Networking learning communities: skills, platforms and contents

LisbonDecember 12 2008

Networking learning communities: skills, platforms

and contentsRiina Vuorikari

Senior Research Analyst European Schoolnet


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European Schoolnet (EUN)

• 31 Ministries of Education (MoE) in Europe

• Created in 1997

• Major European education portals for learning resources, collaboration and skills

• Leads the way in bringing about change in schooling through the use of new technology


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LRE provides content by

– Austria– Estonia– Finland– Flanders

(Belgium)– France– Hungary– Iceland– Israel– Ireland– Italy

Publishers– FWU– Cambridge-Hitachi– Cambridge University Press– Skolavefurinn– Contento– Promethean– Young Digital Planet– Siveco – Dunlem e-Learning

Others– OERcommons– Cité des Sciences– Open University (UK)

– In 2009 also MoE of Portugal!

– Lithuania– Norway– Poland– Region of

Catalonia– Slovenia– Spain– Sweden

Ministries of Education (MoE)


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What is a tag?

• Personal metadata by a user, not a librarian or other expert indexer

• Personal marker to help associate with the resource

• Can be used for sorting or managing- keep found things found!


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Skills needed: to navigate through a variety of learning resources

Institutional sources (e.g. Ministry of education, universities)

Community driven content

Teacher-created content

Other sources of content creation (e.g. school book publishers, museums, websites..)


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Skills needed: collaborate and navigate the networks

Increasingly, educational activities in both schools and higher education involve collaboration with other institutions, teachers and learners.

Collaboration and networking serves as a “new resource” to support and enhance specific learning goals!


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eTwinning for schools

• 49 500 active members in Europe

• Learning 2.0 enables that people, teachers, peer learners, subject experts, etc. can help build new ‘communities of practice’

on local and global scale


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nodeseTwinning schools

eTwinning projects


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What type of information do social networks reveal?


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What type of information do social networks reveal?


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tightly connected nodes in the central


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isolated groups interacting mostly amongst themselves


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“singletons” with no connection, least central


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What more?


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closeness: the shortest distances between each individual and every other person in the network

Reach: the degree any member of a network can reach other members of the network

Betweenness: Degree an individual lies between other individuals in the network: an intermediary; liaisons; bridges


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New skills needed for teachers?Educators should be able to perceive the Internet

and its different networks as a rich resource

that can support and enhance learning and teaching of the future generations.

Message for policy makers: This type mindset should be explicitly supported by leadership at the institutional and system level!


Paradox: young people have falling interest in maths, science and

technology in general

Yet young people are keen users of IT tools– Majority use a blog, Facebook or MySpace account,

or other IT tool regularly (particularly girls)

– Majority play computer games in some form

– Now spend more time on YouTube than watching TV


e-Skills career portal

Targets IT skills for:– Students at secondary and tertiary level– Early career IT professionals– Educators– IT stakeholders: companies, EU level

actors, etc.


Visit the portal• http://eskills.eun.org

http://eskills.eun.org/


Learning Resource Exchangehttp://lreforschools.eun.org

eTwinninghttp://www.etwinning.net

e-Skills portal: http://eskills.eun.org

http://lreforschools.eun.org/





http://www.etwinning.net/






