ECVET Step kick-off meeting

Representatives of 8 organizations from 7 countries in Europe (Greece, Belgium, Germany, The Netherlands, Slovenia, Czech Republic and Spain) are this week Monday to Wednesday in Athens for the kick-off meeting of a new LifeLong Learning project called ECVET Step. This project, lead by TEI Athens, aims to produce transparent and comparable descriptions not only of lifelong learners’ achievements (qualifications as well as learning outcomes) but also of their goals, of VET and employment opportunities as well as of recruitment needs in the agriculture and other sectors. It is expected to also build IT tools and services related to the generation of personal profiles, achieved learning outcomes and competences, etc. which is basically the main task of our group in the project.

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As said, the Information Engineering team has a prominent role in Work Package 4, namely “ECVET Step online services”, but will also have some effort and responsibilities in WP2, WP3 and others. IE member Salvador is from last monday in Athens working but also meeting old friends from previous and running projects such as Cleo Sgouropoulou, Nikos Marianos, Christian Stracke or Thasos Koutoumanos, as well as IE member Paulo Gaona who is doing a research stay in Athens under the supervision of Giannis Stoitsis. Above these lines some pictures taken during the sessions and social activities taking place these days.

agInfra 2nd review in Athens

The second review of the agINFRA project took place in Athens from 10th to 13th of December. As part of the project, IERU members Miguel Angel Sicilia, Jaakko Lappalainen and Babis Thanopoulos were representing the group there. The first two days consist of discussing and rehearsing the final review presentation. On the third day a hands on workshop organized by Babis took place in Demokritos. There Jaakko presented a tutorial about the usage of the agINFRA RESTFul interface and Alberto a tutorial about aggregating data automatically using the VIVO component. The last day Miguel Angel as project coordinator talked about WP1 and future works, Jaakko as work package leader presented the advances in WP4 and also the used of some components developed for agINFRA with Alberto.

Project coordinator prof. Miguel Angel Sicilia presenting WP1

 

Babis intervention in the review

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 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

Organic.Lingua kick-off meeting

From Monday 21st and until this Wednesday IE members Miguel Angel and Salvador attend the kick off meeting for the Organic.Lingua project in Athens. The scope of the project is, generally speaking, the challlenge of transforming an existing portal into a fully multilingual service. To this end, the Organic.Lingua project aims to capitalise on the European and international demand for the Organic.Edunet portal by re-engineering the architecture and enhancing the services of the existing Organic.Edunet portal, in order to fill the existing gaps in multilingual support and cross-language resource organization and search.

Different moments of the kick-off meeting sessions at the Classical Athens Imperial hotel

UAH is coordinating this effort, with a big support from the other major partner Agroknow so three days should be barely enough to bring together all the elements of the project so that all the participants could have a proper overview. In the picture above, a few snapshots taken during the kick-off meeting sessions at the Classical Athens Imperial hotel.

Partner representatives posing at the end of the kick-off meeting sessions

Third Organic.Mednet project meeting in Athens

This Thursday and Friday Athens hosts the third consortium meeting of the Organic.Mednet project. IE member Salvador Sanchez -the project coordinator who already attended the Organic.Balkanet meeting and the First Joint Workshop of the three Leonardo DaVinci projects on Organic Agriculture- ,  is attending the sessions. The Greek Certification and Inspection Organization (DIO) is hosting the meeting.

Sessions will cover important issues such as the design of the pilot courses our agricultural experts will be giving to farmers in Greece, Spain and Turkey next spring, the agreement on technical decissions related to the MOLE platform, the decission on having a new silent partner on board –TSRI, who will be providing solutions for sustainability issues-, and the organization of the Organic.Mednet european workshop that will take place in Switxerland in June. As in the other meetings in this project, we enjoyed a very nice athmosphere as well as a very good disposition from everyone to do their best in the benefit of our project. In the picture below, a photo with all the attendees, including Alain Sandoz from our silent partner Prodague, who was in one of our project meetings for the first time. Unfortunately, Juan Manuel Dodero from TSRI -the soon to come new silent partner- had to flight back to Spain before we could take this photo.

Representatives of the project partners posing outside DIO offices in Athens

3rd Balkanet consortium meeting in Athens

Monday and Tuesday this week Athens is hosting the third consortium meeting of the Organic.Balkanet project. IE member Salvador Sanchez is attending the sessions together with TSRI representative Juan Manuel Dodero, who is presenting his association to the consortium to explore the possibility of having TSRI on board as a silent partner. Very important issues need to be decided upon, such as the sustainability strategy, the train the trainers event (which will likely take place in Maribor next June), the way we will use MOLE in the project, the design of the pilot trials, etc. In the picture below, a moment of the Tuesday morning session.

One of the sessions of the project in GRNet premises

Research stay of Leonardo Lezcano at GRNET

Leonardo & Nikos

IE member Leonardo Lezcano is currently staying at GRNET premises in Athens as part of his PhD research plan. It’s being a great opportunity to meet the GRNET group, led by Dr. Nikos Manouselis, who is an important partner of our IE group and the project manager of the Organic.Edunet project. During the stay, Leonardo and Nikos will be designing and carrying out some ontological approaches to knowledge representation in the biological and medical domains, which is closely related to their lines of research.

The city of Athens is really hot and full of tourists these days of the year (35º – 40º C). Therefore, it’s not a bad idea to escape from the urban area and visit some near and interesting places like the Temple of Poseidon. It is located on the southern tip of the peninsula of Attica, at Cape Sounion. Built in 440 BC, the temple offers quietness and relax as well as stunning views of the Aegean Sea and one the most famous sunsets in all the Mediterranean Sea.

Temple of Poseidon

Organic.Edunet 7th project meeting in Athens

IE members Alberto and Salvador with Maria and Georgios from AUA and Nikos Palavitsinis from GRNet

The 7th review of the Organic.Edunet project is taking place this week, from today until wednesday afternoon. IE members Alberto and Salvador Sanchez-Alonso will attend so they are now in Athens to present the progress of work package 5 and to run a demo and collect feedback on the portal we are building as part of IE responsibilities.

The meeting is taking place in the Agricultural University of Athens, which is located fairly close to Plato’s Olive Tree on Holly street (Iera odos). In fact, the remains of the olive tree are exhibited in the ground floor of the Rector’s building of the University, while the meetings are in the 2nd floor.

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.