Special:Badtitle/NS104:DKS/2016-02 News

After 6 month (or more) of being broken, the wikilog extension works again :)

First of all I wish everyone a happy and productive new 2016 !

Since last summer there are not many interesting changes in this wiki I am afraid (except updates here and there). On the other hand, the french cousin does fairly well thanks to the contributions of our students.

Last semester (from sept 2015 to Jan 2016) I taught my first full class on digital design and fabrication. Students had to create construction kits in one of the three categories construction and design, conceptual manipulation or reality role play (explained in Constructionist learning object), or directly read Zuckerman, Oren (2006), Historical Overview and Classification of Traditional and Digital Learning Objects). The result is here. If you don't speak french, you still can look at pictures and try to find the downloadables. Each project has wiki page for that (follow the links to the left of the pictures).

In the same vein, in December 2015, I got a new Felix Pro 1 3D printer and I am happy with it. 3D printing now is almost easy. It still takes many hours to print anything and print aborts can happen with certain designs and plastics. At least this new machine can automatically calibrate its platform and like its ancestors it's reliable (yes I do recommend it and I believe it to be a better choice than some of these backbreaking models made in the USA liked by the trade mags). Platform calibration is IMHO the biggest stumbling block for novices. It also has a quickly removable platform. That prevents beginners to destroy the printer's geometry when forcibly removing prints without grace and skill.

While Geneva still doesn't have a Fablab (I am talking about a simple makerspace and not the "real thing"), we now got at least a loose 3D printing community, organized by the 3D nursery from our computer science centre. The little French border town St-Julien (15 minutes away from us) is more dynamic: http://fablab-saintjulien.xyz/.

The citizen cyberlab project is over. In this wiki, it generated two fallouts: Portal: citizen science and Portal: Data mining and learning analytics tools and I will continue working a bit in this area, teach some tools like Pybossa or Epicollect, and interact with my other colleagues involved with our new Citizen Cyberlab.

This year I will work a bit on literacies (digital, cultural and other sorts) and there will be traces in the wiki. I also promised to create a little Mooc on e-learning standards. Not sure that this was a good decision, but I'll try to do it (and find a way to be somewhat creative) .... Template:Wl-publish: 2016-02-19 21:32:46 +0100