In the framework of the European High Level Conference «Education in the Digital Era», a prior debate is taking place online.
You may contribute to it at #EdDigEra
http://openeducationeuropa.eu/en/edu-in-digital-era

eLearning Papers is a journal on open and digital learning issues. Different issues are focusing on different themes. Next theme will be on "Innovation on Education"

The European Commission is organising an High-Level Conference on "Education in the Digital Era". It'll take place in Brussels on the 11th December. Discussion will also take place online. Themes will be adrressed in advanced, promoting an online debate feeding into the conference, and during the day allowing anyone to follow-up and contribute to the debate on spot. Bookmark the page and go back to it during the comming weeks. Ricardo Twitter: @ricbruno71

Quite interesting guide on how to find relevant OER of different types and natures. «Reusing existing Open Educational Resources (OER) can save significant time and effort. The OPEN partners recommend TAACCCT grantees invest up-front time finding OER to reuse rather than starting development of new educational resources right away. A significant benefit of OER is that they provide source material to build your development efforts around.» Ricardo twitter: @ricbruno71

Just released. This is the result of a survey about the usage of OER in higher education. It gives insightful views on how OER are perceived within universities. It becomes thus a good support for those trying to implement an institutional strategy for OER. Best regards Ricardo Twitter @ricbruno71

In week 3 we've addressed how open knowledge can promote active citizenship. A pre-requisite for that is that individuals are equipped with the right set of digital skills. Being digital native does not necessarily imply that one is digital competent. The promotion of digital skills is at least as important as ensuring accessibility to technology. This document is a reference framework to identify what are the different elements of digital skills as these go much beyond than merely knowing how to use a computer. This has been developed by the European Commission, engaging several different stakeholders from several countries, and is being used as a support to strategies for the promotion of digital skills.

Quite interesting video by Dr Jekins in module 3. Indeed participatory culture is taking place only made possible from the openness brought by technology to knowledge. It is not only changing the way we live but also our roles in society.

One thing I'd like to highlight: he's constant reference to digital skills or competences. Indeed one of the success elements for society is the potential to develop digital skills, specially among youngsters. Unfortunately, in this field, most of us are still self-learners, as the education systems are not yet embedding this need. (as well shown in the end of the video by the fact that many institutions simply ban access to).

An interesting resource in this field is "DIGCOMP: A Framework for Developing and Understanding Digital Competence in Europe", published by the European Commission a few months ago. Could be useful in many parts of the world to understand the extension of these digital competences.

We can find it in here: http://ipts.jrc.ec.europa.eu/publications/pub.cfm?id=6359

twitter: @ricbruno71

by IPTS - European Commission.

I found this video quite attractive. Well realised and well focused. By focusing on showing facts and figures that can be seen as unexpected or shocking the authors clearly managed to keep the attention of the viewer. And quite a lot of interesting data shown leads to deep reflections.
The video is successful in passing a quite clear message: social and digital media are unquestionably part of our lives.
This leads me to two reflections, a major and a minor:
The main one is the fact that indeed our education systems do need desperately to catch up with the world. Though we find today amazing examples of openness, sharing and digital integration in the education system, we also find that the average case is hardly even close. We must be capable of going beyond the frontrunners and reach out to the average school, teacher and student. Classrooms should be as open and sharing spaces as our lives are.
The second one is a detail. We simply must take out of our speeches the expression "21st century". We keep on using it as meaning a modern world, a new era, or alike. The fact is that most of students were born after 2000. Therefore it is not the 21st century that is new, it is the 20th that is pre-birth for most, therefore pre-historic.