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.

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

A video message on ViPi and ATLEC project

Project coordinator Karel Van Isacker presents the projects ViPi and ATLEC.