LisbonDecember 12 2008
Networking learning communities: skills, platforms
and contentsRiina Vuorikari
Senior Research Analyst European Schoolnet
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European Schoolnet (EUN)
• 31 Ministries of Education (MoE) in Europe
• Created in 1997
• Major European education portals for learning resources, collaboration and skills
• Leads the way in bringing about change in schooling through the use of new technology
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LRE provides content by
– Austria– Estonia– Finland– Flanders
(Belgium)– France– Hungary– Iceland– Israel– Ireland– Italy
Publishers– FWU– Cambridge-Hitachi– Cambridge University Press– Skolavefurinn– Contento– Promethean– Young Digital Planet– Siveco – Dunlem e-Learning
Others– OERcommons– Cité des Sciences– Open University (UK)
– In 2009 also MoE of Portugal!
– Lithuania– Norway– Poland– Region of Catalonia– Slovenia– Spain– Sweden
Ministries of Education (MoE)
Skills needed: to navigate through a variety of learning resources
Institutional sources (e.g. Ministry of education) Community driven content
Teacher-created content
Other sources of content creation (e.g.MoEs, school book publishers, museums,..)
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Skills needed: collaborate and navigate the networks
Increasingly, educational activities in both schools and higher education involve collaboration with other institutions, teachers and learners.
Collaboration and networking serves as a “new resource” to support and enhance specific learning goals!
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eTwinning for schools
• 49 500 active members in Europe
• Learning 2.0 enables that people, teachers, peer learners, subject experts, etc. can help build new ‘communities of practice’
on local and global scale
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nodeseTwinning schools
eTwinning projects
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New skills needed for teachers?Educators should be able to perceive the Internet
and its different networks as a rich resource
that can support and enhance learning and teaching of the future generations.
Message for policy makers: This type mindset should be explicitly supported by leadership at the institutional and system level!
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Paradox: young people have falling interest in maths, science and
technology in general
Yet young people are keen users of IT tools– Majority use a blog, Facebook or MySpace account,
or other IT tool regularly (particularly girls)– Majority play computer games in some form– Now spend more time on YouTube than watching TV
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e-Skills career portal
Targets IT skills for:– Students at secondary and tertiary level– Early career IT professionals– Educators– IT stakeholders: companies, EU level
actors, etc.
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Visit the portal• http://eskills.eun.org
LisbonDecember 12 2008
Learning Resource Exchangehttp://lreforschools.eun.org
eTwinninghttp://www.etwinning.net
e-Skills portal: http://eskills.eun.org