2014 har vore eit travelt år! No i jule-innspurten er vinteren er endeleg her. Store snømengder gjev gode skitilhøve. Innimellom er det opplett og då kan morgonbilete som dette sikre julestemninga.
Altanutsikt på Campus Fosshaugane, Sogndal
Hjelper ikkje dette, så er det berre å dagdrøyme om snømenn. Igjen… (The Snowman )
Dette var vanskeleg å sjå føre seg i sommar, då Nordfjord-termometeret heime viste «klegghete» og 35 grader +.
God Jul!
Øyvind
Nyttårsfeiringa vart noko prega av at stormen Dagmar hadde mørklagt bygda Hyen og stengt all vegtilgong i fleire dagar. Men mindre granskog har Vestlandet godt av.
I Sogn måtte eg og mine forskarvenner uansett nyte skiføret og bratt moro til påske.
Kor er vi? Kor skal vi? Kor har vi vore? Forskarar på tur…
Deretter var våren plutseleg her. Ikkje at det gjorde noko i Sogn heller…
Fin ettermiddagstur!
Og folkevandringa frå Sogndal mot toppen Nuken (oppe til venstre under ) er lett å forstå:
Vatnet under Nuken er full av fisk
Fisken er diverre for kresen for flugeutvalet på tre floger som eg presenterte denne sommarsdagen. Ein tur på Molden er difor populært og eit godt alternativ.
Nøgd turist på trimtur til Molden. Under ein time frå parkeringsplassen.
Plutseleg var snø og julesteming her. Eit par dagar i veka etter jobb og i helgar må det bli bortoverski og nedoverski i skianlegga i Sogn no. Som oftast Hodlekve. Nytt av året er at puddersnø og eit par toppturar skal nytast med Randonee-utstyr. Kveldsøkt i -10, 07.12
Hodlekvelangrennsløypa i svar og kvit
Hodlekvelangrennsløypa i måneskin
Langrenn i Hodlekve i god stemning
Nysnøen er kvit, pudder og glitrande i minus 10
Eit vellukka oppvektseminar i regi IT-forum skulenettverk (takk til Norfjord) veka før der 100 frå barnehage, skule, vgs og HiSF/VF var samla, innheld rikeleg med julemat og lunsj (og spa). Det er julebordsesong. No må forbrenninga aukast.
Det var godt gjort å få gjennomført meir eller mindre på dugnad ein halvparten so stor konferanse som IT-forum sin årlege konferanse. I 2011 var over 200 i Balestrand.
På Vestlandsforsking har eg fleire spanande prosjekt i gong og på gong. Eg er glad for at eg fekk koordinere skattefunnsøknaden vi lukkast med å få på gjennom. Det er viktig for oss å få utvikle nye forskingstenester gjennom nybrotsarbeid og stort løft innan semnatiske teknologiar der vi nasjonalt har spisskompetanse.
Elles driv eg mangesysleri og får arbeid med avstandsreduserande kommunikasjon, inkluderande arbeidsliv for SMB, Eit kunnskapsbasert Sogn og Fjordane, breibandsatsing i Hordaland og ikkje minst endeleg VRI Kompetansemekling att (etter ein byråkratisk dvale-periode). Kanskje får eg bidra på ei spennande skulesatsing i Nordfjord i eit skattefunnprosjekt bedrifta Oppad har fått nyleg og.
Tidlegare i haust var jakt og friluftsliv god helgeaktivitet når Sogndal ikkje spelte kamp. Først glimt frå supportersteming 2011. Få reiste jamnt, men steminga var god:
Kampen starta i tåkeheimen. Og blir berre hugsa for jubelen to min etter slutt
Så friluftsliv 2011:
Ystelvikja med fullklaff. Felte fal kolle med knøttliten kalv
Hylsetevegen. Klassisk kort trimtur for sogndøler
Today I select two presentations, although there were two others who really deserved attention too. Case studies on «Teachers» forums» and not least the extensive activity «Designing with and for the elders». Alas. I was not able to keep up with the presenters paces.
Note: This is my short conference notes on two very different but interesting presentations today and they are prone to faults and misunderstandings. For reference use http://www.mccsis.org
1. INTERNET USAGE AND REAL WORLD ACTIVITIES: WHO IS SOCIALLY WITHDRAWN? (F094) Univ of Kagawa, Japan, Emiko Itami, Hiroyuki Tarumi, Kazutoshi Kobayashi and Mitoko Nakashima
Introduction:Aim of study is to find relationship between Internet use and real world activities.
Subjects: 235 engineering students from year 1-3 at the University.
Survey: With questions on:1) Internet use, 2) Change of daily activities due to Internet usage, 3) Usage of regional facilities
Results:
– Three categories of internet usage was defined based on reported data on time spent on Internet: Light usage: 96 students, Middle usage: 98, Heavy: 41
– Internet usage has reportedly strong increasing impact time spent on student hobbies, friends and on time spent at home. Not all effects are positive
– The service with most impact reportedly was VSS (Facebook and a popular japanese alternative) that increased number of physical places visited
– Internet usage directly affect hobbies, number of friends and activity area!
– Specialist services are found on internet when located relatively far from physical location.
– Heavy users are NOT more active. There is a difference between going there and knowing about it.
– Further analysis includes involving factors, such as subjects: «living at home» or «own a car»
2. ICT SUPPORT TO THE RECONSTRUCTION OF SOCIAL MEANINGS AFTER A DISASTER (S021)
Francesco Maria Barbini, Alessandro D’Atri, Laura Tarantino and Stefano Za
Introduction: 6.april 2005 an earthquake of magnitude 6.3 struck L’Aquila and killing 308, injuring 1500 forced 70 000 to evacuate.
35 000 still has not been able to return due to massive material damage. But the massive immaterial damage is felt even harder to repair. Without their houses to live in, streets to walk in and shops to visit people has reportedly lost much sense of meaning.
Current strategy seems to hamper new sense-making that must be based on interaction. 20 000 are at the moment located in more than 20 small «new villages» built directly after the disaster. Can ICT help?
The project seeks answer in Pierre Levy’s research and use of anthropological space: Earth – Affiliation, Territory – Address, Commodity – Professional role
In Cyberspace many systems are available, but the paper states that few focus on citizens.
The EagleVox- project want to build a platform with the right focus and ease of use. The channels envisioned are primarily mobile terminals (SMS) with some use of terminals and a web portal.
The modalities: top-down (institution to citizen), bottom- up, and peer-to-peer (between citizens). A unique listening point gather information, evaluate and then disseminate to users.
Conclusion: This platform will allow citizens to participate in creation of new sense-making.
Current prototype support top-down modality, the second prototype will support bottom-up modality and the final will support peer-to-peer communication.
Post- presentation comments;
The project team has shared experience with researchers at University of South Carolina. They report similar effects and citizen needs after the hurricane disaster hit New Orleans.
The presenter was personally one of the citizens who endured the quake with its consequences and has been forced to move.
—
A few comments:
1. IT would be interesting to couple (and strengthen) the findings with other sources than the students own reports ( data repositories of internet use. I do not like the ide of putting a gps-tag on each of them to measure what they do all the time.)
2. A very good and necessary project. ICT to support sense-making should obviously be heavily invested in by both public and private agents. I am surprised to hear that adequate systems do not already exist.
The proposed platform mainly based on SMS does not (to a programming novice) sound technically challenging to build by assembling open-source code or perhaps purchasing proven sms- modules or entire CMS-systems.
Platform usability, introduction and procedures ensuring quality of content will be challanging.
A USABILITY STUDY OF MICROSOFT OFFICE 2007 AND MICROSOFT OFFICE 2003 (F117) Nestor J. Rodriguez, Puerto Rico
Note: This was a straightforward study i found worth sharing with focus on the conclusion without going to much into the details and figures presented. To me this is also relevant eLearning-paper even though this was presented on the Interfaces and Human Computer Interaction conference.
Introduction: Upgrade included from Off 2003 to 2007 is a major change in user interface. Upgrade CAN have negative effects (Khoo, 1996).
Objective of study: Assess effects.
Subjects: 50 (college students, professors and staff), each with at least one year of experience as user. 25 in each version
Methods: Initially questionnaire for demography.
Tasks: ca 20-30 per application performed on Word, Excel and Powerpoint.
Post test new questionnaire, with alternatives 1-5, on difficulty and satisfaction
Statistical analysis: Dependent Sample T-test of time to completion
Result: ONLY Excel had significant difference in average completion time, and this was only related to one question of ca 20 («create a graph…»)
Only Word 2007 had significantly higher error rate compared to Word 2003.
Conclusion: NO added significant average user value of upgrade identified! Excel 2007 upgrade had a significant negative effect.
—
Question: I asked the presenter if his conclusion would change with the one outliner resulting from the test question about creating graphs set aside.
His reply: «Then there is no significant difference in average would result also for Excel.»
My remark here; I do not think they should lay so much weight on this one outliner data result, as a new set of questions could give a new outliner in PPT or Word.
This however does not take away my interest for the case study that points towards no real added value by upgrade. (But I do suppose MS would like to address the undisclosed graph tool challenge if they have not already done so in Office 2010. New comparisons 2010 vs 2007/2003 would be of some interest, I believe.)
Keynote on Collaborative Technologies 2011- Theme Security: Techniques and challenges for ensuring effective use of collaborative systems, Professor Carsten Maple, Univ of Bedfordshire.
NOTE: These conference notes are prone to my misinterpretations and the trouble of keeping up with the presenters» pace…
Introduction: Collaborative Technologies. We use them quite a lot- Wikipedia in some cases- and professional and private life is merging. There is a massive growth:
– Elearning; blackboard, moodle
– Videoconferencing; Webex (Cisco), Skype (Microsoft)
– E-gov; Govdex (Australian government)»
– Grovt of skype; Nov 2009,20 mill- Nov 2010, 25 mill- six months later 30 mill
Challenge; Security, Reliability, Abuses, Usability, Acceptance/Behavioral challenge
Collaborative systems come with plusses and minuses on different modes of working – ie wiki hinders the energy normally emerging from brainstorming
Security: Information Assurance – towards a new way of systems design
Requires:
– Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability, Non-repudiation, Autenthification.
Holistic design idea and preventing cyper-stalking
– Data Confidentiality is straightforward keeping something sent unchanged.
In real life more often what one think is breach of Data conf:
– Integrity breach: The guarantee that the data received by one party is the data sent
– Availability: Assuranse that the systems and data are available at any required time- This is increasingly important
– Non-rep. = assurance that sender cannot deny what has been sent
– Autenthification = The process of the act of confirming the truth of an entity.
Pflegers» Classification of Network Attacks: Interruption, Interception, Modification, Fabrication/ Insertion.
With a autenthification breach all of the attack types can happen.
Techniques; Security – Encryption, Integrity- Hash algorithm (fingerprint of document made and tested), Availability – Redundancy, Non-rep.-Digital signature, Autenthification – Password (has often been compromised or NO password to system exist). This have been the cause of most cases one hears of.
Autenthification
1. HOW?:
– What you know – password
– What you have – tokens (keys)
– What you are – biometrics, static or dynamic- physical or behavioral
2. Stages:
– Enrolment (registration)
– Verification
– Reset (often not mentioned)
It is a bad idea that biometrics are the best! WHEN compromised you have lost all hope of resetting. A password you can change
People struggle to remember random strings (=good passwords). It IS a good ide to use good passwords AND WRITE THEM DOWN! Few has access to your workplace and many to your web site. Strangely this strategy was ridiculed earlier on.
We interact differently online than face to face. With some consequences. How many has let others borrow a password?
Holistic approach is needed to look at and address the motivation for cyber harrassment.
– How difficult it is to do, What rewards harassment leads to, probability of getting caught, probability of penalty, What penalty
Conclution: Most approaches focus on the first. Lawmakers must address the challenge.
Question after presentation;
The user is the weakest link, as we all know. What is the second weakest? (Strangely this is the first time the professor has been asked :-)).
– Your business partner is the second weakest link.
– But a rising threat is availability risk due to increase of mobile systems and possible interception of signals.
Personal comment: An interesting general presentation about security with some obvious and some surprising new bits of knowledge
On Friday I presented the paper ELECTRONIC INTERACTION IN HEALTH SERVICES AND ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE – LESSONS FROM THE NORWEGIAN COUNTY OF SOGN & FJORDANE. This will be available later via a link to SlideShare or my employers website http://www.vestforsk.no.
Due to the catastrophe back home that unfolded after the session (and poor internet connection at the internet conference hotel that made live-blogging during session impossible) other priorities than work came first on friday afternoon and most of saturday.
I was very impressed with the presentation of model and examples from South Africa.
THE GENERIC QUALITY ASSURANCE MODEL (GQAM) FOR SUCCESSFUL E-HEALTH ACQUISITION IN RURAL HOSPITALS (F118) by Nkqubela Ruxwana eventually got the prize for best presentation and it was really well deserved.(I later attempted pronouncing his name during my presentation. YOU try it.) This was to make a point about his findings might not only be true in poor regions as he suggested. (And I thought my paper was open about our project shortcomings? The importance of Involvement and Quality procedures can also be felt in case study in our resource rich region of Norway.
DEVELOPMENT APPROACHES FOR TRAINING TEACHERS TO INTEGRATE TECHNOLOGY INTO THE CLASSROOM Dean T. Spaulding and Evan J. Seiden, USA
NOTE; Theese are my conference notes. Conference proceedings are the only validated source.www.iadis.org
Introduction: How to, no longer IF we should integrate…
Sample:
20 school districts, 16 public and 4 non-public, government founded project, 8 teachers per high school involved.
Approaches:
1. Online courses: 10-14 were available to each teacher.
2. Pair- Modelling :”outsider” trainer coming in for 7 days
3. Project groups of teachers would have a $5000 mini pot to selected technology of their own choice
Data collection:
Teacher survey-Archival Usage (data stored of use)- Interviews & Site visits- Trainer survey
Thoroughly crosschecking was done by triangulate surveys and interviews’ and data use.
Result:
i. Yr 1- 33%, Yr 2- 7% of teachers participated in at least one online course
ii. However those who did found it valuable and informative
iii. Why not?: Time, irrelevant course topic etc..
i. Challenge was scheduling/ finding time
i. Challenge: MANY! But teachers didn’t abandon technology like with Elluminate, they chose to work to address the challanges
ii. Teachers reflexions revealed they might have chosen other technologies if given new chance
Conclusion:
– CMP Unique successful approach for training teachers to integrate technology into the classroom
– Focus on giving teachers autonomy
– Provide framework for teachers to select, criticise and reflect on integration
Discoussion after the presentation:
– This is in line with theory of learning.
– Culture of organization will affect success of such initiative.
– Typically funding and decision on technology goes to higher level in the organization.
– 8 is a small number of teachers on buildings with 2000 students.
International Multi Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems 2011, Rome eHealth 19.july- http://www.iadis.org.
eHealth Opening Profs Isaias and Macedo
– Welcome
– 19 of 103 full papers accepted- lucky me! case study from Sogn & Fjordane accepted
– First eHealth conferense was held in Portugal 2009 and then in 2010 in Germany
PPT not working as intended on conference PC. ODF solves the problem…
eHealth Keynote Dr Ascione
All online Europe: 172.3 Million
All eHealth Europe: 154 Million – eHealth is big!
Internet is the most trusted source outside professionals, a BIG thing. Whatever is there is trusted.
In US the Web is more trusted than the physicians…
European physician’s integration of the Web into daily practice nearly on par with the US
The eHealth communications eco-system: Personal webspace and virtual conferences, augmented reality, content syndication (the most used resource for patients and physicians in Europe is Wikipedia after the search! Needs to be owned by community working on health care ), video (youtube- huge but still not enough in English and poor in other languages, on diabetes etc.),
Mobile (now more mobile sold to be on the net then pc)- those who supply tools(drugs) supply the new programs/apps for Physicians.—- mobile is booster for electronic record because Ipad more effective to bring along and apply—– ”games for health” apps to teach to achieve compliance- text can do a lot! Tips and tricks: text4baby—-
Health 2.0: Patients, HCP and Social Media:
Circle figure: personalized search -) gathering communities -) intelligent tools (virtual help agent) -) data integration within content -) personalized search-)
Personal -72% use sosial media for healthcare –
Physicians Europe: 300 000 use blogs for info (of 1 mill) 25 000 are actively using them for prof content (podcasting): to share with or learn from peers, or to identify resources and advise patients. (Radically differs from 10 years ago). The web is substituting physicians as info source and they are starting to use info themselves. Nearly half of euro physicians recommend sites to patiens. ( 2008- 38%, 2009- 49%). Age is an important factor (young physicians much more into new practice than old. The patient is driving this change- Skype in 5 min replace 2*2 ours drive success story in us)
Turning people into practitioners in social networks – How?
Case from Italy- key service offered is ”Doctor online” with message board (in out), useful links (that doctors trust), upload patients resources, colleagues they trust, publications, point of view: — patients /consumers want and expect advice on their fingertips.
Database growt questions/answers 2001 to 2008 ratio one/one. By then long tail leverage was achieved and consumers often found answers by looking through old threads, half the questions are general in nature (definitions etc.) the database saves phy time.
Semantic web will address and support such effects on large scale. But top down approach might not be successful. Language and application of definitions differ. Instead of international top-down standards forced through, crawlers could enter such databases as this Italian and return with practitioners definitions to organically produce value by forming the necessary definitions and relations.
eHealth= empowered Health ! Many more will have access to health information and support.
After the presentation I asked the keynote speaker about progress of international safety issues, ie. How to avoid anyone to listen in on the (now Microsoft owned) Skype-conversations that he advocated for, address ownership (Goggle+ and Facebook own the pictures YOU upload). What are the international initiatives on this? : Response: Skype is unsecure but now only the start and an early application. Like in finance, secure applications will emerge.
Mobilen.no har nyleg testa navigasjonhjelp til usikre førarar (27.mai). Underteikna har testvinnaren og har avsvergja det gamle papirkartet, fordi han ikkje reknar seg som best på å orientere kartet og sondere terrenget under køyring. Behovet for elektronisk støtte vart stort nok til at innkjøpsprosessen blei gjennomført tidleg i 2010.
Første sondering var kring ei eiga navigatoreining, men med ønska spesifikasjonar (minimum fotoboksinformasjon og skiltoversikt/fartsalarm mm.) so vart alternativa dyre. Alt som freista kosta typisk kr 2500-3500. Det var mykje difor prosessen ikkje var starta før 2010. Men og fordi eit alt høgt tal på dupedittar eksisterte og forventa ekstra «draks» på tur ikkje freista.
Men so fann eg ut litt tilfeldig at ein tomtom-haldar (med GPS) som kan stå fast i bilen kunne kombinerast med ein ipod touch eg likevel hadde liggande til å bli ein fullverdig navigator. Og prisen vart då berre ca 1000. Enkel nedlasting og oppdatering av kart via itunes eit par gongar årleg via pc trekkjer og i rett retning. Dette utløyste kjøpet.
I eit år har eg funne fram dit eg har tenkt. Og etter kvart fekk eg justert vekk «milde formaningar om å snu» og fartsalarmar ved 5 km over åtti. Ikkje so reint skjeldan veit du om snarvegar navigatorhjelpa ikkje har inne. Då er det ok at den etter ei periode med stille protest faktis ser lyset og kalkulerer den rette veg. Det er kjekt å sjå når du er framme i tid.
Bilnavigasjon er difor enno ei veiledning og ikkje eit påbod om køyreretning. Underteikna opplevde sjølv ekstremsport på ein Spania-tur med lånt bil med eiga navigator-eining. Midt i ein travel by fekk vi gjerne beskjed om å ta til høgre opp ei gågate eller mot einvegskøyring. Og på vekesturen mellom Gibraltar og Barcelona var det MANGE vegar og rundkøyringar under bygging som ikkje enno var på karta. Men vi fant fram og Spania vant i fotball so alt var topp. Lokal har vogntog teke seg fram på den smale sti mellom Årdal og Turtagrø med navigatorstøtte, men DET er ikkje å anbefale. Trass desse døma vart det investert i tomtom Vest-Europa.
I Tyskland på ein Cebit (ikt-teknologi)-konferanse hjalp ein navigator følget med å finne ledig parkeringplass i p-hus nærmast der vi skulle. Køoversikter og anlegssarbeid kunne og omgåast. Slikt er nyttig! Men diverre ikkje klart for Norge, fleire år seinare.
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