Manuel Castro-Gil, Ph.D. Professor Castro is an electrical and computer engineering educator in the Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED). He has an industrial engineering degree and Ph.D. from the Industrial Engineering School of the Madrid Polytechnic University. His doctoral thesis received the Extraordinary Doctoral Award and the Viesgo Award. He is now Professor and Director of the Department and was serving as UNED's Vice-Rector of New Technologies. His contributions to the advancement of engineering applications can be evaluated in-light of his continued and dynamic efforts to renovate curricula in electronics teaching throughout Spain, Europe and South America. He has continued to integrate new tendencies, and innovations that are manifested as simulations and multimedia tools, primarily oriented to distance and online learning. He has provided exemplary leadership, which has fostered change through his writings and textbooks in Spanish.

Phillip Laplante, Ph.D. Dr. Laplante has promoted the advancement and application of engineering science and technology through his leadership and contributions in continuing professional education, associate, bachelor and master degree programs both as a professor and as an academic administrator for more than 20 years. He has also a distinguished author, scholar, and teacher in the areas of real-time systems and in real-time image processing, the latter a sub-discipline which he helped to create.

Karen Panetta, Ph.D. Dr. Karen Panetta received her B.S. in Computer Engineering from Boston University, M.S. in Electrical Engineering and Ph.D. in Computer Systems Engineering from Northeastern University. She worked full-time for Digital Equipment Corporation as a Principal Engineer while completing her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees. She worked on many CPU design teams and developed simulation engines for fault simulation of digital logic systems. In 1991, Karen was selected as a Digital Fellow for the Engineers Into Education Program. This awesome program allowed her to go to school full time, with full salary for two years to finish her Ph.D. dissertation. She is the recipient of the NSF CAREER AWARD and is a NASA Research Scientist Fellow. She is currently working on the "Nerd Girls": Breaking the Stigmas and Stereotypes of Women in Engineering project. And, is the Chair of the IEEE Women in Engineering Committee and the Editor in Chief of the IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine.

—go to table of contents—

Click the banner to see the newest issue...

Seji Isotani, Editor-in-Chief, of the Multimedia Engineering Education Magazine, which is the EdSoc's student-only peer reviewed publication, has announced the availibility of the newest issue. Volume 3 number 1 (2008) is available at: http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/e/sac/meem/index.php/meem. The primary objective of MEEM is to facilitate the publication of interesting, useful, and informative material on all aspects of multidisciplinary engineering education for the benefit of students and young educators. The MEEM is run for and by students. The Magazine focuses on education, bearing in mind that the expected readers are the students/teachers/facilitators who will be responsible for designing educational programs to satisfy the needs of tomorrow. With this mission statement in mind, this magazine encourages submissions on all aspects of engineering education and related fields with emphasis on educational aspects.

—go to table of contents—

Michael Auer, the Chair of the Interactive Computer Learning (ICL) 2008 has issued the first Call For Papers. The ICL conference has quickly become a world renowned event. Please, take a moment and download the Call For Papers from: http://www.icl-conference.org/CfP_ICL2008.pdf

The ICL 2008 Conference Chair has already enlisted a very respectable list of keynote speaker. They are:

• Kanji Akahori, President of the Japan Society of Educational Technology (JSET), Japan
• Erhard Busek, former Austrian Vice-Chancellor, President of the European Forum Alpbach, Chairman of the "Institute for the Danube Region and Central Europe", Austria
• Muriel Dunbar, Director European Training Foundation, EU
• Judson Harward, MIT Center for Educational Computing Initiatives, USA
• Torsten Fransson, KTH Stockholm, Vice-Dean School of Energy and Environmental Technology, Sweden
• Nikitas Kastis, President of the European innovation and research network MENON, Greece
• Bernd Kreissig, CEO Brockhaus Duden Neue Medien GmbH, Germany
• P.Tapio Varis, University of Tampere, Chair Media Culture and Communication Education Hypermedia Laboratory, Finland

"Pairing senior design student groups with industry projects has created the best advertizing for our students' abilities we could have ever imagined." —Jim Conrad North Carolina Chapter Chair

(Above left) Team members describe the autonomous robot they designed and built. (Above right) The poster session allowed students to describe their designs to over 80 industry representatives. The UNC Charlotte College of Engineering's senior design program brings together students and industrial partners in a collaborative research environment. As they tackle real-world engineering projects, the engineering students and their industry sponsors are afforded unlimited possibilities for learning and achievement.

(Photo to the left) Students who worked on the Schweitzer Engineering Labs project describe their results. The UNC Charlotte College of Engineering's senior design program brings together students and industrial partners in a collaborative research environment. As they tackle real-world engineering projects, the engineering students and their industry sponsors are afforded unlimited possibilities for learning and achievement.

—go to table of contents—

Do you want to become an IEEE leader?

Become active in your local chapter OR start one!

The 2003 IEEE All-Society Review revealed that 50% of the Education Society (EdSoc) members do not know if there is an EdSoc Chapter in their local area. We need to address that as Chapters serve several purposes and could prove useful to you, or, you may want to start a Chapter in your area!

The EdSoc has some 70 Chapters scattered throughout the world. For a listing of those Chapters and to review what is available for Chapters, see: http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/es/chapter-list.html.

And, I might add, there are a number of Chapters that are just about to become official. They include: Harbin, Chengdu, Xian, Shanghai, Wuhan, Beijing, and Nanjing.

All these chapters exist for a number of reasons—some obvious, some not so obvious. The obvious reasons for chapter development are:

• to facilitate membership growth,
• to provide community service, and
• to promote collegial networking in various localities.

However there are other very powerful reasons to develop chapters. Chapter development CAN ALSO provide a mechanism:

• to foster the identification and development of LEADERS who can, for example:
  • represent their colleagues and present a unified position to their federal government, to their college administration, to the European Union Education Commission, to the United Nations education committees, etc., or,
  • represent their colleagues and formulate grant/funding proposals.
• to establish VISIBILITY for the Education Society!

If there is no Chapter in your area, it is relatively easy to start one. The Chair of the EdSoc Chapters Committee can use the IEEE's e-Notice mechanism to send an email notice to EdSoc members in your area, which would inform them of the Chapter Formation Drive and ask them to consent to form a chapter. IT'S THAT SIMPLE TO GET ONE STARTED!

EdSoc Chapters exist for many reasons. Some IEEE Sections may not have a reason to establish one, some IEEE Sections may greatly benefit from having a Chapter. If you would like to lead an effort to establish an EdSoc Chapter in your IEEE Section contact the Chair or the EdSoc Chapters Committee via email — Rob Reilly at reilly@media.mit.edu.

—go to table of contents—

in the photo above: students work on TEP assignment

"the IEEE Russia Northwest Section is lead by Alexander Mikerov a terrific EdSoc leader..." —Manuel Castro, Vice Chair, Chapters Committee

in the photo above: attendees pose with Moshe Kam (standing with blue shirt in center) and Alexander Mikerov (seated in front row).

Students of the IEEE Technical English Program (TEP) in St. Petersburg, Russia were recently treated to an all-day tutorial by Moshe Kam and Ryan Measel from Drexel University (Philadelphia, USA). Kam is a Professor at Drexel and has also served as the 2005-2007 IEEE Vice-President for Educational Activities. Measel is a Research Assistant.

in the photo above: (left to right) Ryan Measel, Moshe Kam and Alexander Mikerov

in the photo above: Ryan Measel gives his presentation.

Already in its third year, TEP is an exclusive benefit for IEEE student members. The purpose of the program is to increase technical literacy in English, and improve the readability of manuscripts, papers, and specification sheets by non-native speakers of English. The TEP tutorial is given at the end of an instruction cycle and is an important milestone for both students and instructors associated with TEP. In 2006 the tutorial featured Professor Kurt Richter from Austria, who spoke about development of leadership skills.

The 2007 tutorial took place at the St. Petersburg Electrotechnical University on a sunny Saturday (24 November, 2007). Twenty three (23) registered participants were exposed to a lecture and workshop on “Cracking the Bar Code” and to a demonstration entitled “Concepts of Analog and Digital Signal Processing.” The program included a theoretical introduction, in-class exercises, and a music-based demonstration. The demonstration allowed participants to experience digital signal processing concepts through their vision and hearing senses.

Before focusing on the technical subject, Professor Kam spoke about IEEE’s history, and about its activities worldwide. He emphasized IEEE activities in countries that exhibit new emerging roles in technology creation and consumption, including China, India and Russia. Kam pointed out that IEEE has a significant potential to grow in Russia. Though Russia is the largest country in the world by territory, and its population is about 140 millions, there are now only 800 IEEE members in the whole country. The Russia Northwest Section, where the tutorial was given, has only 200 members, including about 50 student members. (It turned out that about half of all the Section’s student members were part of TEP and were physically present in the 24 November tutorial.)

In addition to the tutorial (which was fully funded by the IEEE Educational Activities Board), Kam and Measel stopped by the Alexander Popov Museum, and met with university administrators led by the Vice-Rector Sergey Karmanenko. They discussed opportunities to extend the TEP beyond the Northwest Russia Section, and exchanged opinions on the question of First Professional Degree in Engineering. This is a topic that raised some controversy lately, and was the subject of a recent article in the IEEE publication The Institute (M. Kam and A. Peskin, “What should be the first professional degree in engineering?” Vol. 31, #3, 2007). Russia now faces this question following its decision to adopt the principles of the Bologna Declaration.

In 2007 the TEP has seen a few changes, including the following:

• TEP classes are provided only to IEEE members (a member benefit)
• There is a (modest) tuition fee
• Trainers are remunerated

In addition, pre-TEP classes (General English) were introduced for those who need them.

Russia Northwest Section and St. Petersburg Electrotechnical University are very grateful to the IEEE Region 8 and the IEEE Educational Activity Board for organizing the tutorial, and for their generous support of the Technical English Program as a new and very powerful benefit of the IEEE Membership.

—go to table of contents—

—go to table of contents—

The Education Society and the Computer Society are co-sponsoring the IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies (TLT). The TLT's Steering Committee is a joint committee composed of 5 members - 2 from the EdSoc and 3 from the Computer Society. The EdSoc representatives to that committee are: Matthew Ohland (USA) the Chair, and Martin Llamas-Nistal (Spain). The Steering Committee has apoointed Wolfgang Nejdl (left) as the Editor-in-Chief of the new journal. He is a full professor of computer science at the University of Hannover in Germany since 1995. He received his M.Sc. (1984) and Ph.D. (1988) at the Technical University of Vienna, was assistant professor in Vienna from 1988 to 1992, and associate professor at the RWTH Aachen from 1992 to 1995. He worked as visiting researcher/professor at Xerox PARC, Stanford University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, EPFL Lausanne, and at PUC Rio.

According to the TLT's Steering Committee Chair, Matt Ohland: "Wolfgang and Associate Editor-in-Chief Peter Brusilovsky are putting together a team of Associate Editors who are clear leaders in the field of learning technology. There is no better way to signal their commitment to creating a high-quality publication." Click here for more information about the IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies.

—go to table of contents—

"This is one of the more active areas within the Education Society, and, this activity is clearly due to the fine work of the leaders in both Chapters." --Rob Reilly, Chair, EdSoc Chapters Committee

This event began with several IEEE Spain EdSoc Chapter events in Madrid, which included 2-days of workshops and seminars. Toward the end of the week-long event, there was a meeting of IEEE-Spain chapter officials and from the IEEE-Portugal chapter. The afternoon-long joint chapter meeting explored a number of existing projects and explored a number of potential initiatives. The photo to the left shows some collegial exchanges among conference participants. From left to right, Lluis Vincente a professor at University Ramon Llul in Barcelona; Professor Martin Llamas-Nistal, a professor at the University of Vigo and an active EdSoc leader; Pablo Orduña, recipient of the MSc End-term project Award of the Spain Chapter; Manuel Caeiro, recipient of the Doctoral Award of the Spain Chapter; and Professor Manuel Castro-Gil a professor at the National Distance Education University of Spain, who is a well-known EdSoc leader.

Spanish Education Society Chapter

—go to table of contents—

photo 1	photo 2	photo 3
In spite of the political situation in the Gaza Strip, Palestine, our engineering colleagues there have accomplished a great deal. They offer professional development courses to in-service engineers and to students via traditional and state-of-the-art technologies. Photo 1 shows a cluster of campus buildings at the Islamic University of Gaza campus in the Gaza Strip, Palestine. In photo 2 depicts a seminar for university Alumni to explore about e-learning tools in one of the e-learning labs at the Islamic university of Gaza, Photo 3 shows Ms. Sana Aldabagh (center) and Professor Hatem Hamad (right) during a visit to Berzeit University in Palestine Palestine's West Bank.

photo 4

photo 5

photo 6

Photo 4 shows Ms. Sana Aldabagh during a visit to the Islamic university of Gaza, Palestine. Photo 5 is a scene in front of an older building at the Islamic University of Gaza we see Professor Mohammad Mikki, (right), Professor Hatem Hamad (center) and Ms.Aldabagh (left). In photo 6 During a visit to Jerusalem, Dr. Neil and Ms.Aldabagh visit the Dome of the Rock.
photo 7	photo 8	photo 9
Photo 7 depicts Professor Mikki during a visit to Petra in southern Jordan. Photo 8 shows Professor Kamaleen Shaat, President of the Islamic University of Gaza, presenting a graduation certificate to a student who was enrolled in a University e-learning course. Photo 9 shows Dr. Kamaleen Shaat (left), Dr. Mohammad Husein (second from left) and Professor Hatem Hamad (third from left) presenting graduation certificates.

—go to table of contents—

The Education Society offers several annual awards, which are typically presented at the Frontiers in Education (FIE) Conference. The nomination deadline for all Education Society awards is June 15 annually. All nominations should be submitted to both the Education Society Awards Committee Chair and the chair of the selection committee that oversees the specific award. Click on the link provided for detailed information and nomination instructions related to each award.

—go to table of contents—

Click the FIE 2008 banner to go to their Web site... Be sure to attend the 2008 FIE Conference in Saratoga Springs, New York USA...

—go to table of contents—

Longtime dynamic and energetic Education Society leader (and now retired) Professor David Voltmer has assumed the role of Chair of the Central Indiana EdSoc Chapter. If you would like to contribute to the effort, or have any ideas, please contact Dave (voltmer@rose-hulman.edu).

—go to table of contents—

Impatica for PowerPoint makes it easy to add narrated business presentations to your web site or e-mail marketing programs. Now you can deliver fully narrated and animated PowerPoint presentations to essentially any Internet device without plug-ins and even at normal modem speeds. It is the software of choice for the EdSoc's Distinguished Lecture Series presentations.

For more information, pricing, to view demos of the software, and to download fully functional trial software, go to: Impactica Web site.

—go to table of contents—