Education in the Digital Era, European High Level Conference

digitalEra

The European High Level Conference on “Education in the Digital Era”, organised by the European Commission in close cooperation with the Italian Presidency of the Council of the European Union, will be taking place on December 11th in Brussels. The event will enable interested stakeholders to discuss the opportunities and challenges of adapting education to a fast changing, digital society and economy, whilst shaping education’s place and priority in the EU’s sustainable growth agenda.

The conference is expected to be a flipped interactive debate. The main positions and inputs of the different participants in the panels will be available to the audience ahead of the event through the event website. This will allow the audience to start the discussion and engage with the addressed issues ahead of the conference itself, allowing more space for a dynamic debate during the actual panel discussions.

Join Ministers of Education, senior decision makers, educational practitioners and educational technology leaders online from day one to debate the following key themes:

Increasing the quality and relevance of learning (access an interesting collection of materials around this topic here)
Increasing the impact of educators (access an interesting collection of materials around this topic here)
Addressing inequalities through better access and lower cost (access an interesting collection of materials around this topic here)
You will also be able to follow the debate on Twitter through @OpenEduEU and the hashtag #EdDigEra.

On the day of the physical conference there will be three panels addressing the three key areas discussed during the online debate. For each of these panels there will be one impulse statement by an international expert, followed by comments and discussion from a discussion panel. In a fourth panel several European Ministers of Education will discuss the events of the day and their potential policy conclusions. Click here to see the draft agenda.

If you are interested in attending the event itself we encourage you to register your interest well in advance, as only limited places are available for this high-level, but participative event.

Alongside the debate, participants will also be able to visit and experience a replica of European Schoolnet’s Future Classroom Lab, a glimpse at some of the most recent developments in learning technologies. During the lunch break, the award ceremony of the Open Education Challenge will take place. The winners show the potential of entrepreneurship and innovation in education.

http://openeducationeuropa.eu/en/edu-in-digital-era

Most common foreign languages studied at lower secondary level in the EU28 in 2012

English, French and German still most common foreign languages studied at lower secondary  level in the EU28 in 2012…… but Spanish learning has increased more.

In the EU28 in 2012, English was still the most commonly studied foreign language at lower secondary level, with  96.7% of pupils learning it, far ahead of French (34.1%), German (22.1%) and Spanish (12.2%). The importance
of English as a foreign language in the EU is also confirmed by its leadership in nearly all Member States. Since Croatia’s accession, there are 24 official languages recognised within the EU. In addition there are
indigenous regional, minority languages and languages that have been brought into the EU by migrant populations.

On the occasion of the European Day of Languages2, celebrated each year on 26 September, Eurostat, the  statistical office of the European Union, publishes data on language learning at school. The general objectives
of this event are to alert the public to the importance of language learning, to promote the rich linguistic and cultural  diversity of Europe and to encourage lifelong language learning in and out of school.

eu28Secondary

Read on.