Bob Reuter drew my attention to the Web Behaviour Test that can be found on the BBC site. I created an account and took the test. My answers revealed that I am a web bear who has the following characteristics:

I am a web bear according to the web behaviour test

Slow-moving: Web Bears like you browse the internet at a leisurely pace – just like real world bears who like to take their time over things.

Solitary – Like real bears, Web Bears tend to be solitary animals. Your results show that when you are looking for information, you are less likely to use social networks or other sites whose content is created by its users, preferring instead to go it alone.

Adaptable – Web Bears are highly adaptable multitaskers, able to do several things at the same time. Real-bears are also very flexible, particularly in their diet, and will eat fish, insects, salmon and even scavenge in human refuse for new sources of food.

I am always a bit critical about such tests. Of course, they provide some truths, but some of the characteristics I am supposed to have puzzle me a bit.

Slow-moving

I guess, they got that result from the amount of time it took me to continue to the next page while reading the search results. Often I am much faster than I was on this test. Here I wanted to make sure that I choose the best option available as I only got one shot. But I do tend to read the brief descriptions below the links on Google so that I do not necessarily spend time on pages that are not worth visiting. This habit has manifested itself since the first links on the result pages have become links to sale web sites.

Solitary

Being solitary seems to have a negative connotation in this context. In the test I was asked to search for nutrition and other factual information. Applying basic information literacy (or as Howard Rheingold calls it “crap detection“) skills, I look for trustworthy sources. These are not necessarily blog posts by random people who do not have any reputation in the field, but sites from organizations that I know have authority. For calculating the Body Mass Index I could have chosen almost any site because that is a set formula, but many sites only regurgitate what can be found on an official site or do not show the entire picture. Hence, I prefer to refer to a site of some standing.

Had I been asked to solve a computer or software problem or anything that resembles a do-it-yourself activity, I would have most likely chosen a forum discussion, blog post or video to assist me and not a vendor homepage.

Thus, for me it depends on the type of information I am looking for which internet sites I will populate for finding an answer. If facts are concerned, I’d like to stick as close to an official source as possible, if other issues are concerned that require to discover a certain procedure, I will most likely be more successful in user discussions. Depending on my knowledge about the field and experts in the field, I may also choose to search somebody’s blog instead of the site of an organization if I know that they are years behind in their research.

I am solitary in the sense that I do not have Facebook open all day long or broadcast what I am doing to Twitter and / or Facebook at all times. Usually, I scan Facebook updates only briefly in the evening, but have Twitter running all day. However, I am not reading all messages. Echofon in Firefox is funny in the way it displays messages: Some are displayed, others are just “You have received 7 new tweets” and I would have to open them actively. Thus, many go unnoticed throughout the day.

Being solitary or social should not only be seen in regard to consuming information. There could have been a question on what to do when the answer cannot be found on a site. Social also means that you actively ask questions in a discussion forum or ask your Twitter / Facebook buddies etc. Consuming information is one thing, but participation is quite another and in today’s age with the possibilities of social media well worth looking at in such a test.

Adaptable

My test results must have been mixed up with somebody else’s. At the beginning of the test I selected that I hardly ever do two things at a time. Later, during the concentration tests, I scored pretty well when there were distractions. So that probably counts for my multitasking. Most of the time I think that I cannot multitask very well. I like to concentrate on the task that I am performing so that I do not get sidetracked and forget something.

Having a phone conversation while writing an email is not really possible for me as I am not able to give the caller my undivided attention that s/he deserves. But of course, I can jot down notes, send a link etc. However, I do have Twitter and email open all the time and briefly check updates throughout the day. If something interesting comes across on Twitter, I usually open the URL in a new browser tab for viewing it later. Thus, I do multitask a little, but actually think that I still do these things sequentially:

I read something online -> I see that Twitter has new messages -> I briefly scan them -> I go back to my reading OR I follow a Twitter link in a new tab and scan the link’s content and bookmark it.

Now. Which web animal are you? Are you a bear, elephant, fox, hedgehog, leopard, elk, octopus, or ostrich?

On Wednesday and Thursday, March 10-11, 2010, I witnessed my first software launch. After 8 years of development and already substantial use, TAO, an open source computer-based assessment (CBA) platform was officially launched. The development of this online assessment tool started as a partnership of the Research Unit EMACS of the University of Luxembourg and the CITI department of the Centre de Recherche Public Henri Tudor in Luxembourg in 2002.

The two days were filled with presentations about CBA in general, the partnership, the history of the development of TAO, and its use in international assessments such as PISA and PIAAC. Although TAO was not officially released as open source software until now, it has already been in use for some time now testing it thoroughly and improving it constantly.

Besides presentations, there were user and developer sessions dealing with all aspects of getting to know TAO. The workshops ranged from setting up TAO on a server to creating test items and running the tests. Thus, we could gain first-hand experience of the software.

TAO is being developed as a versatile and generic solution for CBA instead of being geared towards a very specific test. The aim was and is to create a system that can accommodate as many CBA tests as possible allowing also for the exchange of tests among the TAO users.

The launch did not only kick off version 1.0 of TAO, but also marked the beginning of the user and developer community for this open source system. The developers know that this official start is not the end of their work but the beginning of a more public development to improve the software.

In the user workshops which I attended we learned how to set up users, test takers, tests, test items, and the delivery of the test. I was very impressed by the possibilities of TAO, but also saw that there is a lot of work to be done in regard to usability. Being used to a great number of easy-to-use social media, some of the steps I had to take in the TAO system seemed not necessary and sometimes even annoying. However, I also learned that the usability guys and gals had not taken up their work until a few months ago and are working hard to make the software more user friendly.

During the final round of presentations, William Thorn, senior analyst with the OECD, brought the metaphor of haute couture vs. prêt-à-porter into the discussion. This metaphor was taken up by Marilyn Binkley and Romain Martin (both University of Luxembourg). Haute Couture was seen as where creativity goes on, where new developments are brought about to further CBA. At the same time it also signifies developments that have not yet been thoroughly tested and that cannot be applied everywhere, e.g. for technical reasons. On the other hand, prêt-à-porter assessment is well-tested, easier to administer, immediately usable. However, that does not necessarily mean paper-and-pencil tests, but can also be CBA. In contrast to haute couture CBA, it would only have little added value to paper-and-pencil tests. Just having multiple choice items on a computer screen instead of on paper is not very innovative. Like with elearning activities, the real added value must be something else, e.g. the use of multimedia, new forms of test items etc.

Altogether between 80 and 100 people attended this two-day event at the Abbaye de Neumünster in Luxembourg City. There were plenty of opportunities for discussions in the workshops and the breaks where developers, users and potential users mingled. The TAO Days were very well organized by the TAO team and also included a Walking Dinner for a selected number of guests (photos).

The coming months will show how quickly the word can spread about TAO and hopefully get the community to a good start.

I love conference recordings especially of conferences which I could not attend. Thus, I am very grateful to the conference organizers who decide to record their (keynote) events and make the recordings available to the general public. Such a recent event was eLearning 2010 (#ITC10), the conference of the Instructional Technology Council in Fort Worth, 20-23 February 2010.

The speaker line-up was excellent: Nancy White, Jim Groom, and Jared Stein among others. I particularly liked the following:

• Nancy White with “Online Facilitation 14 Years On: Where are we headed?”
• Jim Groom with “A Sermon: ‘For Who Hath Despised the Day of Small Things?’”
• John Krutsch Sr. and Jared Stein with “Late Night Learning LIVE!”
• Carol Spalding and Paul Harrat debating “Colleges Must Monitor Student Social Networking”

Nancy White and Jim Groom did not only have well-thought out arguments, but also presented them in a very engaging and funny way. Where have you ever won chocolate, books or a bottle of wine at a keynote (Nancy White)? Or has a sermon about social media tools been more compelling than Jim Groom’s rendition? Just these two examples show that keynotes do not have to follow the standard set-up, but could and should depart from them. Of course, it helps when the speaker has a great sense of humor and can respond on their toes.

Jared Stein’s and Marc Hugentobler’s “Late Night Learning LIVE!” touched upon current learning issues with a sarcastic, ironic, humorous tone, interspersed with ads that drove home their points very well.

Carol Spalding and Paul Harrat argued about monitoring student social networking in a friendly though thoroughly researched debate in which the moderator, Michael Catchpole, who has a knack for making people laugh, watched over their allotted times because they could have debated for much longer.

If I had to choose the keynote that I liked best from the recorded events that I watched, I’d definitely go with Nancy White’s presentation. She presented the history of online facilitation, what has changed over the years, and what needs to be done in the future along with a very personal style of presenting that kept me attentive the entire time, and she also tested a couple of new presenter tools incorporating her own learning in real-time.

Update: Nancy’s reflection on her presentation and the Twitter experiment.

From 25-27 February 2010 I was at the AKS-Tagung in Bochum, Germany. I was invited to give a brief presentation on the project “imMEDIAte TEACHing” for which I had worked at LMU München a few years ago. In particular, the organizers of the workshop “Lifelong learning also for language teachers?!” were interested in our concept for a language teacher training program.

These are the slides that I used for the presentation. More details can be found in the “notes” section below the slides directly on the slideshare web site. They should make it a bit easier to understand the presentation. If you cannot see the embedded presentation, view it here.

I liked the new concept of this conference very much. Everybody had to choose one specific workshop in which s/he stayed the entire time. No “workshop hopping” as is so frequent at other conferences. Thus, the workshop participants could get to know each other better and could really discuss the proposed issues over the three conference days. We had 4 ca. 15-minute presentations and the rest of the time for discussions and group work.

At the end we were very pressed for time to generate a presentation of our workshop results. Luckily, our workshop organizers, Sigrid Behrent (University of Paderborn) and Gunter Lorenz (University of Erlangen-Nürnberg) had already categorized most of the results the previous night. It was too bad that there was only little time to view the results of the other workshops. If this conference concept is continued, I would prefer to have a specific time slot for brief summaries from the workshops besides the slides or posters because then these could be put into context better, and it would be possible to see the connections between the individual workshops more clearly.

The biggest results from the workshop for me are the following:

• Continuously training language teachers is necessary (nothing new there) and is done differently at individual institutions. Some have in-house workshops, others organize external trainers, others have a mix, but many do not have any scheme in place.
• Sharing resources and workshop facilitators between language centers will help to offer a wide range of workshops. Language centers should try to pool their resources and see if they can profit from their respective expertise.
• Any training program should be accredited to command respectability and offer real value to the participants for future employment (especially for freelance teachers) and professional development in general. Other professions already have such certificates – why not language teachers in higher education in Germany?
• The idea behind “imMEDIAte TEACHing” is still current and provides a good ground for discussions to venture off to new grounds.
• We have set up the AKS-NetworkING space where the discussions can be continued, resources shared, etc. The conference was just the start for the actual work.

A few days ago I learned that this building will be torn down soon.

Delhaize, the Belgian supermarket chain that currently resides in this building will tear it down to construct a new one. Though the old name of the store was not taken down when Delhaize moved in, this supermarket chain did not have the monopoly anymore as other supermarkets are also present.

The name of the former store "Monopol" (Monopoly) was telling: no competitors. This reminds me a bit of the “good ol’ GDR times” just in the capitalist west.

Not the monopoly anymore

Knots, bends, entangled strands – it had to end.

That’s what I thought when I took a good look at my necklaces a couple of weeks ago. I remembered that something like a jewelry / necklace stand / tree existed and searched the web to find some answers. All commercial ones looked kind of unstable, did not have much space for the jewelry, were too short / small / tall, or were not to my taste. I also ran across a Swiss artist’s (Reto Baumann) interpretation of a jewelry tree.

That’s when I decided to make my own. I was going home for Christmas where I knew I would have a workshop, my dad still had tons of wood to choose from, and I would have all the tools I needed. I had called ahead to ask if he had any suggestions for the material of the “branches” as they needed to be made of some metal that could be bend easily but not too easily.

When I was at home, my dad and I looked for a nice piece of wood. We eventually found a piece of locust that would work perfectly. My dad used a big electric saw to shape it nicely. Then we sanded it lightly to bring out the texture.

We had a good collection of rods from 2 mm to 7 mm thick in my dad’s workshop. I chose brass rods of 3 mm that are used for welding because they were flexible enough to be bent without problems, but sturdy enough to keep from changing their shape if something was draped over them. The length of the individual rods we decided on was 0.5 m with one longer one of 0.6 m and a shorter one of only 0.4 m. Altogether I had 10 rods to bend. I used tongs for the bending process while keeping the rod immobilized in a bench vise. I also used some steel wool to put a shine on the rods.

After I finished the bending, I drilled 10 holes into my wooden base and varnished it twice. Twice because the “hair” of the wood would stand up after the first coat of varnish. Thus, I had to apply some strokes with the steel wool and could varnish a second time. The diameter of the holes was the same as the rods which allows me to avoid having to glue the rods into the wooden base unless necessary. Currently, only one rod moves around a bit. The others are pretty tight. Furthermore, having the rods a bit mobile, I can change their position. I already realized that I should have drilled the holes a bit closer to the white rim (I could only drill within the brown center) to set them further apart. When I put the rods in the wood for the first time, I had to re-bend a couple of them a bit, but that was also to their advantage.

Here is my jewelry tree, my Xmas gift to myself:

Jewelry tree made out of locust wood and brass rods

And the tree in action:

My jewelry tree with most of my necklaces

On October 9, 2009, Bob Reuter and I held our first TechLunch on Campus Walferdange (Faculty of Language and Literature, Humanities, Arts and Education – FLSHASE) of the University of Luxembourg. We had initiated this informal lunchtime session to give students, teachers, and researchers the opportunity to learn about digital technologies in a relaxed setting. Often, people at university do not have a lot of time to participate in workshops. Furthermore, 3- or 4-hour workshops are not always the right format to whet the appetite for a topic. To get people interested in something, we thought that a shorter session could be more beneficial. Participants would not have to invest much because they could eat their lunch at the same time. Thus, TechLunch war born.

We planned to hold it approximately twice a month also depending a bit on the internship schedule of the BScE (Bachelor in Educational Sciences) students who are a primary target group for us as we are both involved in that study program. However, we also welcome anybody else from the university, i.e. students, researchers, teachers, and staff from all 3 campuses, to join us. We have had 4 sessions up to now with 4 to 12 participants. All sessions are video recorded and uploaded to YouTube in case anybody who could not attend the sessions wanted to review them.

Although we are happy that anybody shows up, we would, of course, like to have a larger audience.

TechLunch survey

We set up a questionnaire to find out what further topics would be interesting to our potential audience now that they may have already heard about TechLunch or even attended one. Within the last 4 days we have received 23 responses. Now that everybody is in holiday mood and preparing for the festivities, I do not think that we will receive many more responses, but we will keep the questionnaire open.

Out of these 23 people, 5 had already attended a TechLunch. We also already have a couple of regulars who have come to 2 and 1 already to 3 TechLunches.

TechLunch time

One concern of ours is the time to offer TechLunch. With students not having classes every day, researchers and teachers also being on campus often irregularly, it is very difficult to come up with a time that would suit most. We had opted for Friday 12:00-12:45 p.m., but wanted to see if other times might be more convenient.

Friday does not seem to be too bad, but our preferred time was not among the ones chosen most (only 3 people agreed with that time).

• 6 participants preferred Friday, 1:00-1:45 p.m.
• 5 participants opted for Wednesday, 12:30-1:15 p.m.
• 4 participants each voted for Monday, 1:30-2:15 p.m., and Thursday 1:30-2:15 p.m.

One person suggested to offer a date with several time slots before each TechLunch and see which one is the most popular. In theory that might be a good idea, but bringing in a sign-up process would complicate everything. We had asked people to sign up for the first TechLunch (Zotero for Beginners) because we knew the topic was a favorite for our students, but it generated more emails than people actually came to the session because some could not come in the end and apologized or asked if they could come late etc. Having the sign-up process also feels as if it is something formal whereas we want to keep TechLunch open and just as a gathering to exchange ideas and opinions about using digital technologies for learning, studying, teaching, and researching.

TechLunch topics

Before planning the coming “summer” semester (it starts in mid-February ), we wanted to get an idea if the topics that Bob and I would offer would also be of interest. We proposed 13 topics:

• Bookmarking: synchronization and sharing with others
• Electronic notetaking
• Advanced features of Zotero
• Facebook and Twitter
• Alternatives to PowerPoint
• Setting up a personalized start page in a browser
• Mahara [this eportfolio system doubles as social network and is in use in the BScE] as social network
• Creating cartoons online
• Open Educational Resources: What’s that?
• How do I find photos online that I can use?
• Why should I have a blog?
• How can I subscribe to online content and view it easily?
• Password management

Only “Creating cartoons online” got less than 5 votes. Maybe we should have added “… for learning purposes / with kids in the classroom” or something like that.

The top 3 topics with 14+ votes are:

• Alternatives to PowerPoint (17)
• Open Educational Resources (15)
• Using online images legally (14)

Interest in proposed TechLunch topics

Some people also provided their own suggestions for future TechLunch topics:

• Troubleshooting common error messages on a Mac (I guess, also Windows computer owners could find some); unfortunately, no examples were provided and also no email address to contact the commenter
• Chrome OS
• Cloud Computing
• Privacy Issues
• Image, audio and video editing
• Using Word optimally
• Google Wave (that was already on our list, but we did not put it forth because it is not out yet for everybody)
• iTunes U
• Zotero for beginners (two times)
• OpenOffice (two times)
• R as alternative to SPSS
• SPSS
• Creating online surveys with tools other than Grafstat
• Tools for creating handouts (which tools are there? compatibility PC-Mac, preferably free)

We also asked if anybody would be interested in leading a TechLunch. Although up until now we have led all 4 TechLunches that doesn’t mean that that needs to stay that way. We welcome others who want to share their experiences and use of software or online services. Two people were interested in doing just that. Yeah.

Comments in the survey

In the general comment text field we received encouraging comments to keep up with TechLunch. However, we need to make it clear that the language in which TechLunch will be offered will depend partly on the audience. The first posters were in German thus discouraging some people to attend. However, the last two sessions were conducted in English as we had some non-German speakers in them. Thus, we can be flexible, but it must be clear to our audience. Initially, we used German to encourage the BScE students to attend. The language issue is a bit complicated because the University of Luxembourg has three official languages: English, French, and German.

Originally, we intended TechLunch for students, researchers, and teachers. However, administrative staff can also benefit from some of the sessions. Therefore, TechLunch really is for anybody at the university.

Where to go from here?

So how will we continue? Well, the last session for winter semester 2009/10 will be held on January 15 (time to be announced) and we will look into using polls in the classroom and for research. The online service PollEverywhere will be introduced. Then there will be a brief semester break and TechLunch will be back in summer semester 2010. We will come up with a schedule and take all the topic suggestions as well as preferred times into account to allow more people to join us.

My first impressions of OmmWriter in video. You should watch the HD version in order to see the text.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here is the text that I typed in the video with a few added links:

Via a Twitter message by D’Arcy Norman, my attention was drawn to OmmWriter.

Having installed it, I must say that I like this slick software because it just offers you to type text. No thrills, no bells and whistles. Simply text.

As keystrokes and background music are not my thing, I can turn them off. I can also change the frosty winter landscape to a simple white to see even less on the screen.

OmmWriter forces me to separate content from layout because there are no layout options. Usually, I play with headings, bullet point and pictures. It will be interesting to see if I get jumpy from not being able to do all that or if there are also instances when I don’t need to layout.

You can actually also use OmmWriter to create audio text art when you use the music and / or the pitches of the keystrokes to convey meaning.

Clayton M. Christensen brings product improvement down to a simple statement in his presentation at the ECS National Forum on Education Policy: “Understanding the job rather than understanding the customer is the critical insight” (at about 8:30 min in the video).

His example is the buying of milk shakes. Collecting data on who buys milk shakes is not enough. A company also needs to understand why the people buy milk shakes at that particular time. In his example, people buy milk shakes before starting their long commute to have something to do while driving. Thus, the company would do good to bring the shake dispenser to the counter and equip it with a pre-paid swipe card system so that customers – who are in a hurry in the morning – can get their milk shake without having to wait in line. Customers who buy milk shakes in the afternoon will most likely have very different needs and thus the company needs to think about a different strategy to get them to buy more milk shakes.

via @ctscho

Click here to view the embedded video.

George Siemens presented today at LearnTrends 2009 on “Finding New Points of Balance”. In his presentation, which was attended by 120 participants on average, he employed a very nice online presenter technique. He offered (almost) empty slides encouraging participants to drop their ideas on them and thus engaging in the presentation more than just through the backchannel.

I had already seen that others had done this before. Recently, Dave Cormier wrote a good post on this method that he also tried for one of his presentations with great success entitled “Presenting with live slides“.

This technique is great to interact more with participants and to bring in their voice. Of course, one could use the backchannel or the audio chat. However, by putting everything on a slide, the contributions become part of the presentation visuals, and the presenter can use the ideas more easily than if he had to sift through the chat log which can move rather quickly with a large group.

The slides that George provided were filled quickly because he had approx. 120 other minds chiming in and bringing ideas forth.

In a way, this session showed that online conference sessions can be more engaging than f2f conference sessions because everybody can participate at any time by using the backchannel without interrupting the speaker. By offering a white slide for putting down ideas, people will do so actively and I had the feeling more willingly than in an auditorium where we would have had to raise our hands and shout our ideas to the podium where the speaker may not even have heard them. It was also suggested that the nature of the writing on the whiteboard assisted the involvement as it was anonymous.

One slide from George's slide deck on which we participants put down our ideas on the continuum of using online tools for learning.