ViPi @ Media and Learning conference 2012

We will have a booth at the Media and Learning conference 2012 in Brussels on 14-15 November 2012. Demonstrations will include the desktop and mobile games.

Project representatives in workshop panel on inclusive education.

Semantics and accessibility – ITAG 2012 presentation

Our colleague George Millis presented “Semantic Web embraces inclusion in learning with enhanced discovery of accessible learning objects” at ITAG 2012.

Below the presentation.

ViPi at ITAG 2012

Andy Burton presented ViPi at ITAG 2012: “ViPi desktop and mobile games to develop ICT skills for people with disabilities”.

ITAG 2012 presentation

And here the presentation itself:

Next project meeting in Athens, Greece

Our next meeting will take place in Athens on 6-7-8 March 2013, with adjacent workshop at Disability Now.

More news to follow on this.

ViPi Autumn training event in Nottingham, UK

The ViPi Autumn School workshop in Nottingham UK went ahead on Wednesday and Thursday 17-18 October last week at the Oak Field School and Sports College. A lot was learnt about the platform and developed games giving pointers for further iterative developments.
End-user representatives from Belgium, Cyprus, Greece, Lithuania and the UK attended both days and gave ViPi partners the opportunity to make some further fine-tuning to the various ouctomes. Adjacent to this, a 2-day project meeting also took place.
Pictures of the event can be seen on our Facebook page.

Autumn workshop in Nottingham, UK, 2012

2012 CRPD Progress Report on ICT Accessibility

The 2012 CRPD Progress Report includes the latest data on 52 countries representing 77.4 percent of the World Population. The report offers disability advocates, governments, civil society and international organizations — monitoring the progress of the implementation of the Convention by States Parties — a unique benchmarking tool that collects data on country laws, policies, and programs pertaining to accessible and assistive Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) around the globe. All results are available cross-tabulated by region, level of income per capita of Human Development Index to facilitate benchmarking by advocates and policy makers.

Grundtvig – Training of trainers to provide basic ICT skills’ education to people with disabilities

Which course?

Training of trainers to provide basic ICT skills’ education to people with disabilities, taking on board their specific needs.

Is it good for me?

Target audience:

• Teachers (Pre-school, primary, secondary, vocational, adult, special needs)
• Teacher trainers
• Careers officers, educational guides and counsellors
• Inspectors
• Headteachers/principals/managers of schools/organisations offering adult education
• Other (Paid or voluntary) management staff in the institution/organisation
• Non-teaching administrative staff
• Members of students/teachers councils in adult education
• Representative organizations of persons with disabilities

Hmm…what is it about?

The objectives of the training course are:

• To offer an inclusive approach to teaching, learning and assessment of (accessible) basic ICT skills, aiming at inclusive education (people with disabilities within regular education) and have this inclusive approach also embedded in daily teaching practices;
• To help trainees understand the basic ICT challenges but also competences related to disabilities;
• To help trainees understand and implement the teaching of basic ICT skills to people with disabilities and how to accommodate for them;
• To help trainees understand the cultural and social differences linked to people with disabilities coming from different backgrounds (e.g. migrants, refugees, ethnic communities, people from outside Europe or intra-EU mobility);
• To help trainees experience, through visits to local VET centres, how local organizations for people with disabilities, as well as disabled individuals themselves, address the issues of acquiring basic ICT skills and how this can consequently improve their employability potential;
• To help trainees acquire hands-on experience by role-playing in implementing accessible teaching practices.

What language?

English will be the main teaching language, however, supportive material will be available in Dutch, English, Greek and Lithuanian!

Where?

Four options!

• 1st SESSION: Larnaca, Cyprus, on 11-15 March 2013. Register by 25/02/2013!
• 2nd SESSION: Ypres region, Belgium, on 20-24 May 2013. Register by 16/05/2013!
• 3rd SESSION: Vilnius, Lithuania, on 01-05 July 2013. Register by 17/06/2013!
• 4th SESSION: Nottingham, UK, on 14-18 October 2013. Register by 30/09/2013!

Further information?

You may find all details about the course at the address http://ec.europa.eu/education/trainingdatabase/index.cfm?fuseaction=DisplayCourse&cid=34259 , including the full programme, organizers, fees and sessions’ details.

Do I get any certificate for participation?

Yes, you will receive an attendance certificate based on the Europass Mobility certificate template.

Interesting! How can I register?

1. Please, first book your place and receive a written pre-registration confirmation as soon as possible, by sending a message to the addresses given below. Applicants from outside the session’s host country are treated favourably (due to Grundtvig regulations only 1/3 of the participants can be from the hosting country).

PRE-REGISTRATIONS FOR UPCOMING SESSIONS:

• 1st SESSION in Cyprus: trainings@eurocyinnovations.com
• 2nd SESSION in Belgium: info@phoenixkm.eu
• 3rd SESSION in Lithuania: vilma@imotec.lt
• 4th SESSION in UK: david.brown@ntu.ac.uk

2. Apply for a grant! Only if you are not from the hosting country, you may apply for funding to cover your travelling, accommodation and meals, as well as, participation fees. Find your National Agency at http://ec.europa.eu/education/lifelong-learning-programme/national_en.htm and follow the procedure to apply for a Grundtvig In-service Training grant! This option is now open for the 1st SESSION. You may check regularly for new calls for applications that will cover the next three sessions. Depending on your eligibility and application evaluation, you can get as much as € 2500 that will cover almost all your participation expenses.

3. As soon as you have secured funding by your Lifelong Learning National Agency or you have made your final decision to participate on your own expenses, please, get back to the hosting organization (same contact details as given above for pre-registrations) and confirm your registration! Make sure to complete the whole procedure before the relevant deadline for each session, given above.

We will be happy to help you at any step of the above procedure. Please, do not hesitate to contact us asking for clarification and help at the contact details given above.

Looking forward to welcoming you to one of our sessions!

ITAG Conference 2012 – booking available

ViPi will participate with a dedicated booth and paper at the Interactive Technologies and Games Conference (ITAG). This event brings together academics and practitioners who work with interactive technologies to explore and innovate within the areas of Education, Health and Disability.

ITAG 2012 registration available now!

The Conference provides an excellent opportunity to showcase practice and to mainstream research ideas and outcomes. It introduces a wider audience to key findings and products and illustrates how practice feeds back into and informs research. The conference creates a forum for two-way communication between the academic and practitioner communities and particularly welcomes user led presentations and workshops.
For full details of papers, please see the conference schedule.

Date: Tuesday 23 and Wednesday 24 October 2012
Venue: Nottingham Conference Centre, Nottingham
Day 1: 8.30 am – 6.30 pm
Day 2: 9.00 am – 3.30 pm
Conference rate (both days):
Standard – £150.00
Concessions – £75.00
ISVR Members – £125.00
Daily rate:
Standard – £80.00
Concessions – £45.00
ISVR Members – £67.50

Find out how to become an ISVR member.

Book ITAG Conference online.

Measuring the Impact of eInclusion Actors

The MIREIA (Measuring the Impact of eInclusion Actors) study aims to better understand the role of e-Inclusion intermediary actors and to create adequate instruments to facilitate the demonstration of their outcomes and their contribution to the achievement of European e- Inclusion policy goals.

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) play an essential role in supporting daily life in today’s digital society. The EU policy on e-Inclusion aims at reducing gaps in ICT usage and promoting the use of ICT to overcome exclusion, and improve economic performance, employment opportunities, quality of life, social participation and cohesion.

The MIREIA research aims to address two key gaps identified at policy and research level:
a) the need to characterize the diverse set of actors involved in implementing eInclusion policies;
b) the lack of common methodologies and practice in measuring the impact of ICT for socio-economic inclusion.

The MIREIA research will carry out the following activities:

1. State of play Analysis – Review of Literature and practice on measuring ICT for socio-economic inclusion.
2. Selected Locality Mapping – to provide a detailed picture of eInclusion local landscapes in selected localities
3. Conceptualization and design of the Impact Assessment Framework for eInclusion intermediaries
4. Survey design and testing of the Impact Assessment Framework for eInclusion intermediaries
5. Development of an implementation methodology for applying the Impact Assessment Framework for eInclusion intermediaries
6. Stakeholders‘ Engagement, communication and dissemination

Dates
Start date: 1st January 2012
Preparatory studies: January – May 2012
1st Experts Workshop: 3-4 May 2012 (JRC-IPTS, Seville)
Stakeholders’ Consultation Workshops – 6th September 2012
2nd Experts’ Workshops: June 2013
Final Stakeholders’ Consultation Event: October 2013
End date: 31st December 2013

MIREIA website

Open educational resources on EP’s agenda

The European Parliament’s Directorate General for Innovation and Technological Support is to produce report on the EP’s free and open source software programmes. MEP Bart Staes (Group of the Green and European Free Alliance) on 10 May added this as a requirement for the discharge of the EP’s 2010 budget committee.

In his request, Staes writes that he ‘expects a full report on the parliaments free software projects’. Staes also wants the EP’s IT department to check if its software choices reflect the parliament’s obligation to conduct its activities with the utmost transparency.

Looking not just at its own implementations of open source, the EP earlier, on 12 April, adopted a resolution on eGovernment. This resolution welcomes the European eGovernment Action Plan 2011-2015, the European Interoperability Strategy (EIS) and the European Interoperability Framework (EIF).

The EIS provides a basis for the organisational, financial and operational support of interoperability of Europe’s e-government services. The EIF next provides guidance on the design and requirements of interoperability. One of the recommendations is that public administrations share and re-use software solutions.

In their resolution the EP calls on the Member States to rapidly align their strategies with the the EIS and EIF.

In the same text, the parliamentarians ask the EU countries and the EC to make available their publicly funded data in machine-readable form ‘under open licences’.

They also request the EU members to develop ‘open educational software’. They want the member states to “exchange best practices, and to develop online platforms for collaboration on educational materials and resources that are free for students and take due account of data protection and copyright rules.”

Source: EC