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

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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)

ECO to host workhop at EDEN conference

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ECO to host workshop at EDEN

ECO to host workshop at EDEN

Between the 14th and 17th of June the annual elEarning European Distance and eLearning Network (EDEN) Conference will take place in Budapest.

The context of the EDEN conference for 2016 is described (on the website) as follows:  “The powerful combination of the ’information age’ and the consequent disruption caused by these unstable environments provides the impetus to look afresh and identify new models and approaches for education (e.g. OERs, MOOCs, PLEs, Learning Analytics etc.).”

Attend ECO workshop

It is therefore very suitable for ECO to attend this conference and connect with subject matter peers and experts.

ECO will be hosting a workshop “Social environments for Learning” on Wednesday 15th of June, during the afternoon parallel sessions: C7 from 16:15h until 17:45h.

  • Convenors: Divina Frau Meigs, Adeline Bossu, Sorbonne Nouvelle, ECO project
  • Moderator: Sünne Eicher, SE, ECO Project

In this workshop we propose to discuss the pros and cons of using commercial social networks vs internal contained social network functionalities within a MOOC platform. The use of commercial social networks is relatively controversial for learning environments, beyond issues of privacy and traceability, especially in Europe.

Researchers have found tensions and polarizations that complicate the issue: open vs contained content, formal vs informal settings, structured vs unstructured exchanges, traceable vs untraceable data, personal vs professional status of interactions.

Why attend?

Understanding the dynamics of such participatory tools is crucial to social MOOCs. They are part of the live core of interactive spaces characteristic of sMOOCs and contribute to transforming the relation to learning, if not to the nature of knowledge itself. They enable flux and openness while facilitating communication among various types of participants (teachers, mentors, tutors, learners….). They create an epistemic community with an important impact on the learning events as they are delivered within the spaces of interaction provided by the social networks. This “inside-outside” navigation creates synergies and empowers communities as they can mix and remix the resources available online and produce their own projects and evaluations.

The workshop will examine different ways of using social networks functionalities “inside-outside” a sMOOC platform, based on practices carried out by the sMOOC pilots of the European project ECO and their evolution through several iterations. We will also present how ECO pedagogical teams use commercial and non-commercial social networks in order to reach the goals of the European project (enrolment, motivation, community management, e-teacher projects…). We will also consider some limitations and constraints that may arise, such as the efficiency and/or redundancy of using several social networks. We will also reflect on the logics adopted by various actors as the limits between social conversations and pedagogical conversations get blurred, in spaces that remain partly dominated by the heritage academic framework.

Participants are invited to share, compare, and comment on their own practices and ideas. They are invited to join the conversation around such questions as: how to keep the potential of social networks while building learning and educational competences?

What is the right balance between commercial and non-commercial uses in sMOOC pedagogical design? Are social networks valid tools that contribute to constructivist forms of knowledge? What new learning strategies can emerge from such network effects..?

The full conference programme can be downloaded here.

ECO Learning drives an educational democracy

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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.