Networking learning communities: skills, platforms and contents

Networking learning communities: skills, platforms and contents Riina Vuorikari Senior Research Analyst European Schoolnet Lisbon December 12 2008

2 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 Lisbon December 12 2008

3 Lisbon December 12 2008

6 LRE provides content by Publishers Ministries of Education (MoE) – FWU – In 2009 also – – Austria Cambridge-Hitachi MoE of – – Estonia Cambridge University Press Portugal! – – Finland Skolavefurinn – Lithuania – – Flanders Contento – Norway (Belgium) – Promethean – Poland – France – Young Digital Planet – Region of – Hungary – Siveco Catalonia – Iceland – Dunlem e-Learning – Slovenia – Israel Others – Spain – Ireland – OERcommons – Sweden – Italy – Cité des Sciences – Open University (UK) Lisbon December 12 2008

9 What is a tag? Personal metadata by a user, not a • librarian or other expert indexer Personal marker to help associate with • the resource Can be used for sorting or managing • - keep found things found! Lisbon December 12 2008

Skills needed: to navigate through a variety of learning resources Other sources of content creation (e.g. school book publishers, museums, websites..) Institutional sources Community driven content (e.g. Ministry of education, universities) Teacher-created content

12 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! Lisbon December 12 2008

13 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 Lisbon December 12 2008

15 eTwinning schools nodes eTwinning projects Lisbon December 12 2008

18 What type of information do social networks reveal? Lisbon December 12 2008

19 What type of information do social networks reveal? Lisbon December 12 2008

20 tightly connected nodes in the central Lisbon December 12 2008

21 isolated groups interacting mostly amongst themselves Lisbon December 12 2008

22 “singletons” with no connection, least central Lisbon December 12 2008

23 What more? Lisbon December 12 2008

24 closeness: the shortest distances between each individual and every other person in the network Lisbon December 12 2008

Reach: the degree any member of a network can reach other members of the network

Betweenness: Degree an individual lies between other individuals in the network: an intermediary; liaisons; bridges

27 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! Lisbon December 12 2008

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 Lisbon December 12 2008

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. Lisbon December 12 2008

Visit the portal • http://eskills.eun.org Lisbon December 12 2008

Learning Resource Exchange http://lreforschools.eun.org eTwinning http://www.etwinning.net e-Skills portal: http://eskills.eun.org Lisbon December 12 2008

Networking learning communities: skills, platforms and contents

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