MTSR 2009

Last week, IE members Miguel-Ángel Sicila and Ramiro Cano were attending the MTSR 2009 conference, held in Milan, in the University of Milano-Bicocca. This bianual conference aims at bringing together researchers and practitioners who share a common interest in metadata, its representation, its semantics and its diverse applications to Information Systems.

Apart from the conference, there was a little time for entertainment, including the social dinner which took place at the wonderful location of Grand Hotel Villa Torretta.

From left to right: Ramiro Cano, Miguel-Ángel Sicilia, Cristian Cechinel and Juan Manuel Dodero

 

SSFW09

Last week, IE member Leonardo Lezcano attended the SSFW09 workshop, held in Milan, where he presented an approach titled “Integrating Disease And Diagnosis Semantics In Clinical Archetypes”. This workshop was a follow up to the first workshop on Signs, Symptoms and Findings: Towards an Ontology for Clinical Phenotypes held in Dallas in 2008. The aim of both meetings was to achieve a better understanding of the pathogenesis of human disease in order to develop effective diagnostic, therapeutic and prevention strategies. This Milan edition was organized by the DISCo Bioinformatics Group at the University of Milano-Bicocca.
The workshop audience was pleased to watch the presentation of Nicola Guarino, one of the key names in the ontologies domain, as well as the one of Barry Smith, perhaps the most vociferous advocate of the philosophical approach to the study of ontologies in informatics.

SSFW09 participants

From left to right: Leonardo Lezcano, Gianluca Colombo, Daniele Merico

 

Talking about openness at Miraflores

Last wednesday, Miguel-Angel gave a talk on the concept of openness at Colegio Mayor Miraflores, in Zaragoza, as part of the activities of the “New Technologies” programme the College organizes every year. The slides (in Spanish) have been posted at Manu Benito’s blog:

http://www.memeteka.net/2008/11/profundizando-en-qu-es-abierto.html

In the picture below, left to right Fernando Martín (Microsoft), Jesús Romo (Basque Country Univ.), Miguel-Angel and Oscar González (the chair of the session and organizer of the event). Jesús spoke about the history and pitfalls of Creative Commons licenses, and Fernando about open source and proprietary software (a curious relation :-/).

 

Summer course at “El Escorial” – about Semantic Interoperability for health systems

The course took place 27 to 30 July 2008, and Miguel-Angel gave a talk on “archetypes, ontologies and inference”. The audience was half computer scientists, half from the medical sciences (and something similar happened with the backgrounds of the speakers), so it was a real pluri-disciplinary event.

The summer course was held at the facilities owned by the Universidad Complutense at the beautiful location of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, UNESCO World Heritage site.

 

At Kaambal

Miguel-Angel is visiting for a few days the beautiful mexican city of Mérida to giva a talk at the Kaambal 2008 event. Kaambal (which means ”learning” in Maya) is a network of research groups around the topics of tele-learning and learning objects. 

Left to right, José Angel Olivas (Castilla La Mancha Univ.), Miguel-Angel and Manuel Prieto (Castilla La Mancha Univ., main organizer of the event.This is after the inaugural session at a conference hall of the Universidad Autónoma del Yucatán. Behind us the big poster of the event with our three names as speakers.

Wendsday night Miguel-Angel and José-Angel went for a walk to taste a delicious Mamey ice-cream at one of the terraces in Paseo de Montejo. We were careful with the trees, just to avoid a hair-raising experience with an alien creature like the one reported here (it is in Spanish but you can watch the chilling video ):

http://www.ikerjimenez.com/especiales/criatura_merida/index.htm

 

	Closing session at Kaambal. Left to right, Edgar (Universidad Autónoma del Yucatán), Manuel Prieto (Castilla La Mancha Univ.) and Luciano (Universidad del Mayab), featuring a lively discussion on the future of the event.
	A view of the Facultad de Matemáticas, Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán. At the back, people preparing the closing dinner.

 

Teaching innovation event

This morning I (Miguel-Angel) gave a talk on “evidence-based instructional design” at the Rectorate building of the University of Alcalá. The event consisted in a round table with several reports on classroom innovation experiences. There were several interesting reports of teachers highly commited to their students, and a thought-provoking discussion afterwards.

I talked about our latest pre-post study on teaching the Model View Controller pattern.

Below some of the participants having lunch after the event. In the right, Carlos Barriuso (Prof. of Law, Univ. of Alcalá, organizer of the event), Arturo de las Heras (Council member, Universidad a Distancia de Madrid) and me. In the left, Alberto Domingo (Prof. of Molecular Biology, Univ. of Alcalá), Asun Miró (Faculty of Medicine, Univ. Extremadura), and Conrado Miró (Prof. CEU University, Seville).

 

4 days in New York

Miguel-Angel will be this week participating in the AERA 2008 Annual Meeting. He will, in particular, give a talk in one of the sessions of the meeting.

This is the program of the TICL Symposium meeting in which Miguel-Angel participated:

SIG-Technology, Instruction, Cognition & Learning
Crowne Plaza Hotel Times Square, Times Square Ballroom, Section A,
Lobby Level
2:15 pm to 3:45 pm

Chair:
Peter Fadde, Southern Illinois University – Carbondale
Participants:
Short Introduction: Media, Content, and Pedagogy: What Is a Learning Object?
Joseph M. Scandura, University of Pennsylvania
* Generative Learning Objects: A More Powerful Basis for Reuse and Repurposing.
Tom Boyle, London Metropolitan University

* Reuse, Instructional Design, and Learning Objects.
Miguel-Angel Sicilia,University of Alcala – Spain

* Learning Objects, Social Learning Communities, and Design-Based Research Opportunities.
Terry Anderson, Athabasca University – Canada

* Modeling Complex Systems.
J. Michael Spector, Florida State University, Tristan Johnson, Florida State University, Pablo Nicolai Pirnay-Dummer, University of Freiburg

Lifelong and Life Wide eLearning: Some Ideas on the Future Role of LMSs and ePortfolios.
Ingo Dahn, University of Koblenz – Germany

After the session, some of the organizers continued the discussion around the table. In the picture below you have left to right (half of) Ingo Dahn, Joseph Scandura and wife, Peter Fadde, Miguel-Angel Sicilia and Ingo Dahn (Tom Boyle is taking the picture).

That’s the view of Manhattan from my hotel room.

A picture of Rockefeller Center.

The plaque at the landmark of Rockefeller has the following John D. Rockefeller, Jr. quotation:

“I believe in the supreme with of the individual and in his right to
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I believe that every right
implies a responsibility, every opportunity, an obligation; every
possession a duty.

I believe that the law was made for man and not man for the law; that
government is the servant of the people and not their master.

I believe in the dignity of labor, whether with head or hand; that the
world owes no man a living but it owes every man an opportunity to
make a living.

I believe that thrift is essential to well-ordered living and that
economy is a prime request of a sound financial structure, whether in
government, business or personal affairs.

I believe in the sacredness of a promise, that a man’s word should be
as good as his bond; that character-not wealth or power or position-
is of supreme worth.

I believe that the rendering of useful service is the common duty of
mankind and that only in the purifying fire of sacrifice is the dross
(waste matter) of selfishness consumed and the greatness of the human
soul set free.

I believe in all-wise-and all-loving God, named by whatever name, and
that the individuals highest fulfillment, greatest happiness, and
widest usefulness are to be found in living in harmony with His will.

I believe that love is the greatest thing in the world; that it alone
can overcome hate; that right can and will triumph over might.”

That’s a great quote. We need more of this philosophy here in Spain to restore our right to own the outcomes of our labour.

 

Culture 2.0

Miguel-Angel Sicilia gave a talk last 16th october in the rooms of the “Círculo de Bellas Artes” about the applications of the Semantic Web and Web 2.0 to e-tourism and access to cultural heritage.

The PowerPoint presentation (in Spanish) can be downloaded from here: Culture 2.0 – Sicilia

 

IE activities at Corfu

Miguel A. Sicilia and Salvador Sanchez-Alonso arrived in Corfu island as part of the (as a joke) so-called IE Greek tour 2007. Nice town but a very busy time by the way, as we first faced two days meetings for the LUISA project to afterwards get fully involved in the activities of MTSR 2007.

Anyway, there is always time to relax with some local friends (see Dr. Lytras in the picture below) and to open new opportunities for collaboration. Together with, of course, some time to taste the excellent Greek cuisine.

Below some Spanish guys at the entrance of the main building of the Ionian University. José Emilio Labra (University of Oviedo), Julià Minguillón (Open University of Catalonia) and Miguel-Angel and Salvador from IE.