The conference theme was “Political priorities for education and the role of technology”. The two-day discussions involved policy-makers from European Educational Authorities, as well as by high profile politicians including Prof. Jorge Pedreira, Deputy Minister of Education, Portugal and Krzysztof Stanowski the Under-secretary of Education of Poland.

There were five plenary sessions, including the eLearning Awards ceremony on Thursday 6 December 2007. A series of workshops took place on Friday, covering four digital learning resources, online safety, e-maturity and .self-regulated personalised learning.

The conference, organized in partnership with Belgacom, was closed by Marc Durando, Executive Director of European Schoolnet and the newly elected chairman of European Schoolnet’s steering Committee, Giovanni Biondi, of the Agenzia Nazionale per lo Sviluppo dell'Autonomia Scolastica in Italy (INDIRE).

Day One
Opening [presentations]
The conference was opened by Odile de Chalendar, the outgoing Chair of the EUN Steering Committee and representative of the French Ministry of Education, who warmly welcomed the participants and dignitaries present at the event. Participants came from more than 30 countries. She particularly welcomed guests from outside Europe including Argentina, Australia, Columbia, USA… which gave this year’s EMINENT a truly international flavour. She reported that the day before the event, a GENIE (Global Exchange of Networks in Education) meeting was hosted by European Schoolnet, to bring international perspectives on the future of technology enhanced teaching and learning at the heart of this edition of EMINENT.

EUN Executive Director Marc Durando emphasised the commitments that the EUN team had undertaken since  Round Table 2006 conference in Bruges, where participants made recommendations for EUN priorities. These  included: networking teachers in engaging ways; adding EU value to policy and practice; and optimising access to European digital content.

Opening the conference, Ján Figel’ European Commissioner for Education, Culture and Youth congratulated EUN for organising the event which brought together industry representatives and representatives of public bodies as “a good example of the public–private partnerships for innovation that the European Commission favours”. Commissioner Figel’ emphasised the impact of ICT that some recent research has shown, including EUN’s "ICT Impact Report" published in December last year. “There is also evidence that ICT has a positive impact on learning processes and teaching practices. It leads to better teamwork, collaborative working across schools, and a more student–centred approach which gives learners more autonomy,” he said. Commissioner Figel’ concluded by saying that there is a need to address the changes in the learning habits of young people which “are happening so fast that our education systems find it hard to keep up. This is the real challenge when we design and implement our policies.” Young people are “the digital–native generation; the first who touched a computer as they were learning to speak. For us, computers will always be a second language,” he said. [read full speech]

Plenaries
Plenary 2 - international perspectives [presentations]

Kathryn Mole, Associate Professor, School of Education and Community Studies, Canberra University, Australia opened the plenary on international perspectives, chaired by Jan de Craemer of the Belgian (Flemish Community) education ministry, with a presentation on three case studies that have been undertaken in the US, Australia and the UK as part of a joint project on "Calculating the Value of Investment in ICT in education". The project aims to enable data-driven decision making, e.g. to close the loop with research and practitioners.

Keith Kruger, who represents the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) in the US, gave an outlook on what is happening in American schools. He started by talking about a survey in which 63 per cent of teachers had said that their technology skills are ‘somewhat advanced’ or ‘advanced’. Yet most are using email and Internet research, not to change teaching. There seem to be some anxiety about US competitiveness. Thus, a STEM initiative has been promoted, which focus on Science, Technology, Engineering & Math. Policymakers at federal level, however, do not view Education Technology as key factor.  Focus is on high stakes tests in math, science & reading. “The ‘T’ has disappeared,” he said.

Vanessa Pittard, Director e-strategy at BECTa, UK, talked about the impact that technology has in UK schools. Her good news is that, finally, one can find good and sophisticated studies that can show a positive impact of ICT on learning outcomes. She quoted this year’s BECTa Harnessing Technology Review, “We can now be confident there is a positive general impact on learning outcomes. Since the 2003 ImpaCT2 study, statistical links between the use of technology and learning outcomes have been identified in an increasing body of evidence, ranging from studies of home use of ICT by learners, studies of the impact of specific technologies, and analysis of the impact of school e-maturity on school improvement”.  

Frans van Assche from the EUN Office talked about Curriculum mapping cross borders. In his presentation he questioned whether in a multi-lingual/multi-cultural environment, teachers could find and tag learning resources in their own curriculum. He demonstrated EUN’s Calibrate portals (calibrate.eun.org) where teachers can find learning resources and link them to the curriculum.

Plenary 3 – current issues [presentations]

Plenary three of the EMINENT Conference, chaired by Conor Galvin of University College, Dublin, focused on current issues in eLearning in schools.

The sessions started by a presentation of the implication of the Rocard report, named after the former French PM and MEP Michel Rocard, which focuses on science education. Johannes Klumpers from DG Research, European Commission, explored in his presentation the uptake of science topics in schools. He said that increased attention to scientific culture is needed. The European Commission views this as important for the future of Europe in order achieve a European Knowledge Society. Additionally, parts of the recommendations of the Rocard Report suggest that new forms of pedagogy are needed, such as inquiry-based learning methods. Mr Klumpers also mentioned the future FP7 calls for proposals. One of the novel points in these projects will be the dissemination of results which will use a common service provided by the Commission.

Anja Balanskat and Janice Richardson from European Schoolnet presented the latest emerging issues and national responses in e-safety. European Schoolnet is the coordinator of INSAFE, a network of safer internet nodes throughout Europe. eSafety is one of the major challenges that teachers face nowadays mentioned the speakers, two third of the countries who were surveyed in the recent EUN report on eSafety (soon available) have actions in place regarding this.

Prof. Roni Aviram from Ben Gurion University in Israel talked about personalisation of e-learning as it is dealt with in the iClass project. Five goals in the project are personalisation, self-regulation, intrinsic motivation, morality and participatory belonging. These are elements for self-regulated personalised learning, which Prof. Aviram said is needed in nowadays educational environment.

Lex Stomp from the Department of teacher training for secondary education, Windesheim University, the Netherlands, talked about the use of a scenario planning tool, where it is used for example in courses of teacher training to help planning and future policy needs. Scenario tools as such are not new; they have been used in different areas of society to help planning. The scenario method allows one to create his/her own story about the future projection. More about this scenario building tool is available for example on the Insight website.

Giovanni Biondi and Leonardo Tosi from the Agenzia Nazionale per lo Sviluppo dell'Autonomia Scolastica presented the latest development in Italy in the use of Interactive whiteboards. They talked about two different ways to introduce interactive whiteboards in Italy: Digiscuola, a large-scale training initiative involving 3,300 teachers to introduce Interactive Whiteboards in schools in the South of Italy and Marinando, an experimentation project to create a social environment through the distance connection of Interactive Whiteboards for pupils in the disadvantaged areas.

Plenary 4 – elearning awards
The eLearning Awards were given out for the 7th time at EMINENT 2007, hosted by Anne Gilleran. There were 563 submissions from all over Europe. Sylvia Binger (EUN) and Derrick de Kerckhove, Professor at the University of Toronto and Chair of the 2007 eLearning Awards Jury, described the judging process and presented a very informative initial analysis of the entries, highlighting in particular how much they featured web 2.0 tools and approaches.

The project ‘Rescue La Vallette: An Adventure in Time’ from the Dun Anton Manche school in Malta won the Young Digital Planet Award for best use of ICT. A €3,000 cheque was presented to teacher Emmanuel Zammit for his school by Piotr Mroz, CEO of Young Digital Planet. Emmanuel also received a crystal trophy and an interactive whiteboard classroom technology package. Derrick de Kerckhove said about the winning entry: “This site introduces young learners to the e-skills of the European Computer Driving Licence through an engaging storyline mixing fun and learning at the right dosage for beginners. High production values, innovative format and clever didactics make this project the best in all categories.”

eLearning Awards 2007 partners were Young Digital Planet, Intel, Interwrite Learning, Promethean, SMART Technologies, Apple, Michael, Adobe, Belgacom, Microsoft, SIVECO Romania, Telefónica O2 and UPC.

In total, € 40.000 in cash prizes and equipment (interactive whiteboards, USB devices, software etc.) was awarded to schools in 2007 to 13 winners.

A full list of winners and prizes is available on the eLearning Awards website.

Gala dinner and after-dinner speech [read the speech]
In the evening a gala diner was offered by Young Digital Planet to EMINENT participants, Doug Brown, Deputy Director at the Technology Futures Unit in the UK Department for Children Schools and Families gave an after-dinner speech. This speech which is available on the EMINENT 2007 Blog (http://eminent.eun.org/blog) was entertaining and mind-tickling - and somewhat cathartic, too, after a long and thoughtful day of interesting presentations.

Day two
The morning part of the day was spent in parallel workshops. A full 2,5h were spent listening presentations on four main topics:
A: International co-operation, Open Educational Resources for teachers
B: E-Safety workshop
C: e-Maturity
D: Personalised learning

A: International co-operation, working session on Open Educational Resources for teachers
The GENIE meeting on Wednesday 5 December evening with inputs from the US, Australia and South America showed the need to think globally about content-sharing, not just in Europe. Approaches differ significantly from country to country in Europe. Frameworks are essential to share knowledge and the Learning Resource Exchange - currently been developed by European Schoolnet - aims to support this through projects such as EdRENE and ASPECT and with the support of the Hewlett Foundation.

B: E-Safety workshop
Five examples of good partnerships between ministries of education and e-safety awareness nodes in the INSAFE network were presented (eg Germany, Italy, Belgium (Flemish community)). Successful partnerships were characterised by joint knowledge building (a theme running across all the workshops) leading to changed behaviours. For schools the way forward for e-safety is integration into the curriculum, as it has happened in Belgium, Poland and Ireland.

C: e-Maturity
Among the conclusions in this workshop is that there is still a long way to go to a state where the majority of schools are e-mature; frameworks are valuable in assisting schools along the journey to e-maturity. Two frameworks were been discussed during the meeting: the BECTa Self-review framework for schools and the Framework for School inspection developed as part of the P2P-P2V projects. ICT needs full integration for the pay off to really take off. Additionally, the eTwinnig project was presented to the participants; one conclusion was that there should be more discussions between eTwinning and peer learning projects such as P2V.

D: Personalised learning
The iClass project has developed ‘SRPL’ or Self-Regulated Personlised Learning’ a model for the future. It includes key notions like joint knowledge building, reflection, self-profiling, planning, reporting and recording, choice, mindfulness, personal preferences, flexible environment. SRPL represents a shift from the learner as a passive participant in a system to learner autonomy and responsibility within a personalised system providing appropriate tools. Teachers are at the heart of it while at the beginning of the project the focus was on learners. Dialogue with teachers and researchers has been beneficial. Validation work will take place in 2008 using a mock-up, focus groups and questionnaires; the outcomes will have a strong influence on product development by the ICT industry.

Plenary 5 and Closing remarks
The concluding session of the conference started with a panel discussion on perspectives on priorities for education by industry members. The panel comprised Martina A. Roth, Director of Global Education Strategy, Corporate Affairs Group, Intel Corporation, Piotr Mroz, CEO, Young Digital Planet, and Stephen Jury, Vice Chairman, Promethean.

All the industry members emphasised their commitment to work together with other stakeholders in the field of education to achieve better results. They saw many win-win-solutions around for business and public sector to work together and saw EUN's role crucial as a middle-man who has contacts and knowledge of both worlds. Words by Commissioner Figel, "hardworking, team working, networking", were mentioned as a good example of this conference, a work that should be carried on it the future to work on common challenges.

To conclude the conference, a series of closing remarks was given by Maruja Gutierrez-Diaz, Head of Unit European Commission - Directorate General for Education and Culture; Jorge Predreira, Deputy Minister of Education, Portugal;  Marc Durando, European Schoolnet Executive Director and Giovanni Biondi, the new chair of EUN Steering Committee.

Ms. Gutierrez-Diaz congratuted the EMINENT organisers for the conference and said that the issues presented by EUN at the conference are close to those of the Commission, such as eTwinning, which has been successful and has a big potential for international cooperation too.

Jorge Predreira, the Portuguese Deputy Minister of Education, highlighted two goals of the Portuguese EU presidency which placed the Lisbon agenda at its heart: to improve the visibility of education and training in the Lisbon strategy and to improve the competitivity in Europe with education and training in a key role.

Giovanni Biondi, the new EUN Steering Committee chair highlighted that we have to think in terms of new concepts and new environments for the school of the 21st century. He stressed that what is needed is not only changing the content, standards or to find new technological solution; the new ‘phase’ we are entering requires re-thinking the whole ‘environment’ of the school. He called onto Ministries of Education members of European Schoolnet to step in and get more involved, this consortium was created by Ministry of Education for Ministries of Education. It is necessary that they take the full advantage of their membership.

Marc Durando, executive director of European Schoolnet, concluded the conference by saying that EUN went through a very busy and challenging year 2007. He highlighted that EUN has a political agenda set by ministries of education and reaffirmed EUN’s commitment to work on the areas of a European platform on exchange and sharing learning resources; analysing the impact of ICT on teaching and learning; and support teachers and teacher training. Marc Durando also thanked the European Commission for the support it has given EUN, the Ministers of education who attended the event (Portuguese and Polish), industry sponsors for the event and the eLearning Awards and lastly the EUN team for its dedication to making this event successful.

Optional extended workshops and meetings (parallel)
 In the afternoon after the conference several optional extended workshops took place including an International co-operation workshop, the INSAFE network meeting, a P2V project partners meeting, iClass project meeting and a ‘Science issues and industry’ workshop.

EMINENT presentations:
http://blog.eun.org/eminent/presentations/

EMINENT Portal (including previous years):
http://eminent.eun.org

EMINENT Blog (presentations, comments, links, pictures and reports)
http://eminent.eun.org/blog