Digiskills Final Conference - Open Classroom Conference with ODS

CONFERENCE WEBSITE

Background

EDEN and Ellinogermaniki Agogi will co-organise a three-day international conference in September 2015 in Athens.

The event will be earmarked as the next occasion in the EDEN Open Classroom Conference series with the involvement and support of thematically significant EU co-funded projects. The Conference incorporates the final event of the DigiSkills project, a European project demonstrating ways to involve school communities in innovative teaching and learning practices, and empower teachers and trainers to use, share and exploit unique resource. The timing will also make several of the conference activities the first steps in the sustainability of the Open Discovery Space project, one of the ever-largest EU co-funded educational networking initiative.

The first two days of the conference will highlight an impressive spectrum of different open schooling and teacher training initiatives, major achievements, their resources and training services provided.

During the third, Scholarly Contributions Day, academics and professionals will present their research and validated practices, following peer reviewed admission process.

The hosting projects will utilise their teacher communities and resources in the interest of a professional event, offering free training opportunities and promoting their best teaching practices. The trainings provided will be acknowledged by certifications.

Based on its continuing success, the EDEN "Synergy" strand will be weaved into the programme in Athens as well, adding a "project magnet" effect to the conference and enabling new partnerships to be created and old ones to be strengthened and expanded, thanks to the active participation of a diverse audience.

Invitation

EDEN has been organising the Open Classroom Conferences since 1997 with the support of the OCLR Working Group. The 2015 Athens Conference will address the needs and necessities in search for Innovation in School Education.

Developments in learning innovation and the impact of ICT on school education have presently been realised through many policy actions, programme initiatives and projects. At the same time, socio-economic challenges and the recent, often critical scenarios – social mobility, migration, globalisation, multi-culture structures – change the mandate of what we call Open School Education.

The search for new, more effective school structures, and the overcoming of broader challenges that societies are facing in their way towards the Knowledge Economy, is uninterrupted. The demand is increasing for upgrade of quality, in order to meet the needs for new competences and skills. It is proven that learning personalisation helps foster motivation and engagement, so learning is becoming more and more individualised and self-managed even in institutional settings.

The EU has adopted policy initiatives like the Opening Up Education and formulated ambitious goals in the EU2020 programme, for the school education sector as well. Still, most Member States are striving to introduce innovation through resisting structures and hindering factors.

Transforming systems to open environments will necessitate significant amendments to the existing teacher profiles in order to run a school system successfully. Through its range of presentations and activities the conference aims to contribute to the social, political and research dialogue, addressing the new complexities, contexts and resources. The exploration of what makes school education innovative will be enhanced by practical activities demonstrating and demystifying those 21st century teacher skills and competences that are so often regarded as essential but intimidating.

To serve this double purpose the conference will showcase and celebrate the excellence of "change agents" from all over Europe who – having been involved with EU projects like ODS and DigiSkills – developed (often from scratch) and/or improved their digital skills and competences by participating in online trainings and face to face summer schools, workshops and competitions. All teachers yet novice to these innovative projects will be able to learn from these inspirational best practices and exploit the active community members' experiences and achievements.

During the 3 days you will be able to benefit from professional development opportunities by participating in a selection of the projects’ most popular trainings and webinars in a face to face setting, while the Scholarly Contributions Day of the programme will offer strands of paper presentations and Synergy sessions where you are invited to introduce your own research and validated practice to your peers.

Themes

• ICT and digital media use in primary and secondary education
• Developing and improving learning to learn competences
• Learner support in ICT enhanced learning
• Open Educational Resources and their use in education
• Teacher training
• Learners’ motivation, needs and perceptions
• Learning psychology, Learning software ergonomics
• Learning experience and collaborative-collective learning patterns
• The power and pleasure of sharing, fun of communicating in learning
• Learning as self-expression and the development of personality
• ICTs as resources for innovations to improve learning experience
• Virtual reality, Games for learning, simulations, media rich solutions
• Quality of learning and human resource management, staff development, teacher training
• Measurement of learning effectiveness
• Learning quality and the quality management in education
• Learning quality and experience for disadvantaged student groups

Call for Contributions

How can the progressive academic and professional European community contribute to the better understanding, development and exploitation of the educational landscape in 2015?

We invite all members of the educational community, including old friends and prospective partners, but particularly primary and secondary school teachers, to take part in discovering the conference themes from multiple points of interest.

The conference approach and themes imply openness in choosing the topics and applying interactive session formats. Be prepared for an inclusive, engaging and creative atmosphere. We welcome papers presenting project concepts as well as research findings related to the links between learning, ICTs, innovation and the Transforming Schools topics.

Submissions addressing one or more of the conference themes are welcome in either standard paper or Synergy formats. The deadline for submission is 1 July for papers and 15 August for Synergy formats. Extension of deadline is possible, please send an email with the request to: athens@eden-online.org.

Find more information about the submission procedure and guidelines.

Paper presentations are expected to introduce research achievements, reviews of existing results including empirical or theoretical studies, policy reviews, case studies or project outputs.

The Synergy Strand aims to facilitate the sharing of project deliverables, research findings and experiences, offering the participants an open platform to develop new or extended collaboration ideas and plans, to create highly beneficial partnerships by engaging the conference audience in interactive working group activities during parallel sessions.

Conference Publication

All proposals should be written in English. Contributions are expected to make relevant contribution to the field and meet customary academic requirements. Full text submissions are awaited – abstracts are not required.

Please make sure that your document is spell checked and proofread before submission.

Accepted contributions will be published both in print and on the EDEN Portal in the ISBN-identified Conference Proceedings.

Selection

Evaluation of paper submissions is done by double peer-review. Decisions on acceptance will be based on originality, innovation and quality of contribution. Contributions not matching the conference themes will meanwhile also be considered if they bring new knowledge and benefit to delegates.

The Synergy contributions will not be subjected to the same rigorous academic peer review as paper submissions but their acceptance will be also decided by experts from the Programme Committee. Aspects of evaluation include the relevance, level of elaboration of the initiative and quality of presentation.

Submission Guidance

How to contribute?

Proposals should be submitted as MS Word doc files, through the online submission form.

Paper proposals should not exceed six A4 pages, including figures and references, using the format guidelines.

Synergy submissions should be fitted into a specific template, not exceeding 1,5 A4 pages, including all data, information and illustrations.

Notice

For all accepted submissions, publication and insertion in the conference programme will be subject to at least one author conference registration. In case an institution / organisation wishes to introduce multiple projects, combined delivery can be arranged, but only within the Synergy Strand. To avoid clashes in timing, we advise that every submission has one designated author or multiple possible presenters registered.

The expenses of attending the conference (travel and accommodation) are the responsibility of the author(s) or presenter(s) of accepted papers. The organisers do not offer funds to assist prospective authors.

Contact

Would you need further assistance, do not hesitate to contact the Conference Secretariat at athens@eden-online.org.

Registration

The registration to the conference is free of charge, but to enable precise preparation of the logistics (i.e. coffee and lunch breaks), we need to know how many participants we are expecting, so please fill in and submit the registration form.

The delegates will have access to all conference facilities, the printed ISBN-identified Conference Proceedings (including the Synergy "Book of Projects"), the Welcome Reception (18 September), all lunches and refreshments during the 3 days (19-21 September) of the conference.

The registration is open until 15 September.

Deadlines

Paper Submission: 1 July - Extension request possible by writing to: athens@eden-online.org.

Notification of Authors: 15 July

Synergy Submission: 15 August

Presenters' Registration: 31 August

Detailed Programme: Early September

Registration: 15 September

Conference Dates: 18-21 September