Visit to: Dé Onderwijsdagen 2009: Samen Slim Leren

Visit to: Dé Onderwijsdagen 2009: Samen Slim Leren
10 en 11 November 2009 Jaarbeurs Utrecht, Beatrixgebouw

The 10th of November I visited de Surf Onderwijsdagen http://owd2009.surf.nl/owd2009/ (most info in Dutch) where I visited a number of very interesting sessions. Below I made a small summary of my findings.
The 'Onderwijsdagen' are organized by the Surf foundation which promotes "Sustainable change of Dutch Higher Education by use of ICT and a systematic approach to innovation, knowledge development and dissemination".

Contents
-Keynote on Open Resources for Education (VERY INTERESTING)
-Session: "Kijk Mam Zonder Wachtwoord" ("Mama look, without password")
-Session E-Merge by Henk Frencken
-Session "Augmented reality" by Arno Coenders
-Session "ICT voorzieningen in the cloud' (ICT applications in the cloud")
-Keynote Marc Lammers (FIH Mastercoach Olympisch Bondscoach)

Keynote on Open Resources for Education (VERY INTERESTING)
Richard found out that 15 persons in the world where trying to write a similar book on Electrical Engineering at about the same time. They decided to write the book together and produced a raw book of 2000 pages. Everyone (lecturers) can now assemble his/her own book by selecting the relevant chapters/parts of this 'base book' and get it printed for 25$ per copy.
In his keynote he mentions a lot of other very interesting issues on Open Resources, especially the idea of 'Lenses' where institutes or people discuss the quality of certain Open Resources, which can be seen as a great alternative system of Quality control.
Resources:
Presentation:http://www.surfmedia.nl/medialibrary/item.html?id=YJ9ZFMeFacvuPUeQLQ2IR0Em
San Francisco Chronicle: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/22/EDRTUJ346.DTL
New York Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/01/opinion/01tue3.html?_r=1
Connexions website: http://cnx.org/
About lenses: http://cnx.org/help/viewing/lenses

Session: "Kijk Mam Zonder Wachtwoord" ("Mama look, without password")
OpenID is a system whereby you login with a Service provider (Fe. Hotmail) after (via) the log in with an Identity Provider (Fe. Microsoft passport / Live ID). The Service provider does not keep passwords herself, but just trusts the Identity provider. This system ensures that during a session you only have to login ones and do not have to type passwords for each Service provider again.
Surfnet however has formed a 'Federation' with all main Universities in the Netherlands where the Identity check is done at the individual institutes that are part of the Federation. Within this Federation all parties trust each other and open up (some) Services to the other federation partners.
Reason for not wanting to use OpenID is that Universities do not want all User information to be stored with OpenID providers but want to be in control themselves.
Problem is that the Fedration uses another protocol then OpenID and thus does not fit in with publicly available Service Providers like Live@EDU and Google Apps.
Resources:
http://www.slideshare.net/DeOnderwijsdagen2009/411-kijk-mam-zonder-wachtwoord

Session E-Merge by Henk Frencken
E-merge is a regional alliance between TU-Delft, Hogeschool Leiden, Haagse Hogeschool and University of Leiden to work on projects to innovate education by ICT. On http://www.e-merge.nu/ you can find what they are working on. For us interesting is the project on E-portfolio http://www.e-merge.nu/index.php?id=214 .

Session "Augmented reality" by Arno Coenders
This was a very nice presentation on the (future) use of augmented reality in education. Best example is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9KPJlA5yds , a small movie by BMW. Another nice example is http://alien.t-immersion.com/ . If you install and run the application, you can hold the pages of the book in front of the camera which will replace the page (visible on the screen via the webcam) by a three dimensional figure that will move over the screen as you move the page in front of the camera. An example on YouTube is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foAaQsdka0w
Resources:
http://www.slideshare.net/DeOnderwijsdagen2009/716-augmented-reality-arno-coenders

Session "ICT voorzieningen in the cloud' (ICT applications in the cloud") Question in this presentation was whether Universities should move their E-mail to the cloud or not. Both Google Apps and Live@EDU (Microsoft) are offering to host the E-mail of institutes on their computers. Institutes keep a lot of control over the email boxes and can keep using their own URL, so it seems a perfect solution. Microsoft offers the service for free, at least for the first 4 years (what happens then, no one knows).
According to the speakers, Microsoft has the best legal arrangements. This is important because mail is stored on servers in the US where other laws are valid etc. Problem with Microsoft is that they do not comply with the Surf federation login system (see above). This problem is being worked on by Microsoft however. Advice of the speakers is to wait with moving E-mail to the cloud until the federated login is working because institutes do not want to move the credentials of staff and student to an outside organization.
Resources:
http://www.slideshare.net/DeOnderwijsdagen2009/415-ict-voorzieningen-in-the-cloud-uitbesteden-of-niet-andres-steijaert

Keynote Marc Lammers (FIH Mastercoach Olympisch Bondscoach)
Interesting pep-talk on becoming the best using innovations.
Resources:
http://www.surfmedia.nl/medialibrary/item.html?id=KvGNG40DHlgxgoYFpdZXeYw1