Dipane Hlalele has sent the report below on the annual Sustainable Rural Learning Ecologies Colloquium held on 29-31 October 2014 at the Qwaqwa campus of the University of the Free State. This is the third time the colloquium has been held at the Qwaqwa campus.

The Indian Government announced in June 2014 that 100 Smart Cities will be funded in India at a cost of US$1.2 billion.in cities with populations over 100,000 people. The program aims to improve methods for engaging citizens and addressing their needs, building capacity in cities and progressing e-governance through the use of technology..

The HEInnovate project funded by the EC and OECD offers a range of dimensions for consideration in measuring the extend to which HEIs are entrepreneurial. A concept paper produced by the project is attached.

Izmir University of Economics (IUE) has become the first Turkish university to participate in the PASCAL Learning Cities Networks (LCN) program. Located in the third city of Turkey which is the second biggest port in turkey after Istanbul, IEU was established in 2001 by the Izmir Chamber of Commerce Education and Health Foundation.

Two new OECD education publications on global education trends will be released at 13.00 CET/12.00 GMT on Monday 19 January 2015. These will then be presented in an international webinar on Tuesday 20 January at 17.30 Paris time.