The HANDS Stockholm meeting 2009

Hi,

The HANDS Consortium invited all partners to join the meeting in Stockholm. Approximately 30-40 partners joined a lively, effective and joyfull 3 days setting. The images within this post constitutes a photo gallery of the Stockholm meeting(42mb).


"The meeting in Stockholm was very pleasant and very interesting",
projectcoordinator Peter Øhrstrøm said, when HANDS/AAU evaluated the Stockholm meeting. Everybody agreed. Me tod and the photos in this postings shows it.

It takes a while to grasp it. I was - as usually - very stressed and excited about the meeting but seeing the other participants, having a cup of tea and a good talk at the breakfast, drinking a glass of beer after the meetings in the night with the partners and discussing next years issues at the meeting was indeed pleasant.

I tend to forget what actually took place at the meeting when the consortium is socially in such a good shape. Working in a interdisciplinary and international consortium the good atmosphere is an prerequisite for success. And a prerequisite for the wish that HANDS can be software that improves the social skills of the pupil with autism.

Effective meeting - what did we discuss?
The meeting was divided into

• General meeting
• Researchers workshop
• Teachers workshop
• Discussion with Ethical Board
• The working dinner at the Archepelago of Stockholm

General meeting
The general meeting had to main issues. Anca Rarau and her team at Wirtek Romania made a presentation of the present version of the HANDS toolset. On the server and on the smartphone. It was an exciting moment. The people in Wirtek Romania have been doing a real good job despite the fact that they had no prior knowledge about autism or persuasive technology. Naturally has the software not been fully developed but the interaction was exciting and the identity with the specifications was impressive.

The test on the schools was the other important issue at the general meeting. Joseph Mintz is responsible for the WP6 "Testing on the Schools" and he is doing very well. He and his colleague, Cristina de Vecchi has both been employed as at teacher caretaking pupils with autism and they know how schools and teachers work. Despite that fact, much work remain.

Researchers workshop
During this session researchers introduced to articles that they where about the write or wanted to write. I recall in particurlar my own talk(!) It was about my phd proposal that I am going to submit after summer(09). I suggested that the division between qualititative research methodology and quantitative methodology within the humanistic research areas will be changed due to the fact that quantitative reality-close datacollection will be less costly in the future. The data logging of HANDS is an example. The electronic footprints are collected without costs. Only the analysis costs. With new and cheap sensor technology the division between qualitative and quantitative methodology will change.
Partners found the proposal interesting and some found it highly creative.

I do apoligise my poor memory about the other presentations. But I do remember that there was a growing understanding of the need for common collaboration where the test results of prototype 1 and 2 could be highly valuable. A mixed method research project that not has been forseen in the workplan of HANDS.


Teachers workshop
I did not participate in the Teachers workshop. The workshop was about how to use the CoMe(Credibility-O-Meter -teacher application) and the workshop was guided by Kristian and Torsten from Egebakken that gave some pupil cases in which the the HANDS could be used.
It was lively.

And they discussed the translation of the HANDS toolset to hungarian, danish, swedish and english. New and innovative ideas demands an the invention of new terms and words. Not a easy discussion but necessary.

Furthermore they discussed the support system for use when testing the software. The teachers agreed to have a combined help and requirements system integrated in the HANDS moodlesite. The teacher can at any webpage click a questionmark-icon and they will get access to a HANDS discussion about that site. A discussion that is a supportpage as well.
I believe it is valuable that teacher can see comments and postings from other teachers instead of being left alone.


Discussion with Ethical Board

The Ethical Board had finally reviewed our test setup. What was expected to be a undramatical walk over was far more complicated than anybody had thought of. Including - I believe - the Ethical Board.

They had a number of modifications. Most of them was minor and easy to manage. The most severe reservation regarded the use of testpersons. Whether they should have the right to use the HANDS smartphone inbetween the two prototype tests and if they should have the right to continue to use the HANDS smartphone at all. One of the test of HANDS uses some pupils as controlgroup and the controlgroup should not use HANDS smartphones. On the other hand giving pupil with autism cognitive support systems and taking them away again could cause real troubles and Ethical Board disliked the test setup.
The meeting had a discussing and agreed to work on a solution. Afterwards have the consortium found an solution.


The working dinner at the Archipelago of Stockholm
Finally the swedish hosts had made a great arrangement. A very nice conference site, close to Alta Stan of Stockholm, dinner at Svedenskolan(including HANDS cakes!) and a wonder working dinner in a boat sailing in the wonderful archipelago of Stockholm. At a beautiful light. We sang - yet another HANDS song "He's got the whole world in his HANDS".

Thank you, Svedenskolan!

Pirkko, Gun-Marie and Tobias


Morten









Yours,

Morten Aagaard