Report from ED-Media 2011

ED-MEDIA is an international conference on "Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia & Telecommunication" and started in 1993 as follow-up after 6 years of International Conferences on Computers and Learning (ICCAL). As a non-profit organization for the advancement of computers in education, AACE developed the ED-Media annual conference as a multi-disciplinary forum for the discussion and exchange of information on the research, development, and applications on all topics related to multimedia, hypermedia, telecommunications and distance education. Without the honorable work of AACE the conference would not be such a worldwide event.

Nowadays it is certainly one of the largest international conferences on these topics. About 1000 participants every year attend numerous sessions and workshops for 5 days. Two very fresh publications (Khan et al, 2009) (Mendez & Duval, 2009) pointed out the huge amount of contributions, the relationship of authors, the key players and lots of more trends. In 2008 for the very first time Twitter was used to support the conference by announcements and a live stream beside each keynote talk (Ebner, 2009).

So ED-Media conference stands for innovation in education and encourages their participants to collaborate not only at the conference but also later on.

In especially these economically rough times, the interdisciplinary exchange of ideas and research in the field of ICT and lifelong learning is of main importance to help solving today's society's problems. Working on one's individual competencies and knowledge is the key to employment and to a better life for individuals, education is important for countries and regions to be competitive in a global world... yes we have heard those lines many times before, but in fact it is true! We should also not forget that we need an educational- and training infrastructure that provides first class learning experiences to learners. Unfortunately that is often not the case. In our opinion, new technology, new pedagogy and new role models in teaching and research are extremely important and now needed more then ever!

Due to the fact that education is maybe the most important investment for our future, the topics of ED-Media are strongly focusing on the improvement of learning and teaching using digital technologies. Therefore it doesn't matter if we are talking of schoolchildren, students or even elder people in lifelong learning-programs. ED-Media aims to bring technologists, pedagogic and didactical specialist together on one central point to initiate discussions and exchange of information and newest research results.

Furthermore this year (in Lisbon, Portugal) three keynote speaker gave a deep impression of learning methodologies and technologies of tomorrow. Beside the intensive use of so-called Web 2.0 technologies for teaching and learning, the topic Open Educational Resources was the driving force of the conference. To get a further impression it can be stated that total of 512 full papers were submitted, of which 241 were accepted. Of these, 28 were nominated as outstanding papers and passed through a second round of reviews with the Steering Committee. Of these, a small number were selected as award winning papers. In addition, 362 brief papers were submitted of which 165 were accepted. 150 reviewers from around the world were involved in the review process.

Finally it must be pointed out, that the Steering Committee is very encouraged to integrate and assist our young academics. For that, Ed-Media is offering an excellent Graduate Student and Research Training Program during the conference for our young academics as well as supervisors, advisors, early career researchers. A series of presentation and a detailed program aimed to assist to get a professional enhancement in the field of research. In forthcoming years this initiative will be further improved and enhanced to allow young researchers get in touch with other academics, professors.

The exchange of research results and therefore the improvement of our education with the help of technologies is not only the main goal of the conference; it is simply its passion. So I would like to invite you all outside to our next event in the end of June in Denver, Colorado, US - become part of our big family and help to improve the worldwide education with your valuable work.

References

M. S. Khan, M. Ebner, and H. Maurer. Trends discovery in the field of e-learning with visualization. In Proceedings of 21st ED-Media Conference 2009, pages 4408-4413, 2009.
X. O. G. Méndez and E. Duval. Who we are: Analysis of 10 years of the ed-media conference. In Proceedings of 21st ED-Media Conference 2009, pages 189-200, 2009.
M. Ebner. Introducing live microblogging: How single presentations can be enhanced by the mass. Journal of Research in Innovative Teaching (JRIT), 2(1):91-100, 2009.