— posted by Rafaela Oliveira Lima, Member of the Going Local Team for Portugal

A Agenda Digital para a Europa tem como objectivo tornar cada europeu digital.
A Comissão Europeia, em colaboração com as autoridades nacionais e locais, está a organizar o Going Local 2011 de forma a dar a oportunidade a cada português de fazer ouvir a sua voz.

 Uma equipa da Comissão Europeia liderada por Mário Campolargo, Director de Tecnologias Emergentes e Infra-estruturas, DG INFSO, estará no Porto e em Aveiro no próximo dia 12 de Dezembro, e em Coimbra e Lisboa nos dias 13 e 14 de Dezembro, respectivamente.

Queremos entender qual é a situação actual e o progresso feito desde a publicação da Agenda Digital para a Europa em 2010, mas sobretudo procuramos perceber quais são as prioridades de Portugal, e como pode o país contribuir para a implementação dessas acções.   

Os principais temas a serem tratados serão:

• Governo e Administração Pública on-line
• e-Inclusão, Educação, Competências e Literacia Digital
• Banda Larga
• Inovação
• Infra-estructuras para a Investigação e Conhecimento
• Portugal, a Europa e o Mundo

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Number of views: 624

— Posted by Prabhat Agarwal, DG INFSO, Project Officer 

“Students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach.”

So begins Marc Presky’s famous essay in which he coined the term “Digital Natives” — those born typically after 1980, and raised in the connected digital world. Presky’s main focus was on the revolution of the teaching world. But when we designed the Digital Agenda for Europe, we knew that we had to reach out to our own Digital Natives in Europe. Right from the beginning, and across a much wider set of policies.

And so we did.

In our house, it started with Neelie Kroes’ visit to the Campus Party Europe last year, followed by a special event at last year’s ICT conference, and then continued in the recruitment of a Young Advisors Group for the Digital Agenda, and in the launch of a special grant for young researchers under the Future and Emerging Technologies scheme. In parallel, our colleagues from DG Education and Culture launched a whole series of initiatives on education and employment for young people in Europe. This series of initiatives is called “Youth on the Move“, another key flagship of the Europe 2020 strategy for growth and jobs.

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Number of views: 2399

— Posted by Nancy Pascall, DG INFSO, Policy Officer, Workshop organiser at Digital Agenda Assembly

The lack of qualified and skill personnel in the ICT sector was predicted a few years ago but it is now a reality.  Despite the high unemployment level in some countries thousands of ICT related jobs are empty.  It is now time to take into consideration the unused talent pool: women!

To address how the women can concretely play a more active role and benefit from the Information Society, an action plan is needed which takes into account all relevant factors.

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Number of views: 1556

— Posted by Javier Hernández-Ros, DG INFSO, Head of unit: Cultural Heritage and Technology Enhanced Learning

On 16 June, in the framework of the Digital Agenda Assembly, we will have the opportunity to discuss with Member States’ representatives, experts and stakeholders how to support the mainstreaming of eLearning in national policies as an agent for modernization of education, for all subjects and skills.  Mainstreaming eLearning is one of the key actions of the Digital agenda for Europe.

President Obama recently stated, “we’re sending today our children out into a 21st century economy by sending them through the doors of 20th century schools”. This applies to a large extent to schools in Europe as well. If we want to ensure a bright future for our young generations and build the knowledge economy of the  twenty first century, Europe has no choice than to continue modernizing its education and training systems, making full use of the potential of ICT. Read the full entry

Number of views: 2664