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LEARNING FOR LIFE Workshop 18th March 2008.
Please see below for the call for participation in a Learning for Life
workshop on day one of GCCR’08 from Professor Josie Taylor, Chair of Grand
Challenge 8: Learning for Life.
Workshop: Tuesday, 18th March 2008
Location: British Computer Society, Southampton Street, London
Call for Participation
Developing a statement of vision for the future.
With the emergence of mobile and ubiquitous computing, the semantic web
and the development of an e-research infrastructure, new possibilities
open up for e-learning and Learning for Life that take us beyond what has
been conceived in this area before. The challenge here is to even
conceptualise how learning environments and opportunities will manifest,
how people will engage with learning events, and what Learning for Life
will be like. These new possibilities need to be understood in the
context of our developing understanding of the co-evolutionary nature of
learning and computing systems.
Traditional grand challenges have had a single, easy to understand goal,
e.g. put a person on the moon (and bring them back), map the human genome.
Unfortunately, life is not so simple for us – or for any of the other
computing-oriented GCs. Goals are only ever partially achieved, one can
always do better. And there are many complementary goals. Therefore, we
need something more like a roadmap, where we identify various milestones
and estimate the time it will take to meet them and the dependencies
between them – something like the workplan in a research proposal, but
more grand in its scope. It might be easier to work on this roadmap in
parallel with developing the vision statement, as each will assist the
other: the roadmap suggesting realistic goals for our vision and the
vision suggesting the direction for the roadmap.
We invite you to join us in developing this roadmap to define the scope of
the Grand Challenge: Learning for Life and its research agenda.
Please submit a short position paper on: What milestones would you propose
and why? (2-4 pages max) – preferably with an interdisciplinary slant – by
Tuesday, February 19th. Places are limited at this workshop due to the
size of the venue.
Themes that papers may wish to address could include but need not be
limited to:
Modelling and Dynamic evaluation: How do we best model and represent
learners within e-learning facilities and how might we assess these over
time?
Informal and Lifelong Learning: How might we develop facilities that
support learning outside formal educational settings over a learner’s
lifetime?
Creativity and Problem Solving: How might we encourage and support
creativity and problem solving with and through e-learning facilities?
Inclusion and Accessibility: How do we ensure that learning for life is a
viable option for all, and that the facilities provided reflect the
diversity of learners?
Important Dates:
Position papers: Tuesday, Feb 19th 2008 (2-4 pages Max)
Final Programme: Monday, March 3rd 2008
Workshop: Tuesday, March 18th 2008
GCCR’08 day two: Wednesday, March 19th 2008
GC8 Steering Group
Chair: Josie Taylor (Open University)
Anne Anderson (Glasgow)
Tom Boyle (London Metropolitan)
Mike Sharples (Nottingham)
Jan Rae (Open University)
Position papers should be sent directly to Jan Rae ([log in to unmask]).
Places for this workshop are limited to 20 participants. The workshop is
free of charge, coffee and lunch will be provided to those participating.
The workshop will start at 9.00 and finish at 4.30, it will be held at
British Computer Society, Southampton Street, London.
For more information on GCCR 08 – agenda, fees and details of
accommodation – and to book your place at the Conference please see
http://www.bcs.org/gccr08. For further details of the Learning for Life
Grand Challenge please see http://ukgrandchallenge8.open.ac.uk/.
The GC8 Learning for Life workshop will be sponsored by the BCS and the
IET.
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