From all the places in the world I have worked in, the University of Limerick is by far the best. There are many reasons for this: the people, the campus, the cross-department collaboration atmosphere, the personal development programs and workshops, the lunchtime concerts. And last but not least, the events where we meet to exchange information and ideas about how to improve our teaching and the students’ learning. Every time I feel unhappy about how my teaching progresses, all I have to do is to attend one of these events and find out I am not the only one who encountered that problem, and learn how other people have solved it.
On Friday, after the last lecture of the semester and two other meetings, I attended a “Teaching on the Go” session organised by the Technology Enhanced Learning group in UL.
Stephen Kinsella from KBS gave a talk titled: “Many to one: Using the mobile phone to interact with large classes“. Since this is one of my major problems – how to interact with a large class during the 50 min I get with them, I thought I might pick up something from Stephen’s experience.
The talk was excellent – short and to the point – and Stephen invited the participants to join his efforts. He developed the app himself – using a cheap mobile phone and Java. He is teaching a really large class – 500 people attend his lectures in the Concert Hall. At specific points during his lecture, he asks his students for questions or comments. The messages are projected on the large screen and everybody can read them. Sometimes he gets highly relevant questions, that allow him to explain specific terms or clarify issues. Some other times he gets irrelevant stuff, or even bad language. The phone numbers are always on the screen, so he can call back the number and expose the person. But most of the students understand the rules of the game and use this opportunity for real dialogue.
Stephen is now working with a couple of Indian developers on developing a web version of his application.
A video recording of the talk is available on his blog.
The excellent thing about this solution is that it is simple, affordable and the messages stay in a closed circle. My worry about the Jaiku experiment I ran last year was that I was polluting all my other contacts with the messages I was sending to the students. In one way, this was good, because it allowed synergies to occur (like my collaboration with Bernie), but at the same time some of the students might have been put off by this transparency.
My guilt feeling for not blogging was fueled even more by Stephen’s statement that he has reached 1000 blog posts! After checking his blog, I realised it’s an excellent illustration of what good teaching enhanced by technology can do! All his lectures are available online – exactly what was suggested by my students last year (and I thought they were asking too much!)
Someone else in the room mentioned Clicker and a trial they are involved in. It’s amazing how much can you learn from your peers in an environment like UL! People from different departments come together and share their experiences and you always leave the event with new ideas and having made new acquaintances!
November 30 2008 | Events and teaching | 3 Comments »
Today a friend came to see me one more time before leaving Ireland to return to Romania. I was a bit sad thinking that during the last two years she’s been in Dublin we only met a few times. But we are such close online friends that distance won’t really make much difference…
I met Diana in 2004, when she left a comment on one of my blogposts on Prinsea, a blog I was co-writing with Gabriel Radic, a Romanian living in Paris, about the tips and tricks of blogging. To our knowledge, it was the first source of information about blogging in Romanian. I took Diana’s comment as offensive, so I fired back. Gabriel asked us to stay calm and take it offline. E-mails followed, then IM. Misunderstanding clarified, we sent each other virtual hugs and became friends.
Later in 2005, the fact that a Romanian candidate for a PhD position on my project was turned down (she had two degrees and a master’s, but no publications) made me think of a possible solution to this problem. In the west, very few people realise how things work back in Romania, and that it is almost impossible as a student to attend any relevant international conference in your field, or even a workshop. The access to prestigious publications in one’s field is also limited – the universities can’t afford subscribing. And nobody could ever dream publishing straight into a journal without being familiar with the latest progress in your field and without a supervisor’s support. At the time, I was an observer on elgg, a social networking platform developed around the idea of eportfolio. I decided to encourage a group of graduate students from Romania to start building an online portfolio in English, writing about their research interests, their readings and future plans. My idea was that adding the url to their CVs could make a difference and give their potential international supervisors an idea about their abilities. I have no idea how much the blog/portfolio idea helped to get a position – they were brilliant students anyhow, but all the 5 people in that group got the chance to study abroad. Diana was among them, and she came to NCI in Dublin to do a master’s in Learning Technologies 2 years ago.
And now she’s getting ready to return to Romania. She was invited to continue with a PhD, but she’s too keen to move back home and apply what she learnt. Time to say goodbye… no more dinners in Dublin together between the Damastown bus and the 9pm Limerick train!
Two weeks ago at Barcamp Cork II, Emma Persky made me smile and gave me an Akoha card:). “Akoha is a new type of “social reality game” inspired by the idea of pay it forward where players play real-world missions that can be tracked online” – their website says.
I played my card with Diana today, as I knew she will enjoy playing it forward. Farewell, and may the road rise up to you, dear friend!
November 16 2008 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Yesterday, I read the announcement that FriendFeed is now available via IM, and I thought of giving it a try.
This morning, while preparing my lecture on Collaborative technologies and Enterprise 2.0, a feed coming from Lee Bryant’s Twitter caught my eye:
November 12 2008 | teaching | No Comments »
Well, the Podcamp was in my calendar for the last two months, but until 3 days ago, I wasn’t sure I can go. It was a tough week (and a tough month!), and I wouldn’t have dared to go by bus or take the train up to Dublin and then to Kilkenny!
I had promised Sabrina Marczak (a Brazilian doing a PhD at the SEGAL group in Canada), who’s visiting our research group, to facilitate a few discussions with people in the Irish software industry involved in outsourcing. I have done my best, but we didn’t get many responses.
I intended to take her to an OpenCoffee in Cork, but this didn’t work out. She visited Cork last week, attending the Irish HCI conference in my place, while I was stuck at home, with an injured back and hip (don’t ask how it happened, because it was really stupid!)
But we’re coming to Kilkenny tomorrow, so who knows?! Maybe we’ll have a bit of luck!
If, by any chance, you have ever been in a software outsourcing/offshoring relationship (either at the receiving or at the sending end) and you happen to be at Podcamp this Saturday, please come and say hello!
We’re getting a lift with Marian, and I’m really excited to get the chance to talk to her on the way!
September 26 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
No, I didn’t disappear from the face of the Earth. I just keep writing drafts here and never manage to publish them…
I am in India – another one of my childhood dreams coming true. An Indian colleague, consulted because I was very anxious before my departure, said he doesn’t think I’ll encounter any life threatening circumstances. His feeling was that I’ll probably be disappointed. And in a way he was right…
Things here are very different. This is not David Lean’s India. Neither is Mircea Eliade’s.
It’s a weird mixture of aggressive capitalism and thousands of years of culture. And I need time to get accustomed to it! Maybe one day I’ll love it. But for the moment, I’m just overwhelmed.
I spent a week at Wipro in Bangalore. It was a great experience and I hope to blog about it this week!
Now I’m in Kerala, taking an ayurvedic massage course. I should be in the seventh heaven… only if I could be less critical!
I’m in an Internet cafe right now – I had to change a password that was expiring and I checked every Internet cafe in town if they would let me connect my laptop. Everybody else said: “impossible”, until I found this nice guy at Rabby Towers. Wi fi seems not to have reached this land yet – they were looking at me as if I’d have been from another planet.
Talking about other planets- I found in a bookshop Douglas Adams‘ Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and I’m reading it now!
The hotel does have Internet access – but it’s an old PC in a tiny room next to the kitchen, and shared with the staff and every other hotel guest!
Going back to my hotel now, more later, world!
August 06 2008 | Travel India Cannanore | No Comments »
I arrived in Bangalore on Sunday morning at 5am. The airport looked impressive – it was just opened in April this year. On the way to the city, the first shock: shacks, rubbish, people selling food next to the motorway… And the red mud everywhere…
The second shock was my carefully picked up hotel. In my naivety, I had picked up a hotel close to the company I was going to visit. I was going to visit Wipro in Madivala, so all I had to do was to find a hotel in Madivala and check the map. I wanted to walk there every day. I didn’t want to depend on any means of transportation. This is how I found The Libra. Don’t let the banner fool you: the pictures must be taken in some rich cousin’s hotel in the UK. The place is not what we would call a hotel. Minimal furniture, windows overlooking piles of rubbish and construction sites, shower dripping continuously… After a first attempt to eat breakfast, I gave up and did my own shopping. There was a sheet on my matress and then an old blanket without an extra sheet. I asked for an extra sheet but couldn’t get one. I spent the first night covered with the towel I had brought with me. It was warm, but not comfortable enough. This is a picture of an executive roam just like mine. Doesn’t look too bad here, but it was actually not very welcoming. The rooms were under continuous camera surveillance, and I felt uncomfortable to know someone was watching me day and night.
On Sunday, I took a motorickshaw into town. I enjoyed the experience, although a sudden rain drenched my whole left side. It was less than one euro, but when I tried to ask the driver how to get back – or what was the name of the place where he had picked me up, I couldn’t get any answer. I stopped at the Mota Royal Arcade on Brigade Road, and I would have bought the whole place if it wasn’t the very first day! I tried to get an Indian SIM card, and I found out I needed a picture and a proof of address in India in order to get one. It was Sunday, so I couldn’t get my photo taken. But I had dinner in a fabulous restaurant: Just Oriental. The staff was so nice that I felt spoiled. I remember I had stuffed aubergines and they were fabulous. Nice music, nice ambiance, fantastic food and service! I went to the famous MG road and looked at book shops (almost the same books as home!), tried to buy shoes – well, for women it’s basically leather made flip-flops and nothing else!) and entered an old and luxurious saree shop, where I felt a bit like an elephant in a garden: whole families were seated, having tea and discussing the options with shop assistants, who were showing there more and more fabrics.
The rickshaw back was 5 times more expensive, but I was glad to see myself back safe. It got dark around 7pm, and I was very tired.
My contact at Wipro sent me a car to pick me up on Monday morning, and I accepted, but told him I intended to walk once I knew were the place was. The driver arrived half an hour earlier, and I asked him to wait, because I didn’t want to get there too early. He drove me through a city market and I was amazed seeing people camping there next to their merchandise. The traffic was absolutely insane, and on several occasions I feared for the lives of women and children travelling on motorcycles driven by men.
It took me a good while until I got accustomed to the hunking horns – in the beginning, I was continuously terrified. After the first trip, I couldn’t imagine walking there anymore, and I accepted Shiva, my driver, as guardian angel! Anyhow, my work took me to different locations, so managing without a car would have been impossible. The car trip took an hour most of the time…
Another shocking thing was the fly-over getting build in the middle of the current 3 lane road, in order to separate the car traffic from buses and motorcycles. I would have never thought of such a solution!
I got a Vodaphone SIM card on the second evening, not without struggle. My hotel proof of address was considered dubious. But taking into account the bombs that went off just two days before that, I understood their concern. There was police everywhere, and at every supermarket they were checking people’s bags! Shopping for food was a bit complicated, but I just went for fresh fruit, Ness Cafe and milk. I needed a lot of time to figure out what was in packages and cans.
My deceiving hotel had a LAN, so I used to dive into conversation with friends every evening and forget where I was. I could have moved out, but I didn’t have the energy to do it. And I was there for work, and work was good. My only indulgence during these evenings was to eat pomegranates – a fruit I always longed for, as it was one of the main features of Romanian fairy tales.
Crossing the road was a big adventure, especially in the dark. One evening it took me 20 min! Going out for dinner on my own was also tough! After a bad experience in a food court, where I had to queue for each item separately (curry, nan and lhassi), I decided to go for restaurants. One night at Sahib Sindh Sultan, the guy at the entrance tried to persuade me to go for a pub instead. I only wanted a decent dinner in a nice ambiance, and I stood my ground. In the end I got a little table in the middle of corporate party groups, and had a delicious dinner!
I didn’t get to see too much during the first week – in the evenings, I wandered around my hotel on Hossur Road and that was it. I was waiting for the moment when I had to get out of Bangalore as my salvation!
July 28 2008 | India Bangalore travel | No Comments »
Coniecto got a new home, and we’ll be moving here soon. Until then, you can keep an eye on the old blog.
July 08 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
One more hour to spend in Dublin airport before my flight to Germany. I’m going to ICSE, the most important conference for the field of software engineering. I’ll attend two workshops:
– STC – Socio-Technical Congruence – on Saturday, and
– CHASE – Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering – on Tuesday.
I’ll also present our work at CHASE, and I’m pretty excited by the format suggested by the organisers, which will give us the chance to interact with the other participants. It looks like this workshop attracted 60 participants and it’s one of the biggest this year.
The main conference will happen from Wednesday until Friday.
I’m looking forward to the event and excited to visit the place where my favourite baroque composer has spent a good part of his life!
May 09 2008 | conferences and Software engineering and travel | No Comments »
It’s been months since myself and Micheal O hAodha have discovered we share an interest in social networking and decided to organise an event on this topic at our university. We started with the idea of a presentation in mind, but as the date kept on slipping , the concept changed, in an attempt to make the event more lively and interactive.
Taking advantage of my collaboration with Bernie Goldbach (@topgold) and James Corbett (@EirePreneur) in bringing to life the next BarCampIreland, I thought of inviting them for a discussion panel.
The announcement went out to the university Events mailing list:
You are invited to the panel discussion
“Social Networking – Getting Beyond the Hype”
in the Library Board Room, Friday 11 April, 2008, 2-3 pm.
The panel will touch on the variety of existing online social networking opportunities (e.g. Facebook, Linkedin, Bebo, MySpace etc.). But instead of insisting on the potential advantages/disadvantages of social networking as sometimes outlined in the mainstream media, the panelists intend to share insights from their own experience with blogging and micro-blogging as instruments for building social interfaces, networking through “social objects” (like photos, bookmarks, references) and the numerous face-to-face events facilitated by the use of online applications.
Panelists:
- Micheal Ó hAodha –Librarian (College of Science and Engineering-ECE,CSIS,MAE,MOE), UL – Moderator
- Gabriela Avram – Researcher, Interaction Design Centre, UL
- Bernard Goldbach – Lecturer, Tipperary Institute of Technology
- James Corbett – Entrepreneur and social media consultant, EirePreneur
And here’s a wiki page dedicated to the event.
So, if you’re around Limerick this Friday, you are more than welcome to join us!
April 08 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
This year, I made it! After only 3-4h of sleep per night in the last two weeks, a bit of extra sleep over the week-end would have been highly appreciated. But I decided to stretch myself a bit more, jumped on the Dublin bus at 12:30 on Saturday (the price of a one way train ticket is prohibitive!) and made it to both events:
– the Ladies’ Tea Party at the Market Bar
– the Irish Blog Awards 2008 at the Alexander Hotel.
I had to go to bed around 11, because my crazy plans didn’t end here. This morning I took the Aircoach to Cork at 6am, and here I am.
More on the Dublin events later!
March 02 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
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