media and learning

The MEDEA2020 partnership recently launched a community of practice focused on media-based education! This multilingual online community of practice (CoP) called Media & Learning Community, was created for practitioners interested in the use of media in education. As a community member you can connect with other community members, start and join discussions related to media and learning related topics, and promote your own initiatives and events, as well as find and share educational resources focused on media and learning.

If you speak French, German, Italian, Spanish and Polish, you can participate in language-specific discussions that are moderated by a native speaker and expert. To explore and join the community, see www.media-and-learning.eu/community

The Media in Education newsletter has been renamed 'Media & Learning News' and will continue to be published every month. From March onwards, this newsletter will be available every two months in Spanish, Italian, French, Polish and German as well as English. 

Highlights in this month's newsletter include: an update on the highly successful BBC News School report and how non-UK schools can get involved in News Day on 24 March; an invitation to the International Council For Educational Media; one mother's experience of how media-rich learning materials are challenging traditional maths teaching; tools of the Trade: fancy creating your own 3-D Video? It also contains the confirmed dates for the Media & Learning Conference 2011 and plenty of other news items, notifications and announcements related to the use of media in education and training as well as the MEDEA Awards 2011.

The December issue of Media in Education is now available. In this month's newsletter you will find a short report about the Media & Learning Conference. Video recordings, presentations, photos and a final report about the conference are now available from the conference website.  

You will also find a report on how media is being implemented in French universities and a feature article by Paul Bottelberghs on a radical new approach to media literacy in education, based in the new digital culture. This issue also contains an article on electronic whiteboards, an announcement of the winners of the MEDEA Awards 2010 and lots of other news and information.  

Media in Education will be re-launched in January 2011 as "Media & Learning" and bi-monthly editions will be available in French, German, Italian, Spanish and Polish as well as in English.

The Media & Learning Conference Brussels 2010 on 25 and 26 November 2010 addresses how new media can contribute to improve learning.  Media literacy and digital fluency are amongst the most important skills young people can learn in order to find, use and create accurate information to become the creative citizens of a future society. But how can educators be sure that learners are learning better thanks to media?

During this conference practitioners, experts and researchers will discuss how learners handle video and audio in a meaningful and thoughtful manner to support their learning, how media repositories complement existing teaching and learning materials effectively, how young people learn by creating their own media and how ICT can enhance the teaching and learning process. The programme for the conference is now finalised and available online and it will be supported by an online discussion to facilitate networking and exchange of ideas before, during and after the conference within the Media & Learning community of practice.

The MEDEA Awards Ceremony takes place on Thursday 25th November alongside the Media & Learning Conference, where the winners of this year’s awards will be announced. More information from the conference 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.

WEBstroom, a Special Interest Group of the Dutch SURFfoundation that focuses on streaming media in higher education, organised a meeting in the Netherlands on 11 February 2010 about user generated content. Among other highly interesting and relevant presentations about best-practice examples, Nikki Cortoos presented the MEDEA Awards and included a selection of online showcases featuring user generated online video.

WEBstroom is a MEDEA National Contact Point in the Netherlands and has recently moved its discussion group to LinkedIn.