Living in a home that creates perpetual challenges

I am a strong believer in theories that see a large role for the environment in shaping in our behaviour and our well-being. I think that the easiest way to change somebody’s behaviour is to change their environment. Let me give you a simple example: if you want people to drive slower, then you should make the road narrower.

So I was delighted to find these Reversible Destiny Lofts through Boing Boing:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFOSdutS4lA]

These houses keep you young and healthy by providing you with perpetual challenges:

Designed to stimulate the senses and force inhabitants to use balance, physical strength and imagination, the lofts feature uneven floors, oddly positioned power switches and outlets, walls and surfaces painted a dizzying array of colors, a tiny exit to the balcony, a transparent shower room, irregularly shaped curtainless windows, and more.

Since I have changed jobs about one and a half years ago, I have gained 10 kgs just from living in a different environment (walking to my car, instead of to the metro and sitting behind my laptop instead of standing in a classroom). I believe that living in a reversible destiny loft could really keep you physically in great shape. I don’t think I would be able to manage it mentally though: climb a wall every time you want to turn on the light?

Learning is could be (narrowly) defined as overcoming challenges. It would be interesting to try and create a learning environment that keeps challenging as many senses as possible, keeps changing/adapting and keeps your brain working at all times.

Does anybody know any?

The Future of Moodle and How Not to Stop It

The annual Holland Open conference is held today and tomorrow in Amsterdam. It is a conference about open standards, open source and open business.

I did a very general talk about Moodle, focusing on its community and what the future might hold. The slides of the talk are publicly available, can be downloaded here (2MB) and are licensed under a Creative Commons license:

[slideshare id=604539&doc=hosc2008-1221731404519865-8&w=425]

Moodle and Digital Pedagogy

The Dutch Moodle association, Ned-Moove, organised a seminar on Digital Pedagogy and Moodle. I had the honour to be able to do a presentation on my work as a teacher at the Open Schoolgemeenschap Bijlmer. This (Dutch!) presentation was very practical: which simple benefits can be had from a Virtual Learning Environment in secondary education (where they currently have about 7 computers per student 7 students per computer).

The presentation is public (download it as a 3.4MB PDF file) and has some examples that should inspire and enthuse:

[slideshare id=602499&doc=080917moodleinhetvo-1221644014077576-8&w=425]

Next time I will try and record my audio so that the slides will make slightly more sense.

Why we should stop using Twitter and switch over to Laconica

The biggest implementation of Laconica

A lot of my colleagues at Stoas Learning including myself are having a lot of fun using the microblogging service Twitter. It has changed the social interaction between some of the team members and we have gotten to know each other better through a very simple service delivering 140 character messages at a time.

I like the service a lot but have been worried about one thing: the fact that all this information is only on Twitter’s server. This point is extra poignant whenever Twitter is down (which happens quite often).

Imagine a world in which people with a Hotmail email address could only email somebody if they also had a Hotmail address. There would be no way for somebody who is registered at Gmail to email somebody at Yahoo. Luckily this is not the case: email is collection of open protocols which can be implemented by anybody. Unfortunately we cannot say the same about instant messaging. I personally have a MSN account, a Skype account and a Yahoo account and there is no way for me to talk to a Skype user with my MSN account.

So what about microblogging? Will we go towards a future which is similar to instant messaging with multiple microblogging services which are not connected to each other? Will Twitter be so dominant that there will be no alternative (creating a monopoly with all its disadvantages)? Or will we move towards a future where microblogging is like email: you can choose the provider you want and connect to people using other providers?

I prefer the last option and feel that I should be principled about it. That is why I will stop using Twitter, temporarily abandoning the people I follow and the people that follow me and switch over to Identi.ca, currently the largest Laconica installation. Here is how Identi.ca explains in what way it is different from services like Twitter:

Identi.ca is an Open Network Service. Our main goal is to provide a fair and transparent service that preserves users’ autonomy. In particular, all the software used for Identi.ca is Free Software, and all the data is available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, making it Open Data.

The software also implements the OpenMicroBlogging protocol, meaning that you can have friends on other microblogging services that can receive your notices.

The goal here is autonomy — you deserve the right to manage your own on-line presence. If you don’t like how Identi.ca works, you can take your data and the source code and set up your own server (or move your account to another one).

I will spend the next couple of weeks trying to convince everybody around me to make the switch and maybe even get Stoas to start its own Laconica server.

If you are interested in hearing more about Identi.ca and Laconica I can recommend episode 37 of Floss Weekly where Evan Prodromou, the creator of both is interviewed and explains how Laconica works and what the plans for the future are.