News at the Joensuu EdTech Research Group

Clint Rogers: Birthday Greetings - Creating a New Reality

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:45:00 +0000

Thank you all my friends, family, and colleagues who have wished me a happy birthday, or simply been a happy part of my life! I’m feeling blessed to know you. On the airplane to Orlando today I created this short 1 minute video clip for you: If things like countries are inventions of the human mind, what [...]

Carolina Islas: social media and natural disasters

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 10:02:02 +0000

I am impressed of the power of social media. No for the technology itself, I confess. I am marveled of what human beings can do as soon as they have the access and the know how to use technology. Today my personal use of social media is limited to these three areas: 1. Research (main topics within [...]

Roman Bednarik: Pearls of today

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 19:45:43 +0000

During today’s interview with Henrik Hansson, I produced few bright ideas for which you can quote me (paraphrased, the original will be soon online, hope not):

R: “You go twenty kilometers away from Joensuu and there is nothing.” – when comparing North-Carelia with Africa.

H: “Is there any special characteristics a phd student must have?” R: “Let me think for a while…hm, no.”

R: “If I don’t hear anything from a student in one week, I start to be afraid he might be sick!”

H: “How did you select the topic of your thesis?” R: “Well, we were building a usability lab, that’s how it happened.”

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Carolina Islas: dreams come true: never let go!

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 16:49:01 +0000

Before I went to Africa I saw two videos from TED (I am a BIG fan of TED), which have a special influence in my process towards Iringa. Actually they re-enforce some of my inner energy, I admit. One of those videos is this one: “William Kamkwamba: How I harnessed the wind” He shows the clear relationship [...]

Clint Rogers: ICT4CC - AXIS LIVE Course has begun!

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 07:50:51 +0000

Carolina Islas: score: 9 vs 1

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 19:59:00 +0000

Publications on January 2010: I got 2 new rejections and 1 acceptance. When I got the acceptance, I wanted to believe it will be a change of trend and I will get more papers accepted. However, didn’t want to celebrate too fast, as I knew two more feedbacks should be coming this month. Today those feedbacks [...]

Carolina Islas: ut&c #1: How to catch an iPhone thief

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 13:49:54 +0000

It is my impression that USA promotes detective movies, novels and TV shows. At least it has a wide sample of that genre. Then when I read the article of “how to catch an iPhone thief” I could say the fact that happens in the USA and in CA, makes it just the perfect location. Actually, [...]

Carolina Islas: all of us are guilty at some level

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 21:34:04 +0000

In October I wrote about some of my reflections about natural disasters and our behaviors. This topic affects me deeply. Today is Haiti. Since I first read the notice of the earthquake, I had been following closely. Maybe this time I identify a bit more as I lived the earthquake of Mexico ’85 on a fifth floor [...]

Carolina Islas: research basics: ethics and philosophy.

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 14:08:46 +0000

If one wants to be a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) two things must be present in the basic foundations of this path, according to my actual perspective. Both of this elements I am learning them in a very hard way, as I was clueless about them and no-one guide me about them. Those two essentials [...]

Carolina Islas: each day can be a celebration day – it is up to us

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 10:28:00 +0000

Hmmm…. for me “New Years” is like the earth’s birthday. Humans made it up, as we have no idea when our planet born but anyway humans celebrate together this day. Most of the people in this season are happy and with good energy, however it is possible to find depression too, which is understandable. However, [...]

Clint Rogers: from Jordan - What would you like to see in the New Decade?

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 11:11:28 +0000

Carolina Islas: graduation

Fri, 25 Dec 2009 21:39:54 +0000

The graduation was a big event. Schoolteachers, Tumaini University students and some teachers, family and community member were present. The children move the desks from the schools to allow adults to sit, and they were at one side of the area sitting on the floor, however all assistants were under the shade of the same [...]

Carolina Islas: intensive workshop: “working for my Dreams” (2/2) – workshop

Fri, 25 Dec 2009 19:13:12 +0000

The workshop has been VERY intensive. My nights-sleep average during the workshop period was four hrs a day approximately. I was the last one to go to bed and usually I got up before the sunrise. This gave me the opportunity to realize the night rhythm in Iringa: first relative quietness (I say relative because [...]

Clint Rogers: “How might we improve?” vs. “Wouldn’t it be cool if?”

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 02:50:15 +0000

Clint Rogers: CNN iReport - 10 Days to Touch 10 Million, “Your Life Matters!”

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 15:53:50 +0000

Carolina Islas: intensive workshop: ” Working for my Dreams” (1/2) – background & trip

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:15:15 +0000

The reason for me to be in a, Tanzania, Africa is to run this workshop. Within my research this is the way to validate my model, but this will be material for other post. Right now let’s focus on “Working for your Dreams”. Until now I am able to write about this. Before my trip, in [...]

Ilkka Jormanainen: NSS Spot Meeting at Ruaha National Park

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:51:33 +0000

This part of North-South-South exchange progam network meeting at Tumaini University and Ruaha National Park, Tanzania, was highly successful as the pictures below show. More results to follow…

Clint Rogers: Sir Ken Robinson, Hammer Lectures

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 02:50:22 +0000

Clint Rogers: 10 Days to Touch 10 Million: The world needs you

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 04:49:36 +0000

Ilkka Jormanainen: OLPC and other interesting things

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:50:17 +0000

Tanzania has exposed me to very many new and interesting things, such as kiti moto and dala dala, and not to forget one of the most delicious part of Tanzania, Ndovu. Thanks for Marcus for introducing these things for me at Dar es Salaam and Iringa!

One of the most interesting thing has been Tumaini University’s OLPC (Once Laptop Per Child) project in the local Ukombozi primary school. Marcus and Carolina are going to run a workshop on digital storytelling there next week, and today we went to prepare the technical bits of the project. My part was to configure the XO School Server (XS) to work as a resource centre and gateway to Internet for the XO laptops.

Configuring the server with Tumaini IT students at Ukombozi primary school

The server is based on Fedora with the necessary additions for using and sharing resources in the mesh-up network of XO laptops. The server was pre-configured almost completely, but wireless access point, school’s PPoE-based Internet connection, and server’s iptables-based firewall gave a bit of a headache for few hours. It seemed for me that if the Internet connection was a straight to Ethernet port as usually nowadays, the whole thing would have been just plug-and-play (after proper configuration for the access point). After all, everything seemed to be up and running even with the PPoE connection, and hopefully things will work also on the next week when the workshop starts.