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Dear „e-mentor” Readers,

For many of us, commencing holiday season is not only a time to finally relax and regain our strength before new academic year starts, but it is also a chance to catch up with missed books and articles, or even to gain new skills useful for our professional lives. For those, who did not decide yet what to choose we have some suggestions worth to be considered. Recent weeks have brought a couple of events linked to the use of ICT in education – both on the local and on the global educational market. In Poland two important meetings should be mentioned – Annual General Meeting of Association of Academic E-learning (SEA) and the Virtual University Conference. This conference, organized regularly since 2001, constitutes a common discussion forum for e-learning professionals.

The main goal of the Association of Academic E-learning, which was established exactly ten years ago is to support academic institutions in Poland as well as individual educators in effective implementation of e-learning and technology enhanced learning. One of the key activities undertaken by SEA is certification of e-teachers and instructional designers. In Spring 2016 the fourth edition of certification procedure for e-teachers was conducted and 27 academics have been awarded. It is worth to be mentioned that since the procedure was first introduced in 2011 SEA Executive Board awarded 95 people all together (74 teachers and 21 instructional designers) with this significant distinction.

Among many international events, which also took place recently I would like to mention the New Skills Agenda for Europe announced by the European Commission on June 10th, 2016. The main reason for modifying the competency development program at EU countries were the results of research which unveiled that “almost 70 million Europeans lack basic reading and writing skills. Even more cannot use numbers or digital tools properly in everyday life”. Therefore, the Commission proposes 10 actions to be taken forward over the next two years in order to better adjust the skills of the EU citizens to the needs of the job markets in Europe. More information about adopted program is to be found on the European Commission website at http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=1223&langId=en.

Proper competency development of European societies was also the subject of another document called Timisoara Declaration, which was signed in June in Timisoara (Romania) by the representatives of several European associations dealing with distant and open education. This document is called Timisoara Declaration because of the place where it was signed but its title is Better Learning for a Better World through People Centred Smart Learning. The signatories have urged the European policy makers to undertake the actions that will help the educational institutions “better respond to the expectations of younger generations, decrease drop out and increase levels of employability”. Main principles of this document are outlined at http://www.mifav.uniroma2.it/inevent/events/aslerd/index.php?s=222&link=TD2016, where a link to full document has been provided as well.

I do hope that both the content of the current issue of “e-mentor” and the documents mentioned above will inspire the Readers to arrive at new ideas and to take up new initiatives, significant not only for academic community but also for the global society in Poland.