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June 17, 2009

First international symposium brings together major global networks for innovation in education

More than 130 high-level decision-makers from 30 countries, members of international networks active in the field of ICT in education attended the first ICT in Education Networks international symposium on 11-12 June in Rome, Italy. The aim of the event was to build a vision for a common future for education, and set an agenda for future cooperation.

The event was jointly organised by four major education organisations: European Schoolnet (EUN), a network of 31 Ministries of Education in Europe, the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) in the USA, Education.au, the Australian national agency for ICT in education and ANSAS, the Italian agency for innovation in education.
In a globalised world, international networks may face challenges that could be better addressed by sharing knowledge and experiences with other networks. The symposium laid the stone for high-level networking within the global ICT in education community.

The two-day highlighted the need to improve information-sharing and cooperation between international education networks to address key topics such as the nature of 21st century learning and analyse the role of international education networks vis-à-vis decision makers in the field.

“It is the first time an initiative of this scale has been undertaken to build bridges between global networks, and to develop peer-learning mechanisms between all actors in the education sector. International networks are operating in a diversity of education environments and cultures, and the symposium was the occasion to share and exchange on this diversity and cultural wealth. We hope the momentum initiated by this conference will lead to a plan for action as a ‘Rome declaration’”, said Marc Durando, Executive Director of European Schoolnet after the event.

Participants of the symposium came from six continents, representing 30 countries. Delegations from 32 Ministries of Education and education agencies participated.

Key industry partners are sponsoring the event, including eInstruction (www.einstruction.com), Intel Education (www.intel.com), Microsoft (www.microsoft.com), Oracle (www.oracle.com), PASCO Scientific (www.pasco.com), Promethean (www.prometheanworld.com) and SMART Technologies (www.smarttech.com).

Several other organisations support the initiative such as Futurelab in the UK (www.futurelab.org.uk), Apple Computers (www.apple.com), KERIS (the ICT agency of the Ministry of Education Science and Technology in South Korea – http://english.keris.or.kr), South East Asia Ministry of Education Organisation (www.seameo.org) and World Links Arab Region (www.wlar.org).

Other networks which attended the event included African (Schoolnet Africa), middle-eastern (iEARN Lebanon, World Links Arab Region), European (Global eSchools and Communities Initiative, Digital Europe) and South American networks (Interdidatica, Fundação Vanzolini).

Presentations and programme for the event have been made available at: http://is.eun.org. The symposium also marked the start of a series of podcasts featuring key persons from International Networks for ICT in education.
The podcast is available here: http://blog.eun.org/is/podcast/ more episodes will regularly be added to this podcast channel.

A complete report for the event will be published shortly.

June 12, 2009

International Symposium // Plenary session 6 // Closing

Patricia Wastiau (European Schoolnet) reports back on the conclusions of the conference. Through reports and notes from all sessions, she has summarised the key points and recommendations.

The following principles were noted:

  • ICT based, excellent education must be for all

  • ICT can facilitate personalised learning approaches

  • Digital divide is shifting: now it's more to achieve proper use, rather than access in many countries

  • Skills such as flexibility and open-ness is key.
  • How can we realise 21st Century Learning?

    • The challenge is no longer technological, but addressing education in a systemic way
    • Starting from concerns of teachers is key: ICT itself is not an added value for teachers, but how can ICT address problems such as pupil disengagement, ongoing professional development, etc.?


    The breakout sessions highlighted these issues:

    • Need for fundamental change in forms of assessment to ensure better cohesion between 21st century skills and assessment models

    • Teacher education institutions are crucial to revising pedagogical methods, networking them can help to upgrade their approaches

    • Communities of teachers help to ensure ongoing skill enhancement and peer learning in-service

    In addition, Patricia remarked a number of issues had been a little neglected during the debate. In particular, we did not address how informal learning processes can be better integrated into education systems. In addition, further work and analysis is needed to understand the skills needed by students in the future, and specifically, ethical challenges posed by extensive and pervasive use of ICT in education.

    Giovanni Biondi went on to thank the participants for their active participation and the success of the event. However, he noted that we are in the middle of a revolution - and it is key that international networks continue to exchange to continue developing in this way. He proposed that this first symposium should be the first of many, planning for a follow up once every two years. As is the case for students, policy makers and networks do not learn alone.

    Marc Durando gave the closing remarks, and thanked all for their support. He proposed a series of next steps, through meeting in the annual Learning and Technology World Forum, CoSN annual conference and the forthcoming New Millenium Learner Conference in Belgium. In addition we are preparing a compendium of the networks, via a publication and database of networks active in the field. In addition, the proceedings will shortly be published including recommendations and a plan for action as a 'Rome declaration'.

    Presentations // Plenary session 6: Closing

    General report and conclusions Patricia Wastiau, European Schoolnet.

    Download file

    International Symposium // Podcast // Gavin Dykes, Associate Director, Futurelab

    International Networks for ICT in Education Podcast: Gavin Dykes, International Strategy Consultant for Becta and Associate Director for Futurelab

    Gavin Dykes is widely experienced in technology and learning, from classroom practice to developing and implementing national e-learning and technology policy. He has over 20 years experience of working with schools, colleges and universities, in government and with industry. His current roles include International Strategy Consultant at Becta and Associate Director of Consulting at Futurelab. In this podcast he explains the currents priorities in Britain regarding peer learning, international cooperation and how learners can best benefit from innovation at school.
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    International Symposium // Podcast // Greg Black, CEO, Education.au

    International Networks for ICT in Education Podcast: Greg Black, CEO, Education.au

    Greg Black has been a chief executive in large government agencies in Australia for over 20 years. In this podcast he tells us more about the best way to scale up innovation in education and how Australia has been doing in the past years in this area
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    International Symposium // Plenary session 5

    This session was designed as an Interactive session with the audience: Addressing key challenges for the future: from vision to practice

    Panel:
    Moderator: Keith Kruger, CoSN

  • Nafissatou Mbodj, Executive Director, Schoolnet Africa
  • Dr. Cher Ping Lim, Director, Asia-Pacific Centre of Excellence for Teacher Education & Innovations and Professor at Edith Cowan University, Australia
  • Professor Guilherme Ary Plonski, Carlos Alberto Vanzolini Foundation
  • Bridget Cosgrave, Director General at Digital Europe

    What are the first steps should organisations take to start what has been decided and discussed during the two days to operationalising international cooperation?
    1) We shoudl organise study visits and open up collaboration channels between (Nafissatou Mbodj)

    2) Keith highlight the latest HigherEd report which came out recently, in the US there is a strong focus on mobile devices and the report has a special focus on mobile phones.

    3) Dr. Cher Ping Lim asked the audience how the networks present in the room can sustain/scale up the pilot projects that we have started. There are pockets of innovation but how do you scale up these projects, how can educational network help?

    4) In the US, there is now a strong drive for education, the new Obama administration asked CoSN to advise them on how new technologies could help so Cosn started calling other networks in the world to ask them about the latest policies in their countries. This is a real change at the policy level.

    5) We should have a repository of best/interesting practices. There is a space to articulate innovative actions, especially in less developed areas...

    6) We should work together to create portable portfolio for teachers and pupils which could be used in other countries

    7) Domizio Baldini, an Apple Distinguished Education highlighted, there is and obvious generation gap which came along with new technologies at school and in life. Parents have to learn from their kids


    What can the private sector do in this area
    Keith shows a survey looking at the skills that employers are looking after when hiring new graduate. Skills include work ethic, collaboration, communication, critica thinking etc... all skills which are not assessed by traditional curricula.

    1) School accountability: should the private sector also look how to extend teaching after school.

    2) Curricula has to evolve, the core curricula still remain the same and are not adated to the digital world in which we live, is not adapted to kids who are digital native.

    Who is the core audience we should address (policy makers, student etc), where do we start?

    1) Young people, ICT practitionners, entrepreneurs

    2) Teachers are the gatekeepers to the classroom, school leaders shoudl be the direct beneficiaries

    3) In Africa the main target should be the students, policy makers and parents

    4) We have to make a pandemic of improvement in education, we should think big and attack systemically what has to be done.

    Keith concluding the session by highlighting that global connections are central if we want to create the conditions for 21st century learners.

  • International Symposium // Plenary session 4 // A vision for the future- roundtable

    Greg Black, Director of Education.au was the moderator of this session, which included presentations from:
    • Nancy Knowlton, SMART
    • Kirsten Panton, Microsoft
    • Frans Van Assche, EUN

    At school level, ICT solutions are increasing but schools are not enough future-oriented and have to be encouraged. The discussions presented different visions of the way education could be in the future.

    Nancy Knowlton from Smart said that a larger vision must be created and that it should flow down to every level of the educational system. Children are ready to learn and use new technologies in classrooms and, by 2020, technological material will finally take its rightful place in the classrooms.
    Also, the role of teachers and learners has to evolve in the next years because the mode of teaching has currently started to break down in lot of schools all around the world. In the future, the students will cooperate more and more with their peers worldwide, they will take more responsibilities and teachers will move to the side and become more guides than mentors.

    All the educational actors (teachers, students, parents, community, suppliers) should be involved and work together to define new ways of learning.

    Nancy also underlined that more attention should be paid towards the developing countries, especially by funding their empowerment in ICTs. Every aspect (contents, teacher trainings, good practices) of education should be shared with developing countries at every level.

    As getting to the global level is hard to achieve, she called for a deep commitment from teachers and administrators. Having the students involved is more difficult but it could help to spread a "positive virus" around the world.

    Kirsten Panton, from Microsoft, showed a video which presented how the world could look like in the future, where technology will have an impact on all aspects of life and work.
    To reach such a world, the assessment and curriculum, learning management, human capacity building have to evolve. Teachers have to be provided with good learning management tools and to make sure they have the good skills.

    Frans Van Assche, Senior Manager at EUN, sais that there were similarities between ICT in schools and ICT in industry. A 2002 study showed that those who embraced change management were benefitting more from ICT, Frans believe similar results would be observed in education.

    Another perspectives are interactions with others in educational context (relations with coach/mentor, subject/expert, the world etc), ICT is changing all that as we have seen in the 'Hole in the All' experiment where coach or mentors settle the scene but leave learners make their own learning paths.

    Personalisation of learning is also an issue, but what type of personalisation: differentiation (like in Denmark) or individualisation. How much can learners self regulate themselves? What can be personalised: what should be learned and how it should be learned (learning materials, pedagogy...) ?

    We are now going from technophobia to technologies acceptance, and it looks like a Copernican revolution : the teacher is no more at the center but aside, while the learner takes a more central position.

    In 2020, will teachers be minute managers? This is a provocative line, in light of the announced transformation of role of educators from teachers to coach. Other trends for 2020 are the growing importance of peer learning and micro-learning, towards synchronisation and convergence of technology.

    Sugata Mitra said that in the future, with the current trend of climate change, lack of fossil energies and terrorism, it could be much more difficult for the students to travel or even go outside, but on the other hand the communications will be totally free, schools would physically disappear by moving to home.


    International Symposium // Podcast // Keith R. Krueger, CEO, Consortium for School Networking (CoSN)

    International Networks for ICT in Education Podcast: Keith Krueger, CoSN

    Keith R. Krueger is CEO of the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), a U.S. nonprofit organization that serves as the voice of K-12 technology leaders, especially school district CTO’s, who use technology strategically to improve teaching and learning. In this podcast Keith looks at the new perspectives in the US as regards ICT in education, particularly in lights of the new US administration. Keith also talks about the latest developments in the US which can be useful to other international networks.
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    Plenary session 3 // Priority international cooperation strategies

    This session included presentations and discussion from:

    Roger Blamire demonstrated a number of existing international approaches for partnership, focusing particularly on those which have a clear evaluation aspect to identify impact of ICT implemented. He covered a number of specific examples:

    • STEPS: a comparative research study evaluating use of ICT in primary schools

    • P2V: a peer-learning framework for exchange of best practice in ICT in education between inspectorates and schools

    • Insafe: a network of national and European nodes to raise awareness of critical and safe use of ICT

    Miao Feng-Chun showed the diverse challenge of partnership in Asia-Pacific: countries range from very developed, highly ICT-oriented societies (S. Korea, Japan), to much lesser developed countries (Afghanistan, Tajikstan). They therefore focus on strategic priorities, particularly:

    • education of policy makers on appropriate, evidence-based strategies for implementation of ICT in education systems

    • acting as a clearinghouse for ICT in education in the region

    • identifying good practice and awarding teachers, teacher trainers, etc. for use of ICT in education

    • networking teacher training institutions to upgrade pre-service ICT in education courses.

    One of his key messages was however that we need to ensure we reach the most marginalised populations, and we need to be creative about use of ICT to address them.

    Laurent Odic, eInstruction demonstrated some new tools for innovative classroom approaches, which permit teachers to move away from 'front of the class' teaching and more interaction from students. Currently eInstruction is cooperating with many governments across EU, Asia and Central/Latin America - in both 'rich' ICT in education contexts as well as more marginal areas with satellite connections.

    Rhyan Bloor gave us a clear overview of the situation in Australia. There is more need to use ICT in Australia than in other countries, due to the huge size of the country combined with a sparsely distributed population. Priorities for cooperation are ones where we can find common policy areas and shared problems between countries, particularly those that permit interoperability between states/countries/regions and facilitate cooperation between pupils. Events such as this conference are valuable for this process.

    Elisabetta Mughini replaced Giovanni Biondi in this session, and pointed out that international cooperation is key for developing and inspiring new policy approaches at national level. It's clear that many countries already share common problems, and we have a shared vocabulary for this: collaboration, communication, comparison and so on. Creativity is also important: we need to help our pupils have a creative and innovative experience at school. Through some existing projects schools are already cooperating at grassroots level, and get engaged in social networks. One interesting approach that could be developed is an international curriculum for ICT in education, taking account of the new developments of ICT.

    International Symposium // Podcast // Nafissatou Mbodj, Executive Director, Schoolnet Africa

    International Networks for ICT in Education Podcast: Nafissatou Mbodj, Executive Director, Schoolnet Africa

    Ms Nafissatou Mbodj is the Executive Director of Schoolnet Africa, President of "Association Culturelle Sénégal USA" (ACSU) and National Coordinator of World links Sénégal since 2000. In this podcast about International cooperation for education networks, she gives an overview of the situation in Africa and about the 1m computers initiative Schoolnet Africa is currently leading.
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    International Symposium // Podcast // Dr. Miao Feng-Chun, ICT and Education Programme Specialist, UNESCO Bangkok

    International Networks for ICT in Education Podcast: Dr. Miao Feng-Chun, ICT and Education Programme Specialist, UNESCO Bangkok

    Fengchun MIAO is the UNESCO Bangkok’s ICT and Education Programme Specialist, serving as the Chief of ICT in Education Unit of UNESCO Asia-Pacific Regional Bureau for Education. He explains in this podcast, aimed at international networks in education, the main priorities in Asian countries for ICT in education in a continent which has great variation in development, access and infrastructures.
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    Presentations // Plenary session 5: Addressing key challenges for the future: from vision to practice

    Presentations // Plenary session 4: A vision for the future – roundtable

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    Presentations // Plenary session 3: Priority international cooperation strategies

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    International Symposium // Podcast // Reem Bsaiso, CEO, World Links Arab Region

    International Networks for ICT in Education Podcast: Reem Bsaiso, CEO, World Links Arab Region

    Reem Bsaiso, CEO, World Links Arab Region talks in this first podcast about International Networks about the work of World Links Arab Region. Based in Jordan, WLAR develops projects and teacher training to bring education in the Middle East up to speed with 21st century challenges.
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    June 11, 2009

    International Symposium // Enabling communities of Learners // Session A : Online school collaboration across borders

    Liz Hitchcock, from British Council, running the Global Gateway - an online platform for international school cooperation, was launched by the British Council, that develop English Language Learning and teacher training programs - asserted that the two sides of the web 2.0 - online discussions, live conferencing, information exchanges, podcasting, messaging, blogging for students vs. access to educational software, training, free resources and professional networks for teachers – had to be reconciled to met expectations. She also said that teachers needed support from their school and ministries, that the schools needed accreditation for international work and the awards needed to be recognised by the curriculum authorities.

    Reem Bsaiso from World Links Arab Region indicated that students are much more skilled than teachers in ICT, and that collaboration between teachers and students should be encouraged in that field.

    Metni Eliane, from iEARN mentioned that in Yemen, where people have no computer but cell phones, ICT projects are made on mobile phones. Therefore, mobile phones offer a great potential for school collaboration - students have them in a great deal of countries, even before PC access in many cases. Much online content can be downloaded on mobile phones, and some collaborative platforms (e.g. webex) facilitate upload/download of content via their phones.

    Reem underlined that there were a huge diversity of online collaboration projects, with a variety of models. This is a benefit for education as provide different methods which can be customised and integrated according to students' needs.

    Lynne Gill from Oracle Foundation indicated that these kinds of projects were extremely important for social cohesion and international understanding: they are fundamental to helping children have a global outlook.

    She said that we have to find a mean to integrate ICT tools and skills in the way of thinking, and underlined the fact that there is a huge gap between the universities and the schools and we should tackle it.

    Nafitassou Mbodj from Africa Schoolnet and Liz Hitchcock agreed to say that we should facilitate global cooperation between schools - perhaps by networking better the existing networks - particularly as this can bring up more deep educational / global issues than cooperating with neighbouring countries. Schools in peripheral areas really need to be involved better in these kinds of projects.
    For instance, ANSAS in Italy launched a pilot project, Med-twinning, for online collaboration between North African and Mediterranean countries.

    Alexa Joyce from EUN presented the eTwinning project, which is a European Schoolnet project funded by the EC that started in 2005. It currently gathers 60 000 schools across the 31 members states, that developed 12 000 projects so far. It reached its critical masse and new Twinspace collaborative tools will be launched in next September to reflect the web 2.0 approach.

    International Symposium // Helping educational leaders use new tools // Session B: Priority strategies for the future: transforming the curriculum

    Chair: Jim Ayre, European Schoolnet
    Session B: Priority strategies for the future: transforming the curriculum
    • Skoool in Turkey Mehmet Muharremoğlu & Turan Şişman, Ministry of Education, Turkey
    • Digital Textbook Project and its impact on students’ learning Jeonghee Seo, KERIS
    • One Million Computers for African Schools Nafissatou Mbodj, Executive Director, Schoolnet Africa

    Skoool in Turkey
    Turan Sisman, Ministry of Education, Turkey

    Turan explains the recent ICT Policy in education which are implemented by MONE (Ministry of Education)
    - The ICT Policy report (digital content, electronic tablets) Turkey is a big countries and numbers are impressive: 14m pupils, 40,000 schools and over 600,000 teachers, the challenge is to maintain internet infrastructure and access in Turkey.

    Priorities for infrastructure:
    1) ICT classes in all schools having more than eight classes
    2) Providing ICT equipment to small schools
    3) Completing the ICT equipments at the end of 2009

    Turan demonstrates http://skoool.meb.gov.tr and www.egitim.gov.tr, a website for secondary schools which contains science material an other learning resources. At the end of 2009, there will be 2m learning resources available (user generated content). To achieve this figure, MoNE intends to ask teachers to create and send their own generated learning resources.

    3) Access to internet: 94 % primary schools and 100 % of secondary schools can access the internet. The service also include free area for schools where to publish web pages. In Turkey, MONE is also developing teachers training programmes, making them able to also create their own content. Additionally a professional service call centre exist.

    Digital Textbook Project and its impact on students’ learning
    Jeonghee Seo, KERIS

    Keris is responsible for ICT in education in Korea.
    At the moment the project is in development stage and the management of pilot schools.
    Digital Text books initially start from traditional textbooks but also much more by adapting the content to the new media. Keris analysed the effects of Digital Text Books and their effectiveness and research shows an increase in effectiveness. Effectiveness seem on par however in urban areas between digital and paper text books.

    Issues and challenges:
    - Tablet PC cost, more research should be undertaken to study further the effectiveness of Digital Text Books
    - The teacher as well is crucial in this initiative and teachers have to embrace the project.

    LMS are in Europe out of favour - but it seems for teachers in Korea, the use of KERIS LMS is no problem.

    One Million Computers for African Schools

    Nafissatou Mbodj, Executive Director, Schoolnet Africa
    Pan African non profit NGO working with the following vision: empower African pupils to be global players as regards ICT access and use. The 1m PC campaign started with the aim to provide 1m PC to African pupils, for this a fund raising campaign started, KPN in the Netherlands provided some 20,000 computers. The strengths of schoolnet Africa is to be a pan African network and its priorities is to find technological and financial support for providing access. Some projects are interesting for instance eTwinning and other educational projects.

    One of the key challenge is that Schoolnet Africa is doing all by themselves, so more support is needed from colleagues in other networks, this is why this symposium is important.

    Recommendations:
    -The network should have resources as one focus. Aim to aggregate small repositories and make it discoverable.
    -We should use web 2.0 or build a social network, maybe through linked in.

    International Symposium // Enabling communities of Learners vs. Traditionnal Professional Development / Session B Supporting professional development of teachers : developing skills for the future

    Chair: Alexa Joyce, European Schoolnet
    • Asia Pacific networking between teacher education institutions Dr. Miao Feng-Chun, UNESCO Asia Pacific Bureau for Education, Thailand
    • Interactive technologies to teachers’ needs, Laurent Odic, eInstruction
    • Evolving a Statewide Knowledge Network for the Development of Teachers, Professor Guilherme Ary Plonski, Director of the Technology Management Applied to Education Area, Carlos Alberto Vanzolini Foundation

    Dr Feng Chung Miao sais that ICT was over used by the students outside schools but under used in the class room : Teachers have grown in a non ICT society and students are ICT natives.

    As a teacher entering information society, ICT is a two-edge sword bring in both opportunities and risks :
    - Grown from non-information-society, they are challenged by ICT Natives in classroom
    - They have been prepared to teacher-centered approach and are asked to teach with student-centered pedagogy
    - They have a limited schedule and unlimited learning content
    Dr Miao said that, to develop students as critical thinkers, these educational issues should be tackled first.

    In this context, UNESCO propose to use a Pedagogy before Technology approach. It will allow teachers to innovate pedagogy by using ICT (enrich content, facilitate communication with students, organize collaboration in learning community).

    If teachers integrate the use of ICTs (e-mails, online forum, ...), they will be able to understand better student's needs, facilitate information sharing, and use ICT to organize students’ learning activities. Teachers could also, by developing further their e-skills, facilitate students’ project based on collaboration with peers, teachers or even experts.
    Several UNESCO surveys focused on the use of ICT by teachers had showed that, even if they agree with student-centered approaches, 90% of them use more ICT for teaching rather than facilitating students’ use of ICT.

    UNESCO is a standard setter, a capacity builder and a catalyst of international cooperation. Surrounding these mandates, UNESCO Bangkok has planned its ICT in education programme and delivered wide range of ICT in education projects. The overall Goal of ICT in Education Programme UNESCO Bangkok is to assist its member states in harnessing the potential of ICT towards achieving quality education for all goal in the Asia-Pacific region. UNESCO has 6 traditional focus areas for ICT in education programme: policy, teacher training, teaching and learning, non-formal education, monitoring & measuring, research & knowledge sharing.

    The flagship ICT teacher training project is the Microsoft-UNESCO Next Generation of Teachers Project. The cooperation between Microsoft and UNESCO for this Innovative Teachers Conference is also under the umbrella of this project. The overall goal of this project is to build institutional capacity of teacher education institutions in designing and providing training program on ICT-pedagogy integration for pre-service teachers.
    UNESCO Bangkok, together with Microsoft, has been using the three-pronged modality to help member states to build capacity of their TEIs.

    Laurent ODIC presented e Instruction, The company develops interactive whiteboards and student response system and other solutions made for schools to help educators and achieve progress.
    Laurent, who used to be a teacher, teacher trainer and civil servant of the French Ministry of Education, said that education could be more efficient if students were active participants in classroom and if collaboration was encouraged.
    To achieve this goal, its eInstruction develops software such as response student solution, tools to help building content, software to create pedagogical lessons, collaborative systems for students.

    He said that we were still teaching with classroom organisation inherited from the 19th century, teachers from the 20th century but with students of the 21st century. Classrooms are still existing physically but they are virtually disappearing.

    He pointed out that a change of paradigm was emerging in education : The teacher is at the same time an expert, a mediator between knowledge and student, a coach, an animator and a creator of situations and activities. His role is to facilitate learning. Teachers have different roles : contents author, lessons designer, tutor in charge of interactions with learners.

    In the meantime, the learner should participate in the construction of his own knowledge, by being an active collaborator and the actor of his own training.
    He said that the knowledge was a dynamic process and not a static truth, and also that the assessment could be part of the training and not only summative. He said that educaitonal content could be developed and shared by using networks.

    Professor Guilherme Ary Plonski explained that the Vanzolini Foundation was under the umbrella of the São Paulo State Secretary of Education (SEE) and received the support of the Foundation for the Development of Education (FDE). The Foundation aims at contributing to the digital literacy of the professionals involved in public education, consolidating new ways of learning and teaching, stimulating the creation of learning communities and communities of practice.

    He asserted that the technologies should be a support and not a purpose and that the media will not replace the content.

    Changing strategies is needed to rationalize investment in education. Professor Plonski affirmed that new educational challenges required a long‐term vision. Technological infrastructure was a necessary but not sufficient condition to create an environment for fruitful interactions : Partnership and confidence of the educational authorities is also required to create a sustainable environment.

    International Symposium // Creating Compelling Learning Environnements / Session B : What should be the future of learning environments?

    Patricia Wastiau welcomed the participants to the second session about the future of learning environments.


    Connected learning - interactive classrooms and beyond, Chiristian Lortz, Smart

    Christian Lortz presented SMART as one of the IWB industry leaders.
    His delivery was upon how technology in classroom has changed very rapidly, going through different stages, from traditional class to technology based classrooms with IWB, and a further step: connected learning classes, with a laptop for every student, internet access and other tools.


    The vision from SMART for the next classroom stage is to combine the use of IWB, multitouch screens, and laptops.
    It is a challenge to make this vision a reality in the sense that many schools do already have computers in class; digital content, and growing number of VLEs and LMSs, but there is a need to go beyond this type classroom, and to enable the efficient usage, different components are needed:
    • IWB,
    • Software content (connected to the board) Content is the greatest challenge for Smart, it needs to be developed for IWB and needs to travel well, so it can be used in different schools, regions, countries.

    • Student devices (having one laptop per student is not always possible, sometimes funding is not enough to get these devices for each student; an alternative to this is mobile software and or VLE and LMS)

    • Infrastructure like web based systems but that are connected to IWB. One of the biggest challenges for new learning environments is how to connect IWB and learning platforms, Smarts solution examples for this are to combine IWB and interactive environments or IWB and remote learning, allowing real time connection.
    It is all a question of integrating the technology, and from SMART’s point of view the best way of achieving this integration is to make the IWB the centre of these ICT learning tools, IWB as the door to interactive learning.

    Lortz mentioned eTwinning as an example of projects where SMART has worked on using the software called “Brigit “ for real online collaboration, he pointed out that this experience has been working very successfully.


    The design of future learning environments - Empowerment, Enactment, and Engagement, Dr. Cher Ping Lim, Director Asia-Pacific Centre of Excellence for teacher education & innovation and professor at Edith Cowan University, Australia

    The Asia Pacific Centre of Excellence for Teacher Education & Innovations works engaging different partners at regional level like UNESCO and Microsoft to create teacher ICT education networks and engaging programmes.

    The presentation of Dr Cher Ping Lim focused on the design of future learning environments:
    For this purpose he stated that it was necessary to look at different components and considerations in order to design future learning environments. There is certainly a need to engage students to the achieve success, and it is important to take into account that learning environments are not limited to schools. He suggests that we take a further look in the community also, or even in online communities.

    Globalisation is a phenomenon that obliges future generations to be aware of incidents everywhere, and therefore Dr Cher Ping acknowledges the need to provide kids with opportunities to be critical while examining local and global issues.

    Dr Ping Lim focused on three considerations that are important to empower and engage students.

    Developing Dispositions of Teachers and School Leaders to Support Technical and Pedagogical Competencies

    For policy makers it is important to take into account the activities carried out by teachers and then see what can be done to enhance their teaching. Policy makers tend to focus on technical methodogical side, but it could be that it is better to focus on the disposition side.
    From his experience the best wayof reaching teachers is to see their actual work environment and get some inspiration, see where the gaps are or what the teachers actual need is and then, with this information help these teachers get engaged and inspire them to want to learn more.

    Engaging global and local communities
    Students from different communities or cultures, working together in an online environment is a good teaching methodology, from Dr Lim’s experience, and easily motivates pupils. Showing kids different learning environments can give them many ideas and inspiration. They can learn anywhere, and then share their experience with other students, said Dr Lim.

    Transforming Mode and Process of High Stake Examinations
    The challenge Dr Lim underlines here is to find the effective use of digitally based representations of student work output on authentic tasks specially for courses with a substantial practical component.
    An example presented by Dr Lim was having peer and individual assesment preparing a presentation in school and comparing online over different communities.

    Building a knowledge Society for all: extending access to knowledge beyond classroom walls, Mary Hoocker, Gesci


    Mary started her presentation by introducing us to GESCI, GESCI was established by UN ICT taskforce in 2003 and has operations from 2005 throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America. The aim of GESCI’s work is to develop a knowledge society. And trying to face what she called the knowledge divide with developing countries.
    She described the anxiety in the developing world facing the gap between the developing and the developed world. She pointed out that it is acknowledged that transitioning successfully to the knowledge society requires investment in education, innovation systems, ICT infrastructure and implementation of those policies that support such a transition and therefore needs coherence across policy (Education Ministries) and an empowerment of policy making and strategy capacity.

    Mary affirmed that the challenge in developing countries is enormous in terms of access, quality, brain drain, management of systems and the increasing irrelevance of education systems. To start facing this challenge it is fundamental to have country and regional programmes, knowledge about products and research, and to promote partnerships.

    She claimed there is an evidence of incapacity in the developing world of the institutional structures to deal with scaling Schools. Schools and teachers remain central to the concept of a quality education process.

    Mary launched a question to the audience: What are we addressing? A technology problem? Or technology as a tool for education processes? If it is about processes, what are educators supposed to do?
    She explained how schools are moving from given programmes to experimentation contexts and how this involves a deep and complex diagram of change and can also involve many different paths. There are many solutions, pilot schemes and experiments proposed. As an example she mentioned that in some regions of Africa up to 61 different initiatives can be taking place at the time. With this example she questions what sort of new practices can best support learning. Concluding that the reality is that we don’t quite know yet but telling us that the key is in the institutional and process level.
    So what is needed acording to Mary Hoocker’s view is to bridge the gap between research, policy and practice, re-examination of assumptions, fundamental re-thinking of educational purpose and practice, creation of innovative approaches which are contextually relevant and sustainable capacities and capabilities in developing countries to develop own solutions.


    International Symposium // Helping educational leaders use new tools // Session A: Online education resources

    Chair: Jim Ayre, European Schoolnet

    Session A: Online educational resources: a sustainable approach to enhancing access to knowledge

  • Video message Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing
  • Promethean Planet. Lessons learned from creating a global, collaborative education community Mark Robinson, Promethean
  • Richard Hollis, Cambridge University Press

    The sessions starts by a video with Cory Doctorow, Canadian journalist and science fiction author. Cory Doctorow argued for the openness of educationalists' materials under creative commons. Education is what you do with learning materials, using your teaching skills. What's needed at policy level is easing of restrictions on sharing and using other materials, e.g. copyright, photocopying.

    Much is to be said for packaged material, ready to use, as in printed text books. An alternative is print on demand whereby teachers have access to all the publishers’ content and selects those they want to be compiled in a customised text book. Networks for teachers, examples of good practice in their use are added value services you can provide around educational material. It is not the education system’s problem if publishers’ products are no longer bought because there are other, free, sources.

    Mark Robinson from Promethean then demonstrated the work that the company is doing in the area of IWB and digital content for IWB. Mark's point is that IWB are fully integrated digital classrom system, which allow to organise content especially using the 'Activeclassrom' concept.

    The classroom should be a fully integrated digital classroom system, with an interactive whiteboard at its heart, a social learning tool, a window onto the network and student technology, a digital stage for students and groups.

    Video, images, documents, interactive multimedia and assessments are all part of the definition of a learning object. Added to that are learning goal and rubrics, physical activities, collating reflections and students’ responses. Teacher quality is the most important factor in learning successfully, especially questioning technique. Assessment happens at different levels: learner, teacher, school, district and state. Promethean Planet is highly successful, with over 300,000 teachers, available in English, German and Spanish, with resources in 19 languages although mostly in English. Teacher feature is a set of good practices, with YouTube videos of classroom practice, something about the teacher and the lesson. Most used feature is 10,000 downloadable lessons, 300 resource packs and thematic sets of materials (e.g. Olympics); ability to preview increased uptake (should be an important feature of repositories). Lessons can be adapted.

    Promethean is providing a range of devices such as responsive systems. One of the main question is about assessment, Activeclassroom allows to assess and use feedback to guide targeted instruction.

    IWB is a catalyst for using digital content by teachers, more than if you give teachers a laptop. Mark shows Promethean planet is very successful with 30,000 lessons shared and downloaded. This is the largest community of teachers providing features such as teaching finding, videos available (also on iTunes), forums for localised discussions (French forum, Spanish forum etc...).

    On the issue of teacher training, Promethean believes that what is crucial is a change of mentality rather than the simply putting IWB in the classroom and assume something will happen we have to guide teachers to use the new tools available to them. The area of right management is also an area where teachers need support.

    The national grid for learning was also demonstrated by Richard Hollis, Cambridge University Press. Richard walks you through how publishing has changed since it was invented from a manual process (using cases) to digital process. The 4C initiative aims to:

  • Developing a digital content supply network for education
  • Connecting education to a billion digital resources in the next ten years
  • Helping teachers and schools worldwide to collaborate
  • Building local digital content publishing capacity worldwide

    The Global Grid for Learning provide learning content for teachers, in 2008 1.25m resources were in the Global Grid for Learning Library with over 45 commercial content provider participating. The Global Grid for Learning has also expanded beyond the UK with Arab Grid for Learning and GGfL Ireland.

    Some of the lessons learned from the Global Grid for Learning include:

    - Not all content travel well (need to take in account social, cultural, linguistic parameters)
    - Partnership add value
    - Adoption does not always mean usage

    Following presentations, a wide ranging discussion followed which included the following points:
    Discussion:


    • What are resources that travel: What we share are ideas, can ideas travel well? The sharing idea should be linked less to sharing of content rather than the sharing of ideas.

    • Where should I search for content: LRE, national portal, Global Grid for Learning (SMART), Promethean Planet, ‘peers around the planet’, my personalised learning network? Discoverability of resources that are all over the world. Follow Google and use APIs rather than a bot that goes and searches federated repositories (both speakers).
    • Teachers have busy lives. How to provide useful services and resources for the less enthusiastic or too busy teacher? They like resources to be quality assured. Different ways in are needed for different teacher types, e.g. the spoon-fed, the DIY teacher, content producing teachers.
    • What can ministries do to help monitor and exploit user-generated content? In Denmark there is a range of UGC from contributions to discussions to stand-alone learning materials.
    • EUN portals working group is covering a similar area; perhaps it should merge with the interactive whiteboard group?
    • What is the potential of Google Wave for teachers to share and network? There is a demo video on YouTube.

  • International Symposium // Creating compelling learning Enviroments // Session A: Innovative technology in education

    What is a learning environment?

    Patricia Wastiau chair of the session defined this concept as something related to specific areas of education, also covering organizational and physical aspects, as well as the relation between teachers and pupils and pupils themselves. Virtual learning environments are parallel to this defined learning environment

    Survey of administrators and web 2.0 Keith Krueger CoSN

    Krueger remarked that innovation is happening individually, individual teachers are using innovative techniques, but we need to make this individual moves global. The national survey he presents (USA) was based in investigating the opinion of different level educational leaders.

    Using the results of the national survey of administrators and web 2.0 CoSN looked at 3 different level educational leaders audiences. The results of the survey points out that all of the surveyed groups agreed that web 2.0 has a positive impact in students.

    For educational leaders the main reason for using web 2.0 is to try to keep students engaged in school.
    Surprisingly the last priority for educational leaders according to the survey was connecting students globally (which for ICT networks this is one of the highest interests).

    School administrators in the US mainly think web 2.0 must be limited to educational sites. And for that reason the majority of schools ban social networking in the US, not realizing the positive aspect of it. Krueger thinks it is the policies that must be updated, as this is the key to reach schools and haven't been changed in a long time.

    The survey shows that heads of curriculum have very low knowledge of use of Web 2.0, but great interest in learning. Nevertheless they agree that it is not yet integrated in the curriculum.
    District leaderships don't find themselves responsible for the restructuring of school systems. Leaders accept responsibility for «micro» use but not for «macro» organisational implications of full 2.0 usage


    Implications from a national survey of educator use of ICT, Greg Black, Education.au

    Black presented a national survey on teachers use of technology, performed in Australia.
    The Australian government has a digital education revolution policy among others, and seems very committed. From the survey we can know that 85 percent of teachers use ICT, basically for investigation and admin practices. But not so many use it for transforming practice.

    The barriers teachers found in their use of ICT is mainly poor infrastructures and lack of time.
    Teachers really claim that they have no time, and they have lack of confidence for using new tools.
    Therefore the steps to follow should be more support; better infrastructure and investing on teaching development.

    From this survey results the policy proposals that should be done.Following Blacks presentation this would be to enable web 2.0 and 21st learning spaces infrastructure, and also to look for a national software infrastructure. The presentation concluded by reminding the audience that the greatest impact will be made by targeting and reaching educational leaders.

    Are we ready for the power of ICT in education? Kirsten Panton, Microsoft
    The use of ICT in education is a tool in progress, said Panton during her presentation.
    A recent OECDE Study shows that most countries have improved in the use of ICT but only outside school, hardly any change has been noticed in schools.

    To reach some equality in this respect digital lifestyle and workstyle should be combined. Microsoft is in favour of a presonalised learning and the use ICT as the instrument for this learning.
    For this purpose Microsoft invests in programmes ansd solutions. Diverse solutions for diverse needs: Live @edu: gives Microsoft services on personalised basis http://www.microsoft.com/liveatedu/free-hosted-student-email.aspx

    Learning through ICT is the target, to make it possible ICT must be available always.

    International Symposium // Plenary session 2 // Roundtable : Transforming education systems-leveraging international networks

    • Greg Black, CEO, Education.au
    • Keith Kruger, Director, CoSN, USA
    • Gavin Dykes, Associate Director, Futurelab, UK

    Greg Black reminded that getting cooperation was difficult and that networks should enhance their exchanges to achieve their goals. Common challenges should be defined in the field of education.

    Gavin Dykes stated that there will be a time where people, including teachers, will be replaced by computers.
    We should consider us as being in the learning age and sharing information and we should be more autonomous at learning. Also, access to internet and e-skills is needed for everybody as it is a great vector to reduce unemployment.

    Networks are important in the sense we have to be positive about technology and communication skills. Skills that we don't need are programmable skills, in this sense teaching must be a supportive creative work.
    By being a member of a network you learn about different methods of learning, changing cultures through the use of tech in new ways. Cultural differences is the difficult part for the use of technology and sharing information and how to use it. (filtering policies, are a good example of this cultural differences, eg USA - Europe).

    Teresa Evaristo, from the Ministry of Education of Portugal, shared her experience of primary schools in Portugal. The system is being reformed and the use of new technologies, such as interactive whiteboards, is required to implement cultural changing.

    Keith Kruger agreed and said that in the 21st century of learning, the biggest challenge we face was not technological but human. Networks need to focus on culture changing and impulse action in that direction.
    In USA the biggest challenge is culture. Educators don't yet have the same vision as networks of ICT, so leadership and policy are the key main instruments that should be implemented from the networks side in that respect.

    He said that there were 3 waves of technologies: Creating infrastructures / Enabling applications (by training teachers) / Transforming the way of learning.
    We have already enough technologies and experience available and the system as a hole must be transformed on a school national/regional/local basis. For this purpose we must focus on educational problems. In the US the problem is that the system is very decentralized, there are many level of leaders and they have to be sensitized about our goals.
    The educational leaders want to provide XXI century skills to kids, create compelling learning environments (to face school disengagement) and online teacher professional development to break their isolation.
    He reaffirmed that there were no technological problem but educational problem, and that children will manage the technologies.

    The speakers agreed that technology changed fast so we must have better thinking and innovation skills.

    International Symposium // Breakout session // Helping Educational Leaders Use New Tools (1)

    The sessions starts by a video with Cory Docorow, Canadian journalist and science fiction author. In this video Cory shows how open content can help education models:

    Mike Robinson from Promethean than demonstrate the work that the company is doing in the area of IWB and digital content for IWB. Mike's point is that IWB are fully integrated digital classrom system, which allow to organise content especially using the 'Activeclassrom' concept.

    Promethean is providign a range of devices such as responsie systems. One of the main question is about assessment, Activclassroom allows to assess and use feedback to guide targeted instruction.

    IWB is a catalyst for using digital content by teachers, more than if you give teachers a laptop. Mark shows Promethean planet is very succcessful with 30,000 lessons shared and downloaded. This is the largest community of teachers providing features such as teaching finding, videos available (also on iTunes), forums for localised discussions (French forum, Spanish forum etc...).

    On the issue of teacher training, Promethean believes that what is crucial is a change of mentality rather than the simply putting IWB in the classroom and assume something will happen we have to guide teachers to use the new tools available to them. The area of right management is also an area where teachers need support.

    The national grid for learning was also demonstrated by a representative of Cambridge Hitachi. The Global Grid for Learning provide learning content for teachers, some of the lessons learned include:

    - Not all content travel well (need to take in account social, cultural, linguistic parameters)
    - Partnership add value
    - Adoption does not always mean usage

    What we share are ideas, can ideas travel well? The sharing idea should be linked less to sharing of content rather than the sharing of ideas.

    International Symposium // Opening plenary session 1 // Mariastella Gelmini

    maria-stella-gelmini.jpgMaria Stella Gelmini, Minister of Education of Italy opened the International Symposium by welcoming all the networks for ICT in education present at the symposium coming from 30 countries from the five continents. She also thanked European Schoolnet, ANSAS, CoSN and Education.au for organising this first event. It is a unique opportunity for all experts present in the room to discuss how new technologies are used in education, a crucial topic at the turn for 21st century learners.

    Young generations communicate, play, learn about the world already using new technologies, learning no longer takes place only at schools in a globalised and interconnected society. "Schools needs to make the best of these new opportunities," she said.

    The minister underlined the need to overcome the digital 'disconnect' in education between young people and schools for instance. There is a need to help schools meet current needs and future challenges. The Italian Ministry of Education has started several programmes to organise the transformation of lessons, we do not want to provide only technological training to teachers but help them discover new teaching models, we will introduce IWB with the hope to transform learning in the schools from the ground up.

    Web 2.0 gives us new ideas and concepts of the web where citizens are active, judge, participate and choose, young people are already adapted to these changes as they are born in the digital era. The ministry adopted tools such as the ebook with the support of several industry partners who have accepted to participate in the project and provide educational content.

    She asserted that we have to help also young people from the misuse of the internet and internet safety is a key issue to ensure that schools use the best of the internet.

    International Symposium // Opening plenary session 1 // Sugata Mitra

    Sugata Mitra.jpg
    Sugata Mitra, Keynote speaker, University of Newcastle, UK
    Sugata Mitra, Professor of Educational Technology of the University of Newcastle, ran through a presentation where he showed a series of experiments made in India to bring new technologies to young people in disadvantaged areas.

    The first example, 'The Hole in the Wall' was a project by which a computer was set up through a wall in the street, to be provided to young people. This experiment revealed that children have the ability to learn how to use it by themselves and even in a language they do not understand (English).

    Another experiment was conducted in Kalikuppam, a village which was severly hit by the Tsunami in 2004. A computer with literature on biotechnology in English was provided to children. The project aimed at assessing the limits of autonomous child learning. But kids were actually more interested than if this was explained by a teacher or a specialist. Two months later, the kids said they did not understand anything at all, “appart from the fact that DNA has a double helix structure”. The fact is that, by rivalry and competitiveness, kids managed to find a way to learn.

    Sugata Mitra also indicated that the “Self Organized Learning Environment” needed to be done in a public space and not in scholar context. This makes the computer screen visible from everybody and prevents the misuse of the internet and computer by children and it encourage kids to work together.

    One of the key messages from Sugata was that young people find ways to learn how to use anything including new technologies even without mentor support.

    Therefore, we have to rethink the role of the teachers and mediator in learning. What kind of mediation do children need ? Another successful project from the Newcastle University selected teachers and volunteers from UK to assist by video, one hour a week, children from India to learn, in a non institutional or hierarchical relationship.

    Presentations // Breakout session // Helping Educational Leaders Use New Tools

    Helping Educational Leaders Use New Tools (Evidence-based decision-making.)
    Session A Online educational resources: a sustainable approach to enhancing access to knowledge

    Session B Priority strategies for the future: transforming the curriculum

    ICT applications, e-content pool and schools in Turkey

    Jeonghee Seo KERIS

    To download the presentation click here

    One million computers for African schools, Nafissatou Mbodj, Executive director,
    Schoolnet Africa.

    Download file

    Presentations // Breakout session // Enabling Communities of Learners vs. Traditional Professional Development

    Session A: Online school collaboration across borders.

    Access, inspiration, celebration: Supporting schools to work internationally Liz Hitchcock, British Council.
    To download the presentation click here

    View more OpenOffice presentations

    World Links as an enhancer of online content Reem N. Bsaiso; World Link Arab Region
    Download file

    21st Century Skills Through Online Collaboration Lynne Gill, Oracle Education Foundation.
    To download the presentation click here

    Session B Supporting professional development of teachers: developing skills for the future.

    Asia pacific networking between teacher education institutions Dr Miao Feng Chun, UNESCO Asia Pacific Bureau for Education Thailand
    Download file

    Evolving a Statewide knowledge network for the development of teachers
    Professor Guillherme Ary Plonski, Director of the Technology Managment Applied to Education Area, Carlos Alberto Vanzolini Foundation
    Download file

    Interactive technologies to teacher's needs, Laurent Odic
    Download file

    Presentations // Breakout session // Creating compelling learning environments

    Session A Innovative technology in education: new platforms, new expectations

    Survey of administrators and web web 2.0 Keith Kruger, CoSN
    To download the presentation click here

    Implications from a national survey of educator use of ICT. Greg Black, Education.au
    To download the presentation click here

    /strong>

    Kirsten Panton Are we ready for the power of ICT in education?

    Session B What should be the future of learning environments?

    Connected learning Interactive classroom and beyond Christian Lortz SMART
    Download file

    Building a knowledge society for all: extending access to knowledge beyond classroom walls, Mary Hooker, Gesci

    Download file


    The design of Future Learning Enviroments Empowerment and Engagement Dr. Cher Ping Lim

    Presentations // Plenary session 2

    ICT in education: from centre of excellence to mainstreaming.
    Stephen Jury Vice Chairman, Promethean.

    Download file

    Reem N. Bsaiso, Director World Links Arab Region

    Download file

    International Symposium // Opening plenary session 1 // David Puttnam and Jim Shelton

    Jim Shelton, Dept of Education, USA

    Lord David Puttnam, Member of the House of Lords, UK (part 1)

    Lord David Puttnam, Member of the House of Lords, UK (part 2)

    June 09, 2009

    About the International Symposium

    European Schoolnet (EUN), the network of 31 Ministries of Education in Europe, the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), USA and Education.au, the Australian national agency for ICT in education are pleased to organise the first international symposium of all education networks active in the field of ICT in education. This event will take place on 11-12 June 2009 in Rome, Italy.

    The aims of the symposium are:

    • To encourage high-level networking within the global ICT in education community

    • To improve information-sharing and cooperation between international education networks

    • To reflect on the nature of 21st Century Learning and analyse the role of international education networks vis-à-vis decision makers in the field.

    The emphasis will be networking on shared global issues as well as developing peer-learning mechanisms between all networks, taking into account the diversity of educational environments at national level

    It is financed by ANSAS/INDIRE, eInstruction, Intel, ORACLE, Microsoft, Promethean, PASCO Scientific and SMART Technologies.

    Supporters of the events are: Apple, Futurelab, KERIS, Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization and World Links Arab Region.

    Final programme: [pdf]

    This symposium is reserved for high-level decision makers in international networks active in the field ICT in education. Each network can recommend a maximum of 5 participants to attend the event. Only 120 participants worldwide will be accommodated.

    More information: paul.gerhard@eun.org
    Venue: more information

    Speakers // Cory Doctorow, Author, activist, journalist and blogger, Co-editor of Boing Boing

    CORY DOCTOROW PIC 210.jpg
    Cory Doctorow (craphound.com) is a science fiction novelist, technology activist, journalist and blogger -- the co-editor of Boing Boing (boingboing.net) and the author of the bestselling Tor Teens novel LITTLE BROTHER. He is the former European director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in London.

    He is a contributor to Wired, Popular Science, Make, the New York Times, and many other newspapers, magazines and websites. He was formerly Director of European Affairs for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (eff.org), a non-profit civil liberties group that defends freedom in technology law, policy, standards and treaties. In 2007, he served as the Fulbright Chair at the Annenberg Center for Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California.

    His novels are published by Tor Books and simultaneously released on the Internet under Creative Commons licenses that encourage their re-use and sharing, a move that increases his sales by enlisting his readers to help promote his work. He has won the Locus and Sunburst Awards, and been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and British Science Fiction Awards.
    His latest novel, New York Times Bestseller LITTLE BROTHER, was published in May 2008, and his latest short story collection is
    OVERCLOCKED: STORIES OF THE FUTURE PRESENT. In 2008, Tachyon Books published a collection of his essays, called CONTENT: SELECTED ESSAYS ON TECHNOLOGY, CREATIVITY, COPYRIGHT AND THE FUTURE OF THE FUTURE (with an introduction by John Perry Barlow) and IDW published a collection of comic books inspired by his short fiction called CORY DOCTOROW'S FUTURISTIC TALES OF THE HERE AND NOW. His next novel is MAKERS, due from Tor Books in October, 2009.

    LITTLE BROTHER was nominated for the 2008 Hugo, Nebula and Locus Awards.
    It won the Ontario Library White Pine Award, as well as the Indienet Award for bestselling young adult novel in America's top 1000 independent bookstores in 2008.

    He co-founded the open source peer-to-peer software company OpenCola, sold to OpenText, Inc in 2003, and presently serves on the boards and advisory boards of the Participatory Culture Foundation, the MetaBrainz Foundation, Technorati, Inc, the Organization for Transformative Works, Areae, the Annenberg Center for the Study of Online Communities, and Onion Networks, Inc.

    In 2007, Entertainment Weekly called him, "The William Gibson of his generation." He was also named one of Forbes Magazine's 2007/8 Web Celebrities, and one of the World Economic Forum's Young Global Leaders for 2007.

    He is presently working on a new young adult novel, FOR THE WIN (about union organizing in video games).

    On February 3, 2008, he became a father. The little girl is called Poesy Emmeline Fibonacci Nautilus Taylor Doctorow, and is a marvel that puts all the works of technology and artifice to shame.

    Speakers // Mehmet Muharremoglu, Ministry of Education of Turkey

    Mehmet Muharremoglu.jpg

    Mehmet Muharremoğlu has been working 12 years in public secondary schools as an English teacher. In 2004, he started working as a master teacher for the Department of Strategy Development Planning and Coordination in the General Directorate of Educational Technologies for the Ministry of National Education. He is still carrying on his profession for the ministry, carrying out projects on integration of ICT in education.

    Speakers // Dr. Turan Sisman, Minsitry of Education of Turkey

    Turan Sisman.jpg
    Dr. Turan Şişman has been working as lecturer in Universities for many years. He is still carrying out part time courses at University. He started working as Head of the Department of ICT in the General Directorate of Educational Technologies for the Ministry of National Education in 2004. He is still carrying out his both academic and administrative professions.

    Speakers // Mariastella Gelmini, Minister of Education of Italy

    maria-stella-gelmini.jpg
    Maria Stella Gelmini was born in 1973, she is a lawyer, with a specialisation in administrative law.

    She integrated the Forza Italia party at its creation in 1994, has been elected in 1998 at the Municipality of Desenzano, and stayed in charge of the Presidency of the Municipal council until 2002.

    In 2002 she became city council member to the Province of Brescia and, in 2004, city council member to Agriculture. She joined the Regional Council of the Lombardy in 2005 and was named as regional coordinator of Forza Italia in Lombardy.

    In 2006, she was elected for the first time at the Chamber of Deputies, where she was member of the Commission of Justice. She has been re elected in 2008 to the Chamber of Deputies and was named Minister of the Instruction, the University and the Research in the Government of Silvio Berlusconi.

    June 08, 2009

    Speakers // Kirsten Panton, Regional Leader for Western Europe, Microsoft

    KIRSTEN PANTON.jpg

    Kirsten Panton works as the Partners in Learning regional lead for Western Europe in Microsoft.

    Before joining Microsoft in 2003 as the PiL manager in Denmark, Kirsten had spent 15 years working in the education sector. This includes 11 years at Niels Brock, the largest business college in Denmark in the roles of teacher, program manager and Head of Information. She also held the position of Head of Teacher Development, designing and implementing key pedagogical development for the 2,000 teachers at the college...

    Previously Kirsten also spent 12 years in the modern industrial design industry where she was head of buying at Form & Farve. Her responsibilities included working with international companies, like Crate and Barrel in the US, Marimekko in Finland and others on procuring goods for resale within Denmark.

    Kirsten holds a Master of Science (Economics) degree and a Bachelor degree in English

    Speakers // Mark Robinson, Head of Education Product Strategy, Promethean

    mrobinson.jpgWith a background in UK Primary School teaching, Mark has been recognised with numerous ICT and teaching awards. His industry experience spans educational publishing and research and development roles for providers of online learning management systems. He is currently the Head of Education Product Strategy at Promethean.

    Speakers // Christian Lortz, SMART

    Christian Lortz is Product Manager for Europe, Middle East and Africa at SMART Technologies. After four years as Marketing Manager for SMART in Germany, Lortz moved to Calgary, Canada. There he held a Product Manager role directly at the SMART headquarters in 2007 and 2008. Since early 2009, Christian Lortz is based in Germany again and spends his time in the EMEA region to keep a close relationship to local experts and customers.

    June 04, 2009

    Speakers // Rhyan Bloor, Department of Education of the Australian Government

    Rhyan Bloor.jpg


    Rhyan Bloor is the Branch Manager of the Broadband and Digital Education Branch in the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR). The Branch is responsible for implementing the Australian Government’s Digital Education Revolution.

    The DER represents a $2.2 billion Australian Government investment in ICT in schools over six years...

    While a significant amount of DER funding has been allocated to ICT equipment, the suite of initiatives also covers curriculum tools and resources to encourage greater collaboration, accessibility and sharing of digital content; measures to enhance teacher professional development and to enable parents to participate in their child's education through online learning and access. The DER will be underpinned by the Australian Government's $43 billion investment in a new National Broadband Network which will provide fibre to the premises connections to schools in 90 per cent of Australia at 100Mbps. An additional $100 million is available under the DER for the further consolidation and development of broadband services for school education.

    State and territory and non-government school authorities are responsible for delivering schooling in Australia. As such, they have primary responsibility for deploying and integrating ICT in Australian schools and Rhyan’s Branch is working collaboratively with them to implement the DER.

    Rhyan’s experience in the Australian Public Service is wide-ranging. Early in her career, she worked in policy roles in the Departments of Defence and the Prime Minister and Cabinet. At that time, she worked on strategic and international policy before taking up the position of Executive Officer to the Secretary to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. In that role, she worked extensively on public sector reform issues and, thereafter, moved to the Government Division of PM&C with a focus on public sector administration.

    Moving to the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts in the late 90s, Rhyan developed telecommunications and broadcasting policy and regulatory frameworks. She was responsible for negotiations with the United States on the Australian content and media provisions of the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement participating in all negotiating rounds in Australia and the United States.

    Following a couple of couple of years managing the regulatory operations and state office network of the Office of Transport Security in the Infrastructure Department, Rhyan moved to her current position in DEEWR in March 2008.

    Rhyan earned a BA (Hons) in politics and philosophy at Monash University.

    Speakers // Stephen Jury, Promethean

    Stephen Jury PIC.jpg
    Stephen Jury’s role as Promethean Vice Chairman – Education Strategy is to advise the board on strategic issues relating to education. For 7 years prior to September 2007 Stephen was Chief Executive at Promethean. Stephen is committed to progress in education and has served on a number of groups advising Government ministers and agencies. He has also served as a school and college governor. Earlier in his career, Stephen worked in manufacturing and in international trade in London and Miami. Stephen holds a 1st class honours degree from Manchester University and an Open University MBA.

    June 03, 2009

    Speakers // Sugata Mitra, Professor of Educational Technology, University of Newcastle

    Sugata Mitra.jpg His contributions include a number of inventions and first-time applications including the database publishing industry in India and Bangladesh. His work with multimedia and the ‘hole in the wall’ experiments with unsupervised learning by children are known all over the world.

    His current interests include Children’s Education, Remote Presence, Self-organising systems, Cognitive Systems, Physics and Consciousness.

    Speakers // Nafissatou Mbodj, Executive Director, Schoolnet Africa

    Nqfi.jpg
    Ms Nafissatou Mbodj is the Executive Director of Schoolnet Africa, President of "Association Culturelle Sénégal USA" (ACSU) and National Coordinator of World links Sénégal since 2000.
    Ms Mbodj has a bachelor and a Certificate of Mastery in English from the University of Dakar, Sénégal. She entered the computer field as an English teacher and were part of the pioneers who experimented the World Bank Project: World Links for Development in 1997, that used the computer as a tool to improve quality education and knowledge.
    She trained teachers to the use of computer and were the pedagogical responsible for the Computer Lab. Ms Mbodj has also been Fulbright Teacher in St Louis, Missouri, and ICT World links instructor.

    Speakers // Bridget Cosgrave, Director General, DIGITALEUROPE

    Bridget CosgraveMs Cosgrave leads the EU trade association representing the information technology, consumer electronics and telecommunications equipment sectors. Ms Cosgrave is an Irish national with a 25 year career in telecoms and finance.

    June 02, 2009

    Speakers // Nancy Knowlton, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, SMART Technologies

    Nancy Knowlton.jpg Nancy focuses primarily on business development and strategic initiatives and is a frequent speaker on the topic of educational products and solutions for 21st century teaching and learning. SMART’s products are at the heart of almost one million interactive classrooms globally. Employing more than 1,300 people, SMART has offices in North America, Europe and Asia and assembly operations in each of the regions.

    www.smarttech.com

    Speakers // Alexa Joyce, European Schoolnet

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    A specialist in education technology, Alexa is currently working as a development manager at European Schoolnet. She has consulted for UNESCO Bangkok Asia-Pacific Bureau for Education, UNESCO International Institute of Educational Planning and for the OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation. She has a Masters in Biological Sciences from the University of Oxford and an MBA from Solvay Business School, Brussels.