TIES 2012

III European Conference on Information Technology in Education and Society:
A Critical Insight
Barcelona, February 1st – 3rd, 2012

Keynote speakers

Xavier Prats Monné

Xavier Prats Monné is Deputy Director-General for education at the European Commission. He is responsible for the education aspects of the Europe 2020 strategy, and represents the EC at the European Institute for Innovation and Technology. From 2007 to 2010 he was Director for employment policy, and founding member of the Commission's Impact Assessment Board. He completed his secondary education at the Istituto Massimo in Rome. He holds degrees in Social Anthropology from the Central University of Madrid; in Development Economics from the International Centre for Advanced Mediterranean Agronomic Studies; in European Affairs from the College of Europe in Belgium, where he graduated first of the Class of 1981–82 and served as assistant professor.

José Antonio Millán

José Antonio Millán has taken part in the inception and development of a number of different cultural projects in the internet, has tought courses and conferences at numerous Spanish and foreign universities and has authored, among others, the books Hacia la escuela 2.0. Proyectos con programas gratuitos para formar ciudadanos de la Sociedad del Conocimiento (Ediciones SM, 2010) and De redes y saberes. Cultura y educación en las nuevas tecnologías (Santillana, 1998). You can follow him on his website, jamillan.com.

Keynote: Digital prostheses in education: opportunity or consumerism?

Digital advancements provide an endless amount of useful tools. In both the cultural and educational terrain, new gadgets and services foster learning autonomy and allow for a new type of knowledge, in addition to a new way to approach the world. However, the digital sector oftentimes urges consumerism, due to the general and accelerated rate of obsolescence that shortens a product's lifespan. Educational systems and educators alike must carefully choose where they stand on these issues.

David Istance

David Istance is in OECD’s Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI), where he heads the work on Innovative Learning Environments and before that on Schooling for Tomorrow. He has authored or co-authored many reports and articles; recently for OECD these include: The Nature of Learning: Using Research to Inspire Practice (2010), Innovating to Learn, Learning to Innovate (2008), and Towards Demand-Sensitive Schooling? Evidence and Issues (2006). He writes the overview publication on education at OECD, (most recently Education Today 2010: The OECD Perpective). David is also Honorary Visiting Professor, Cardiff University.

Keynote: Technology Use and Broader Models of Schooling and Learning – common arguments re-examined.

First, to re-examine the naive idea that simply investing in different forms of technology would significantly alter the nature of education and learning – an expectation doomed to disappointment. At the same time, I want to look again at the common conclusion that, since so often that technology is being used to do things that were being done before using more traditional materials, it has not made any significant difference or improvement. Incremental change may already be important progress.

Second, I will want to examine the notion of the ‘grammars of schooling’ to ask whether they are simply too powerful for new educational resources to unsettle the status quo. At the same time, we can ask whether too often analysts make supposedly sophisticated argument out of simplistic stereotypes of school learning that are not well substantiated by evidence – does it help to conclude that schools today are not fundamentally different from 19th century practices and anyway is it true?

Third, I will present a model of learning environments and their links to institutional environments derived from our international project on Innovative Learning Environments to argue that the use of ICT and digital resources can usefully be embedded in such larger frameworks. Such wider frameworks can also serve to emphasise and problematise the links to non-formal learning that sit awkwardly with the predominant concepts ‘school’ and ‘classroom’.

Finally, I can seek to summarise forms and benefits of teaching and learning that can only be achieved with technology (or otherwise only with great difficulty) – distinctive ‘value-added’.

Dr. Betty Collis

Dr. Betty Collis (B.A., Mathematics, University of Michigan; M.A., Mathematics Education, Stanford University; PhD, Computer Applications in Education, University of Victoria, Canada) has focused her work since the 1970s on technology as a learning workbench. She is an emeritus professor of the University of Twente in The Netherlands from which she took early retirement in 2005. Since then she works as a consultant with universities and in the corporate sector on the potential of technology for strategic change in teaching and learning. For a review of her projects, publications, presentations, teaching and consulting work see her page at the University of Twente.

Keynote: Digital Learners: Will they surprise us?

Current learners are digitally handy, but are they digitally literate? In what ways are they approaching learning differently than they did in pre-digital times? And a major question: What do learners expect differently from their instructors and educational institutions to reflect the learners’ on-going uses of digital technology? In this presentation we will consider these questions, giving different points of view for each answer.

Dr. Juana M. Sancho

Professor of Educational Technology at the Didactics and Educational Organization Department, University of Barcelona. She coordinates the consolidated research group Esbrina, Subjectivitats i Entorns Educatius Contemporanis (2009GR 0503) and co-directs the Centre for the Study of Change in Culture and Education. Main investigator at the project School+: More than a platform for the school of tomorrow, from the 5th Framework Programme, European Comission. She has numerous publications (books and articles) related to innovation and education improvement, teacher's professional development and the impart of ICT in education.

Keynote: Technological affluence, educational precariousness: a look at the last 20 years.

In the 20 years that span the celebration of the first, second and third Conference on Information Technology in Education and Society: A critical insight, the technology in our surroundings has undergone significant and profound changes. For most people (or at least those who live in technologically advanced countries), work places and social settings, ways of using and accessing information and modes of communication, and even how we learn have all experienced large transformations. Within this changing universe, whose climate is always in flux, and where research, development and innovation never cease, educational systems remain practically unchanged. From this perspective, this conference serves as a platform for developing a critical comparative analysis of the economic strength, creativity and rapid evolution that seems to underlie the development of ICTs, as well as the fragility, dependence, lack of inventiveness and inertia that seem to characterise activity in the field of education. The presentation will close by indentifying a number of challenges education must face today, and in the immediate future.

Dr. Punya Mishra

Dr. Punya Mishra is Full Professor of Educational Technology at Michigan State University where he directs the Master of Arts in Educational Technology program. He (with Dr. Matthew J. Koehler) is co-chair of the SITE2011 conference and former chair of the Innovation & Technology Committee of the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education (AACTE). He is nationally and internationally recognized for his work on the theoretical, cognitive and social aspects related to the design and use of computer based learning environments. He has worked extensively in the area of technology integration in teacher education which led to the development (in collaboration with Dr. M. J. Koehler) of the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework, which has been described as being “the most significant advancement in the area of technology integration in the past 25 years.” He has received over $4 million in grants, has published over 45 articles and book chapters and has edited two books. Dr. Mishra is an award winning instructor who teaches courses at both the masters and doctoral levels in the areas of educational technology, design, and creativity. Dr. Mishra is a gifted, creative and engaging public speaker, having made multiple keynote and invited presentations for associations and conferences nationally and internationally. He is also an accomplished visual artist and poet. You can find out more about him by going to http://punyamishra.com/

Keynote: Creative Teaching with Technology: Introducing the TPACK Framework.

Technology is playing an increasing important role in the world of teaching, offering the potential to fundamentally transform the practice and process of teaching and learning. This rapid evolution of technology, however, presents significant challenges to teachers and teacher educators. Confronting these challenges requires moving beyond notions of just integrating technology to an understanding of the complex issues teachers face as they design effective transformative learning experiences that exploit the possibilities provided by these technologies.

The Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework will be introduced as a way of framing research and practice around teacher knowledge, technology integration, and teacher creativity. The TPACK framework seeks to capture the essential qualities of knowledge required by teachers for effective technology integration into their teaching, while addressing the complex, multifaceted and situated nature of this knowledge. He will discuss how technologies (both analog and digital) need to be creatively repurposed by educators in order to develop a trans-disciplinary curriculum essential for success in the new millennium. He will also offer examples of current research and practice as well as offer implications for teacher education, teacher professional development and policy.

Dr. Neil Selwyn

Neil Selwyn is a sociologist working at the Institute of Education - University of London, UK. Neil has written extensively on a number of issues, including digital exclusion, education technology policymaking and the student experience of technology-based learning. Recent books include, ‘Schools and schooling in the digital age: a critical analysis’ (2011, Routledge); ‘Education & Technology: key issues and debates’ (2011, Continuum); ‘Adult learning in the digital age’ (2005, Routledge) and ‘Telling Tales on Technology’ (2002, Ashgate).

Keynote: Social media, social learning? Considering the limits of the ‘social turn’ in contemporary educational technology.

The growth of social media over the past ten years has transformed the ways in which the internet is experienced by most ‘end users’.As such, many education institutions (and educators) now find themselves expected to ‘catch-up’ with this world of social media applications and social media users.

Of course, as with most of these previous waves of ‘new’ technology, social media remain an area of considerable expectation, exaggeration and hyperbole. It is essential, therefore, that the educators are able to approach social media in a considered and objective manner. The issues addressed in this presentation are necessarily straightforward. What are the key features of social media and just what is their significance to contemporary education? How are social media applications currently being used in education settings and contexts? What are the limitations as well as the opportunities of social media use? What changes does education need to make in order to remain relevant in the apparently fast-changing digital age?