Cloud computing rocks, but yes you can get hacked... so

The twitterworld has been buzzing with the latest twitter hack that gave the hacker access to a lot of sensitive information. This sensitive information was accessible because of a series of factors: passwords that were intercepted amongst others, but what is on everyone's lips is the fact that cloud computing makes everyone's information more vulnerable for hackers. It was a very good and solid communications move of Twitter to openly spread the word on what happened.

(Image source: http://infreemation.net/cloud-computing-linear-utility-or-complex-ecosystem/)

A lot of teachers and knowledge workers have been increasingly publishing there documents online. And with the increase of mobile usage cloud computing (in its very basic form) becomes even more popular, mobile cloud computing is mentioned in the Horizon report from earlier this year. And what if learners become more at ease with password hacking programs (and lets be honest, using those is childsplay). But if we keep in mind to use different passwords for different levels of 'security' or add additional encryption if necessary, some easy hacking might be avoided.

There are a lot of benefits in using a central location for information and knowledge production: you can access it from anywhere, the whole team can work on it at the same time, it is transparent to everyone involved, ... But it does put your information out there for 'everyone' to see.

A lot of us remember Wargames in which the protagonist David hacks into computers for a variety of reasons. And if you link all the computers together, yes a risk is involved. But is it wise to through away the baby with the bath water? I think not. Cloud computing gives a lot of benefits, not only for producing knowledge and team work, but also has benefits for the environment and there is more as you can read in this article by Jim Williams from the Cloudcomputing magazine (and yes Jim, I trust my wife more, I am an old fashioned girl :-D

A more in depth look at all the (technical) features of cloud computing can be read here in the Cisco article or seen in the movie that features Padmasree Warrior from Cisco (and she is a warrior if you look at the apathy of some of the public, keeping going with that lack of interest is a challenge).

Let others find your most read blogposts via PostRank

[Look at the right side bar to see the blogpost ranking in action]

The last few months many people have been writing about the surplus of networks and finding the content you are looking for as quickly and simple as possible in a knowledge world.

Although I agree that linking, filtering and constructing are just a couple of qualities that a contemporary learner (and I see all of the contemporary professionals as learners) should have to keep updated on the latest content and knowledge in a particular field, it is not easy to disseminate your own knowledge. Many knowledge workers mention many options: feeds, streams, blogs, collaborative networks... but at the end of the day you yourself need to stay on top of what people are interested in. But if networks are getting increasingly important, it will be essential to provide your network(s) with immediate extra's.

So what part of your brain do others want to pick? What niche might you have? In order to do this you can use a number of analytic tools, but those tools are just providing data for your own interest. What about data that is of immediate use to your own network? Today I came across an easy to use widget that gives just that bit of extra: PostRank. This widget extrapolates your most read blogposts, enabling new readers to take a look at those particular posts others found interesting, thus increasing the chance of your posts being followed. And in addition, if they are interested in case those readers have a specific topic of interest, they can search on that specific topic in the lower end of the widget (look at the widget on the side).

In addition to this widget they have a twitter widget for educational blogs as well: http://twitter.com/pr_education (get picked up in this twitter by adding #postrank & #education) through which I found the link to a post of Stephen's Web on 'Should Learning be Free and Open?' written by Curt Bonk.

By the way Stephen Downes Ol'Daily is one of my favorite ways to stay on top of what experienced learners have to say about learning... and I do not think the ol'daily has a official hyped term to define what it does, it is just the thing to get connected to if you are interested in learning content (I still have a lot to learn and still have a lot of things to change in order to improve dissemination of interesting learning topics).

Thanks to the global educational blogger Christian Kreutz for getting me posted on postrank.

visualizations galore for Academic, Personal and Business Intelligence

In this increasingly data related world, visualizing your research is important. There are lots of old school ways (Excel, SPSS...) which give straight forward data in correct (rather square) graphics, but now you can add some extra 'Umph' to your complete data overview.

The online analytics blog: Juice Analytics (which features a lot of free tools and open source apps) just released a wonderful post on analytics applications that will pull your data into the new visualization era.

Two data applications that are mentioned in the Juice analytics blog caught my eye: the IBM's many eyes one and the mobile data application RoamBI. The latter is only available for the iPhone mobile device (a pity).

Many eyes: is a really easy to use visualization application that enables you to quickly put your data in a visualization AND interact with people in the familiar 2.0-way. If you are into the whole social media feel, this application feels familiar.

The RoamBI app allows you to show statistics on the go or roam through them as you yourself are on the road. The visuals are compact, but you can slide through them in a nice way. But to be comprehensive and keep an overview the desktop applications will be advisable, but to keep in touch with data while on the go, this mobile app gives a nice extra.

For both applications you need to register to get going.

In the meanwhile I am procrastinating as I should be tackling spss again...

Layar the first mobile augmented reality browser

Augmented reality is the natural next step off technological mobile applications. Augmented reality gives you just that bit more information when and where you need it.

Layar is a Dutch app, build by Claire Boonstra, Raimo van der Klein and Maarten Lens-FitzGerald from the sprxmobile company. Layar builds on the Android platform. It gives the mobile user immediate feedback on what the camera of his mobile is 'looking' at. The extra information is displayed in layers. You can switch between layers as well.

The examples mentioned are mainly commercial (estate prices, restaurants, hotels...). But this application might be very interesting for educational purposes, to get learners out in the street and amongst the topics they need to learn. Now that is ubiquitous learning if you ask me. And, if you would link augmented reality to the semantic web, we would probably have something like the fourth dimension. Cool idea.

At this moment Layar is available for the T-Mobile G1, HTC Magic and other Android phones in Android Market for the Netherlands. Other countries will be added later.

Want to hear more about Layar and see it in action? Well lookie here:



It does feel as though the world is becoming less and less surprising though. If everything can be viewed and found... there is not much left for exploration. Unless you are looking for a rundown, very dangerous ghetto to track down a homeless person... those people and areas will probably be the last to be added. I hope humanity will build star-travel-ships soon... need to have some surprises in my life.

Joining the Web Research 4 Beginners online conference next week... take a look

For the researchers out there that are interested in using online sources to build up their research, this is a great meeting point: the Web Research 4 Beginners Online Conference.

What can you expect?
Starting 22 June up until 26 June, during five days, two presentations a week will be given by a variety of speakers. The conference is hosted by the University of Manitoba, home of Web Research conference.
They even have a conference tab for any kind of following purposes: WR4B09.

The conference is multidisciplined, with international speakers and it can all be followed wearing your pyjama's or any which way you want to.

Let me just copy from their homepage:

"Is web research for me?

Ever consider online data collection for your research? Can web research be practical for longitudinal studies? Could one implement a clinical treatment online? Are ethical issues tractable? What features are important in survey research software? These and other questions will be addressed by this online conference, which is designed to provide the curious web research novice with an overview of the issues, promise, and pitfalls of online research.

The convenient conference format will allow you to:

• participate from a personal computer anywhere,
• attend two presentations each day for five days,
• hear expert speakers talk live,
• watch their slides at the same time, and
• ask questions by text or voice.

Compelling reasons to attend:

• Speakers with academic and private sector backgrounds from 6 countries;
• Really inexpensive registration fee — CAD$40;
• No travel required (well, OK, that could be a drawback);
• No accommodation costs (use the saved money for something fun);
• Multitasking opportunities if things get slow;
• Small carbon footprint;
• Minimal pandemic risk; and
• Flexible dress code (pyjamas?).

If the topics look interesting and the schedule works for you, register now."

I do not know about you, but I am enrolling myself immediately...

Opera Unite for Windows/Mac/Linux gives you immediate access to group or personal learning spaces

Today I tried out the newly launched Opera Unite application. It got to my attention through Chris Mills from Opera who published the introducation to Opera Unite just today.

The general idea is quite straight forward: you download the latest Opera Unite version for your OS and you install it. After that you enable the Opera Unite server by using the Opera Browser, clicking on the 'tools' tab, choosing 'opera unite server' and enabling it. At this point you do need to subscribe to this service (giving your username, password, e-mail address) like you would with any other social media app. From that moment onward you can share what you want with who you want.

What is this app about? Well, it gives you the possibility to build user/learner groups and exchange files (documents, pictures), use chat-service, leave notes... without having to go through another one's server. Opera Unite makes your computer into a web-server in which you can host both websites, chats and file transfers.

Once you launched the Opera Unite service, you can try out some of the ready made features, but the people at opera also offer the possibility to roll up your sleeves and start developing your own set(s) of tools.

So what does this add to the already existing landscape of apps? To my knowledge it will give me the possibility of instantaneously starting up a learner group, keep in touch with people I need to work with closely and within the 'natural' environment of the web. And of course Google comes close, but lets face it ... this is Opera, jeej!

Although Opera mentions that the Unite server does not have trouble with firewall settings, I have not tried it thoroughly enough, but it does seem to live up to that claim.

In a nutshell you can see how they promote their general launch in this post. I only started it, exchanged some files and photos and I must say it works swiftly and quick. At first glance, I like it!

#eden09: educational shift in Japan, using ubiquitous learning by Haruo Nishinosono

a collaborative platform for designing ubiquitous learning by Haruo Nishinosono, Institute for Learning Development, Kyoko Saio and Kunio Nakamura , Japan

(Grey haired, glasses wearing man in a beautiful black suite and with a very sensitive way of speaking in which you can feel the grandeur of sensitive Japanese phrasing to highlight critical thoughts. It reminds me very much of my grandparents way (strong Protestant) of touching sensitive issues.)

While he looks at designing ubiquitous learning, quality is mentioned as a key factor:

• Ubiquitous learning aims to realize a learning process and/or outcomes free from teachersʼcontrol and intervention.
• Despite such characteristics, ubiquitous learning should be designed to achieve quality learning outcomes and a high level of learning.
• How can we describe such high quality learning without alluding to instructional objectives?

So he looks at the conversion from a teacher lead instruction to a teacher growing by learning his/her practical experiences, while looking at learners that want to become teachers.

I taped rather a lot because this presentation also gave an overview of how the shift from teacher/student went into more autonomous learning.

The presentation focused on the mentality shift from the more teacher-student oriented approach to more autonomous learning and especially the process Haruo Nishinosono went through as he was trying to make this change happen. So he takes the audience along his ever changing educational approach leading up to where it is now. This feels like a necessary process, as history or the processes behind a result are sometimes forgotten or not archived.

Although the quality of the movie is not optimal, I do hope it adds an extra layer to the slides.



In addition I found slides from a previous presentation, some of the slides are similar, others different with more text, so the combination of both the movie and the other slides, I found complimentary. I hope you do too. Meanwhile I will ask the shown slides as well... I'll keep you informed.

#jobat for luckiest employee or wondering why I find it hard to sell myself?

Calling for your help, because there is this weird feeling that I cannot seem to put my finger on. I think that as educators we can promote others, we can promote our learning, our projects... but we loose the ability to sell ourselves.

This week I got selected as one of the ten luckiest employees in Flanders, which is motivating in itself, but something happened during the interview, and that has happened to me when I apply for a job.

So my question to you is: how do you sell yourself (as a person who is into eLearning/learning) and is it easy for you to do so?


Let me tell you why this question came to mind or first let me situate the setting...
The 10 luckiest employees were chosen based on a written, more general statement and the writing part is somehow easier to produce, because it focused on the institute that I work for and I can sell that, because I like it.
After this selection a personal interview followed. All ten of us laureates of this competition (the real finalist will be chosen next week and is chosen based on an interview they took from all of us) needed to do an interview with a jury of 5 people. They asked questions, I answered and after the interview I suddenly found myself wondering about what I said and especially what I did not say?

This made me think... I did mention my employer during the interview, I did talk about a lot of things, but I somehow managed not to talk about the things that make me get out of bed and jump into eLearning and into work? How strange is this?
I did NOT mention the fact that I use new media with great pleasure, that I can travel, that I can discuss my research with peers in many ways, that I love the international aspect... all of these factors make the difference, so why did I just focus on the working environment in general and very little on myself?

Why could not I sell myself in the same way, based on the facts that really do it for me? Apparently, being in education and working mainly to motivate learners has made me focus on benefits for others. Give me a group and I dare to say I can get the energy flowing, but everytime I need to sell myself purely for myself, I forget things, and mostly the facts...

The same happens when I go for a new job, if I am not 'headhunted' (= asked by someone who knows my work), I have great difficulty telling people why I would be a good addition to their team (and let me assure you, I really suck at it. My friends have a great time when I tell them what happened during those interviews - sigh), what I do is go for how great they are...

So is anybody out there having the same experience? Could this be part of being an educator that is mainly focused on improving others?

New online book on mobile learning -available for free download

New online book on mobile learning -available for free download by Jan Herrington, Anthony Herrington, Jessica Mantei, Ian Olney and Brian Ferry (editors), New technologies, new pedagogies: Mobile learning in higher education, Faculty of Education, University of Wollongong, 2009, 138p. ISBN: 978-1-74128-169-9 (online)

Available: http://ro.uow.edu.au/newtech/

It is fully downloadable from this site either as individual chapters or as the whole book in pdf form.

This online book describes a study, funded by Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC), that involved teachers in the Faculty of Education at the University of Wollongong implementing innovative teaching approaches to support mobile learning. Palm Smartphone and Apple iPod technologies were used by undergraduate and postgraduate students to assist their learning across a range of curriculum areas.

The book outlines authentic activities, assessment strategies, and professional learning approaches that teachers across the higher education sector can easily adapt and implement within their own discipline areas.

Thanks to IAmLearn to send this new information around.

#eden09: my poster presentation on mobile continued medical education

This is a link to the poster presentation I gave today at EDEN09. During this conference mobile learning was not really mentioned a lot.

I also put in the movie of my (always moving) body as I present. The movie was filmed by Kristof who I filmed yesterday, so he put his foot down and told me I needed to put myself and my way of presenting stuff out there as well. So yes, I have problems with standing still... (amongst a speech impediment that is enlarged by my camera microphone, huge glasses, rather chaotic, ... but hey, that's me :-)