Learning anytime anywhere was the key theme of the VIII International Conference on ICT in Education – Challenges 2013, which was held in July 2013 in Portugal.
Organised by the ICT in Education Competence Centre of the University of Minho Institute of Education, the conference covered a plural range issues, structured in three main topics:
Emerging environments
Digital and curriculum
Digital evaluation
The topic “Emerging environments” included the more recent technological innovations, searching for lines of future development in the dimensions related to education and training.
Ale Okada, invited as a keynote, presented the project WESPOT “Working Environment with social personal and open technologies for inquiry based learning”, whose features , strongly anchored in digital and networked technology, highlighted very well the key theme of this conference. More than 400 attendees from higher and basic education came to engage in a programme. All keynotes were also live-streamed increasing therefore the open access to the conference. Okada, however, mentioned that increasing access to conference talks through live webcast was not new for Challenges. Seven years ago, during the initial editions of Challenges, Okada presented Open Learning Technologies of the OpenLearn Project through webinar using FM which was widely accessed. “Challenges” was the first international event which allowed online presentation of a conference paper . This significant and innovative opportunity opened up several other online talks in various events that doubled or tripled the number of viewers, by extending our reach geographically as well as temporally through the video web conferencing application FM. During Challenges 2013, Okada also launched her book “Open Educational Resources and Social Networks” edited by the OU KMI, published by UEMA University in Brazil . The free print copies were distributed in the conference and received by the Chancellor (Rector) of the Open University in Portugal and the Educational Projects Director of the Education and Science Ministry as well as the Diretor of EUN (European Schoolnet).