In the summer of 2003 the KALEIDOSCOPE project was selected as a Research Network of Excellence under the 6th EU programme framework from a field of 15 applicants. The Kaleidoscope project is quite an extensive research project, which encompasses more than 70 participating research institutions and a budget in excess of 10 million euros. The Kaleidoscope project was officially launched on January 1st 2004.

The Kaleidoscope project deals with concepts and methods for investigation of future learning by means of digital technology.

A decisive challenge for e-Europe is transformation of information into useful and manageable knowledge, which individuals, society and institutions can learn and share in various ways all over Europe, and which overcomes cultural differences. In spite of rapid reproduction of networks for communication, plenty of digital content and the rise of omnipresent computers, citizens of the knowledge society are not capable of using the possibilities, which technology provides in order to increase their quality of life.

Far too many existing E-Learning environments primarily produce old, and consequently, limited paradigms of learning, which are useful for technology belonging to a past era. They are incapable of producing a fundamental transformation of the ways in which people learn and construct knowledge. For a long time, social theorists have warned against dangers of a post modern world: Fragmentation, harm, loss of identity and society, and various problems connected to globalisation.

The Kaleidoscope project believes that pro active research can guide digital technology into a direction, which is more beneficial for European citizens. A process, which can be provided by relevant subjects of socio-technological nature, a closer cooperation between researchers from a series of fields that include designers, teachers, semioticians, scientists within computer technology, sociologists and economists. Factors which will place the learning person in the centre of what we do. Learning is situated though. ‘The learning person’ is not a single entity: He or she learns at school, through working – at home and at the place of work: The learning person changes through all of his or her life. Each domain requires that we conceptualise new concepts and methods for design and implementation of well adjusted learning environments. Thus, Kaleidoscope’s competences must include the main domains that contribute to developing of E-Learning in the long term: From psychology and education to technology with its various components from hardware to software research, organization of systems and knowledge, networking, human computer interaction and artificial intelligence.

Lone Dirckinck-Holmfeld is the project manager for Aalborg University’s participation in the Kaleidoscope project, who in that regard leads a European Research Team (ERT) called Conditions for productive learning in network learning environments“.

Kaleidoscope website