Management

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.

On Thursday and Friday 14 and 15 January 2010 ATiT participated in the mid term project meeting of the European Commission Lifelong Learning Project SoRuraLL, which focuses on using information and communication technologies in rural parts of Europe, especially within the education and training domain.

Partners from Greece, Bulgaria, Spain, Belgium, Germany and Poland gathered in the excellent premises of Ellinogermaniki Agogiki to discuss the progress of development and pilots. The pilot activities are beginning now and will continue until July involving teachers in Greece, Spain and Ireland as well as learners in Germany and Bulgaria and citizens in Poland.

The overall winner of the MEDEA Awards 2009 was announced by Maruja Gutierrez-Diaz, Advisor to the Director of the Lifelong Learning Programme, European Commission on 4 December during a well attended reception in Berlin.

It is Know IT All for Primary by Childnet International (UK), which was represented at the prize-giving ceremony by Lucinda Fell, Policy and Communications Manager, who graciously accepted the bronze MEDEA statuette as well as hardware and software sponsored by Avid and Adobe. In addition to the overall winner, the MEDEA Award for Creativity and Innovation 2009 was won by Daisy and Drago by Terakki Foundation Schools (Turkey) represented at the awards by Özge Karaoğlu.

Traditions Across Europe by Istituto Comprensivo “Don Bosco” (Italy), represented at the awards by Gina Mango won the MEDEA European Collaboration Award 2009 and a special jury prize was given to Eyes on the Skies by European Southern Observatory (ESO) (Germany) in recognition for what the judges described as “a superb example of the value high quality video imagery can bring to an educational production”. For more information visit the MEDEA web site

The MEDEA Secretariat announced today the 8 finalists for the annual MEDEA awards. These are in alphabetical order: Daisy and Drago by Terakki Foundation Schools (Turkey), Eyes on the Skies by European Southern Observatory (ESO) (Germany), INgeBEELD by CANON CULTURAL UNIT (Belgium), Know IT All by Childnet International (UK), Les TIC en Classe by VISION FUTURE (France), Planet SciCast by NESTA (UK), Studiecoach by the Dutch Open University (The Netherlands) and Traditions Across Europe by Istituto Comprensivo “Don Bosco” (Italy). The overall winner will be announced during the MEDEA Awards Ceremony on 4 December 2009 in the Hotel InterContinental in Berlin.
 
This year the competition attracted 254 entries from 39 countries which was a significant increase in entries compared to last year. The finalists were chosen by a jury made up of 76 education and media experts from 26 countries who assessed the MEDEA entries in October.  All finalists will attend the Awards Ceremony on Friday 4th December 2009, where they will have the chance to win the main MEDEA Award as well as several other prizes, including software sponsored by Adobe and AVID.

If you would like more information about these awards, visit the MEDEA web site.

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 kick-off meeting of the EUscreen project took place this week in the impressive home territory of Beeld en Geluid (Sound and Vision) in Hilversum, The Netherlands. This new project funded in part through the European eContent Plus Programme is a Best Practice network which brings together 27 partners from 17 EU member States as well as Switzerland in order to provide access to a highly interoperable digitised collection of television material.

This three year project will result in an interoperable EUscreen platform, including a core collection of 35,000 television items. Partners include 18 core content stakeholders, these are European broadcasters and television archivists like DR in Denmark, Deutsche Welle, RAI in Italy,  VRT in Belgium, Television de Catalunyo, RTE in Ireland, ORF in Austria, INA in France and many others.

ATiT is a partner in this project and will be responsible for exploiting use of these materials in the educational sector.

Entries to the annual MEDEA Awards have been arriving daily to the MEDEA Secretariat in recent weeks and more than 250 were received by the competition deadline of 30th September. The highest number of entries have been submitted by French organisations with organisations in Italy, UK and Germany also submitting a significant number. Judging will begin in mid-October and the organisers hope to have a list of finalists available at the beginning of November.