TELL US, "Technology Enhanced Learning Leading to Unique Stories" is a two-year project funded by the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Commission (Grant agreement n°619462). It aims at addressing the inertia of TEL deployment in European formal education systems by organising a two-stage contest process throughout Europe 28 and by demonstrating successful adoption and scaling up of the awarded products and demand by the formal learning context.

There is no doubt that technology-enhanced learning (TEL) has created enormous changes in schools, universities, and vocational learning. However, these innovations have tended to be unsustainable. Too often, initiatives need a high degree of effort to be sustained and are consequently endangered when funding stops. At the same time, mobile and social information and communication technologies are fundamentally changing our lives. Nowadays we use them naturally to keep in contact with our friends, to seek information, to buy things, and to work. In many domains, these emerging technologies demonstrate that scaling is possible.

However, few educational institutions have taken these technologies up in a systematic way in order to include them in their learning strategy. In spite of the availability of a huge number of technologies for learning purposes, teachers and students are NOT taking them up, and the real breakthrough of new teaching and learning methods with new technologies has not happened.

To address this problem, the TELL US project will organise a range of contests aimed at finding technologies that have successfully been scaled up and have shown successful results in formal educational contexts in order to help them grow in size and geographically.

The challenge offered by this contest approach will be to allow suppliers and producers to be open to new potentially risky ideas and create breakthroughs in TEL by demonstrating the depth and breadth of innovative and effective solutions available.

There are more than 70,000 euros worth of prizes to be won, including a 10,000-euro cash prize shared among the four category winners presented at the Grand Finale to Future en Seine in June 2015! The TELL US team will be present as an exhibitor and workshop during the BETT SHOW in London, 21-24 January 2015.

Deadline for submissions: 31 January 2015

Do you have an innovative product or service in the field of eLearning? Are you ready to join the European market? Then hesitate no longer! Submit your entry to the TELL US Awards and take on the European competition!

Only the best will receive cash prizes and see their solutions deployed at the European level.

The European TELL US competition is open to all participants, large enterprises as well as SMEs, web entrepreneurs, students, professors, and all actors in education; it is sponsored by DG Connect.

The competition is organised in two stages:

1. Regional competitions online: sixteen winners will be selected for the Grand Final.

Prizes for each regional winner include

• internationalisation support – one showcase event
• soft-landing services in one of the cluster ecosystems
• mentoring and preparing for the Grand Final Pitch FenS
• promoting their products and services at a conference or trade show
• advice on EU projects (H2020, SME Instrument, etc…)

2. The Grand Final at Futur en Seine will take place on 15 June 2015 in Paris.
 

The four winners will be awarded prizes by a high-level international jury and the public

Prizes for each of the four winners include

• 2500 euros cash
• a Kindle
• a 500-euro Amazon account to cover technological needs
• a mentoring session with an Amazon engineer
• startup profiling on EDUKWEST Europe along with social-media promotion
• HP equipment

And many other prizes...