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Aalto University Design educational tool Open Source Social Software

Metaverse: What it could (and should) be?

Metaverse is a concept primary used in tech and media industries but also by journalists. It is fair to say that nobody really knows what it is or how it will be. For many, metaverse is the second coming of the Second Life (2003), a 3D virtual world with avatars to hangout and talk with […]

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Collaboration Design educational tool Open Source Sharing economy Social Software Wikimedia Wikiversity

We need a Signal School — to be prepared for future crises

In May 2020, two Finnish teachers started to taught 23 Finnish children living in the Al-Hawl refugee camp. From their homes in Finland, every schooldays at 9 AM teachers sent text, image and audio messages to their students’ mobile phones — school assignments of the day. In the camp children were having a daily schedule […]

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Aalto University Collaboration Design educational tool Open Source Social Software Wikimedia

Open source / FLOSS tool for online collaboration

Aalto Media Lab students are awesome. Now they have collected a list of open source / FLOSS tools for online collaboration during the pandemic. The original file is in the Wikimedia’s etherpad. I don’t want to share the link to that collaboratively editable file, but I copied here the content as it was on Tuesday […]

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Aalto University Collaboration Design educational tool Open Source Wikibooks

Campus Universities and Online Teaching

With the corona crisis many campus universities have fast moved to online teaching. To help people in the transition, with a group of volunteers, we wrote an open guidebook, for educators in difference educational levels, on how to start online teaching. I mainly contributed to the section about how to continue university education in times […]

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Aalto University Collaboration educational tool Open Source

Webdialogos: A prototype for active learning with an online fishbowl video conversation

This post is written to share and to document some screenshots from the latest prototype designed and developed in my research group. The prototype is called Webdialogos. Active learning refers to practices where students do more than just listen lectures, read learning materials and do exams. In an active learning students are developing thinking skills. They […]

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Collaboration Design Open Source Sharing economy Social Software Wikipedia

The democratisation of design

Victor Papanek begins his book, published in 1971, with the words “All men are designers”. By this, Papanek means that an element of design is involved in almost everything people do. Design is the basis of all human activity. The fact that Papanek himself was an industrial designer gives more weight to his words, even […]

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Collaboration Design educational tool Open Source Social Software Wikibooks Wikimedia Wikimedia Commons Wikipedia Wikiversity Wiktionary

Wikipedia Open Search: The World Needs It

In the last years the Wikipedia’s search has been improving. It still sucks, but it is getting better. There is a smart team working with the search and the Wikidata is giving a structure to the data. Think what Wikipedia Search could be? Think what Wikipedia Search could do? First of all, it could answer to […]

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educational tool Open Source Sharing economy Wikimedia Wikimedia Commons Wikipedia Wikiversity

One hundred women to Wikipedia

It is well documented and known that there is a gender bias on Wikipedia. In the Finnish Wikipedia only 19 % of the biography articles are about women. So, what can we do to get more women to the Finnish Wikipedia? How could we get more women to write Wikipedia articles? How could we get […]

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Aalto University Design Open Source Sharing economy Social Software

MOOC for teachers: why to bring coding to school?

This autumn our research group was involved in the design and implementation of a MOOC for Finnish teachers. The Code Alphabet MOOC was designed to help teachers bring coding to their classes, as proposed by the national curriculum framework for primary education in Finland from 2016 onwards. The national curriculum states, for example, that a […]

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Collaboration Design educational tool noelearningpatents Open Source Sharing economy Social Software Wikimedia Wikimedia Commons Wikipedia

The future of computers in education

Ten years ago I wrote a blog post with the title (Critical) history of ICT in education – and where we are heading? I feel that the post is still pretty accurate interpretation of the history, but there are some issues I see today differently. In 2005 I was optimistic. Social media and free and […]