ViPi Training/Testing Nicosia/Cyprus 22 March 2013

Interview with George Milis, G.M. EuroCy Innovations Ltd (Cyprus).

Local stakeholders had the chance to see a full list of the ViPi outcomes, play with them and discuss about their potential exploitation. Participants were also informed about the local pilot procedures and they expressed their interest to participate and contribute to the success of the project.

For those interested, the current status of the outcome of the ViPi project can be found at: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/8jyle4q3nu49tfq/yL-O0fq5TR . The material is freely available under proper Open Source Software licenses and Creative Commons agreements. Everybody is welcome to disseminate the material. We will be glad to answer any questions and organise further training events.

*What is ViPi*

A majority of Europe's people with disabilities are unemployed (ANED figures state over 60%). There are many reasons for this. Many people with disabilities have advanced skills but suffer significant barriers to employment. This is an important issue which must be addressed. For others, skill acquisition must be facilitated. ViPi aims to support and facilitate the acquisition of basic ICT skills for those people with disabilities who lack them.

ViPi aims to provide a "one-stop-shop" interactive portal & learning environment for ICT skills by delivering:

- a comprehensive multilingual portal, with;

- an embedded multilingual social community (for VET centres, people with disabilities, ICT training centres, etc.), using the latest social media, facilitating interactive information sharing, interoperability, and collaboration, with access to all;

- an accessible (WCAG 2.0) multilingual Web 2.0 enabled online learning environment for ICT for people with disabilities and their trainers, with an interactive and extensive repository of interoperable SCORM compliant learning objects (LOs) that focus on basic ICT literacy to support the acquisition of core skills by people with disabilities, in order to facilitate their entry into or sustain their employment in, the regular labour market; LOs will be enriched with intuitive mobile Java and Flash Lite based mobile and internet/PC based educational/serious games;

- The final outcome will be an entire set of applications and services that will be streamlined via a blended educational and pedagogical framework, making full usage of the interaction possibilities offered by web 2.0, and localised, tested, piloted and subsequently fine-tuned with GR, BE, LT, UK and CY end-user communities.

The platform will equally act as a "one-stop-shop" for trainer organizations to find and contribute LOs that they can integrate in existing learning environments and practices. Using Open Source Software, ViPi platform extensions can be easily integrated.

The ViPi platform will thus be able to support a fully accessible and Open Source based pan-European learning network and community, bringing together key stakeholders and gatekeepers (VET, target groups, umbrella organizations), while offering a vast set of reusable (PC and Mobile) LOs, supported by Web 2.0 social services.

The ViPi KA3 LLL project (511792-LLP-1-2010-1-GR-KA3-KA3NW) has been partially funded under the Lifelong Learning program, subprogramme KA3 ICT.

Following partners participate in the ViPi project:

- Steficon SA (Greece)

- PhoenixKM BVBA (Belgium)

- Hypertech S.A. Informatics & New Technologies (Greece)

- VŠĮ HITECO -- High Technologies for Cooperation (Lithuania)

- Nottingham Trent University (United Kingdom)

- G.M Eurocy Innovations Ltd (Cyprus)

Start date: 01.01.2011

Duration: 36 months

Music credits: "Garden Of The Forking" by J.Lang, 2009 - Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0)