ARETE Project Year One Review
Dear ARETE members and stakeholders,
We hope that you are all well and looking forward to the Christmas break! As we reach the end of the year, we would like to thank everyone for their remarkable efforts towards the ARETE project. This has been the most extraordinary year and one that we are unlikely to ever forget. To date, the ARETE project has made very good progress in technical development, produced excellent impact on various perspectives and achieved all the actions and activities according to the project plan.
During the first year of the project, the team delivered nine deliverable reports, one milestone and one periodic report to the EC. The team has held three General Assembly and four Project Steering Committee meetings. The WP4 and WP5 activities are strongly linked with schools and since those activities have been impacted by Covid-19, the duration of the project has been extended from 36 to 42 months. The 1st scientific and technical review of the project has been scheduled to take place on the 4th of December 2020. All partners have made a valuable contribution for the project dissemination. To date, the team published 12 journal articles/conference proceedings and gave 12 conference/workshop presentations. The consortium overachieved the first year KPI targets on the social media channels, as the ARETE Twitter attracted over 100 followers and our LinkedIn account has over 80 connections.
Another highlight of the ARETE project in Year has been the External Ethics Advisory Board (EEAB) that has been recruited by recommendation of the UCD Human Research Ethics Committee. The consortium put significant effort and time on addressing ethics requirements and data protection procedures to make sure that all humans involved in the ARETE pilots are protected, due to the disruptive nature of the AR technology, which will be tested in schools around Europe. All ethics -related documents have been reviewed carefully by the EEAB and all Data Controllers and Data Protection Officers from the partners’ involved are informed.
The ARETE project has held a weekly virtual coffee since March 2020 and also has held a photography competition. The motivation of these social activities is to support team members during the Covid-19 pandemic and provide a virtual space to share experiences. We are also pleased to see that Professor Fridolin Wild and Professor Eleni Mangina received their academic promotion and Jennifer Tiede from University of Würzburg received her PhD degree during the first year of our project. It also has been exciting news for our consortium members to hear that Jennifer and her family welcomed their baby, Carlotta into the world. We look forward to having Jennifer back to the team in January.
Of course, the above summary cannot truly capture everything that has happened to the ARETE team members, as a lot of collaborative activities and contributions have occurred during the past twelve months. Hence, we hope you will forgive the omission of several activities and success stories that could have been included above. The ARETE team looks forward to the review in December and to get constructive feedback from the review panel. Finally, we would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone and their families a peaceful Christmas and a Happy New Year. We would like to thank you for your hard work and support during 2020.
With very best wishes,
Professor Eleni Mangina and Dr Na Li
(ARETE Project Coordinator)
