EDITORIAL

Dear IFIP friends,

This is the second Newsletter of IFIP Technical Committee 3 ( Education) after IFIP WCCE and WITFOR conferences last summer. TC3 Newsletter collects together the essence of IFIP TC3 activities and we hope that it would serve you as a community tool. We are developing this channel of communications and also trying to keep it digested due to increasing information overload problem. Maybe in the future we have it more designed.So we continue community entrepreneurship.

The contents of this number are related to news from Chair and information about forthcoming events summer and fall 2005. In each number we also introduce our backbone i.e. people and their activities while that is what IFIP is, committed working professionals for joint objectives and international collaboration.

Enjoy our second Newsletter about on-going TC3 activities and people behind it. Feel free to contact, contribute and develop contents. Looking forward to seeing you in next year events!

Season?s Greetings!

  and remember that Santa Claus lives in Finland!

Professor Mikko Ruohonen TC3 Newsletter Editor mikko.ruohonen@uta.fi

TC3 NEWS

  WCCE 2005

8th World Conference on Computers in Education (WCCE) was held in Stellenbosch, South Africa, July 4-7, 2005 and it collected roughly 800 delegates from 40 countries. A very special case of this conference was made by an expert group from six continents. They produced the WCCE Stellenbosch Declaration which is to improve the integration of ICT in Education as a resource for both better teaching and learning and as a preparation of citizens for the Knowledge Society. We address this to all stakeholders in ICT in Education: teachers, practitioners, researchers, academics, managers, decision-makers and policy-makers, in order to increase the access to Education for everyone around the World. The key areas are Digital Solidarity; Learners and lifelong learning; Decision-making strategies; Networking; Research; Teachers. Actions on each area are recommended in societal level, learning and teaching level and technological and infrastructure level.

Ask editor for the full copy of the declaration or visit

http://www.ifip.org/home/TheStellenboschDeclaration.pdf

  WITFOR 2005

WITFOR is an abbreviation for "World Information Technology Forum". The first conference was arranged in Vilnius in august 2003 and last one 2005 was organized in Gaborone, Botswana The theme of WITFOR 2005 was "ICT for accelerated development" and objectives to find ways of utilising ICT for accelerated development, in line with the UN Millennium Development Goals and the WSIS Plan of Action; and pay special attention to the needs of developing countries and assist them in accelerating development through the application of ICT.

http://www.witfor.org.bw/

See The Gaborone Declaration -

http://www.ifip.org/home/TheGaboroneDeclaration.pdf

Next WITFOR 2007 will be organized in Addis Abeba, Ethiopia, end of August 2007.

  IFIP Congresses

The next IFIP Congress will be World Computer Congress 2006, Santiago, Chile, August 22-25. WCC is the key event for IFIP. After China in 2000, Canada in 2002, and France in 2004, it is now Latinamerican?s turn to welcome this prestigious event.

http://www.wcc-2006.org

In connection to WCC our TC3 organizes conference "Education for the 21st Century - Impact of ICT and Digital Resources" around the following streams: - ICTEM II: Informatics Curricula, Teaching Methods and best practice
  Teaching and Learning with ICT: Theory, Policy and Practice - From the world of research to classrooms and learning environments

http://santiago.eduhi.at

Submit before January 15, 2006.

  OSA OUTSTANDING SERVICE AWARDS

Chair Jan Wibe has informed and we are all pleased to note that:

Professor Anne McDougall, TC3 vice-chair and former TC3-secretary Professor Alex Fung, Former chair of WG 3.7 Professor Niki Davis, Former chair of WG 3.3 Professor Joe Turner, U.S.A. Former chair of WG 3.2 and IFIP Trustee.

have received the IFIP Outstanding Service Award (OSA).

This was decided in the IFIP General Assembly (GA) in the beginning of September 2005.

We all congratulate Anne, Alex, Niki and Joe for their active participation and dedication to our joint interests.

For more information about the OSA:

http://www.ifip.org/bulletin/b_osa.htm

  IFIP GRANTS

IFIP GA (General Assembly) decided to give the following grants to TC3 for 2006:

WG 3.1 and 3.5 Working Conference Aalesund Norway, July 2006 ? 1500

which should subsidise at least 2 participants

WG 3.7 ITEM, Japan, July 2006 ? 1500

which should subsidise at least 2 participants

TC 3 WCC 2006 conference ? 1500

which should subsidise at least 4 participants

Conditions:

The grant must be advertised on the web-site of the conference.The grant should go to participants or speakers from developing countries. Payment of the grant will take place after the conference and the IFIP Payment Form must be used.

  NEW TC3-MEMBERS

Chile: Dr. Jaime Sanchez jsanchez@dcc.uchile.cl http://www.dcc.uchile.cl/ jsanchez/

Mauritius: Prof. Alain Senteni senteni@uom.ac.mu http://vcampus.uom.ac.mu/vcilt/centre/senteni_profile.htm

Peru: Dr. Ernesto Cuadros-Vargas http://socios.spc.org.pe/ecuadros

Spain: Prof. Carlos Delgado Kloos cdk@it.uc3m.es http://www.it.uc3m.es/cdk/

Greece: Dr Helen Drenoyianni Senior Lecturer for ICT in Education Aristotle University of Thessaloniki edren@eled.auth.gr

  NEW WORKING GROUP CHAIRS

3.2: John Hughes

3.3: Paul Nicholson

3.4: Barrie Thompson

3.7: Adrie Visscher

PEOPLE AND BACKGROUNDS

TC3 is based on members of each IFIP member country. National representatives are crucial in carrying message and spreading it in their own home countries. One of the newest representatives is Professor, PhD Alain Senteni from Mauritius and VCILT, Virtual Centre for Innovative Learning Technologies (VCILT) at the University of Mauritius. Here you have some background of his expertise.

Please, feel free to contact Alain in his special fields of knowledge.

Alain Senteni received an Engineering Degree, a PhD and an HDR in Computer Science from the National Polytechnics Institute (INPT) in Toulouse (France). His interest in technology-enhanced education dates back to the early 70?s in the Logo community, and later as a professor of technologies in education at the Faculty of Education of the University of Montreal (Canada). After 1995, he moved to the indian ocean region where he first participated in the setting up of a school of fine arts and visual communication in Reunion island. In this context, he taught computer-mediated communication and multimedia.

Since 2001, Alain Senteni became the Director of the Virtual Centre for Innovative Learning Technologies (VCILT) and the Chairman of the Lifelong Learning Cluster (LLC) of the University of Mauritius, and also a member of several ministerial committees for the integration of ICTs in education in Mauritius. His current work regards the integration of ICTs in educational systems of developing countries, with an emphasis on intervention strategies, training and ICT-based development. He is the initiator and the programme chair of the International Conference on Open and Online Learning (ICOOL), held for the first time in Mauritius in 2003, then in the context of the 8th IFIP WCCE in Stellenbosch (SA) in July 2005. He is also a co- chair of the WITFOR education commission.

The VCILT < http://vcampus.uom.ac.mu/ > is a now becoming regional centre of research and development, maintaining strong research links with major telelearning research labs in Montreal, Geneva and Finland. Alain Senteni is a research associate at the LICEF Tele- Université < http://www.licef.teluq.uquebec.ca/ > and CIRTA, a Montreal Interuniversities Research Center. VCILT specialises in ODeL and more generally in using ICT for capacity-building, particularly in the field of education. The centre is recognised in the indian ocean region for its graduate programmes in computer-mediated communication and pedagogies.

Alain Senteni’s teaching and research regards technology-enhanced education, computer-mediated communication, multimedia, arts and technology, technology-based training and pedagogical engineering which he taught in several contexts. He has published articles in international journals and conferences and is the editor of two collective books "Pedagogies.net" in 2003, and "Innovative Learning & Knowledge Communities" in 2005. He is a member of the executive board of the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Learning Technology (LTTC).

WORKING GROUPS WORK

The Working Group 3.1. will celebrate next year its 40th anniversary in the joint conference in Aalesund, Norway. See the message by Deryn Watson below.

http://ifip35.inf.elte.hu/alesund/

WG 3.1 is concerned with the role of both Informatics and using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in secondary education (age range from 11 to 18 years). In brief, or mission is to provide a forward-looking perspective on the development and impact of Informatics and ICT on secondary education from an international perspective, drawing on research and experiences. Full details of our mission, aims and scope are outlined on our Website ? http://www.didaktik-der-informatik.de/tc3/wg31

But WG 3.1 is of course much more than a series of statements ? it is a living dynamic community consisting of researchers, policy makers and practitioners who relish the challenge of working within a global rather than just national or regional context. It is a community not simply of practice, but of shared concerns and understandings that develop over time and in different places. And as with all communities, it is the individuals who enrich it with their different perspectives and idiosyncracies.

There are three particular features of our group that are worth recording. The first is that we are a jolly bunch ? humour is never far away, and we seem to enjoy the collective experience of meeting, eating and drinking in convivial surroundings. Long-term jokes have a habit of re-surfacing with an added twist at our AGMs, which are always enlivened by the traditional circulation of suitable liquid refreshments as soon as ?apologies? are over, rather than await the end of formal business.

The second feature is that we are proud to have undertaken some TC3 ?firsts?: ? first working group to take an event to Africa ? the Zimbabwe 1997 conference, shared with WGs 3.4 and 3.5; ? first WG to take an event to Latin America ? Chile 2000.

Which leads to the third feature. Working Group 3.1, as its number indicates is the oldest working group of TC3 ? founded just two years after the TC itself was formed. Many members of the group went on the initiate the establishment of further groups, leading to the current grand total of seven WGs and one SIG. So I feel it is fair to say, (and even appropriate for me to say it) that we are the mother of all the working groups in TC3.

And this ?mother group? celebrates its 40th birthday in 2006. So the TC3 meeting and the WG 3.1, 3.3 and 3.5 conference, Imagining the future for ICT and Education [26th ? 30th June 2006 in Alesund, Norway] will include suitable celebrations.

This is an invitation to join the fun ? for details, visit http://ifip35.inf.elte.hu/alesund/

Deryn