Organic.Edunet 6th project meeting in Rome

IE members Alberto Abian and Salvador Sanchez are currently in Rome to attend to the Organic.Edunet 6th project meeting which is taking place in the FAO premises in the city. Main task for IE in this meeting is to introduce the first fully functional version of the Organic.Edunet portal. IE members are also participanting in other sessions related to the evaluation of the quality of the learning objects uploaded to the portal, pilot trials requirements, multilingual issues in the portal, and others.

The Roman Coliseum

On the social side, the eternal city of Rome needs no presentation. In fact the sessions take up almost all the available time so it is difficult to do any touristic activity apart from the joint dinners we are all having after everyday’s sessions. In the photo below, one view of today’s session about the basics of the evaluation plan.

General view of one of the sessions

 

At Dublin: Mark Melia dissertation on evaluating courseware

Last week Miguel-Angel was visiting Dublin City University as external examiner of Mark Melia Ph.D. dissertation on “constraint-based validation of e-learning courseware” (having Claus Pahl as supervisor).  As can be appreciated in the happiness Mark exhibits in the picture below, the evaluation was fairly successful for him.  

In the picture, left to right: Mark, Miguel-Angel and Claus Pahl.

 

Visit of Dr. Manouselis

Nikos Manouselis arrived in Madrid yesterday from Athens. Dr. Manouselis, from GRNet Athens, is the project manager in the Organic.Edunet project and one of our best partners in Europe. He will be in Spain during the summer so that we can plan and organise a few things we collaborate together in.

Dr. Manouselis gave a very interesting talk on collaborative filtering in technology-enhanced learning to our students and Faculty, and he will be working with us in related topics during his stay with us.

 

Research stay at Athens

These days, IE member Salvador Sanchez is in Athens to strengthen links with the GRNet group lead by Dr. Nikos Manouselis. During his stay, Salvador will be working on the design of the Organic.Edunet portal, as well as attending a few sessions for planning future joint project proposals, and meeting PhD students.

Remains of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi

In such a long stay in Greece it is almost mandatory to visit the Oracle of Apollo, established in the 8th century BC in Delphi. In this place on the slopes of Mount Parnassus, Apollo -who was in Greek mythology the god of light and truth-, dispensed oracular wisdom through the Pythia. It is well known that this oracle at Delphi was visited by kings, philosophers and politicians, whose decisions were often influenced by the oracle’s responses. It was so important in the antiquity that ancient Greeks even established a right and a precedence for consulting the oracle: the promanteia.

 

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?

 

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!