Final roundtable Gender & ICT at UOC University

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UNESCO Chair in Education & Technology for Social Change

Attendants to the final Roundtable of the study "Professional trajectories of women in ICT: employment dynamics and policy responses in Spain & the UK", carried out by the research group Gender & ICT from the IN3 and with the participation of UNESCO Chair in e-Learning.

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Final roundtable Gender & ICT at UOC University

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Many countries are seeking a radical transformation of the process and outputs of skill formation as solutions to the economic crisis are sought. One of the consequences of the reality of exponential technological change for the VET curriculum, which has been the cornerstone of skills formation, is that it is already outdated by the time students start their course as the pace and impact of technological change in the workplace removes the need for previously taught skills. Skills obsolescence therefore needs to become a factor in the planning and delivery of the VET curriculum so that it is reviewed and changed on a more regular and routine basis than hitherto. This means more than deploying digital technologies to the aims, objectives, content, activity and assessment of traditional skills formation but reframing skills education itself so that it is presented to the students as a ‘curriculum of problems’ around which resources become available as required. What we see emerging is a heuristics-based model defined by the skills of search, critiquing, collaboration and curation and the practice of real-time application of knowledge. Over the course of the last year Cathy Ellis has been working with Professor Sugata Mitra and more recently with associates at Harvard School of Education, MIT Media Lab and EdX exploring the implications of this approach and planning a series of controlled curriculum experiments which will be conducted in a number of VET settings over the coming academic year. These experiments will seek to examine the following questions: Have we reached the point where learning to learn has become a fundamental capability for the VET student and what does this mean in practice? Can we take the concept of Self-Organised Learning as pioneered by Sugata Mitra in the primary sector and apply it to VET? Will Self-Organised Learning better equip our students to manage the challenges of continual change in the workplace as previously sought after vocational competencies are rendered obsolete in a world characterised by ‘plug and play’? In her demo Cathy will outline the work done to date and share the initial findings from the first round of experiments which are planned to take place in October 2012.

Self-organised Learning in the context of Vocational Education and Training (...

UNESCO Chair in Education & Technology for Social Change

The revolution of low cost private education is taking place across the developing world. In poor urban and peri-urban areas, private school children make up a majority of schoolchildren; even in rural areas, a substantial minority of parents is using private schools. Research has shown that children in low cost private schools outperform those in public government schools, even if they operate at a fraction of the cost. Importantly, low cost private schools are generally financially sustainable, and hence provide a scalable solution to the problem of providing education for all. In his talk, J. Tooley will examine this background revolution and follow educational entrepreneurs who are creating chains of low cost private schools. Such chains are attracting investment and creating radical innovations that have the potential to transform educational opportunities for the poor.

Frugal Innovation in Education: The case of chains of low-cost private school...

UNESCO Chair in Education & Technology for Social Change

The world needs creative and entrepreneurial talents who are globally competent to take advantage of the opportunities brought about technology and globalization and tackle the tough challenges facing human beings. But our schools are being pushed to produce homogenous, compliant, and employee-minded test-takers, as a result of seductive power of the traditional education paradigm. In this presentation, Dr. Yong Zhao challenges the traditional paradigm, debunks the myth of international tests such as PISA and TIMSS, and proposes a new paradigm of education aimed to cultivate diverse, creative, and entrepreneurial talents. Dr. Zhao’s presentations is based on the massive amount of evidence from a variety of sources he gathered for his new book World Class Learners: Educating Creative and Entrepreneurial Students (Corwin, 2012) and his Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization (ASCD, 2009).

World Class Education: Educating Creative and Entrepreneurial Students (By Yo...

UNESCO Chair in Education & Technology for Social Change

Our goal is to connect the knowledge base from cognitive development and neuroscience to practical knowledge about learning and teaching in educational environments. Grounding learning and teaching in research about learning, we have discovered a universal scale for learning – which greatly increases the power of assessments and makes possible the use of a common toolkit for learning sequences in any domain. In addition, we have been able to design on-line computer-based assessments that make assessment both less expensive and more convenient. The tests start with assessments that are connected to learning environments and can be used directly to promote and guide learning. Our goal is to move beyond using tests as sorting mechanisms and toward using them as powerful aids for education.

Mind, Brain, and Education: How Cognitive & Neuro Science Inform Educational ...

UNESCO Chair in Education & Technology for Social Change

Secondary teachers’ training has become one of the key elements in educational policies in Spain. For more than a decade, university and secondary education teachers have claimed the need to design specific and quality based training for professionals that wanted to become teachers in this specific level, giving special emphasis on the didactics and the psychological aspects involved in the process of teaching and learning with adolescents. In order to cope with this demand, a Master of Secondary School Teacher Training was designed at a national level with specific criteria. This master, as in other European countries, pretends to contribute to the development of the teaching competencies that are necessary to succeed in teaching at this complex educational level. It is addressed to different teaching disciplines, with a general psychopedagogical approach and specific teaching competencies for each domain (i.e. Mathematics, English, etc.) Specifically, at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) the master’s programme wants to contribute to the development of particular aspects such as: (a) Collaboration between novice teachers from different disciplines simulating the real context at schools. UOC’s programme, as coordinator of the pychopedagogical training modules addressed to students of different disciplines, has designed specific tasks that teach and demand students to collaborate between them as interdisciplinary teams. (b) ICT integration into the teaching and learning processes.

Training new teachers for Secondary Education (By Teresa Guasch & Guillermo ...

UNESCO Chair in Education & Technology for Social Change

The Usual Suspects? Teachers, Their Challenges and Development (By Ferran Rui...

UNESCO Chair in Education & Technology for Social Change

The role of narrative storytelling is central to almost any creative learning activity involving children. Whether through words or images, or a combination of both, children create and communicate their unique stories through the use of narrative. Innovations in technology over the last few decades and, especially, within the last few years are becoming a regular part of the educational experiences for children. Children, by virtue of their age, are the earliest early-adopters of new technology. However, there is a lack of education and training on how to use digital video technology in order to expand the creative possibilities of children and their imagination. Our research attempts to address that deficiency by providing children with the tools and environment to apply the knowledge they possess through the utilization of digital video technology. In our research, we focus on the use of digital video technology in children’s play activities. Digital video technology can be used to enhance both the learning activities as well the creative output. The effects of mixing traditional tools of learning with new instruments – particularly through the use of video technology - in a group setting illustrates the importance of the creative process, as well as creative output, in children.

Enhancing the creativity of children through the use of digital video technol...

UNESCO Chair in Education & Technology for Social Change

Enhancing the status and professionalism of teachers in the digital age (By E...

UNESCO Chair in Education & Technology for Social Change

In the 21st century the work of teachers should undergo two fundamental transformations. We have to rethink what we teach as well as how we teach it. While this might be stating the obvious, it is professors and teachers that are teaching future generations of students at all levels. Since they receive their professional education at universities, any reform that aims at having a transformative impact throughout the educational system has to start there. With rapidly advancing digital technologies the world's information will increasingly be available at out fingertips - anytime and anywhere. The primary task of higher education therefore will evolve from transmitting information, to integrating vast amounts of information in such a way that it results in knowledge. Yet, in order to provide students with an education that is adequate for the interdependent, exponential, complex and messy world that they live in, our understanding of knowledge itself has to change. Reformed higher education curricula that acknowledge what we call the 'New Enlightenment' should place an increased emphasis on the epistemological dimension of academic knowledge. By teaching teachers to embrace the world's complexity and messiness, we can help to transform society's understanding of knowledge - a crucial prerequisite for dealing with many of the global challenges the world's facing today. While there are many reasons to place curriculum reform at the heart of any major reform of higher education, this raises the question of how these new curricula can be delivered at scale. Discussions and interdisciplinary peer-to-peer collaboration in small groups will be quintessential to this new form of higher education. Large lecture halls on the other hand will become largely superfluous. In a context of stagnating or diminishing resources t his new form of higher education will make the adoption of technology inevitable. In so doing, it will shift the role of the teacher from that of a recitation machine back to that of an advisor and mentor. Online social networks will go a long way to facilitate peer-to-peer collaboration. Educational analytics and automatization of basics teacher task (such as grading tests) will allow teachers to refocus on the epistemological questions. In short, we have come full circle. In the 20th century we taught digital (i.e. uniform) curricula by analogue means. In the 21st century we should teach analogue (i.e. locally contextualized) curricula by digital means.

Higher Education Curricula, Technology and the Changing Role of the Teacher i...

UNESCO Chair in Education & Technology for Social Change

In A New Culture of Learning, we suggest that thriving in the 21st Century requires more than just learning or even learning how to learn. These worked great for the 20thcentury but will not sustain us in this one. Instead we must focus on how to cultivate imagination. To us, imagination is more important than creativity - the current craze in education. Imagination is critical for finding new ways to frame issues and for crafting new conceptual lenses. Said most simply, in a world of constant change we must master the art of the beginner's mind where imagination reigns supreme.

Cultivating the imagination for a world of constant change (By Douglas Thomas)

UNESCO Chair in Education & Technology for Social Change

North Hertfordshire College (www.nhc.ac.uk) is a large general further education college in England with just over 4,000 students aged 16 to 18 and around 10,000 adults. The college is located across the towns of Stevenage, Hitchin and Letchworth, serving a population of around 200,000 people. The college is transforming its approach to education and training to address the growing gap between the knowledge and skills learned in school and college and those required by a rapidly changing, uncertain and fragmented workplace. It is developing its ideas in collaboration with colleges from across the country, and using leading research in the field to address the needs of students from different backgrounds and to coordinate the needs of both students and their local communities. The approach requires a radical review of teacher training and development. It is founded on the development of a new pedagogical framework which will, predominantly, be a blended learning model. The college is on a journey leading to a whole college transformation where students will learn in a visually stimulating and collaborative environment, utilising the latest Information and Communication Technologies and where learning will be an experience developed with and shared by tutors and students. The college, through a targeted induction programme, will ensure all students are on the right level of the right course for them and, in the process, will learn about their individual capabilities and ambitions enabling it to guide the student on a truly personalised journey through their education. Its ambition is to change the education paradigm of vocational and Lifelong Learning-articulating, in practice, the research set out by, amongst others, Sugata Mitra and Sir Ken Robinson. The presentation that will be research-based but grounded in its application in the classroom and in college initiatives for teacher training and development. It will be informative, practical, challenging and provocative.

New Learning Team: Time for Creativity and Collaboration in Teacher Education...

UNESCO Chair in Education & Technology for Social Change

The world is in a constant state of change. The changes are profoundly affecting every part of the fabric of our society. Education is particularly is affected by change, with a direct impact on the cultures of our schools and universities, and also by projection – with implications for all our futures. It is likely that the students we now teach will leave school to enter a world of work that is radically different to the world with which we are currently familiar. The evolution of digital media has brought us to an unprecedented point in history where we are able to connect, create and collaborate in new ways on a global basis. Knowledge production is burgeoning, to the extent that any fact or statistic is now openly searchable and available on the Web. Such cultural shifts necessitate new modes of thinking, new ways of communication and new rules of engagement with people, content and organisations. Mobile technologies, handheld devices and social media have combined to create fertile, anytime-anyplace learning opportunities that are unprecedented. Teachers and learners are adapting to these new untethered and ubiquitous modes of education, and in so doing, are discovering an entirely new array of skills which we shall call the ‘digital literacies’. These include the ability to learn across and between multiple and diverse platforms, the ability to self broadcast to large audiences and the discernment to select and filter out good and bad content, all achievable within ever changing mediated environments. What will be the new skills and literacies that teachers and students will need, to survive and thrive in the digital age? How will assessment of learning change? What will be the expectations of young learners, and will these differ from what the institutions can offer? Ultimately, how will teachers prepare students for a world of work we can no longer clearly describe? I n this presentation he will explore these concepts and discuss the future of learning and teaching in the digital age.

Learning and teaching in the digital age (By Steve Wheeler)

UNESCO Chair in Education & Technology for Social Change

Supporting Teacher Development of Competences in the Use of Learning Technolo...

UNESCO Chair in Education & Technology for Social Change

Presentation for the VII International Seminar of the UOC UNESCO Chair in e-Learning: Mobile Technologies for Learning & Development. 20th century education required that materials were developed in advance by the instructor, and information were scarce and publishing limited. Today information is indeed abundant and publishing is pervasive and easily accessible by students staying connected while on the go. Wireless devices are replacing wired ones in all walks of life, whereby a massive and increasing number of people soon own a computer that fits in their hand and is able to connect to the network wirelessly from virtually anywhere. 21st Century education requires that learning processes are developed dynamically both inside and outside of class with students as codevelopers, or even as primary codevelopers.

Promoting Interaction and Engagement in Education and Training by use of iPod...

UNESCO Chair in Education & Technology for Social Change

Presentation for the VII International Seminar of the UOC UNESCO Chair in e-Learning: Mobile Technologies for Learning & Development. The project mobile Game Based Learning (mGBL) is coordinated by evolaris next level GmbH and: has been implemented from October 2005 until December 2008, has been conducted by 30 researchers from 11 project partners from 5 European countries (Great Britain, Italy, Croatia, Austria and Slovenia), used nearly 600 person-moths resources with a budget of 2.5 Mio EUR, was supported by the EU under the FP6 IST. The overall goal of the project was to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of learning in the target group of young people (aged 16 – 24) through the development of innovative learning models based on mobile games. The biggest challenge in this project was to communicate content from different fields in a motivational, inclusive and emotional way. As the most personal and emotional communication channel the mobile phone was used to establish the link between learners and teachers. The specific aim of the project was to design, develop and pilot a prototype game platform that might be used to efficiently develop games for m-learning. The basic idea is to use the mobile phone to implement games bridging the real and virtual world. These games are firstly intended to directly support learning via opportunities to develop knowledge and cognitive skills in an exciting and inspiring – and hence in a highly emotional – way, and secondly to indirectly motivate users to refer to other media (e.g. “classic” libraries, scripts, etc.) for learning purposes.

The Project "Mobile Game Based Learning" (By Thomas Putz)

UNESCO Chair in Education & Technology for Social Change

Presentation for the VII International Seminar of the UOC UNESCO Chair in e-Learning: Mobile Technologies for Learning & Development. There is much activity, much discussion and much interest in the capacity of mobile devices to deliver, support and enhance learning for the disenfranchised, the disadvantaged and the developing communities and regions of the world especially in Africa. Much of this discussion, interest and activity is however uncritical, simplistic and poorly synthesised. In general the argument for using mobile phones or other mobile devices to address educational disadvantage is straightforward: their ownership and acceptance are near-universal and cut across most notions of ‘digital divides’; their use is based around robust sustainable business models; they are, unlike other ICTs, found at the BOP amongst the next billion subscribers; they deliver information, ideas and, increasingly, images.

Mobiles for Learning in Africa.... Too Good to be True? (By John Traxler)

UNESCO Chair in Education & Technology for Social Change

Learning technologies in mobile scenarios (By Magí Almirall)

UNESCO Chair in Education & Technology for Social Change

Analysis of the m-learning practices in Telefónica regarding its different st...

UNESCO Chair in Education & Technology for Social Change

Presentation for the VII International Seminar of the UOC UNESCO Chair in e-Learning Literacy levels in most poor countries remain shockingly low and formal education is making little progress. MILLEE improves literacy through language learning games on cellphones – the “Personal Computers of the developing world” – which are a perfect vehicle for new kinds of out-of-school language learning. The project focuses on developing scalable, localizable design principles and tools for language learning. The challenges are (i) to integrate sound learning principles, (ii) to provide concrete design patterns that integrate entertainment and learning, and (iii) to understand cultural and learning differences in children in developing regions.

Mobile Phones and Language Literacy in Rural Developing Regions (By Matthew ...

UNESCO Chair in Education & Technology for Social Change

Presentation for the VII International Seminar of the UOC UNESCO Chair in e-Learning: Mobile Technologies for Learning & Development. school has been the same for at least the last century. The big difference is that inside some classrooms we find netbooks on the students desks with the same XIX century teacher student disposition. The question is then, how can technology change classroom dynamics to fulfill students' and teachers' needs? The benefits of technology can be realized only through an effective learning and teaching strategy. The problem to solve has to be shifted from a technological perspective, to a pedagogical one. We show how different technologies can be used to foster collaborative learning inside the classroom to improve learning, and social and communication abilities.

Integrating technology and pedagogy in the classroom (By Miguel Nussbaum)

UNESCO Chair in Education & Technology for Social Change

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