Working on the OpenMinTeD dissemination & training activities

OpenMinTeD is having a user meeting between 24-25/2/2016, hosted at the premises of Athena Research Innovation Center. Partners involved in the dissemination and training Work Packages (WP2 & WP3 respectively) had the opportunity to work collaboratively on the joint activities to be undertaken within the next months in the context of these two WPs on the day before - 23/2/2016. Partners from Athena RC (hosts of the meeting and coordinators of the project), LIBER (the WP2 leader), Open University (WP3 leader) and Agroknow attended this pre-meeting.

The discussions focused mainly on the dissemination tools that are already used (such as the project website, Twitter account and blog, for the time being) as well as the envisaged one for the next months (such as a potential Facebook page and the under-preparation project newsletter); the events and workshops that can be considered for dissemination purposes. Potential revisions and ideas for improvement were discussed, mostly on the OpenMinTeD website and blog (powered by Wordpress). This is where our experience with Wordpress, based on the Agroknow blog, was considered useful and may provide some quick fixes for open issues.

Thanks @AgroKnow @OpenAIRE_eu @FrontiersIn @OpenUniversity @i_am_rec @LIBEReurope for a great meeting! #textmining pic.twitter.com/9dGnzUI9T9

— OpenMinTeD (@openminted_eu) February 23, 2016

Events were also discussed in details, mostly LREC 2016 Conference and the RDA 7th plenary meeting. The project will be represented in both events, while additional ones will also be considered

As regards the training activities (WP3), they will focus on the OpenMinTeD platform and the services provided by the project. In addition, training sessions on more generic topics (introductory sessions on the TDM methodologies, advantages for various types of stakeholders, legal and interoperability aspects etc.) will also be considered, especially when training communities that are not exactly familiar with text mining and what it can do for them. In this context, I am excited that Agroknow (and therefore me personally, as I am representing Agroknow in these two WPs) is going to work on a report that will aim to provide the basics of the work to take place within the next months, such as the mapping of the communities to be trained, the curriculum for the trainings (e.g. thematic areas to be covered; it's been quite a long time since I was last involved in something like that but it would be great to apply my past experience in a new context), means to be used for the delivery of the trainings and other parts.

This work will take into consideration the work that has already taken place by Agroknow in WP4, in terms of the analysis of the research communities within the project and will feed the next steps of the Training WP. The deadline for this task is the end of March so I'd better stop blogging and start working on the report!

Training Course and Green Ideas 2011

During the last weeks my time is almost completely dedicated to two important tasks:

1. The testing phase of the VOA3R content population. Trying to coordinate a task which involves a significant number of project partners is not always easy, especially during August! I will not go into more details about this task.

2. The "Joint School on IT-Enhanced Organic & Sustainable Education for Teachers, Trainers and Agriculture Professionals", which will be a really big training course involving a number of respected tutors and a diverse audience, case study visits, lectures and hands-on exercises etc. Even though the organization of this course has been taken over by two colleagues of mine, still there are a lot of things to take care of, such as arranging flights and accommodation for the participants, estimating costs and involving budgets from different projects. Speaking of projects, the course will be primarily supported by Organic.Balkanet and CerOrganic, while VOA3R and I.S.L.E. will also be represented and contribute. This course will be collocated with another interesting event, Green Ideas 2011 which "will bring together people and institutions that are interested into agricultural, biodiversity and rural education, so that collaboration opportunities may be explored and exploited". This event will feature a really diverse list of participants, is sponsored by a number of relevant E.U. projects and supported by major organizations, such as FAO.

Preparing for the Organic.Balkanet 4th project meeeting

The last days at the office have been really intensive; only a few days are left before my long trip around Europe and there are a lot of open issues that I will have to take care of before I leave office. So far my biggest concern is the 4th project meeting of Organic.Balkanet, which will be combined with a training event for testing the curriculum and methodology of the project. The meeting will take place between 29 & 30 June, 2011 at the premises of the University of Maribor.
During the last days I have been working on new presentations and revising existing ones, preparing my contribution to both the project meeting and the training event as well as reviewing dissemination activities of the project. The Organic.Balkanet MOLE platform will be used to store, index and deliver the courses online and its official presentation will be also during the meeting.

Apart from that, we have been really busy with some new tasks of the VOA3R EU project, which still looks really interesting and fresh to me. I am really anxious to go through the next steps and get more actively involved in this project. The team is really supporting the project and we have focused our efforts in specific tasks.

Preparations for the Organic.Balkanet training

During the last two days I have been working on the training curriculum of the Organic.Balkanet, as it will be used during the training that will take place in the premises of University of Maribor, Slovenia from June 27th to July 3rd. At the same time, the 4th project meeting will also take place. My presentations will deal with topics on creating interactive courses, the use of ICT tools in training courses and working with training scenarios.

In order to start organizing the courses prepared for the training, it was really important to work on the Organic.Balkanet instance of MOLE. The TUC/MUSIC team was kind enough to prepare the instance for us, so we worked together on solving some translation issues and some minor bugs (even though almost no bugs were left after the intensive bug-hunting of the last weeks, before and during the CerOrganic Summer School!). I would like to thank especially Xenia & Nikos for their support with MOLE platform!

The two MOLE handbooks (for trainers & trainees) which have been developed with the precious help of the TUC/MUSIC team will have to be revised and another handbook for the implementation of training scenarios in the Organic.Balkanet context has to be designed.

Apart from that, a significant number of presentations has to be developed from scratch or revised to fit the purposes of the project. The wide variety of topics is really challenging, as I will have to discuss about both technology and for conventional tools and methods.

This 5-day trip will be the first of a series in June-July, so everything has to be designed and prepared very carefully, now that time is available!

CerOrganic ToT School - Day 2

Day 2 of the school is now over. It seemed really hard to cope up with all these personal presentations (09.00-13.30) in a row, but everything went well in the end. The following topics were presented:

1. Using Open Educational Resoures to Support Scenarios
2. The Organic.Edunet Web portal
3. Elaboration and adaptation of Organic Farmer Scenario (activities & resources)
4. Preparation of Organic Farmer Scenario Presentation

The participants seemed really interested about the training scenarios concept and the various sources of relevant information (such as the Organic.Edunet Web portal).

An additional presentation followed after lunch by Xenia Arapi from TUC/MUSIC, describing the various features of the MOLE portal.

The existence of interactive sessions greatly helped in this direction, as I had the opportunity to interrupt these presentations with hands-on exercises (such as the description of training scenarios and activities, searching for resources in portals etc). Even though my presentations included screenshots and animations, I think that some additional would greatly help in making them more enjoyable for the participants.

Preparing for CerOrganic ToT School

I am trying to finish my preparations for the CerOrganic Training of Trainers Summer School. It will take place at MAICh premises, Chania, Greece during 23-28 of May, 2011.

I have quite a few presentations to make during the first two days (five or six, if I am not mistaken!) and I am rather nervous about that...they will be both about ICT tools and services in OA training (e.g. Metadata, Open Educational Resources & Organic.Edunet Web portal) as well as blended learning (training scenarios).

I have already revised my presentations a few times and my recent discussion with Erik Duval helped me in some cases. I have also prepared a handbook for the implementation of training scenarios in vocational education & training (VET), which will be revised according to the updates and feedback from the school.

This school will be a crash test for my knowledge, my skills and ... my temper! I really hope that everything will go well in the end.