OEB: Europe's Digital Education Vision
Berlin (GER), December 2011 - Europe's Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes has reiterated the European Commission's commitment to ensuring that all Europeans are fully digital by 2013. In a major speech at ONLINE EDUCA BERLIN 2011, Commissioner Kroes said: "My goal in the EU is clear: to get every European Digital. That has to include education and training. We need every teacher digital and every student digital. Right from the very start of formal education and as part of lifelong learning."
"
She said that, despite the plethora of information and communication technology tools available today, Europeans are still not taking full advantage of the digital revolution to educate, enrich, and enlighten themselves. Other countries, however, have realised the immense potential of technology to transform education. "In South Korea, all classrooms will go fully digital by 2015… So why here in Europe do most classrooms still feel like they did when I was at school?"
Commissioner Kroes' speech at the opening plenary session of ONLINE EDUCA BERLIN set the tone for a conference which attracted 2.154 participants to its programme of discussions about the latest trends in ICT and education. OEB is the world's largest eLearning conference and, this year, 360 speakers from 43 countries discussed the latest research and best practice in learning for the corporate, education and public service sectors.
Among the line-up of speakers this year was Professor Huw Morris of the University of Salford, UK, who spoke about managed learning environments in the era of Web 2.0 and cloud computing. He said, "In the late 1990s as the World Wide Web was beginning to be used for educational purposes the dominant idea influencing debate about online learning activity was the notion of the online community. Nowadays, we have to promote the notion that we have to promote critical and creative engagement with these technologies and new ways of understanding digital and networking literacies."
Professor Doug Thomas of the University of Southern California outlined his vision of "a new learning culture" in which education will involve much more than knowledge transfer from the teacher to the student, and Dr John Bohannon of Science magazine spoke about "transactive memory" and our increasing reliance on online resources and networks.
With the theme of "New Learning Cultures", several trends emerged at OEB, including the challenge of educating the educators; strategies for embracing eLearning innovations; and the value of incorporating informal learning in primary and secondary schooling, in tertiary and vocational training, and in workplace learning and development programmes.
The next ONLINE EDUCA BERLIN will take place from November 28th - 30th, 2012.
