The University of Thessaly is participating to the innovative European Project O-CITY.
O-CITY is an ambitious European project and the University of Thessaly declares a proud partner. Project coordinator is the University of Valencia in Spain and along with the rest of the partners from the countries of Serbia, Italy, Slovenia and Colombia constitute an extremely promising and effective consortium.
“Our goal is to reveal and promote the natural and cultural heritage of cities and stimulate their economy while modernizing universities by implementing innovative learning methodologies,”
Mr. Charalampos Samantzis (European Project Coordinator & Managing Director of the Center of International Education of the University of Thessaly)
Virtual map
Through the virtual map (www.o-city.org), everyone will be able to browse through the physical, cultural and historical heritage of the cities of Volos and Larissa.
This digital map will look like the google maps but the user will also be able to browse through cultural images of these two cities.
The hint point of the service is that the user will be able to click on these images and see videos as well as read about these cultural monuments of interest.
The cities
Cities will have a platform where they can present their heritage through multimedia, creative and interactive content, in the form of open data. As a result, O – City will display the heritage of these cities on the O-City.org virtual map and will be visible to those who come in and are interested in visiting. This benefit will have a direct impact on cultural and natural tourism and a general link to the orange economy.
Interaction of citizens and tourists
The end-users of the digital map will be both tourists and citizens that they will be given the opportunity to interact through the platform.
On the one hand the tourists will be able to:
- discover the cultural and natural heritage of the area through the recommendations of the citizens themselves, to
- visualize and interact with the multimedia resources developed in this sense
- make trips to visit the sites thanks to their prior knowledge through multimedia elements uploaded to the platform, filtering and adapting the data to suit their own interests.
On the other hand, citizens can be part of the O-City project by recommending local cultural and natural realities. These proposals will be evaluated by the municipalities themselves and multimedia elements can be developed through the training activities provided by the O-City program to teachers through the e-learning platform.
Since the concept of the platform is based on collaboration, both groups will be able to make their own contributions, thereby encouraging them to share their knowledge and experiences.
Create pre-trip tourist experiences
The map will also be a tourist tool. Multimedia will be integrated into the O-CITY platform that will serve the dissemination of cultural and tourist proposals. Users will be able to create and design their pre-trip travel experiences.
Create educational experiences
O-CITY offers teachers an educational platform designed exclusively for them. The platform will be designed to train and provide to the education sector with an extensive library of knowledge in four areas:
- Cultural (Heritage and Intellectual Property)
- Technical (creative technologies)
- Soft skills (critical thinking, creativity, etc.)
- Business (business development, pitching, etc.)
Academic staff can use the training modules to carry out multimedia projects on the cultural reality of their cities and integrate them into existing curricula. Moreover, O – City will provide students with the necessary training to be able to implement multimedia projects (photography, video, comics and illustrations).
Source: local newspaper, taxydromos.gr (Release date: 10/11/2019)