CCITA 2009 – Spanish conquest of Yucatán

This week IE members Miguel Angel and Salvador will be attending to CCITA 2009 a latin american conference on learning objects and learning technologies. They will be givin a workshop on learning objects lifecycle, from birth to death.

But before the conference starts, they will broaden their minds with unvaluable knowledge about the Maya gods -Chac Mol is everybody’s favourite- and secrets. In the picture above, visiting Chichen Itza.

Below Miguel-Angel is in front of “La Iglesia” (the building at the left). La Iglesia is a Puuc-style temple with Chaac (a rain deity) in the middle of the facade.

 

Miguel-Angel in front of “La Iglesia”, learning about Mayan religion

In “La Iglesia” we can see the four “Bacabes” (sustainers of heaven) two at each side of the Chaac mask in the center. Below you have the pictures. It is said that the bacabes are in the form of several animals: armadillo, snail, turtle and crab. Can you identify them in the pictures?

 

Ontose 2009

Today IE members Daniel Rodriguez and Salvador Sanchez-Alonso are attending to Ontose 2009, the latest edition of a series of bianual workshops on ontologies for information systems and engineering. Ontose was conceived as a forum promoting challenging discussions and cross-fertilization over multidisciplinary research areas from the ontologies point of view.

This year’s edition has has been organized by the Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt (Austria) as part of the 21st International Conference on Advanced Information Systems, CAISE 2009. We have been lucky enough as to count with the presence of Nicola Guarino, one of the key names in the field of ontology in computer science. His keynote on the ontological foundations of Service Science has been not only thought provoking but also very interesting from the point of view of the challenges that the new service-based economy will have to face in the near future. In the photo below these lines, Christian Kop from Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Nicola Guarino and IE member Salvador Sanchez-Alonso.

 

Organic.Edunet 5th project meeting in Norway

Today and the next two days IE members Alberto Abian and Salvador Sanchez will be in Asker, a town near Oslo, in Norway, to attend to the Organic.Edunet 5th project meeting. Main task for IE in this meeting is to show the rest of the partners a portal mock-up presentation including general interface, semantic navigation and social navigation. IE members will also conduct an interactive session where all partners will comment on the portal mock up and give feedback to UAH for continuing with the development work.

On the social side, the meeting is taking place at Holmen FjordHotel, a beautiful location by the Oslo Fjord. Meeting rooms face the Fjord, as well as the restaurant and many of the rooms, which makes of it a nice place to work and relax once meetings have been called off.

In the image above, Alberto, project manager Nikos Manouselis, Salvador and host Aage Steen in the hotel pier relaxing in between sessions.

 

Open health Spain 2009

Yesterday and today the first Open Health Spain symposium on clinical interoperability issues is taking place in Alcala. Organized by the IE, ATOS Research and Innovation and the Fuenlabrada University Hospital, this symposium aims at gathering together researchers and practitioners in the field of Health interoperability in Spain.

Pablo Serrano (Fuenlabrada Univ. Hospital), Josema Cavanillas (ATOS R&I) and Miguel A. Sicilia (Univ. of Alcala) in the first session

 

MCCE 2009 – 2nd Workshop on Methods and Cases in Computing Education

Last wendsday 22th April Miguel-Angel and Salvador attended the second workshop of the Spanish ACM SIGCSE Chapter, which took place at the Central Building of the Open University of Catalonia. The event has a “real” workshop format, with a few presentations and most time devoted to discussion. Particularly, this year many Universities in Spain are struggling with the inception of the new degrees in computing, adapted to the “Bologna process”, and this raised significant controversy (of the kind that is really insightful).

The MCCE’09 workshop at Barcelona.

Topics covered included several computing education presentations, but also general issues as how to integrate transversal competencies in computing curricula, the need for pluri-disciplinary approaches and the real cost of changing to the new “Bologna-style” approach to teaching.

 

Virtual Meeting AIS R2

Yesterday at 16.00 Miguel-Angel participated in a virtual conference of the presidents of chapters of the Association for Information Systems (AIS) covering Region 2 (including Europe and its surrounding area). Miguel-Angel started the Spanish Chapter  of AIS (spAIS) in 2008. spAIS has only started some initial setting up activities, but much more is to come if finally the Ministry of Education approves the first degrees in Information Systems, thus allowing IS to become a clearly identifyable discipline in the country.

The meeting was basically to know each other and discuss some general issues. It was great to talk with colleagues from other countries, as in Spain we are just in the infancy of IS as an independent discipline.

 

Validation of PhD project theses at the University of Cádiz, Spain

Daniel Rodríguez visited Cádiz on 5th Feb, for the validation of some PhD projects. There was a small tornado that afternoon very nearby (San Fernando), but luckly we didn’t notice anything at the hotel… uff!! Thanks to Mercedes Ruiz for sending me the picture!

 

Organic.Edunet meeting in Alcala

From today to friday afternoon Alcala de Henares will host the sessions of the 4th EU project Organic.Edunet meeting. The workins sessions will take place in the old Rectorate building, an amazing and very inspiring place to meet and work. These walls, built in the XVIth century, contemplated the student period of literature genious and other important personalities such as Juan de la Cruz, Lope de Vega or Francisco de Quevedo, just to name a few.

Interactive session in the 3M room of the rectorate building, part of the first day agenda

After a long day of work, we all had a few tapas at night in the old-style bars in Alcala (photo by Hannes E.)

 

Ph.D. dissertation: Josep Prieto

Miguel-Angel spent a couple of days at Barcelona. Monday it was a meeting of project SUMA. SUMA is about integrating learning technology via OKI interfaces.

Tuesday it was the Ph.D. dissertatio of Josep Prieto Blázquez, a faculty member of the Open University of Catalonia. The Ph.D. was about an ontology for Virtual Laboratories (VLAb), and the results included an ontology-driven generation of VLab arrangements in Moodle.  Below the Ph.D. candidate respectfully listening the veredict of the committee (luckily, the result was positive).

The Ph.D. candidate listening the veredict (the public is at the left, out of the picture)

 

Green flag and… goodbye Athens!

The review went perfect! The outcome of our 1st project review was very positive, and the project was highly appreciated by the project reviewers and the Commission.The result was a nice green flag from the Commission to continue with the activities as planned.

Some partners visited the Acropolis after the review, which was empty due to the stormy weather in Athens

In the following days we will finally decide about the next project meeting, that is expected to take place late January or early February, most probably in our university.