Month: October 2012

Commission urges Member States to recognise skills gained outside school and university

As part of its strategy for creating jobs and growth, the European Commission has launched an initiative to boost the recognition of skills and competences gained outside school or university. The Commission’s proposal aims to increase job opportunities in particular for the young unemployed and those with few formal qualifications such as older and low-skilled workers. It also seeks to increase access to higher education, especially among mature students.

Through this recommendation, the Commission is urging Member States to establish national systems for the validation of non-formal and informal learning (see background for definitions) by 2015. This would allow citizens to obtain a full or partial qualification on the basis of skills and competences acquired outside formal education. Only Finland, France, Luxembourg and the Netherlands currently have comprehensive systems in place for validation of non-formal and informal learning.

“Our aim is for all citizens to make full use of the learning opportunities which are available to enhance their skills and employability, whether at the work place, through civil society groups or via the internet,” said Androulla Vassiliou, Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth. “In a time of high unemployment and low economic growth, it is essential that Europe develops the right mix of skills and competences to boost competitiveness, prosperity and social inclusion.”

Several high profile breaches so far this year have brought some much needed attention back around to the topic of password security. Odd that in the years since the World Wide Web was first founded, the username password paradigm remains relatively unchanged. Technologies, browsers, design and usability have all evolved exponentially, and yet the same authentication methodologies have persisted for nearly two decades.

In some ways, we are almost regressing in our ability to protect our private information online. Security questions based on public data, linked accounts which can be recovered through basic social engineering tricks, and password reuse have all served to further destabilize an already flawed system.

Attempts at educating users on proper password policy has been limited to a fuzzy stream of seemingly over complicated policies, oversimplified “rules”, and increasing characters, symbols and numbers, without much consideration for the implications of a poor password choice.

We talk every day about how iPads and other technology can be implemented in the classroom. But many devices *cough* iPad *cough* are designed to do a myriad of different things. Sure, they???re terrific learning tools but they???re also great distraction tools. Just ask any student able to quickly check their Facebook account while they???re supposed to be using an iPad for research.

But Apple has you covered. The new iOS 6 has a very simple and powerful tool called Guided Access that lets you keep students focused on a single app of your choosing. It lets you disable the home button, restrict parts of the screen so they can???t be touched, and even stop responding to being turned over and upside down. It???s easy to implement and a great tool in the teacher???s toolkit.

I???m a so-so fan of Skype. I???ve used it on an infrequent basis and have had more than a few dropped calls. Audio and video alike.

However, it???s a cheap way to make long distance calls and seems to work better over wi-fi and the video quality is improving on a regular basis.

So therefore it???s probably a great tool for the classroom. But how can you use Skype to do more than just make calls? Well, there???s a pantload of interesting ways! Check out these fun ideas:

Creating a supportive and bully-free classroom takes time, energy, and determination. It can???t be done overnight and certainly can???t be done without a ton of effort on the teacher???s part. That???s exactly why a team at the Department of Education created a series of toolkits to help you build a safe and supportive classroom.

It focuses on working to solve the bully problem and then moving onto crafting a long-term plan for a safer school experience for everyone. These modules were designed to work together.