Category: Open Source

LeMill is something we are developing in my research group in Helsinki with our developer friends in Estonia, Hungary and Georgia. Don’t ask whether LeMill must have something to do with geopolitics. Not really – except that it was originally funded by the EU with several new member states (Estonia and Hungary). An interesting anecdote […]

I am right now taking part in the Participatory Design 2008 Conference at Bloomington, Indiana, USA. Yesterday I was giving a talk about a research paper with the title “Software as Hypothesis: Research-Based Design Methodology”. The paper will be later published in the ACM International Conference series. With the paper and the presentation I am […]

Last weekend I took part in at the Campus Party Colombia in Bogota. Campus Party is a combination of LAN-party, technology conference and a fair sponsored by Telefonica, the Spanish telecom. Picture by mario_nel2002 I gave a talk about how to use New Media tools (blogs, wikis, micro-blogs, mobile phones) in learning and capacity building […]

Friends at the UNCIEF NYHQ, who have been developing also the MobilED audio wiki, just announced a prototype of solar powered communication hub than can be used to provide communications, education, connectivity and emergency support in places lacking electricity, Internet, telephone, radio and other connections. I think this is a great idea. The communication hub […]

The title is silly, but well… this is a blog anyway. Comparing schools in Finland and in US is bit like comparing carrot to all the fruits. Carrots are good, but there are many great fruits, too. We also know that some fruits are just non-eatable, even poisonous. Anyway, in the following I will make […]

The SLATE Magazine reports the study, The Effect of Computer Use on Child Outcomes (study report, PDF), looking at the program of the Government of Romania where low-income families were given vouchers to purchase PCs. From some part, I agree with the interpretations presented in the study. My final conclusions would anyway be somehow different. […]

The latest news from the OLPC world are no news. So, the OLPC is now more or less officially and primary a laptop project – not an education project. Why I am not surprised? I think publicly traded technology companies suddenly making add-value for the children of the developing world instead of their shareholders would […]

A good media report is such that whatever opinion you hold about the topic, you’ll find the report supporting your point of view. I think the Dutch documentary “The Truth According To Wikipedia” does exactly this. In the video Ndesanjo Macha makes some excellent remarks being same time amused, cynical, despairing and hopeful. If you […]

In a couple of last months I have been visiting two times the Long Now Foundation in San Francisco. I know their projects very well from online, but visiting physical places made me think about them differently. Physical world is so immersive – you know. “The Long Now Foundation hopes to provide counterpoint to today’s […]

This is not a great story. This is a fragmented note I am making to this blog. The thesis of the post is: Learning is story telling. Avoid ignorance. Learning is story telling because we make sense of the world through stories. Teachers job has always been story telling. This should be in the core […]