Tryggvi Thayer

Hjálmholt 4

IS-105 Reykjavík, Iceland

Tel: +354 445 2417

Weblog: http://blog.lib.umn.edu/thay0012/leapfrog/

E-mail: tryggvi_bt@yahoo.com

Education

University of Minnesota 2007

M.A. Comparative and International Development Education.

Thesis: Information and Communication Technology and the Millennium Development Goals in a Global Knowledge-Based Economy: A critical review of donor organization policy.

(Adviser: Dr. Arthur Harkins)

University of Iceland 1993-1997

B.A. Philosophy (degree awarded 2003)

Thesis: Truth and Information – Dretske’s conceptualisation of information.

Spent 1 semester in 1995 doing independent study in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Women’s College of Reykjavík 1984-1990

General Matriculation Certificate with focus on pedagogy.

Professional Experience

Iðnmennt – Skills Iceland 1/2008-Present

(Iceland - http://skillsiceland.is)

Project Manager

Responsible for the Icelandic National Skills Competition and Icelandic liaison to European Skills Promotion Organisation and the World Skills Organisation.

Office of International Education – University of Iceland 7/2006-10/2007

(Iceland - http://www.ask.hi.is/id/1006726)

International Coordinator

Institutional coordinator for the University of Iceland’s foreign partnerships, managing international cooperation, institutional contracts with foreign universities and partnerships within Nordic and European programmes, i.e. Nordplus and Socrates (Erasmus).

International coordinator for the Erasmus National Agency, part of the EU Socrates programme.

Web coordinator for the Office of International Education (OIE), responsible for development and maintenance of OIE web site and services.

Mennt – Educate Iceland (Iceland - www.mennt.net/page.asp?Id=439&sid=164) 1/2001-8/2004

Project Manager

Project manager for European projects. Responsible for a wide range of European activities related to the development of vocational education and training, including providing technical support to the Leonardo da Vinci National Agency and providing reports on developments in vocational education and training in Iceland to European agencies.

Coordinator of ALL – Accreditation of Lifelong Learning, a European transnational project funded by the European Commission’s Leonardo da Vinci II program. Goal of the poject was to develop an internationally recognized accreditation system for small to medium sized learning providers.

Technical coordinator of Animate, a European transnational project funded by the European Commission’s Leonardo da Vinci II program. Project provides innovative web-based collaboration and resource sharing tools for regional networks involved in research and development of vocational education and training throughout Europe.

Managed the development of Iceland’s first national database on learning opportunities at the upper-secondary level and above, including adult and continuing education. The database makes use of innovative data replication and mining techniques to maintain consistency between information providers’ resources and the central database.

Education and training service centre (Iceland - www.frae.is) 10/2003-12/2004

Seconded from Mennt – Educate Iceland

Responsible for setting up communications and computer services for newly established centre. Negotiated contracts for all communications services and hardware including telephones, Internet, computing equipment and office equipment. Oversaw the implementation of all services. Set up internal computing services including desktop computers, laptop computers, wireless network, email, mailing lists, intranet and printing services.

Streymi – web development training (Iceland) 1/2001-5/2001

Instructor

Responsible for instruction in advanced web programming in Streymi’s two semester training program for web professionals. Developed course program and learning materials in addition to teaching.

Cedefop (Greece – www.cedefop.europa.eu) 2/1998-12/2000

(European Center for the development of Vocational Education)

Seconded from the University of Iceland

Technical coordinator of the Electronic Training Village, Cedefop’s interactive website (www.trainingvillage.gr) targeted at the European vocational education and training research and development community with oversight of a team of 4-5 web developers. The site offers Europe’s vocational education and training community extensive information on developments in the field as well as offering collaboration and dissemination tools for Cedefop’s network members, editorial board and management board.

Other notable project work at CEDEFOP:

- CEDRA, project produced a suite of innovative XML-based content authoring tools and an online knowledge-sharing environment for VET researchers.

- “Technology supported learning” (TSL). This project aimed to provide overviews on emerging metadata standards for electronic learning materials.

- Contributed extensively to research on emerging metadata standards and standardized mark-up languages for structuring documents and facilitating data exchange. The results of this research has had an impact on the formulation and development of several ongoing Cedefop projects.

University of Iceland, Research Liaison Office 4/1997-12/2000

(Iceland – www.rthj.hi.is/Apps/WebObjects/HI.woa/wa/dp?id=1000616)

Project manager

Responsible for public relations and design, construction and maintenance of the Research Liaison Office’s website.

Led development of multilingual and multicultural “On The Move” website (www.onthemove-eu.hi.is), a transnational project funded by the European Commission’s Leonardo da Vinci program. The website helps young people in Europe prepare for work or study abroad. This project was selected as one of 200 outstanding projects out of the thousands that have were funded by the Leonardo da Vinci program.

Publications & Presentations

Peer Reviewed

Lee, M., Thayer T., Madyun, N. (2006). “The evolution of the European Union’s lifelong learning policies: An institutional learning perspective’”. Accepted for publication in Comparative Education.

Books, chapters, etc.

Thayer, T. (2002). “Limitations of computers in the management of knowledge”. In Nyhan, B. (Ed.) Taking steps towards the knowledge society – reflections on the process of knowledge development, Cedefop.

Thayer, T. (2003). Compendium of current and recent Icelandic led Leonardo da Vinci II projects. Research Liaison Office – University of Iceland.

Thayer, T. (1997). Compendium of current and recent Icelandic led Leonardo da Vinci projects. Research Liaison Office – University of Iceland.

Articles

Thayer, T. (Nov. 6, 2006). “Internationalisation of Higher Education”. Morgunblaðið.

Thayer, T. (Sept. 21, 2006). “Free to develop: A response to Dr. Hannes H. Gissurarson on market liberalisation and developing countries”. Fréttablaðið.

Thayer, T. (2002). “Www.mennt.is - learning opportunities database”. Cedefop Info, No. 1/2002.

Karlsdóttir, S., Thayer, T. (Dec. 28, 2001). “Information services about learning opportunities”. Morgunblaðið.

Thayer, T. (Vol. 20.1, Jan., 1998). “The Leonardo da Vinci Programme”. Fréttabréf Háskóla Íslands.

Thayer, T. (Vol. 19.10, Dec., 1997). “Computer supported language learning”. Fréttabréf Háskóla Íslands.

Presentations

“The National Learning Opportunites Database – workshop for users”. Presented at the annual ICT conference for educators. Reykjavik, 2003.

“The National Learning Opportunites Database”. Presented at the annual ICT conference for educators. Reykjavik, 2002.

“Linking learning and employment opportunities on the WWW with metadata”. Presented at a meeting on a Europe-wide database on jobs and learning opportunites. European Commission. Brussels, Jan., 2001.

“Information and learning in knowledge management”. CEDRA Symposium. Cedefop, Thessaloniki, Greece. 2000.

“Networking and collaboration in CEDEFOP’s Electronic Training Village”. Training of Trainers’ Network Workshop. Paris. 1999.

“ICTs – giving power to knowledge”. Training of Trainers’ Network Workshop. Cedefop, Thessaloniki, Greece. 1998.

Communications skills

Excellent written and oral communications skills.

Languages – Fluent in English and Icelandic. Fair knowledge of French and German.

Technical Skills

Operating systems – Windows 95-2000 and XP, Linux, Apple OSX

Business Software – Microsoft Office (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Access)

Internet and Media Software – BBEdit, Homesite, Dreamweaver, FrontPage, Flash, Director, Photoshop, Freehand, Illustrator, Quark Xpress, InDesign

Web/Programming – HTML, CSS, XML, XSL(T), JavaScript, Active Server Pages, Visual Basic, VBScript, PHP, SQL

Web Servers – Apache, Microsoft IIS

Databases – MS SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL