News Story

Eden Conference – Budapest, Hungary

Peter Scott, Monday 21 Jun 2004

The EDEN organization (European Distance and E-Learning Network) held its annual conference for 2004 at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. The conference focus was on NEW CHALLENGES AND PARTNERSHIPS IN AN ENLARGED EUROPEAN UNION: Open, Distance and e-Learning in Support of Modernisation, Capacity Building and Regional Development. The principal conference sponsor was Microsoft and KMi was invited to lead their key workshop on the Thursday morning in the main conference auditorium.

The workshop was on Telepresence research for work and learning and was presented jointly with Dr Fiona Brooks from the University of Hertfordshire, UK. For my part, I was able to give a view of the new Prolearn Network of Excellence and a range of new telepresence perspectives from KMi.

Workshop participants were engaged in producing innovative educational scenarios for the technologies we discussed and were rewarded by our Microsoft host, Paul LeFrere, (Microsoft Education Europe), with MS goodies for their efforts. Most prized were the rather nice MS rucksacks!

Abstract: In an enlarged European Union, with ten new member states and with other candidate countries lining up to join, finding appropriate technologies to support our shared working environment is becoming critical. Virtual and Remote presence environments for collaboration need to be pervasive, accessible and scalable. In this workshop session we will explore the learning application of new range of telepresence technologies, from the simple and elegant to the complex and powerful.