[Apologies for cross-posting]

*********************************************************
FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS
Workshop on
Learning Technology Standards for Agriculture and Rural Development Athens,
Greece September 19, 2008 http://infolab-dev.aua.gr/agrolt/2008/

in conjuction with the
4th International Conference on Information & Communication Technologies in
Bio & Earth Sciences (HAICTA'08)
*********************************************************

RATIONALE

Interoperability has been judged essential in order to realize an open
infrastructure for learning that can put a wide diversity of tools and
content in the hands of learners and tutors.  It allows the preservation of
crucial learning and teaching information (such as competency profiles,
learning activities, learning metadata and resources), as well as its future
reuse among a large number of different systems and repositories. Recent
standardization and specification efforts in the area of learning
technologies have improved this vision.

On the other hand, in the field of agricultural education, the specifications
and standards produced by groups and bodies working on learning technologies
have not yet been widely adopted and implemented. It is essential to
identify, collect and report experience from the large-scale implementation
of learning technology specifications and standards in the agricultural
domain. Sharing this experience with other people working on similar topics,
and providing feedback from such implementations to standardization
initiatives of the agricultural information management domain, can prove
valuable. Apart from leading towards a wider dissemination of learning
technology standards for educational applications, it can help us reaching a
potential consensus of related work by comparing and harmonizing
similar/competing approaches.

The aim of the AgroLT 2008 Workshop is to bring together researchers and
implementers that are working on the design and development of
technology-enhanced learning systems and services to support the needs of the
agricultural and rural communities. It aims to serve as a discussion forum
where interested experts will present the results of their work, exchange
experience, and establish liaisons with other groups that are working on
related subjects. Overall, it aims to outline the rich potential of the
agricultural domain as an application field for learning technologies.

TOPICS OF INTEREST (but not limited to):

* Describing and categorising agricultural learning resources using standards
such as IEEE LOM and DC
* Designing and building learning repositories for agriculture and rural
development
* Federating and querying agricultural repositories
* Describing learning opportunities for agricultural stakeholders
* Interoperable curricula definitions for agricultural and rural education
* Creating and representing learning activities for agricultural stakeholders
* Representing agricultural competencies in a reusable manner
* Agricultural skills and competencies using transparency and mobility
frameworks such as Europass
* Learning technologies standards & specifications for mobile learning
applications

SUBMISSIONS

Authors are invited to submit original unpublished research as extended
abstracts (2-4 pages). All submitted papers will be peer-reviewed by at least
three members of the program committee for originality, significance, clarity
and quality.

Authors should follow the formatting instructions at:
http://infolab.aua.gr/haicta/conf/instructions.htm.

All submissions should be written in English. Electronic version (MS Word or
PDF) of the manuscripts should be sent to both nikosm[at]ieee[dot]org and
gauri[dot]salokhe[at]fao[dot]org.

PUBLICATION

Accepted papers will be invited for oral/poster presentation at the workshop
and will be included in the Proceedings published by the HAICTA association.
Also, they will appear in the digital library CEUR. CEUR-WS.org is a
recognised ISSN publication series, with ISSN 1613-0073.

Selected papers from HAICTA proceedings will be further considered for
publication in two special issues of the following Elsevier journals:
- Computers and Electronics in Agriculture
- Environmental Modelling and Software

IMPORTANT DATES

   Submissions: April 15, 2008
   Notification: May 12, 2008
   Camera-ready: June 9, 2008
   Workshop date: September 19, 2008

PROGRAM COMMITTEE (tentative)

* Alexander Sideridis, Agricultural University of Athens, Greece
* Ambjorn Naeve, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
* Christian Stracke, University Duisburg-Essen, Germany
* Demetrios Sampson, CERTH/ITI & University of Piraeus, Greece
* Diane Hillmann, Cornell University Library, U.S.A.
* Jan Beniest, World Agroforestry Centre, Kenya
* Jan Pawlowski, University of Jyvaskyla, Finland
* Johannes Keizer, Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome, Italy
* Matthias Palmer, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
* Salvador Sanchez, University of Alcala, Spain
* Sarah Currier, Intrallect Ltd., Scotland, UK
* Stavros Christodoulakis, Technical University of Crete, Greece
* Venkataraman Balaji, International Crops Research Institute for the
Semi-Arid Tropics, India
* Zeynel Cebezi, Cukurova University, Turkey

ORGANISERS

* Nikos Manouselis, Informatics Laboratory, Agricultural University of Athens
(Greece)
* Gauri Salokhe, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
(Italy)
* Cleo Sgouropoulou, Greek Standardization Organization & Technological
Education Institution of Athens (Greece)
* Constantina Costopoulou, Informatics Laboratory, Agricultural University of
Athens (Greece)

ABOUT HAICTA'08

The 4th International Conference on Information and Communication
Technologies in Bio and Earth Sciences (HAICTA 2008) will be held during
September 18-20, 2008, in the premises of the Agricultural University of
Athens, Greece. HAICTA 2008 aims to bring together professional, experts and
researchers working on ICT systems and applications in Bio and Earth
Sciences. See http://infolab.aua.gr/haicta/conf/ for details.

*************************************************************