Joint European Summer School on Technology Enhanced Learning 2010
(www.JTELSummerSchool.eu)

Ohrid, Macedonia, 7th – 11th June, 2010
First Announcement and Call for Participation

Deadline for applications: March 26, 2010

We are pleased to announce the 6th Joint European Summer School on Technology Enhanced Learning, to take place from Monday, 7th June 2010 to Friday 11th June 2010. Pre-summer school activities are organized all day on Sunday, June 6th.

The summer school aims to encourage participants to adopt a critical stance in thinking about the role of technologies in providing opportunities for learners and the potential of these opportunities in terms of learning. Work will centre on three research ‘Grand Challenges’:

·        Connecting learners
·        Orchestrating learning
·        Contextualising learning environments.

The summer school provides a learning environment where participants get opportunities to: develop their research skills; increase their knowledge base; collaborate with others in their own and complementary research areas; engage in debate; have access to experts in the field; and discuss their own work.  Participants will record ideas and develop thinking by contributing to a Grand Challenges wiki (http://www.stellarnet.eu/d/1/1/Home) where they will also find contributions from experts in the field.

The programme will include lectures from experts in the Grand Challenge areas and presentations exploring the Grand Challenges from both summer school participants and experts. Research projects within TEL are encouraged to represent their work as it relates to the Grand Challenges. The programme will also include practical and methodological workshops and opportunities for doctoral candidates to develop their own work. All participants will be expected to read and contribute to the Grand Challenges wiki. Students will have opportunities to present and discuss their doctoral work.

Applications should be submitted online before Friday 26th March. The online application form will be available from Friday 19th February at www.JTELSummerSchool.eu.

Applicants will be required to submit:
·        a CV outlining their educational background and work experience (maximum one page);
·        a letter of motivation, explaining why they want to participate in the Summer School (maximum one page);
·        a statement explaining how they think they might contribute to the Summer School and in particular how they can contribute to developing the Grand Challenges (maximum one page);
·        a letter of support from their PhD advisor, which should include a statement of the level of support the institution is able to supply.

Applicants requiring financial support for participation or travel should explicitly mention it in their motivation letter, briefly explaining their circumstances. It is expected that applicants working on research projects which are able to fund them will not apply for financial support. To ensure a high ratio between tutors and students the school will be limited to 60 PhD students.

In order to increase social contacts among the summer school participants, the programme includes several social events. A variety of sport activities will also be offered to the summer school participants.

Cultural excursions are organised on the Sunday preceding the summer school and the Saturday which closes the summer school.

Support

This year the JTEL Summer School will benefit from special funding from the STELLAR Network of Excellence in Technology Enhanced Learning, the Austrian Science and Research Liaison Office, and the European Association of Technology Enhanced Learning.

Venue Description

Magnificent and exciting, mysterious and surprising, Ohrid is one of the most ancient towns in Europe, flavoured with a taste of centuries gone by, full of Hellenistic, Roman, Slavic, Byzantine, and Turkish memories. During the classical and medieval periods Orhid was the artistic, cultural and spiritual centre of the Balkans and has been called “a notable bridge of Europeanart”. The town is proud of its rich cultural heritage and unique lake which both belong to UNESCO’s World Cultural and Natural Heritage (http://www.ohrid.com.mk/).

Accommodation and social events

Accommodation and summer school facilities will be made available at Hotel Granit (http://www.hotelgranit.com.mk/). Granit Hotel is located on the coast of Lake Ohrid in St. Stefan, 5 km from the centre of Ohrid. It is 12 km from the Ohrid airport. The Hotel has two harbours which enable access to the hotel and the beach from the lake. The wonderful woods which surround St. Stefan Monastery are located 1 km from the Granit Hotel.
PhD students are asked to share a double room with other PhD students.

Cost of Summer School

The cost for PhD students is Euro 550 (including accommodation - 7 nights in double room, meals, excursions, local transportation to and from the airport).  JTEL has secured funding to provide funding for about 40 PhD student grants to cover summer school accommodation, catering, and events. Please indicate if you are applying for a scholarship in your application. Some selected students with grants may be able to benefit from funding to cover travel expenses to Ohrid as well.

Calendar

March 26, 2010: Deadline for submitting applications to the Summer School

April 16, 2010:  Notification of acceptance

May 15, 2010: Pre-Summer School videoconferences begin

June 6, 2010:  Summer School begins

ROLE has published a new paper in the Training Journal magazine that is addressed to learning and development professionals in the UK and has a really wide readership. Karen Velasco from The British Institute of Learning and Development explains what Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) are and how PLEs can enhance learning. To learn about it read Karen’s article “Making learning personal“.

For all ROLE publications see under: http://www.role-project.eu/publications

Last week, the British Institute for Learning and Development (the BILD)
attended the Learning Technologies & Skills conference and exhibition in
London.

The show featured over 130 exhibitors (of which the BILD was one) with 3000
registered visitors over two days. Visitors could either look around the
exhibition, attend one of the 60 free seminars or take part in the main
conference programme.

The BILD attracted 100s of visitors to its stand and promoted the ROLE
project to the passing delegates through the exhibition banner and marketing
leaflets.

As the show was predominantly about innovations in technology based
learning, there was a great deal of interest shown in the ROLE concept and
the project itself.

As a partner on the project, the BILD welcomed the opportunity to promote
the research and innovation that is ROLE to the conference delegates.

(Preliminary) Call for Paper
EC-TEL 2010
Fifth European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning - Sustaining TEL: From Innovation to Learning and Practice
http://www.ectel2010.org

28 September - 1 October 2010 in Barcelona, Spain

The last decade has seen significant investment in terms of effort and
resources (time, people, money) in innovating education and training.
The time has come to make the bold step from small scale innovation
research and -development to larger scale implementation and
evaluation. The time has come to show the world (government, industry,
general population) that we have matured to the stage that sustainable
learning and learning practices – both in schools and in industry – can
be achieved based upon our work.

What not long ago was seen and experienced as a novel technology
(Internet and WWW) has become for much of the populace mundane and
commonplace (Web 2.0 and social software). What not long ago was
expensive and exotic (computers and broadband computer networks) is now
inexpensive and ordinary (netbooks and omnipresent wireless). And what
in the past was proprietary and inaccessible (information and learning
materials) is now generic and open (open educational resources).

The TEL community is faced by new research questions related to large
scale deployment of technology enhanced learning, support of individual
learning environments through mashup and social software, new approaches
in TEL certification, etc.. Furthermore, for new approaches are required
for TEL design, implementation, and use to improve the understanding and
communication of educational needs among all stakeholders, ranging from
researchers, learners, tutors, educational organizations, companies, TEL
industry, and policy makers.

ECTEL 2010 will bring together technological developments, learning
models, and implementations of new and innovative approaches to training
and education. The conference will explore how the synergy of multiple
disciplines, ranging from Computer Science, Education, Psychology,
Cognitive Science, and Social Science, can provide new, more effective
and more especially more sustainable, technology-enhanced learning
solutions to learning problems. The conference welcomes researchers and
developers from European and Non-European countries and industries to
present recent advancements from technologies, applications, and
learning models in all areas of technology enhanced learning.

CONFERENCE TOPICS
From both research and experience perspective the following topics of
interest to the conference include, but are not limited to:

Technological underpinning
* Large scale sharing and interoperability
* Technologies for personalisation and adaptation
* Context-aware systems
* Social computing and web 2.0
* Semantic web and web 3.0
* Mobile technologies
* Intelligent games
* Network infrastructures and architectures for TEL
* Sensors and sensor networks
* Roomware and ubiquitous computing
* Data mining and information retrieval
* Natural language processing and latent semantic analysis
* eLearning specifications and standards

Pedagogical underpinning
* Problem- and project-based learning / Inquiry based learning
* Computer supported collaborative learning
* Collaborative knowledge building
* Game-based and simulation-based learning
* Story-telling and reflection-based learning
* Instructional design and Design approaches
* Communities of learners & Communities of practice
* Teaching techniques and strategies for online learning
* Learner motivation and engagement
* Evaluation methods for TEL

Individual, social & organisational learning processes
* Cognitive mechanisms in knowledge acquisition and construction
* Self-regulated and Self-directed learning
* Social processes in teams and communities
* Social awareness
* Knowledge management and organisational learning
* Sustainability & TEL business models and cases
* Business-learning models

Learning contexts and domains
* Applications of TEL in various domains
* Formal education: initial (K-12, higher education), post-initial
(continuing education)
* Workplace learning in small, medium and large companies
* Aggregated learning at the workplace Distance and online learning
* Lifelong learning (cradle to grave)
* Vocational training
* Informal learning
* Non-formal learning
* Ubiquitous learning

TEL in developing countries
* ICT Inclusion for learning
* Digital divide and learning
* Generation divide and learning
* Education policies
* Rural learning

TEL, functional diversity and users with special needs
* Accessible learning for all
* Visual, hearing and physical impairments
* Psycho-pedagogic support for users
* Educational guidance for tutors
* Adapted learning flow, content and monitoring process
* Standards about accessibility and learning

IMPORTANT DATES (PROVISIONAL)
Paper submission: 11 April 2010
Paper acceptance: 31 May 2010
Camera-ready final papers: 30 June 2010
Workshop proposals: 11 April 2010
Workshop acceptance: 11 May 2010
Workshops: 28/29 September 2010
Conference 30 September /1 October 2010

SUBMISSION FORMATS (use of supplied template is mandatory)
All papers will be reviewed through a non-blind review process. Accepted
papers will be published in the conference proceedings. Proceeding
publishing is currently under negotiaiont with the Springer publisher
within their “Lecture Notes in Computer Science” series which is ranked
in the ISI Web of Knowledge. Please follow the Spinger guidelines at
http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-7-72376-0

* Full Papers (max. 16 pages)
* Short Papers and Posters (max. 6 pages)
* Poster and Demos (max. 2-4 pages)
* Meetings: contact the local organisation chair

WORKSHOP ORGANISATION
EC-TEL 2010 offers the opportunity to host several workshops. Parties
interested to organize a workshop are asked to submit a proposal of max.
4 pages outlining the theme of the workshop, workshop format, expected
participants and domains addressed, dissemination
activities, programme committee, and organizational requirements.

Proposals should be submitted to the workshop chair by 11 April to:
Daniel Burgos Solans

CONFERENCE ORGANISATION
- General chair: Vania Dimitrova, University of Leeds, UK
- Programme chairs: Martin Wolpers, Fraunhofer FIT, Germany and Paul A.
Kirschner, Open Universiteit Nederlands
- Workshop chair: Daniel Burgos, TELSpain, ATOS Origin, Spain
- Poster and Demonstration chairs: Stefanie Lindstaedt, Know-Center
Graz, Austria
- Industrial session chair: Ignacio Canela, TELSpain/Int. University of
La Rioja, Spain
- Local organization chair: Marta Enrech, TELSpain/Open University of
Catalonia, Spain
- Doctoral Consortium chairs: Katherine Maillet, INT, France, and Ralf
Klamma, RWTH Aachen, Germany

eChallenges e-2010 Conference and Exhibition
27 - 29 October 2010, Warsaw, Poland
Call for Papers - Deadline: 26 February

eChallenges e-2010 Conference & Exhibition takes place in Warsaw, Poland, 27 - 29 October. This is the twentieth in a series of Annual Conferences supported by the European Commission, which regularly attracts over 650 delegates from leading commercial, government and research organisations around the world to share knowledge and experience, lessons learnt and good practice.

We are now inviting extended abstracts (1,200 - 1,500 words) for technical papers, visionary papers, business and government case studies. Proposals to arrange 90 minute workshop sessions are also
welcome. Related themes and suggestions for papers and sessions are outlined in the Call for Papers

eChallenges e-2010 will focus on Applied ICT research topics addressing major societal and economic challenges. The programme will combine strategic keynote presentations, technical and policy papers, case
studies, workshops, an exhibition and social activities. The programme will showcase results from projects funded at national and regional level as well as those funded by European Commission Research Programmes.

Call for Papers - Important Deadlines:

• Submission deadline for Extended Abstracts: 26 February 2010
• Acceptance decision: 31 March 2010
• Submission of full paper: 30 April 2010

The scientific programme for eChallenges e-2020 is based on an open Call for Papers and the conference language is English. All abstracts must be submitted online by 26 February for double blind peer review by the International Programme Committee.

Papers should focus on a research or eAdoption topic on which a case study, initial or final results can be published. General project descriptions are not appropriate. All papers must highlight the level of innovation and actual or expected impact.

Please bear in mind that the extended abstracts submitted are double blind peer reviewed so they should not provide contact details within the text of the extended abstract submitted. All extended abstracts are
submitted as text via a form - tables and diagrams can be submitted as part of the full paper submission in April.

Extended abstracts should provide a good overview of your full paper and cover the following headings:

• Introduction - Issues to be addressed
• Objectives of your paper
• Methodology Used
• Technology or Business Case Description
• Conclusions and Summary Recommendations

Workshop proposals must also be registered by 26 February 2010. Each workshop proposal should be supported by a minimum of two papers per workshop session. Authors submit abstracts via Abstract Submission process, as these will be double blind peer reviewed by the IPC.

Core Thematic Priorities for eChallenges e-2010:

• eInfrastructures
• ICT for Networked Enterprise & RFID
• eGovernment & eDemocracy
• eHealth - Services to Citizens
• Collaborative Working Environments
• Living Labs
• Digital Libraries and Cultural Heritage
• Intelligent Content and Semantics
• High Performance Computing Applications
• Networked, Smart and Virtual Organisations
• Mobility
• Security and Identity Management
• Technology Enhanced Learning and ICT Skills

Related themes include but are not restricted to:

• i2020 and ICT take-up by SMEs
• Digital Content & Digital Rights Management - issues, applications & technologies
• eVoting, eParticipation
• eInclusion and eAccessibility
• eTourism
• Future Emerging Technologies
• Knowledge management and technologies
• Interoperability and Standardisation
• Open Source Technologies and Applications

More information is available at eChallenges e-2010 - Thematic Priorities.

eChallenges e-2010 is Supported by DG Information Society & Media of the European Commission, Hosted by Ministry of Sport and Tourism of the Republic of Poland, Supported by Warsaw Convention Bureau and the Convention Bureau of Poland, and Technical Co-Sponsored by IEEE.

Technical Co-Sponsors confirmed to date include IEEE Region 8; IEEE Poland Computer Chapter; IEEE Poland Communications Chapter; IEEE UKRI Computer Chapter. We kindly ask you to forward this Call for Papers to your colleagues in research, government or business interested in these topics.

eChallenges e-2010 Organising Committee:
Email: secretariat@eChallenges.org
www.eChallenges.org/e2010

Miriam Cunningham
IIMC International Information Management Corporation Ltd
353-1-8170607 (O)
353-1-8170606 (F)
E-mail: miriam@iimg.com
Web: www.iimg.com

Further Conferences, Exhibitions, Projects:

IST-Africa 2010 Conference & Exhibition
Durban, South Africa, 19 - 21 May 2010
www.IST-Africa.org/Conference2010 - Advance Programme Published

Future Network and MobileSummit 2010
Florence, Italy, 16 - 18 June 2010
www.FutureNetworkSummit.eu/2010 - Call for Papers Deadline 08 Dec ‘09

eSkills Summit 2010
Cape Town, South Africa, 26 - 28 July 2010
www.eSkills-Summit.org/2010 - Call for Papers Deadline 26 Feb ‘10

Africa4All Project - Connecting African Parliaments and Citizens through
ICT Innovative Technology
www.Africa4All-project.eu

Scope

Competence issues have been definitively recognized as both strategic and tactical factors to develop inter-enterprise or inter-individual collaborations. The scope of the session covers any type of collaborative network, where the competence factor plays a significant role. At a strategic level of enterprise management, organisational competence analysis is required to take coherent decisions on firm alliances; but at a tactical level, firms’ competence descriptions can also be at the heart of a competence management system providing concrete support to the implementation and deployment of specific collaboration opportunities. The scientific literature has developed complementary points of views on competence, used to support coordination or collaboration: (i) various management levels, as mentioned just above; but also, (ii) different granularity levels in competence description (firm collective competences versus individual competences); or, (iii) distinct types of scientific approaches (e.g. quantitative versus qualitative approaches of competence modelling and management). The objective of the session(s) is to contribute to an international state of the art about competence management in collaborative networks and organisations.

Topics

* Modelling and Managing Competences
* Ontologies for competence management or coordination ; ontology on skills, competences and related concepts
* Competence-based collaboration
* Competence-based simulation of collaborative networks
* Competence Assessment - Organisational and Individual Approaches and Methods
* Managing competence exchanges in collaborative organizations ; inter-enterprise competence transfers
* Competence models ; Integration of competence in enterprise models and modelling frameworks
* Impact of skills and competencies on the design and management of collaborative systems
* Competence management systems, Collaborative Management of Competencies
* Managing Competences with Social Network Analysis

Chairs

* Dr Xavier Boucher, Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Saint Etienne, France, boucher@emse.fr
* Dr Hamideh Afsarmanesh, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, h.afsarmanesh@uva.nl
* Prof. Dr.-Ing. Egon Mueller, Chemnitz University of Technology, egon.mueller@mb.tu-chemnitz.de
* Dr. Ralf Klamma, RWTH Aachen University, Germany, klamma@informatik.rwth-aachen.de

Submission procedure

Short abstracts submission: February, 15th, 2010
Full papers submission: March, 30th, 2010
Acceptance Notice: May, 15th, 2010
Camera Ready Submission: June, 13th, 2010

Acceptance of papers is based on the full paper (up to 8 pages). Each paper will be evaluated by three members of the International Program Committee. However, prospective authors should submit a short abstract in advance, in order to check if the proposed topic fits within the conference scope.

Submission on: www.pro-ve.org, with copy by email to the chairs of the session

ROLE has published a new paper:

Denis Gillet, Effie L-C. Law and Arunangsu Chatterjee (2010): Personal Learning Environments in a Global Higher Engineering Education Web 2.0 Realm. In: Proceedings of the IEEE First Annual Conference Engineering Education (EDUCON), 14-16 April 2010, Madrid, Spain. (summary)

For all ROLE publications see under: http://www.role-project.eu/publications

Call for papers - Workshop on Supporting e-learning with language resources and semantic data

Date: 22/5/2010
To take place within the Language Resources and Evaluation Conference
(LREC 2010) Valletta, Malta http://www.lrec-conf.org/lrec2010/

Background
Language resources are of crucial importance not only for research and development in language and speech technology but also for eLearning applications. In addition, the increasingly availability of semantically interpreted data in the WEB 3.0 is creating a huge impact in semantic technology. Social media applications such as Delicious, Flikr, You tube, Facebook, provide us with data in the form of tags and interactions among users. We believe that the exploitation of semantic data (emerging both from the Semantic Web and from social media) and language resources will drive the next generation eLearning platforms. The integration of these technologies within eLearning applications should also facilitate access to learning material in developing economies.

The workshop aims at bringing together computational linguists, language resources developers, knowledge engineers, social media researchers and researchers involved in technology-enhanced learning as well as developers of eLearning material, ePublishers and eLearning practitioners. It will provide a forum for interaction among members of different research communities, and a means for attendees to increase their knowledge and understanding of the potential of language resources in eLearning. We will especially target eLearning practitioners in the Mediterranean Partner Countries.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

o Relevance of language resources, semantic data (i.e. ontologies, social media data) and tools in eLearning;
o Use of social media applications and social networks in enhancing eLearning;
o Methods to link semantic description of learning objects to semantic web data;
o Ontology Design in the eLearning domain;
o Different methods of employing LRs such as written and spoken corpora, grammars, lexicons, and linguistic databases in eLearning;
o Use of multilingual language resources in facilitating knowledge exchange within eLearning applications;
o Use of language and speech technology for improvement of language learning applications;
o Use of language and speech technology to provide feedback in eLearning applications;
o Exploitation of semantic data and language resources for the development of intelligent functionalities in eLearning systems;
o Collaborative development of semantic data describing learning objects;
o Methods to re-use linked data in the development of learning objects;
o eLearning applications enhanced with language technology tools and semantic data in facilitating education access in Mediterranean partner countries.

Submissions
Abstracts should be 5 pages long and submitted through the START Conference Manager submission site: https://www.softconf.com/lrec2010/E-learning2010/
Accepted papers will be published in the workshop proceedings and should adhere to the style sheet.
When submitting a paper from the START page, authors will be asked to provide essential information about resources (in a broad sense, i.e. also technologies, standards, evaluation kits, etc.) that have been used for the work described in the paper or are a new result of your research.

For further information on this new initiative, please refer to
http://www.lrec-conf.org/lrec2010/?LREC2010-Map-of-Language-Resources

Important dates
Submission of abstracts: 15 February 2010
Notification of acceptance: 22 March 2010
Final version for the proceedings: 28 March 2010

Organisers
Paola Monachesi, University of Malta and Utrecht University
Alfio Massimiliano Gliozzo, ISTC-CNR
Eline Westerhout, Utrecht University

Programme Committee
Claudio Baldassarre (Open University)
Roberto Basili (University of Rome Tor Vergata)
Eva Blomqvist (ISTC –CNR)
Antonio Branco (University of Lisbon)
Dan Cristea (University of Iaşi)
Ernesto William De Luca (TU Berlin)
Philippe Dessus (Univ. Pierre-Mendès-France, Grenoble)
Claudio Giuliano (FBK-irst)
Wolfgang Greller (Open University of the Netherlands)
Alessio Gugliotta (Innova spa)
Jamil Itmazi (Palestine Ahliya University)
Susanne Jekat (Zürich Winterthur Hochschule)
Vladislav Kubon (Charles University Prague)
Lothar Lemnitzer (Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften)
Stefanie Lindstaedt (Know-Center, Graz)
Angelo Marco Luccini (INSEAD)
Manuele Manente (JOGroup)
Dunja Mladenic (J. Stefan Institute)
Mattew Montebello (University of Malta)
Jad Najjar (WU Vienna)
Valentina Presutti, STLab (ISTC – CNR)
Adam Przepiorkowski (Polish Academy of Sciences)
Mike Rosner (University of Malta)
Doaa Samy (Cairo University)
Khaled Shaalan (Cairo University)
Kiril Simov (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences)
Stefan Trausan-Matu (University of Bucarest)
Cristina Vertan (University of Hamburg)
Fridolin Wild (Open University)

On the 17th of December 2009 our ROLE Christmas Project will take place at RWTH Aachen. We are happy to present and discuss our first prototypes in a big consortium. The agenda is as follows scheduled:

10:00 Welcome
10:05 Christmas Project Overview
10:20 Presentation of Partner Widgets
11:00 Coffee Break
11:30 Integrated Prototype Demonstration
12:30 Lunch
14:00 Prototype Testing Session
15.00 Reflections on Development Process
15.45 Coffee Break
16:15 MASHL 2009 Special Issue Paper
17:15 Easter Project Planning
18.15 Wrap up
20.00 Dinner