The Digital Era is changing the ways we interact between us, the ways we work… and for sure, the educational world. Traditional ways of teaching and learning are being transformed, and key challenges should be addressed to exploit the technologies potential on learning as well as to ensure that the young generations have the required digital skills and competences.
The European High Level Conference on “Education in the Digital Era” brought together interested stakeholders to discuss the opportunities and challenges of adapting education to a fast changing, digital society and economy, whilst shaping education’s place and priority in the EU’s sustainable growth agenda.
The event was organised around 3 main key themes:
- Increasing the quality and relevance of learning. How can we make learning more interactive and connected through digital means, responding to learners’ individual needs and goals? (materials around this topic here)
- Increasing the impact of educators. How to unlock the potential for a more personal and effective interaction with students? (materials around this topic here)
- Addressing inequalities through better access and lower cost. How to ensure digital access to the best content, resources and teachers (materials around this topic here)
The discussion around these topics was intensified through an online debate. The main positions and inputs of the different participants in the panels were available to the audience ahead of the event through the event website, allowing to start the discussion and engage with the addressed issues ahead of the conference itself. At the same time, the debate can be followed on Twitter through @OpenEduEU and the hashtag #EdDigEra.
As stated at The NMC Horizon Report Europe: 2014 Schools Edition, European schools are facing key challenges linked to the impact and use of new technologies:
Alongside the debate, participants were also be able to visit and experience a replica of European Schoolnet’s Future Classroom Lab, a glimpse at some of the most recent developments in learning technologies. During the lunch break, the award ceremony of the Open Education Challenge took place. The winners showed the potential of entrepreneurship and innovation in education.
The 18 members who joined the association in Bratislava are honored with the status of Founding Members, and constituted the first General Assembly of the association.
During two days, international and local representatives, experts and creatives presented the technological tools and shared their experiences, focusing on the evolution of distributed environments, creative hubs and cultural broadcasting. The programme was developed considering the artists and technicians interested in co-creation. Representatives from different cultural and academic institutions in Europe (England, Italy, the Netherlands and Catalonia among others) met to share experiences, establish synergies and explore future collaborations.
The workshop was specially designed and focused on the changes occurring in performance-based CH as a result of novel possibilities made available by digital technologies and its main objective was to bring together researchers, professionals and practitioners to share their experiences and knowledge and experiment with low latency virtual and shared environments to conduct future remote performances. Thanks to the technology made available by i2CAT Foundation, participants in the workshop had the opportunity to reflect on how to distribute performance based cultural heritage content through ultra-fast wired networks and to evaluate what benefits could be brought for their dissemination and preservation. Thanks to dedicated training sessions on the usage of UHD technologies and advanced network infrastructures provided by partner i2CAT and afterwards, through the realisation of a set of experiments and co-creation sessions, these activities will bring higher level of knowledge and open a wider range of possibilities to accomplish with the main goals defined by RICHES project and also enhance cooperation with external entities in order to enrich and better spread the results obtained.
This workshop was organised within the framework of the European project SPECIFI that promotes the creation of a European Ring Creative Cities and Regions smart with the participation of European projects also Visionair, RICHES and eIeC. SPECIFI is funded under the CIP, Competitiveness and Innovation framework programme, which aims to promote the use of Future Internet infrastructures for the promotion of culture and creativity in the Smart Cities with the objective to capitalize the cultural and creative richness and diversity that emanates from European cities.
