Second Herbal.Mednet meeting in Athens

Last week, IE member Enayat Rajabi attended the second Herbal.Mednet meeting in Athens, Greece (during 30^th and 31^st of May). The project partners discussed the latest progress of the project and provided each other with updates on the technical and general aspects of their work. Enayat presented UAH’s progress on the Task 3.1 (Platform Design) and Task 5.1 (project website).

Victor Gonzalvez from SEAE, project coordinator beside Enayat, during Enayat’s presentation

AgriMoodle as the e-learning platform of the project was explained by him and different functionalities of the platform discussed as well. In consequence, partners discussed different issues regarding the remaining parts of each task and agreed on a timeline to catch the deadlines.

 

Open Discovery Space meeting in Brussels

IE members Enayat Rajabi and Salvador Sanchez attended the ODS consortium meeting in Brussels last 20th and 21st of March. The meetings took place in the center of the city and were lead by the project coordinator partner INTRASOFT. The participation of our group was focused on work packages 7, 8 and 9 but we also participated in discussions related to other parts of the project.

Salvador and Enayat at “la Grand Place” of Brussels

The group presented the UAH part in the portal development, such as the search engine and the summary page, on Thursday during the joint cluster meeting (see picture below these lines), architectural issues related to the portal, and the Strategic Planning session in which we prepared our part of the overall WP7 plan for the next months.

ODS Portal presentation at the joint cluster meeting

 

Organic.Lingua 5th project meeting in Alcala

Wednesday to Friday this week the Organic.Lingua consortium representatives gathered in Alcala de Henares for the 5th project meeting. This is an important meeting as the decisions that we will take are essential to plan the forthcoming pilot tests in England and France, as well as all the preparations for the next review meeting.

IE members Miguel Angel, Giannis, David Baños, David Martin, Leonardo and Salvador attend the sessions as the Faculty of Law in the University of Alcala, in a building that was originally a Jesuit college built at the end of the seventeenth century. Below some pictures taken during these 3 fruitful days of  intensive work.

 

Herbal.Mednet kick-off meeting in Alcala

Today and tomorrow the kick-off meeting of the Leonardo DaVinci Transfer of innovation project is taking place in Alcala. This project will transfer training content that has been tested in Spain and Romania into Italy and Greece, as well as in new geographical region users’ group in Spain.

During the next 2 years, Herbal.Mednet participants will select and adapt existing training contents in organic farming of herbal, medicinal and aromatic plants that is publicly available worldwide to the countries of the participating user groups. At the same time, the project will transfer the innovative training techniques that have been developed for the agricultural advisors and trainers in organic Agriculture through previous initiatives like Organic.Mednet and Organic.Balkanet into agricultural advisors in a new thematic area: organic farming in herbal, medicinal and aromatic plants. In the picture above these lines, representatives of all partner institutions and other external experts pose in the rectorate building of the University of Alcala, where the sessions of the meeting are taking place.

IE member Salvador is representing UAH in the project, in which we are leading WP3 dealing with the design and deployment of the e-learning platform where the courses will be delivered.

 

SOCIRES Final Meeting in Graz

During the last 2 days IE member Salvador Sanchez attended the final meeting of the Leonardo DaVinci TOI SOCIRES project.The meeting took place in Graz, and was hosted by ISCN Austria.

The project aim was to define a set of skills needed to analyze and define social influences and responsibilities of an organization, as well as skills needed to define procedures that would ensure the optimal ratio between social responsibilities and economic interests of the organization. In this meeting, as the final after 2 years of activities, the sessions held focused on the results of the different national training events in Spain, Slovenia and Greece, on the dissemination results and finally on the final report that will be submitted at the beginning of the next year to the Leonardo Agency.

On the social side, even if Graz is listed as a UNESCO Human Heritage centre due to the “harmonious blend of the architectural styles and artistic movements that have succeeded each other from the Middle Ages until the 18th century”, the rainy weather and the packed working sessions did not leave much time for walking around and visit. The most remarkable event was the joint dinner at a typical Styrian restaurant, certainly a must for all visiting this beautiful region in the south east of Austria.

 

6th VOA3R project meeting in Limassol

Last week, from 15^th to 18^th October, we were attending the 6^th VOA3R project meeting in Limassol (Cyprus). University of Alcalá is the project coordinator as well as the WP4 “Platform design and integration” leader.

Group photo. 6th VOA3R Consortium Meeting in Limassol (Cyprus)

Miguel and David presented the last changes in VOA3R’s platform according to pilot trials and usability testing information and make and in depth review of project status to put everything on to the rails for the final project review.

A nice view of Limassol Mediterranean Beach Hotel

It was a very fruitful meeting closed with an open access workshop which took place during Thursday 18^th . We want to thank George Adamides from Agricultural Research Institute of Cyprus for his hospitality and the fantastic organization of the meeting, and all the consortium partners for the great work they are doing.

 

Open Discovery Space first coordination and cluster meeting in Cyprus

During the last 2 days, selected members of the Open Discovery Space consortium met in Paphos, a coastal city in the southwest of Cyprus. The objectives of the meeting were to present the progress of the work in the different clusters so far as well as to ensure that partner responsibilities, activities and tasks outputs are aligned.

Miguel Angel during one of the sessions for cluster II discussions

Several IE members participated in cluster II meetings, showed the progress of the tasks we have been involved in and agreed with the rest on a detailed plan for the second half of the first period of the project.

Juanma Dodero from University of Cadiz and IE members Miguel Angel and Salvador pose in Tomb 4.

While in Paphos, and during the sessions, we met other spaniards that are also part of the consortium, such as Juanma Dodero from University of Cadiz and Luis Anido from University of Vigo. Together, we did some social activities, the most remarkable being the visit to the Tomb of the Kings, an impressive burial site formed by ancient tombs carved in the stone. This Unesco World Heritage site is very close to the hotel where we stayed -something like 1 kilometer away- so we felt we had to visit it before taking our afternoon flight back to Spain.

 

Organic.Lingua 4th project meeting in Paris

This week, members of the OrganicLingua consortium meet in Paris to attend the different working sessions. We are meeting in the INRA facilities in the 7th arrondissement, a nice neighbourhood of the city, very quiet and located very close to the Eiffel tower.

Tonight we had the social event in a nice restaurant called Leo le Lion (?). It was a nice opportunity to relax after an exhausting 9 hours working session (from 9:30 to 19:00 almost non-stop, only 1 hour lunch break). Below, a picture of consortium members attending the social dinner.

IE members Leonardo, Giannis and Salvador are these days in the city of light planning the soon to come pilot trials, working on the ontology evolution as well as in the portal reengineering and over all, coordinating all project tasks from a management perspective.

 

Working session on European projects with Nikos Manouselis and Cristian Cechinel

Today, Nikos Manouselis from Agroknow (Greece) and Cristian Cechinel from Universidade Federal do Pampa – Campus de Bagé (Brazil) are the keynote speakers in a working session organized by the Computing School of the University of Alcala. Both speakers have a strong background relationship with Information Engineering Research Unit of the University and have therefore been invited by us to participate in this knowledge-sharing event.

Nikos’ talk, entitled “Opening Up Digital Collections: a case study on the connection of cultural collections with educational activities”, introduced how digital collections of cultural and scientific institutions may be organized and exposed to Web portals and online services in order to support various user information needs and tasks. It has particularly presented the case of Natural Europe, a research project that connects museum collections with educational activities, allowing the design of digital educational pathways over digitized cultural items from Natural History Museums. After this talk, a discussion on relevant research directions and potential technology challenges took place.

Partial view of room E-101 during Nikos Manouselis presentation

Cristian Cechinel, a representative of the IGUAL project (which stands for “Innovación para la Igualdad en la Universidad de America Latina”) gave a talk about the project objectives and achievements, which basically are to improve the quality, relevance and accessibility of Higher Education in Latin America, particularly for the most vulnerable groups.

Cristian Cechinel during his talk

IGUAL project assumes that if more low-income students successfully finish their studies despite the deficiencies in their basic education, the project will have a direct, positive impact in the accessibility of higher education for a segment of the population (public schooled students) that is usually in a disadvantaged position compared with students that could afford private schools. The role that University of Pampa plays in the project was specially highlighted and detailed by Cristian.

 

Open Discovery Space project kick-off in Athens

51 organizations from 23 countries gather from monday in Athens, Greece, for the kick off of Open Discovery Space – an innovative European Commission funded project (CIP PSP program) that aims to create a socially-powered, multilingual open learning infrastructure to boost the adaptation of eLearning Resources.

Panoramic view of Athens from the 11th floor of the President Hotel

According to Antonis Ramfos, Project Coordinator, “We are eager to rethink the current model of education [...] Open Discovery Space aims to turn the world of learning upside down by creating an entirely new model that will become the most powerful engine of change and innovation that the world of education has ever seen.” Open Discovery Space will achieve its ambitious goals by engaging teachers and pupils in the co-creation of innovative, new educational practices, it will advance the modernization of school education and, ultimately, it will engage stakeholders in the production of new user-generated educational activities in a socially-empowered, multilingual environment and empower them with integrated access to unique eLearning resources from educational repositories around the world.

Information Engineering team has a relevant role in Work Packages 7, 8 and 9 (mostly devoted to software design and development) but also some effort in WP6 and WP10, and this is the reason why Salvador is from last sunday in Athens working but also meeting old friends from previous and running projects such as Mathias Palmer, Hannes Ebner or Juanma Dodero just to name a few.

Plenary session with more than 90 representatives from the more than 50 partners of the consortium