26.10.08

need an avatar?

Hi!
I found a nice Web 2.0 tool: Voki - http://www.voki.com/.
It lets you create a 2D spaking avatar that you can embed into your blog of page. No bad at all if you need to design interactive materials (except for the cold vocal ynthetizer... but that's how technology can go so far...)

24.10.08

Journal of Distance Education

I thought it could be interesting to post here links to free access journals. Here is one, which also has online archives from 1986!
Journal of Distance Education - http://www.jofde.ca/

I tagged this with "open access" - please do the same with all relevant open access journals. thanks!

18.10.08

A very simple and good idea: PHISICAL BAR CHART

visit http://www.lucykimbell.com/LucyKimbell/PhysicalBarCharts.html








In Physical Bar Charts, viewers are presented with five tall see-through tubes containing button badges, each with a specific message on. Visitors are prompted to help themselves to badges. As they do so, the levels in the tubes drop, presenting an inverse bar chart showing the popularity of the badges.




we should copy it for next conference at USI, shouldn't we? :-)


Ema

16.10.08

Teachers and technologies

I want to share a message from a discussion group of the online course I teach for the Open University of Catalunya. It is from a secondary school teacher of Math and Science, and I think there is some truth we should bear in mind: learning is people, and people is always different!

Spanish (original)
Sin embargo, si me interesa la remarcar la importancia de la adecuación de los materiales al nivel de los usuarios. (...) ¿Qué necesita un MDM para ser útil? (...) simplemente adecuarse a las circunstancias particulares del aula!!, unas veces sirve uno y otras veces otro.....
Porqué?, no lo sé y me encantaría saberlo. ¿Porqué el curso pasado he podido utilizar la unidad de los números racionales con el 2º de ESO y este año en las mismas circunstancias, el mismo planteamiento, las mismas actividades... resultó un fracaso?. No lo sé!!!

English
No doubt I'd like to emphasize the importance of adapting hypermedia materials to the level of users. (...) What does an hypermedia material need for bring useful? (...) simply to be adequate to the specific setting of each class!! sometimes it is useful, other times not.
Why? I don't know and i'd love to learn it. ¿Why could I use the unit on rational number with grade 7 last year, while this year, with the same grade, the same schedule and the same activities... it was a mess? I don't know!!!

Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference

In Copenhagen to discover how ethnograpics and companies' world meet...

...visit www.epic2008.com.

In few days i'll provide you a resumè of this challenging experience!

:-)


Suggestion for everybody: visit Copenhagen.








Hi,
Ema

11.10.08

10.10.08

Ph.D. positions open

Here is the announcement of more Ph.D. positions open in our field.

Life in 25 years - a student wiki activity

Similar to what we did in our online seminar with Maurer and the future, a student task at Elon University (NC, USA) was to create wiki pages. Visit their "place for teaching and learning about technology and society" and see their thoughts about life in 25 years:
http://trumpy.cs.elon.edu/metaverse/wiki/Life_in_25_years

9.10.08

From Japan (Kokoro Co. Ltd's Gynoids): the cyber-baby

What do you think about?

Is this the future forecasted by Maurer?



Interesting, terrifying, fascinating...



Smply a question: how will we teach Repliee-R1?

Repliee R1 is a Synthetik replica of creator Hiroshi Ishiguro's daughter!!!

SD2 - Servizio di Documentazione Software Didattico

an online service that provides comprehensive updated information on educational softwares >>>

Guided tour

P.S. Sorry, exept the guided tour, the website is in Italian!

Web 2.0 Tools for Instructional Integration for the 21st Century Classroom

a huge compilation of web applications and services, classified into categories.


8.10.08

mozilla ubiquity

For the ones amog us that need an all-inclusive tool to surf the web...

(probably you knew it before this post, but as me, I discovered it right now!)

Best to you,
Ema

7.10.08

Designing engaging technology


What about technology and emotions? Again from the EC-TEL conference, a pair of funny tools presented in the keynote of Kristina Höök while discussing the current attempts to design digital products for physical, emotional, and bodily involvement.

- eMoto, a mobile service for sending affective messages to others >>>

- Affective Diary, a means to express inner thoughts and record experiences of past events >>>

4.10.08

Are educational games fun?

Here is an educational game developed in a European project - it's about sustainability and the environment.

http://honoloko.eea.europa.eu

It's quite a classic format for a game of this kind... What do you think? It is really fun? Do you really learn?

3.10.08

Sharing an experience of design - from Stanford

some of you are working on design, others work on different things but will always have to work with people that design technologies, education, media or else.
So here is a nice video that might be of real help!