We held our 2nd Multiplier Event “The VALENCE educational software environment and digital infrastructure” at the Center for Technology Transfer and Innovations INNOFEIT on 09. 05. 2022. The leading organization for the event was the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, “Ss Cyril and Methodius” University in Skopje.
The event was colocated with the Third Workshop for Embedded Microprocessor Systems organized by FEEIT and Loging Electronics. This allowed for participants from 9 technical high-schools from all over Macedonia to learn about the work done in the VALENCE project, and to see all the progress that has been made towards building the new curriculum. The participants included professors and students from: SUGS “Vlado Tasevski” Skopje, SOU “Gjorche Petrov” Kriva Palanka, SOTU “Gjorgji Naumov” Bitola, SSOU “Kole Nedelkovski” Veles, SETU “Mihajlo Pupin” Skopje, OSTU “Nace Bugjoni” Kumanovo, SOU “Riste Risteski Richko” Prilep, SOU “Gjosho Vikentiev” Kochani, and the partner institution SOSU “Ilinden” Skopje.
During the event, VALENCE team members presented an overview of the project, focusing on the need for Machine Learning and Data Science in secondary vocational schools, we introduced Orange and the VALENCE educational software environment, and finally we presented the outline and material planned to be covered in the VALENCE curriculum. Professors from FEЕIT, Branislav Gerazov, Zivko Kokolanski, Marija Markovska Dimitrovska, Stefan Zlatinov, and Tomislav Kartalov took part in the presentations. The program was enriched by three guest lectures on “Publishing Open Educational Resources” by Vladimir Milovanovic, University in Kragujevac, Serbia, “Free Software in Engineering Education” by Predrag Pejovic, University in Belgrade, Serbia and “Wikipedia: Promoting Open Knowledge in Data Science and Machine Learning” by Nikola Miloshevski, from Wikimedia Macedonia.
The presentations were followed by a Discussion with the participants in which they expressed their views and opinions on the form of implementation of the curricula in the vocational education framework.
