Technology-enhanced education for Millennials: how the Information Society is changing the way of learning

The Information Society has provided the context for the development of a new generation, known as the Millennials, who are characterized by their intensive use of technologies in everyday life. These features are changing the way of learning, prompting educational institutions to attempt to better adapt to youngneeds by incorporating technologies into education. Based on this premise, wehave reviewed the prominent reports of the integration of ICT into education atdifferent levels with the aim of evidencing how education is changing, and willchange, to meet the needs of Millennials with ICT support. The results show thatmost of the investments have simply resulted in an increase of computers andaccess to the Internet, with teachers reproducing traditional approaches to education and e-learning being seen as complementary to face-to-face education.While it would seem that the use of ICT is not revolutionizing learning, it isfacilitating the personalization, collaboration and ubiquity of learning.

Extending Learning Objects by Means of Social Networking

Learning objects have been the promise of providing people with high quality learning resources. Initiatives such as MIT Open-CourseWare, MERLOT and others have shown the real possibilities of creating and sharing knowledge through Internet. Thousands of educational resources are available through learning object repositories. We indeed live in an age of content abundance, and content can be considered as infrastructure for building adaptive and personalized learning paths, promoting both formal and informal learning. Nevertheless, although most educational institutions are adopting a more open approach, publishing huge amounts of educational resources, the reality is that these resources are barely used in other educational contexts. This paradox can be partly explained by the dificulties in adapting such resources with respect to language, e-learning standards and specifications and, finally, granularity. Furthermore, if we want our learners to use and take advantage of learning object repositories, we need to provide them with additional services than just browsing and searching for resources. Social networks can be a first step towards creating an open social community of learning around a topic or a subject. In this paper we discuss and analyze the process of using a learning object repository and building a social network on the top of it, with respect to the information architecture needed to capture and store the interaction between learners and resources in form of learning object metadata.

Poblenou y La Mina [Barcelona], participacion creativa con la metodologia de las CPBoxes

En el último año, en la reunión del Public Art Observatory en Lisboa (septiembre 2002) y en el marco del congreso User (marzo 2003), presentamos uno de nuestros proyectos iniciado en el 2001 y centrado en la búsqueda de metodologías de participación ciudadana para el desarrollo de propuestas de arte público o diseño de espacio público: las denominadas CPBoxes (cajas de acotaciones y tendencias). Ahora, después de la realización de distintas dinámicas de participación ciudadana, tanto en el barrio de La Mina como en el de Poblenou, ambas zonas urbanas de Barcelona caracterizadas por los profundos cambios urbanos y sociales a los que se hayan sometidas, hemos percibido que la metodología propuesta ha resultado ser, no sólo herramienta perfecta para averiguar la percepción y significado que los ciudadanos otorgan a su espacio, sino excelente instrumento de dinamización cultural y educativa para realizar con grupos escolares de educación secundaria con el objetivo de descubrir y conocer conceptos relacionados con la ciudad y el espacio urbano.

Poblenou y La Mina [Barcelona], participacion creativa con la metodologia de las CPBoxes

En el último año, en la reunión del Public Art Observatory en Lisboa (septiembre 2002) y en el marco del congreso User (marzo 2003), presentamos uno de nuestros proyectos iniciado en el 2001 y centrado en la búsqueda de metodologías de participación ciudadana para el desarrollo de propuestas de arte público o diseño de espacio público: las denominadas CPBoxes (cajas de acotaciones y tendencias). Ahora, después de la realización de distintas dinámicas de participación ciudadana, tanto en el barrio de La Mina como en el de Poblenou, ambas zonas urbanas de Barcelona caracterizadas por los profundos cambios urbanos y sociales a los que se hayan sometidas, hemos percibido que la metodología propuesta ha resultado ser, no sólo herramienta perfecta para averiguar la percepción y significado que los ciudadanos otorgan a su espacio, sino excelente instrumento de dinamización cultural y educativa para realizar con grupos escolares de educación secundaria con el objetivo de descubrir y conocer conceptos relacionados con la ciudad y el espacio urbano.

Students’ viewpoint on engineering subjects taught in English

The European Educational Institutions have the challenge and the commitment to enhance multilingual competence and teaching curricular subjects in a foreign language is seen as one of the most promising alternatives. In that context, professors teaching different engineering subjects at the School of Engineering of the UPC at Manresa (EPSEM) have been involved in projects aiming at analyzing the current linguistic situation and developing some on-line open access materials using CLIL as a strategy. They formed the u-Linguatech Research Group on Multilingual Communication in Science and Technology in order to provide such resources in an effective and efficient way. In this paper, we focus on students’ perception of the improvement of their multilingual competence throughout their Engineering degree, by means of subjects taught in English by non-native speakers. Data about the English level of current students are taken into account. We also describe the use of the above resources to improve the quality of subjects learning related to Chemical Engineering curricula.

Student Journalism 2.0 : Testing Models for Participatory Learning in the Digital Age

Many educators and educational institutions have yet to integrate web-based practices into their classrooms and curricula. As a result, it can be difficult to prototype and evaluate approaches to transforming classrooms from static endpoints to dynamic, content-creating nodes in the online information ecosystem. But many scholastic journalism programs have already embraced the capabilities of the Internet for virtual collaboration, dissemination, and reader participation. Because of this, scholastic journalism can act as a test-bed for integrating web-based sharing and collaboration practices into classrooms. Student Journalism 2.0 was a research project to integrate open copyright licenses into two scholastic journalism programs, to document outcomes, and to identify recommendations and remaining challenges for similar integrations. Video and audio recordings of two participating high school journalism programs informed the research. In describing the steps of our integration process, we note some important legal, technical, and social challenges. Legal worries such as uncertainty over copyright ownership could lead districts and administrators to disallow open licensing of student work. Publication platforms among journalism classrooms are far from standardized, making any integration of new technologies and practices difficult to achieve at scale. And teachers and students face challenges re-conceptualizing the role their class work can play online.

CRM and higher education : developing a monitoring system to improve relationships in e-learning environments

Peer-reviewed

Social Networks for learning : wikis, blogs and tagging in education

Fast developments in information and communications technologies and changes in the behaviour of learners demand educational institutions to continuously evaluate their pedagogical approaches to the learning and teaching process, both in face-to-face and virtual classrooms.

Expanding the Customer Relationship Management scope to the non-profit organizations : an analysis focused on the e-university domain

Peer-reviewed

Open Educational Resources: an opportunity for virtual learning institutions

The Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC, Open University of Catalonia) is involved inseveral research projects and educational activities related to the use of Open Educational Resources (OER). Some of the discussed issues in the concept of OER are research issues which are being tackled in two EC projects (OLCOS and SELF). Besides the research part, the UOC aims at developing a virtual centre for analysing and promoting the concept of OERin Europe in the sector of Higher and Further Education. The objectives are to makeinformation and learning services available to provide university management staff,eLearning support centres, faculty and learners with practical information required to create, share and re-use such interoperable digital content, tools and licensing schemes. In the realisation of these objectives, the main activities are the following: to provide organisationaland individual e-learning end-users with orientation; to develop perspectives and useful recommendations in the form of a medium-term Roadmap 2010 for OER in Higher and Further Education in Europe; to offer practical information and support services about how to create, share and re-use open educational content by means of tutorials, guidelines, best practices, and specimen of exemplary open e-learning content; to establish a larger group ofcommitted experts throughout Europe and other continents who not only share theirexpertise but also steer networking, workshops, and clustering efforts; and to foster and support a community of practice in open e-learning content know-how and experiences.

L'Educació assistencial i social a Vic

A partir de les fonts documentals de la “Casa Misericòrdia” i de “Casa Caritat” de Vic i també del testimoni de persones que hi havien viscut o hi havien treballat o les coneixien de prop, s’ha volgut explicar el naixement, evolució i decadència de les dues institucions centenàries que van realitzar, gairebé sempre amb pocs mitjans però amb notable dedicació, una tasca ingent en favor dels més desfavorits i que van deixar d’existir a principis dels anys setanta. Casa Caritat atenia persones necessitades d’ambdós sexes, encara que en dues instal•lacions diferents, com l’antic convent dels Trinitaris per al sexe femení i l’antic convent de Sant Domènec, per al masculí. La Misericòrdia va acollir durant poc més de dos-cents cinquanta anys nenes, noies, dones i velles pobres i desemparades. La raresa d’aquesta institució estava en el règim d’autogestió, sense la intervenció de cap ordre religiosa, com era costum en aquells temps. El tancament de les dues institucions va donar lloc a un nou model assistencial i educatiu per als menors, promogut pel bisbe de Vic Ramon Masnou i per Joan Riera, els impulsors de la Llar Juvenil. Es tractava d’un recurs modern i d’inspiració cristiana, ubicat en una casa de nova construcció i sota un reglament molt més humanitzat i amb menys pes de les pràctiques religioses. La conflictivitat dels nens i nenes, a mesura que creixien, i amb les necessitats d’uns altres temps, a més d’assumpció de les competències de menors per part de la Generalitat el 1981, van propiciar la creació per part de la Generalitat i de l’Ajuntament de Vic de Casa Moreta, amb un projecte totalment laic i portat per professionals que després es convertiria en el Centre Residencial Osona i també va suposar el naixement d’una altra entitat, la Llar Terricabras. La recerca, doncs, pretén posar les bases per a futures anàlisis aprofundides sobre l’atenció als menors a la ciutat de Vic, al llarg del temps.

Innovative Applications : Open Educational Resources and Mobile Resources Repository for the Instruction of Educational Researchers in Mexico

The movement of Open Educational Resources (OER) is one of the most important trends that are helping education through the Internet worldwide. "Tecnológico de Monterrey" (http://tecvirtual.itesm.mx/) in Mexico, with other Mexican higher education institutions, is creating an Internet/web based repository of OERs and Mobile Resources for the instruction and development of educational researchers at undergraduate, Master's and Doctoral level. There is a lack of open educational resources and material available at the Internet that can help and assist the development and education of educational researchers in Spanish speaking countries. This OER repository is part of a project that is experimenting new technology for the delivery of OERs from one repository (http://catedra.ruv.itesm.mx/) through an indexed OER catalog (http://www.temoa.info/) to mobile devices (Ipod, Iphone, MP3, MP4). This paper presentation will describe and comment about this project: outcomes, best practices, difficulties and technological constraints.

Open Educational Resources : Experiences of use in a Latin-American context

This paper presents practical experiences using Open educational Resources (OER) for basic and elementary education (K12), educational research and research training on two inter-institutional projects with the collaboration of thirteen higher education institutions and with the support of the Corporación de Universidades para el Desarrollo del Internet (CUDI) and by the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT) of Mexico and hosted by the Tecnológico de Monterrey. The first initiative is titled "Knowledge Hub for K-12 Education" with the main goal of enrich a catalog of Open Educational Resources for basic and elementary education (K-12) for Mexico and Spanish speaking countries in Latin-America. The main goal of the second initiative is to build a collection of Open Educational Resources for Mobile Learning to address the issue of educational research and research training.

The Role of social institutions in inter-generational mobility

In this study we examine the role of institutions in shaping inter-generational mobility behavior. Research has traditionally emphasized the role of educational systems but cummulative evidence suggests that variations in their design offer only a very limited explanation for observed mobility differences. We examine the impact of welfare states and, in particular, how early childhood and family policies may influence the impact of economic and cultural characteristics of origin families on child outcomes.

Una Propuesta de renovación metodológica en el marco del Espacio Europeo de Enseñanza Superior: los pequeños grupos de investigación cooperativos

La
 Declaración 
de 
Bolonia 
sentó
 las 
bases 
para
 la 
construcción
 de
 un
 Espacio
 Europeo
 de
 Enseñanza
 Superior
 (EEES)
 entre
 cuyos
 retos
 destaca
 la 
renovación 
metodológica. 
Este
 trabajo 
plantea 
la
 organización
 de
 una
 materia
 básica
 de
 psicología
 como
 es
 Procesos
 Psicológicos
 Básicos
 para
 estudiantes
 de
 Pedagogía
 y
 Psicopedagogía
 mediante
 la
 organización
 de
 pequeños
 grupos
 cooperativos
 de
 investigación.
 Con
 esta
 propuesta
 se
 trabajan
 diferentes 
ejes 
de 
gran
 importancia
 para 
la 
construcción
 del 
EEES
 como 
son 
la
 promoción 
de
 la 
función 
tutorial,
la 
formación 
basada
 en
 competencias,
 el
 aprendizaje
 autónomo,
 la
 consideración
 del
 tiempo 
y 
la 
carga
 de
 trabajo 
y 
la 
promoción 
del 
uso 
de
 las 
nuevas
 tecnologías. El 
artículo,
se 
centra 
fundamentalmente 
en 
describir 
y
 explicar
 el
 trabajo
 cooperativo
 en
 grupos
 de
 investigación,
 su
 organización,
 orientación,
 desarrollo,
 seguimiento
 y
 evaluación.
 Los
 resultados
 de 
la 
aplicación 
de 
esta
 propuesta
 resultaron 
muy
 formativos
 para
 los
 alumnos
 tanto
 a
 nivel
 puramente
 académico
 como
 de 
relaciones 
interpersonales