Sunday, March 31, 2013

agINFRA users' meeting, 26-27/3/2013

AK hosted the agINFRA users' meeting in Athens, between 26 and 27 of March, 2013. The meeting was attended by the majority of the agINFRA data providers and gave the opportunity for discussion about the next steps in the context of WP5, which is related to data aggregation. I was really involved in this meeting, as it was an excellent opportunity for me to collect feedback on the D5.2 "agINFRA data integration methodology and workflow" and D5.3 "Conceptual specification of linked agricultural data integration layer", which were ongoing during this period but still there was input missing.

Hands-on session during the meeting
As regards D5.2, we had a great time with the data providers trying to depict their own (meta)data management workflows using flipchart sheets and markers and at the same time trying to see which of the collections we could use at this first metadata ingestion step. In D5.3 things were less fun, as we had to discuss about any type of Knowledge Organization System (KOS) such as controlled vocabularies, ontologies and thesauri which is used by the data providers for the classification of the resources but has not been published yet. This will be a challenging task, requiring a cloud-based installation of a KOS management tool and guidance of the partners in uploading their KOSs and linking to existing KOSs, which are already published, in order to facilitate the mapping between the different KOSs.

On top of that, we got to discuss about the tools which may be used for the uploading and puiblication of KOS as well as about the agINFRA integrated services from the users' point of view. As a user I found all discussions to be really useful :-)

The meeting was also an excellent opportunity for me to see again old friends like +Imma Subirats but mostly to meet new people like Davika, +Giovanni L'Abate, Ivana, David and +Valeria Pesce, with whom I have exchanged a lot of emails during the last months but never got to meet them in real life. Even though I was pretty ill during the two days of the meeting (high-fever, probably a flu), I got the chance to get to meet everyone slightly better. On the other hand I missed the opportunity to get to meet Guntram and Jane who did not finally make it to the meeting, people with whom we have exchanged a lot of emails but never had the chance to meet.

A big thank you goes to all those who got involved in the organization of the meeting (I know how hard it is) as well as to those who managed to travel to Athens and provided their feedback during the tow days of the meeting!

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Agro-Know in the Open Education Week 2013



Open Education Week is taking place from 11-15 March 2013 online and in locally hosted events around the world. The purpose of Open Education Week is to raise awareness of the open education movement and opportunities it creates in teaching and learning worldwide. Participation in all events and use of all resources are free an open to everyone.

Agro-Know will be there, with a presentation from my colleague +Madalina Ungur, titled: "OER Commons Green: A Unique Lens on Open Environmental Education", on Wednesday 13/3/2013 at 17:00 GMT. The presentation will be about OER Commons Green, a micro-site on green open educational resources jointly curated by Agro-Know Technologies (Greece) in collaboration with the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (US).



Participation is free and we will be glad to see you there!