Meeting in Ancona
The first in-person meeting of the Communicare project was held in Italy.
Partners from Germany (Wohlfahrtswerk für Baden-Württemberg, DHBW), Italy (COOSS), Greece (Frontida Zois, University of the Aegean), and Austria ( BFI) gathered in Ancona for the first transnational meeting of Communicare, an Erasmus Plus program project designed to improve caregivers’ communication skills in long-term care of the elderly.
The meeting in Ancona, held June 21-22, 2022, proved to be very useful for deepening all the learning paths to be included in the platform.
The partners met in Italy, in the city of Ancona, and it was a very valuable opportunity not only to take care of the purely planning aspects, but to meet in person after a long time. Because of the restrictions related to the pandemic emergency, widespread throughout Europe, the meetings were always held online, in the Marche region the pleasure of working as a team was finally discovered.
On the first day, representatives of the various partners focused on learning paths, content aspects essential within the platform. Introduction to the basic principles of effective communication, basic principles and methods of communication in chronic diseases along the case of dementia, communication in the new era of instant messaging, video calling, and technological advances to support an age-friendly environment and the game.
During the meeting, gamified scenarios were also presented by University of the Aegean: the kitchen, living room, and bedroom. Directly viewing the digital context dedicated to users proved particularly useful in curating some technical and content aspects. Specifically, minor annotations were made on colors and the possibility of making all graphic components within the scenario accessible.
Thought was also given to the instruction panel and the overlay questions. Where is it best to place them? How to make them usable for a user not particularly experienced with digital tools? Again, brainstorming proved to be extremely productive and interesting: in fact, the idea emerged of including a special section within the platform dedicated to conversation.
The partners divided into three working groups, one for each scenario defined earlier. The discussion within the COOSS Marche training rooms was extremely useful to analyze the digital context and take care of the details of the scenarios to be proposed in the platform.
The second day in Marche was an opportunity to plan the next meeting, scheduled to take place in Samos, Greece, in September 2022.
Proper planning of the work requires precise organization of activities so it was thought to leave ample space for the trainers, their path of knowledge of all the tools made available by the project, but without forgetting to give proper attention to the project meeting.
The first in-person meeting was a key step in the development of Communicare.