The North American PASCAL Center – located at Northern Illinois University – co-sponsored the 4th TRE Networks Roundtable meeting held in Washington, DC, December 5 – 7, 2011.  The theme of this year’s TRE Roundtable was “Accelerating Regional Solutions: Finding Unique Pathways to American Prosperity.”  PASCAL Associate, Josef Konvitz -- recently retired Head of Division, Regulatory Policy, at the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) -- delivered a well-received keynote on “The European Experience: Governance, Place and Higher Education.”

Gerry White’s stimulus paper has given us a useful introduction to the work of the Digital Education Research Network (DERN) in highlighting and disseminating research into the use of digital technologies and media in schools, training, higher education and lifelong learning.  He concentrates most on formal education settings, but he emphasises that ‘the distinction between formal and informal learning has become artificial in a networked world’, and that the there is a ‘convergence of formal and informal learning’ in the face of high levels of use of the internet for educational purpo

Highlighting successful projects based on PUMR principles, we are now delighted to additionally feature a number of selected Best Practice Cases. These are drawn from over 130 examples of best practices developed by more than 25 universities around the world which conform to PUMR principles. As PUMR develops, this invaluable resource will grow as more universities reveal their own ten best practice cases and share their knowledge of how they were achieved.

Dear Colleagues.

We are now starting our new and very creative Comenius LABlearning project - on media based learning for youth at risk.

You might wish to take a look at the preliminary webpage

The kick-off meeting will be in Salt Catalonia in December.

Best regards,

Jan Gejel

Xploit coordinator

A recent article was sent to me regarding the work done by Lilia Abron, PhD, an environmental engineer and founder of PEER Consultants and PEER Africa.  While this in and of itself was not unusual, I receive articles all the time; it was the title Engineering Better Lives for Others that caught my notice.  Abron was raised with the ethic that individuals are their brothers’ keeper: a