Design-Based Research EPSS

A link to a video collection on Design Based Research was just posted on the ITForum's mailing list by Thomas Reeves.
It points to a series of short interviews, conducted at AERA International Convention in 2006, put together by PhD students at the University of Georgia. The collection provides some specific insights from some notable researchers in the field of Design-based Research. It is a really useful resource to understand why this methodology is so helpful to those working towards understanding technology, and it's role in the learning process.

Watch a sample interview from the collection, such as the interview with Dr. Sasha Barab, (pictured right) from Indiana University, where he explains how he started in traditional research and why he felt unsatisfied with what it provided. He talks about how he moved to Design Based Research as an alternative methodology to explore the role of the student, the technology, the teacher and the learning activity.

Philosophy of Technology

Last Wednesday and Thursday, Roisin Lally and Aengus Daly, of NUI Galway organised an amazing two day conference on the Philosophy of Technology.

Don Ihde spoke as one of the keynotes at the event, and echoed some of the themes Stephen Heppell touched upon at the Learning Technologies conference. These related to ideas around sensory modalities, and how technology mediates the world for us in so many ways.

Some fascinating examples that Don Ihde drew upon included a recording from an artist/physicist by the name of Felix Hess. Hess has recorded the fluctuations of air currents (which generate sound in the inaudible infrasound end of the sonic spectrum) at 360 times the original speed, thus bringing these sounds up to audible levels. The noise of the Hess's recording that Don Ihde played during his talk sounded like a soft rain (and we know a thing or two about those in Galway, this summer). A deep droning hum that occasionally was heard was apparently the amplification of waves from storms in the distant North Atlantic, and the increased density of sounds heard about every 4 minutes was attributed to an urban population waking up and starting its day.

Don Ihde asked the question: “What if we were more scientifically multi-sensory?” In particular, he suggested that it is merely a cultural anomaly that we rely on visualisations to translate data for us, and we may have just as easily ended up using sound as our primary mechanism to interpret data. He referred to how his wife, and English language teacher used an oscilloscope to teach accents to non-native speakers- for them to see the sound, where they could not ‘hear’ differences. He made the point that you get richer knowledge by using multiple variations. Even more radically, he proposed that without technology there would be no science, as we would not have any instruments to mediate our experience (e.g. imaging technologies, telescopes, microscopes, etc.), and that science has always followed technological trajectories.

I wonder what conclusions Don Ihde would draw from NUI, Galway students’ uses of technology as part of their university ‘lifeworld’?

Visualisation and Presentation (Part 2)

Hans Rosling gave a follow-up talk at TED 2007, showing the next generation of his TrendAnalyzer software, which was subsequently bought by Google. In another stunning presentation he discusses world poverty, and ends by swallowing a sword. Seriously!

Photo-web?

Fiona has pointed out this fascinating demonstration of an amazing photographic software system (Photosynth) which has to be seen to be believed. It can link multi-scale imagery and produce complete representations from all existing images of a location on the web. Have a look at the video, it takes about 7 minutes.

Stephen Heppell's keynote

It's coming...just a wee bit of editing to be done and should be with you soon, completing the 'full set' of keynotes.....then we'll look at adding some info based on the parallel sessions and other materials online. See - all the more reason to subscribe to this blog.....

Bill McDaniel's Keynote

Bill McDaniel who works at the Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI), here in Galway spoke about some of his perceptions of the future of learning in the digital age. Bill (who hails from Texas) previously worked for Adobe and ran a number of his own companies before he moved over here to lead the E-Learning Cluster in DERI.

DERI itself is an interesting organisation which has successfully attracted significant external funding and is the world's largest research group on the Semantic Web, working to develop the new technologies that will transform the web (into, for example, a resource that can be searched on the basis of natural language, meaning and concepts instead of straight text matching searches as at present).

Anyway, here he is:

http://www.nuigalway.ie/celt/webcasts/BillMcDaniel/BillMcDaniel.html

virtual mud bath?

Well, this weekend is, in England, the traditional time of mudbaths (photo credit), loud music and quack crystal healers that constitutes the Glastonbury festival. For geeks and those of us who live in another country (if not another world) the Guardian newspaper has teamed up with Intel to provide a three day music festival in Second Life. This might be an opportunity to give this bizarre world, constructed entirely of electrons, a try whilst also hearing some music. Of course, you will no doubt come across all sorts of strange people there - but if it gets too heavy, skip over to the education zones including the NMC Campus.

Speaking of the NMC (New Media Consortium), they have produced an entertaining promotional video for their next conference (in 2008 at Princeton University).

More keynote videos

We hope, next week, to be able to provide you with a wider range of choices for viewing the conference keynote presentations. Whilst the best quality is via the Camtasia/Flash versions, these do take a little while to get started as they need to download a fair amount of the content before they can start playing. For those who are really impatient and can't wait for the 20-30 seconds or so it takes to start (sometimes a wee bit longer if your connection bandwidth isn't great), then we'll also provide a 'streamed' version. The streamed versions are similar in layout to the iPod video files, in that the video is in a 'picture in picture' view.

Anyway, for those who want to see more now, try this from Michael Kerres:

http://www.nuigalway.ie/celt/webcasts/MichaelKerres/MichaelKerres.html

Or this, from our local Director of Computer Services, Dr. Kieran Loftus:

http://www.nuigalway.ie/celt/webcasts/KieranLoftus/KieranLoftus.html

Ray Land - Keynote presentation

Prof. Ray Land, the opening keynote speaker, is captured here in the first of our recordings to go online. We are using Camtasia to provide these (in Flash format) and when you click you will have to wait about 20 seconds or so for the recording to start, but it's worth it! Ray also wanders off camera for the first couple of minutes, rattles his microphone, etc. All well known subversive actions to challenge the AV team - but we still caught him! ;-)

You can also download the PowerPoint slides, the audio only (in MP3 format) or a video iPod file (m4v).

Enjoy and discuss.

http://www.nuigalway.ie/celt/webcasts/RayLand/RayLand.html

Visualisation and Presentation

Many folk commented about how it was great to see the confidence with which speakers like Stephen Heppell can throw away the PowerPoint crutches that so many of the rest of us are still hobbling along with. An interesting example of presentation using a statistical representation system (Gapminder) was the talk by Hans Rosling (Professor of Global Health, medical doctor and researcher at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden - oh, and an amateur sword-swallower!) at the TED conference last year. Just look at these lovely statistics!

If you want to see some really amazing examples of what you can do with 'multi-touch' (mentioned in one of the talks), then have a look at this, also from TED last year. Now Microsoft have just released their 'surface' - also worth a look. Much better than your average coffee table - every student cafe should have one!

Big Brother - here I am and this is what I'm up to

What better way to run a surveillance society than to get enthusiastic citizens to agree to post onto the web their whereabouts and a short report (micro-blog) of their current activity? Make it easier for them by integrating it into their mobile phone and let them post up pictures, videos and other information. Self-tracking made easy - that's jaiku, the latest Finnish innovation.

Alternatively, it's a nifty way of keeping in touch with friends, family and colleagues. Perhaps in education, students, tutors and peer-groups can post updates quickly and easily by text message as they work collaboratively on projects and courses. Listen to/watch the inventor in the video below giving a really interesting presentation about social networking media, including an historical overview.

You decide which it is. Meanwhile, I'm available on my own personal Jaiku channel as per the link on the right hand side of this blog!

p.s. thanks, Ina for the info.

'in world' or out of this world?

In response to some emails enquiring about Second Life:

Well, my Second Life (SL) avatar, Iain Wise, tells me that he has started up an official group in SL for anyone who was at the conference or who works at the university to join. The group is called, rather imaginatively, "NUI, Galway." If you want to join and perhaps meet up for an exploration and some 'in world' seminars and discussions, then please do. Second Life membership is free and the membership of this group is also without charge.

So why not give it a go? As you'll see there are many universities and other organisations within SL (Sweden even has an embassy!). Go to http://www.secondlife.com/ and follow the instructions. Once you get 'in world' and sort out your avatar's appearance, basic controls, etc, then click on 'search' at the bottom of the window and type in NUI, Galway and then choose 'join group'. Let's see if you can manage that.

It's odd at first, but honestly you'll get the hang of it. Iain, in the meantime, will try to contact some experts and arrange some sessions with them, as well as tours of various education locations (including, for example, Harvard University's Berkman Centre). Oh, there's a handy pub called "The Blarney Stone" in SL's version of Dublin city centre, just along from Trinity College, so if you fancy a virtual pint of Guinness and to try Irish dancing....

Related links:

• Interesting project from OU and others, is schome.
• Harvard Distance Learning courses in SL: example of Law, intro for students
• JISC (UK) online conference, Second Life session in YouTube. (I know, it's getting out of hand!)
• Sloodle - first attempts to integrate SL with a VLE, interesting project at University of Paisley & partners in San Jose State University.
• Article in Times Higher this week on campuses in SL.