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home > Media services > News > European Schoolnet stakeholders and partners meet in Rome at EMINENT conference European Schoolnet stakeholders and partners meet in Rome at EMINENT Conference European Schoolnet’s annual conference took place in Rome on 4-5 December 2008, offering two days of debates, plenaries and workshops. The event was attended by 240 participants from all over Europe and beyond representing ministries of education, industry partners, teachers and experts. The conference was opened by Giovanni Biondi, Chair of the Steering Committee and Marc Durando, Executive Director of European Schoolnet. The conference consisted of four plenary sessions with key speakers including Mike Trucano of the World Bank who gave the opening keynote on the topic of ‘People and technology in world class education systems’. Other prominent speakers and policy makers at the conference included Andrea Gavosto, director of the Agnelli Foundation (Italy), Pr. Luigi Berlinguer, a former Italian Minister of Education and Maruja Gutierrez-Diaz, Head of Unit Innovation and Creativity at the European Commission’s Education & Culture Directorate-General. Two parallel workshop sessions allowed participants to break in groups to discuss topics of interest, these included on the first day: ‘ICT policy and practice’, ‘Electronic games and new ways of learning’ and ‘Building – and using – the European Learning Resource Exchange’. On the second day, workshops were organised linked to European Schoolnet’s newly created working groups: ‘Digital learning resources’, ‘Interactive whiteboards’, ‘Digital skills’ and ‘Linking national and regional portals’.The workshops proved to be a highlight of the conference as they allowed experts, policy makers, industry partners and teachers to exchange ideas and practice examples on the ground. They met one of the key objectives of the conference: to facilitate bridges between practitioners, industry suppliers and policy makers.Another highlight of the conference was the eLearning Awards Ceremony on 4 December. Eight winners were awarded prizes for their schools for a total of €40,000 in cash prizes and equipment worth a similar amount. The ceremony was followed by a gala dinner in a Palazzo in the centre of Rome, generously hosted by the Agenzia Nazionale per lo Sviluppo dell’Autonomia Scolastica. Sponsors of the eLearning Awards this year were Young Digital Planet, Interwrite Learning, Intel, Promethean, SMART, Cisco, Microsoft and O2 Telefonica. Apple also supported the event with funding and and technical support for the EMINENT 2008 Podcasts. The conference was organised in cooperation with Agenzia Nazionale per lo Sviluppo dell’Autonomia Scolastica (ANSAS, ex Indire). Day One Opening plenary [presentations]:  Giovanni Biondi, elected Chair of European Schoolnet’s Steering Committee a year ago, opened Eminent 2008 with this question: ‘Are ICTs introduced in schools?’ Giovanni talked about the use of mobile phones, which has seen a huge increase in Italy among young people. Young people are now using them not only for phoning and sending SMSs, but also for photo, video, music, etc. How does that change the learning environment of tomorrow, how do classrooms and models of learning shift?Marc Durando, Executive Director of European Schoolnet highlighted 2008 as year of transition. EUN continues to act as a facilitator for cooperation between Ministries of Educations (MoE) in Europe who form a unique knowledge network. Work has started in five new working groups set up at the request of the EUN Steering Committee, they include: Learning Resource Exchange (LRE), Digital Skills, Interactive Whiteboards, Portals and Insight. Day two of the conference featured early outcomes and debates from four of the working groups. Marc also mentioned the continuation of work in all area including school collaboration (eTwinning which was relaunched), R&D projects (ASPECT), Internet Safety (INSAFE 2.0), studies on ICT impact on primary schools (STEPS) and on electronic games in education. In the area of digital resources, namely in emerging areas of social tagging and automatic generation of metadata, a Learning Resource Exchange portal (LRE) has been launched in the beginning of December for eTwinning schools, and then later publicly in 2009. eminent_2008002.jpgMike Trucano from the World Bank in Washington, USA gave the conference’s keynote speech titled ‘People and technology in world class education systems’. He introduced the audience to the work conducted by the World Bank which has some 125 active education projects being ran where ICT has a part. Key areas of work include: Learning for All, Skills and Knowledge for Groups, and Complete Education system for results. Within all these, technology and ICTs are considered as a tool to meet specific challenges. The questions are: what to avoid, what is the impact and how to measure it, and at what cost? Low-cost computing has seen a huge growth worldwide. Currently, there are more than 300 low-cost computing devices around. Governments who have sponsored low-cost computer initiatives have not only contributed in creating a critical mass of users worldwide, but also a trend of designing for cost, not features. Mike also gave some interesting insights about the use of ICT in developing country in a podcast recorded at EMINENT: "When we talk about ICT in developing countries, places like Jordan, Malaysia or China have decided to make large scale investment in technology in the education sector and are doing it in an innovative way […]. In China, we see large scale investment in rural areas […] as a way to connect less prepared teachers in the west with more prepared teachers in the east and to make that connection with technology in ways which were not possible even a decade ago." Listen to full podcast Plenary 2: Inspiring Young people: the challenges of Maths, Science and Technology [presentations]  Andrea Gavosto, Director of the Agnelli Foundation, opened the plenary by presenting the European Roundtable of Industrialists, an informal forum bringing together 45 CEOs and chairmen of major European companies. He highlighted the shortage Europe will face in MST graduate and the need for all European stakeholders to take action. The industry has an important role to play and ERT believes in stronger partnerships between schools and businesses. At a recent conference organised by ERT in Brussels on 2 October 2008, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso called for a stronger partnership between education and business worlds. On the main aim is to create a European coordinating body to build bridges between industry and Education and EUN is well positioned to play this role.Andrea Gavosto also participated in a podcast during the conference where he highlighted that regarding ICT in schools the problem is not having the ICT hardware but more dealing with changes induced by ICT. Young children are already avid internet users at home, back at school, they enter an underworld where they have textbooks, blackboards, pen and paper. There is this disconnection between the two parts of the day which has to be bridged. Training teachers to use ICT and change the way they teach is a key factor. The Agnelli Foundation has started discussion with European Schoolnet to start investigating this topic: how does ICT affect the way of teaching, we hope to start this research next year. Listen to full podcast  Luigi Berlinguer, Chair of Inter-ministerial Working Group for Scientific Culture Dissemination, and Italian Minister of Education in 1996-2000 portrayed the area of Math, Science and Technology (MST) as a complex area to teach in modern schools. At the same time where MST is a classical domain of theories, laws and experiments where synthesis of science and theory is achieved, it is a highly complicated area to teach in schools. One challenge is that teaching MST is not seen as attractive, appealing and digestible domain for pupils and students. This challenge is not to be tackled by teachers alone, noted Mr. Berlinguer, who points to Ministries on a local and European level to make changes to convert MST teaching into more inclusive, appealing subjects - past systems cannot give right answers anymore.Professor Berlinguer, during a podcast recorded at the conference, also underlined how the way of teaching MST is in his opinion the first reason for the increasing falling figures of young people committed to this field. "MTS are learnt as a necessity, as something pupils must know, but this is not science", which on the contrary is amazing and should rise curiosity. In this sense, "the use of ICT can help a lot" as it is a method for "experimenting a new pedagogy" which brings together experiments and theory. But most of all, "we need a proper policy for MTS: we don't have a policy in Italy and we don't have a proper one in Europe". Promoting innovation is also the real answer to the dramatic economic crisis of these days; therefore the widespread of scientific culture should be one of the major current concerns. Listen to the full podcast Maruja Gutierrez-Diaz from the European Commission talked about the work done in the EC for Maths Science and Technology (MST). It has been a priority for the EU particularly since the Lisbon council in 2000. A Maths, Science and Technology cluster was created in 2005 to improve participation in MST studies and monitor the MST benchmark towards achieving the Lisbon objectives. Out of all the five benchmarks, MST is performing the best as it achieved its goal in 2004. However, Maruja also noted that other studies and survey – namely the PISA 2006 study and a Eurobarometer survey - draw a bleaker picture as it shows no improvement in MST. Eurobarometer also highlighted the lack of interest for young people in science teaching careers. Although there are reasons for optimism, the situation is not that great and the benchmarks should be revised to better match the reality. Maruja Gutierrez-Diaz also mentioned the EU’s 7th Framework Programme ‘Science and Society’. This programme can be seen as an answer to the recently published Rocard report which issued six recommendations to promote: science education, new forms of pedagogies, raising participation of girls, involving local communities, using instruments of the Framework Programme and setting up a European Science Education Advisory Board.
Parallel workshops session 1: [presentations]
Listen to full podcast 3) Building and using the learning resource exchange This workshop aimed to demonstrate the work done by EUN in the area of sharing and using digital learning resources. Frans Van Assche from European Schoolnet gave an introduction to MELT, a project which developed new ways of creating metadata to describe learning resources. MELT is among the projects which paved the way to the Learning Resource Exchange (LRE) portal and the LRE federation infrastructure which allow getting advantage of LRE resources and user-generated metadata. Associate partners of the LRE, including the National Centre for Technology in Education in Ireland and Promethean, presented how they connected their repositories to the federation. Research is also carried out on evaluation of teacher created tags as metadata descriptors to describe learning resources. The early results of the survey show that most used tags can be found as useful, and in some cases even more useful than thesaurus indexing terms. Plenary 3: Inspiring practice: presenting the eLearning Awards 2008 The afternoon plenary consisted of the eLearning Awards 2008 prize giving ceremony, eight schools were awarded in 2008 and the competition was supported by nine industry partners including Young Digital Planet, Interwrite Learning, Intel, Promethean, SMART, Cisco, Microsoft and O2 Telefonica. Additionally, Apple also supported the event in kind and cash. A Turkish teacher, Elif Kara, won the top prize at the event: the Young Digital Planet Award for outstanding teachers (first prize) for a project called ‘EuroPoems’. Miguel Roa Guzmán, a Spanish teacher won the Interwrite Learning Award for outstanding teachers (second prize). Eight schools were awarded for a total of € 40 000 in cash prizes and equipment worth a similar amount, provided by Interwrite Learning, SMART, Promethean and Intel. Following the ceremony, a Gala Dinner was organised in Palazzo Ferrojoli in the centre of Rome. Full story link and complete list of winners Elif Kara, during a special podcast dedicated to the top winner of the eLearning Awards 2008, explained how the idea of the winning project "Europoems" was developed together with a Spanish and an Italian school. The aim was bringing together different cultures and traditions and getting to know each other through poetry. Thanks to the cash prize and the equipment awarded to her school in Turkey, she feels even more "motivated to go on with new projects, also because I am just on my second year of teaching, as I graduated only two years ago". As soon as she will be back, she will discuss with her colleagues how to use at best all the prizes she won, for which she is very thankful. Listen to the full podcast Day two Parallel workshops sessions two [presentations]: The topic addressed in these workshops were linked to European Schoolnet’s working groups: ‘Digital learning resources’, ‘Interactive whiteboards’, ‘Digital skills’ and ‘Linking national and regional portals’. Work in the working groups started in October. 1) Digital Learning Resources: Improving the supply, flow and uptake of content The discussion in this workshop chaired by Jan De Craemer, Assistant to the Director at the Ministry of Education Flanders in Belgium, highlighted the need for improving the supply, flow and uptake of digital content. Today there is already much content available both commercial and open content. However, finding or creating quality resources that can be used in the classroom is still a challenge. Several issues were addressed during the session including extending the network of learning repositories, connecting the EUN Learning Resource Exchange to national curricula (Ireland), national implementations of a brokerage service (Sweden). Search and find strategies for teachers were also addressed at the workshop as well as problems teachers may encounter when sharing pedagogical and educational activities. Other challenges addressed at the workshop included the lack of mature business models, IPR and copyright issues, availability of quality content and the possibility to reuse it, and teacher training in the necessary competences. 2) Interactive Whiteboards: Issues and options Jerome Morrissey who chairs the Interactive Whiteboard workgroup of European Schoolnet introduced the work done by the group whose aim is to look at good practice use of IWBs in EUN Member countries, provide feedback and recommendations on IWBs use, look at the use of other digital devices and see how they complement and broaden the scope of IWBs. Eventually, the aim will be to design teaching guidelines and generic teaching training. The workshop was in the form of an interactive session using response systems, there were several questions voted on by the audience starting with one that asked what are and what should be the main drivers for introducing IWBs in schools. The conclusion was that teachers and national policy needs to be driving the introduction of IWBs more than is currently the case. Illustrative classroom practices were presented at the workshop with examples of lessons (Italy) and innovative use of alternative technologies including laptop, data projector, wireless key board and mouse (Ireland). The session concluded on a roundtable with industry representatives from Interwrite Learning, promethean and SMART Tech. One of the main feedbacks from the industry panel was that Interactive Whiteboards are not standalone, exclusive, technologies, but should be used in conjunction with other existing technologies, methods and techniques. 3) Digital skills: developing teachers’ and learners’ ICT competence The session was chaired by Giovanni Biondi Chair of the EUN Steering Committee and looked at issues linked to improving, assessing and training teachers’ ICT skills. Presentations included an OECD comparative study on initial teacher training in ICT, US approaches to teacher education in ICT. Both studies are looking at national requirements, extent of use of ICT in training and national and local conditions. UNI-C in Denmark presented the European Pedagogical ICT license, which focuses on learning as a collaborative process and appropriate use of technology. A key issue throughout the session is that ICT needs to be properly integrated in the pedagogical process, and needs to be used for more high level tasks (e.g. data analysis) rather than seeing it as a standalone and relying only on basic tools like email. Giovanni Biondi concluded by reminding all to consider how the learning environment needs to be transformed, in order to facilitate the acquisition and use of digital skills. 4) Linking national portals This session was chaired by Vainas Brazdeikis from the Centre of Information Technologies for Education in Lithuania. The aim of the workshop was to show best practice portals including the punto.edu platform for formal and informal teacher training (Italy), EMU the main educational portal financed by the Danish Ministry of Education which provides services via a central portal that can be reconfigured and adapted by schools to create their own local environment and Educa.ch, the Swiss Education Server which faces a special challenge as it serves 26 different educational systems managed by the Cantons as well as with five different localised language versions. Semantic technologies for eLearning were also presented with experiences from Austria. To conclude the session the EUN Office presented preliminary findings from a small survey of Ministries of Education to get a “helicopter view” of the activities of members in terms of portals services. A summary paper on this will be released in 2009 in conjunction with plans to revise the eun.org portal. Plenary session 4: Looking forward Creativity and Innovation panel session (full transcript of the discussion) This final panel session of EMINENT, chaired by Jim Ayre (European Schoolnet) featured discussions between a panel of experts and the audience. The discussion ranged very widely and covered different issues related to the evolution of education and how better to ensure it fosters creativity and innovation. Andrea Gavosto (Agnelli Foundation) urged the need to get away from the silo approach of specialization and called for a more horizontal approach to teaching and more individualized learning. Martina Roth (Intel) said that creativity and innovation cannot be measured in the same way as maths and science, so the best way to promote creativity and innovation in the classroom, is to highlight best practice and invite representatives from industry into the classroom, which would not only encourage public-private partnerships, but also promote inter-disciplinary projects. Lilla Voss (DK Moe) commented that in Denmark, assessment is changing to acknowledge the evolving environment: students can already use computers in their exams, and the intention is to go even further and allow full internet access. Elisabetta Mughini (ANSAS ex-Indire) stated that creativity is now changing the concept of space in terms of where we meet, learn and interact. Projects such as eTwinning have made us realize the new importance of personlised learning through teamwork in collaborative environments. On the need to unleash creativity, Anne Gilleran (European Schoolnet) stated that in her experience of being a school principal, often the most disruptive students were the most creative. The question is, how can schools unleash the creativity in students within the conforming system? She suggested that part of the answer is through teamwork. Andrea Gavosto highlighted that the creativity-conformity dichotomy is not just a problem for schools but society as a whole. We have to find the right balance. We don’t want total conformity or total anarchy. Elisabetta Mughini expressed her belief that the majority of students are now non-conformist, suggesting that it is not them that is the problem, but rather the system which is outdated. Jerome Morrissey (NCTE, Ireland) reminded us that creativity is an incremental talent acquired through trial and error. ICT allows us to eliminate all mistakes. Therefore, whether or not ICT helps or hinders creativity is a legitimate and important question. Donatella Nucci (ANSAS, ex-Indire) commented on the need for more bottom-up approaches, such as the projects produced by eTwinning, and more integration of the different existing initiatives. For example, we could link eTwinning projects on teacher professional development with the European Digital Portfolio development. The very animated discussion closed with Richard Galvin's (European School Brussels II) comment on the need to provide the correct context, sufficient time and space, and then step back to allow teachers and students to be creative. The EMINENT Conference was then closed by Marc Durando who concluded that the two key aspects that emanated from the conference concerned partnerships and teacher development. With regards to partnerships he mentioned the following four main areas:
Marc Durando also closed the EMINENT Podcast, asked to highlight one topic he thought was food for thought he said: “what struck me was what Minister Berlinguer said about difficulties to attract young students in Maths, Science and Technology subjects. Quite a lot of teachers are teaching for themselves and not for their students, if we want to make MST subject more attractive, we have to think how we can work with teachers in changing their way of teaching it”. Marc also thanked EUN networks for participating in the event, “We have to learn from our Ministries and stakeholders as they have to help us in defining the roadmap for the future, what type of challenges we are going to face and how to address them in the years to come. EMINENT is a unique moment to do this and to develop the partnership with our stakeholders and networks. Diversity is richness and we should develop this peer learning and peer exchanges between all the stakeholders of the EUN family” Listen to full Podcast (photos by Lorenzo Guasti www.logu.it)
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The plenary concluded with a presentation of eSkills portal which was the recently launched by European Schoolnet on behalf of a consortium of 13 industry partners. As a motivation for the portal, Alexa Joyce from the European Schoolnet, introduced the paradox of the current time: where young people have falling interest in MST but at the same time are keen users of IT tools. How can we transfer that? The eSkills career portal is aimed at secondary and early tertiary students, early career IT professionals, and educators. It offers a space where private companies and organisations offering IT training and certifications participate and additional services and information for young people about IT careers.
