The beta version of CommonSpaces was officially presented during the Translator's Day (La Giornata del Traduttore), a popular yearly event for the Italian translators' community.

The third edition of the conference, organized by STL Formazione and the European School of Translation, took place in Pisa on 10 October 2015 and was dedicated to networking and marketing initiatives for translators.

Andrea Spila talked about the emerging role of the so-called "sharing and collaborative economy" and showed how Communities of Practice (CoPs) and Open Educational Resources are being used by educational and academic institutions throughout the world.

In his presentation, Andrea also illustrated the pilot activities that a group of "pioneers" is currently carrying out on the platform. The activities include various OER catalogation projects that will lead to the creation of OER collections for the community library and to learning paths specifically aimed at improving employability skills. Subjects chosen by CoP members include "Technologies for freelancers", "Soft skills for translators and interpreters", "Legal aspects of the creative professions", "Public speaking".

The presentation also described the collaborative tools used by the community, such as the CommonSpaces Sandbox Facebook group, Google Drive shared documents, project forums and videoconferencing applications. Attention was also given to future features such as an e-mentoring module, networking and certification features.

CommonS Project

The CommonS (Common Spaces for collaborative learning) project, co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union, is aimed at the development of Common Spaces, an international co-learning and e-mentoring Community of Practice (CoP) devoted to improving the employability skills and work opportunities of participants and reducing the gap existing between the academic world and the labour market, by means of appropriately remixed and localised OERs, i.e. Open Educational Resources freely available to everyone. Partners include:

• Sapienza Università di Roma (Italy)
• Leiria Polytechnic (Portugal)
• Brightside Trust (United Kingdom)
• Link srl (Italy)
• AlfaBeta srl (Italy)
• MTC (Belgium)

Photo: Angela Stelli (www.angelastelli.com)