Tag: UTFS

Rhizome: Digital Identity Matters

The Rhizome project was funded by EduServ in parallel with our own This is Me. While we took a practical approach of aiming to help people learn about their digital identities by producing and testing learning materials for use by individuals and groups. The Rhizome project was more theoretical with them exploring the construction of digital identities and the socio-technical elements that impact on this online presence. Rhizome have just produced a report of their work and it is available via a creative commons licence.
The report contains a discussion of what digital identity is, including this description:

“Whether we call it ‘digital identity’, ‘online persona’ or ‘virtual self’ we are talking about accumulated electronic data that references us as an individual – the things that we say about ourselves, the things that others say about us, and/or the products of our electronic transactions that are driven by human-machine or machine-machine interactions.” Warburton, S. (2010). Identity matters, London: King’s College London.

The report then goes on to describe individual practice in relationship to digital identity, based on a number of workshops which included a group of researchers and others interested in the topic. There is a short section on Performance and the work of Goffman (my review), linking to the idea of performance of identities in digital spaces.
The case studies presented and the resulting pattern focus on children and the digital identities they may have as a result of the activities of others.
The report is certainly worth reading by anyone that is interested in digital identity, it only touches on so many of the issues that relate to digital identity, and there is so much more things that others have said about digital identity, and that can be said about the topic. But from my perspective that is good, as I do want to write a book on the topic, and this report will be an excellent piece of work to cite.

Software Engineering Awards

This was the fifth year of the Game Challenge for the Software Engineering module (SE1SB5) and once again I was lucky enough to be a judge.
2010

Posts from previous years can be found at:

This year’s entries were of a very high calibre, and promotional material produced was great. Every team presented themselves to the judges and spoke passionately about what they had done. Judging was very difficult because the work was so good, but given a team of judges we were able to pick out winners in each category.

  • Most innovative game concept or application of concept: Amish – Zero Effort

  • Best presentation showing how the game supports software engineering: Breeze Blocks – SENGA

  • Most entertaining presentation: Triangle Square – Killers

  • Best project documentation: How Unfortunate – How unfortunate

  • Best Poster: Synchronize – Project X

  • Special recognition awards for individual contribution: Ed Paul, Alex Farren

 

2010 2010 2010 2010

Workshop on Programming Phones Day 1

The first day of the Programming Phones Workshop went well, some 20 people dropped in for a short or longer time, the majority experimented with Android but smaller numbers looked at the iPhone and Blackberry. We didn’t have anyone wanting to look at Windows Mobile this time.

Blackberry provided some great tutorials, but with our set up it appeared that students need to part with $20 to get a “signed key” (csi file) before they could test their applications. We are trying to find out if their academic programme will allow educational use without students having to pay the fee.

We do have an educational link with the Apple Developer Programme, the trouble with that is that you need to develop on a Mac, and we don’t have Macs in our labs, fortunately the people who were interested had bought their Mac Books with them. After quite a bit of head bashing, help from books, online tutorials and a fellow participant they got their first app working with both input and output. The problem that had taken most time was lack of linking to “First Responder” and “File Owner” for the input and output, and the differences to Visual BASIC and C with which they were familiar.

The larger group was looking at Android, and quite a few started with Hello World, and some even loaded this on their own phones. A lot of the problems stemmed again from the differences to the programming environments the guys were use to. The lack of a visual editor caused some consternation, and for some Java was a new language.  Those with a bit more experience were planning larger projects that would help focus their skills.

The success of the afternoon was due to a number of people: Nick and others from ITNG for getting the software we needed on the lab machines, Karsten for helping those who got stuck, and everyone there for helping each other.

We will be running the workshop again today (Tuesday 15th June, 2010), it will be informal and will help beginners get started and offer a challenge for the more advanced.

Workshop on Programming Phones – Joining Instructions

 

2.00pm Monday 14th and/or 15th June 2010
in G21

Workshop Call

The workshop call is at http://redgloo.sse.reading.ac.uk/ssswills/weblog/3886.html

Essentially the sessions are aimed at people who are interested in programming phones, and allowing them to work together, to explore and learn from each other.

For now this is only for people at Reading University, but we could widen things at a later date.

Response to the Call

We have had some 30 people show an interest and we will run the event both days with a similar format, so if you can only come to one session that will be ok.

Programme

The programme will start with introductions and groupings, we will cluster around the technologies people are interested in.

Beginners will work through tutorials and those with experience will hopefully support the beginners and identify challenges that they can work on.

Suggested Tutorials

Android

Hello, world http://developer.android.com/resources/tutorials/hello-world.html

Notepad: http://developer.android.com/guide/tutorials/notepad/index.html

iPhone

Via the Apple Developer Program see http://developer.apple.com/programs/which-program/

Windows Mobile

Via Microsoft http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsmobile/default.aspx 

Blackberry

Via RIM http://na.blackberry.com/eng/developers/resources/tutorials.jsp  

Resource list: http://na.blackberry.com/eng/ataglance/academic/content.jsp

 

If you know of other tutorials and resources – add a comment below.

 

Workshop on programming phones

Lots of people are starting to explore programming phones, whether iPhones, Androids or Windows Mobile.
I have little experience, other than having followed a tutorial on Android programming that ended up with “Hello World” on the Android emulator! But I know lots of you are experimenting or want to experiment. So on the afternoons of Monday 14th  and Tuesday 15th June we will have 2 sessions to allow people to work together to explore and learn from each other.
If you can come along please post a comment on this post on RedGloo, indicate what devices you are interested and what experience you have, which day or days you can come. This will allow us to plan how we will work.
For now this is only for people at Reading University, but we could widen things at a later date.

Presenting with Prezi

The tag line for Prezi (http://prezi.com/) is “Create astonishing presentations live and on the web” and they go on to assure the reader that anyone can do it.
It is easy to sign up for a free account, and there is a really good free educational offer. having played around for about 90 minutes I have created a presentation about me – well at least the me at the University of Reading. With more time I could have added pictures and some clever effects.
I don’t think it will take over from PowerPoint, but I think as something different it is fantastic.

http://prezi.com/bin/preziloader.swf

Staying online when on the road

Recently in the course of a week I travelled quite a lot in the UK:  I spent over 20 hours on trains, and 4 nights in two different hotels. I like to be online and so I was hoping to keep up with emails and Twitter while out and about. As a starting point I had my new Android based phone – with always on internet (well as long as there is a signal), plus my netbook with my mobile dongle.
The first trip was on Cross Country trains and it seems that any mobile coverage is limited most of the route (well certainly out of Reading), it means that you don’t have to listen to other people’s lengthy “I’m on the train” conversations, but it meant not much connectivity. The good thing with the train was it was easy to see when it had phone/internet connectivity and to do a quick catch up.
The second trip was with a mix of Great Western and East Coast. The coverage on Great Western up to London is a bit better than heading north on Cross Country, but not great. East Coast trains was a revelation – they have on board wifi although not the most speedy service it was there, coupled with quite a lot of the journey seeming to have 3G available meant I felt really online.
The 2 hotels I stayed in both had wifi but a different attitude. The first had free wifi in the public areas (ok as long as there were only a few wanting to use it), but if you wanted to have access in your room you had to pay – and they didn’t say what the charge was. Having invested £10 topping up my mobile dongle I decided not to invest further. The second hotel gave me 2 vouchers for wifi access, each was valid for 8 hours, I asked if this was for 8 consecutive hours and I was assured it was for 8 hours connection. My netbook runs Linux and usually works ok with these vouchers opening up a window in which I can keep track of the time used and disconnect, but this outfit didn’t work like that. The 8 hours started when I first connected and ran out in the middle of the night, even though the netbook was turned off. I decided it wasn’t worth moaning to the receptionist, and it was a lot easier just to use the dongle.
The other place I wanted to use the internet was Edinburgh University, and when I arrived I was given a code to access their internet, but I didn’t need it, both the netbook and phone picked up an EduRoam connection, EduRoam does exactly what it is meant to – allows academics to use their home credentials to access the internet at other institutions.

SEDA Spring Teaching, Learning and Assessment Conference

The Spring 2010 conference of SEDA (Staff and Educational Development Association) was entitled Communities of Learning, with Etienne Wegner as a keynote speaker. A colleague had suggested this was a place to present our work on Digital Identity (This is Me), so I had submitted a proposal that was accepted. I was unsure what sort of people would be members of this association, but having joined their event I can report that they are a friendly bunch, passionate about education and able to organise events that are well worth attending.

Day 1 started with Etienne Wenger’s keynote, the session was pitched at the audience weaving his ideas with questions and comments from the audience. One comment that will stay with me is that we should collect success stories of communities of practice, rather than looking for metrics which are probably impossible to enumerate. Etienne also led the closing session of Day 1 bringing together strands of sessions he had attended.

There were lots of other notable sessions I attended, including:

Helen Beetham’s “Learning Literacies for a Digital Age”. This was run as an interactive session with Helen asking us questions, us discussing in small groups and then coming back together. There were so many great ideas and points we wanted to follow up it felt like 90 minutes was not enough.

Pat Atkins and Charlotte Stevens “Developing staff communities to create online student communities”. Pat and Charlotte used a painting of the Infanta of Spain as a discussion point for their work, with each of us considering which character in the picture matched our roles, and considering the interaction between them. This bought together the differences and similarities between different communities.

Aaron Porter, the president-elect of the NUS, introduced the student voice, speaking of the problems facing the different communities in education. I was particularly impressed by his ability to have empathy with the views of all of these communities and their members.

Helen Walmsley talked about her work on e-learning, and undertook a brave exercise where participants undertook in the session roles that could be undertaken in online seminars. It was a great exercise, giving a real insight into the experience.

Obviously I attended my own session in which we talked about Digital Identity and undertook some of our activities. When talking about choice of email addresses one participant told of a job applicant who had an email address that was something like “LazySusan”, not really an image a job applicant should want to present.

 

Ede and Ravenscroft Extranet

The university has changed the way staff register to attend graduation and it is now handled by the robe provider Ede and Ravenscroft web site called Enet, the whole process seems to be ill thought out and some what unprofessional.

The first I knew about this was an email entitled: “Staff Processions Reading Uni 30/06-02/07/10 30/06/2010”; the return address on the email was “noreplay@graduation-services.co.uk” the misspelling of “reply” made me assume it was a scam and so I reported it to ITS, but apparently it wasn’t a scam and it was the only way the university was offering to register for attending graduation. The email also included my password which I can only assume is the same password sent to all staff at Reading, probably the same password sent to all staff at any institution using the service.

Well today I decided I should register, I was allowed to change the password, and to correct the out of date title they were using. I was given the option of registering for one of two ceremonies, presumably the ones associated with my school, there seemed no way to register for other ceremonies. Staff occasionally attend other ceremonies because they know people who are graduating, either professionally or personally, and this really should be allowed for; and to work out which of the ceremonies offered I should attend I needed to consult a pdf document on the university site. Having selected my preferred ceremony I was told if I required a lunch ticket I would need to send an email to the graduation office. The time taken to do all this was considerably more than any previous systems.

All in all I believe the systems is flawed and things like this give IT a bad name.

It is also processes like this that give the scammers a chance.