Learning Technology newsletter invites articles, announcements, call for papers, project reports, case studies and other items which may be of interest to academics, researchers and professionals involved in the field of existing and emerging learning technologies.
With the advance of metadata standards, learning objects, Web 2.0 approaches to rip, mix & burn learning, wikis, blogs, syndication, user generated content, interactive TV, games and the ubiquitous availability of computing devices we can and have to offer more flexible learning services on a global scale. As one of the new objectives of the 7th Framework Program of the European Commission puts it: we need "Responsive environments for technology-enhanced learning that motivate, engage and inspire learners, and which are embedded in the business processes and human resources management systems of organizations". An important challenge is to bridge between informal learning strategies of the knowledge society and formal competence development programmes of organizations.
After the success of EC-TEL06, the Second European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning provides a unique forum for all research related to technology-enhanced learning, including its interactions with knowledge management, business processes and work environments. This is a competitive and broad forum for technology enhanced learning research in Europe and world-wide through specialized workshops and the main conference. EC-TEL 2007 provides unique networking possibilities for participating researchers throughout the week and includes project meetings and discussions for ongoing and new research activities supported by the European Commission.
This conference is the final event in a two-year European project (Covcell), aimed at supporting language learning and teaching in an online environment by adding tools which support collaboration and co-operation to the functionlities already provided by the Moodle learning management system.
As well as showcasing the collaborative tools developed by the project, the conference seeks to address critical issues in the field of online language learning from two perspectives: (1) the pedagogical perspective of the effectiveness of cohort-oriented, task-based approaches to language learning and teaching in an online environment; (2) the technical perspective of open source development of tools which support online language learning and teaching.