One of my first jobs was to attend a meeting of the KIP project. In short: Knowledge integration between various VLE's by building a respository in the library of (digital) learning objects. Naturally these learning objects will be catalogued by adding lots and lots of metadata.

Of course this has to the extremely sensible way to go. All learning objects must be as well catalogued and accessible as possible.

However: Daily life is different (it certainly was at Geosciences and does not appear any different at Social Sciences): A teacher builds his or her (more ladies at Social Sciences) course around lectures and activities. Any digital component is added to Blackboard (or WebCT) to help improve this learning process. Therefore: why bother to document everything you are adding to your VLE because it is not your primary worry?

I do think it is valuable to catalogue all learning objects in a context in which these digital learning objects are central to the l... more

After just two days at Social Sciences things are already quite organised :-) I even have a working e-mailaddress and an account to administer Blackboard. I wonder what the present administration interface will look like....

On the photograph you can see Jos, my collegue. Together we will be managing Studion Support. One of my jobs will be to update the website...

I have just started my last week of work at the faculty of Geosciences. It is a strange idea to be leaving the faculty after all these years. On the other hand: it feels as if the timing is right.

I am certainly looking forward to my new job. It will allow me to spend all my time focussed on ICT in education. I am also pleased to say that I will no longer be supporting WebCT Vista, but will be switching to Blackboard, as Social Sciences uses Bb as their VLE. In my opinion Bb is better suited to the needs of the teachers (both at the faculty of Social Sciences as well as at the faculty of Geosciences.)

I am sad to say that working with Vista was a downright pain at times. I do hope that WebCT will get their act together and clear up a number of the issues we encountered. One issue I find very troublesome is its extreme dependence on running Java on the client. This simply does not make it an accessible VLE.

I will keep you posted on my findings of course... To... more

Yesterday we kept up good old Dutch traditions. The whole family got invloved. After the rugby training (and the traffic jam) Black Pete came round and surprised all the rugby kids. If you look carefully you can see whole Black Pete is, and the assistant Pete...

Even the trainer had to come forward and was asked rather difficult questions ;-)

A quick reaction on an article on the Dutch Edusite about SAKAI as a future in the Netherlands. I think a number of aspects are getting people confused. Open Source is offered as a new sinecure to provide institutions with exactly what they need.
Personally I see Open Source as an interesting alternative to the single remaining VLE when Bb and WebCT truly merge into one product. It is extremely necessary as an engine to keep competition going. However, I think it is shortsighted to see the classic proprietary VLE as dead. I think it is time that VLE's evolve. What should they evolve into?

• Open standards


• Set of web services that can be offered in various frameworks. This means they can offer content and interaction in various systems. Offer students social software incorporated in the VLE or offer them the option to incorporate from an external source


• The ideal VLE wil... more

Today we took a sunday afternoon outing to visit the Anne Frank house. Hasse has just read the book and was very impressed. I must say: I was also very impressed. It was years ago since I last visited the house and it made quite an impression on me too. It is a good reminder of the cruelties of mankind and our responsibility in preventing cruelty.
I am also very pleased I brought the kids there, because it taught them a lesson about how far discrimination can go...

For more photographs visit Karien's weblog

For all those specialists out there about to build their own webservice: Great, a good idea. Finally we are getting closer to sharing information across the web according to standards. Content is not something locked in a webpage, but it is out there to be shared and offered to the right person at the right time.
I do hope people will accept that this means their webpage is no longer only their webpage. Content deliverers are no longer proud owners of a webpage, they deliver content which can be delivered in a multitude of places and systems.
Some of you may have noticed: this weblog supports an RSS feed. This is quite intentional: try it out! You can get my content without visiting my site :-)

But all of this is simply an introduction to my main rant and rave of this evening: If you want to set up a SOAP webservice using php, beware of the PEAR package. It may actually work, but why is there no decent documentation? Why ... more

I have always had a broad interest and have never wanted to make the choice for either science or social science. So I ended up studying Geography, yes: both the human as wel as the physical geography. This means I can now illustrate to my kids why we have seasons, using a candle and a mandarin...

But all this is only a lead up to the real news... It is now official: I will be moving to the faculty of Social Sciences on the 15th of December! I will be able to spend all my working hours on ICT in education. I am sure I will miss my website work, but this means I can finally direct my efforts at what really fascinates me. How can we use ICT in our education in a meaningful manner...

It is also an interesting shift because I will be bridging the gap between WebCT Vista and Blackboard. Geosciences where I am working now is using Vista and Social Sciences is using Blackboard.

I must be going crazy: everybody in my house is standing on their head. I am much too old for these jokes but they are all taking it quite seriously. Here is a photograph of Peije to prove it. He can easily stay there for up to 3 minutes...

I just had two valuable days at the SURF onderwijsdagen. This is the annual event in Holland for all those interested in ICT in education. The days were directed at the new pupils and their new styles of learning and their new attitudes to technology. How will the digital immigrants engage the digital natives?
There many interesting examples:

• The habbo hotel - The place to be for youngsters


• Wikipedia - A possible tool in groupwork?


• Weblogging - I have fortunately already had some experience with this


• Social bookmarking, with furl as an example - definitely worth a try


• Online working together in the same file


• Etc...

I think I will be busy for a while try out all these new toys.
But of course these days are also days of reflectio... more