Leweb 10 I was at the office this week and had the opportunity to watch a big part of the Leweb 10 conference program, which was streamed online. It must be said, Leweb just rocks, offering everyone to join the...
Acceptation of the LMS by the secondary school teacher After 2 years of collecting data, I finally got to a more exciting point in my PhD: analyzing the data and publishing the results.
In my first study, we search for reasons behind the technology acceptation...
Hooray, a new MOOC is born: #PLENK2010 I started this blog almost a year ago, when I followed my first MOOC (Massive Open Online Course): CCK09. From this week on a new MOOC, PLENK 2010, will be facilitated by George Siemens, Stephen Downes,...
Today, I had the privilege to attend an internet conference in my hometown. The line-up was quite impressive, but 3 speakers were outstanding: Jeremy Keith, Gary Vaynerchuck and James Bridle. I made some notes and grabbed some videos that are shared by the conference organizers.
“The web does forget on what you stay or do.” Read: don’t be afraid about Google of Facebook.
“Storing information on a long term is a problem.” Keith’s advice: DIY (hosting), ‘open’ rules (format, data) and use a liberal policy (Creative Commons).
LinkedIn has never been the most sexy service out there. But lately, they have done some improvements that I appreciate.
They just introduced InMaps (found via BVLG), a product that let’s you visualize your network. The result is a color-coded map that represents the different groups in your network. Colors are given to people who have (or had) the same employer, people working in the same industry etc. This is my map (click to enlarge):
On my map, I found 3 groups related to a former employer, 2 groups who are related to a specific industry and 3 groups who where difficult to label. A lot of my network consists of people I met on unconferences, blogdinners or via social media networks. The only thing they have in common is a blog and/or a Twitter-account.
Something interesting are the bigger names on your map. They represent people who are the most connected within that specific cluster or group. Most probably they are they are the ‘influentials’ within that group.
One more thing. I can’t really see who is closest to me on the map, but one of them is my better half. Funny.
I was at the office this week and had the opportunity to watch a big part of the Leweb 10 conference program, which was streamed online. It must be said, Leweb just rocks, offering everyone to join the party from their office chairs.
If you’re not familiar with Leweb, they bring the hottest entrepreneurs, investors and media personalities of the internet on stage. This year, my two favorite talks were a bit more off topic. They have been labeled as “TED“-talks and I agree on that.
The first talk I liked was by Dr. Bertrand Piccard from Solar Impulse. His grandfather made the first ascents into the stratosphere, his father made the deepest dive ever and Betrand himself was the first to fly around the world in a balloon. His next project is even more challenging; fly around the world in a solar airplane. I admire people like him a lot, their drive and belief to change the world. They just do it:
The second talk was given by Ariel Garten, CEO of Interaxon. Her company is all about thought controlled computing. I was stunned about the possibilities their technology can offer: from a greater gaming experience to a medical revolution for those sitting in a wheelchair. I have to say, Ariel made me think of a character in a fairy tale, but she and her technology are not fiction but reality. Have a look at this great technology:
After 2 years of collecting data, I finally got to a more exciting point in my PhD: analyzing the data and publishing the results.
In my first study, we search for reasons behind the technology acceptation of learning management systems (LMS) by secondary school teachers and also investigate the instructional use of the LMS. I ‘ve been writing 2 conference papers about it and they are submitted to international conferences. My first scientific article is almost ready to be submitted. If they get accepted, the results will be available… somewhere next summer.
So unfortunately, I can’t publish lots of details already, but I did publish my first international conference presentation on Slideshare.
I started this blog almost a year ago, when I followed my first MOOC (Massive Open Online Course): CCK09. From this week on a new MOOC, PLENK 2010, will be facilitated by George Siemens, Stephen Downes, Rita Kop and Dave Cormier. PLENK 2010 stands for “Personal Learning Environments Networks and Knowledge 2010″.
I’m especially interested in weeks 2 topic “contrasting personal learning with institutional learning”. More specifically the question: is a PLE the opposite of an LMS, or can it be part of it? Just in case you don’t know, my PhD research is about the use of LMSes (also known as VLE or ELO) in secondary schools.
My focus on the LMS topic is one of the main reasons I guess, why this MOOC will be different for me then the previous one. I have this one niche domain now I will focus on. Other reasons are the fact I did CCK09 for credits (Belgian PhD requirements) and I was a MOOC newbie last year. To conclude: I will focus and scan this time, instead of drowning.
If you want to follow the course, you can still subscribe. If you just want to lurk, you can choose between the daily newsletter, the Moodle course, all sorts of online publications tagged #plenk2010 or my favorite (non-official) channel: the #PLENK2010 Daily.
Can you imagine a community that’s spending between £209,976,000 and £1.9Billion worth a year of unpaid labour for a commercial organisation? (via Martin Weller, the Ed Techie)
That’s exactly what scientists do by peer reviewing articles of other scientists for the academic publishers. Research being a tax-payer funded activity, one could expect the output is freely available. Wrong. Most universities suffer from an almost never ending subscription price increase. Last week, this resulted in the University of California considering a boycott of the Nature Publishing group (via Frederik Questier on Twitter).
So I wondered, me, being a junior researcher and a big fan of open access, who wants to publish 2 articles next year (*), would I be able to publish in Open Access journals only?
The answer today is ‘No’. I did some research, and it looks like in my field almost no journals are already indexed in the ISI Web of Science. So I guess I will have to spend some tax-money myself (by writing an article for free) in order to obtain my Ph.D. Disappointing.
(*) At my university, only articles published in journals who are indexed by the ISI Web of Science databases ‘Science Citation Index’, ‘Social Science Citation Index’ and ‘Arts and Humanities Citation Index’ are considered ‘valuable’ (**) for a Ph.D.
(**) Update: Only students who published at least 2 of those articles will receive their Ph.D.
I’ve been thinking about negative feedback lately, and found some very helpful principles.
Tim Ferriss gave a short keynote (video) at The NextWeb 2010 in Amsterdam on how to deal with haters (and their negative feedback). A part of that keynote was dedicated on 7 principles that help you deal with negative feedback (they were originally published on Mashable by Amy-Mae Elliot).
It doesn’t matter how many people don’t get it. What matters is how many people do.
10% of people will find a way to take anything personally. Expect it.
“Trying to get everyone to like you is a sign of mediocrity.” (Colin Powell)
“If you are really effective at what you do, 95% of the things said about you will be negative.” (Scott Boras)
“If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.” (Epictetus)
“Living well is the best revenge.” (George Herbert)
Keep calm and carry on. Focus on impact, not approval.
The principles were originally meant as a (mental) response to the commenters on Tim’s blogposts (somewhere between 200 and 2000 comments a post) and overall critiques he received on his book, but I think they are worth a thought as well for negative feedback you receive in your personal or business life.
Note: I’ve been writing a lot on my Dutch blog about the ideas and principles of Stephen Covey, David Allen and Tim Ferriss. If you’re into GTD and Lifehacking, I would recommend you to read them as well.
One of the definite pro’s of being a teacher (or lecturer in general), is learning together with your students. I already gave 2 presentations on PLE’s in a conference setting, received lots of interesting feedback, and will give my last and definite one tomorrow. The last one because I want to move on and explore new paths (unless someone really wants me to present it again).
During my previous workshop, a participant suggested to incorporate my own PLE as an example. That’s why I decided to make a Prezi presentation. It’s my first Prezi ever, so don’t expect a spectacular effect.
On the 6th of march 2010, a very interesting TEDx took place in New York on: ‘the role of new media and technology in shaping the future of education’. The event was streamed live, but unfortunately, I missed it. But good for us, all TEDx conferences are made available on YouTube afterward.
