eLearning Informatics

A walk through eLearninglandia to define the main points of eLearning Informatics

noreply@blogger.com (Malinka Ivanova) — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 13:16:10 PDT

It is a spring and the weather is beautiful for walking on well formed alleys or on small paths of eLearning land :).
So, I start with "Who is responsible for E-Learning Success in Higher Education?" - a question asked by Nicole Wagner, Khaled Hassanein and Milena Head from DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University, Canada. Their answer for successful eLearning is hidden behind collaboration of all stakeholders summarized in a matrix, including students, instructors, institutions, content and technology providers, accreditation body and employers.The "Positive Impact of eLearning" could be reached through a holistic solution integrating suitable "polices, infrastructure, profesional development and curricula" say the professionals from Intel World Ahead Program. Diffrent problems of learners could be decided and the high requirments of our society could be satisfied via "Engaging with the new eLearning" forms according to Allison Rossett and Antonia Chan.

It is time for my first stop where a glade of theory is around. "Review of e-learning theories, frameworks and models" is well done by Terry Mayes and Sara de Freitas who present eLearning environment design from associative, cognitive and situative perspectives. Among the growing pretty flowers are: "Connectivism: Learning theory of the future or vestige of the past?", “Why Personalized Learning?”, What is "Collaborative learning in e-learning?"- all of them and others take an important place on the eLearning theory glade.

A wide variety of methods could be utilized for modeling and patterns creation of eLearning events and processes like Petri nets - used for better understanding of some collaborative scenarios in which mediation is essential for communication (Capelo D. et al.- Petri Nets as Applied to the Modeling of E-Learning Cooperative Systems) or neural networks - used to design, develop and implement a model of an adaptive course player (Mota J., Using Learning Styles and Neural Networks as an Approach to eLearning Content and Layout Adaptation).

"Emerging E-Learning Technologies: Tools for Developing Innovative Online Training" is the next and my favorite stop in eLearninglandia where Gary Woodill from Brandon Hall Research in details explores the directions for building of innovative eLearning solutions.

Oops, right know I am in front of the lake of algorithms supporting eLearning information gathering, processing, mining, storing like "Evolutionary algorithms for subgroup discovery in e-learning", "Automatic Assessment of Open Ended Questions with a BLEU-inspired Algorithm and shallow NLP", "Scoring Algorithms for Evaluation Tests in Advanced e-Learning Systems", ect.

One very impressive stop with thousands unique plants is the botanical garden of http://www.elearninglearning.com/, where the information and knowledge of producs and best practices in eLearning is shared.

And finally I crossed the platform of "E-learning quality", "eLearning Quality in European Universities", "Embedding Quality in e-Learning Implementation through Evaluation" to finish my walk for today. Also, I hope that I successfully traced out the contours of the colored spring picture of eLearning Informatics :)).

eLearning Informatics and new approaches in support of learning

noreply@blogger.com (Malinka Ivanova) — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 00:50:01 PDT

This blog was focused on eLearning 2.0 and Web 2.0 technologies and principles utilization for organization of effective learning and teaching processes. I wish to expand these borders uniting a wide range of technology enhanced systems and environments and their behavior, information processing and construction in support of eLearning.
If we back we can see that the term eLearning is referred to "all forms of electronically supported learning and teaching। The information and communication systems, whether networked learning or not, serve as specific media to implement the learning process.[1] The term will still most likely be utilized to reference out-of-classroom and in-classroom educational experiences via technology, even as advances continue in regard to devices and curriculum" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-learning ).
In the same time we have to understand how to build such systems and studying their functionality and performance in context of optimization and elaboration.
Here Informatics will come as "the science of information, the practice of information processing, and the engineering of information systems" to "studies the structure, algorithms, behavior, and interactions of natural and artificial systems that store, process, access and communicate information" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informatics_(academic_field)).
Therefore, the term eLearning Informatics will be used as a part of Informatics addressing the problems, research and practices of solutions realizing eLearning.
I plan in the next blog posts to discuss good approaches related to eLearning Informatics including technical, educational, social, neuro, pervasive, visual, and analytical aspects of eLearning systems.

Source image (http://www.appliedsec.com/service_cryptographic.html)

Call for Papers: 3th International Workshop on Interactive Environments and Emergent Technologies for eLearning (IEETeL 2012)

noreply@blogger.com (Malinka Ivanova) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 05:23:13 PST

It's my pleasure to announce that the 3th International Workshop on Interactive Environments and Emergent Technologies for eLearning (IEETeL 2012) will be part of the 11th IEEE International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Communications (IUCC-2012) in Liverpool, UK, one day among 25-27 June 2012.
Prospective authors are invited to submit manuscripts reporting original unpublished research and recent developments in the topics related to the workshop.
The length of the papers should not exceed 6 pages + 2 pages for overlength charges (IEEE Computer Society Proceedings Manuscripts style: two columns, single-spaced, 10-point font), including figures and references.

Call for papers

Rationale
------------------
The aim of the workshop is to bring together researchers, educators and technology experts to share and discuss the new solutions, trends and realizations of eLearning environments and the adoption of emergent technologies in a learning process.
New kind of learners requires suitable environments ensuring flexible, personalized, adaptable, in-demand learning. The dynamic, interactive and social aspects of Web 2.0 have great potential to support innovative teaching and meaningful learning. Semantic web enables computers and people to work in cooperation, 3D virtual worlds support new online experiences of research and learning, augmented reality helps deeper understanding of subject matter, mobile technologies play a role in increasing individual support and opportunities for personal development.
This forum invites research, technical papers, and work in progress investigating eLearning environments process development and practices of their implementation in education to support university students as well as to prepare them to become self-organized and life-long learners.
These include the technological aspect of environments building: “from scratch”, using open source software or mashup applications from a cloud as well as pedagogical strategies and solutions for utilizing such environments.

Topics of interest
-----------------------------
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Web 2.0 Applications for Learning
- 3D Virtual Environments
- Semantic Web
- Educational MashUps
- Immersive technologies in ADL
- Networks/Grids for learning
- Adaptive and intuitive environments
- Personal Learning Environments
- Mobile learning environments and applications
- Augmented Reality Implementation

Program Committee
--------------------------
Toshio Okamoto, University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo, Japan
Gabriela Grosseck, West University of Timisoara, Romania
Reggie Smith III, United States Distance Learning Association
Inge de Waard, Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp, Belgium
Ion Roceanu, "Carol l" National Defense University, Romania
Marco Temperini, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
Mohamed Amine Chatti, RWTH Aachen University, Germany
Dimiter Denev, Max Planck Instiut Informatik, Germany
Volin Karagiozov, American University in Bulgaria, Bulgaria
Jennifer Richardson, Purdue University, USA
Alev Elci, Eastern Mediterranean University, Turkey
Javed Alam, Youngstown State University, USA
Palitha Edirisingha, University of Leicester, UK

Organizers
-------------------------
Malinka Ivanova
Technical University of Sofia, Bulgaria
Email: m_ivanova@tu-sofia.bg

Anguelina Popova
Open University of the Netherlands
Email: angie.popova@gmail.com

Emotional Technologies on the 6th Plymouth e-Learning conference

noreply@blogger.com (Malinka Ivanova) — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 05:34:56 PDT

This is my second visit to Plymouth, UK and like the past year I was welcome by warm people and lovely weather. Anything that would trigger this time fire alarm in my hotel, the fire of eLearning was distributed among the all participants of the 6th Plymouth e-Learning conference :) .

I had great chance to see the remarkable presentations of keynote speakers as well as of the educators and eLearning professionals during thematic oriented sessions thanks to the host and chair of the conference Steve Wheeler. Steve (@timbuckteeth) is diligently working on the field of technology enhanced learning and teaching and I would say that this year the conference was organized under the motto of the keywords “emotional technologies”. A wide range of technologies and good practices of their implementation was presented that induce exciting thoughts and charged me with more energy and new ideas. Technologies inevitably affect teachers and students emotions in a positive or negative way and this factor must be considered, researched and discussed.

The keynote speaker Stephen Heppell (@stephenheppell) presented new concepts about the design of effective learning places and spaces, including the importance of furniture, fixtures and equipment and Stephen was looking for good examples in virtual spaces that could be translated in real learning situations. Fascinating presentation provoking reflections about technological impact on educators and students’ emotions at organization of supportive, comfortable, engaging and attractive learning environments.

John Davitt (@johndavitt) speech was captivating with ideas for going out of content gathering style in organization of learning activities. The wonderful metaphors from musical area are weaved to present learning as a dance where we mustn’t forget the music and choreography. The learning event generator and the RAG generator of thousands learning opportunities were demonstrated. John Davitt sees future like “age of agility”, walking through many paths, celebrating our own learning curve, opening the bandwidth of talents, thinking broad and innovating.

The session that I attended summarized the experience and achievements during the Atlantis project. Oliver Schneider from University of Applied Science, Darmstadt, Germany presented their system Coherence that works like content management system adapting the content according to learning preferences. He is looking for free content in a given course from the area of Computer science to prepare further experimentation with this

system and if you posses such content you can connect him. About usability of learning software and evaluation of the usability of the concrete application CoCoMa (Collaborative Content Manipulation) was the presentation of Tillman Swinke. Michael Schulmeyer accented on learning tools interoperability with the focus on concepts and tools related to IMS Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) specification. This IMS Standard allows web based learning tools to be easily integrated in LMS as native ones. If you are interested in LTI module for Moodle LMS you can download BasicLTI4Moodle.

I chose the participation in the workshop about Mobile web applications leading by Mark Power from University of Bolton and James Clay (@jamesclay) from Gloucestershire College to understand the potential possibilities of mobility for teaching and learning. Attractive speakers with wonderful humor walked us through the galaxy of web mobile applications and its usage.

What do I present at the Plymouth e-learning conference? I shared the experience gained in applying augmented reality technology for teaching and learning during the Computer graphics course. The students’ reflection about adoption of augmented reality technology related to their visual knowledge perception of several algorithms and knowledge reproduction in their projects is analyzed and discussed. There were several questions about the software for AR applications building and discussion about the students’ opinion and advantages of AR technogies was formed. Thanks to my chair Mark Lyndon (@marklyndon) for the organization of this pretty good Augmented reality session.

For a networked educational world in the New 2011 Year

noreply@blogger.com (Malinka Ivanova) — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 12:45:13 PST

I want to congratulate you with the upcoming New 2011 Year by sharing some thoughts and ideas of one small part of educators and trainers from my twitter network. They twitt and blog about strategies and technologies for learning and teaching from a theoretical and practical point of view. They have performed enormous work sharing knowledge and forming our modern digital space. As it seen they have plead for one more connected and smart education that support our students in their university life and their future professional development. So, may the new 2011 be more successful and fruitful. :) Should there be any challenges in your way, take the most of them and share the triumph of overcoming them with the people you respect and treasure!

@gfbertini Giorgio Bertini

Connectivity, the answer to ending Ignorance and Separation. "Applying the hot, new network theories to education, Judy Breck describes an emerging and entirely new medium of expression platformed in connectivity that is creating compelling new learning assets nestled into an online webbed matrix of academic subjects".

@MariaKorolov Maria Korolov

Social interaction ‘killer app’ of virtual worlds. "According to a white paper released by U.K.-based virtual worlds solutions provider Daden Limited, virtual worlds are not the next stage of evolution of the World Wide Web — but will be the evolution of social interaction".

@catspyjamasnz Joyce Seitzinger

Visualisation – Exploratree & Periodic Table of Visualisation Methods. "The two sites above contain many methods that can help a teacher and students explore, critically examine, fully map or actively discuss almost any topic. And provide a kick-start for an instructional designer with designer’s block".

@Josh_Bersin Josh Bersin

Bersin & Associates Predicts a Shift to a Borderless Workplace Will Drive New Talent and Learning Strategies in 2011. "Innovation, empowerment and learning culture will become common themes for talent management and business growth. Deep specialization and career development will drive integrated talent and learning strategies. Informal and continuous learning will drive further adoption of internal and social networking. Talent mobility strategies will become highly strategic, often replacing the traditional approach to succession management".

@thot Thot - Cursus

Film on the Internet, sites essential to know. "The video and film on the Internet, it often comes into our minds to YouTube and other platforms for streaming with an offer more or less legal. Yet there are other sites to help improve our film culture, prepare a future meeting or even share their tastes and passion for cinema: Allociné, Comme au cinéma, Google Movies, Cinétrafic, l'Internet Movie Database, Bibliothèque du film, Movie Archive, Classic Cinema Online".

@oldaily Stephen Downes

A Reflection on Networked Professional Learning. "This post is an interesting look at approaches to self-directed learning and an excuse to post an absolutely beautiful photo of an unusual bird. Beth Kanter identifies two major types of learning, illustrated below: - Product-driven learning - mindful, mostly linear, and focused. - Process-driven learning - seeing patterns, listening and scanning, serendipity – not pure randomness, but orchestrated".

@mfeldstein67 Michael Feldstein

The CDW-G 2010 Annual Surveys: CIOs and Faculty Differ on Education Technology? "Faculty rate digital content, wireless Internet access, and smart podiums sharply higher than other technologies...Faculty choose the teaching methodologies and education technologies that best accomplish their learning objectives. Their choices depend on the field of study, level, student background and schedule, as well as many other factors. Three recently cited examples illustrate this difference: Philosophy using communication technologies for collaboration, algebra using online drill and practice, and art history using lecture supplemented by slides, video, and audio".

@sebfiedler Sebastian Fiedler

Is there a new (media-)historical type of learning emerging? "What types of learning have emerged over time and coupled to what (media-) historical developments? Personally, I find it rather useless to talk about environments for personal learning (or Personal Learning Environments) without an exploration of the types of learning (or the types of learning activity) these, so called, environments are supposed to constitute, support, or facilitate".

@josiefraser Josie Fraser

Building Networked Learning Environments. "Talking about networked learning made me reflect on how much my own practice and thinking benefits from the networks and communities I am part of, and the excellent friendships that have come about as a consequence over the years. I wanted to model the benefits of networked learning and use the platform I was given to share ideas, resources and research".

@timbuckteeth Steve Wheeler

Web 2.0 based e-learning. "I'm in the business of teacher education, and I am interested in using the latest technologies to support their learning. A few years ago, I began to use wikis as embedded module tools to encourage and support collaborative learning. Generally it was a success, but the approach also raised some interesting pedagogical questions and posed some operational challenges for my students and I ".

@pgsimoes Paulo Simões

"O Twitter é uma moda passageira" cc @PauloQuerido. "I believe that Twitter is gaining more and more space in various niches of activity, being used in various contexts".

@C4LPT Jane Hart

What really is social learning? "However, it is clear that individuals are using social media to "learn" in many other ways which have nothing to do with being trained or taught by anyone, as the following categories show".

@andreasauwaerte Andreas Auwaerter

Future podcast episode in progress prospective to the technical needs. "What is the main aim of this episode? As far as it is thought through this episode should take the perspective of an institution, which is itself willing to enrich the teaching and learning with moden and social media. How should the infrastructure be planned? How Should it be designed scalable? What are the experiences by a state of the art now? Which limitations are common, expectable and resolvable? What are the security issues, you are dealing? What are the barriers?"

@csantos Carlos Santos

Video and slides: "Wiki Wiki, or at an educational institution? - The case of SAPO Campus Wiki". "From personal experience, I recognize the enormous potential wikis in terms of knowledge sharing and collaborative work. But will this potential is not limited at the outset when you have a closed vision and controller technology? If Wikipedia serves as a global service, why can not something similar work at an institution?"

@Quinnovator Clark Quinn

Working Smarter Cracker Barrel. "Looking at the individual components – performance support, formal learning, and informal learning – is valuable, but looking at them together is important as well, to consider the best path from where you are to where you want or need to go. Across a number of engagements, a pattern emerged that I’ve found helpful in thinking about what we term workscapes in a systemic way".

@w2YDAvid DAvid Cordina

Transmedia strategies for future Sphere. "Here are two Prezi some advanced thinking on strategies for web 2.0 communication and transmedia. I'd like to see the Sphere of Lille 1 (virtual park for the popularization of scientific research laboratories in the Science City)".

@courosa Alec Couros

Visualizing Open/Networked Teaching. "In my view, open teaching goes well beyond the parameters of the Free and Open Source Software movement, beyond the advocacy of open content and copyleft licenses, and beyond open access. For open teaching, these are the important mechanisms, processes, and residuals, but they should not be viewed as the end goals in themselves. Rather, open teaching may facilitate our approach to social, collaborative, self-determined, and sustained, life-long learning".

@Larryferlazzo Larry Ferlazzo

The Best Sites For Collaborative Storytelling. "For the purposes of this post, I’m defining collaborative storytelling as a process where one person begins telling a story, and then various others continue and complete it. This can be a great in-class exercise just doing it on an overhead or whiteboard, and it can be a lot of fun doing it online, too".

@gippopippo Cosimo Cannata

SweetSearch for Students. "SweetSearch helps students find outstanding information, faster. It enables them to determine the most relevant results from a list of credible resources, and makes it much easier for them to find primary sources. The engine staff exclude not only the spam sites that many students could spot, but also the marginal sites that read well and authoritatively, but lack academic or journalistic rigor".

@stevemac121 Steve Mackenzie

PLE's need Teachers. "I think however the terms PLE and PLN are with us to stay and so an appreciation of the differences between the terms is useful. From the various blog posts it would seem that the consensus is that a Personal Learning Environment (PLE) is more concerned with tools and technology and that Personal Learning Networks (PLN) are more concerned with connections to people".

CfP - International workshop on "Human-Computer Interaction and eLearning Systems" (HCIeLS 2011)

noreply@blogger.com (Malinka Ivanova) — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 03:24:15 PDT

Call for papers
=====================

International workshop on "Human-Computer Interaction and eLearning Systems" (HCIeLS 2011)

https://sites.google.com/site/hciels/home
=====================

International Workshop on Human-Computer Interaction and eLearning Systems (HCIeLS 2011) will take place within the I nternational Conference on INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES, St. St. Constantine and Elena Resort, Varna, Bulgaria,on 15-16 September, 2011 (http://www.tu-sofia.bg/saer/).

---------------------
Rationale

Our students are in everyday interactive dialogues with computers and well designed human-machine interfaces can lead to reach learning experience gaining. This workshop provides an international forum for the dissemination and exchange of up-to-date scientific information on theoretical, generic and applied areas of Human-Computer Interaction by determining useful eLearning system functionality and by describing usable interfaces. On the other side, understanding and modeling of human behavior, communication, social interactions, cognitive mechanisms are also important topics for exploration and discussion.

The aims of this workshop are:

* to bring together the various research and educational groups, working in the areas of Human-Computer Interaction and eLearning and currently focusing on the development or adoption of the next generation eLearning technologies and systems;
* to disseminate and exchange of up-to-date scientific information on theoretical, generic and applied areas of HCI and eLearning;
* to serve as a forum for extending existing and establishing new professional networks, giving the opportunities for discussions and future collaborations.

This forum invites research, technical papers, and work in progress investigating HCI problems, solutions and challenges, also in the scope are eLearning systems process development and practices of their implementation in education to support university students as well as to prepare them to become self-organized and life-long learners.

---------------------

Topics:

* Human Interface and the Management of Information
* Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction
* Virtual and Mixed Reality
* Online Communities and Social Computing
* Intelligent and agent systems
* Adaptive and personalized environments
* Visualization methods and techniques
* User modeling

--------------------
Important dates:

Paper Submission April 1, 2011
Notification of Acceptance May 15, 2011
Camera Ready Submission June 15, 2011
Registration June 15, 2011
Workshop Date September 15, 2011

--------------------

Program Committee:

# Ilona Buchem, Beuth University of Applied Sciences, Germany
# Linda Castañeda, University of Murcia, Spain
# Boris Kruk, Siberian State University of Telecommunications and Information Science, Russia
# Elvira Popescu, University of Craiova, Romania
# George Ivanov, University of Edinburgh, UK
# Paulo Sampaio, University of Madeira, Portugal
# Lilyana Nacheva-Skopalik, Technical University of Gabrovo, Bulgaria
# Ana Elena Guerrero Roldán, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain
# Angelos Alexopoulos, Dublin City University, Ireland
# Isabel Azevedo, Porto Superior Institute of Engineering, Portugal
# Tatyana Ivanova, Technical University of Sofia, Bulgaria

---------------------
Organizers:

Malinka Ivanova
Technical University - Sofia
Bulgaria
email: m_ivanova@tu-sofia.bg

and

Anguelina Popova
University of Utrecht
The Netherlands
email: a.popova@uu.nl

2nd International Workshop on Interactive Environments and Emergent Technologies for eLearning (IEETeL 2011) - Call for papers

noreply@blogger.com (Malinka Ivanova) — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 09:52:48 PDT

2nd International Workshop on Interactive Environments and Emergent Technologies for e-Learning (IEETeL 2011) will be held in conjunction with the International Conference on Digital Information and Communication Technology and its Applications (DICTAP2011), France, Dijon, 21-23 June, 2011.

Rationale
==========
The aim of the workshop is to bring together researchers, educators and technology experts to share and discuss the new solutions, trends and realizations of eLearning environments and the adoption of emergent technologies in a learning process.

New kind of learners require suitable environments ensuring flexible, personalized, adaptable, in-demand learning. The dynamic, interactive and social aspects of Web 2.0 have great potential to support innovative teaching and meaningful learning. Semantic web enables computers and people to work in cooperation, 3D virtual worlds support new online experiences of research and learning, augmented reality helps deeper understanding of subject matter, mobile technologies play a role in increasing individual support and opportunities for personal development.

This forum invites research, technical papers, and work in progress investigating e-Learning environments process development and practices of their implementation in education to support university students as well as to prepare them to become self-organized and life-long learners.
These include the technological aspect of environments building: “from scratch”, using open source software or mashup applications from a cloud as well as pedagogical strategies and solutions for utilizing such environments.

Topics of interest
==================

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Web 2.0 Applications for Learning
• 3D Virtual Environments
• Semantic Web
• Educational MashUps
• Immersive technologies in ADL
• Networks/Grids for learning
• Adaptive and intuitive environments
• Personal Learning Environments
• Mobile learning environments and applications
• Augmented Reality Implementation

Paper submission and publication
=================================

Researchers are encouraged to submit their work electronically in MS word or pdf format without author(s) name. Submitted papers should not exceed 15 pages, including illustrations and references, and should be numbered starting at page one. All papers will be reviewed by at least two reviewers. Accepted papers that are modified according to reviewers' comments will be published in the conference proceedings. Awards for best papers will be announced during the conference.

The authors should format their papers according to the Springer template.

Please, follow the submission procedure of the conference DICTAP2011 and in addition in the field Comments to Chair mention that this paper is for the International Workshop on Interactive Environments and Emergent Technologies for eLearning (IEETeL 2011). Also,
notify organizers of IEETeL 2011 by email that the paper is sent for participation in IEETeL 2011.

Important dates
===============

Paper Submission: February 20, 2011
Notification of Acceptance: April 1, 2011
Camera Ready Submission: April 10, 2011
Registration: April 10, 2011
Workshop Dates: June 21-23, 2011

Program Committee
=================

Toshio Okamoto, University of Electro-Communications,Tokyo, Japan
Gabriela Grosseck, West University of Timisoara, Romania
Reggie Smith III, United States Distance Learning Association
Inge de Waard, Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp, Belgium
Ion Roceanu, "Carol l" National Defence University, Romania
Marco Temperini, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
Mohamed Amine Chatti, RWTH Aachen University, Germany
Dimiter Denev, Max Planck Instiut Informatik, Germany
Volin Karagiozov, American University in Bulgaria, Bulgaria
Jennifer Richardson, Purdue University, USA
Alev Elci, Eastern Mediterranean University, Turkey
Javed Alam, Youngstown State University, USA
Palitha Edirisingha, University of Leicester, UK

Organizers
==========

Malinka Ivanova
Technical University - Sofia
Bulgaria
email: m_ivanova@tu-sofia.bg

and

Anguelina Popova
University of Utrecht
Netherlands
email: a.popova@uu.nl

Society and Information Technologies Conference - Call for papers

noreply@blogger.com (Malinka Ivanova) — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 16:53:26 PDT

The 2nd International Conference on Society and Information Technologies: ICSIT 2011

is collocated with

The 17th International Conference on Information Systems Analysis and Synthesis: ISAS 2011
and
The 9th International Conference on Computing, Communications and Control Technologies: CCCT 2011.

ICSIT 2011 will be held in March 27th - 30th, 2011 in Orlando, Florida, USA.

Major Themes, Areas and Suggested Topics:

Impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) on Societies

- ICT Applications in the universities--industries-governments Triple Helix Model
- Relationships and Cybernetic loops between Society and ICT
- Information society Technologies. Knowledge-based Society
- Education for the Information/Knowledge Society
- Social and Societal Roles of ICT
- Globalization and ICT
- Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC)
- Information Society Policy-Making
- Ethics and Informatics/Cybernetics
- e-Inclusion, Digital Inclusion or inclusive Information Society, Global e-Inclusion
- e-Health
- e-Skills. Computer-literacy
- e-Learning
- e-Communities
- Social Informatics and Social Information Systems
- National Strategies for the ICT
- Public Policies in Free and Open Source Software
- Ethics and Informatics
- Cyber-Societies, Cyber-Cultures
- Online and Virtual Communities
- e-Journalism

The Academic Sector and the ICT

- Semantic Web for Scientific and Engineering Research
- e-Science Practice and Education
- e-Humanities
- Arts, Humanities and e-Social Science
- Web 2:0 and Science 2:0
- e-Engineering
- Knowledge Representation for e-science
- Internet-based Collaborative Research
- E-learning
- Virtual Classrooms, Virtual Universities
- Digital Repositories and Data Management
- e-Authoring Tools
- Internet Research and Online Research Methodologies.
- e-Publishing
- Digital Web for Digital Libraries and Research Publications
- e-Technology

The Private Sector and the ICT

- Business/ICT Alignment
- e-Business. Mobile Business Applications
- e-Commerce, mCommerce
- e-Training
- e-Banking
- e-Service
- e-Management
- e-Procurement Systems
- e-Payment
- Enterprise Computing
- SemanticWeb /Ontological Engineering of Business Applications
- Knowledge Management Systems
- Knowledge Sharing in a Collaborative Business Environment
- Systems Security
- ERP System Integration
- B2B and Inter-organizational Systems
- Internet Abuse in the Workplace
- Online Auctions
- Collaborative Pricing
- Business Inlelligence
- Data Mining and Data Warehousing
- Business Service Analysis, Strategy, Design,
- Information Systems Development and Deployment
- Software as a Service, Service as a Software
- Collaborative Product Design and Manufacturing
- Global Manufacturing Systems
- Sustainable Manufacturing
- Virtual Design and Virtual Manufacturing
- Web 2.0 & Web Design Experience

The Public Sector and the ICT

- E-Government
- E-Politics, Cyber-Power, Online Activism
- Ethical and Legal Issues related to the ICT
- On-Line Crimes
- Electronic Government. Web-Enabled Government. Local e-government
- e-Administration. e-public Services. Web Self-Service in The Public Sector
- Citizens and Governance in an Open Knowledge-Based Society
- Cyberspace Security
- Telematics for Development. Telematics as Agent of Social Change
- Open Source for National and Local e-government Programs
- Informatics, Voting and Political Parties
- Informatics and Political Campaigns
- Online Campaigning. On-line Polling. Political Advertising
- Leaders, Elections and Parties and New Media. Informational Power
- e-Democracy and e-Participation, Democracy and New Media, e-Communities
- The Effects of Mobile Communication on Public Participation and Political Mobilization

Deadlines:
September 8th, 2010: Submission of draft papers (2000-5000), extended abstracts (600-2000) and abstracts for inter-disciplinary communication (300-600 words)
September 8th, 2010: Invited Sessions proposals. Acceptance of invited session proposals will be done in about one week of its proposal via the respective conference web form, and final approval will be done after the inclusion of at least five papers in the respective session
November 15th, 2010: Notifications of acceptance.
December 6th, 2010: Submission of camera-ready or final versions of the accepted papers
March 27th, 2011: Conference Starts
March 30th, 2011: Conference Ends

7-th eLearning and Software for Education Conference - call for papers

noreply@blogger.com (Malinka Ivanova) — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 16:33:35 PDT

eLSE 2011 is the 7-th eLearning and Software for Education Conference organized by the Advanced Distributed Learning Department to be held in April, 28th- 29th, 2011 in Bucharest, Romania.

The central theme of this forthcoming event stands out as "Anywhere, Anytime - Education on Demand".

eLSE is an international refereed conference created with the aim to promote eLearning related activities by providing learning and professional development, by blending ideas from researchers, developers and practitioners from education, business and government, to both learn, teach and share from one’s own experience.

The conference is particularly focused on:

- Technology enhanced Life Long Learning. This section spins around innovative solutions in the design and realization of the support management systems for education and training, technical solutions and approaches on interoperability and on generating training on the fly.

- Immersive technologies. This topic is dedicated for the presentation of solutions regarding serious games, distributed simulation, multitouch, virtual world, m-learning, 3D solutions and other related activities.

- New pedagogical dimensions in eLearning. This topic covers presentations on the way learning objectives are used in education, assignment-oriented learning, instructional templates, eLearning object life cycle, reusability of elearning content.

- Modeling and Simulation in ADL. The discussions will be tailored to respond specific issues regarding modeling and simulation, best practices in ADL domain, repositories and sequencing issues, solutions and systems that evaluate the performance of virtual learning environment and assess the actors’ performances.

A special place will be reserved for the papers that reflect the progress of the scientific research projects that are in relations with eLearning.

DEADLINES:

Submission of abstracts for review: November 30, 2010
Notification of abstract acceptance: January 15, 2011
Submission of complete papers for the proceedings: March 15, 2011
Confirmation of payment fee : March 15, 2011

JournalFire - a new possibility for learning/research network expansion

noreply@blogger.com (Malinka Ivanova) — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 10:04:11 PDT

Several days ago I received an email by Riccardo Schmid, Co-Founder of JournalFire.com. He invited me to join the newly created web site: JournalFire. Thank you for this! The aim of this site is to become a hub for discussing published journal articles.

"I started working on JournalFire as a grad student at Caltech because I wanted a place to capture all the interesting discussion that was taking place in the many journal clubs on campus. There are plenty of online reference managers out there, but unlike most of them, our primary focus is discussion and discovery. That's why we try to make it as easy as possible to create online journal clubs, comment on articles, and share what you're reading." - explained Riccardo Schmid.

I have just registered at JournalFire.com (http://journalfire.com/malinkaivanova) and created my first Journal Club with name "eLearning". I found several papers on eLearning practices and research via the integrated search engine and added 6 of them in the eLearning Journal Club for discussion. I added 6 more papers as articles that I have to read. From the item Find People> Suggested Users I Followed two faculties from two different USA universities to track their activity feeds.

The 1st july 2010 is the first official day for the site working. The database of our collegues and their research work at this moment is small. You are welcome to join and try the features of the site.
The idea of the site for discusing research papers and in the same time organizing of personal learning/research network is great! Good luck, JournalFire!

Riccardo Schmid is looking forward to your feedback! Your comments are always welcome!

Learning without Limits: Facing the Challenges

noreply@blogger.com (Malinka Ivanova) — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 02:37:42 PDT

"Learning without Limits: Facing the Challenges" - this was the moto of the Plymouth e-Learning conference this year that I participated in. Many solutions for learning in different contexts were discussed. Because of the several parallel sessions, I had the possibility to see only a small part of the presentations.

The first one was on "e-Portfolios". Ray Tolley from Maximise ICT Ltd, UK talked about the place of the e-portfolio within mainstream education and also how Web 2.0 activities can be safely encouraged within e-portfolio practice.
Helen Bowstead and Patrick McMahon from University of Plymouth, UK shared the learning experiences of a group of undergraduate students, and their tutors, as they engage with the ePortfolio system PebblePad. The students use it for competence development in preparation for their entry into the job market.
According to Julie Swain, David Croot and Sue Atkinson from University of Plymouth, UK three formal elements support the individuals' learning and progression: the employer, the HEI and a web-based e-portfolio hosted by the Institution.

Another interesting session "Online Learning" includes the presentation of Rhian Pole, James Williams, Tony Toole, Stephen Hole and Karen Jones from Swansea Metropolitan University, UK with focus on social networks (Ning) and mind maps usage as an effective learning environment.
Geraldine Jones from University of Bath, UK showed the advantages of peer assessment in Web 2.0 world (first year undergraduate students created, peer reviewed and assessed each others digital story productions using the voicethread Web 2.0 service).
Angelos Alexopoulos, Theo G. Lynn and Kieran Linehan from Dublin City University, Ireland presented a model suggesting that two key digital divide dimensions (socio-demographic and skill-based) are likely to be associated with young people’s online activities related to communication, entertainment, and learning.

At the session "Interactive Technologies" I had the possibility to experiment with electronic voting equipment during the presentation of Linda la Velle, Matthew Wharf and Frederique Arreckx from University of Plymouth, UK. They argued that the usage of an electronic voting system for teaching and learning improves interactivity, material understanding and rapid reflection.
An e-learning online tutorial to correctly diagnose and initially manage burns was presented by Francesco Egro from University of Bristol, UK.

The proceedings with abstracts can be downloaded from the conference web site.

Between sessions I had nice time and interesting conversations with eLearning experts and professionals.

My work at this conference reflects on research and gained experience in the area of personal leaning environments building. I propose a model for 3D PLE and argue that 3D world gives opportunities for creating and management of high interactive, social and technology rich self-organized learning.

A View of 3D PLE

Thanks Carmen Holotescu from West University of Timisoara, Romania who was chairing a workshop "Microblogging in education" for splendid time together. She prepared the following nice video with her impressions.

Great keynote speakers: Josie Fraser and Dave White, perfect organization by the conference chair Steve Wheeler and his team, fantastic presentators, lovely residents, beautiful city and wonderful weather :) - I hope that I choose the right warm words to describe my staying in Plymouth, UK.

If you are still wondering if learning can be limited just watch the recorded final panel discussion:

The 14th World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics: WMSCI 2010 - call for papers

noreply@blogger.com (Malinka Ivanova) — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 06:44:24 PST

The conference "Society and Information/Communications Technologies" and other conferences included in the 14th World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics: WMSCI 2010 to be held on June 29-July 2, 2010 in Orlando, Florida, USA.

The new deadlines are the following:

Papers/Abstracts Submissions and Invited Sessions Proposals: March 10th, 2010
Authors Notifications: May 5th, 2010
Camera-ready, full papers: May 26th, 2010

You can also submit your abstract-paper to another area or any of the following conjoined and/or collocated events:

* The SUMMER 4th International Conference on Knowledge Generation, Communication and Management: KGCM 2010

* The 3rd, International Symposium on Academic Globalization: AG 2010

* The 2nd International Symposium on Peer Reviewing: ISPR 2010

Participants in any conference can attend the sessions of other collocated conferences, and will receive electronic proceedings, in a CD, which includes the papers presented at all conferences and symposia

Submissions for Face-to-Face or for Virtual Participation are both accepted. Both kinds of submissions will have the same reviewing process and the accepted papers will be included in the same proceedings.

Pre-Conference and Post-conference Virtual sessions (via electronic forums) will be held for each session included in the conference program, so that sessions papers can be read before the conference, and authors presenting at the same session can interact during one week before and after the conference. Authors can also participate in peer-to-peer reviewing in virtual sessions.

All Submitted papers/abstracts will go through three reviewing processes: (1) double-blind (at least three reviewers), (2) non-blind, and (3) participative peer reviews. These three kinds of review will support the selection process of those papers/abstracts that will be accepted for their presentation at the conference, as well as those to be selected for their publication in JSCI Journal.

Authors of accepted papers who registered in the conference can have access to the evaluations and possible feedback provided by the reviewers who recommended the acceptance of their papers/abstracts, so they can accordingly improve the final version of their papers. Non-registered authors will not have access to the reviews of their respective submissions.

Registration fees of an effective invited session organizer will be waived according to the policy described in the web page (click on 'Invited Session', then on 'Benefits for the Organizers of Invited Sessions'), where you can get information about the ten benefits for an invited session organizer. For Invited Sessions Proposals, please visit the conference web site, or directly to www.2010iiisconferences.org /wmsci/organizer.asp

Authors of the best 10%-20% of the papers presented at the conference (included those virtually presented) will be invited to adapt their papers for their publication in the Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics.

MicroECoP Workshop - Call for papers

noreply@blogger.com (Malinka Ivanova) — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 11:16:14 PST

I am very happy to be a member of PC of the workshop MicroECoP (Using Microblogging to enhance communication within Communities of Practice) and would like to thank the organisation committee.
It will take place at the WCC 2010 conference in Brisbane, Australia, 20-23 September, 2010.
MicroECoP focuses on current research trends in the application of microblogging in various domains. The workshop seeks to attract quality research papers that propose solutions to the issues identified above. The workshop also seeks papers that comment how the application of micro-blogging can impact on real life experiences in diverse communities. It aims to bring together scientists and engineers who work on designing and/or developing the above mentioned solutions, as well as practitioners who use and evaluate them in diverse authentic environments.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to) the following:

* Design and development of microblogging tools
* Application of micro-blogging in teaching scenarios
* Application of micro-blogging in software engineering scenarios
* Communication and interaction issues using microblogging
* Understanding the dynamics of microblogging communities
* Harnessing the semantic filtering capabilities of microblogging
* Visualization issues of microblogging
* Evaluation issues and case studies
* Smart devices for microblogging in education
* Using microblogging for enhancing creativity in education
* Digital identities and microblogging
* Ethical and safety issue
* Harshtagging and tweckling
* Developing pedagogies around the use of microblogging
* Live microblogging and micro-narratives
* Language Learning with microblogging
* Engagement analysis and microblogging

The organisation committee
Wolfgang Reinhardt
Steve Wheeler
Graham Attwell
Johannes Magenheim

For more details about MicroECoP you can see its web site. Also, you can track the news using twitter search #microecop .

Towards Personal Learning Environments and my students ...

noreply@blogger.com (Malinka Ivanova) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 01:26:58 PST

This semester I am teaching two courses: Internet Technologies and Computer Graphics. I will not conceal it from you that I classify myself as a technology woman :). So, I have fallen in love with technologies and strongly believe that they can support and organize our teaching/learning everyday life. In these courses I focus the students' attention on their Virtual Personal Learning Environment (VPLE) building as a starting point for the development of different skills and concentration of knowledge.

My practice indicates that there is a big problem in PLE understanding of my students!!!

When I introduce them with the PLE's concept for the first time, they have many questions, because they are not technical or pedagogical experts, they are not instructional designers or professionals that work hard on PLE design and development.
The students need us to tell them "in plain English" what is a PLE and to motivate them to create and update their virtual spaces. Believe me, it is not an easy and unilateral process.
So, I decided that it is time to prepare a guide about PLE organizing (PDF) for my students.

I would like to thank in advance all of you who have ideas and suggestions about how to expand and improve this guide.

My point of view about PLE building utilizing the platform of start pages is summarized in the paper: Use of Start Pages for Building a Mashup PLE to Support Self-Organized Learners:
USE OF START PAGES FOR BUILDING A MASHUP PERSONAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENT TO SUPPORT SELF-ORGANIZED LEARNERS
And a model for the possibilities of start pages for PLE building (click on image for large view):

The students’ roles, activities, used tools/services and occurring processes in PLE building are summarized via the model:

Create PowerPoint presentations in MashUp style

noreply@blogger.com (Malinka Ivanova) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:16:10 PDT

Presentations, presentations, presentations... How many presentations you have to prepare this year? And the next? All of them have to be different and engrossing. What about for presentations with live streams and with mashup services from several Web 2.0 sites?
SAP (based on BusinessObjects Xcelsius dashboarding technology) proposes PowerPoint templates with embedded widgets giving a real-time Twitter ticker feed, a Twitter feedback slide, and Twitter voting tool.

Yesterday I tested these tools using SAP PowerPoint templates and also I integrated the code in the Edu20 LMS. The effect of the synchronous communication, feedback and reaction is incredible!
To see how PowerPoint Twitter Feedback works, just enter a search term in the lower-left hand corner.

Another nice solution is given by authorSTREAM Desktop for images (from Bing) and video (from YouTube) searching and integration in PowerPoint slides. The team is developed a plugin for PowerPoint 2007 which you can download from the authorSTREAM site.

How can augmented reality support learning?

noreply@blogger.com (Malinka Ivanova) — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 10:16:22 PDT

The definition of augmented learning according to Wikipedia is:
" Augmented learning is a learning technique where the environment adapts to the learner. Instead of focusing on memorization, supplemental information is presented to the learner based on the current context. The augmented content can be dynamically tailored to the learner's natural environment by displaying text, images, video or even playing audio (music or speech).
Most implementations of augmented learning are forms of e-Learning. In desktop computing environments, the learner receives supplemental, contextual information through an on-screen, popup window, toolbar or sidebar. As the user navigates a website, email or document, the learner associates the supplemental information with the key text selected by a mouse or other input device.

The explored research materials in this area show that augmented reality can enhance learning: to encourage situated learning, collaborative learning, learning by experiments, learning at the work place:

Supporting Collaboration Ubiquitously: An augmented learning environment for architecture students

Augmented Learning Environment using Mixed Reality Technology

Learning With Augmented Reality

Learning through digitally-augmented physical experiences: Reflections on the Ambient Wood project

Virtual Reality for Augmented Collaboration and Accelerated Learning among Process Plant Workers

Augmented Reality Language Learning – Virtual Worlds meet m-Learning

View more presentations from AvatarLanguages.com.

Augmented Reality in Mathematics

WizzKit from Mathijs Beks on Vimeo.

Expand your Personal Learning Network with the #FollowFriday initiative on Twitter

noreply@blogger.com (Malinka Ivanova) — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 15:04:22 PDT

It is the end of Friday and the end of the work week. You of course relax in front of the computer and read the messages of your Twitter friends using a life stream program (or you like to change them?). Some of the twitts attract your attention, no, no grab your attention beacuse they are closer to your thoughts, feelings, personal and professional interests at this moment. You start reading, communicating, retweeting, bookmarking and also finding people with congenial minds and kindred spirit to follow! How is the adrenaline? Is it rush? Yessss, of course you range over a large number of digital resources that to this moment ecape from your notice. So, the #FollowFriday initiative can support you to open your mind and to examine the subjects from a different point of view. How was #FollowFriday started? The full story via @jmuncy you ca read here.
I propose a few worthy professionals from my PLN with their wonderful 140 character messages for#FollowFriday. Hope that they can touch and add value to your world! Enjoy!

@cami13 - Carmen Holotescu, Timisoara, Romania
*********************************************
Reading white paper "Video Use and Higher Education: Options for the Future" http://url.ie/27uh, via The Wired Campus http://url.ie/27uf.
-------------
Listening to David Wiley - @opencontent - and Stephen @Downes dialogue across the spectrum of open education - http://url.ie/27qx.
-------
PLN’s Redefined http://url.ie/272k: when twitter becomes a Personal Living Network; an emotional story by @kellyhines.
-------------

@cedpaine - Ced Paine, Newton, MA, USA
*************************************
RT @paulawhite: RT @mayfieldc: good one, a searchable, sortable, add-able database of tech tools for the classroom: http://bit.ly/BGOgL
-------------
Another great exmpl of Google Custom Search! RT @tonnet: RT @lbott: Trying All Teacher Websites, Google for teachers http://bit.ly/1GgUHY
-------
Nice collection of links RT @DiigoRSS: Twitter for Teachers http://bit.ly/5oIxb
-------------

@c4lpt - Jane Hart, Wincanton, England
***********************************
#ff Don't forget the Connexions Directory with over 1200 learning professionals to follow http://bit.ly/4J55u
-------------
5 places to learn how to touch type - for free http://bit.ly/sc9gB
-------
12 best places to get free images for your site http://bit.ly/jxevB
-------------

@CompetencyMgmt - CompetencyMgmt, USA
*****************************************
RT: @HRToolsWriter Leadership Core Competencies Are the Foundation of Leadership Skills: http://tinyurl.com/lygzg5
-------------
News Release: Avilar Releases Newest Version of Competency Management System, WebMentor Skills v.6.5.pdf: http://digg.com/d310lNs?t
-------
Learn Competency Management Basics at live workshop in Columbia, MD next Tuesday, 8/18! http://bit.ly/R9KN
-------------

@elearning - David Anderson, Phoenix, AZ, USA
*******************************************
Foundations of Interactive Storytelling http://is.gd/2gK8z
-------------
All set for my #elearningguild session on learning tools and resources in Second Life http://is.gd/2gxb2 Enjoyed yesterday's sessions!
-------
Great collection of interactive tools, books and maps for elearning and instructional designers http://is.gd/2fJUC
-------------

@elemenous - Lucy Gray, Chicago, USA
***********************************
RT @Google Learn how to talk about search in the classroom with free lessons put together by Google Certified Teachers http://bit.ly/WPRXi
-------------
Planting my wisdom tree at www.iwise.com/elemenous #quote #iwise
-------
Reading: "Still no free lunch 2.0 « Generation YES Blog" (http://twitthis.com/te5qpc)
-------------

@FelipeMorales - Felipe Morales, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain
*************************************************************
Screen Capture Tools: 40+ Free Tools and Techniques http://bit.ly/INDPp
-------------
Yudu Library http://www.yudu.com/
-------
20 Free Web Apps to Use in the Classroom http://bit.ly/md2ym
-------------

@ggrosseck - Gabriela Grosseck, Timisoara, Romania
***********************************************
via @mashable I am a MachtMaker twitter user, http://yahoo.knowyourmojo.com/ - nice game for advertising the new Yahoo home page
-------------
Feudal Knowledge in Academic Publishing - so true , http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cg...
-------
Absolutely in love with this song ... Such a pitty I couldn't blip it , http://lyricwiki.org/Rod_St... ♫ http://blip.fm/~bn9bc
-------------

@hjarche - Harold Jarche, Sackville, NB, Canada
******************************************
World Cafe Online Community: http://www.theworldcafecommunity.org/
-------------
My thoughts on power relationships in learning for @LearnNuggets http://is.gd/2gKEf http://is.gd/2gKHt http://is.gd/2gKKz #lrnchat
-------
f "formal learning for basic skills" was true then none of us would have learned how to speak #lrnchat
-------------

@gsiemens - George Siemens, Manitoba, Canada
*******************************************
RT @jonmott: "Open for Learning: Bridging the CMS-PLE Gap" slides posted at http://bit.ly/EanJQ. Downloadable #opended09
-------------
Reading @psychemedia remote analysis of twitter during #opened09 http://bit.ly/NHZ3T
-------
Recordings (July and August) from Social Media sessions with @davecormier http://bit.ly/T5wjn
-------------

@hopkinsdavid - David Hopkins, Bournemouth, UK
*********************************************
BBC "Sony to support open ebook format" http://bit.ly/7rSbV #eBook
--------------
eLearning On The Rise - http://tinyurl.com/njy6rh (via @kimworthy)
-------
Blogged: What is a Learning Technologist? http://bit.ly/Oam1H
--------------

@Ignatia - Inge de Waard, Belgium
*******************************
(myBlog) Is your global eLearning2.0 content censored? You better take a look: With the recent Iran elec.. http://bit.ly/gfhmE
-------------
(myBlog) visualizations galore for Academic, Personal and Business Intelligence: In this increasingly da.. http://tinyurl.com/mhdrhm
-------
RT @blacklooks @whiteafrican @johnkidenda: Kenya sitting on talent that's going to waste: Shunned genius wooed abroad http://bit.ly/YiSYq
-------------

@jalam1001 - Javed Alam, Youngstown, Ohio, USA
*********************************************
Education and growth: Quality, not quantity http://bit.ly/1LRLj7
-------------
How Web-Savvy Edupunks Are Transforming American Higher Education | Fast Company http://bit.ly/12uPdJ
--------
30 Flash-Based Photography Sites http://bit.ly/aLUMJ
-------------

@jclarey - Janet Clarey, New York, USA
***********************************
Lessons from Edupunks http://bit.ly/XuGPi Are/would you send your kids to a traditional college campus? Same as author...a real hypocrite
-------------
American pedagogy invariably emphasizes simultaneous instruction "frontal teaching" @gwoodill talking about J Goodland's book about school.
-------
"One of my favorite tricks..using overhead projectors to light video interviews" & other creative ideas from @tomkulmann http://bit.ly/boRnI
-------------

@JoanVinallCox - Joan Vinall-Cox, Oakville, near Toronto, Canada
**********************************************************
3 mistakes the media has rushd to make - this week - http://tinyurl.com/otmo6q
------------
RT @JaneBozarth: RT @Jeffhurt: I like to call social media my tool for engineering randomness & accelerating serendipity #lrnchat
-------
Social learning is the dance of learning w/ others, informal is where you get no certificate.#lrnchat
-------------

@julianna07 - Mona, Timisoara, Romania
************************************
RT @storytellin: Teach Digital: http://tr.im/vFFb - very useful and comprehensive curriculum by Wes Fryer
-------------
100 Best Blogs For Teachers of the Future http://icio.us/1dvief
-------
Tips for teachers to help sts be safe on the net http://bit.ly/1dnYYL
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@klamma - Ralf Klamma, Aachen, Germany
***************************************
edtechpost - PLE Diagrams http://ff.im/5Zf8D
-------------
ACM MMSJ Special Issue on Multimedia Intelligent Services and Technologies http://twurl.nl/up00mk
--------
ECS - Semantic Technologies could link up UK learning http://ff.im/5Vanj
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@marciamarcia - Marcia Conner, Virginia, USA
*****************************************
One of our key goals 4 social learning outcomes is get learners to "engage, interact & introspect" become social RT @spotlearning #lrnchat
---------------
Is #lrnchat formal or informal? I'd say formal-unexpected: http://sn.im/inforr #lrnchat
--------
Is technology changing childhood? Yes. A national poll http://sn.im/on-teens and social networking via @mfhiatt
--------------

@mebner - Martin Ebner, Graz, Austria
***********************************
http://twitpic.com/du7so - great the new welcome presents for our newbies arrived #welcomedays #tugraz #usb
------------
nice video about "Augmented Reality and the Future of Education" http://bit.ly/Widue #education #future #augmentedReality
------
recommend RT @heinz: @mebner you can have fb notifications via growl without a toolbar and without opening a browser: http://bit.ly/QG6CC
------------

@michael_hanley - Michael Hanley, Dublin, Ireland
*********************************************
Gartner's Hype Cycle Special Report for 2009 has been published - Essential reading in my view - click the URL for more - http://url.ie/27jp
----------------
The E-Learning Curve Blog - Podcasting for E-Learning: Introduction to Audio Production - Find out more here - http://url.ie/27dy
---------
Perseids meteor shower occurs tonight (Tuesday night/Wednesday morning) - find out more http://url.ie/27dn - fingers crossed for clear skies
----------------

@NikPeachey - NikPeachey, Morocco
*********************************
Great way to monitor kids' or students ' computer use without blocking http://www.visikid.com/ #esafety #elearning
---------------
Want to add a chat widget to your website? http://www.talkinator.com/
---------
The Future of New Media: Anil Dash on BigThink. makes good sense. Hope he's right http://bit.ly/M07Im
--------------

@pascal_venier - Pascal Venier, Manchester, UK
*******************************************
@manchesterstory is a project to crowdsource Manchester's history http://www.themanchestersto..
----------------
RT @malburns: "Vitual worlds and Second Life: Closing my open tabs" http://bit.ly/uS8Wk
----------
I shall have a good look at http://www.pivote.info/
---------------

@pgsimoes - Paulo Simões, Portugal
********************************
Schools add cell phones to curriculum ... slowly - http://tinyurl.com/njq3e8
-----------------
How the brain hard-wires us to love Google, Twitter, and texting. And why that's dangerous. http://bit.ly/2McsKB
--------
Schools Need Teachers Like Me. I Just Can't Stay. - http://bit.ly/xwjmH
-----------------

@rashford - Robin Ashford/Mochi, Portland, Oregon, USA
***************************************************
The Next Big Thing in Mobile: 5 Trends We're Watching http://tinyurl.com/m8qyr9
---------------
Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) meeting in Second Life starting now-join us on ALA Island http://tinyurl.com/ldcjza #ACRL
---------
"Tagging the world on a phone" http://tinyurl.com/lcv2n4 (Augmented Reality on handhelds like this-amazing, such potential-soon!)
---------------

@rashkath - Rash Kath, India
**************************
Geometry tool box http://www.mrreddy.com/geometrytoolbox.swf
-----------------
A nice collection of MCQ's in Math http://bit.ly/N4dTu
---------
Reading about Jigsaw classroom http://www.jigsaw.org/steps.htm
-----------------

@russeltarr - Russel Tarr, Toulouse, France
***************************************
RT @quote_daily: To me, education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul - Muriel Spark
-------------------
100 educational iPhone apps for self-learners http://tinyurl.com/nmcwnc
---------
A Europe of Tales: Animated folk stories: http://tinyurl.com/q7tqlf
-------------------

@sciencebase - David Bradley, UK
******************************
Try again - nerdy chemistry game - http://bit.ly/yESah
------------------
Google changing underlying search structure, adding caffeine to its sandbox for a kick - http://bit.ly/google-caffeine
------------
Educational Video Streaming - http://sciencetext.com/Jo
------------------

@skipz - Skip Zalneraitis, Brattleboro VT USA
*****************************************
Education 'Miracles' Don't Survive Scrutiny- http://snipurl.com/pvc99 [www_truthdig_com]
-------------
Karooba - Education-based games - http://www.karooba.com/
--------
How to use an iPhone as a photography tool- http://snipurl.com/pokvs [digital-photography-school_com]
-------------

@stylianosm2 - Stylianos Mystakidis, Patras, Greece
**********************************************
"As people embrace social media in their private lives, they naturally expect to use similar tools within the enterprise" J.Nielsen #e2
---------------
Great teaching aid: A Visual Guide to Twitter http://bit.ly/3gpqQ -via @RobinGood @MetaJp
----------
E-Learning & training trends report highlights Social, Game-based & Mobile Learning http://ub0.cc/7b/0v (free pdf german)
----------------

@timbuckteeth - Steve Wheeler, Plymouth, UK
******************************************
Personal webs and the future of the institutional VLE http://bit.ly/SA29a
-----------------
Using mashups for PLEs: Future Internet Vol 1 http://bit.ly/39WYBl
---------
RT @rodericksilva: Connectivism and Connective Knowledge - 2009 (http://tinyurl.com/kpcybx)
------------------

@zaidlearn - Zaid Ali Alsagoff, Malaysia
***********************************
Folksemantic: Browse and search over 110,000 Open Education Resources (OERs). "This is an open educational r.. http://folksemantic.com/
------------------
2 Juicy Ways to Insert YouTube Videos into PowerPoint: This article explores two (2) juicy ways to insert your f.. http://bit.ly/CIEbv
----------
Psychology in the 21st century ( OpenLearn - UK): The key message of this unit is that different psychologists f.. http://bit.ly/fWgge
------------------

Is Social Media a challenge for Higher Education?

noreply@blogger.com (Malinka Ivanova) — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 13:25:53 PDT

It is a fact that neither Web 2.0 technologies do not pass over the Higher education nor does the Higher education jump over the Web 2.0 technologies, because of the new type of learners, the present types of internet media and their everyday relationships. The usage of these technologies in learning processes is not a fad, it is just a normal reflection of the evolutionary development of internet. Our students like YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, ect. and spend much time in these virtual places. The informal learning based on Web 2.0 exists and functions like a "university in shadow" with possibilities of a borderless digital learning environment. So, why don't the educators present the power of social media for learning and better strategies for its utilization?
At this moment my observations point that emergent technologies are not popular enough and their adoption in the engineering education needs further understanding. Also, when the collegues have been introduced with the advantages and benefits of social media for teaching and learning, their reaction was positive and optimistic.
With this post I would like to show several opinions about the entwinement between Web 2.0 and Higher education via the folloing research reports:

Web 2.0 and Higher Education: Pedagogical Implications

"The use of Web 2.0 technologies in the context of Higher Education could lead to the implementation of a model of learning centred on the concept of Community of Practice, in which learners are seen as participants of a framework that has social structure, rather than being passive elements that acquire models of a static world.

"What remains the core challenge of the adoption of Web 2.0 in Higher Education is the balance that must be made between the necessary conservative part of Education, which is necessary to preserve past human effort and talent, as also traditional skills and knowledge legacy, and the possibilities that technology introduces in terms of students’ self expression and co-construction of knowledge.

The Changing Landscape and the New Academy

"Conceptualization of the learning environment is transitioning from learning in a physical space—that is, the classroom—to a student-centered learning
environment situated in cyberspace. Deeper learning is the goal of such active, learner-centered practice, involving the interplay of technology and pedagogy.

"The New Academy is emerging. Those who know and understand the topology of the new teaching and learning landscape will feel comfortable navigating through it.

The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age

"Our argument here is that our institutions of learning have changed far more slowly than the modes of inventive, collaborative, participatory learning offered by the Internet and an array of contemporary mobile technologies. Part of the reason for the relatively slow change is that many of our traditional institutions have been tremendously successful, if measured in terms of endurance and stability.

"When we advocate institutional change for learning institutions, we are making assumptions about the deep structure of learning, about cognition, about the way youth today learn (about) their world in informal settings, and about a mismatch
between the excitement generated by informal learning and the routinization of learning so common to many of our institutions of formal education.

The future of higher education: How technology will shape learning

"According to the survey results, online-collaboration tools, software that supports individually paced learning, and learning-management systems are among the communications technologies most expected to improve academics over the next five years. Web 2.0 technologies such as wikis, instant messaging and social networking which have been influential in improving connectivity in many settings and are in use now at a large number of institutions are expected to decline in use over that period. By contrast, online gaming and simulation software are cited by 54% of higher education respondents and 59% of corporate respondents as an innovation likely to be adopted among universities over the next five years.

"Understanding challenges in rewiring education ... Although university participants view technology as having a largely positive impact on their campuses, they acknowledge several challenges. The biggest of these may well be cost, a factor that close to 70% of university respondents cite as their greatest concern. Entrenched organisational cultures may be another hurdle, as academic faculty members accustomed to traditional modes of instruction may be disinclined to change. In fact, more than one-third of those polled say that tenure and promotional requirements will need to be re-weighted to include technology-based teaching criteria.

Higher Education in a Web 2.0 World

"Higher education has a key role in helping students refine, extend and articulate the diverse range of skills they have developed through their experience of Web 2.0 technologies. It not only can, but should, fulfil this role, and it should do so through a partnership with students to develop approaches to learning and teaching. This does not necessarily mean wholesale incorporation of ICT into teaching and learning. Rather it means adapting to and capitalising on evolving and intensifying behaviours that are being shaped by the experience of the newest technologies. In practice it means building on and steering the positive aspects of those behaviours such as experimentation, collaboration and teamwork, while addressing the negatives such as a casual and insufficiently critical attitude to information. The means to these ends should be the best tools for the job, whatever they may be. The role of institutions of higher education is to enable informed choice in the matter of those tools, and to support them and their effective deployment.

How to Use Social Software in Higher Education

"Embracing e-Learning in Higher education requires a shift in the paradigm of pedagogy, as well as the use of mediating technologies. On one hand, there is a
discussion going on about the dichotomy between closed institutionalized learning tools and open social software. On the other hand, we can talk about the pedagogical tension between the urge for individual independence and personalization, which leads educators to consider the new possibilities provided by the Two-Way Web as individualized learning tools. At the same time there is the need for the learning management systems connecting those individualized tools and supporting the learners to contribute to the learning communities. With this in mind, it is clear that innovation (as an idea) does not consist in just a technology but it is very likely that it is inside it.

A review of current and developing international practice in the use of social networking (Web 2.0) in higher education

"The future of universities Web 2.0 by itself is unlikely to have a significant effect on Higher education over the next ten years, but it will almost certainly accelerate some of the trends that we are already seeing:
- Universities will lose their privileged role as a primary producer of knowledge and
gatekeeper to it, as knowledge becomes more widely accessible through other sources, and is produced by more people in more ways.
- The funding sources of existing universities will become increasingly threatened as other providers start to offer degree courses. In the UK we are seeing further education colleges offering higher education provision, and in the United States there are many private universities (including for profit universities, and university divisions of large corporations).
- Distance learning will increase as the technology reduces (not eliminates) the differences between campus based learning and distance learning.
- Work-based learning will increase with courses being more closely embedded into the work-place as work can more easily be shared between colleagues at work and on courses. Note that this will raise concerns over confidential information that universities, employers and students will all need to consider.
- Collaborative work across courses and across institutions will increase, both planned as part of the courses themselves, and informally as students get to know each other
through their social spaces.

Free Hosted eLearning 2.0 Platforms in Action

noreply@blogger.com (Malinka Ivanova) — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 07:01:37 PDT

In this post I am presenting several free hosted platforms suitable for teaching and/or learning management. Also, I wish to show the situation in 2009 in point of view Web 2.0 technologies integration in eLearning platforms and as a continuous review of Zaid Ali Alsagoff's blog post "Any Free Hosted CMS or LMS?" from February 2008.
In the explored eLearning platforms functional features that they propose varied. I will mention the basic functional requirement for one learning environment: course design, content development and access, enrollment and tracking, knowledge and skill assessment, communication. Groups with special interests, communities forming and network organizing are typical characteristics for 2.0 mode. Some of the recent eLearning platforms offer a full cycle of authoring-management-delivery. Most of them are mashable and flexible through tools for media content creation and delivery in the form of wiki, blog, microblog, A/V/images/widgets code embedding, RSS subscription.
Last semester I used Edu 2.0 and it really supports my teaching and students' formal and informal learning. Edu 2.0 is not designed specially for Higher Education, but rather for Schools. The environment integrates tools for lessons structuring (sequentially or hierarchical), rich media integration, student participation in: PLE building, Portfolio forming, resource sharing in the community library, collaboration and communication. Also, I motivated them to use start pages for PLE extending and Ning for widening of their learning Portfolio, Glogser, SlideShare, Vimeo and other Web 2.0 tools to enhance their learning process. In Edu 2.0 the schools and colleges can be reached after registration. New features are constantly being added to the system. The latest one is a perfect solution which was missing then - a public school portal (in my case the address is: http://tu-kee.edu20.org/site).

It would be good if information about the ideology of eLearning platform development could be proposed on their sites to orient educators about the possible pedagogic strategies realization.

I hope that this information will be useful for educators and I recommend them to try at least one of the following eLearning platforms:

CollegeBrain is a Course Management System and it enables course instructors to consolidate, view, and manage content and students.

EctoLearning is a social, collaborative, online learning environment and Learning Management System with attendance tracking, grade book, and an assessment engine including the use of rubrics based evaluations.

Edu2.0 is a learning management system with community features and a public library. The classes are available after registration in the system and after class enrollment. Several class examples are provided below:

1. Internet Technologies and Web Design
2. Course of Computer Aided Graphics
3. eLearning 2.0 & Beyond

Eduslide (Tutorom): Tutorom allows educators to create online educational content and deliver it, to form community and network. If you would like to use this software on your own network (based on php and MySQL), it is also available free as open source, from eduslide.org.

Lessons:
1. Adobe Photoshop CS2: Learn how to use Adobe Photoshop from a web designer and graphic designers point of view (39 lessons)
2. Algebra I: This course will make math come alive with its many intriguing examples of algebra in the world around you (4 lessons)
3. Adobe Photoshop Basics: Free Online Tutorial for Beginners (1 lesson)

GlobalClassroom is an eLearning platform for course content and students management, custom branding and collaboration.

Free courses access after system registration and course enrollment:
1. Utilizing WordPress to Blog and Podcast
2. Moodle Tutorial - How to Build Courses with Moodle

The KEEP Toolkit is a set of web-based tools for selecting and organizing teaching and learning materials, prompting analysis and reflection by using templates, transforming materials and reflections into visually appealing and engaging representations, sharing ideas for peer-review, assessment, and collective knowledge building, facilitating knowledge exchange and dissemination.
KEEP Toolkit is implemented in Apache, PHP, and MySQL and it is available as open source.
Collections of resources for K-12 teachers and teacher educators you can find on the site Inside Teaching. The Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education proposes a collection that includes hand-built faculty teaching portfolios and scholarship of teaching and learning projects that were created over a period of eight years.

LearnHub is a social learning network of communities and experts. It is a pool of resources and knowledge representing different subjects and subcategories.
I selected only several learning communities from the treasure of the LearnHub:
1. Cooperative Learning (115 lessons)
2. Blended Learning and Instruction (55 lessons)
3. Geography (36 lessons)
4. Mathematics (149 lessons)
5. Journalism (63 lessons)

LectureShare is an online platform for course materials sharing. The instructor's tools include course and student management center, grade book, announcement posts. The search engine can help you to find the right courses.
Here are several public available courses (after system registration and course enrollment):
1. Advanced CRT: The focus of this course is on CPT surgery coding and CPT and HCPCS modifier usage
2. Mathematics: This course covers topics on quadratic equations, exponents and radicals, exponential and logarithmic functions, higher degree equations (cubics), trigonometric functions, sequences and series
3. Intro to Computers:

Lecturio is a course based system that allows educatots to offer their students study multimedia content cost effectively and, above all, centrally accessible. The system is in German, but there are courses in English that are available without registraion:

1. Data Communication and Internet Technology

2. Distributed Systems

3. Organic Computing

Multiply is an online environment for resource sharing, group, school, university content management and networking. Most of the sites of the system can be seen by users after registration.

1. Mapúa Institute of Technology
2. Cebu Doctors' University

MyiCourse is a learning management system. You may find free courses by using the search engine or by going directly to http://learningcenter.myicourse.com and looking at the course catalog.

NfoMedia is a learning management system, specially designed for Higher Education. The courses can be opened and closed and they can be reached after system registration. The search engine supports finding a course.

1. English 1C course of University of California
2. Computer Literacy course of Bolton High School

Pyuple is a course management system with features for networking and communication. Here you can search for courses.

RedGrove is a content based system for knowledge sharing of teachers, professionals and learners. A wide range of topics can be discussed in RedGrove network.

Sclipo is a social platform for teaching and learning with possibilities for course creation, live sessions, storage in a vast library.

TalkBean is an eLearning solution for knowledge and experience sharing via virtual communication rooms. You have to download and install TalkBean Live software to perform your lessons.

WizIQ is a free online teaching and eLearning platform with a web conferencing possibility. The sessions are recorded if you can not participate or if you wish to repeat some lessons. Great classes by Nellie Deutsch you can find here.

Yacapaca is the leading free online assessment platform. It helps teachers assess students through multiple choice, short-text tests, eportfolios and other popular methods. It includes automarking and analysis tools, and has a complete suite of authoring tools. A thriving community of authors collaborates to create and perfect new assessment materials that are then available for all to use.

If you have teaching/learning experience with the environments mentioned above or with another, please share your opinion, cons and pros about the effectiveness of the provided learning process!

Are Educators Ready for Virtual Worlds?

noreply@blogger.com (Malinka Ivanova) — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 16:15:39 PDT

The past week I spent some time in the virtual reality of Second Life, exploring the possibilities for learning activities arranging and for management of a learning process. Also, I read several research papers sharing the gained experience in teaching and learning in SL. It was found that this virtual world:

*is conducive for collaboration in terms of allowing all of the students to work successfully as a group
*is successful in the communication aspect - each person has their own identity (avatar), which makes communicating through SL appear more personable than an email or instant messaging programs
*supports a community forming – the SL community was always there to answer any questions
*promotes cultural and intercultural education
*suitable for project-based learning providing a “handon” opportunity for students to address real world problems in a multidisciplinary, collaborative environment
*excellent place for experiments and simulations preparing
*can be an educational environment for teaching technology (and not only) concepts
*fosters shared learning among educators and contributes for networking, running inworld seminars, conferences and symposia on learning and creativity related to virtual worlds (Thank you André Roux for this wondeful site: http://www.nmc.org/, and for this too: http://www.slobserver.com/).

Second Life can be used for a range of educational purposes including:
- Distance and Flexible Education
- Presentations, Panels and Discussions
- Training and Skills Development
- Self-paced Tutorials
- Displays and Exhibits
- Roleplays and Simulations
- Data Visualisations and Simulations
- Libraries, Art Galleries and Museums
- Historical Recreations, Living and Immersive Archeology
- Computer Programming
- Multimedia and Games Design
- Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Life Projects
- Art and Music Projects
- Literature and Creative Writing
- Photostories
- Treasure Hunts
- Cultural Immersion & Cultural Exchange
- Language Learning and Practice
- Social Science and Anthropological Research
- Support and Opportunities for People with Disabilities
- Politics, Governance, Civics and Legal Practice
- Business, Commerce, Financial Practice and Modelling
- Real Estate Practice
- Product Design, Prototyping, User-testing and Market Research
- Interior Design
- Architectural Design and Modelling
- Urban Planning and Design.

So, I begin with a great list with addresses of universities, colleges and schools in SL, where you can add your institution or just visit some of them.

More information for Educational Uses of Second Life, you can reach at:
http://sleducation.wikispaces.com/educationaluses

or

on Second Life Education Wiki .

On the site: Educational Online Resources there is a bibliography containing relevant and popular sites concerning education in SL. You can help build the resource by submitting either your own favorites or even your own website.

Intrestig practices you can read in the Proceedings of the Second Life Education Workshop at the Second Life Community Convention, San Francisco, August 20th, 2006

Anouther resources:

Engaging with Second Life:Real Education in a Virtual World

Education in Second Life: How it Compares to Real Life

"Second Life" as a Cyber Learning Environment for Higher Education and Research Collaboration

Second Life Education Workshop 2007, Part of the Second Life Community Convention, Chicago Hilton, 24th-26th August 2007

101 Uses for Second Life in the College Classroom

Blended Realities: A Virtual Tour of Education in Second Life

Second Life in Medical and Health EducationA Quick Visual Tour

Best Practices in Using Virtual Worlds For Education

Virtual or Virtually U: Educational Institutions in Second Life

Immersion and Engagement in a Virtual Classroom: Using Second Life for Higher Education

Second Life in Education and Language Learning

Second Life for Education

Or maybe you wish right now to dive directly in SL, visiting such places like:

Exploratorium in second life

The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE)'s Second Life space that provides a venue for educators to network and learn from each other about real life education opportunities and best practices in Second Life.

DEN in SL Headquarter Discovery Educator Network in SL .

Campus region that is the main hub for classes participating in the Campus: Second Life program, and it’s a great place to meet students and educators currently working on projects.

You wonder if it is possile to use SL as LMS? Then visit SLOODLE that is a system integrates the open source Moodle LMS with SL. Sloodle provides a range of tools for supporting learning and teaching to the immersive virtual world; tools which are integrated with a tried and tested leading web-based learning management system.
Introductory classes run inside Second Life every Tuesday at 2pm U.S. Pacific Time.

Teach, learn and enjoy! ;)

Will the word "training" still exist in 2019 ?

noreply@blogger.com (Piotr Peszko) — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 12:24:36 PST

Big question for this month is quite amazing and of course stimulating to think about what will training mean in not-so-far future.

In my opinion, there will be no activities that we call "training" or "learning" or even "teaching". Training departments will not exist anymore, because there will be no need to organize formal training. Closing my eyes and looking at organisation, let's call it inTen, I can't see laptops, mobiles, pc's, papers telephones etc.

inTen is organized...

in very specific way, mainly supporting cooperation and focusing on personal creativity, and stimulated ability to make decisions, collect facts, find solutions and innovate. All hi-tech equipment, is used to hear employees, support them providing all necessary data when they think abouth them and help in all activities that at the moment we call "daily routine".

inTen works smart...

not forcing anyone to do what is not his best activity, talent management skills of highigly supported HR-departments doesn't allow to make position not fitting needs so each employee has got a perfect place to work smart making huge investment into his own work enviroment.

inTen is focused on...

employees evolution that is motivating and stimulating to be motivated, by setting up challenges that are fit into specific business requirements from one side and to personal abilities, knowledge, and what is the most important contemporary potential od specific person,

In my opinion computers in 10 years will not be identified as some specific tools, so there will be no e-learning. Digital worplaces will provide automatically all necessary feedback, so there will be no need to train anyone. There will be no specific qualifications needed, rather skills or personal assets will be the most valuable.

7 Things You Don't Need to Know about Me!

noreply@blogger.com (Malinka Ivanova) — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 15:41:54 PST

I was selected by Sheryl McCoy to share what you do not need to know about me! Thank you, Sheryl. I will be very short and I do not intend to keep your attention on my person ;)!

1. Always in my head there are many different ideas, hipothesis, and sugestions that sometimes I feel that I live unconfortably, because I have time to realize not more than 20% of them. But I am an optimist!

2. Have you ever happened to desire to be at two or more places in one and the same time? Despite of the social networks, virtual worlds and immersive technologies, at this moment it is immposible in the real space.

3. Sometimes I am aware that I can't grab the moment despite that I know that I will not have another chance!

4. My to-learn list begins as a to-ask-questions-list. Questions translated in items that I need/wish to learn.

5. What about the to-do list? I still write my activities on a blank, because I am afraid that I will forget something important to do.

6. The favourite tools in my PLN are for communication, for writing and reading, for music listening, for visualization and conceptual mapping, for searching,for image/video sharing, for collaboration.

7. How are you forming your personal and professional networks? With me it is not a planning process, it just happens.

I nominate to share thoughts in this topic the following my Bulgarian friends and colleagues:

Do you like widgets?

noreply@blogger.com (Malinka Ivanova) — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 03:13:08 PST

Hmmm...widgets! These small parts that can be easily integrated in web sites, learning management systems and another different web and desktop applications! - maybe you will ejaculate :)! Yes, for them is the talk in this post which is one continuation of the previous post: Using widgets as learning objects in a widget-based education. So, I adore widgets and they really support my teaching and learning.

If you are a widgets' developer, you have to know a family specifications that ensure their
interoperability, functionalability and interactivity.
The W3C Web Applications (WebApps) Working Group is responsible for producing of these
documents.

The definition of widgets given by the W3 WebApps WG sounds like:
Widget is a single purpose application for displaying and/or updating local data or data on the Web, packaged in a way to allow a single download and installation on a user's machine, mobile phone, or Internet-enabled mobile device.

So, the following specifications regulate the standartization of widgets:
- The Widgets 1.0: Requirements - a document lists the design goals and requirements that
specifications would need to address in order to standardize various aspects of widgets;
- Widgets 1.0: The Widget Landscape - a document surveys a group of market-leading widget
user agents with the aim to inform the requirements of the Widgets 1.0: Requirements
document;
- The Widgets 1.0: APIs and Events - a specification defines APIs to store preferences and
capture events;
- The Widgets 1.0: Digital Signature - a specification defines a means for widgets to be
digitally signed using a custom profile of the XML-Signature Syntax and Processing
specification;
- The Widgets 1.0: Security Model - a specification describes a security model that defines
what a widget can or cannot do at runtime;
- The Widgets: 1.0: Automatic Updates - a specification defines a version control model
that allows widgets to be kept up-to-date over HTTP;
- Widgets 1.0: Packaging and Configuration - the document standardizes a Zip-based packaging format, an XML-based configuration document format and a series of steps that user agents follow when processing and verifying various aspects of widgets.

One unpublished yet specification is related to Widgets 2.0 Use Case and Requirements.

If you wish to know the work in progress and developments of the W3 WebApps WG, then you can follow them on Twitter: http://twitter.com/widgetspecs .

As an educator, maybe you are interested in case studies and examples how widgets can be adopted in a learning environment? Here are several best pracices of using widgets for providing educational services and for extending personal and institutional systems:

Nano Science for Students and Educators

noreply@blogger.com (Malinka Ivanova) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 15:46:20 PST

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious — the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science."

This great thought is given by the world known physicist Albert Einstein. The basics of his theory of relativity is studyed by our students. What do they know about science? Maybe they do not see science as a dynamic and creative area, and like a long and boring process. Maybe they do not know that millions of scientists all over the world are working to solve different parts of the puzzle of how the universe works. Science is also a reliable process by which we learn about all that stuff in the universe. Can anyone become a scientist? Maybe you will find some of the answers on the site: Understanding Science.

Nano Sience is focused on developing materials or devices with structures of the size 100 nanometers or smaller.

According to the Europian Commision: Nanotechnology is a new approach for research and development for controlling the fundamental structure and behaviour of matter at the molecular level. Applications are emerging in many different areas such as health care, information technologies, materials sciences, manufacturing, instrumentation, energy, security or space. Nanotechnology has great potential for improving our quality of life, the competitiveness of European industry and sustainable development.
The importance of nanotechnotology is also seen in formed Eropean Technogy Platforms.

Watch the next interesting video "The 21st Century: What will it look like?", made by Karsten Staack:

The students have to be prepared for their future and for this many people are responsible, including educators and parents. Nice resources about nanotechnology for students and teachers can be find at:

NanoHUB: resources for nanoscience and technology
National Center for Learning and Teaching in Nanoscale Science and Engineering: Nano Teaching Resources
Nanotechnology Educational Resources and Activities for K-12 Teachers
Nano Science Education Solutions and Resources Online

Now I am working on a project in the area of M(N)EMS, so here I offer you several reports about educational practices in teaching MEMS:

- Report on the 2005 MEMS Education Workshop
- Hands-On MEMS
- Teaching Micro System Design by Using Multi-User Micro Avionics System Laboratory in Aerospace Educational Reform Program of Taiwan
- Incorporating CAD for MEMS Tools into the Academic Environment
- A Teaching – Learning Framework for MEMS Education
- Introduction to Micromachining and MEMS

Your suggestions and opinions always are welcome! :)

Free and Open Source Social Software for Education

noreply@blogger.com (Malinka Ivanova) — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 22:30:00 PST

This first month of the year I devoted to exploration of Free and Open Source Software based on Web 2.0 technologies, because I am interested in how it can be implemented in education.
In this book I summarized some FOSS applications that can be useful for learning enhancement.

Some of my references are the following wonderful blog posts:

The next step is to examine the best practices of suitable social FOSS usage for educational purposes. So I am looking forward to your suggestions and experience sharing.