LACLO Fun

The travel gods couldn’t keep me from the LACLO conference in Merida, Mexico this week – though they tried … Had a great time with Wayne and Xavier and many new friends.

A theme that I developed a bit more relates to technology and social interactions… Often, I get questions about whether technology will not turn us into isolated, nerdy, a-social and alienated psychopaths. (OK, the language is typically somewhat more subtle. Though I have also been accused of accelerating the destruction of civilization!)

In my talk, I tried to explain that

• technology needs social interactions to make the wisdom of the crowds work: imagine a facebook where nobody is nobody else’s friend, or a twitter where nobody follows anybody…
• technology enables social interactions that are difficult to realize otherwise: I have received comments on my blog or on slideshare and other platforms that have been really helpful and that I would not have had otherwise.

As an illustration to the latter point: I always like to get detailed feedback from the audience, about what I said and how I presented it. If the LACLO participants would have been on twitter, that would have been a way to get that feedback – but I think only xaoch and wwwayne tweeted at #laclo09…

So, I asked the audience to write feedback on paper and hand it to me at the end of my session. The drawback is that they then do not see one another’s comments. We cannot develop these comments into a discussion. I cannot use machine translation to translate from Spanish to a language I understand better. It is difficult for me to respond to the comments as many do not include an email address. Etc.

The comments are still HUGELY useful to me – many thanks to all who took the time and effort to write something down and hand it to me! But this experience illustrates the point that technology could have helped to do this in a more effective way…

Now maybe, just maybe, someone will leave a comment here, and we can still take advantage of the technology…?

Shazam for conferences?

Michael Nielsen has a pretty interesting blog pos on “Doing science online” (which I discovered through Bruce Sterling). I pretty much agree with him that

we are going to change the way scientists work; we are going to change the way scientists share information; we are going to change the way expert attention itself is allocated, developing new methods for connecting people, for organizing people, for leveraging people’s skills. They will be redirected, organized, and amplified. The result will speed up the rate at which discoveries are made, not in one small corner of science, but across all of science.

(And if you want to share your ideas on how we are going to make this happen, then please do consider submitting to TELSci2.0!)

The reasons why science will change, IMHO, are very similar to the reasons why music has changed: as we’ve moved from scarcity to abundance, we need to change how we relate to our material. The solution to the explosion of publications is not going to be faster reading

One practical idea I’ve been contemplating lately is that of a ‘Shazam for conferences’. Many of you will be familiar with the Shazam application for music. Basically, it allows you to record 10-15 seconds of an arbitrary song. The application sends that sample to its server and back comes a response that identifies the song, the artist, the album it comes from, etc. Pretty neat, and I’ve discovered quite a few songs this way.

But the real beauty of Shazam, for me, is that it makes it effortless to buy the song (from iTunes), see the clip (on Youtube), tweet that you like it, discover other people in your physical neighborhood who love the song or send an email to your friends to let them know about the song. Effortless, yes, as in 1-click-away…

Now imagine that we would have a tool like that for conferences: you are sitting in the audience, record 10 seconds of the speaker (or, take a picture of a semacode displayed at the side). You then send this off and the reply identifies the speaker, includes a link to his home page, his twitter account, his blog, his publication list, his slideshare account (where you would find the slides he is presenting), a comments page to leave public comments on his presentation, a way to share information about the talk with your colleagues, a template message to blog your comments on his talk on your own blog, with the slides already embedded, etc. You could say – and you would be right – that we can do all of these things already today. But the point is that such an application would make this effortless, as in 1-click-away…

What do you think? Would you like such a tool? Do you know of a similar tool? Do you have a better idea?

Looking in the mirror…

After a travel fiasco, I eventually presented our work on an analysis of the EdMedia conference series to the audience in Hawaii from … Belgium. As I had no video or audio feedback from the room, this was somewhat challenging There is something slightly surreal about sitting in a deserted office building at midnight, talking to your laptop while looking at your own slides and hoping that an audience 12 time zones away can make some sense of what you are saying… It felt a bit like talking to a mirror. Kind of appropriate for a presentation on who we are as the edmedia community… (Thanks to Dave and Martin, I at least had a chat feedback channel.)

This must have been “One of Those Days”, as the recording of our talk didn’t work. Neither did the transmission to the remote participants over Adobe Connect. Seems like we still have some ways to go before the technology is really stable and reliable

However, the slides are online and we will be re-recording the audio, and make it available openly. In the mean time, you can enjoy the nice tool to explore the EdMedia community that Xavier and his team developed. I think that wollpb sums up my view on the tool quite eloquently:

Anyway, I do regret no being at the conference in person, and I do hope that the Travel Gods will be a bit kinder with me from now on… Have fun in Hawaii!

Science2.0 for Technology Enhanced Learning: a tool and a workshop (and more to come!)

Together with my Great Friend Xavier, I will be presenting some work we did on the analysis of the EdMedia conferences next week. You can try out for yourself the tool that the ESPOL team developed to explore 10 years of publications in EdMedia. Or you can also see some screencasts that explain how we analyzed co-authorship and co-citation.

This is part of our ongoing work on leveraging web2.0 techniques to support research on Technology Enhanced Learning. On that topic, I am very excited to launch the call for papers for the 1st Workshop on Web2.0 approaches, tools and technologies to support research on Technology Enhanced Learning (TELSci2.0).

at the 4th European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning

(EC-TEL09), Nice, France, September 29 – October 2, 2009

I am very excited to finally move this topic forward! Through the tool mentioned above, I’ve already discovered several authors that I was not familiar with that work on the same topics that I work on – as demonstrated by the fact that we share many citations. The potential here is huge!

In the coming weeks and months, we will be adding more material to drive this tool, like the proceedings of eLearn, ICWL, ECTEL, ICALT, TLT and others. We will also be linking this with information about the web2.0 presence of authors, so as to investigate the link between ‘traditional’ academic publishing and more ‘current’ ways of communicating about our research. More on that in a few days…

For now, please spread the word about the workshop and please consider submitting your own work – deadline is July 5… Or submit a comment here with references to similar tools…

Summer School Fun

I always enjoy speaking at a summer school: the enthusiasm of the PhD. students is always a treat… This year’s Joint European Summer School on Technology Enhanced Learning was no exception!

I was invited to talk about the Snowflake Effect… I added some new slides to make students aware of how crowds are really … stupid, juxtaposing Canetti with Surowiecki… In fact, that was a rhetorical trick: Surowiecki nicely explains that you can only obtain the wisdom of the crowds if the individuals in the crowd make up their mind independently. Otherwise, you get group think. In that case, in my opinion, crowds become … stupid! That is why I believe more in the power of one, connected to many.

BTW, as I gave my talk on June 4, I used the picture of the man in front of the tank 20 years ago to illustrate the power of one. Sadly, this man was not connected to many. It seemed a bit unreal to talk to students who were small infants at the time, about the simple courage of a man and the students that were about their age in 1989… I find it a bit hard at times to understand how we’ve just come to accept that this happened and decided to ‘move on’ with our lives…

What struck me in the reaction from the students is that many did not know about the tools that I used to illustrate the theme of abundance and personalization: I now consider these tools to be ‘mainstream’ and I would have expected the students to live on the ‘bleeding edge’. I had expected that they would show me many new tools and technologies! That was a bit of a mistake on my part…

However, quite a few did share with me their work: I had some great conversations and look forward to getting updates from them as their work progresses. (Please do send me your updates!)

I often ask the audience to write down what struck them in my presentation and why it was relevant to them. Many of the students mentioned that they appreciated my passion. That was nice to hear, but it did make me wonder a bit: shouldn’t ‘passion’ be the norm at a Summer School?

In any case, it was Serious Fun – I look forward to doing this again next year!

Making waves…

You probably don’t need this blog to learn about Google Wave… (See also BBC, TechCrunch, and a gazillion other places…)

It is certainly noteworthy that Google decided to open up the API even before they release Wave – much in line with one open approach to innovation.

And there are certainly applications for Wave in teaching and learning.

But what strikes me most is how this started from reconsidering email and instant messaging:

Wave was born out of the idea that email and instant messaging, as successful as they still are, were both created a very long time ago. We now have a much more robust web full of content and brimming with a desire to share stuff. Or as Lars Rasumussen put it, “Wave is what email would look like if it were invented today.”

Makes me wonder:

‘Schools and universities, as successful as they still are, were both created a very long time ago. We now have a much more robust set of technologies and a desire to share stuff. How would schools and universities look like if they were invented today?’

Maybe we can start working on that wave? Suggestions? Ideas? Do leave a comment…

Testing, testing, …

Last and next week, I have the pleasure and privilege to listen to my students present the results of a semester (or sometimes a full year) of project work. I already posted about projects they did with video and music on the web, or in facebook.

Sometimes, we build more tangible things, like … robots that roam around to pick up golf balls – before other robots do so. That was this year’s project for a course on problem solving and design. You can see some of the robots in action in the video.

I’m rather convinced that students learn a lot from such projects – much more so than they typically do in the coming weeks, when they prepare for their more ‘conventional’ exams. I don’t do ‘conventional’ exams. I don’t think they work very well…

I wonder what you think about that? Maybe you’re preparing to take exams from your students, or maybe you’re a student yourself? Or maybe you’re both – I know some of you are! In any case, would be wonderful if you can share your opinion about project-based-permanent-evaluation-oriented approaches versus more conventional show-me-what-you’ve-learned-at-the-end exams…

Serious Fun with My Students – and you can have some too!

It is that time of the year again: most of this week is taken up by presentations of my students on the results of a semester or year of work…

And … you can help them!

• Tom De Winne (whose father will soon take of to space, for the second time!) wants you to play his game for describing videos!
• And if you understand Dutch, then you can help Jelle Van Eyck to evaluate a system for intelligent music selection.

I am quite happy to see that both have brought their work to a stage where it can actually be used by ‘real people’ – that is people like you, not them or me

Speaking of actually being able to use the result of student work. You can also try the following applications that my students on Human-Computer Interaction built on Facebook:

• You can raise a virtual dog,
• or import your course schedule in Facebook (if you study in Leuven),
• or join the Hello Kitty Fight Club (yes…),
• or trade words on WordStock (updated link – see comment below!),
• go on a Planetary Conquest,
• or discover your inner Shakespeare in a Never Ending Story.

By exploring these applications, you will help them to evaluate what works or not and when – as they track all the interactions. That is what makes facebook such a great platform for CHI courses in my humble opinion: they get ‘real data’ from ‘real people’! This is very important for me as I emphasize the importance of evaluation and that can only be done with a sufficient number of people other than the girlfriend, brother or mother of the student-developers!

BTW, if you want to discover how they developed the applications, then do check out their group blogs: Click OK to Cancel, Erik’s Angels, CHI09, That’s a lot of CHI, WiWoWoS, CHIblog – I agree: some blog names are more original than others And, you can also check our delicious feed (more than 260 bookmarks on CHI that my students contributed!) or our twitter conversation.

I still need to grade the students, so shouldn’t say too much, but I had Serious Fun doing this. I’d love to hear your comments and feedback!

Snowflakes in Graz!

Had a GREAT time this week in Graz, Austria. I spent the Wednesday at TUGraz with Hermann Maurer and Martin Ebner. In the afternoon, Hermann gave a talk on “why theory is necessary, but dangerous“. The dangerous part referred to the fact that we often shy away from trying to do things that have been proven to be impossible in theory. Yet, sometimes, we find ways to do them in practice…

This is a really good and important point, I believe: my favorite example from my own world relates to music recommending. A common misconception is that music recommendation requires an understanding of why we like certain music in certain contexts. I consider it a deep mystery why music can make me cry or make my hair stand up. I don’t understand how that works. But, that doesn’t mean that we cannot automatically create the desired effect: see last.fm or pandora…

My own talk on learning in times of abundance went rather well. Before and after, there was quite a bit of twitter traffic – no surprise, with Martin Ebner as one of the local hosts!

On the second day, I re-connected with Nick Sherbakov, who continues to do GREAT work on the TUGRaz  learning environment, together with Martin.

Around noon, I crossed the street to the KNOW center, to discuss our STELLAR collaboration with Stefanie Lindstaedt. I gave another talk, of course again on the theme of the snowflake effect. This time, I emphasized the importance of openness and the fundamental reason why I prefer an open approach to a “walled garden” – see also my earlier post.

As on the previous day, the students refrained from making comments or asking questions during the session. But I am very happy that they did make use of twitter and facebook to ask follow-up questions about the role of music, and how the evolution of radios is a good source of inspiration.

In the afternoon, I had a great time with Stefanie’s team and got to see some wonderful demos on what they do – lots of similarities with our work on ALOCOM and attention metadata. It’s so much fun to see the awesome results of Really Good Work: I had no idea they were so advanced with for instance their context detection work. I sure look forward to working more closely with this team…

Well, many THANKS to all who made my visit so much fun – including the students who came to my talks!

Responsive Open Learning Environments

Like before (on standards or mobile learning, for instance), I turn to you for advice and feedback – which I nowadays get more of via twitter than in the comments here…

On Monday, I have the opportunity to talk to my ROLE friends about my vision for ‘Responsive Open Learning Environments’…

I’m not so sure that I have a lot to say about ‘Responsive‘: reminds me of Doug Engelbart’s intro to the mother of all demos (2:19 min into the video)… I guess that, nowadays, ‘responsive’ makes me think of an approach to computing that is personalized – yes, the Snowflake Effect, yet again

About ‘Open‘, I have thought a bit more over the past years… I must admit that, the more I think about that topic, the less simple it seems to me…

I have argued before that openness facilitates innovation.

• An historical example is the way the web, based on open standards like URL, HTTP and HTML, quickly overtook all existing web information system – most notably gopher, when the University of Minnesota wanted to start charging licensing fees.
• A more contemporary example is the way that twitter with its open API has been the scene of very substantial innovative development, making Facebook seem a bit dull – Facebook seems to be opening up in an effort to catch up!

Yet, a company like Apple is also often cited as a source of innovation (tablet, anyone?)… One can say many things about Apple, but ‘open’ is not one of them…

One thing that is key about openness, it seems to me, is that it is one way to attract developers: see the exciting stuff happening with mash-ups (including our own). But there may be other factors at work too: otherwise, should Android not attract many more developers than the iphone?

I am a big fan of the ‘small pieces loosely joined‘ approach to software development. Yet, that is all too often an excuse for a fragmented, frustrating user experience!

About ‘open learning environments‘ then: it is a bit ironic for me personally that I chaired a group that introduced the TOLEDO learning platform in my university: it’s been quite successful, in that all courses now have an online presence, all students are automatically registered to all courses relevant to them, etc. Yet, my own courses have a very small footprint in TOLEDO: a link to a wiki or a facebook group! The problem? Toledo is not open enough (for me) and exciting tools arrive years too late (for me): we will introduce wikis and blogs next (yes, next!) academic year in TOLEDO! Yet, for most professors, my ‘build your own’ approach is not relevant, because they cannot build their own or do not want to – much like I don’t build my own car…

On a more principled note, I personally feel that we should not create ‘walled gardens‘ for learning. (That is exactly what our university system feels like. In fact, some of our campus is a walled garden – see the picture above!) I believe that we should realize that learning is part of the life of our students, and that they already live on the web. We should be part of their life, not something separate. Yet, sometimes it seems like they resent it when we interfere with their ‘real life’…

You see, this is not as simple as I once thought it is… Maybe you can add your own thoughts and help me further my thinking?