Category: News

The SEIT Lab participated in the European Researcher Night, where Digi-Sporting was disseminated. You can check the presentation created by the coordinator (UCLM) here: Digisport_Presentation

The KickOff meeting took virtual place on November 23, 2020 on the MS Teams platform with participation of all project partners.

After the welcome presentation of the leader of the project (SAS), the leader presented Slovak Academy of Sciences, its research background and present activities and the base assumptions of the project.

During the second section of the meeting, all partners introduced themselves and then the ALIVE project overview, project timeline and budget were presented by the SAS. The project aim, target groups, work packages and lead partners were presented as well. Lastly, dates for all transnational project meetings were discussed, and the partners’ next actions were decided upon.

The project “Participation and Recreation through Inclusive Martial Arts Education and E-Learning” (acronym “PRIMAE”), approved by the Erasmus Plus National Agency in the UK as part of the program Erasmus Plus KA2 Strategic Partnerships for Adult Education as action n.2019-1-UK01-KA204-061975, has reached the middle of its development path and it is time to produce the appropriate interim report of activities. The European initiative, well coordinated by Ray Sweeney, head of Ikkaido Ltd (a registered charity based in Oxford), aims to develop the first platform to provide online education and training in the martial arts sector, providing an e-learning tool accessible to all, to promote the inclusion of people with disabilities through the aforementioned sport. A respectable partnership is working on the project which, in addition to the English Ikkaido Ltd, includes the following partners: Areadne Oe (Greece), EURO-NET and Futuro Digitale (Italy), Ikkaido Inclusive Martial Arts (Ireland), Stockholm Vastra Idrottsforening For Funktionsnedsatta (Sweden), University Of Cyprus (Cyprus) and Aux Couleurs Du Deba (France).

The project fits perfectly into the European Commission’s <<Europe 2020>> strategy for inclusive, smart, sustainable and active growth which sets the goal of relieving at least 20 million European citizens from poverty and social exclusion and, at the same time, increasing the employment of the population aged between 20 and 64 to 75%. The aim of the project is, in fact, to develop an innovative and useful training curriculum that will include modules that will range from martial arts coaching for adults and children to the use of medicines in sport, from the approach to disabilities to the protection and inclusion of vulnerable children and adults.

In the first year of activity, the partners worked hardly to develop the basis of the various intellectual products, collecting many good sectoral inclusion practices, placing the emphasis on the development of a necessary pedagogical plan, developing an e-learning platform where it will be possible to participate to online courses and a respectable training curriculum.

The objectives that the project wants to achieve – underlined Ray Sweneey, coordinator of the entire project – are very ambitious and that is why we are working hardly, despite all the problems that the covid-19 pandemic has created in the various partner countries, in order to develop a project to be proud of and which can be classified at the end of the activities as a good practice in the Erasmus Plus program because it will have allowed many people with disabilities to engage in physical activity and sport, opening up, at the same time, new job opportunities in the martial arts world. The ultimate goal of the partnership is that the project could be officially recognized by the various countries and by the CEN (European Committee for Normalisation): it would be an exceptional result to which all the Partners are dedicating themselves with great passion and that we are sure to to be able to obtain.

The European initiative, which can also be followed on social media thanks to a specific Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/IkkaidoPrimae, started in September 2019 and will end if there will be no extensions due to the pandemic, by February 2022.

The second newsletter of our Digi-Sporting Erasmus+ project is now published.

You can check it out here:
http://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/seit/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/DIGI-SPORTING-2nd-NL.html

PROJECT ISSA – INTERNATIONALISATION FOR SOCIAL AND INNOVATIVE START UP’S AND ENTREPRENEURS

Since October 2019, five entities coming from Norway, Spain, Cyprus, Greece and Bulgaria are working on the Erasmus+ project ISSA – ” Internationalization for Social and Innovative Start Up’s and Entrepreneurs” is an Erasmus+ project designed to identify core and innovative learning methods that best encourage success in international activities for start-ups and entrepreneurs”. Under the coordination of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, the partnership will strive to identify core and innovative learning methods that best encourage success in international activities for start-ups and entrepreneurs. After the two years of duration of the project, the consortium of ISSA expects to contribute to solve the special needs of start-ups and entrepreneurs by designing and making available an innovative self-training modules and virtual learning platform.

Currently, the partnership of the project is working on field research and analysing the competences of the social entrepreneurs in order to identify the training content. The EntreComp framework (Bacigalupo et al., 2016) serves as a foundation for the competences included in the ISSA project, both by using two of its competences and by adapting the framework in the presentation of the social competences applied in the project. This document therefore refers to a large degree to the work by Bacigalupo and colleagues (2016), and a more thorough presentation of the framework is found in their report.

From the field research report conducted by ISSA, the following four competences were identified as the most prominent for social entrepreneurs in an internationalisation process:

• Spotting opportunities;
• Mobilising resources;
• Ability to identify social problems;
• Cultural awareness.

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ESticky is configured as a digital post-it able to communicate information and transmit notifications.

In the last meeting held by the partners it was possible to analyze and discuss the 9 essential characters that make up the morphology of the device, such as the display – evaluating its size and brightness – the insertion of a LED light to visually reinforce the message or the expected energy consumption.

Dwelling on how the eSticky box must be assembled is an essential element for good operation. If the device is not designed and optimized for the established purpose, it will be not very adaptive and will not be able to offer the requested help. This design phase is delicate, and each partner has contributed energetically to ensure that the product has a positive outcome. Choosing to be able to implement acoustic or light devices in the system to reinforce the meaning of the message is a valid help. 

In light of the considerations that emerged from the eSticky team meeting, it is necessary to collaborate to achieve high performance.

The eSticky project is proceeding at full speed and the researches oriented to its functioning are more and more precise.

One of the aspects that deserves attention is the application of industrial design, the purpose of which is to be able to optimize ergonomic and functional systems and products through the use of “scientific design”. Designing an aesthetically pleasing product, through a highly technical design, allows you to create quality products with a decidedly positive feedback.

It should be emphasized that, in projects such as eSticky, good design and good usability are the undisputed protagonists in making the user experience enjoyable, especially if the products are aimed at elderly people with problems related to the functioning of memory.

Helping those suffering from Alzheimer’s or dementia is possible, but a substantial technological, social and communicative effort must be made so that these people can preserve their autonomy in daily actions: thanks to the development of eSticky simple routine gestures, such as hiring a medication, they will never take a back seat.