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Well it's a bit late to wish you a happy and interesting new year, but what are three weeks compared to the 15 years needed to properly implement a standard like CSS or SVG or the 60 years needed for any serious educational reform .... ?

Big plans for 2010: None actually (sorry).

EduTech Wiki plans for the near future:

(1) Finish assembly of our RapMan and then report here. In the picture below I am looking at a piece of the hot end, the most fundamental element of the extruder that will heat up the plastic filament for 3D printing. So far, we spent about three long half days on assembly. The manuals are quite superb (with a few small exception). To assemble a piece you can:

• look at a printed manual with step-by-step instruction
• Explore a 3D representation (very useful!)
• Explore a 3D animation of the assembly (we never used this)
• Watch a video for the most tricky parts.

Miles ahead of Ikea and other "let the customer figure out how to assemble a device" companies.

RapMan printer (under construction)

Btw. Bits from Bits RapMan made it winner of the digital devices Betta awards..

Read the fab lab article for more info about 3D printing. 2010 ought be more tangible. So here is one of my plans: print crazy pieces of Lego-compatible blocks, design and produce door stoppers and turn both into 3D visiting cards.... (more later). I also may buy another 3D printer this year, i.e. one that could print food. Brilliant for giving talks, e.g. handing out edible 3D representations of statistical results.

(2) Finish some tutorials on web technologies. Not my idea of great fun, but I need these since writing things down helps me designing more up-to-date and interesting classes. In addition, students get short "how to" pieces that help them getting their homework done from a single source. Right now, I am adding stuff related to web applications and portalware. Later this winter, I also will go over the Flash tutorials and (hopefully) add some CS4-related stuff. But the Tutoriels Flash (en français) will have priority, since I got Atelier WebMaster: Animation et interaction avec Flash - 8-12 mars 2010 coming up.

(3) Go over design language articles (in particular Educational design languages) and systems that support good educational design. Provide feedback to the designers of good technology (e.g. LAMS) and help with some dissemination efforts. Last Monday I added and fixed some links in the concept map and mind map article. Gave a half-day training session in french (that's why). I actually used post-ITs for hands-on activities (much less hassle than explaining how to use mind-map, concept map and other software).

(4) Maybe (we shall see), I will dare promoting some "wiki books". But that project would need some extra editing (quite a lot actually).

(5) Be more agressive towards people who talk about "digital natives". In my experience (yes I sometimes I do go visit the trenches) the younger generation still has enormous difficulties using a computer and with respect to expectations (20% of all jobs are IT intensive) the picture rather gets worse. Posting a picture or a 2 sentence message on FB: ok. Figuring out how to use Word, SPSS, a MediaWiki, copy a file (and I could make this list really long ...): bad. Or if you want a summary:

EduTechWiki was nominated in the educational wiki category

Time for voting. http://edublogawards.com/ probably is the most important annual contest. The name "Edu blog awards" is a bit misleading since there are many categories: Best individual blog, Best individual tweeter, Best group blog, Best new blog, Best class blog, Best student blog, Best resource sharing blog, Most influential blog post, Most influential tweet / series of tweets / tweet based discussion, Best teacher blog, Best librarian / library blog, Best educational tech support blog, Best elearning / corporate, education blog, Best educational use of audio, Best educational use of video / visual, Best educational wiki, Best educational use of a social networking service, Best educational use of a virtual world, Lifetime achievement. You got one vote for each category.

Anyhow, I also suggest going through the nominations even if you don't plan to vote (including past years' nominations). Lot's of very interesting web sites.

I am very pleased to announce a (provisional) online version of Barbara Class (2009) A Blended Socio-Constructivist Course with an Activity-Based, Collaborative Learning Environment Intended for Trainers of Conference Interpreters, PhD Thesis, School of Psychology and Education, University of Geneva (download: 5.4MB PDF).

I am pleased for several reasions: It's the first completed PhD in education I directed at University of Geneva. (A few years ago, before becoming a full time academic, my role was being a "techie" at TECFA). The thesis is an example of design-based research, and it uses IMHO an appropriate mix of design languages and research methods (though as of today I'd suggest to use another educational design language, e.g. coUML or the easy CompendiumLD). This thesis is also a conclusion of a 1991 idea to use Community, Collaboration and Content Management Systems (C3MS) in education (C3MS is a name we invented for portalware like Drupal, Postnuke, Joomla).

Below, we quote from the summary (p. 5) [I also inserted some links to edutechwiki articles]:

Juliano F. Ravasi made an upgrade of his MediaWiki Wikilog extension, i.e. the tool I use to write what you are reading right now. As you can see, there is a "more" button at the bottom of long articles.

This is also a reminder recalling that MediaWikis are one of the interesting technologies available for implementing a learning platform. I find its affordances useful for project-oriented learning, writing-to-learn and mini-project-based technical courses (together with some upload/grading tool). For my technical courses I use EdutechWiki (mostly the french version). A project-design is implemented in a university history/sociology course and a writing-to-learn strategy in a highschool biology class. Both these wikis are a bit hidden and closed for writing.

Here is my first attempt at 3D scanning with a low cost (350 Euros) David Laserscanner system I got today. It comes with a webcam, a laser, calibrated panels and the software. So if you are short on cash, you also can have it for less...

Since printable designs will be part of future, you'll have to learn how to cope with all the legacy stuff. Read more about desktop fabrication in the Fab lab article. Pictures below show a plush lion of the kind that you could sit on top of your computer screen (camera view and capture from front).