Focusing on new technologies the EDID 2014 conference is intended to promote innovations in the field of education. As OuS fits the profile, the UNESCO Chair presented mechanisms to scale solutions across education and training sectors and argued that scaling and open innovation was imperative if European companies are to be internationally competitive and create jobs.
OuS was sucessfully presented in form of keynotes at the yearly Expert Meeting for principals and school heads of kindergartens, primary and secondary schools in Slovenia. With one last presentationin this series left for November 24th, we showcased the idea to most of the Slovenian principles who will pass it to their teachers. These have been, over the years, constant promoters of innovation in our educational institutions and as OuS tries to transform, modernize and internationalise the Slovenian education system with tangible effects of open education, everyone feels this meeting has been an important hub for spreading the idea.
n recent months OpeningupSlovenia managed to follow its strategy in providing funding for OER related projects, building partnerships and pushing the OER research agenda further into computer science and other national open education domains. On September 30th 2014 the UNESCO Chair on Open Technologies for Open Educational Resources and Open Learning was established in Slovenia. UNESCO Director-General, Irina Bokova, and the Director of the Jožef Stefan Institute, Professor Jadran Lenarčič, signed an agreement establishing a UNESCO Chair at the Institute in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The Institute being one of the leading powers behind OpeningupSlovenia.
The signing ceremony took place at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, in the presence of the Chairholder, Mitja Jermol and the Permanent Delegate of the Republic of Slovenia to UNESCO, H. E. Ms Veronika Stabej. The Chair will serve to promote an integrated system of research, training, information and documentation on online learning for OER and open learning. It will facilitate collaboration between high-level, internationally-recognized researchers and teaching staff of the Institute and other institutions around the world. The signing coincided with the holding at Headquarters of a UNESCO Chair Workshop organized with the Jožef Stefan Institute, the Slovenian National Commission for UNESCO and the Permanent Delegation of the Republic of Slovenia to UNESCO.
According to the new Chairholder, Mitja Jermol, the Institute has been working on OER since 2001, pushed by the conviction that education needed a new approach. “We started a national initiative to set the country in the direction of open learning, from infrastructure to legislation, in order to make use of technologies for learning.” commenting on OpeningupSlovenia.
OpeningupSlovenia partner Knowledge 4 All Foundation successfully won a H2020 bit for traMOOC – Translation for Massive Open Online Courses. MOOCs have been growing rapidly in size and impact. Yet the language barrier constitutes a major growth impediment in reaching out to all nations and educating all citizens. TraMOOC will aim at tackling this impediment by developing high-quality translation of all types of text genre included in MOOCs (e.g. assignments, tests, presentations, lecture subtitles, blog text) from English into eleven European and BRIC languages (DE, IT, PT, EL, DU, CS, BG, CR, PL, RU, ZH) that constitute strong use cases, are hard to translate into and have weak MT support, thus complying with the OpeningupSlovenia national education case study objectives. The project results will be showcased and tested on the Iversity MOOC platform and on the VideoLectures.NET digital video lecture library.
The Slovenian Ministry of Education, Science and Sport in synergy issued a Call for proposals for development projects and the establishment of e-services and mobile applications in advanced ICT use in education in between 2014-2015. The Ministry will co-finance projects of up to € 70,000.00 euros with the total indicative amount of funds available for public tender up to € 900,000.00. The newly appointed UNESCO Chair will push to present all projects to win the call at the UNESCO Mobile Learning Week in February 2015 and other relevant events.
The Jožef Stefan Institute together with other OpeningupSlovenia members and K4A foundation directors will organize a workshop in AI methods and Big Data in education. This will be an introductory scientific and technological workshop and meeting to present planned and important activities within the framework of the implementation of the UNESCO Chair Open Technologies for OER. The workshop will precede the signature of the agreement between UNESCO and Jožef Stefan Institute to formally establish the Chair.
Welcome to the new OpeningupSlovenia website. Here you can find all the information you need to get familiar with our initiative.
Androulla Vassiliou, European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth issued a press release following her visit to Ljubljana, Slovenija in order to attend the launch of OpeningupSlovenia. The officcial press relese is downlodable here.
Europe’s schools and universities risk losing ground against their international counterparts if they fail to make the most of the digital revolution. This will be one of the themes addressed at an event promoting ‘open courseware’ – free-to-use educational material for teachers – in Ljubljana tomorrow, 23 April. Androulla Vassiliou, European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth, and Jernej Pikalo, the country’s Minister for Education, who will unveil a new ‘Opening up Slovenia’ initiative to promote open educational resources, will be among the speakers.
“I am delighted that Slovenia has adopted a national strategy to promote open educational resources. This complements the Commission’s own ‘Opening up Education’ initiative. Our shared objective is not to replace traditional textbooks or face-to-face teaching, but to make the most of the opportunities created by digitisation and new technologies. Europe cannot afford to lag behind its international rivals if we want to ensure our young people have the skills needed in the modern world. I hope that this Slovenian initiative is successful and inspires similar schemes in other Member States,”commented Commissioner Vassiliou.
During the conference, the Commissioner is also expected to emphasise the potential gains for education in terms of quality and access that will result from a stronger uptake of open educational resources and practices.
A nationwide platform aimed at increasing the uptake of open educational resources and courseware is at the heart of ‘Opening up Slovenia’. The platform involves all Slovenian universities, as well as compulsory and vocational education institutions, and partners
from research and industry.The idea is to create an open educational system in parallel to the formal one, and to exploit all aspects of open education. For example, it will encourage rigorous, transparent and replicable testing of open learning environments, open education theories, new business models, open education computational tools, and new and emerging technologies in the educational technologies market-place.
European Commission press rellease
European Commission press rellease
