Edu:ESAO

Educational Series on Applied Ontology (ESAO)

IAOA [1] is currently preparing a new educational effort under the name Educational Series on Applied Ontology (ESAO) [2] that shall be suited for learning about topics of Applied Ontology, primarily established basics and foundations. The series is inspired by the Interdisciplinary Schools on Applied Ontology (ISAO) (cf. e.g. [3]), but - in times of the Corona pandemic - it is complementary in format and its overall approach.

ESAO is being planned as a long-term effort, which shall be prominently started with a launch event on Sep 10, 2021 (Fri), preceding FOIS (Sep 13-16, 2021) [4] in Bozen-Bolzano, Italy. Likewise the ESAO Launch Day will be part of the second Bolzano Summer of Knowledge (BoSK 2021) [5] and is intended to be held in a hybrid format.

Key Idea

The key idea of ESAO is a combination of (1) an archive of educational material and (2) a webinar series for presentation and exchange on that material.

For (1), we aim at creating an archive of short (10-20 min), self-contained units of educational material (videos, web-, screen- and podcasts, a.o.) that is available to be streamed on demand. Any such unit can originate from recording a live session, but likewise it can be produced in any other suitable way. The purpose is the material as such and making it accessible.

Concerning (2), an accompanying webinar series shall present the material and allow for personal interaction about its topics in a variety of formats, e.g. as live presentation with subsequent discussion, as question and answer sessions or panel discussions on a few units together for further digestion (then expected to have been “consumed” already), as well as further formats may be proposed.