Organic.Balkanet 4th project meeting - Day 0

Despite the general strikes of the public means of transportation in Greece (the Athens Airport was only reachable by taxis - and I hate taxis!) as well as the strike of the air-traffic controllers starting at 08.00 this morning, I managed to fly to Vienna from where I am going to continue my trip to Maribor for the Organic.Balkanet 4th project meeting.

The preparations for the meeting have been really extensive, as we have worked on various different tasks:

• Dissemination: The project website was updated with the latest news and events. The project brochure was revised and a newsletter including news and references to the project was prepared. We have also worked on disseminating the Training Course, which is supported by the Organic.Balkanet project and will take place in Mesta village, Chios island Greece in October 2011. Two papers were prepared by the GRNET team, concerning the project and they will be presented during the EFITA 2011 Conference and the 2011 VOA3R Workshop.
• Content: About 10 courses classified in 3 different training modules (Pedagogy, ICT and Training Scenarios) have been prepared and revised, in order to be a part of the Organic.Balkanet training curriculum. The templates for their descriptions and presentation have been prepared and sent to partners a long time ago. A handbook for the implementation of training scenarios has been developed for the project and will be enriched with the scenarios developed during the training events.. 
• ICT: We have adapted the MOLE platform in order to fit the specific purposes of the Organic.Balkanet project. Our courses have already been uploaded there and everything seems to be ready for the rest of the project partners. Two handbooks have been adopted for use by the trainers and trainees of the Organic.Balkanet training events respectively.
• Evaluation: We have designed and developed questionnaires for the evaluation of both the content and the training scenarios developed by the project.

I met Prof. Roman (the project coordinator) & Maria Toader from USAMVB in the Maribor train station (we took the same train - me for just one stop... what a coincidence!) and it was a really nice surprise. It is always nice meeting friends, especially when you are far from home. We arranged an unofficial meeting in the evening, to visit the premises of the University of Maribor (where the meeting will take place) and go sightseeing (apparently while discussing project issues...).