red-ink doctoral school

The State of the Internet: Summing up 2010

2011-04-11T22:28:00.003+02:00

Virtually in the cloud

2011-04-01T20:29:00.001+02:00

Adobe Photoshop Cooking

2011-01-19T17:36:00.001+01:00

PING-Poverty is not a game

2010-10-27T14:10:00.002+02:00

PING is an online game made for secondary schools, forming a starting point to discuss the subject ‘poverty’ and what it means to be poor. Ping is aimed at the students of the secondary and third degree. The students become the main characters in the game. They can choose between Jim or Sofia, who, due to certain circumstances, end up on the street and need to find their own path.

PING shows that games can help to introduce complex social subjects like poverty in the class room.

The partners of the PING project want to contribute to the social debate encouraging the use of games at school as a tool to open the difficult discussion about poverty.

Education scientist (Sugata Mitra, from India) explains we don't need anymore teachers (after experiments' evidence)

2010-10-02T14:44:00.002+02:00

raise you hand for education

2010-09-20T19:46:00.002+02:00

“Raise your hand” today through 15 October to submit and vote on the most important action to take in education today. The top five ideas will be shown to education ministers, business leaders, technical experts and academics during the Education Policy Forum at the OECD in Paris on 4 November.

Education ministers will be invited to respond to the ideas at that time. Follow the conversation as it unfolds on OECD educationtoday, share your ideas and raise your hand!

minutes from the first RED-INK meeting (who is the author?)

2010-09-10T11:05:00.000+02:00

A communicative Approach

Evolution of man vs evolution of avatar

2010-06-16T23:31:00.002+02:00

hey folks,
- is there still anybody reading this blog?..

i am designing a poster and created this little comparison
(i downloaded the upper half, i'm sure you know that one already)

is the message i am trying to convey understandable?
please let me know in the comments.

cheers

New Google Phone Service Whispers Targeted Ads Directly Into Users' Ears

2010-05-30T20:15:00.002+02:00

Just came across this world-changing new Google service!

Top 40 Useful Sites To Learn New Skills

2010-05-28T08:54:00.004+02:00

...a very intriguing collection of great sites and blogs:
http://www.marcandangel.com/2010/05/24/top-40-useful-sites-to-learn-new-skills/

Future School of Finland

2010-02-18T16:30:00.001+01:00

Let's face it, Scandinavia is just way ahead of us here in the south...

Merry Red-Inkristmas!

2009-12-22T12:02:00.001+01:00

How do they teach at Harvard?

2009-12-17T17:59:00.001+01:00

Wnat to have an inside look into the teaching practices of one of the best business schools in the world? this CNBC documentary brings you behind the scenes of great teachers at Harvard Business School. Enjoy the vision!

http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=1178839117&play=1

Online collaboration and self-organization

2009-12-02T21:32:00.002+01:00

An interesting research on spontaneous and self-organized collaboration on the net: http://networkchallenge.darpa.mil/

from "digital natives vs immigrants" to "tourists or residents" perspective

2009-11-19T15:45:00.000+01:00

The internet is killing storytelling

2009-11-19T15:27:00.002+01:00

"A story, God knows, is still the most powerful way to understand. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word, in the great narrative that is the Bible, was not written as twitter."

from: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/ben_macintyre/article6903537.ece

~~~~

The internet is killing storytelling

Narratives are a staple of every culture the world over. They are disappearing in an online blizzard of tiny bytes of information

Click, tweet, e-mail, twitter, skim, browse, scan, blog, text: the jargon of the digital age describes how we now read, reflecting the way that the very act of reading, and the nature of literacy itself, is changing.

The information we consume online comes ever faster, punchier and more fleetingly. Our attention rests only briefly on the internet page before moving incontinently on to the next electronic canapé.

Addicted to the BlackBerry, hectored and heckled by the next blog alert, web link or text message, we are in state of Continual Partial Attention, too bombarded by snippets and gobbets of information to focus on anything for very long. Microsoft researchers have found that someone distracted by an e-mail message alert takes an average of 24 minutes to return to the same level of concentration.

The internet has evolved a new species of magpie reader, gathering bright little buttons of knowledge, before hopping on to the next shiny thing.

It was inevitable that more than a decade of digital reading would change the way we do it. In a remarkable recent essay in the Atlantic Monthly Nicholas Carr admitted that he can no longer immerse himself in substantial books and longer articles in the way he once did. “What the net seems to be doing is chipping away at my capacity for concentration and contemplation,” he wrote. “My mind now expects to take in information the way the net distributes it: in a swift-moving stream of particles.”

If the culprit is obvious, so is the primary victim of this radically reduced attention span: the narrative, the long-form story, the tale. Like some endangered species, the story now needs defending from the threat of extinction in a radically changed and inhospitable digital environment.

Last year Hollywood veterans and scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology teamed up to create a laboratory aimed at protecting the traditional tale from oblivion: the Centre for Future Storytelling. However ludicrous that may sound, they have a point. Storytelling is the bedrock of civilisation. From the moment we become aware of others, we demand to be told stories that allow us to make sense of the world, to inhabit the mind of someone else. In old age we tell stories to make small museums of memory. It matters not whether the stories are true or imaginary.

The narrative, whether oral or written, is a staple of every culture the world over. But stories demand time and concentration; the narrative does not simply transmit information, but invites the reader or listener to witness the unfolding of events.

Stories introduce us to situations, people and dilemmas beyond our experience, in a way that is contemplative and gradual: it is the oldest and best form of virtual reality.

The internet, while it communicates so much information so very effectively, does not really “do” narrative. The blog is a soap box, not a story. Facebook is a place for tell-tales perhaps, but not for telling tales. The long-form narrative still does sit easily on the screen, although the e-reader is slowly edging into the mainstream. Very few stories of more than 1,000 words achieve viral status on the internet.

Meanwhile, a generation is tuned, increasingly and sometimes exclusively, to the cacophony of interactive chatter and noise, exciting and fast moving but plethoric and ephemeral. The internet is there for snacking, grazing and tasting, not for the full, six-course feast that is nourishing narrative. The consequence is an anorexic form of culture.

Plot lies at the heart of great narrative: but today, we are in danger of losing the plot. Paradoxically, there has never been a greater hunger for narrative, for stories that give shape and meaning to experience. Barack Obama was elected, in large measure, on the basis of his story, the extraordinary odyssey that begins in Hawaii and ends in the White House, taking in Chicago and Kenya along the way.

The news stories that compel us are not the blunt shards of information, but those with narrative: the tragic mystery of Madeleine McCann; the enraging saga of parliamentary scandal; the strange decay of Gordon Brown’s premiership. Reality television, The X Factor, Strictly Come Dancing, all are driven by personal narratives as much as individual talent.

Our fascination with other people’s stories is as great, if not greater, than any time in history. This year I am judging the Costa biography of the year award. The astonishing range of biographical writing is testament to our appetite for narrative. Reading several dozen lives, one after the other, has been fascinating, but also unfamiliar, and exhausting. Like Carr and, I suspect, many others, I too have become used to absorbing lives in Wikipedia-shaped chunks.

What is needed is a machine that can combine the ease and speed of digital technology with the immersive pleasures of narrative. It may not be far off. Japan has recently seen an explosion in the popularity of thumb novels, keitai shosetsu, book-length sagas that can be uploaded to the screen of your mobile phone, one page at a time.

These mobile telephone tales are written in the language of the net: scraps of text-speak, slang and emoticons, but these are still unmistakably narratives, stories with a protagonist, a beginning and an end. They are also hugely popular: sales of books in Japan are dropping, but half the Top Ten fiction bestsellers started on mobile telephones. Here is proof that the ancient need for narrative, hardwired into human nature, can sit comfortably with the wiring of the newest technology.

Narrative is not dead, merely obscured by a blizzard of byte-sized information. A story, God knows, is still the most powerful way to understand. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word, in the great narrative that is the Bible, was not written as twitter.

Scientific Poster Design

2009-11-18T13:54:00.003+01:00

...a PDF tutorial from LiLynn Graves at the Cornell Center for Materials Research:
http://www.cns.cornell.edu/documents/ScientificPosters.pdf

Just in case some NewMinErs want to modify and improve that poster format that is already well-established.. ;-)

To combine poster and presentation at a doctoral consortium, I went ahead using Prezi, which was considered as "pretty flashy" by the scientific audience. See here:

A useful reference...

2009-11-10T13:56:00.001+01:00

... for scientific writing and management of references in different styles.
http://www.guidetoonlineschools.com/tips-and-tools/mla-apa-chicago-cse

The reason why we call them "generation Y"

2009-10-20T11:34:00.001+02:00

A new life the OLPC project?

2009-10-19T16:29:00.005+02:00

As reported on the BBC News site, Uruguay decided to join the OLPC. Maybe the project will still remain active...
An interesting point of view was expressed by the head of the Technological Laboratory of Uruguay : "... This is not simply the handing out of laptops or an education programme. It is a programme which seeks to reduce the gap between the digital world and the world of knowledge..." and he also thinks "...Its a culture shock scenario - many countries are simply too scared to put it into practice"

And a related interview with the 'father' of the OLPC project: 'Gaza will be the next step'

The Future of Multi-Touch?

2009-10-16T09:35:00.004+02:00

This concept video shows how ten fingers multi-touch input can be exploited to design a novel graphical user interface for computers.

10/GUI from C. Miller on Vimeo.

I think using gestures is a very nice input method. With some practice, different actions can be done simultaneously. I wonder if we can display a keyboard on the touch surface, to get rid of all the real keys. Elsewhere, there is research and development in progress towards bumpy surfaces... That would allow for flexible keys to touch and click, and also to push tangible things around on the (not anymore flat) surface.

Generation Y, Digital Learners and Other Dangerous Things

2009-10-15T09:45:00.002+02:00

Journal of technology, culture, and education

Call for Special Issue:

Generation Y, Digital Learners and Other Dangerous Things

edited by Lorenzo Cantoni & Stefano Tardini

download the call (in pdf)

Do You Want That on Your Permanent Record?

2009-09-30T19:53:00.000+02:00

By ERIC FELTEN- wall street journal

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204488304574432942927995848.html

What does Creativity mean to you?

2009-09-29T16:59:00.003+02:00

A raffle for those of you who are or have been teachers. The prize is a trip to the European Union’s Creativity conference in Stockholm --> eTwinning

innovation and creativity (from elearningeurope.info)

2009-09-28T16:47:00.001+02:00

Innovation and creativity

Creativity and innovation are becoming most crucial in knowledge societies due to the fact that no one can escape the challenges ahead of us. We live and tackle obstacles for good in an increasingly undivided world. In businesses and cultures, for example, most actors continue to apply a primarily local focus, when knowledge has a global dimension whatever we do. What does this mean to education? What kind of reforms does it call for?

(read the whole article at http://www.elearningpapers.eu/index.php?lng=en&page=volume&vol=13)

eLearning for vocational training

2009-09-25T12:27:00.002+02:00

A blog with useful hints on how to create lively, powerful elearning for adults in the business world: http://blog.cathy-moore.com/

InSITE 2010: Informing Science & IT Education Conference

2009-09-21T09:28:00.002+02:00

Hi all,

this conference in Bari might be of interest to you. Deadline is 30 November, conference will be in June 2010.
http://2010.informingscience.org/

are digital technology changing our wayfinding abilities?

2009-09-19T23:01:00.002+02:00

take a look at the video

then, see this interesting comments

from the new blog of BBC: "digital revolution"

2009-09-08T14:43:00.002+02:00

what's become of the blogosphere?

The blogsophere is dying, apparently. The long tail of user-generated content, brimming with idiosyncrasy and experimentation - the great hope of the libertarian levelling ground promoted by the Web's founding fathers - is petering out. The anecdotal 1% of content creators (versus the 99% of content consumers) is moving away from the more formal end of story-telling/reporting (a process that takes time to craft, link, illustrate and post) because they prefer to keep in touch using quick-fire, low-cost tools like Twitter and Facebook. The result is a ghost town - nay, a ghost metropolis - of blogs that are, well, dead.

Oh the fickle, fickle Web. Oh the Ridalin-smoking, post-MTV, fast-edit generation. What have you done to our new media revolution? Don't you realise that in your absence, the new media mega corps are stepping in to perpetuate the old media models, to establish Old Boy hierarchies and to open and close the gates of information at their whims and inclinations?

Huffington, Gawker, Digg: these are the establishment figures for the next generation - the Hearsts and the Murdochs of the blogosphere. They may have started out pushing the boundaries, but now they've cemented their foundations as bridges between the people who understand the power of this new medium and those who desperately want to.

And what of the rare and the obscure ephemera that captured the imaginations of the Great Blogger Rush of 2004, when the world and its grandma got a blog because it seemed like the thing to do, and there might be a book deal at the end of it? Has the world really lost interest in, oh, I don't know - Smell-o-Vision, or has the person behind http://digiscents.com/blog/ simply realised that typing into a vacuum isn't much fun?

Of course, out of the vast sea of digital nonsense, hierarchy was inevitable. In the lean communication Internet platform, we seek out sources of information that we can trust. To establish a new resource's credibility, we must rely on heuristics of similarity and familiarity. We have to thank Arianna Huffington, Nick Denton, Kevin Rose and their media revolutionary contemporaries for standing firm at the precipice of the chasm between them and the offline big brands, otherwise we'd simply be reading the same content from the same sources. These new rebel aggregators provided a point of focus for blog consumers to gather around, highlighting quality and popular content that was an alternative to the content that Old Media thought was worthy. They've done it faster and more transparently and are more accountable to their readers.

But the result is that the great levelling ground has morphed into a giant virtual pyramid. Yesterday's revolutionary has become the today's institution. Where will the next upstarts come from?

digital native definition (West Virginia Department of Education)

2009-09-07T03:59:00.001+02:00

Digital Immigrant

A technology user, usually over the age of thirty, who was not born into the digital world. The digital immigrant uses technology, but often attempts to bring this use into a framework s/he finds comfort in, such as printing material accessed on the Internet before reading it.

Digital Native

A technology user under the age of 30, who was born into the digital world and is accustomed to receiving information very quickly. The digital native is able to parallel-process and multi-task, and usually prefers to see graphics before text. S/he tends to be more comfortable working in a hyperlinked environment, and when s/he receives frequent rewards or feedback.

from West Virginia Department of Education http://wvde.state.wv.us/21stcenturydigitalresource/index.html

Prezi can replace Powerpoint

2009-08-26T09:49:00.005+02:00

Here is a very nice tool as an alternative to the much too dominating PowerPoint.

I personally was waiting for a tool like this, that basically employs a big canvas and makes use of zooming in and out. Sounds simple, but is very effective - and can help a lot to show overviews and 'the big picture'.

It's called prezi: http://prezi.com

Ema, Ingra, Ling and I will give it a first try this Friday, presenting our participant observation project around tourists in Lugano.

tackling information overload with seriosity

2009-08-20T11:28:00.003+02:00

Here is a very nice product, Attent, by a new company called Seriosity. I think it is an interesting way to tackle information overload involving wise judgment, not only technologies.

Here is the demo, and here is the company website.

the cynefin frameworks

2009-08-14T10:42:00.002+02:00

Recently,

on Clark Quinn's blog the importance of how-to-learn frameworks has been strongly underlined...

Should be interesting to check his point of view at http://blog.learnlets.com/?p=988

Open journals

2009-07-28T10:18:00.002+02:00

I always believed that open journals (i.e., journals where you do not have to pay a subscription to access contents) are the best way to spread scientific knowledge - actually, you are more read than with other journals, even if the magic math of impact factors does not always do justice to that.

I just discovered a site that lists most of them, and here it the section about educational technologies, I hope this can be of help.
http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=subject&cpid=127

2009-07-28T09:21:00.004+02:00

Here is a compilation of 100 sites for educational digital games - interesting for exploring this new media which is so powerful for education.
http://www.upsidelearning.com/blog/index.php/2009/06/24/top-100-learning-game-resources/

One I like is games4change.
http://gamesforchange.org/toolkitflash/

Microsoft HCI report

2009-07-27T15:34:00.001+02:00

Here is the Microsoft Research’s just released report about the future vision for HCI. Worth reading, especially after our last seminar at EPFL. Many innovations describes here still seem futuristic, but they brought me back to our online seminar with Peters & Maurer: how much will new technologies affect our lifes?

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/cambridge/projects/hci2020/downloads/BeingHuman_A3.pdf

1968: mouse computer first demo

2009-07-22T12:32:00.001+02:00

On December 9, 1968, Douglas C. Engelbart and the group of 17 researchers working with him in the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, CA, presented a 90-minute live public demonstration of the online system, NLS, they had been working on since 1962.

The public presentation was a session of the Fall Joint Computer Conference held at the Convention Center in San Francisco, and it was attended by about 1,000 computer professionals.

This was the public debut of the computer mouse.

take a look at: http://sloan.stanford.edu/MouseSite/1968Demo.html

Nice Journal for publishing

2009-07-22T09:56:00.002+02:00

Here is a new Journal that I think it would be interesting for all of us to publish on.
http://www.jld.qut.edu.au/ It also accepts litterature reviews :)

you don't need it, but it's funny

2009-07-21T18:49:00.000+02:00

digital copyrights

2009-07-09T13:42:00.001+02:00

An interesting resource for understanding issues in digital copyrights applied to education and the market around content publication in education - videos from Cory Doctorow (not a pleasant guy in himself, but smart!):
http://craphound.com/?p=2251

Lifelong Kindergarten

2009-06-24T17:41:00.004+02:00

I just read about this tool called Glow Doodle,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGhQHhxXHZE
which is marginally funny, but more interesting to us seems this MIT group:
http://llk.media.mit.edu/ - The Lifelong Kindergarten Group!

Make sure to read their mission, and to have a look at their projects. I can see at least Emanuele liking this. ;-)

in retro we trust

2009-06-24T09:17:00.002+02:00

Manomio,

a start-up based in Phoenix who provides application for I-phone,

started a campaign to re-introduce the 80s style in computer and gaming: "in retro we trust"

Their main aim is to reintroduce Commodore 64 - "the best selling homecomputer ever" - in our everyday life, adding it on Iphone

take a look...

sometimes design answers real questions ;-)

2009-06-17T14:00:00.003+02:00

Mac’s petit inventions: Physically Digital

We all know how great a touch screen is… But have you ever thought that it’s a nightmare for the blind? You never know what you’re touching because everything is flat. All the information and status is on the screen, so a user has to take the device up from a pocket, touch the necessary buttons and see with his eyes. In the future information is told in 3D.

So what would this look like? Let’s take a mobile phone as an example: The front face and the sides of it transforms the shapes according to what information or status is expressed. It makes concavity and convexity on the surface. For example, the face can be customized with contoured graphics. It could be dressed up with a kimono-like graphic or it could have a concave clock so that a blind user can know the time.

read the whole article at http://johnnyholland.org/magazine/2009/06/macs-petit-inventions-physically-digital/

A Sister Project

2009-06-16T21:17:00.002+02:00

Somewhere between Virginia and North Carolina there is a project with quite similar goal to those we have in our Red-Ink family. It's not a doctoral school, though.
It's called LIKES:
http://www.likes.org.vt.edu/

(This blog serves mainly to break the ice after Luca's ground-breaking blog about the Natal project... Seems like nobody dares to blog anymore after having seen those videos... - am I right??;)

Human Computer Interaction: the evolution

2009-06-10T10:32:00.011+02:00

Project Natal for Microsoft XBOX 360...
See this pre registered Milo Demo of the Project Natal presented at the E3 2009 event

and a live use of the system, at the same event

Don't you think is very impressive?

Build your online CV

2009-06-03T14:55:00.001+02:00

Having a simple but effective online CV, maybe coupled with a portfolio of your main works, is a good way both to keep reflecting on your profile, and to find a good position. Here is a nice (and free) tool for that:
www.visualcv.com

work with your hands

2009-05-26T15:52:00.002+02:00

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

2009-05-26T10:36:00.001+02:00

Project LifeLike

2009-05-19T16:44:00.001+02:00

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

2009-05-14T15:31:00.010+02:00

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?

2009-05-12T20:20:00.006+02:00

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

2009-05-12T18:36:00.007+02:00

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?

2009-05-11T11:56:00.001+02:00

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

2009-05-09T08:40:00.003+02:00

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"

2009-05-04T16:49:00.003+02:00

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

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

from ONLINE EDUCA BERLIN 2008

Education in the Knowledge Society for the Lugano Red-Inklings means ...

2009-04-12T18:45:00.001+02:00

we discussed about that on the San Salvatore mountain!

elearning could solve forever a situation like this...but are we sure that it would be positive?

2009-04-06T18:22:00.002+02:00

SocioGeek Silvia's results

2009-04-03T11:47:00.001+02:00

Here are my results!

PS. Ema, it is a little long but quite interesting for your PhD research.

SOCIOGEEK: how do we expose ourselves online

2009-04-03T09:38:00.003+02:00

really really really interesting way to observe...

a nice game-survey (3 steps, it takes abot 20-30 min, but it is worth trying, trust me)about you online behavior gives in back to you a lot of information about your online-style in exposing and choosing contacts.

at this link the survey: http://sociogeek.admin-mag.com/

at this link a slideshare about results: http://www.slideshare.net/slidesharefing/sociogeek-lift-en

here below the (doubtful) results about me

Future Visions

2009-04-02T13:13:00.004+02:00

Again, I post about the future.

Just stumbled upon this video about how media will take over economy, society, and all the rest of our lives.

(@Luca: ...speaking of Experience Design ;-)

If you like that kind of story but don't like the accent, try the EPIC video, with the voice of Agent Scully from the X-Files (at least her German dubbing voice):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYtAGIfFxFQ&feature=player_embedded
Here the original EPIC 2014/2015 website - in English:
http://epic.makingithappen.co.uk/

A sarcastic description of twitter

2009-03-24T01:06:00.001+01:00

ehehehehehe!

A game to learn US law

2009-03-23T18:06:00.009+01:00

You play a Guardian of law and you have to spread the rule of law in a Courts virtual world!

Learn more about it following the link.

Advice for Lugano people

2009-03-23T11:40:00.005+01:00

Hi Andreas, Chrysi, Luca & Silvia (or Sylvia, I never remember...),

to make more complete the info provided by Luca Botturi I inform you that in the University Library you can find the following book:

How to write & publish a scientific paper (by Robert A. Day)

Have a nice everything!

For StGallen and Lausanne people...a hug from a sunny Lugano (ihihihih)!

Ema

How to write a good paper

2009-03-23T10:51:00.003+01:00

From Indiana University, a very good and detailed (and short!) compendium about how to write a good scientific paper. I found it really useful!

http://sparks.informatics.iupui.edu/Publications_files/write-english.pdf

from Kung Fu Panda - The way of Oogway

2009-03-23T09:56:00.003+01:00

Isn't it the core of education?

"Oogway: Your mind is like this water, my friend , when it is agitated, it becomes difficult to see, but if you allow it to settle, the answer becomes clear. True warrior, but do not surrender... Yes, look at this tree Shifu, I can not make it blossom when it suits me, nor make it bear food before it’s time...
Shifu: but there are things we can control, I can control when the fruit will fall... And I can control. What time to seed. That is not illusion, Master...
Oogway: Yes, but no matter what you do, that seed will grow to be a peach tree. You may wish for an apple or an orange, but you will get a peach.
Shifu: But peach cannot defeat Tai Long
Oogway: Maybe it can, if you are willing to guide it, to nurture it, to believe in it...
Shifu: but how, how? I need your help, master.
Oogway: No, you just need to believe. Promise me, Shifu. Promise me you will believe.
shifu: I will try."

The videogame in which you have to fire people in order to survive the economical crisis

2009-03-22T19:38:00.003+01:00

I suggest you to play...it's funny and sad at the same time!

here below the official description:

LAYOFF game released!
Tiltfactor and the collaborative Values at Play project are proud to announce the release of LAYOFF, a game that examines the current financial scandal. The game has been called “The Videogame for the Crisis” and “A game for today’s economy” in reviews! In the game, players play from the side of management needing to cut jobs, and match types of workers in groups in order to lay the workers off and increase workforce efficiency. The financiers in this game cannot face layoffs. Play Now!

2009-03-19T22:13:00.006+01:00

A letter to promote the adoption of open standards for digital documents in UE funded projects.
Please, if you agree with it, contribute to the letter and sign it at http://freeknowledge.eu/wiki/index.php/OpenStandardsLetter

Nice people in Schwarzsee

2009-03-18T14:36:00.003+01:00

A special thanks to Frank and Stephanie

Even if Pierre wanted to stop our expression freedom... ehehehehehe

Red-ink side effects

2009-03-18T14:00:00.002+01:00

In Pierre diagram, where would you put these poor guys?

Lugano team tribute - the fantastic five are coming!

2009-03-18T12:58:00.002+01:00

Strangers? No more!

2009-03-18T12:39:00.005+01:00

A nice ad by Coca Cola, pointing out that already today a lot of people amongst us have a second (virtual or digital) identity, also those you might not assume they do...

In my understanding, the ad suggests to embrace them as parts of our lives.

Become friends with the Ogre instead of fearing it (/her)!

methodological note: ethnography

2009-03-18T12:08:00.002+01:00

from Hardward Business Review

Ethnographic Research: A Key to Strategy
by Ken Anderson (Ethnographer at INTEL)

Corporate ethnography isn’t just for innovation anymore. It’s central to gaining
a full understanding of your customers and the business itself. The ethnographic
work at my company, Intel, and other firms now informs functions such as
strategy and long-range planning.
Ethnography is the branch of anthropology that involves trying to understand how people live their lives. [..].
Our goal is to see people’s behavior on their terms, not ours. While this observational method may appear inefficient, it enlightens us about the context in which customers would use a new product and the meaning that product might hold in their lives.
Ethnography at Intel initially focused on new markets. [...]
Recently, Intel ethnographers have veered into strategic questions. [...]
But people often can’t articulate what they’re looking for in
products or services. By understanding how people live, researchers discover
otherwise elusive trends that inform the company’s future strategies.
[...] Our job as anthropologists is to understand the perspective of one tribe,
consumers, and communicate it to another, the people at Intel. Our experiences
in both worlds make this translation possible. Ethnography has proved so
valuable at Intel that the company now employs two dozen anthropologists and
other trained ethnographers, probably the biggest such corporate staff in the
world.
High-tech companies have to date employed the lion’s share of
corporate ethnographers. But I believe that ethnography is so beneficial that it
will spread widely, helping firms in every industry truly understand customers
and adapt to fast-changing markets.

Copyright © 2009 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved.

NCCR Democracy, positions in Zurich

2009-03-17T10:24:00.000+01:00

The NCCR Democracy is seeking to appoint

2 Postdoctoral researchers,

13 Ph.D. students and

1 scientific assistant

to start on 1 October 2009.

Job descriptions outlining the research orientations, qualifications required and application details, can be downloaded from the NCCR Democracy website http://www.nccr-democracy.uzh.ch/nccr/news_events/news/jobs. The deadline for applications is 15 May 2009.

NCCR Democracy is a Swiss national research centre, working on the challenges to democracy in the 21st century, and funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the University of Zurich. Launched in 2005, NCCR Democracy represents an unprecedented disciplinary alliance in Europe between political science and media and communication science. Managed from the University of Zurich, the network comprises 14 partner institutions in Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands.

The centre's research focuses on two global trends that pose significant challenges to the ways that democracies have traditionally operated: globalization / de-nationalization and the growing influence of the media on politics (mediatization). The research program examines how these two trends jeopardize or reinforce democracy. NCCR Democracy provides a structured doctoral program promoting scientific excellence, independence and interdisciplinarity.

World builder

2009-03-12T18:14:00.001+01:00

here is a very poetic and very nice icon of virtual worlds and how they can be in our life and values.
I know it's then minutes, but that's really worth seeing.

Dr Seuss

2009-03-12T15:22:00.003+01:00

Here is what we've discussed in my follow-up seminar in Fribourg:

Question is: does CSCL also translate to Comic-Supported Collateral Learning? Or is this a video for vocational training?

Red-ink goes movie!

2009-03-05T15:39:00.000+01:00

Beautiful Robot Pictures

2009-03-05T00:00:00.008+01:00

Here you can kick back for three minutes and get amazed by today's robots in action. The slideshow features the Governator, a well-known German girl, and also BERTI, who Ema presented to us some time ago.

...if you have more than three minutes: the blog itself is really nice - wonderful pictures of nearly everything and everywhere, a new album every other day.

A new concept of "privacy" --> "publicy"

2009-03-03T10:47:00.001+01:00

Privacy is not dead. It just went global and public, which doesn’t mean you can’t control what people know about you. Actually, it is now the other way around.

From Laurent Haug's blog.

From New Zealand to India with Andreas

2009-02-25T00:19:00.003+01:00

Just come back from a very nice evening...

...thank you, Andreas, for wonderful pics!

Indian foods were great and all of us fell in love with New Zealand.

Now, we're waiting you to publish the best ones, in order to share with other red-ink mates your dreamful journeys!

:-)

Conference on 'eParticipation'

2009-02-18T14:18:00.004+01:00

http://www.demo-net.org/epart
...held in a neighboring alpine country.

Sounds as if it could be of interest for some of you.
But attention: Deadline for papers coming up soon!!

playing 'paper, scissors, stone' with BERTI

2009-02-18T11:05:00.005+01:00

At British Science Museum scientists developped a robot able to play the child game 'paper, scissors, stone'.

mah?!? :-/

World of Warcraft Intervention

2009-02-16T17:39:00.003+01:00

Reality or Virtuality? You choose.

...only good that this is still considered humor.
If you want to know more: there is an interesting movie coming out soon: http://www.secondskinfilm.com/

Graduate Student Conference on Technology, Media and Designs for Learning

2009-02-16T09:36:00.003+01:00

This conference in New York sounds interesting for every PhD student working on education, media, communication, or games for learning. But see for yourself here:
http://events.tc.columbia.edu/tcetc2009/

- submitted papers must be completely authored by graduate students
- they only want an abstract to be submitted before the conference, as I understood it
- registration fee: $25

Two interesting research workshops

2009-02-06T17:00:00.004+01:00

Here are two nice workshops that will be held during the next ICALT Conference

Workshop on Visual Design Languages and Applications for Technology Enhanced Learning
http://elearn.pri.univie.ac.at/vidlatel

Workshop on Affect and Educational Design Patterns
http://weg.ee.usyd.edu.au/icalt09

ICALT 2009 is one of the major e-learning conferences in Europe, and will be on July 14-18, 2009 in Riga, Latvia - http://www.ask4research.info/icalt/2009/

CONFERENCES

2009-02-05T11:58:00.002+01:00

So, finally, this is the 'full', I think, list of conferences I would like to attend and participate t0 in 2009:

- Design09, Berlin, 15-17 February: presentation of a workshop titled: 'The activity theory as a framework to describe and analyze the design communication'; Accepted

- SKGM pre-conference, Zurich, 25 March: presentation of my Phd proposal and discussion with other phd students and experts; Accepted

- Communicating (by) design, Brussels, 15-17 April: presentation of a full-paper (co-authors Botturi and Andreas) named: 'Communication patterns in design teams'; Accepted

- Epique conference, Nice, 18-30 September: presentation of a paper called: 'Le processus rational du dessin en gruppes' ; Not submitted yet

- Creativity and Cognition, Berkeley USA, 27-30 October: Having the Professor Csikszentmihalyi (you know, the guy who invented the 'flow' term to describe the creative process) as a key-note speaker is a sufficient reason! I would like to interview him. And if it is possible to go, I will submit a paper with possible title: 'Different creativities, same cognitive patterns: the role of communication flow in design teams'; Not submitted (and I don't know if I will be able to submit it!)

online data of interesting searches about european behaviour in using ICT

2009-01-27T19:16:00.004+01:00

The first is the Ofcom’s third report on developments in international communications markets.

"This report sets out the availability, take-up and use of communications services among seven main comparator countries (the UK, France, Germany, Italy, the US, Canada and Japan). Where data are available, we have included a further five European countries (Poland, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden and the Republic of Ireland). We also consider separately the development of communications markets in the large emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China. "

The second one is the public report of international research MEDIAPPRO

"Mediappro is an international project about the way young people (12-18) appropriate the new media in network, including new portable audio-scripto-visual media (mobile phone, Internet, video games, multimedia supports)."

I suggest you to take a look, you may discover something interesting!

red-ink OER

2009-01-27T18:10:00.003+01:00

Red-ink published its first set of Open Educational Resources as scorm packages. Check them out!
http://www.red-ink.ch/oer/
red-ink OER are released under the Creative Commons non-commercial share-alike license, and are available also in MERLOT.

ph.d. position in info visualization

2009-01-27T17:40:00.001+01:00

here is an interesting ph.d position announcement

PhD Position in Information Visualization, Växjö University, Sweden, and TU Kaiserslautern, Germany

View details

New Media Consortium Yearly Report

2009-01-22T22:33:00.001+01:00

Highlights from this year's report, who outlines current and future trends in new media design and technologies for teaching and learning:

- Mobile
- Cloud Computing
- Personal Web
- Smart Objects
... and more
Download Full PDF Report on New Media Consortium Website >>>

"the show must go on" (The Queen, Innuendo, 1991)

2009-01-22T19:23:00.004+01:00

- list of conferences in 2008
EPIC (ethnographic praxis in industry conference) October 2008 @ Copenhagen http://www.epic2008.com/

- list of conferences in 2009 and paper I'd like to submit
"Les voix des apprenants" --> EPAL (Grenoble, Juin 2009) http://w3.u-grenoble3.fr/epal/index.html
"Learners' voices" --> Web as Culture (Giessen, July 16 - 18, 2009) http://www.nmartproject.net/netex/?p=439
“Gen Y @work – The way we learn, the way we work in the knowledge society” --> EPIC 2009 (Chicago ?)
“Lego playing to understand technological attitude” --> Nordic Design Research Conference (Oslo, 30 August – 1 September 2009) http://www.nordes.org/

2009 Conference Plan

2008-12-29T11:24:00.008+01:00

Here my list of conferences I would like to attend:

3DTLC - 3D Training, Learning and Collaboration Conference - is foreseen to become the new leading event for businesses seeking to maximize the added value of their use of virtual worlds. I'd like to give a talk about my research and maybe find subjects for experiments and collaborators. Washington D.C., USA, 20 - 21 April 2009 --> http://3dtlc.com

FaVE '09: International Conference on Facets of Virtual Environments - This conference provides a venue to research related to the many facets of persistent virtual environments. I would like to present my semiotics-based framework for group interaction in 3D virtual environments, useful both for theory and practice. Berlin, Germany, 27 - 29 July 2009 --> http://www.fave-conference.org/

ECSCW 2009: European Conference on Computer Supported Co-operative Work - among others, the conference has a focus on new (interaction) technologies for CSCW and new computer-enabled forms of organisation. I'd like to present a poster (or video/demo) showing results of my first virtual world collaboration experiment. Also, the doctoral colloquium would be interesting. Vienna, Austria, 7 - 11 September 2009 --> http://ecscw09.org/

2009 conferences

2008-12-24T23:59:00.016+01:00

Here a list of ( :-P more or less) interesting (for me, almost) conferences with the link to their homepage:

AIED 2009: International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education - Building Learning Systems that Care : From Knowledge Representation to Affective Modelling. Brighton Thistle Hotel, Kings Road, 6 - 10 Jul 2009 --> http://www.aied2009.com

UMAP 2009: User Modeling, Adaptation, and Personalization - concerns interaction with systems that acquire information about a user (or group of users) to be able to adapt their behavior. Trento, Italy, 22 - 26 June 2009 --> http://umap09.fbk.eu

i-KNOW 2009: International Conference on Knowledge Management - to bring a broad array of these perspectives together, to learn from each other and to jointly find promising ways ahead for the future. Graz , Austria, 3 - 5 September 2009 --> http://i-know.know-center.tugraz.at/

As extra European conference I will be interested in:

HCI International 2009 - International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: international forum for the dissemination and exchange of up-to-date scientific information on theoretical, generic and applied areas of HCI. San Diego, CA, USA, 19 - 24 July 09 --> http://www.hcii2009.org

And to finish, merry Xmas to all of you

E-Therapy

2008-12-18T11:19:00.002+01:00

Maybe you already know about this, but I thought it'd fit in here..

This German article reports that online therapy is being more and more used, and will get really important/popular in the future, with the assumption that mental and neurological problems will become more and more important as causes for illnesses.
It is reported that in some countries services like E-Couch already are paid for by health insurance companies. Other services are called Beating the Blues, FearFighter, OCFighter, Shuti, Moodswings and Panic Online.

By the way, also 3D virtual environments are used for therapy, a good example is treating phobia by exposure therapy.

"Why good products can fail, the personal computer is so complex and information appliances are the solutions"

2008-12-15T20:07:00.004+01:00

Creeping featurism, is what I called this problem in 1988, the symptom of the dreaded disease of featuritis. By 1992 the word processing program Microsoft Word had 311 commands. Three Hundred and Eleven. That’s a daunting amount, more than I dreamed was possible when I wrote my 1988 book. Who could learn over three hundred commands for a single program? Who would want to? Who would ever need them? Answer: nobody. They are there for a lot of reasons. In part, they are there because this one program must cover the whole word, so, in principle, for every command, there is at least one user somewhere who finds it essential. In part, thought, they are there because the programmers dreamed them up; if it was possible to do, it was done. But the most important reason is for MARKETING. My program is bigger than yours. Better it can do more. Anything you have, I have too, and more besides.

Creeping featurism may be the wrong term: perhaps it should be called rampant featurism. Do you think 311 commands is a lot for a word processing program? Five year later, in 1997, that same word processing program, Microsoft Word, had 1033 commands. One Thousand Thirty three.

Donald Norman, The invisible Computer, The MIT Press,
Cambridge (Massachusetts), 1998, p.80-81.

IBM Next Five in Five

2008-11-26T15:48:00.004+01:00

IBM has published their view on what five innovations will lead to the major changes in the next five years:

They say their assumptions are based on actual trends and technical advancements, of course also taking into account what is being developed in IBM's research labs.

METID Day: "The future of eLearning is already over"

2008-11-21T16:02:00.004+01:00

Last Wednesday Luca (Mazzola) and I were at the Politecnico of Milan for the METID day.

METID (Metodi E Tecnologie Innovative per la Didattica) is the University Center dealing with design, development and delivery of eLearning services, both national and international; it was born to support teaching innovation through the use of new technologies --> it's the Politecnico big brother of eLab, the eLearning laboratory within which I collaborate here at USI.

Many interesting projects were presented, covering different fields such as: instituitional communication, staff training, promotion of scientific culture among young people, international contexts, didactic innovation.

The main idea of the Centre is the use of the Internet (in the sense of online services) as a "key" to access and to improve the University knowledge.

teaching between giving and receiving

2008-11-21T11:25:00.003+01:00

While reading the manual "La filosofia nel Medioevo" (Philosophy in the Middleage) by Étienne Gilson, I ran into a consideration that attracted my attention:

Non c’è una delle sole opere di Tommaso d’Aquino […] che non sia uscita direttamente dal suo insegnamento o che non sia stata concepita espressamente in vista dell’insegnamento. La "Summa Theologiae" di Tommaso e il "Commento in quattro libri alle Sentenze" di Bonaventura […] sono esempi eccellenti di quanto vi può essere di fecondo per il pensiero dello stesso maestro in un alto insegnamento. (pp. 456-457)

trad.: Everyone of Thomas Aquinas‘ works comes out from his teaching or was expressly conceived for the teaching. Thomas’s "Summa Theologiae" and Bonaventura’s "Commentaries on the four books of sentences" are excellent examples of the fruitfulness and value of fine instruction for the teacher himself.

Teaching is „to give and to receive“, as in a gifts exchange.

No more useless conferences!!!!!

2008-11-20T13:09:00.002+01:00

I just returned from the ICERI (International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation) Conference in Madrid. It is one if these Conferences that have as a basic motivation...money! New researchers, 'light' professors, Asian people searching networks, pay a quite good amount of money in order to have their work published. Ok, I admit it, I was one of them. It is because in the beginning of your 'scientific life' you need these kinds of pseudo-conferences basically for two reasons: 1)it is easy to get accepted and 2)you get motivated because you see that your work is more scientific than the work of people who have been doing this for years!

Some useful tips in order to avoid 'useless conferences':
- the time of oral presentation has to be at least 20 minutes without the questions (in 10 minutes it is quite difficult to provoke meaningful questions and/or interaction)
- the more specific a conference is, the more useful for you to 'network'
- go to an International Conference only if you are quite sure that you will meet people who can be really helpful for your work
- there have to be key-note speakers! if not, something goes wrong..

Get a look at my presentation by linking to:
http://www.box.net/shared/1daiksexup

I hope I'll have some feedback from you at least! See you at the next GOOD conference ;)

"tecnoager"-the next generation

2008-11-19T23:02:00.004+01:00

for the ones, among us, who know italian

at this link you can see the 9' annual report by Eurispes concerning childhood and youth.

the researchers found out that in Italy young people use very much technologies (at six year with a cell phone, at 9 chatting online, etc), but they live their life with too much scare (about loneliness and violence overall)

children are called tecno-agers because, before to became teen-agers (getting a little of infos about knowledge, life and so on), they became confident with technologies

maybe to use a lot of ICT should help young people to getting informed about life in a new, perhaphs safer, way

as me, coming from pedagogical field, I cultivate some doubts, anyway...

cost effectiveness?

2008-11-16T20:47:00.002+01:00

Here is a quote from a doc from the government of New Zealand "A Review of the Literature on Computer-Assisted Learning, particularly Integrated Learning Systems, and Outcomes with Respect to Literacy and Numeracy" (2000):

1. Computer-assisted learning, especially an integrated learning system, is a relatively costly option as an intervention. Given that, overall, its effectiveness falls below the mean of all other types of intervention, schools need to think carefully about cost effectiveness, notwithstanding other value added features of technology they may perceive.
(…)
4. Consideration should be given as to whether the pedagogical approach of the software is compatible with classroom methods. Similarly, consideration should be given as to whether the content of the ILS curriculum matches that of the school curriculum and whether the type of knowledge and skills and the way they are assessed on the system matches curriculum assessment tasks.