, Corporate University Xchange President and Senior Researcher, USA, will present the findings from The Corporate University Xchange 8th Annual Global Benchmarking Study on Learning and Development. The study assesses the ability of more than 300 global organisations to execute business strategy … and Corporate University Xchange is extending a special offer to encourage your participation in the study!  We are proud to announce Andrew Keen as a keynote speaker in this year's Opening Plenary at Online Educa Berlin. A sharp-witted thinker and an innovative critic of Web 2.0, Keen promises an inspiring and provocative talk that will certainly provide food for thought and further discussion at the conference. The British-American entrepreneur and author argues against the "cult of the amateur" encouraged by Web 2.0, which, he says, is threatening, if not destroying, our economy, culture and values. Taking a strong conservative position in the overwhelmingly liberal surroundings of the blogosphere, Keen has already created widespread controversy on the Internet. Keen will also discuss his newly released book The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture. The OEB Press Team will feature Keen in forthcoming issues of the newsletter...  On the web, cultural heritage content can be found everywhere. At Online Educa Berlin 2007, a transnational and interdisciplinary group of experts will show how to explore, store and use these resources effectively. The workshop “Innovative Approaches for Searching and Using Cultural Heritage Information for Learning and Teaching”, taking place on November 28, is designed for instructors, teachers and cultural content providers who want to improve the distribution of their content, as well as for software and multimedia designers.  Exploring the unmapped terrain between human and machine learning has been the main interest of Sugata Mitra, Professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University in the UK. He is also Chief Scientist Emeritus with NIIT Limited, India, one of the largest private educational institutions in the world. Sugata Mitra has become internationally known for his “Hole in the Wall” experiment, which he started in New Delhi in 1999. Prof. Sugata Mitra will be a keynote speaker at Online Educa Berlin 2007 in Berlin. The OEB Press Team asked him about his current investigations. |
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