News

 BLOOM events June 2009

What's happening?

Monday 22 June, Bite-sized Learning Opportunities On Mobiles (BLOOM) project, at The House of Commons

The event is sponsored by Roberta Blackman-Woods MP. The BLOOM project showcase will include how mobile learning is helping employers across Europe deliver improved training, and to explore the impact that using mobile devices can have on skills development and knowledge enhancement. Large employers across Europe are starting to see m-learning as a viable and effective way to reach out to “hard to reach” employees, and offer just-in time learning and support.

A presentation from the BLOOM (Bite-sized Learning Opportunities on Mobile Devices) partnership along with m-learning experts and a BLOOM learner will be available for questions. The panel includes

• Geoff Stead, Director, Digital Learning Studio, Tribal
• Ray Anderson, CEO, Bango
• Carl Werbisky, Taxi driver/ Learning Representative, Liverpool region 

Thursday 11 June, UnionLearn Conference, London

David Cowey (Go Skills) and Jess Wakelin, Sue Downie and Charlotte McConnell (Tribal) represented BLOOM at this important conference in June. Popular TV star, comedian and novelist Jo Brand, chaired the third unionlearn annual conference, where the TUC's learning and skills organisation celebrated the training of 24,000 union learning reps (ULRs). More. . .

BLOOM and eTEN Newsletters  

Current BLOOM newsletter, March 2009 

The latest BLOOM newsletter,  fourth issue (January to March 2009) is out. Find out what we have been up to in the last few months!

Take a look at the previous newsletters

IVT and BSH present BLOOM at 6th Hessischer Mobilitätskongress

With its vast logistics infrastructure and central geographical position Hessen has traditionally become a home for various logistics and transport-related events. The 6th Hessischer Mobilitätskongress which was held in Fulda, Germany, on 4th November 2008, was structured around different aspects of logistics, focusing on the future of the sector and covering all areas from airplane to automotive and rail.

BLOOM was showcased at the congress alongside a wide range of other projects in the exhibition area. Jens-Jochen Roth (IVT) and Christine Haase (BSH) were on the BLOOM stand demonstrating m-learning activities on PDAs and handing out promotional materials to the participants. As they both noted after the event, ‘The Mobilitätskongress was an excellent opportunity to demonstrate how employers can benefit from BLOOM through adopting new ways of training their workforce. It also provided great networking opportunities both for the BLOOM team and those interested in mobile learning’. 

BLOOM at Euro Bus Expo 2008

BLOOM materials will be demonstrated by GoSkills and Tribal at the dedicated Training and Development Zone of the 2008 Euro Bus Expo which will take place at NEC, Birmingham on 4-6th November 2008. Come and see us at Stand 5/D50 to discuss your company training needs and get hands-on experience of our m-learning package!

Helping the sector develop numeracy and literacy

An article on the BLOOM project appeared in the autumn issue of GoSkills magazine Ongoing (Issue 18, Autumn 2008). With a distribution list of 6000 employers in the Passenger Transport sector, the quarterly publication of the Sector Skills Council focussed its latest issue on driver training and continuing professional development and featured BLOOM as an innovative solution in training delivery. The full article can be viewed on GoSkills website.

BLOOM presented at BSH Annual Meeting in Mainz

On 12th September 2008 BSH held their annual meeting at the Atrium-Hotel in Mainz, Germany, which was attended by over 200 people. Primarily aimed at BSH members, i.e. freight forwarding companies based in Hessen and Rheinland-Pfalz, the event featured a number of workshops and lectures on risk management and logistics. As part of the activities, Thorsten Hölser, BSH Managing Director, gave a presentation on BLOOM.

In addition, attendees had an opportunity to test BLOOM m-learning activities as IVT were demonstrating the product at their exhibition stand. The demonstration sparked a lot of interest – as one freight company representative commented, “BLOOM could be a useful learning opportunity for our drivers”.    

The CWU education team find out about BLOOM (19 February 2008) 

At the last quarterly team meeting of the CWU regional education team held in York on 19th February 2008 Nargis Walker (BLOOM Project Director) and Kseniia Titova (BLOOM Project Assistant) introduced the team to the concept of m-learning and briefed them on the BLOOM project. There was also an opportunity for the life-long learning project team to practice using the PDA’s (Personal digital assistants) and try out some of the learning software.

The 12 members of the CWU project team cover every region of the UK. Their role is to identify and offer learning opportunities to the members of the CWU through their union learning representatives.

Trish Lavelle, CWU Head of Education and Training, said “I believe that BLOOM is an exciting new project that has the potential to offer a different style of learning to our members when they are on the move and may offer a new way to learn using a blended approach”.

To view photos from the meeting please follow the links:

First BLOOM partnership meeting (22-23 January 2008)

An inaugural BLOOM meeting was held over 22nd and 23rd January in Vienna, Austria and was attended by all the partners. A structure and timetable for the project was formulated in an atmosphere of commitment and cooperation. The eighteen month project period will be packed with a dense round of customisation, training the trainers, intensive research and documentation. Regular news updates will be provided as the project moves forward.

BLOOM start-up meeting (1 October 2007) 

After a long negotiation process, the BLOOM start-up meeting was held in Brussels on the 1st of October 2007 and hosted by Tribal Education. The meeting was followed by a two day mandatory workshop for all partners with the European Projects Team. The focus of the meeting was on all matters relating to the Financial and delivery methodology to be used during the lifetime of the project.