Program

Lectures and tutorials will be held by

Dr. Wolfram Laaser, FernUniversität, Hagen, Germany (Track 1)

Dr. Esko Kähkönen, University of Joensuu, Finland (Track 1)

Prof. Kinshuk, Massey University, New Zealand (Track 2)

Prof. Erkki Sutinen, University of Joensuu, Finland (Track 3)

Overview of Topics

The program of the summer school in 2004 consists of three tracks: Workshop on Digital Media and Cultural Issues, Techniques for Adaptation, and Kids' Club Community.

Track 1: Workshop on Digital Media and Cultural Issues

The track is a practical experiment toward designing and producing of culturally sensitive and contextualised digital learning environments and materials. The work is going to be done reflective of learning theories and approaches in cultural studies; hence making participants aware of cultural issues in multi-media production is aimed to. Some programs and tools for producing of materials and learning environments are presented, but it is not going to be a course for learning how to use them.

Individual supervising and peer reviews are conducted in the course of the workshop. An interesting exchange is expected in a multinational team, a maximum of 12 participants is accepted in the track. A professional experience in production of digital materials is not expected, but basic skills in multimedia is required. The ones willing to complete their skills to the required level before the workshop, should make use of the Flash, and Photoshop or equivalent.

Track 2: Techniques for Adaptation

• Adaptivity and adaptability
• Content based adaptation
• User exploration based adaptation
• Cognitive profiling and adaptive learning systems
• Adaptation in mobile learning systems

Track 3: Kids' Club Community

Kids' Club is an initiative of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Joensuu. The idea is to provide a challenging environment where school children together with educational technology researchers can invent, design, and implement novel software, robots, appliances, and gadgets for learning. Since Kids' Club's kick-off in fall 2001, the idea has been to network similar activities around the globe together. During ICALT 2004, we are going to run Kids' Club parallel to the scientific programme, with the attendees' children as participants. Therefore, we are looking for about 5 volunteers, primarily PhD students in educational technology, to run the Kids' channel. These volunteers will, together with other interested researchers, gather for the Kids' Club track at the preceding summer school.

Hopefully, this track will be a start for a long collaboration on a global Kids' Club network.