Helix5 offers innovative projects for education, training and new media. Helix5 is a networked organization, located in The Netherlands and distributed along European and Asian countries. Helix5 bridges research on media, human- and societal impact. Its scope is pragmatic advice, implementation and evaluation. Social media and web-based communities have a prominent position in Helix5’s action repertoire. It fosters an open, creative mindset that values diversity and personal growth.Helix5 is strategic partner in addressing the challenges in Education Training and Youth. Helix5 is involved in the development of new digital skills for creating interactive open educational resources. The Helix5 professional staff is specialized in organizational capacity building, and creating transnational cooperative partnerships with organizations from other countries in order to produce innovative outputs or exchange best practices.
Helix5 was established on 1988 as an SME for national and EU projects on New Media, Society and Industries. Its web site can be seen here http://helix5.eu/. Its staff, which varies between 2 and 5 FTE, specializes in international projects and EU project definition and dissemination. Helix5 has been registered in the EU ECAS administration under PIC code 949531255 and has been accredited for its quality checking procedures.
Helix5’s current and recent projects are in the fields of International Higher Education as recently provided for projects between the European Commission and local Ministries for Education in Thailand, Australia, South Africa, Finland, Russia and The Ukraine. Helix5 has been involved in EU projects from 1992 onwards concerned with aspects of Education, Training, Corporate Development, Media and Knowledge Transfer, Product development.
Helix5 participates in several European Union granted projects, most recently in the MakeITreal project and the CONSTRUIT project.
The MakeITreal project (Erasmus + ) infuses Arts into Science Technology Engineering and mathematics (STEAM), links STEAM to real life and engages students in product design and making practices. Product design is chosen as a practice that integrates STEM disciplines, is a creative process providing links to Arts and is also reflected in industrial practices immersing students in entrepreneurial thinking and in the business culture. Helix5 constitutes one of the core pedagogical partners and provide the input in the design of the MAKEITREAL curriculum, open educational resources for STEM and pilot protocol. Helix5 also acts as a scientific consultant and contributes to the validation of the MAKEITREAL learning intervention as well as on the development of policy recommendations for stimulating further development of and support for the concepts underpinning the project.
The Construit project develops new digital skills for creating interactive open educational resources. The principal objective of the CONSTRUIT project is to promote ‘making construals’ as a new practice that promises to integrate and bring coherence to the dual perspectives on computing and on digital learning. Helix5 is involved in the evaluation from an independent perspective using the Helix5 expertise in educational ICT, pedagogy, evaluation and online learning. Together with educational departments of the university of Warwick EUF-Finland, CU-Bratislava and Edinburg, Helix5 give guidance to the development of a new concept that makes computer programming different and more accessible to people without mathematical education. The concept is tested to different user groups in several institutes. The project is supported by the Erasmus+ programme Innovation and good practice, Strategic Partnerships.
Piet Kommers
Piet Kommers is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Behavioral Sciences, Department of Media. His actual interest is media, learning and visual communication. From 1990 he is increasingly involved as partner and coordinator in European research projects based and continuous learning. His role in initiating higher education in Eastern Europe led to his UNESCO chair, followed by the award of honorary doctor by Capital Normal University in Beijing in 2000. Main recent functions: Committee Member for the Academy of Sciences; Communication and Organization, UT; Scientific Board Member for New Learning Projects. Ministry of Education, Singapore; Lector at Fontys University of Applied Sciences for the Integration of ICT in Education; Regular Visiting Professor for Human Factors in Multimodal Communication for the European PhD Academy IMPDET at Joensuu University, Finland; Visiting Professor at the Institute of Educational Multimedia and Telematics; University of Hokkaido, Sapporo, Japan; Member of the UNESCO Board Creative Media Interaction for a Better Future: Trends, Challenges and Priorities.
Margriet Simmerling
Margriet Simmerling has been leader in projects for the European Commission in the fields of SME business synergies, Life-Long Learning and Web-Based Communities. She is working for the European Commission as expert in innovation for SMEs and education.