Category Archives: News

Jul 20

ECO partners discuss Project final stages in Milan

By | Meeting, News, News about ECO | No Comments

ECO Consortium held their sixth biannual meeting in Milan (Politecnico di Milano) on July 13-14, 2016. With the project running at full throttle on its third, final year, some critical issues were discussed, such as further improvements on quality research, new MOOCs from e-teachers, dissemination campaigns on Social Media, Associate Partners joining the project, and some interesting options to ensure continuation and development after ECO’s project life in January 31th, 2017.

Currently on its 30th month, ECO project is fully developed and growing fast. Participation figures have been achieved and efforts are currently focused on the increasing number of new MOOCs designed and developed by e-teachers, which enrich ECO catalogue . Also, ECO is raising interest among educational institutions and companies worldwide, and a number of agreements are being signed. The new members usually join the project as Associate partners and contribute with their own MOOCs, specifically designed to meet ECO’s quality standards and pedagogical approach.

Partners will hold a final meeting in January, 2017, right before ECO ends its project life. By then, the future features of ECO will have been planned and discussed in detail.

Milan meeting

Author: Ángela Benavides (UNED)

Jul 20

Webinar: “Socially inclusive pedagogical models for MOOCs”

By | ECO Webinar, News, News about ECO | No Comments

Last Wednesday, 27th of July, at 10:30 (CEST) our partner EADTU (European Association of Distance Teaching Universities), coordinated the second ECO webinar in our series: “Socially inclusive pedagogical models for MOOCs“. During this 90-minute webinar, teachers from different university partners of ECO Consortium elaborated on the need of an adjusted pedagogical model for MOOCs such as to achieve the aim to use MOOC to provide quality education to all.

Screen shot of webinar WP4 presentation

Below you can find the slides used by the speakers in order of presentation:

For those of you who could not attend now you can watch the whole session recording on our YouTube Channel:

Jun 27

ECO attends Policy Forum on European MOOCs

By | Conferences MOOC, Events, News, News about ECO | No Comments

Tomorrow, 28th of June, our partner Universidad de Oviedo, represented by Santiago Fano, is taking part in the Policy Forum on European MOOCs, organized by EADTU and HOME (Brussels, Dutch House of Provinces). As stated on the project’s website: “The forum will contribute to better position decision makers to understand the “MOOC phenomenon” and capitalise on the advantages of these large-scale courses and use them as a strategic opportunity to help meet local needs and develop related capacities.”

Santi Fano will take part in the panel “Shared MOOC services: regional, European or global level?” along with other project’s representatives, such as the French MOOC service provider, FUN. His policy paper “MOOC Development Policies: The ECO Project in the European and Spanish Context” is available (p. 78) at the full publication “European Policy Response on MOOC opportunities“.

310518_Events_website_ECO-policy forum

Image taken from http://home.eadtu.eu/news/109-policy-forum-on-european-moocs

 

Jun 23

Award to the MOOC “Digital Literacy for Groups in Risk of Social Exclusion” at Innodoct

By | Conferences MOOC, News, News about ECO | No Comments

Innodoct is an International Conference about Innovation, Documentation and Teaching Technologies that has taken place in Valencia the days 18- 20 of May 2016. The aim of this conference is to provide a forum for teachers,  researchers and professionals that allows sharing their investigations, actual projects, results and challenges and discussing ideas related with New Technologies of Information and Communication; it also will allows sharing innovations and methodologies applied to Education and to Investigation.  In the context of this conference the eTIC team of the University of Oviedo has presented the communication “Teaching Innovation in the training about Digital Literacy for groups in risk of social exclusion” where the teaching roles of the MOOC “Digital Literacy for groups in risk of social exclusion” of the project ECO Learning is analysed, this shows the possibilities that social networks open for teaching innovation through the strengthening of the paper of teaching teams that develop massive online training, which finally is one of the challenges that are considered currently in this area.

This paper  has gotten a double recognition in Innodoct: the award for the best paper and the award for the best video presentation. The awarded video sums up the most relevant aspects of the  paper and shows the experience developed has teachers in the MOOC about Digital Literacy of groups in risk of social exclusion of the ECO Project.

Please, use YouTube’s self-winding translation to read the subtitles of the video in English.

Author: Isabel Hevia (Universidad de Oviedo)

May 17

ECO Learning drives an educational democracy

By | Conferences MOOC, Interview, News | No Comments

The ECO project is presenting and represented in various MOOC and educational conferences, not just in Europe but throughout the world.

ECO project coordinator Sara Osuna travelled to the CIP conference in May in Cancún 2016 to present the status on the 17 ECO Learning MOOCs as well as the progress made on the first MOOCs designed and run by the programmes own eTeachers. ECO learning is on a path of growth towards an expending democratic form of education, where both learning and teaching anytime, anywhere needs to be top of mind.

“The idea is to drive the enrichment of ubiquitous learning and pull down the classroom walls in education, proving that people are capable of learning anywhere”, Sara Osuna says in an interview with Quinta Roo Hoy, a media platform covering the CIP Conference, II Cumbre Iberamericano de Periodismo, which took place between 12 and 15th of May in Cancún, Mexico. Theme of the conference was Channels, journalism and development, the power of internet in Latin America (Medios, periodismo y desarrollo, el poder de internet en América Latina).

Osuna commented during the interview and at the conference on the results ECO Learning project so far: 17 MOOC courses, 100% free, the ECO course portfolio encompassing content from humanities topics to languages, robotics and creativity, in no less than 6 different languages. 50.000 Registered participants so far.

The interview can be read here in Spanish.

 

In addition she expressed her content with not only these numbers and facts, but moreover the proof that through these Massive Online Open Coomunication modules, education can be accessed and enjoyed by anyone, regardless of the time or place. Anyone interested needs just an email address and internet connection, register and choose the or more courses as they like, free of charge. In that sense the MOOC portfolio is giving everyone the opportunity to develop, learn, close any skills gap they feel they to close for better job opportunity or for the purpose of personal growth.

In other words: we are getting one step closer to eductional democracy.

Apr 01

Learn Spanish while travelling with ECO Project e-teachers’ new MOOC

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After a MOOC-based, specific training, participants in the educational, EU-funded ECO project have turned into e-teachers: they have designed, developed and now prepare to launch their own MOOCs. Among the first four courses ready to open up on April 5th, one may prove essential for a holiday in Spanish-speaking countries. Would you like to try?

Español para viajeros (Spanish for travellers) is an accessory course of Spanish as a Foreign Language, focusing on communicational situations likely to take place while travelling in Spain. Scenes and featured situations can be personalized according to participants’ interests and preferences.

The MOOC targets intermediate level students of Spanish as a Foreign language (A2-B1 according to CEFR) planning to visit a Spanish-speaking country and hoping to improve their language skills on real-life, travelling-focused situations.

Forum boards and Social media are essential tools in this course, aimed at promoting interactive and learning of both spoken and written Spanish. Team work and peer-to-peer assessment will also enhance the participant’s capacity to develop learning skills in a self-sufficient, collaborative way, according to the MOOC designers.

The teaching team consists of educators from all paths of life, who previously completed a number of ECO Project MOOCs, mandatorily including the “sMOOC Step by Step”, through which they got capacitation to later develop their own social MOOCs. ECO Consortium provides them with virtual space to host the courses, which are now part of the project’s catalogue. All further information on how to become an e-teacher is available on ECO-learning website. .

For those already fluent in Spanish, there will be three other MOOCs available on April 5th as well: Road sMOOC: Un viaje Eduktransformador on edu-communication; Running Saludable 2.0 which implements technology and social media to improve daily training routines for amateur runners and Introducción a la escritura científica: Retos y potencialidades del entorno digital, a tutorial on scientific writing texts.

Meanwhile, the latest edition of ECO MOOC pilots is successfully unfolding. All 11 updated courses (among 25 in the catalogue) are midway its tutorized period and, therefore, open for all those interested!

Mar 22

ECO Project condemns terror attacks on Brussels

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The ECO Project and all of its members are shocked by the atrocious attacks on the Brussels´ airport and city center metro station.

We condemn the attacks masterminded by a group of extremists who have no concept of our our values of freedom and peace.

We urge everyone to refrain from distributing image and video materials showing victims. Out of repect for the families and loved ones and in addition to not play into the hands of the extremists who use these images for propagandistic purposes.

Our thoughts are with the fathers, mothers, sons and daughters who became victims of today´s attacks.

– The ECO-Learning Consortium

Nov 14
black tie on Flag of France

Declaration of solidarity with Paris after terrorist attacks on November 2015

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Events as the ones last night on November 13th not only are an attack on a nation, but also an attack on humanity. Our proyect ECO cannot stand impassive against these acts. Our educative and communicative model is based on the pillar of democracy, interculturally aligned with basic human rights which dismiss

  • Both imposition and intolerance
  • Both agression and violence
  • Both martyrdom and submission

For this and even more so now we believe in what we are developing within ECO. We believe in education as a axis of human evolvement. We believe in democracy and participation. We believe in plurality and liberty.

We will continue to work in resisting and condemning terrorists´ attacks and stand in solidarity with all of our ECO partners, teachers and students and with the people of France.

Signed: All partners of the ECO project