Hi. My name ist Wolfgang Reinhardt and this is my first try of writing a real blog (not just to tweet). I’m a continuous learner in the field of Technology Enhanced Learning, Twitter addict, CEO of UMITS Limited and father of two little sons born in May 2009 & December 2011. Moreover, I am research assistant at the Computer Science Education Group at the institute of Computer Science of the University of Paderborn in Germany. In April 2012 I received a PhD for my thesis on Awareness Support for Knowledge Workers in Research Networks (direct link to the thesis). Moreover, I am the secretary of the European Association of Technology Enhanced Learning (EA-TEL).

If you want to know more about my profile, skills and knowledge, have a look at my dedicated resume website.

I’m asking myself many questions why things are like they are and seek for answers. In the last years I developed a strong relation to social media and the interactions between actors in the emerging social networks. Together with many fellow researchers I investigated the application of Twitter in conference settings (see my publications) and constantly applied social media to university courses. In my  point of view students should not learn about new tools but with new tools so they know about their strengths and weaknesses. In the context of my PhD thesis I tried to enhance awareness in distributed research networks with several tools and models that try to explain their collaboration. One early result of my endeavors is the model of Artefact-Actor-Networks which tries to combine social network with the results of social interaction: artefacts. Another technical artifact that directly stems from my PhD work is the Social Scientific Event Management System ginkgo that tries to make the organization and participation in scientific events more fun and more useful.