Thursday, October 22, 2009

Playing computer games in school?

We started the ENGAGE project about Game based Learning in the beginning of this year. Our primary target group are teachers in schools who are not very experienced with games in general and in particular how to use games for education.

One of the main outcome products is a web portal in which teachers can inform themselves about a wide range of possible games (Online Games Catalogue) and can even be guided to choose the right game for their purposes (Decision Making Tool): www.engagelearning.eu (will be finished in the end of next year)

Rolf Reinhardt, Executive Manager of EFQUEL, is very optimistic about the impact of this project: "Especially since the last years, schools are doing a lot concerning digital education. When I went to school, we had blackboards and chalk, today a lot of schools have already implemented smart boards. I see overall the advantages of this development, since we have to take in consideration that the kids are grown up with electronic devices, web 2.0 and for sure, also computer games."

That computer games are not only for fun but could really support holistic learning processes is proofed by games like "Helios". This game plays on another planet which is in high danger: The energy resources are extremely limited and the player has to be very smart in using a mix of different energy sources to rescue the planet.

EFQUEL did the review for this and several other games. For sure, we are still very open for your suggestions concerning games that teachers could use in school. You may send your propositions to info@efquel.org .

Friday, October 9, 2009

We are using Open Source Software

Most of our staff is now using Open Source Software for the daily work. Instead of Microsoft Windows Vista, we have Ubuntu Linux as an operative system in place. OpenOffice replaced Office 2007 and instead of Adobe Photoshop, we are working now with Gimp and Inkscape...

We can just encourage everybody to take Open Source Software in consideration. It is definitely very simple to install and to use - and it costs you NOTHING.

During our Operational Management Team (OMT) meeting today, we confirmed the place for the next EFQUEL conference in 2010: Oeras in Portugal is agreeing to host us in September next year. You can maybe already imagine what topic we are discussing there. Since we have became fans of Open Source, we would like to foster also the possibilities of Open Education Ressources - especially under the terms of quality.

We are opening the registration in the beginning of the next year! More information will be soon available at www.efquel.org

Thursday, October 8, 2009

The European Foundation for Quality in E-Learning is now also blogging!

Due to the excellent experiences in our conference blog, we have now decided to go ahead with blogging and to inform you about our activities.

We figured out, that especially the personal touch of a blog attracts people a lot and therefore we use the blog in addition to the News section on our website.

You are also encouraged to use the RSS feed in order to get regular updates!