This news item on PublicTecnhology.net reports that the European Commission has launched a public consultation to search for the best strategies to boost Europes ICT research and innovation until 2020.

The Commission believes that Europe is underperforming in both the level and intensity of its research and innovation investments, with only 33% of research and innovation in developed economies worldwide being in ICT.

The three main questions asked within the consultation are:

1. What are the main challenges ahead for ICT research and innovation? As the ICT revolution continues, what are Europe's key priorities for research and innovation?

2. How, and in what fields, should Europe aim to lead? Europe has world industrial and technological leaders in key fields such as telecommunications and embedded systems. How can advances in these areas be reinforced and what new areas should a leadership profile be sought?

3. What is the role of public policy in putting Europe at the forefront of ICT innovation? How can research policy be consolidated to create a European market for ICT innovation? How can complementary policy fields such as standardisation, licensing and intellectual property regimes be adapted to support the early commercialisation of research results?

If you would like to contribute, visit the consultation site - "Shaping the ICT research and innovation agenda for the next decade" and have your say!

Labels: consultation, EU, futures, ICT, IT, researchmethods, strategy

I've just come across two interesting news items - one about the use of Web2.0 in the Health sector and another about using online games to encourage children to respond to a consultation about play spaces.

Although the full text is not available without paying a hefty sum, the Executive Summary of the E-health 2.0 report is available. The report offers an overview of twenty "leading e-health 2.0 providers", and discusses a number of themes that emerge from this overview, including: Transparency in the health system; Rebalancing the doctor-patient relationship; Consumer empowerment; Empowerment through connectivity; and Mobilisation of data. According to Public Technology.net "The profiles provide a snapshot of innovation across healthcare: from organisations providing online communities for patients with specific conditions, tools for chronic disease management, sites that enable patients to rate the quality of care they receive, together with tools to enable clinicians to better search for and share research data."

The second story I saw came from the Department for Children, Schools and Families. The Playspace consultation tool is a neat online tool which is aimed at 8-13 year olds to try and get them involved with a national consultation on the development of play spaces. In a Sims type game it allows kids to create their ideal playspace, and they earn credits to buy cool things (like skate ramps, swings, etc) for their playspace by answering child-friendly questions based around the consultation.

I suppose what struck me most about these is the way in which technology is changing the relationship between organisations and their 'clients'. Whether that's through finding interesting and fun ways to engage children and therefore enable them to contribute to developments in their world, or encouraging greater interaction, support and freedom of choice through the use of social networking in the health sector.

It's encouraging engagement, interaction, involvement and ownership of these issues and with increasing familiarity and access to technology it seems likely to become more prevalent in every part of our lives.

Labels: consultation, digitalnatives, education, engagement, freedom, games, health, IT, online gaming, open, socialnetworking, web2.0

Google have announced their open social networking platform will enable developers to create applications that work across different networking sites that have joined forces with OpenSocial (already including LinkedIn, Ning and Friendster). This should streamline development processes, meaning that applications are compatible across sites. See ZDNet.com for some more detailed analysis of the implications.

Labels: internet, IT, networks, online, web2.0

Yesterday I attended an interesting presentation by Ewan McIntosh (his edublogs site is worth checking out) run as part of the Urban Learning Space seminar series (a podcast of it will be available soon).

What I found refreshing was his discussion of how emerging technologies (social software in particular) is really just another development in a long line of 'in-things' (from sliced bread in 192x!) whose use seemed daunting, unusual or even inappropriate initially.

What I took from his talk was that maybe educators tend to take the use of emerging technolgies too seriously, treating them as an all-or-nothing. Overplanning the use of technolgy, putting so much emphasis on the need for them to be successful (or the need for it to not fail) means that the flexibility, spontaneity and innovative use of technologies is often stifled in the learning environment. And yet our learners are displaying exactly these traits in their personal use of the technologies - from using their blogs to publish creative writing, to producing videos for youtube sharing their comments on current affairs, and using some impressive technical features to showcase their talents. Maybe it is time we learned from them and see it as a creative medium rather than looking for the way to assess it and 'prove' the value of the excersie... maybe the value is it can engage the interest of learners!

Labels: digitalnatives, education, educators, elearning, freedom, internet, IT, learnerexpectations, online, web2.0

The Guardian reports that MySpace and Skype have joined forces to allow MySpace users to chat to each other for free within the social networking space using Skype VoIP technology.

The development has been hailed as 'The start of a convergence of social networking and communications applications' by Tim O'Reilly. It will afford users with another alternative communication channel, making the social networking environment an increasingly rich communicative tool.

Labels: digitalnatives, internet, IT, networks, online, web2.0

The Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills have announced £3.9 million in funding to support the Technology Exemplar Network jointly led by Becta and LSC.

This inititative will aim to create a national support network to enable those who have successfully embedded ICT in their teaching and learning to share their experience with other practitioners and thus encourage use of learner-focused technology in education.

Read more at PublicTechnology.net

Labels: education, elearning, IT, networks, online, practitioners

The Health Protection Agency have announced a new strudy investigating the effects of wireless networks on our health. Although they say that they "have good scientific reasons to expect the results to be re-assuring", the empahsis of the study seems to be looking at patterns of use, and quantifying actual levels of exposure.

Read more at PublicTechnology.net .

Labels: digitalnatives, education, health, internet, IT, networks

This recently published article reports on research which says that university applicants expect unrestricted access to internet. While this is unsuprising as most university applicants will already use the internet in their everyday life, it does raise questions for institutions who want to maintain a degree of control over their networks, and how to reach an acceptable compromise between learner expectations of freedom of use and safety/security of the network.

Labels: digitalnatives, freedom, HE, internet, IT, learnerexpectations, networks, security