Andrés at Joensuu

After some struggling I have managed to come with a better design for EdtechNews that allows to place more content to the front page. As usual, you will find the summary of the posts in the central column, ordered by date. The left column is a summary of the latest comments in our blogs, again sorted by date. You can subscribe to its feed by just clicking on the XML icon next to “EdTechComments”, you can safely ignore the MySite icon. If you host your blog at Blogger and want your comments to be displayed, you should follow these steps and report back to me with a link to the generated RSS.

The right column hosts a box containing updated news. They should reflect what is of interest for this EdTech group, or what we think can be of interest for the other members of the group. You can consider it like a mini-post. Create an account in del.icio.us, and tag your interesting links with “edtechjns“. They will be added automatically to that list, for everyone to see. Again, you can subscribe to it independently by clicking the corresponding icon.

The layout is probably taken from LayoutGala (I cannot remember), and the comments’ feed is mashup of your WordPress feeds, aggregated by KickRSS, and displayed by RapidFeeds.

How can it be that last weekend Ray Davies and I were in the same place at the same time?? and that nobody told me!! And when they did it, they did it 3 days too late, thanks Elina!

Yep, Ray Davies played at Finlandia Talo last saturday while I was at “We got beef”, having a Red Bull and trying not to fall slept. Thanks god, saturday got its good points without Ray Davies…

Just when I was thinking how my quality of life can be measured as the number of times per week I go to Kruunu (I am doing pretty bad as I have only been once in the last 2 weeks). I heard the news that it is closing down: too small place, too few clients, too big staff.

Roman and I were really looking forward to the summer, when really enjoy their milkshakes outside. It seems we gotta rush and squeeze the last days of Kruunu this cold spring. And you should do the same. A milkshake a day keeps the sugar inside. Remember to try the Hazelnut and Caramel one.

As you may know I have become a “part -time” teacher assistant. And last friday, I had my second and last demo session, this time on Learning Management Systems.

I used del.icio.us to post the links I planned to use for the demo session, but somehow I feel I should have used the course webpages in moodle to post them, but now I am a teacher!! so, do what I tell you , not what I do :). I managed to get accounts on university WebCT and Moodle systems, so students could create some content using both LMS, and compare later. The task was to duplicate the learning material I had already done, but in a different context. It still puzzles me how Java related content was more frequent, everybody wants to be teaching Java!

Anyway, giving students designer rights had its consequences. Some students from the first demo group deleted my previously created content!! And at the end the first demo, “we” managed to put the university WebCT server down. It looks like I am actually teching students how to do things.

So now we have a plan, a summer plan. I will be in Madrid, again, for 2 days attending the Summercase festival. With bands like Primal Scream and Sigur Ros, it does not feel that bad anymore that I will be missing this year’s Ilosaarirock festival (with bands like Mudhoney, Mango Kid, and my beloved Cleaning Women) and all the parties that may happen in my house during that time. Moreover, I will be meeting friends and brothers at Madrid, at the festival… everywhere.

Anyway, this is just a little stop in my trip, as from the festival my brothers and I will go straight to the airport and fly to the La Palma, Canary Islands, where my cousin’s wedding takes place. Again, meeting friends and family in the most beatiful environment I have ever seen. I know I still have to visit the other smalls islands like El Hierro or La Gomera ….one long week in La Palma should give me time to visit one of them at least.

After that, back to Madrid to enjoy the family house, and the neighbouring places.

So, from this moment I don’t have to worry anymore about my holidays! Apart from getting a proper suit for the wedding!!