work with your hands

Here is a nice article from the NY Times about the importance of working with your hands, for all of us working in offices with digital media:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/magazine/24labor-t.html?_r=1

Here is a quote, if you are concerned with our future.

"The Princeton economist Alan Blinder argues that the crucial distinction in the emerging labor market is not between those with more or less education, but between those whose services can be delivered over a wire and those who must do their work in person or on site. The latter will find their livelihoods more secure against outsourcing to distant countries. As Blinder puts it, “You can’t hammer a nail over the Internet.” Nor can the Indians fix your car. Because they are in India."

facebook in real life

Project LifeLike

Have you ever wished you could be in two places at once? Perhaps you've had the desire to create a copy of yourself that could stand in for you at a meeting, freeing you up to work on more pressing matters. Thanks to a research project called LifeLike (see http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=114828), that fantasy might be a little closer to reality.

The ShanghAI Lectures

Andreas has just joined an international eLearning research project led by the prestigious AI Lab (@ IFI) at the University of Zurich.

The project's core are lectures on natural and artificial intelligence that are video-broadcast from Shanghai to universities all around the globe, and also into a virtual collaborative 3D environment (Sun's Wonderland), in which interdisciplinary and intercultural teams of students will collaboratively work on exercises. Learn more about it on the project's website: http://shanghailectures.org/

In the project Andreas is responsible for the Experience Design work stream, which is concerned with ideation and design of the virtual world itself, collaborative tasks within it, and supporting collaboration tools.

If you are interested in doing research in a virtual world with more than 400 collaborating, socializing, and collaboratively learning students, or if you think your university could be interested in participating (e.g. in the scope of a course), let me know or read here about how to participate.

E-Book: the next generation textbook for HE?

Governator of California Launches First-in-Nation Initiative to Develop Free Digital Textbooks for High School Students.
Today he launched an initiative to make California the first state in the nation to offer schools free, open-source digital textbooks for high school students.

Could it work? The real power of e-book finally is discovered? There are still open or unsolved problems.

Read the full news

The Disappearing Computer

From the Fraunhofer IPSI institute, the research division AMBIENTE - Smart Environments of the Future present an interesting approach for adding computer-augmented capabilities to smart artefacts.
The Roomware® project,even if not so recent, aims at stress the concept that "world around us" is our interface to the information and the way of supporting cooperation between people.

I found especially interesting the InteracTable®, where "normal" objects are used as key to move information from one location to another.

what does IT mean for teaching and learning?

Here is a very interesting talk by John Seely Brown, Visiting Scholar, University of Southern California and Co-chairman, Deloitte Center for Edge Innovation.

http://ctl.iupui.edu/symposium/materials.asp

DULP Conference CfP

D for Design Inspired Learning
U for Ubiquitous Learning
L for Liquid Learning Places (& Liquid Society)
P for Person in Place Centred Design

http://www.mifav.uniroma2.it/iede_mk/events/dulp/index.php?s=101&a=6

Submission deadline in 3 weeks already!

"Generation Y - Who are they and how do they learn"

http://nl.xeu.de/j.cfm?i=371664&

http://www.online-educa.com/audio-video-13


from ONLINE EDUCA BERLIN 2008