This symposium will offer an interdisciplinary forum of discussion for both Nordic educational practitioners and academic scholars interested in conceptualizing, designing and evaluating teaching and learning in these new emerging learning landscapes. The symposium, through a series of interactive presentations and discussions, will facilitate conversations aiming at identifying and summarizing main pedagogical and technological design concerns related to the increasing use of mobile devices and social media in a variety of educational settings. More in details, the aim of this symposium is to discuss, try to find answers and reflect upon to the following questions:

• How does the digital culture of children and young people affect schools and teaching and learning practices?
• How can schools and universities take advantage of these latest advances in mobile communication and social media?
• How to design learning activities that support innovative educational practices?
• Which are the most appropriate methods to rely upon while assessing learning in these emerging learning landscapes?
• Which skills are needed from today’s teachers and teacher students in order to face these new conditions for teaching and learning?

Moreover, this symposium will aim at exposing the results of current research efforts in this field as well as future challenges in terms of pedagogies and technologies. The scope of this event will cover but not be limited to the following topics:

• Web 2.0, social media and mobile applications for learning and teaching
• Classroom human-computer interaction
• Mobile and ubiquitous computing support for collaborative learning
• Issues related to the adoption of one-to-one technology for learning
• New learning/instruction devices
• Game-based learning
• Participatory media cultures
• Implementation of learning models exploiting one-to-one technology
• New pedagogical approaches for ubiquitous learning environments
• New Roles for Teachers/Learners
• New Media Literacies
• Evaluation and evaluation methodologies

1st Nordic Symposium on Technology Enhanced Learning, NORDITEL, 26-27 August 2010 at Linnaeus University.

As technology develops and evolves it changes what we can do and where we can do it. People change work, learning, and entertainment practices on account of technology. Technology in support of teaching and learning is no different. This is especially true when the Internet, social media and distributed and mobile technologies are taken into consideration. These emerging technological landscapes are starting to transform the ways in which we teach and learn.

Currently, numerous scholars claim that the majority of educational institutions ignore the overwhelming presence that mobile technologies and social media have in children’s and young people’s life and argue that these technological developments might be integrated into everyday educational practices since they are transforming and defining literate acts and language in profound ways that affect learning. Thus, a crucial challenge for the educational community is to provide teachers and educators with tools and methods that can help them in their efforts to cope with the changes that these new technological developments introduce to our society.

Learn more about the symposium by clicking the links in the left column.