Category Archives: research

digra 2012

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Week 23, 2012
Tampere, Finland

Last time I was in Tampere was for the role-playing seminar. Right after the seminar, I went to the Salmokohta. I want and need to post about those events, and I will but somehow I am still digesting them.

Now, I am back in Tampere for the Nordic DiGRA conference. The community is special, and I learning to know them. Well, I start to join the community since late 2005, so little by little I have gotten to know them. This community approaches research from a different perspective than how we do in my research group at EdTech. In here the stress is more on culture. So, for someone like me who studied a “technical” degree and somehow is practical, it takes me a time to tune in. I assume this is because I was taught to  see and analyze our world differently. However, that offers me an opportunity to learn a lot too. It takes personal energy, but to be able to understand the discourse of others interested in the same artifact of study is a rich experience. At the end our world is made from different persons who have different views.

From this morning, I realized I need to reflect more in:

  • Utopias
  • Perceptions
  • Believes
  • Habitus
  • Authentic
  • Aspirations
  • As we notice concepts related to identity, the key issue!
Opening of Nordic DiGRA 2012

Opening of Nordic DiGRA 2012

 

peer review

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Week 18, 2012
Joensuu, Finland

In Mach, while giving the game design course, I was a student too of a Paper Reviewing Workshop organized by some active members of TEL.

The workshop was very good. I can report that I learn. Also it called my attention that we were active during the course despite that all the participants were spread all over the world. Yes, the workshop was on-line.

Screenshot of one of my sessions at the peer review workshop

Screenshot of one of my sessions at the peer review workshop

 

Let me clarify, in the past I reviewed some conference papers, however I felt something was missing in my reviews.

I admit that one is constantly learning about one’s area of expertise while doing research. One can offer constructive criticism towards one’s work and the work of others when we write together.  Additionally, one can be critical reader of colleagues’ work before they submit their manuscript, so one is somehow a pre-reviewer.  Finally, I have learned A LOT from the feedback of those reviewers who had  examine my work, despite to be painful to read sometimes.

So, what can one learn from a workshop about peer review process?

In my case, to make explicit what we know or assume tacitly. The process is the learning experience in itself, to share with others and to hear the advices from experts in this specific topic is priceless.

Last week I review some papers, and I sense that my confidence level as a reviewer has increased after the workshop. Consequently, I assumed that my performance a reviewer has improved too. There is also space for improvement, specially with practice. But I want to thank  the organizers of the workshop! as well as the expositors and colleges with whom I discussed.

To close this post, I share a presentation from Marco Kalz which I honestly like and might be useful for others as well.

Peer review – Why does it matter for your academic career?

View more PowerPoint from Marco Kalz

organizing posts

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Week 5, 2012
Joensuu, Finland

After deciding to stick to this blog, one thing I want to achieve is to organize its posts. When I started boggling I was clueless of my own posts: how would they look like?, about what would I write?, which one will be my style?, etc. Consequently, the idea to organize posts was not even contemplated.

To my surprise but sometimes I require to find something I have posted and to find it is tricky. I am bad with keywords, writing titles, well I am not good on writing in general (as I have complain so much).  Nevertheless, it will be useful to find a way to organize myself, and keep on using the technologies we profess are “good for learning”.  So, for some time I have been thinking how to organize the blog, I did sketches, lists, but I haven’t implement a thing. However, as this spring I will be given some lectures and I want to use my blog as part of my memoir of this learning process then I need to organize my blog now.

In this weekend I put hand on organizing my blog. These are the steps I followed:

  1. I found a good link explaining the difference between category and tags.
  2. As I had been thinking in keywords for a long time now, so after the previous step I  wrote a table with the keywords I though will be relevant.
  3. I went through my existent 167 posts and label them according to the table.
  4. While labeling I discover some keywords I should use which were no there, and others which I do not want to use in the future.

The process, besides to take time and energy, was actually productive in diverse ways:

  • I research myself.
  • I discover many blogs are only of bla, bla, bla, bla (~babbling). Seeking for comfort, I believe. I want those to be improve somehow.
  • I saw myself over time. It is amazing to see how time passes by fast and we learn to think/walk/talk so slowly.
  • It got some kind of “framework” for future blog activity.
  • My research and my blog are extensions of me.

My blog is inspired on some mothers’ blogs. My research is kind of my abstract baby. It is clear for me that my abstract baby cannot be blog exactly the same way as mothers document the life of their offsprings. But both type of babies have a developing process, and trigger experiences that can be shared. Blogging is a way of sharing and documenting. Let’s see how it goes the 2012 wave of this blog!

The result of this work is in the following two lists: categories and tags.

PS. From now on, I do not think to review again as I did this time all the previous posts…. no time for it.

questioning the publishing system of research information

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Week 5, 2012
Joensuu, Finland

Access to information is vital for research. Universities pay considerable amounts of money for accessing the digital repositories. I am grateful to be in a University that is able to have access to a wide diversity of relevant repositories.

My impression is that scholars are aware of the high costs of spreading research information, which forbid several Universities to have access to the repositories for lack of economical means.  However for one reason or another the systems has been working in this way.

When I requested the permission to the publishers who hold the copyrights of my articles – which I wrote- for my dissertation, and one of them indicated me that I needed to pay a fee, my comfort zone regarding this topic disappear. Sad but true, I needed to be shaking to react.

There are many systems in our modern societies, which we must question more about them in order to modernize them.  And things are happening, I invite you to read the article of Wired Magazine by D. Dobbs: “Testify: the Open-Science Movement Catches Fires”, because things are happening.

are we making the correct questions? (sequel)

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In a previous post I was focusing myself on one specific question. However, today, while preparing my lecture on mobile learning I read an inspiring post from Cameron D. Norman:  Asking if Technology Can Reinvent Education is the Wrong Question. I recommend to read the post!

Questions are fundamental for comprehend a phenomena or a situation. Questions help us to think. To make the proper questions is not easy. For me, the question experts are 3 years old, who are passionately discovering and researching our world, learning from it. However, due to different reasons, which I will not reflect upon right now, our capability to make questions is greatly diminished.

Once in grad-school, I heard that a fundamental characteristic in research is to make questions. I see it as re-connecting with my 3 years old me, but surrounded by considerable more information.

Now, I assume that a difference between a 3-years old (I am fan of them) and an ‘adult’  should be to promote  a critical question process. A process involving reflection and thinking. Perhaps, making questions might be more difficult than to find the answers, however enriching.

Questions help to think. Thinking is fun, as it is time demanding and energy taking. 🙂

Now a cartoon, which matches my mini-reflection of today. If someone who does not read Spanish read this post, the translation of the cartoon is bellow.

Intelligence....

Intelligence....

Up-left: Intelligent buildings
Up-middle:Intelligent mobile phones
Up-right: Intelligent autos
Down-left: Intelligent appliances
Down-middle: I say…. Wouldn’t be better to invest more in education….
Down-left: …. and have more intelligent people?