IBM Next Five in Five

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"

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

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!!!!!

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

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?

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.

New technologies?

Here is some Norvegian humor about technological innovations... Not much different from what we do, is it?

ethnography and his neighbourhoods for e-learning

I'm quite sure all of you know this famous video



if you want to know more I suggest you to visit the Micheal Wesch blog

We're trying to discover in wich way students learn using technologies and in wich way they modify their learners'attitudes because of the technological needings asked by their learning cultures...and we'll use ethnographics...

...we'll inform you about our findings!

In the meanwhile, if you are interested, you can take a look at our questionnaire-on-line about using technologies in education (it's the test version). Thanks to Grainne Conole.