Learnings from eLearning Africa 2014

I was luckey to attend the 9th eLearning Africa conference in Kampala, Uganda last week. As part of my involvement with Nyenga Foundation, me and principal Grace BaigulaniraI took the opportunity to explore new possibilities for our school at Nyenga.

As a rural school in Uganda, we have a very long way to go in getting connection, equipment and teacher training, but this was a good starting point in getting inspiration, connections and ideas.

My 4 key takeaways from the conference was this:

• A lot of innovation is taking place in the Afcrican content right now.  Both in terms of developing new technology and content, as well as deploying solutions in schools.

Digital skolesekk?

Mange kunne tenkt seg en papirløs digital skolesekk, men hva hva skal den fylles med?

Skolens største utfordring er at visjonen er for vag. Vi trenger kunnskapsløft uten reformer og krangel om timeplanen.

DN skriver om Khan Academy som starten på en revolusjon i fjernundervisning.  BT´s Sjur Holsen beskriver den norske skoledebatten som irrelevant.

Jeg kan programmere, jobber med digitale medier, har 3 barn i skolen og en kort karriere som høgskolelektor i bagasjen. Jeg tror på det uforløste potensialet i å bruke teknologi til læring.

Phone on Fire, Kindle and a Kettle

It was with great excitement I unpacked my new BioLite camp stove today. It was ordered 5 minutes after reading about it in PopularScience+. 10 days later it was delivered on my door. For a camper this is good news - it´s a great camping stove (It boiled 1 litre of water in less than 10 minutes), and it has a USB outlet. As we all know - most modern phone batteries does not survive 2 days of tent life.

iPad 3 harnessed for sailing

My iPad 3 is now prepared for summer holiday at sea. After some research, the choice landed on Griffins Survivor case. Both because it is reasonable priced and it fits the iPad 3 (even if not stated explicitly on the package). An alternative - the Lifeproof case, not available for iPad 3 yet , looks pretty good, but is slightly more expensive.

After testing it outdoors, I already suspect one problem - sun reflections. With direct sunlight and a small angle, the plastic screen cover very quickly turns into a mirror.

The apps ? Navionics Marine HD of course. Its is a must and have integrated weather forecast which is a huge advantage. In addition Havneguiden (Harbour Guide) which is an excellent guide to all harbors in Scandinavia. Finally,  I can recommend the Windfinder app on iPhone - it provides real time weather data from several weather stations along the coast.

I rest my case - Evernote and Shakespeare for personal creativity

I promised an update on my search for the optimal personal creativity app in my last blog post. In retrospect in became even clearer to me that it is more inspiring to be guided by Shakespeare and start every day by simply posing the question:

"Who do I want to be today ?" 

rather than what is my Todo list today ? Anyway, I did some googling and stumbled upon The four hour work week blog by Tim Ferriss. I was so curious that I downloaded his book on my Kindle. At first I was very sceptic (and I guess still am), but I must admit he has some very provoking and interesting thoughts on personal productivity and personal creativity.

He convinced me to give Evernote a new (and real try), and I must admit it has more or less all features I have been looking for.

1. Capture web pages (both just URL and complete page) using web clipper
2. Capture images
3. Capture documents like PDFs
4. A tagging systems - that allows you relate items along several dimensions and escape hierarchies
5. Instant Cloud based synchronization between all devices
6. Possibility to create lists
7. Sharing - by allowing shared notebooks.

The only thing I miss (a bit) is OCR recognition. It may be available in the premium edition I´m not sure.
After less than a moth of usage, I have already stored tons of data and I use it everyday. So my quest for a personal creativity app has ended - I will stay with evernote, and most likely turn into a premium customer very soon. I will dump my brain into this trusted external storage - naive as I am

Retro cab experience

Yesterday we took a cab to the city centre to listen to Goldenboy. Just as I was about to leave the taxi and looked at the taximeter, my eyes stopped immediately at this phone that should have been on a technical museum. According to the proud taxi driver,  it is 14 years old and still working. This phone was released 1996 so that may well be true. I asked if a could take a picture - and of course I could.

SVG on mobile - The next big thing

I just submitted a talk to JavaZone before the deadline April 16.

Scalable Vector Graphics is a mature standard that have been around for a long time, but have lived in the shadow of Flash and suffered lack of browser support. Today SVG has gaining rapidly support in browsers and authoring tools. Its fully integrated with, and part of the larger html5 umbrella. SVG has a huge potential for creators of interactive graphic content. One of the great advantages is the inherent scalability, that makes the graphics crisp on any screen size without conversion.
The talk draws on findings from Ruben Havres master thesis “The use of SVG as a dynamic graphic on mobile devices” at Bergen University College that I initiated.

Other conferences interested in this talk ?

Testing my Kindle under extreme conditions

This weekend I spent one night in tent in -13°C, and used the opportunity to test my Kindle under these conditions.

Since I got my Kindle in November it has been a dear companion on travels.

Its best features are what it does not have :

• Apps
• Good browser (it only has one that sucks)
• E-mail
• Games