Management

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.

The closing date for the MEDEA awards is coming up soon and so we invite all producers of media resources to submit their entries by 31 July. Entry to the MEDEA Awards is free!

This year there are two main MEDEA Awards, the MEDEA Overall Award and the European Collaboration Award. The European Collaboration Award recognizes excellent media-based productions and projects that come about as a result of European cross-border collaboration. This year the organisers are making a distinction between professional and non-professional producers, awarding the best entry in each category.

You can submit your entry in French, English or German and once your entry is completed, you can then follow its progress online. Find out more from the MEDEA Awards website.

About 60 broadcasters and others interested in the re-use of video resources met in Mykonos, Greece on 23-24 June. The objective of this workshop was to discuss various metadata schema and initiatives against the background of the EUscreen project which is creating an online resource with more than 30,000 video clips drawn for the archives of European broadcasters. During this meeting, the project team presented the selection criteria that has been drawn up to categorise video resources which will be sorted into 14 primary categories like 'Environment and Nature', 'Politics and Belief, etc...

This video content, which will be made available via Europeana, will also be organised into comparative virtual exhibitions comprising selections of materials from different broadcasters under specific topics, e.g. Eastern European Television vs Western European Television.  Trials using the EUscreen approach will begin in Autumn, 2010. ATiT is a partner in EUscreen, supporting the take-up of these materials in the educational sector.

For a detailled report on the workshop see the EUscreen 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.

11 schools in the west of Ireland are now actively using web 2.0 tools thanks to the SoRuraLL project in which ATiT is a partner.

These schools use a variety of different tools to share information about what they are doing. They include schools like Feakle National school which has put junior and senior classes' bookweek photos online and Moveen national school which has posted photos of pupils making pancakes for Pancake Tuesday. Other schools like St Joseph's secondary school use their own website which the teachers manage themselves to post reports about how well the hurling team is doing.

A number of other schools are getting involved in using these tools to support their links with schools in other parts of Europe like St Mochullas national school which now posts its own photo gallery of their work in the Choir project.

Work on SoRuraLL will continue for the rest of the school year and a conference called Social Applications for Lifelong Learning highlighting outcomes of this and other related projects will be held on 4 - 5 November 2010 in Patras, Greece.

This conference, entitled Media & Learning: towards the era of digital fluency is being organised as a collaboration between the Flemish Ministry of Education and the European Commission Directorate-General for Education and Culture and will take place in the Flemish Ministry of Education Headquarters in Brussels to co-incide with the Belgian Presidency of the European Union.

Organised by ATiT in Brussels, 25-26 November, this conference will bring together practitioners and policy makers in a two day event which will highlight the latest developments, services and digital and media competences in education and training. This event will incorporate the annual MEDEA Awards and interested individuals, project teams, institutions and organisations are invited to submit proposals to give presentations, demonstrations and workshops at this conference, the closing date for submissions is 1 June 2010. Visit the conference website for more information.

Jim O'Sullivan and Sally Reynolds presented the results so far of the SoRuraLL project during the CESI annual conference held 5-6 February in Portlaoise, Ireland.

This conference, entitled Creative Technology for Challenging Times brought together about 150 teachers and others working with ICT in primary and secondary schools in Ireland for a day and a half of presentations, exchanges and discussions about the effective implementation of ICT in Irish classrooms. One of the highlights of this conference was the presentation given by Joe Dale on 'New Tools, New Curriculum, New Opportunities', to find out more about Joe and the tools he recommends, visit his blog.

The SoRuraLL presentation provided an opportunity to showcase some of the blogs and websites being developed by rural schools in Co. Clare as part of this project.

The MEDEA Awards 2010 have been launched with the publication of a brand new website which features samples and stories from winning entries in 2008 and 2009.

Online submissions are welcome up to the closing date for receipt of entries which is 31 July 2010. This European awards scheme recognises, rewards and encourages excellent use of media in education and attracts entries from all education and training sectors. Last year more than 250 entries were submitted and they included cartoons, videos, media repositories and animations.