Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

One year after we succesfully went through iCamp project’s last official review, we are wirting down a new post for wellcoming a new version of our Handbook. This is the time for its Spanish version, issued by Win-Win Consultores, with the financial support of the Spanish Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Turism under its “avanza2” programme for promoting Information Society, managed by red.es. We also have to thank ColorIURIS, responsible for the intellectual property rights management scheme.

Puedes descargarte la versión en español, tras aceptar las condiciones legales, siguiendo este enlace “Manual de Uso del Software Social en la Educación Superior”.

This is intended to be the UPM team’s contribution for the Spanish Presidential Term of the Council of the European Union
Cheers!

The iCamp partner AGH – the University of Science and Technology in Krakow, Poland, has published recently a Polish version of the iCamp handbook on how to use social software in education. Please click here to get the electronic version.

We now received the final review report where our external reviewers commend us on our excellent work and our valuable contribution to European research in Technology Enhanced Learning.

Here are some quotes from the report, which can also be downloaded:

… In the opinion of the reviewers the products and outcomes of the project are of considerable significance for the development and implementation of Technology Enhanced Learning and we are confident of their future implementation and use within the educational technology community. Special attention is drawn to the work of the project in developing, testing and evaluating the use of social software for
learning….

The outcomes of the iCamp project have a high potential impact and offer extensive opportunities for exploitation. Firstly the tools and technologies produced by the project have wide potential use and can
be integrated in different frameworks and applications. As Open Source products, they can also re further developed and repurposed for future use.

Secondly the educational models developed by the project are of cognisance for moves towards technology supported collaborative and group based learning and student centred learning. The models are also of interest for those seeking collaborative work between students in different universities and different countries.

The handbook is a timely and well produced publication which will be of use to practitioners seeking to introduce social software for learning. The research framework and evaluation tools and processes developed by the project may also be of use in future research in this area.

The reviewers commended the project coordinators and partners on their work. They expressed their hope that the partners would continue to develop and exploit the outcomes of the work in future projects and
within the Technology Enhanced Learning community in Europe.

Download the full report here: iCamp_Final_Public_Report

We just finished our series of final deliverables. This includes the following documents:

D1.3 iCamp Educational Intervention Model

D2.4 Trust Management, Privacy and IPR Framework

D2.5 Final Portfolio of iCamp Building Blocks

D3.4 Mash-UP Personal Learning Environments

D4.4 iCamp Third Evaluation Report

D5.4 Final Plan for Using and Disseminating Knowledge

All these documents are all public and can be downloaded from the following link:

http://www.icamp.eu/learnmore/project/deliverables/

We just finalized iCamp video which presents iCamp project and our 3rd trials participants, their expectations and impressions about iCamp. You are welcome to view and comment it on Youtube. 

The iCamp project was highly represented at this year’s ED-MEDIA conference, which tool place last week in Vienna, Austria.

Partner representatives presented overall 5 paper contributions to the conference. The topics that we addressed in our talks ranged from the more conceptual approaches towards Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) and self-direction in social spaces to the technological challenges of distributed tools landscapes and some constructive criticism on learning design approaches (e.g. IMS).

All iCamp contributions to the conference can be found in the proceedings of ED-MEDIA.

Upon request we are extending the deadline for submissions
of the workshop on mash-up personal learning environments
(mupple ‘08) taking place at this year’s EC-TEL.

The extended deadline will be July 14, 2008.

We have just developed a Firefox plugin for our ObjectSpot search engine, allowing users to quickly search ObjectSpot right from their browser at any time. This is the latest of many additions to our search engine portlet, which is now sporting both RSS-export support, as well as the COinS microformat which should be of special help to Zotero users wishing to enjoy the service.

The search plugin is installable by clicking the button below:

The pedagogical team of the iCamp project is going to meet in Murcia. Thanks to our facilitator Linda Castañeda from the University of Murcia we will be able to hold our 3 days meeting in the Southwest of Spain. Since Linda and her college Mar Sanchez have also been heavily involved in our trials we expect some fruitful discussions both from the scientific and the more practical point of view.

we recently received the confirmation from our project officer at the EC that our project was granted an extension of 3 months. So our official project period will last until the end of 2008.

This gives us the possibility to intensify our dissemination activities for promoting our final results. So watch out for iCamp events!