LEVERAGE News 4

LEVERAGE
LEarn from Video Extensive Real Atm Gigabit Experiment

LEVERAGE News No 4, July 1998

Welcome | Co-ordinator | Pedagogical | Technophile | Keynote conference address | Native ATM | Acronym key

Conference report
Philippa Wright, Head of Information Services at the Centre for Information on Language Teaching and Research in London, gives a brief account of the first LEVERAGE conference Education in the communication age
The first LEVERAGE conference, which took place at the University of Cambridge on 7-8 January this year, brought together over 80 delegates from throughout Europe and further afield including the USA, Korea and Japan. Participants came from a range of pedagogical, technical, academic and industrial backgrounds and were able to chose their own 'pathways' through the conference thanks to a rich programme of parallel sessions interspersed with plenary papers and an opportunity to take part in a hands-on demonstration of the LEVERAGE system with live broadband links to INT in France.
The conference opened with a keynote address by Mark Warschauer of the University of Hawai'i, a world authority on Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) in educational contexts, whose paper From the workplace to the classroom: innovation, reform and resistance in the communication age drew on research from both industrial and academic settings to highlight the conditions necessary for successful computer-mediated collaboration and learning to take place.
Luis Rodríguez Roselló, Head of Education and Training in DGXIII, outlined the European Commission's plans for Education and training in the information society while many of the parallel sessions presented innovative projects in different contexts throughout Europe. Among others, these included: vocational training using Municipal Area Networks in Brittany; remote access via the Internet to electronic measuring instruments for engineers in Bordeaux; sophisticated simulations for language learning from Scandinavia; research and evaluation of CMC by the Open University in the UK; the MERLIN virtual learning environment developed at Hull; an account from Northern Ireland of twelve years' experience of using videoconferencing in an educational context; presentation of work being carried out in Toulouse to develop a 'pocket school'; and papers from LEVERAGE partners on their experiences of both the technical and pedagogical aspects of introducing broadband networked-based learning for languages and other disciplines.
Many of the papers and presentations stimulated interesting debate and exciting exchanges of ideas which, in good conference fashion, continued informally at the bar and during a lively conference barndance.
The closing chaired discussion brought up many of the issues aired throughout the conference which Lid King, the Director of CILT, summarised in four key questions: Does the technology work?; Who has access to it?; What kind of learning is taking place? and How is it controlled?
Delegates' evaluations show that they greatly appreciated the chance to: hear about others' work; network with like-minded individuals from very different backgrounds; try out the LEVERAGE system and share ideas and experiences.
We are now looking forward to the second international LEVERAGE conference which will take place in Madrid 10-11 December 1998. The fantastic technical facilities of ETSI Telecomunicacíon (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid) will allow us to have more hands-on demonstrations, practical workshops and tutorials as well as live contributions via videoconference from Brussels and South America.
Summaries of papers from the 1st LEVERAGE Conference.