Moodle Moot Romania 2013
Moodle Moot Romania 2013 will be held on August 19-24 in the city of Brasov, hosted by the Transylvania University of Brasov.
The annual meeting of Romanian Moodle users will count this year with the participation of special guests form Ireland, Australia, India, Poland, Republic of Moldova and Portugal.
The event is open to educators, researchers, training companies, NGOs and public institutions interested in using Moodle as an instruction and assessment online tool.
The programme of the conference includes case studies, debates, practical workshops and courses.
“Adults Learning for Intergenerational Creative Experiences” (ALICE): Creative Intergenerational Learning
Intergenerational learning (IL) aims to improve dialogue among generations through civic participation in common social and institutional spaces, and carry out informal learning of key competences for lifelong learning, both by adults and children. IL has as its goal fostering social cohesion.
Contemporary European society needs social cohesion that is built on the basis of a new integrated and complex dimension of social tissue, where diversity (among cultures, age, gender) is considered an opportunity.
“Adults Learning for Intergenerational Creative Experiences” (ALICE) focuses this idea in a non-traditional way in order to read more...
YELL - Young European Love Languages
Young Europeans Love Languages (YELL) is a network of European partners committed to promote language learning as a key skill of lifelong learning. The project (2009-2011) identified a number of tools to raise awareness and to demonstrate the importance of language learning and produced the YELL Handbook, targeted at multipliers in non-formal and formal education, providers of cultural, social and sport activities for young people.
The Handbook provides insight on how to implement best practices on raising awareness about cultural diversity and motivation of young people to learn foreign languages. The tools are designed for all education and vocational qualification institutions and for the trainers.
The project also produced the Virtual Documentation Center, an on-line database of examples of good practise in the field of innovative and creative ways of language learning in non-formal and informal contexts.
The YELL 2 project was launched in April 2013 to to disseminate the results of the network and to raise awareness of the Virtual Documentation Centre. The consortium of partners from Germany, UK and Turkey, aims to extend the user base of their online database and to enhance the tool by gathering additional Best Practice resources from around Europe.
Website: http://www.yell-project.eu/.
Communication, Empowering, Integration, Experience for Senior Age Volunteers
Project C.E.I.E. is developed in the context of the Grundvig Senior Mobility Action of the Life Long Learning Programme of the European Commission. The project involves the exchange of volunteers between Greece and Lithuania aiming at the development of a volunteering network and the engagement of seniors in social life.
In the context of an ageing society young and old are more and more faced with new learning needs of senior adults and vice versa. Senior adults- even if they are not willing to learn - are forced to cope with the changes of modern life to keep social contacts. It brings chances and challenges, but also risks and threats for young and old. This unique situation in history of mankind requires learning process focused on ageing, as well as focus on intergenerational links. This is a complete new challenge to adult educators, teachers, trainers, facilitators, as well as to learners and students from all ages. Special competencies are therefore needed.
The aim of the project “Communication, Empowering, Integration, Experience For Senior Age Volunteers” (C.E.I.E.) is to create open international communication of senior age volunteers, by improving their social cooperation and networking skills. Website: Project presentation at VDU portal. Read more...
Spicing up Vocational Training
For many people with mental illness and learning disabilities, working and gaining professional fulfilment is only a dream. Apart from the usual problems with finding a job, they face additional barriers: they often lack social skills necessary to work in a team. A methodology of experiential learning has been developed during the three years SUVOT project, co-funded by the European Commission, Life-long Learning Programme, Leonardo da Vinci subprogramme. A one year vocational course in cooking has been designed taking into account the special needs of the trainees. Apart from cooking sessions planned twice a week, once a week participants attend simulation methodology training – role-playing and theatre exercises helping them to acquire personal and social skills needed at work.
For many people with disabilities working and gaining professional fulfilment is only a dream, as apart from the usual problems with finding a job, they face additional barriers: not only physical and technical, but most often social. People with mental and cognitive disabilities are most affected by prejudices and social stigma – surveys reveal a 3 to 5 times higher unemployment rate amongst individuals with mental illness although the majority of them are able and willing to work. “Nobody is to be discriminated because of his or her disability!” This is one of the central statements anchored in the European legislation and leads to many measures that try to ensure that handicapped people have the same options and choices as non-handicapped people. Read more...
Electronically Learning Other Cultures And Languages
e-LOCAL is an EU-funded project aiming to promote multilingualism by developing original learning tools and materials for 6 languages: Dutch, Finnish, Hungarian, Italian, Polish and Portuguese.
e-LOCAL (Electronically Learning Other Cultures And Languages) responds to the EU language policy based on the principle of fostering language diversity, promoting multilingualism and the acquisition of less common languages.
The six free e-LOCAL courses developed by the project (2010-12) have the same formal structure and also have a common framework of contents; they have been created to allow the users to reach A1 level of the Common European Framework for Languages.
The target group consists of school pupils and university students, i.e. young people who are likely to experience mobility abroad. The courses provide students with a tool specially developed with the aim of preparing them for a mobility period abroad: this is reflected inter alia in the thematic structure, including topics suitable to the youth’s interests and likes, and in the plot of the courses, where the main characters are two Erasmus students.
E-LOCAL has been carried out by 9 partners (6 universities and 3 secondary schools) from 6 different countries: University of Bologna and ITCS Rosa Luxemburg (Italy), Adam Mickiewicz University and ZSO 2 Charles de Gaulle (Poland), University of Debrecen and Tóth Árpád Gimnázium (Hungary), University of Coimbra’s CES (Portugal), University of Lapland (Finland) and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium).
Website: http://e-localcourses.eu/.
The impact of the world economic crisis on Higher Education
Website: 2013 International GUIDE Conference. How is it possible to modernise the structure of higher education systems and develop a new model of higher education systems? Professor Andrea Gentile will talk about that and much more at the 6th International GUIDE Conference.
How has the economic crisis affected the structure of Higher Education Systems? Professor Andrea Gentile from Marconi University will tackle that question in his keynote at the opening session of the 6th International GUIDE Conference (3-4 October, 2013 – Athens, GR).
o learn more about the conference please visit the official website, follow GUIDE Association on Twitter or join GUIDE’s LinkedIn group.
The ICT for Language Learning conference extends the abstract submission deadline
The 6th edition of the ICT for Language Learning international conference, to be held in Florence (Italy) on 14-15 November, aims to promote and share good practice and transnational cooperation in the field of the application of Information and Communications Technology to language learning and training.
Due to the high interest in the conference, the organisation has announced that the abstract submission deadline has been extended to 5 September, 2013. The Call for Papers is addressed to language teachers and experts as well as to coordinators of language projects and initiatives.
There will be three presentation modalities: Oral and poster presentations (in-person) and virtual (for those who can not attend in person). All the papers presented during the conference will be published on an ISBN publication. Read more...
Outliers School 2013 to be held in collaboration with the Knowmad Society
Outliers School is a multiplatform educational project launched in 2012 based on the methodology of Design Thinking Learning by Doing. The initiative (with online, offline and hibrid offerings) aims to promote new ideas and models about Education Design and Digital Communication, with learning methods based on problem-solving skills and the prototyping of solutions.
Encouraged by the success of the first edition, with participants from 17 cities across the world, the Outliers School 2013 will be taking place online from 4-14 November in coordination with the Knowmad Society movement, leaded by John Moravec. Only 20 participants will be selected to attend the seminar, targeted to out-of-the-box thinkers passionate about the future of education.
Design Thinking for Educators is based on the confidence that everyone can be part of creating a more desirable future, and a process to take action when faced with a difficult challenge. Educators across the world are using this method to solve challenges in their work. Projects range in scope and scale including design solutions- from curriculum, to space, to processes and to systems— addressing problems in the classroom and across entire districts.
The Outliers School portal showcases several experiences based on Design Thinking in Latin America and the final projects developed by the participants in the Outliers School 2012. Registration to participate in the 2013 edition will remain open until 20 October.
CSEDU 2014, the International Conference on Computer Supported Education
CSEDU 2014, the International Conference on Computer Supported Education, aims at becoming a yearly meeting place for presenting and discussing new educational environments, best practices and case studies on innovative technology-based learning strategies, institutional policies on computer supported education including open and distance education, using computers. In particular, the Web is currently a preferred medium for distance learning and the learning practice in this context is usually referred to as e-learning. CSEDU 2014 is expected to give an overview of the state of the art as well as upcoming trends, and to promote discussion about the pedagogical potential of new learning and educational technologies in the academic and corporate world.
Conference Areas
1 . Information Technologies Supporting Learning
2 . Learning/Teaching Methodologies and Assessment
3 . Social Context and Learning Environments
4 . Domain Applications and Case Studies
5 . Ubiquitous Learning
