project management

On Wednesday 1st of June 2011, the MEDEA2020 consortium gathered at the Ramada Viking hotel in Waterford, to discuss the progress of this European Project. The project partners also participated in the EdTech conference where the MEDEA Awards were presented.

9 finalists for the annual MEDEA Awards were announced by the MEDEA Secretariat on 4 October and are (in alphabetical order): BBC News School Report by BBC (UK), Bla Bla Bla e-democracy e minori by Civil Life Lab (Italy), Et si c'était toi by Lycée Technique du Centre (Luxembourg), Evolution of life by CNDP (France), Level 7 by Careersbox (UK), Monkey Labs by Die Keure/Larian Studios (Belgium), Pocket Anatomy by eMedia Interactive (Ireland), Theorem of Fire by Nafta Films (Estonia) and The Classroom by Cornerhouse (UK). 

The overall winner will be announced during the MEDEA Awards Ceremony which takes place on Thursday 25 November during the Media & Learning Conference in Brussels.This year the competition attracted 140 entries from 31 countries and for the first time, those entering could chose between submitting their entry as a production made by a professional company or semi-professional production unit or as one made by teachers, students, learners, parents, professors, individual or organisational representatives in primary education, secondary education, higher education, adult education, vocational education and/or training. This means that this year as well as the overall MEDEA Prize, there will also be a prize for the highest scoring entry in each of these two categories. There will also be a special prize, the European Collaboration Prize which is supported by the European Commission’s Lifelong Learning Programme. Prizes are sponsored by Adobe, Smart and AVID.

The finalists were chosen by a jury made up of 74 education and media experts from 26 countries who evaluated the MEDEA entries during August and September. All finalists will attend the Awards Ceremony on Thursday, 25 November which is a highlight of the Media & Learning conference and presentations by each of the finalists will be included in the conference programme.  

The European network that has been building up around the annual MEDEA awards was further expanded during the 13th annual ICL conference held in Hasselt from 15-17 September when Sally Reynolds presented MEDEA. During her presentation, Sally described the way in which the competition operates and the type of entries it attracts.This presentation included a discussion about the selection criteria used in the judging process and highlighted the growing level of interest in the use of media in teaching and learning. It also included samples of entries from previous years. More information about MEDEA is available from this website.

The ALT (Association for Learning Technology) conference took place this year from 7-9 September in Nottingham, UK and attracted over 500 people to what is probably one of Europe's leading academic conferences on educational techology attracting more and more participants and members from non-UK organisations.

ALT this year offered a terrific mix of provocative presentations, really stimulating discussions and workshop sessions and a rich mix of networking opportunities. Despite the general atmosphere of doom and gloom in the UK Higher Education sector, ALT-C was awash with new initiatives, innovative developments and a great sense that education technology held the key to many of the challenges facing universities.

Sally Reynolds was there to highlight the MEDEA Awards and the Media & Learning Brussels 2010 conference as well as to promote the Media in Education Newsletter. She was also there to explore opportunities for collaboration particularly in relation to the use of media in teaching and learning. Interest in the use of video is high within the ALT community where a new Video in Teaching & Learning special interest group was launched this year. This year the ALT conference also included the Epigeum video awards, now into its third year.

The Social Applications for Lifelong Learning (SALL) conference takes place on 4-5 November in Patras, Greece. This conference will feature the outputs of two European projects, SoRurall (Rural Social Networking for Lifelong Learning) and SimSafety ("Flight Simulator" for Internet Safety). It is being organised by the Research Academic Computer Technology Institute (RACTI) and the Hellenic Open University in Greece. More information available from the conference website.

Partners from the SoRuraLL initiative which is testing the viability of various types of social networking tools met in Krakow, Poland on 3-4 June to discuss the progress of the pilot activities taking place in different parts of Europe. Part of their meeting was held in the Raba Wyzna Telecentre in the Rokiciny Podhalanskie region, a rural area about an hour from Krakow.  This area is currently suffering a lot from flooding in the region and the meeting served as a good opportunity to find out more about the needs of rural populations when it comes to ICT and the ways in which social networking tools can help to relieve isolation and provide useful community services to the region.

After a year of hard work, the EduTubePlus partners met for their first annual meeting in Rome on the 15/16 October to review progress and plan for the coming months. This meeting took place in the historical Sala 1 - the first radio studio used by RAI. It was a fitting location given the importance placed on educational content by RAI from the early days of the station during the reconstruction following World War II which continues to this day.

The first version of the EduTubePlus platform is almost ready and video content is being segmented and prepared for incluson. At the same time pedagogical scenarios utilising video material from the library are being prepared. Planning for the first user trials is now underway and will involve schools in Greece, Hungary, Italy, Finland, Belgium and the UK.

The ICL conference held in Villach 23-25 September provided a good opportunity to promote the Virtual Campuses wiki created by the Re.ViCa consortium. Re.ViCa team member Sally Reynolds gave a presentation about the extensive Virtual Campus inventory available in the wiki and invited conference participants to visit, use and update the wiki. She also described some of the analytical work carried out by the team supported by international experts which identified factors influencing the success or otherwise of virtual campus initiatives worldwide.
 

The DIVERSE Conference held this year in Aberystwyth University in Wales from 24 to 26 June brings together an active community of practitioners all engaged in developing innovative visual educational resources.

This year the sharing of educational video material was really high on the agenda with Obadiah Greenburg from YouTube describing YouTube EDU, Olaf Schulte from ETH Zurich presenting the Opencast community and the Matterhorn project and the team from the University of Amsterdam talking about ZOEP - this is the space to watch for how, and perhaps more importantly,  where educational videos in higher education will be found in the future.

Taking place in the lovely and surprisingly warm surroundings of coastal Wales, this community of practitioners provides a rich resource of know-how and expertise in the field of educational technology and multimedia production. You can follow the conference live here.

The MEDEA Secretariat now has A2 size posters as well as leaflets for promoting the 2009 Awards and can provide them to anyone interested in helping to spread information about MEDEA. These are available in French, German or English and are part of the current promotional work being undertaken by the MEDEA team.

The network of MEDEA National Contact Points is also growing and there are now partners active in 15 European countries, partners willing to promote MEDEA are still being recruited, so if you are interested, please contact the MEDEA Secretariat.

To find out more about the Awards and how to enter, visit the MEDEA web site. Participation in this competition is for free and the closing date is 30th September!