ASLERD, the Association for Smart Learning Ecosystem and Regional Development, is an interdisciplinary, democratic, professional association open to institutions and individuals. It was founded in 2015 by academics, researchers and scholars, mostly from European Institutions, with the intention of developing the work previously carried out by the Observatory on Smart City Learning (2012-2015). ASLERD is registered as a not-for-profit organisation under Italian law.
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Mission
The mission of the association is to support learning ecosystems to develop their people centered smartness towards becoming incubators of social innovation and engines of sustainable regional development.
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Vision
ASLERD has adopted a more people centered vision of ecosystem "smartness" that integrates the Maslow's hierarchy of needs and the Flow (psychology) theory: "Ecosystems are smart when individuals that take part in the local processes achieve a high level of skills and, at the same time, are also strongly motivated and engaged by continuous and adequate challenges, provided that their primary needs are reasonably satisfied."
Unlike the most popular models used to benchmark the performance of smart cities, in the ASLERD vision an ecosystem "smartness" is not determined by infrastructural or process and product indicators but emerges, bottom-up, from the opinions of all categories of players involved in the learning processes, as it has been shown in the case studies concerning European Campuses and Rome's Schools. In ASLERD vision the development of people centred ecosystem "smartness" is considered as a continual process that needs to be supported by participatory approaches, co-design practices and technologies.
Timi?oaraDeclaration
At the first ASLERD conference, held in Timi?oara (Romania) the Association launched the document, Better Learning for a Better World - Through People Centered Smart Learning Ecosystems, also known as The Timi?oara Declaration. It was signed on 19 May 2016 by representatives of some of the most prominent European Associations involved in the development of the Technology Enhanced Learning and of the Distance Education, including EADTU, EATEL, EDEN and IAFES .The Timi?oara Declaration recognizes:
- the leading role of design as driver of innovation at both organisational and didactic levels and of fostering the acquisition of a metadesign attitude by the students to prepare them as future citizens
- the need for a fully interoperable tech-sphere and phygital environments
- the social relevance of alternating school and work (dual education) to restore learning ecosystems to their central place and to foster cooperation between students, teachers, families and other territorial stakeholders
- the need to unlock the full potential of open forms of education
- the need for new models to benchmark the "smartness" of people centered learning ecosystems and territories
- that technologies are smart not because they are capable of replacing human reasoning but, rather because they can help towards achieving a people centred smartness, through streamlining mundane organisational tasks, and enhancing the skills of all actors involved in learning processes
Activities
The Association supports good quality research on Smart Learning Ecosystems and their relevance for social innovation and regional development by fostering networking and supporting projects at regional, national and international level (mainly European).The actions develop mainly in three ways:
- Relations between Learning Ecosystems and Regional Development
- Competence Development
- Supporting Technologies
ASLERD supports the development of Smart Learning Ecosystems by:
- promoting the transfer of competences, methodologies and technologies from laboratories to learning ecosystems (schools and other formal and informal learning ecosystems)
- offering free access to lectures, workshops, round tables
- promoting high-quality open access multidisciplinary publications
European dimension
The European relevance of the ASLERD vision, and previously that of the Observatory on Smart City Learning, was first recognized in 2013 with the inclusion of People Centered Smart Cities through Smart City Learning among the Grand challenges of the XXI century in Technology Enhanced Learning. Recently ASLERD organized a session on "Smart Learning Ecosystems for social innovation and territorial development at "ICT2015: Innovate, Connect, Transform" (Lisbon, Portugal) promoted by the European Commission - DG Connect. ASLERD is also committed to producing further analysis and collaboration among European Associations as outlined in the Timisoara declaration. SLERD 2017 is also supported by European Platform for Adult Learning (EPALE) - Erasmus+.
Conference and workshops
Members of the Association, and previously of the Observatory on Smart City Learning, have been promoting ASLERD vision by organizing workshops and panels all over the world:
- Learning with and from Smart Cities - SCiLearn 2012 @ICWL2012 (Sinaia, Romania)
- Horizon 2020: Smart City Learning @ARV2013 (Villard-de-Lans, Venors, France)
- Smart City Learning @ICALT2013 (Beijing, China)
- People Centered Smart Territories: Design, Learning and Analytics, 2013 (Bologna, Italy)
- Smart City Learning: Opportunities and Challenges @EC-TEL2014, (Graz, Austria)
- Dubai2020: Smart City Learning @ICWOAL2014, (Dubai, AE)
- Critical and Participatory Development of People Centered Smart Learning Ecosystems and Territories @Critical Alternatives 2015 (Aarhus, Denmark)
- Smart Learning Ecosystems in Smart Regions and Cities @EC-TEL2015 (Toledo, Spain)
- Learning Ecosystems as knots of the regional development (organized in collaboration with SIe-L and RUIAP), Evaluation of Learning Ecosystems: opinions and experiences (organized in collaboration with SIe-L) and Design literacy as engine of the future education panels @EMEM 2016 (Modena, Italy)
Since 2016 the Association has organized its own annual conference: SLERD. The first edition of the series was organized by the Politehnica University of Timi?oara (Romania). SLERD 2017 will take place in Aveiro, Portugal, organized by the University of Aveiro.
Publications
ASLERD is supporting the publication of a high-quality peer-reviewed online open access multidisciplinary journal - IxD&A - indexed among others, by SCOPUS, ESCI (Emerging Sources Citation Index - Web of Science) and DOAJ. Members of the Association, and previously of the Observatory on Smart City Learning, have promoted several special issues published by the IxD&A journal:
- Smart City Learning: Vision and Practical Implementations (N.16&17)
- People Centered Smart Territories (N. 20)
- Social Behaviours and Learning in Smart Environments (N. 22)
- Smart City Learning: Opportunities and Challenges (N. 27)
- Smart Learning Ecosystems and Regional Development (N. 31)
From 2017 onwards, the proceedings of the annual SLERD conference will be published by Springer Science in the series Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies.
Support to Schools
ASLERD is strongly involved in supporting secondary schools in improving their smartness. Since its foundation, the Association has been successfully implementing actions aimed at disseminating design and evaluation literacies, fostering participatory evaluation, co-design and the increase of the social capital and experimenting with new approaches and strategies for dual education.
Elected Board
ASLERD activities are steered by an elected board of people, which have a strong background in the ASLERD related topics. The board remains in office three years and is elected by all members of the ASLERD.
The present board was elected in September 2015 and consists of the following persons (in alphabetical order):
o Carlo Giovannella (University of Rome Tor Vergata - Dept. of SPFS) - elected President
o Alke Martens (University of Rostock - Institute of Computer Science)
o Antonella Nuzzaci (University of L'Aquila - Dipartimento di Scienze Umane)
o Fernando Ramos (University of Aveiro - Dep. de Comunicação e Arte)
o Matthias Rehm (Aalborg University - Department of Architecture, Design and Media Technology) - elected Deputy President
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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