is it just me

Der Blog heißt ja “Is it just me” (Geht es nur mir so) und das aus gutem Grund. Ich frage mich manchmal sehr oft, ob nur ich gewisse Sachen cool, wertvoll oder eben voll daneben finde. Dieser Fall hier ist besonders interessant, da es um die Universität geht an der ich studierte und nun arbeite. Die Universität Paderborn hat es irgendwie verschlafen sich hinsichtlich der Raumsituation auf gestiegene Studierendenzahlen einzustellen und ist nun massiv am bauen, um den seit Jahren bestehenden Mangel mit Geldern aus verschiedenen öffentlichen Töpfen und Eigenkapital zu bekämpfen. Wenn ich richtig informiert bin, werden derzeit mindestens vier neue Gebäude gebaut und auch an der Fürstenallee entsteht mit der Zukunftsmeile Fürstenallee ein Projekt der Universität Paderborn.

Diese heutige News der Uni schießt dann jedoch den Vogel ab: die Uni stellt über den Winter 4 voll ausgestattete und beheizte Zelte bereit, in denen jeweils bis zu 80 Personen Platz haben und wo Lehre stattfinden wird. Es seien in der näheren Umgebung keine Räume gewesen, die man für diese Zwecke hätte anmieten können, deshalb habe man sich dazu entschlossen die Zelte aufzustellen und weist darauf hin:

Ähnliche Zelte werden auch ganzjährig für Ausstellungen und Messen verwendet.

Ich schätze dieser Hinweis soll den letzten Zweiflern an der Ernstheit der Angelegeheit zeigen, dass man hier von wohlerprobten Raumkonzepten spricht. Besonders interessant fand ich dann jedoch den Ausblick auf die nähere Zukunft der universitären Raumplanung:

Er [der Kanzler] gehe aber davon aus, dass spätestens ab dem Sommersemester 2011 der benachbarte Baumarkt für die Seminarveranstaltungen umgebaut und betriebsbereit sei und somit neue Raumkapazitäten zur Verfügung stünden.

Wie jetzt? Es werden Unmengen an Gebäuden gebaut und ab dem kommenden Sommersemester sollen Seminare im Baumarkt stattfinden. You must be kidding guys…

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This post is in German for once.

Heute ist es soweit, der finale Seminarband zum FSLN10 Seminar ist online gegangen. Unsere Studenten haben das gesamte Sommersemester hart gearbeitet und sich mit Themen rund um Technologie-gestütztes Lehren und Lernen beschäftigt und herausgekommen sind — wie wir finden — sehr gute Vorträge, Präsentationen und nutzbare Prototypen. Der Seminarband fasst nun die obligatorischen Seminarausarbeitungen in einem PDF zusammen.

Wie es sich für ein gutes Seminar gehört sind nicht nur die Folien online, sondern wir machen auch die schriftlichen Teile öffentlich zugänglich und hoffen auf reges Feedback dazu.

Im Detail werden die folgenden Themen im Seminarband behandelt:

• Real-Time Collaborative Learning (Rolf Wilhelm, Universität Paderborn)
• Medienbrüche im Web 2.0 (Dennis Horstkemper, Universität Paderborn und Marie-Luise Zankl, Universität Augsburg)
• Awareness in Learning Networks (Christian Mletzko, Universität Paderborn)
• Interaktive Lernressourcen (Felix Meyer, Universität Augsburg und Alexander Schäfer, Universität Paderborn)
• Soziale Netzwerkanalyse in Artefact-Actor-Networks (Matthias Moi, Universität Paderborn)
• Game-based Learning (Eva Andreeva, Universität Augsburg und Sebastian Lauck, Universität Paderborn)
• Universität 2.0 (Julia Schuhwerk, Universität Augsburg und Manuel Schmidt, Universität Paderborn)

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Another great SlideShare find on informal learning in social interactivity systems:

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Today we had the final presentations of our Future Social Learning Networks (FSLN) seminar. The seminar took place at the University of Paderborn and the University of Augburg (both in Germany). I have to say that I supervised a number of seminars during my time at the University of Paderborn, but what I experienced today was awesome. I supervised the seminar together with my colleague Nina Heinze, who also works at the KMRC in Tübingen.

The seminar was designed to let students experience the power of Social Media in real-life situations, so we decided to have them cooperating with a fellow student from another university in another city, far away from home. So they HAD to use tools for keeping in sync with their partner, to communicate, coordinate and cooperate (you remember the classification of groupware from Teufel et al.?). So we introduced social media tools in higher education to them (thanks again to Cristina Costa for doing the lovely voicethread) and the students started to test Twitter, Delicious, Mendeley, SlideShare, FlashMeeting and Co for their work. We told them that we’d expect a collaborative presentation, a final report and an computer science artifact that represents what they did. After the first week we scheduled team meeting with the student groups where they presented their first ideas on the focus of their work and how the could design or implement the required artifact. The same thing took place 3 weeks later where we focused the topic even further and decided what artifact should be created. Nina and me were surprised by both the creativity, engagement and quality of the results in such an early phase of the seminar – because we knew different from former seminars. During the following weeks, we had two FlashMeetings with the whole group and some individual talks on Skype and gave little advice where help was needed. We could follow the students’ work from their bookmarks on Delicious and the shared articles in Mendeley (thank you guys for the extended shared collection, you really rock), could follow Tweets and had short ad-hoc face-to-face meetings at the coffee machine. All in all a pretty satisfying work load during the semester with pretty motivated students.

Today we had the final presentations; the students in Paderborn were sitting in a room in Paderborn, the students in Augsburg were in Augsburg. We used uStream.tv to stream the presentations from one city to another and Skype desktop sharing to transfer sound and the slides to both places simultaneously. Furthermore we had a Twitter backchannel and my boss was attending from another location via Skype as well. I thought: what a mess, technology will never do this. BUT IT DID. And it did perfectly. Yeehaw. You can see a picture of the Paderbornian setting here:

But then the students started to present their work. All in all we had the following topics:

1. Real-time collaborative learning
2. Media disruptions in Web 2.0 environments
3. Awareness in Learning Networks
4. Interactive Learning Ressources
5. Social Network Analysis in Artefact-Actor-Networks
6. Game-based Learning
7. University 2.0

Our students not only invested a lot of time in their presentations and the writing of well-formulated and substantiated articles, they also presented stunning prototypical implementations and architectural design for IT systems that would really make a difference (see the pictures on Flickr). One team was developing a MashUp real-time collaborative learning environment that combined a whiteboard with video chat, twitter integration and the ability to load any RSS feed. The widget-based environment was running on Django in Python (a language we do not teach in Paderborn) and allows for the creation and storage of differing MashUps that can be used, shared, stored and re-accessed later. Another team analyzed the daily routines of students in Paderborn and Augsburg and modeled the study-related part in EPK models (something we never thought of). The team identified a range of media disruptions during the exam application for example (12 disruption in Paderborn, with 4 different tools involved). Finally, the did paper prototyping for an improved system that could be used at various universities and developed an infrastructure design. Another team was developing an interactive PDF where Flash content from nearly all social media platforms can be integrated. They showed a PDF that incorporated fully functioning SlideShare presentations and YouTube videos, the above-mentioned VoiceThread and even FlashMeeting replays from our meetings. Moreover, they developed an application CommentInAPDF that allows to send tweets from within a PDF (there even was an extended version where they automatically added an a priori defined hashtag to the tweet). The presentation of the PDF was so impressing and opened up so many visions of what to do with such technical options, I’m still stunned. Here is a video of their presentation (in German).

Finally the University 2.0 group did an online survey among 470 German-speaking students regarding their vision of the University in the year 2030 and combined those findings with qualitative interviews with scientific staff. Furthermore they likened their findings with future predictions (e.g. The Horizon Reports) and produced this awesome Prezi presentation.

I have to say that I never had so motivated students, which invested their valuable time and lifeblood into a seminar and produced so cool artifacts. During the feedback session they told us, that the collaboration with others that they couldn’t talk to other than mediated to social software was very motivating for them and that they learned to love the tools we introduced to them. Also they mentioned that the permanent availability of the supervisors via social media tools gave them the feeling safety and encouraged them to ask for help and council.

Students, that was rocket science, thank you so much. I hope to work with you again soon!

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Together with Steve Wheeler and Martin Ebner I could place another paper on Twitter at the WCC 2010 conference. Its title “All I need to know about Twitter in Education I learnedin Kindergarten” as well as the basic rules derive from Robert Fulghum’s 1988 book “All I Really Need To Know I Learned in Kindergarten“. During my diploma studies I wrote an article about the basic principles of pair programming that was adapted from the Fulghum book and thought: “one day you’ll borough these rules as well…” I’m pretty excited about the result:

Abstract:

Share everything.
Play fair.
Don’t hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
Be aware of wonder.

Latest draft version:
All I need to know about Twitter in Education I Learned in Kindergarten

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My friend Cristina Costa from the University of Salford (ok, basically she’s from Portugal) contributed to our FSLN 2010 seminar with a pretty cool Voicethread about Social Media in Higher Education.

Cristina blogs:

The presentation aims to be informal and interactive. I welcome your thoughts, questions and reflections about the small chunks of information I have provided in the voicethreads. I also hope we continue this conversation else where. I have some ideas how we could do this, but I prefer to let you to decide where we could ‘meet again’. I’ll be waiting for your suggestions!
And yes, this presentation only barely scratches the surface of Social Media, its advantages and implications. But we do have to start somewhere. I hope this will just be a start of something bigger. Thank you all for taking part in this. I also want to thank those who have helped me with this presentation. You will find them in the voicethread.

I am very thankful for this contribution as it shows not only the power of one’s network but also broadens the scope of our students. They collaborate with students from another University, a different course of studies and in addition they have the chance to listen to the thoughts of Cristina. What else could they ask for?

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I’m pretty excited because tomorrow is the first meeting of the joint seminar of Nina Heinze (University of Augsburg and Knowledge Media Research Center) and me. Some months ago we talked about a cooperation for STELLAR and came to our teaching tasks in this semester and decided to jointly organise a seminar. What we came up with is pretty cool (at least we think it is) and we described it in a recent paper as:

Even if there are heavy transformations in technology, science and society taking place in the recent years, university courses often still emphasize heads-on teaching methods with classic learning methods and learning resources. At the end of a course students had often acquired second hand knowledge, which is often detached from experience-based, constructive learning. The use of new media, the process of working in teams with application of these services as well as problem-solving scenarios remain out of students’ grasp. In this paper we introduce a participative and cooperative seminar setting at two German Universities that tries to overcome those limitations. We report about the pedagogic design and the practical implementation of the course, list objectives and intentions and describe the organizational structure of the seminar.

So if you notice a lot of buzz on Twitter, Facebook and Delicious tagged with #fsln10 – it because of our cool students that rock the social web. A tweetwall for the seminar can be found here

Here are the introductory slides from the seminar (in German):

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Soeben habe ich den sehr motivierenden und cool gemachten Call for Chapters von Martin Ebner und Sandra Schaffert zu einem Lehrbuch der besonderen Art bekommen. Martin und Sandra widmen sich mit ihrer Buchidee einem wichtigen Aspekt der heutigen Bildungslandschaft, der in bisherigen Lehrbüchern deutlich zu kurz kommt: das effektive Lehren und Lernen mit Methoden und Werkzeugen des Web 2.0. Der Name des Projekts ist “Lehrbuch für Lernen und Lehren mit Technologien. Ein interdisziplinäres Lehrbuch (L3T)”

Im Frühjahr 2011 wird das neue interdisziplinäre Lehrbuch rund um das Thema Lernen und Lehren mit Technologien erscheinen. Es wird aktuelle Themen, Einsatzgebiete, Forschungs- ergebnisse und Technologien aufereiten, die in vorhandenen Lehrbüchern (noch) nicht dargestellt wurden, deren Bedarf aber durchaus gegeben ist. Zudem haben sich die Initatoren des Projektes den freien Zugang auf Bildungsmaterialien an ihre Fahnen gehefet: Dieses Lehrbuch soll nicht nur als Buch, sondern kapitelweise auch frei verfügbar zum Herunterladen aus dem Internet angeboten werden. Natürlich werden dabei auch Verweise auf weitere ausgewählte Online-Ressourcen vorhanden sein. Mit diesem neuen Ansatz sollen die ständig zunehmenden Kurse, Seminare, Vorlesungen und Studiengänge im Bereich des technologiegestützten Lernens im deutschsprachigen Raum gezielt unterstützt werden. Ihre Vorschläge für Kapitel, Themen, Kooperatonen, Autor(inn)en und Gutachter(innen) sind herzlich willkommen!

Und hier noch der ansprechend gemachte digitale Aufhänger für das Projekt. Respekt. Echt cool. Ich würde mal sagen: auf geht’s…

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At this week’s SSE 2010 workshop, Prof. Bernd Brügge from TUM gave the keynote entitled “Opportunities for Social Software in Large-Scale Project Courses”. The talk was really inspiring and introduced the DOLLI project to us. This project was a cooperation between TUM and the airport Munich during which more than 50 students worked on a real-life problem for the airport. Not only the engaging topic but also they way they did project management (starting with RUP and switching to XP after that) and used video during the whole project is worth the viewing.

Also check out the website of the DOLLI project.

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It is my pleasure to announce the call for paper for the first workshop on Using Microblogging to enhance communication within Communities of Practice (MicroECoP) which will take place at the WCC 2010 conference in Brisbane, Australia. I organize this workshop together with my colleagues Steve Wheeler, Graham Attwell and Johannes Magenheim. You’ll find all the necessary information at the workshop website.

Microblogging has become a very popular social networking activity in the recent years. The limitation of 140 characters constrains the user to send concise messages. Twitter and other popular microblogging tools have acted as catalysts for a flurry of new and fast exchange of thoughts and artefacts, and from these activities a new area of research has emerged. There are case studies for the application of microblogging in scientific conferences, educational courses, distributed software engineering teams and corporate project groups.

A number of questions are emerging from the early use of micro-blogs as social networking tools that connect communities of practice and interest. These include: How can microblogs support the development of professional communities of practice? How can microblogs be effectively incorporated into formalised professional learning? How can we measure the optimum levels of engagement necessary for microblogs to be successful social networking tools within professional communities of practice? How are communities of practice enhanced or enriched as a result of the application of microblogs? What about issues of security, privacy and intellectual property – how can these be protected? Do the filtering features on microblogs constitute semantic tools?

The workshop 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

Papers up to 12 but no less than 8 pages are solicited. All submissions should be original and not published or under consideration elsewhere. Papers must correspond to the WCC 2010 conference format requirements, as they are described at the conference web site (http://www.wcc2010.com/call-for-papers/submission-instructions). All accepted papers must be presented at the conference by at least one of the authors. One of the authors of accepted paper needs to register for the workshop.

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