It’s all about shopping January 17, 2012
Posted by kieslinger in : Uncategorized , add a commentIn Dubai it’s all about shopping at the moment, as the Dubai Shopping festival is running for a whole month. It’s one of the most important events here and the logo is, guess what?, a shopping bag.
Apart from the regular offers in the shops even real estate companies participate in the event. Here is an interesting add that I saw the other day: if you buy an apartment you get a car for free:
http://www.damacproperties.com/img/dsfoffer_slide1.jpg
social media in education May 15, 2011
Posted by kieslinger in : Uncategorized , add a commentjust came across this comic that we prepared during the iCamp project and still find it very good.
Chewing Gum Fine March 28, 2011
Posted by kieslinger in : Uncategorized , add a commentA friend of mine was recently fined for chewing a chewing gum during a ride on Dubai’s metro. The fine was 100 AED, which is around 20 EURO.
According to her there are signs that indicate no eating and drinking allowed on any metro train. (I have not even noticed those signs myself yet although I have taken the metro various times). The sign does not explicitly mention chewing, but be aware now!
At least I will have to remember next time I would like to take a sip of water that this might cost me 100 AED!
Things to do in Dubai for 1 Dirham /2 September 29, 2010
Posted by kieslinger in : Uncategorized , add a commentso here is another thing you can do in Dubai for very little money:
once you have taken the ferry boat to cross Dubai Creek, let’s say from Deira to Bur Dubai, you can go to one of these very small Indian, Sri Lankan or Pakistani fast food places and get a soft drink for just 1 Dirham! Air condition might be just a small fan from the ceiling, but people are very friendly.
the missing link September 16, 2010
Posted by kieslinger in : Uncategorized , add a commentI just realized that since Flickr is not working in Dubai some of the images that I was linking to from this weblog also do not work. Even the header of my weblog. To keep it simple one can always fall back on some standard designs that wordpress provides.
Since I am in Dubai now, the skyline image also fits very well. The skyline that you get here in Dubai down town is really impressive, especially at night. Although I sometimes feel that I am not completely linked in here yet (still on my first week).
how the internet sees me August 29, 2009
Posted by kieslinger in : Uncategorized , add a commentthanks to a hint from Fabio Nascimbeni I just discovered Personas, a very interesting critique on current data mining practices. You just have to enter your name and then follow how the data about your online identity is arranged and visualized around certain topics.
here are some screen shots about my online identity:
1st result
2nd result
The results are different. I wander, e.g. where religion comes from, etc. Be aware of the data that you process for any analysis! This goes especially to the many people applying Social Network Analysis nowadays on all sorts of data.
andragogy again October 31, 2008
Posted by kieslinger in : Uncategorized,andragogy , add a commentrecently I have been contacted by Tom Hanson, Editor of OpenEducation.net who referred to my article on andragogy.
The article on andragogy on OpenEducation.net gives some short historical background and also tries to explain the dominance of pedagogy over andragogy. It then concentrates on presenting the views of Marcia L. Conner, who advocates for an andragogical approach not only in adult learning but also for children and youngsters.
Interesting thoughts and I think that part of the andragogical thinking could of course also be applied in teaching youngsters. However, what I actually liked about andragogy is the fact that it concentrates on adult learners and says that child-learning is different from adult learning with regard to certain needs, problem facing, experiences, etc.
Then Conner even argues that a more andragogical approach is need for all ages of learners due to new technologies that are penetrating our lives and of course also educational practices. However the article misses to give any further support to this idea. At least for me it misses out on this part. Still, an interesting topic to follow up….
21st Century Schools – Pedagogy Must Give Way to Andragogy — Open Education
Tags: andragogy
getting dragged away August 29, 2008
Posted by kieslinger in : Uncategorized , add a commentI am in the middle of preparing my presentation for the EDUTEC 2008 conference, for which I have been invited to talk about “Uso de software social en el contexto educativo y desarollo de entornos de aprendizaje personalizado”.
So the talk will be in Spanish. Going to be an exciting experience for me and for the audience 
Well, but while I have been preparing the talk now, I was checking some of the Web 2.0 applications for some examples and this is when I got dragged away. For the first time I designed and ordered a t-shirt at Spreadshirt. Really nice and easy. Let’s hope that my friend will like the t-shirt I ordered for her.
Anyway, it has happened to me rather often that I was doing one thing and then I got dragged away by something else. Especially when I am looking for something on the Internet. I suppose that this happens to a lot of people. It’s also a nice way of discovering something new.
BUT, now I have to hurry to finish my presentation.
personal learning environments July 8, 2008
Posted by kieslinger in : Uncategorized , 1 comment so farlast week we had a symposium at ED-MEDIA 2008 on Personal Learning Environment. We had some interesting discussions on what a personal learning environment constitutes of. Is it only the technological landscape or also the other resources, such as people network, organizational processes, etc that form part of the PLE? We were also discussing the relationship between Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs; or also LMSs) and PLEs.
Although I got the feeling that most people in the audience would agree on the preferable shift in responsibilities and control that PLEs bring forward, there was also one or the other voice supporting the VLE vision as the most appropriate tool for teaching in Higher Education. Seems that giving away control is not easy for some organizations and their administrators.
Now I just came across Ton Zylstra’s image of his mostly used tools. To me this is also a nice image of a PLA or better say, of the personal tools landscape of Ton:
What stroke me first when I saw this image is the missing of an e-mail application. I do not have any figures at the moment, but my feeling tells me that almost half of my time I spend using Thunderbird. Apart from that I also spend quite a lot of time in my Web browser and the rest, who knows? But certainly not in any VLE.
Tags: personallearning environment, personal tools landscape
participatory design and ethnographic studies May 23, 2008
Posted by kieslinger in : Uncategorized , 1 comment so fartwo days ago I attended a talk of Prof. Ina Wagner from the Institute of Design & Assessment of Technology of the Technical University Vienna. The Working Life Research Centre FORBA had invited her to talk about her ethnographic studies that she and her team are undertaking in the context of technology development.
The talk gave some insights into the complexity of such ethnographic studies and especially in the efforts that it takes to feed the results into design requirements.
Apart from the interesting talk that included a lot of references for further reading as well as some examples from practices there were 2 aspects that I found very interesting and also very relevant for the work that we are doing in our European R&D projects.
First of all, Ina Wagner presented one case in which they observed the working practices in 3 different hospitals with the final goal of implementing a common patient information management system for all three hospitals. At the end of the ethnographic studies it was decided that the system was not going to be built. The work practices were just too different.
Now if I think in the context of an R&D project, e.g. in the ICT programme of FP7, I have never come across a project so far that would have said after the first phase of requirements analysis that the project as such does not make sense. I have, however, not even seen any project that does some real intensive ethnographic studies before starting the implementation phase. Rather on the contrary, just too many times I have come across projects/proposals with only some “pro forma” user requirements elicitation that do not really include a in depth analysis of the actual context, neither during the design phase nor during the assessment.
The second interesting aspect that was addressed by someone from the audience is related to the current practices of ethnography and how this is already applied by technology providers, e.g. ICT industry. With the exception of very few big players, it seems that similar to many R&D projects driven by academia, industrial development is not yet applying these participatory practices.
In our latest proposal for an ICT project (that deals with the facilitation of work practices in the Creative Industries via ICT) we included ethnographic studies at the very beginning of the project, combined with some other methods of participatory design. Would be great if we could work on this project in the future. We will see if we make it to the list of funded projects….
Tags: ethnography, R&D