Didactical Design of Interactive Media

The power of nerd communities

2007-03-23T10:39:00.000+01:00

Heck, when Nintendo first dropped the word about the Wii, probably nobody but me ;) was seeing the potential. But now Wii sales is running circles around Xbox360 and PS3. The coolest thing for me is the nerd community of people hacking away with the Wii remote.

And this one of the coolest things I have seen yet for the Wii (and a humble Mac :) )

A scratchin, bitchin Loop Machine created by the Amazing Rolo - very nice music AND computer nerd!

The Wii remote is bringing whole body movement into computer interaction for the masses - how silly people look glued to their ~~old school~~tired gamepads.

Have a look for yourself, I am still thinking about the educational possibilities.

By the way, I will consolidate my non-official Blogs on Didactalab to get some steady posting stream and much more control about my blog - I cannot do cool stuff with this one (e.g. including the Amazing Rolo Video, so you have to head over to his page).

How many standards must a E-Learning system walk down?

2006-10-14T23:57:00.000+02:00

Alright, I am a E-learning standards sceptic - I have implemented to many of them in the database structure of my apps only to see the wither or being not useful. You could say I am burned and a skeptic now. With this context in mind You can imagine that this headline put me in full B*llsh*t-mode: PR:IMS Global Learning Consortium Announces Breakthrough Education Industry Standard for Digital Learning Content. Everyone in the industry seems to be backing it - but does it deliver? After joining the IMS/GLC-community, no more substantial info could be found than this blurb "The IMS Common Cartridge specification combines three of IMS’s most widely adopted specifications, Content Packaging, Question/Test Interoperability, and Metadata, with the IMS Tools Interoperability Protocol, which enables standards-based data exchange between learning management platforms and standalone learning tools, such as adaptive tutors or assessment engines."

I will wait with any comments until I have seen this at work at Online Educa in Berlin this year.

Yahoo Search in Context

2006-10-02T08:43:00.000+02:00

A new technology called Y!Q Y!Q is available at Yahoo!. This allows You as a webdev to embed an inline search link to do a pre-configured live search. Now if we could do something like this for every word on the page…

Not having a TV is great!

2006-08-05T01:40:00.000+02:00

Because You watch something like Nicholas Negroponte's talk at TEDTalk about the 100$-labtop.
Three comments:
- make it a 100€-labtop and You are in the target right from the start ;) (some Europatriotism included)
- I give it 9 out of 10 Steve Jobs reality distortion field points (what happened to the handle, btw?)
- I am really interested in the type of educational content they want to put on it. I volunteer for any project going on in one of the states - just contact me at my university blog.

Jeff Han

2006-08-05T01:17:00.000+02:00

I dig this guy, I mean, how cool can You get? I really would give this presentation 7 out of 10 Englebart points for showing the future and 6 out of 10 Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field points (1 point taken away for the shape he is drawing at the end - well, if it was by purpose, he get's 10 out 10 Nipplegate points anyway :) Now have a look at Jeff Han on TED Talks! Not new, but awesome to see him demonstrate it.

Blackboard blacks out with patent claims

2006-08-03T09:27:00.000+02:00

The recent patent awared to Blackboard on e-Learning Technology shakes the industry and is another example of "how stupid can it get with patents on software?". But this one touches one of my core working areas. Good ol' Stephen Jones breaks it down nicely. What to do know? Plenty!
(1) First contact all the politicans You can get access to and tell them, that this is another example of stupidity and NOT GOOD FOR ECONOMY AND EMPLOYMENT (only thing they understand)
(2) Tell everyone with a faint interest in software dev or entrepreneurship or a brain about this personally. Discuss it!
(3) Contribute to the Moodle page about Online Learning history or the Wiki page.

And then… just create something better than plain virtual learning environments as described in Blackboard's "patent", which covers according to Jay Cross:

"A course-based system for providing to an educational community of users access to a plurality of online courses, comprising: a) a plurality of user computers, with each user computer being associated with a user of the system and with each user being capable of having predefined characteristics indicative of multiple predetermined roles in the system, each role providing a level of access to a plurality of data files associated with a particular course and a level of control over the data files associated with the course with the multiple predetermined user roles comprising at least two user’s predetermined roles selected from the group consisting of a student role in one or more course associated with a student user, an instructor role in one or more courses associated with an instructor user and an administrator role associated with an administrator user, and b) a server computer in communication with each of the user computers over a network, the server computer comprising: means for storing a plurality of data files associated with a course, means for assigning a level of access to and control of each data file based on a user of the system’s predetermined role in a course; means for determining whether access to a data file associated with the course is authorized; means for allowing access to and control of the data file associated with the course if authorization is granted based on the access level of the user of the system."

I mean, take out "course" and it sounds awfully like Groupware or Content Management System. Probably everyone doing research in E-Learning has implemented such a system before 1999 (This is a Publication from me 1995 about a system I used 1993 and 1994 in a vocational school with Netscape 0.9x.)!
While Jay is patenting "Learning", I think he shots too short. I will patent "Thinking"!

To quote some nice movie: "Good night and good luck!!"

Physical Desktop Interface

2006-06-27T16:23:00.000+02:00

A very interesting project trying to use a physical desktop metaphor can be seen here. I am still not sure that dealing with documents is the right thing for handling information on a computer. I mean, it is a non-physical physical sim, so it follows the desktop metaphor more closely than my Mac SE (and everything I owned after that), BUT - why not make a non-physical non-metaphoric way to handle the stuff on my computer? Some things are instantly missing, such as a good search interaction. Nevertheless, worth a look and much more interesting than Vista-snoozefest! Hopefully, the upcoming Leopard sneak peak at WWDC will be mindboggling (not that I believe that they can really say goodbye to Finder)

Ajax and WebObjects

2006-05-23T08:37:00.000+02:00

Frustrated by Apple not improving the components of WebObjects for years, it is good to now that the folks of Project Wonder get their act together and provide Ajax integration (they wrap around the Rico framework). Another good source of great componentents is the Noxymo framework.

Google Web Toolkit

2006-05-18T12:22:00.000+02:00

A new trend - so it seems - is to provide Programming Frameworks for Web Applications for free. Not long after Yahoo and Adobe now industry giant Google is offering the Google Web Toolkit to build AJAX apps in the Java language..
I am currently also checking out Flex from Adobe formerly Macromedia (my God, if Apple should buy Adobe this would become a rather long name: Apple formerly Adobe formerly Macromedia :) )

Building Flex with Xcode!

2006-05-12T22:43:00.000+02:00

Flex 2.0 Beta 3 from Adobe Labs has a cool new IDE based on Eclipse, but the beta is not available for Mac OS X - with beta 3 the installer is screwed on Windows, so I was delighted to find this info how to use Xcode with the Flex SDK. It is just the SDK, so You just have the compiler tools available and no IDE, but this is a good place to start!

World of Warcraft Survey - Community Building and Addiction

2006-03-18T21:08:00.000+01:00

Dear WoW enthusiasts,

a student of mine is conducting a survey about community building and addiction in WoW. It would be great if as many people as possible would participate in this survey.

Rapid developments in economy, technology and society have caused online video games, in particular MMORPGS, to gain recent media focus. However, this does not mean that this form of communication and companionability is necessarily counterproductive, as the media has often portrayed. MMORPGs create a new type of pasttime and allow for communication that otherwise might not exist. In our survey, we aim to evaluate the positive and negative social aspects of this new genre.

Of particular interest to us is the way in which friendships that may otherwise have never been possible can be formed and whether or not you are able to develop personally whilst investing time in a virtual world.

We will be looking specifically at the popular World of Warcraft MMORPG, exploring the community structure and trying to find out what elements keep players absorbed in the social aspects of the game.

The following questions are to be answered based upon your experiences playing WoW (World of Warcraft).

Because the questionnaire is aimed at all players, some of the statements may be quite broad and across the board. Therefore we ask of you to keep in mind that:

- "Other gamers/players" refers to every player in WoW, not just your own guild or circle of friends in game.
- "Community" on the other hand refers to your own guild or another group that you regularly play with.
- "Problems/duties/questions" and "community themes" refer to any topic that could be relevant in your community, i.e. game mechanics, character development and improvement or new content (patches).
- The options available to you when responding to the survey are "does not apply" [1] "rarely applies" [2], "often applies" [3] to "always applies"[4].

To participate in the WoW-online-questionnaire please click this link:

WoW Online Study - please click here

After clicking this link use this username and password WarcraftUS and choose the html-format (not the PDF one).

All answers along with all other data in our research will be treated in an anonymous and confidential fashion.

You can find more infos about me at my work blog.

Amazon S3

2006-03-17T20:57:00.000+01:00

Well, it's not only Google delivering database service! Amazon is offering S3 - Simple Storage Service. What to do with it? Here You can find 10 ideas, I am still digging about this. More info can be found here.

Inevitable, is it? Google Pages!

2006-02-24T17:33:00.000+01:00

OK, this was missing right from the start in Googles toolchest: A webpage editor.
While this is cool because they just execute their biz plan to the max and integration is always a good argument to tie in customers, slowly this reminds me of the 7th season of DS9! Anyone remember the Dominion?

Pocket sized projectors, new Ebook-Readers and some ideas

2006-02-16T17:52:00.000+01:00

Hey, this is what I am looking for - getting away from hunching over a labtop screen: Light Blue Optics mini projectors - allthough I only believe it when I have seen it. This would be perfect for realizing PolyVisions Thunder Virtual Flipchart System.

In other news, Sony's E-book-reader uses E-Ink - that looks interesting, but I am still waiting for an iBook Tablet instead :)

At least we know we are doing things right!

2006-02-16T16:04:00.000+01:00

37signals gets a lot of media buzz these days and their new product Campfire, a simple web-based group chat gets its share as well. I am one of the developers of EverLearn, an integrated learning environment / LCMS / learning community server / you name it, which has a Campfire-like chat for two years now. Do we will bitter that CampFire is all buzz now? No, it just shows us, that we are working in the right direction and that our new project coming later this year will be at last two years ahead :) This time, we have people on board for marketing and business, though… Great times ahead!

Devstuff from Yahoo!

2006-02-14T23:36:00.000+01:00

Hmm, is this the kind of standardization we need for all this Ajax-stuff? Yahoo! UI Library? Well, at least some lib with a strong backing, but there are numerous others (see other posts). BUT what is nice to see is the Yahoo! Design Pattern Library. I like this and it is all BSD license. I will check it out for a project.

Free educational pod-& vodcasts

2006-02-05T16:32:00.000+01:00

At LearnOutLoud you can find a collection of both commercial and free audio and video contents. For example in the free category they list material from MIT: Focus on Educational Innovation by Charles Vest. A nice portal, but when will we see a Google p/vodcast search? Or is the iTunes Musicstore the p/vodcast portal to choose?

How fast are You?

2006-02-05T16:26:00.000+01:00

This is a nice and simple test of Your typing speed (TyperA) - I reached 347, what score can You achieve?
Good thing about this little Java app is the instant feedback (words with typos are shown red, current score, current typing speed etc.). And it is available for different languages!

Wikis can look beautiful

2006-01-30T10:31:00.000+01:00

OK, did I say "ugly as any Wiki"? The folks at StikiPad have created a wiki which pleases the eyes and the (dev-)heart. And the markup seems to settle, too:
Textile is the clear winner.

Future of Tech Publishing?

2006-01-29T22:12:00.000+01:00

An interesting experiment at Ajax Patterns - a wiki for the upcoming Ajax Patterns Book. Looks ugly as any Wiki, but more important: does it work participaytion wise? Full text is online. More info about the copyright and licenses used.

iTunes University

2006-01-27T16:05:00.000+01:00

It is a cool idea: faculty and students put bootlegs of lectures on Apple - Education - iTunes U, but with all the lackluster succes of digital and mobile lectures projects - is this a real good new service for students? Most of my lectures depend heavily on slides I am showing. Are students really listening to this? But perhaps some students really try to recapulate their lectures? It could be nice if one assign students to create a five minute podcast summary… . Yeah, I will try that next semester.

Ubiquitous learning environments at last?

2006-01-25T18:31:00.000+01:00

Combine location-based pictures and notes (another project here) together with structured blogging and You could get something I call *Ubiquitous learning environments* - have a look at my vision of this (Wolf, Karsten D. (2001): WWW-based Learning Communities: Moving from patchwork environments to ubiquitous learning infrastructures. In: Dijkstra, S. / Jonassen, D. & Sembill, D.: Multimedia Learning – Results and Perspectives. (Peter Lang) Frankfurt/M., New York.)

The good and the ugly of Ajax

2006-01-25T12:31:00.000+01:00

A rather good approach to Ajax from a software architect's point of view:
Behaviour : Using CSS selectors to apply Javascript behaviours

Ben says: After all the work of WASP and others to promote clean markup, valid pages and graceful degradataion via css - it sucks that we're going back to tag soup days by throwing javascript tags into our html.
I am still not sure if Ajax-technology is ready for primetime deployment. Don

Simple and elegant

2006-01-25T11:37:00.000+01:00

Very nice examples how to implement websoftware for organizing and collaborating: Basecamp, Backpack, Writeboard und Ta-da List from a cool company (37signals.com). Excellent reduction (no bloatware) and good web interfaces. I will try them out in my next seminar.

The Zen of Javagames

2006-01-24T12:30:00.000+01:00

Independent game devs rock and Hell of Sand is a good example of the more exotic sides of the web. Streams of Sand, Water and Oil fall down and You can play with it by drawing barriers, plants, even use fire. This is probably the next thing to a Nintendo DS you can get on a PC/Mac.

Karsten's SuprGlu on SuprGlu

2006-01-22T21:57:00.000+01:00

Putting all stuff together is much easier with Suprglu: here is Karsten's SuprGlu. This is fun!

More info about user interface design for Office 12

2006-01-22T21:30:00.000+01:00

There IS good research at Microsoft. Check out Jensen Harris's An Office User Interface Blog, where he explains the new UI for Office 12! These guys are really spending lot of thoughts on their re-design, something I never suspected as a Word-User from version 4.0 on a Macintosh SE. Since then imho, nearly nothing has happened and usability is down. Let's see if this redesign is more iWordish.

Structured Blogging

2006-01-22T21:29:00.000+01:00

Structured Blogging reminds me of using templates in Web-Applications. Don't make it to hard for users to reach their goal (see more info about Results-Oriented Design here and there). Free text structuring and layouting is hard and takes too much time! Restrain and give structure and the user can concentrate on content. At least in the E-learning area this makes a lot of sense!

When the learning goes underground, the underground goes learning!

2006-01-22T19:48:00.000+01:00

I am currently writing an article about "Webservices for communities (of practice)". This article at Connectivism Blog discusses people in organizations go underground in their learning efforts. Informal Learning (german research paper is getting more and more important in the E-Learning landscape (the ever busy Jay Cross is putting it into a book).

Managing learning is much about supporting a culture of learning. Watch this space for more information about the publication.

The Edublog Awards 2005

2006-01-22T19:40:00.000+01:00

This is a cool list as a starter for getting into the Blogosphere of Education: The Edublog Awards - The Edublog Awards 2005 Winners. Good reading and a lot of stuff to cover!

The ISI Multilingual Glossary of Statistical Terms

2006-01-22T00:14:00.000+01:00

If You need to translate statistical terms into some other language, rejoice: the ISI Multilingual Glossary of Statistical Terms is great for all people doing empirical research.