http://oscargerardo.life-and-things.com/ Learning Objects, Metadata, Interoperability and … me! en http://oscargerardo.life-and-things.com/2009/03/26/history-of-chi-were-all-superstars.html Had a lot of fun preparing a class on the history of Human-Computer Interaction. Slides below, with numerous references to video material - the Web is a wonderful source of material on behalf of this kind of topic… (And yes, I got some of the material from our repository network!) I must have done something right, because of the fact that I am now a “Presentation SuperStar on SlideShare”, featuring on the slideshare homepage ! BTW, we should definitely do something similar in learning object repositories: all of us appreciate a compliment from time to time… One ultimate thought: an overarching theme in human-computer interaction is that we’ve evolved from focusing on how to manufacture effective utilize of the at-the-time expensive computing power to focusing on how people can manufacture utilize of the nowadays-very-cheap-and-abundant computing power. It strikes me that we still require to evolve organizations like schools & universities, or hospitals, in a similar way: these organizations are focusing on how to manufacture effective utilize of the expensive teachers or medical staff, rather than on how to manufacture the student learn effectively or cure the patient… As technology evolves, as well as teaching power or healing power becomes more cheap as well as abundant, I hope that we can re-focus on the needs of the learner or patient… If you have any suggestions on how to manufacture this happen, I’d love to hear from you… http://oscargerardo.life-and-things.com/2009/03/26/history-of-chi-were-all-superstars.html Thu, 26 Mar 2009 04:34:46 -0400 oscargerardo http://oscargerardo.life-and-things.com/2009/03/20/andy-powell-on-music-as-a-source-of-inspiration.html Andy Powell has some valuable feedback on metadata as well as repositories, extrapolating from his experiences with music at blip.fm as well as spotify. I agree with an estimated all all of what Andy mentions, including the importance of social activity around content; a resource oriented approach; a REST based architectural style; designing on behalf of “residents” rather than “visitors”; linking to related things; … BTW, this is a very slideshare friendly kind of slideset. I am not sure how well this style works on behalf of a presentation, but it certainly makes it very easy to follow the train of thought. Maybe, in Andy’s words, this style is more “of” the Web than just “on” the Web… In any case, there is lots of Food on behalf of Thought here, on behalf of developers of institutional as well as learning object repositories alike! Would be great if you would share your thoughts in the feedback here… http://oscargerardo.life-and-things.com/2009/03/20/andy-powell-on-music-as-a-source-of-inspiration.html Fri, 20 Mar 2009 16:57:48 -0400 oscargerardo http://oscargerardo.life-and-things.com/2009/03/17/snowflakes-in-riaydh.html I didn’t anticipate that the first question someone would request me upon arriving in Saudi-Arabia would be whether I am related to Robert Duvall There were quite a few other things I didn’t expect: people are extremely lovely as well as interested as well as informed about the research as well as development in technology enhanced learning. We should definitely aim to integrate this part of the world better in what we do… At the ELI conference, I presented on the Snowflake Effect as well as how it helps us to deal with the abundance of learning objects that is coming… There is a real feeling here of excitement as well as commitment to building an infrastructure that makes a difference. I urged participants to create a pan-Arabic network of repositories as well as connect to the rest of the world as well as have been discussing with numerous folks how we can manufacture that happen. (To those of you who talked to me a bit later in the day, apologies that I ran out of business cards ) I am quite convinced that we shall begin to see a more active involvement of the Arab world in this domain as well as hope to welcome new members to GLOBE soon… http://oscargerardo.life-and-things.com/2009/03/17/snowflakes-in-riaydh.html Tue, 17 Mar 2009 03:45:09 -0400 oscargerardo http://oscargerardo.life-and-things.com/2009/03/10/10-days-to-ecdl-deadline.html The deadline on behalf of the European Conference on Digital Libraries (September 27 - October 2, 2009) is 21 March: 10 days to go! Together with Jane Hunter, I chair the content special track: The 13th European Conference on Digital Libraries, under the general theme “Digital Societies”, plans to host a special track on Content managed in Digital Libraries. The papers in this special track should be original as well as of high quality, addressing issues in areas such as: Composite content as well as how both compound objects as well as their components as well as interrelationships, can be discovered, managed, re-used as well as exploited through flexible access; Time-dependent content (for example,  sensor data, podcasts, YouTube), as well as how its temporal characteristics present challenges associated with  storage, querying as well as visualization; Large volume content, such as scientific data sets or high resolution image data sets (for example from satellites or electron microscopes) as well as the specific requirements they impose; Dynamically-generated content that is in a constant state of flux as well as incorporates near-real-time data as well as information (e.g., blogs, environmental or stock market reports) as well as how such content can be archived, searched as well as managed; 3D-4D content - increasingly 3, 4 or more dimensions are being used to represent digital objects particularly in the cultural as well as scientific domains. Indexing, storage, retrieval as well as preservation of such rich, multidimensional data sets requires innovative approaches; License issues on behalf of digital library content as well as how they are evolving along creative commons as well as related “open access” approaches; Preservation issues as well as how they impact on the architecture of digital library systems, as well as on the workflows of its users; Authority issues - how digital libraries are adapting to manage the increasing amounts of content being generated from non-authoritative sources (e.g., through citizen science or social networking projects, YouTube, Flickr). The aim of this track is to document the state-of-the-art in content on behalf of digital libraries as well as to discuss the predominant open research issues, so that more effective progress can be made in this area. We do look forward to your submissions! http://oscargerardo.life-and-things.com/2009/03/10/10-days-to-ecdl-deadline.html Tue, 10 Mar 2009 17:24:14 -0400 oscargerardo http://oscargerardo.life-and-things.com/2009/03/08/ideos-ten-tips-for-creating-a-21stcentury-classroom-experience.html If something comes my way through both Lisa Petrides and Marcia Conner, it must be worth my time - as well as yours… The good folks at IDEO are thinking about learning. Their focus is more on K-12, but recommendations that sound as Snowflake Effect-ish as “Evolve past a one- size-fits-all mentality as well as permit mass customization” are certainly applicable before (!) as well as beyond school education, IMHO! And here’s a recommendation that I certainly struggle with, on behalf of instance in my studio-based CHI course: 10. Change the discourse.  If you desire to drive new behavior, you have to measure new things. Skills such as creativity as well as collaboration can’t be measured on a bubble chart. We require to create new assessments that help us understand as well as discuss the developmental progress of 21st-century skills. This is not just about measuring outcomes, but also measuring process. We require formative assessments that are just as important as numeric ones. And here’s the trick: we can’t just have the measures. We actually have to value them. On a slightly different level, we’re pretty fortunate that we have a renovated building to work, learn as well as teach in in Leuven, but I’m not sure that a lot of thought went into the idea of the building as a teaching tool… I’d love to help students design robots that actually roam our rooms, or large external displays that would actually show what we do, or location-based assistance tools on behalf of visitors, etc. And: I would love to hear about how you use the building as a teaching tool! This is a much undervalued aspect of how we learn as well as teach, I think: just consider the fun fact that: A 1999 study of more than 21,000 students by the Hesch ong Mahone Group found a strong correlation between daylit schools as well as student performance —including 20 percent faster progression in math, as well as 26 percent in reading. Makes you wonder how numerous opportunities on behalf of increased effectiveness as well as efficiency in learning we’re not making utilize of. Not to draw attention to the opportunities on behalf of Serious Fun… http://oscargerardo.life-and-things.com/2009/03/08/ideos-ten-tips-for-creating-a-21stcentury-classroom-experience.html Sun, 08 Mar 2009 16:04:04 -0400 oscargerardo http://oscargerardo.life-and-things.com/2009/02/20/promised-and-published.html About two months ago, I posted a paper proposal that we submitted to the IEEE TLT vision issue “On the role of technical standards on behalf of Learning Technologies”. I promised feedback on how feedback compared to review feedback. The paper is now published. So, I guess that it is time I retain my promise… Basically, the formal reviewers gave some good editorial feedback (conclusion was too weak, on behalf of instance) as well as one reviewer requested to expand the paper quite considerably. In fact, if we had done what he suggested, then I think we would have published a rather large book . The predominant blog feedback we received (after those on an earlier version) came from Tore Hoel. It seems like we share a lot of common ground, but that Tore wants a better theoretical foundation of standards work as well as believes that we should not separate specification development from standards work all that much. Interestingly, IEEE seems to think that Tore Hoel’s paper from ICALT is the an estimated all related one to our published one, so there's some consistency there Anyway, I’m rather happy with the paper and, proud to be part of a special issue that includes some really lovely papers: Julita Vassileva. Toward Social Learning Enviroments Judy Kay, Lifelong Learner Modeling on behalf of Lifelong Personalized Pervasive Learning Roy Pea, Robb Lindgren, Video Collaboratories on behalf of Research as well as Education: An Analysis of Collaboration Design Patterns Kristina Höök, Knowing, Communication as well as Experiencing through Body as well as Emotion Hope you’ll like it too… Comments, of course, still welcome! http://oscargerardo.life-and-things.com/2009/02/20/promised-and-published.html Fri, 20 Feb 2009 16:50:43 -0500 oscargerardo http://oscargerardo.life-and-things.com/2009/02/19/oer-tlt-cfp-deadline-approaching.html We’ve received a good dozen abstracts on behalf of the IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies special issue on “Open Educational Resources: Learning Objects on behalf of all!“. Deadline on behalf of the full papers is 1 March. Just to avoid misunderstandings: We shall NOT reject or encourage submissions based on the abstracts. They were mainly meant to give us an indication of what we can anticipate in terms of full paper submissions. You can still submit a full paper, even if you did not submit an abstract. In that case, we would appreciate a short message to let us know that you plan to submit. More particulars can be found in the call. Or request - here or by email. We VERY much look forward “to establish a reference publication focusing on the technical aspects underpinning the OER movement”. (BTW, can I get some kind of recognition on behalf of using three acronyms in a post title? Any references to posts that start with more? How can you search on that criterium…?) http://oscargerardo.life-and-things.com/2009/02/19/oer-tlt-cfp-deadline-approaching.html Thu, 19 Feb 2009 10:14:54 -0500 oscargerardo http://oscargerardo.life-and-things.com/2009/02/03/david-weinberger-gets-it-.html As usual, David Weinberger get’s it: Less-than-perfect open courseware is a zillion times better than no open courseware. And we’re just beginning this. Open courseware shall change, as well as it shall also modification how courses are taught in the real world. Here comes atomization, the Long Tail, network effects, backchannels, and, OMG, spam as well as undoubtedly porn as well as … And, evoking the theme of abundance that I often utilize to structure my keynotes around: The an estimated all obvious missing piece has to do with metadata. Right now, there's a relative scarcity of open courseware, so sites like iBerry aggregate the known offerings. But, as recording as well as posting courses becomes the norm, we shall have the difficulties of abundance. And then we’ll desire the usual — as well as perhaps some unusual — ways of filtering to find exactly the courses we desire to invest in. [...] We require tags, ratings, reputation systems, trust mechanisms, social networks, as well as ways to talk with our fellow auditors. And the sites that do this on behalf of us well shall take on some of the role, value, authority, as well as standing of universities themselves. As David anticipates: (And now y’all get to tell me about all of the sites I’ve missed that do exactly that already. Indeed! We harvest metadata from networks of repositories as well as manufacture them available on behalf of facetted browsing. Other folks manufacture the same metadata available in their specific sites on behalf of schools or architecture. And we’re working on integrating social features. Actually, you may be working on similar issues - you still have some time to prepare an article on behalf of our special issue on “Open Educational Resources: Learning Objects for all!“. Abstracts due in two weeks, full papers by March 1… BTW, David really gets metadata too: “Everything is miscellaneous” is required reading!        http://oscargerardo.life-and-things.com/2009/02/03/david-weinberger-gets-it-.html Tue, 03 Feb 2009 17:08:10 -0500 oscargerardo http://oscargerardo.life-and-things.com/2009/01/15/spaces-of-interaction.html You may probably spend less time than I do at conferences as well as events. But you must have wondered too about how we can manufacture better utilize of technologies to replace enrich conferences as well as workshops? Things I’ve seen as well as been involved in: make the papers available beforehand as well as utilize the time on behalf of discussion as well as demos, because of the fact that those are more difficult to do remotely or asynchronously; use twitter as a real-time backchannel on behalf of conversation between the participants as well as feedback to the presenters; enable remote presentations or remote attendance; make recordings of the presentations, the presentation material, etc. available post event. You may have experienced other technical enhancements of conferences? Please share below in the comments! Of course, there are numerous un-conference experiments that look at this topic to0… In any case, the AACE is trying to figure out how to manufacture utilize of technology in the numerous events it is organizing. And they do this … through an on-line conference on “Spaces of Interaction: An Online Conversation on Improving Traditional Conferences“. You can enroll at the web site… We’re getting some Really Good People involved, so this should be really interesting!        http://oscargerardo.life-and-things.com/2009/01/15/spaces-of-interaction.html Thu, 15 Jan 2009 09:29:42 -0500 oscargerardo http://oscargerardo.life-and-things.com/2009/01/10/sirtel.html As any reader of this blog would know, there's quite a bit of interest in the utilize of tags as well as folksonomies on behalf of learning repositories. Yet, there isn’t that much scientific literature on the topic. (Please do mention references in the feedback here!) That is why I am delighted as well as very proud to announce the Special Issue on Social Information Retrieval on behalf of Technology Enhanced Learning that Riina, Nikos as well as I co-edited on behalf of JoDI. The issue grew out of SIRTEL07, a Workshop on Social Information Retrieval on behalf of Technology-Enhanced Learning we organized at ECTEL07. As we draw attention to in the introduction: The first workshop gave impetus on behalf of a Special Issue of the Journal of Digital Information (JoDI) to present the state-of-the-art of this exciting new as well as emerging field. In addition to revised versions of the workshop papers, two other papers were invited from researchers who contribute actively to this field. After a rather demanding review process with three reviewers per submission as well as two review rounds, we were very happy to conclude with five brilliant papers that address several aspects of SIR techniques as well as their application within the context of Technology Enhanced Learning. Enjoy! (And did I draw attention to that feedback is welcome?)        http://oscargerardo.life-and-things.com/2009/01/10/sirtel.html Sat, 10 Jan 2009 16:54:49 -0500 oscargerardo