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Re: [iaoa-education] IAOA summer school: courses and ecturers proposal)

To: IAOA Education Committee <iaoa-education@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: "masolo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <masolo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Nicola Guarino <nicolguar@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2012 18:23:40 +0100
Message-id: <CE6F3602-4CAA-4083-A2DE-AAE90B24283C@xxxxxxxxx>
Hi all,

just for clarification, at the Vespucci institute I made a case for a relatively low level summer school (i.e., addressing people who don't know what an ontology is), but I wasn't meaning a "practical" summer school. After all, we need to differentiate ourself, for instance, from the ontologies & semantic web summer school being organised in Spain, which has a very practical orientation. 

I believe there are various courses available nowadays that approch ontologies form the practical point of view. What seems to lack in my opinion are opportunities to bring home stimulating ideas about what does it mean to do ontological analysis, what are the main competences needed, what are the open problems, and so on. So in my opinion the focus would be more on ontological analysis than on ontological engineering. A model Claudio and Stefano have in mind is that of the ESSLLI summer school,  the prestigious European Summer School on Logic, Language and Information (www.esslli2012.pl).

Opinions?

Nicola

On 11 Jan 2012, at 17:06, Werner Kuhn wrote:

Dear all, 

I promised not to interfere much this year, so never wait for me ;-)

Still, I cannot quite resist. My 2 cents of advice for this year would be to take a problem-driven approach and have mostly lecturers who personally do ontology development, as a more or less daily activity. People like Pustejowsky and Talmy are fascinating scientists and have very important things to say, but I am not sure they can help much with ontology engineering. 

Of course, it all depends on what level you have in mind for the attendees and the school overall. Last year, in preparing a Vespucci Institute (typically at an advanced level), some people including Nicola made a strong case for a complementary, relatively low level, practical summer school. I agree with this case, and since we delayed it then, we may want to act on it now. 

Also, we discussed alternating between levels last year, and I like this idea. But we can also aim for a middle level, or an annual event at the lower level, or whatever else. My only point is we need to decide when picking lecturers. 

cheers, and a big thank you to Stefano and Claudio for taking on the charge!
Werner
 

-- 
Werner Kuhn
Institute for Geoinformatics
University of Muenster
Weselerstr. 253
D-48151 Muenster
kuhn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://ifgi.uni-muenster.de/~kuhn
Vespucci Summer Institutes: http://www.vespucci.org

On Wednesday, 11. January 2012 at 16:20, Galton, Antony wrote:

Stefano and Claudio,

I agree with Leo's comments. Regarding the issue that Fabian highlighted, on the ratio of lectures to practical work, I still think that more hands-on experience would be good, but on the other hand this would mean that less material can be covered at the theoretical level. Perhaps this needs to be settled in negotiation with whoever eventually agrees to give the lectures - again as suggested by Leo. The list of topics looks good.

Best wishes

Antony


-----Original Message-----
Sent: 11 January 2012 14:09
To: IAOA Education Committee
Subject: Re: [iaoa-education] IAOA summer school: courses and lecturers (proposal)

Stefano and Masolo,

Thanks once again for the proposal. Apologies for my delay in responding. It looks very good to me. I concur with Fabian that the proposed speakers are no doubt experts. As possible backup for the Ontology in semantics and cognitive linguistic slot, I might suggest James Pustejovsky or even Hans Kamp.

To underscore Fabian's and Antony's original suggestion, one might ask the speakers to consider some problem the students might work on in a hands-on, working session to apply the lessons the students have learned in the lecture.

I do think the announcement should go out very soon, so please finalize your description, as modified, if you decide you agree, on any comments you receive.

Thanks!
Leo

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2012 6:48 AM
To: IAOA education
Subject: Re: [iaoa-education] IAOA summer school: courses and lecturers (proposal)

Dear all,

I'm sorry but I must insist for some reaction (thank you Fabian for your comments)

If we do not hear from you by the end of this week, Claudio and I will assume that you are overwhelmed with happiness for the proposal and thus we will start contacting people for the school.
Your only chance to stop this causal chain is to start a (possibly
constructive) discussion...
:)

Cheers
-Stefano and Claudio


On 1/7/12, Stefano Borgo <stefano.borgo@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Dear Education Committee,

we are collecting information to estimate the figures and prepare the
school budget.
In the meanwhile, we have made some progress about the structure of
the school.

Pls, react quickly and, if you do not like something, suggest
improvements o propose an alternative.
In particular, we must be able to contact people quickly.
Ideally, we should send out emails to the lecturers by mid of January.

Our plan is to have an introduction day to help the students to
understand the general domain, and then regular courses for the rest
of the week. Below you can find courses and proposed lecturers.

All this is indicative, so feel free to suggest change of topic/title.
Most importantly, the quality of the lecturers is crucial. We would
like the lecturers to interact with the students and with each other.
They should follow the other courses, be open-minded and ready to pick
up from their perspective issues risen during the week.
The people proposed below are ok (we think) but you might know someone
else that fits better.
Also, we plan to individuate some example or topic and ask lecturers
to work them out from their perspective/domain. This activity will
serve as a way to integrate the different views and approaches.
Of course, the attitude of the lecturers is important here so it would
be great if, when suggesting someone, you have direct experience on
how they teach and how the interact with the audience.

No need to say that we need to keep expenses low. We plan to take
advantage of local experts at least in the area of knowledge
representation (see course "Formalizing ontological knowledge")

Finally, in our mind students should have some knowledge of FOL as
prerequisite.

Cheers
Stefano and Claudio


Title of the school:
IAOA Summer School on Ontological Analysis

**DAY 1
-- 0.5h Introduction to IAOA + Introduction to the IAOA summer school
Lecturers:
Nicola Guarino, Claudio and Stefano

-- 3h, Review of FOL (as knowledge representation language suitable
for
ontology)
Lecturers (two options):
Luciano Serafini and Chiara Ghidini (Italy) Enrico Franconi (Italy)

Lunch (1.5hr)

-- 3h, Introduction to ontological analysis (what is an ontology,
etc.) Lecturers (two options):
Nicola Guarino (Italy)
John Sowa (USA)



**DAY 2 to 5
-- 1.5h, Ontological analysis: philosophical perspective Lecturers
(three options):
Achille Varzi (USA)
Thedore Sider (USA)
Kevin Mulligan (Switzerland)

Break (30 min)

-- 1.5h, Ontology in semantics and cognitive linguistic Lecturers (two
options):
Barbara Partee (USA)
Leonard Talmy (USA)

Lunch (1.5hr)

-- 1.5h, Formalizing ontological knowledge [basically, formal
languages/techniques for ontology] Lecturers (two options):
Luciano Serafini and Chiara Ghidini (Italy) Enrico Franconi (Italy)

Break (30 min)

-- 1.5h, Ontology application and database Lecturers (two options):
Bill Andersen (USA)
Chris Welty (USA)
_____________________________________________________________________
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To join: please email committee chair or to: info @ iaoa.org
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_____________________________________________________________________
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To join: please email committee chair or to: info @ iaoa.org
IAOA website: http://iaoa.org
_____________________________________________________________________
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To join: please email committee chair or to: info @ iaoa.org
IAOA website: http://iaoa.org


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