One hour after the 8.9 earthquake near the coast of Honshu, Japan, happened on Friday, March 11, 2011, I was online and saw tweets about the earthquake come in rapidly. It was like a very bad nightmare especially when I turned to the English channel of Aljazeera which was a channel of choice for a number of my Twitter followers. I briefly headed to two other news channels, but the Aljazeera one seemed to have the best coverage.

Following the news as well as the tweets about the earthquake, the ensuing tsunami and its risk for other countries in the Pacific, I realized that the old saying of “being glued to the TV” could be re-worded into “being glued to Twitter”. It was the fastest source of information – primary and secondary. The NZ Civil Defense web site could not cope with the massive amount of people accessing their site to find out if NZ was in danger because according to the projected arrival time of the tsunami in NZ we would have 12 hours to prepare for it. They moved to Twitter quite quickly to give at least brief updates. I could also find out about an acquaintance who lives on Oahu in Hawai’i because she was glued to Twitter as well and responded quickly. And as you could not watch all news at once, somebody might have a piece of information that had not yet made it into the news you were watching.

The computer-generated tsunami arrival times map available on the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Information site shows the estimated times till the tsunami waves would hit other parts in the Pacific Ocean. The wave was very closely monitored by scientists and updates were given when available about the height of the wave and its force.

Estimated tsunami travel times after the 8.9 earthquake in Japan on March 11, 2011

The tsunami energy map shows the flow of the released energy of the earthquake. The current estimate is that a total amount of 9,320 gigatons of TNT equivalent, which is 535 million times that of Hiroshima, of energy was released during the earthquake and the tsunami.

Energy map of the 8.9 earthquake in Japan on March 11, 2011

Fortunately, the threat to NZ was soon only a marine threat and minor land threat for the upper north island and life in Wellington continued without interruption. It was surreal to have a splendid summer day, and actually splendid summer weekend, when there was such destruction both in Japan and also still in Christchurch. Rebuilding Christchurch will take at least a decade according to estimates and I can’t imagine how much time it will take in Japan where there was much more damage.

My thoughts are with the people in Christchurch and Japan in this horrible time wishing that they have enough energy to survive this tragedy not only re-building their cities, but also re-gaining good emotions.

My two dwarfs, but in particular the one on the fly agaric, are my two most favorite Xmas deco items. I’ve have these two carvings that my dad made since I was little and they simply had to come with me to New Zealand. The dwarf on the mushroom emits smoke. It’s a one of its kind “Räuchermännchen” (incense smoker) – a typical Xmas decoration of the Erzgebirge region. You place incense inside, light it and it will emit smoke. Usually it’s a miner that smokes. Although I am a non-smoker myself, I like my mushroom dwarf.

Xmas dwarfs

Time flies, and I can hardly believe that it’s already been 111 days since I moved to Wellington. Though I have not yet traveled much (we barely started spring and I’m not a winter sport person), I have already experienced a fair amount of great things and events with a lot more to come. Here is just a short and definitely not exhaustive list of what has happened, where I have been, what I have done during the last 3.5 months (not necessarily in order; some repetitions):

• started my job at Catalyst IT
• being awed by Te Papa
• Ignite Wellington
• Nerdnite
• WordCamp NZ in Auckland
• gales aplenty
• playing with OLPCs
• Christchurch earthquake (felt it in Wellington)
• bowling
• BeerOClock (though I have yet to touch the beer; I prefer the spirulina or fejioa juices)
• exploring Wellington
• learning to shoot with my Canon DLSR
• rapid weather changes
• winter in July
• eating lots of Indian food and sushi
• wind

In Wikipedia, the definition for take-out (takeaway) is “food purchased at a restaurant for the purpose of being eaten elsewhere. The restaurant may or may not provide table service.” So what would that make a Takeaway University?

Is it a university where the education is purchased for the purpose of being consumed somewhere else, but maybe also on university grounds?

Lots of takeaway food is fast food: cheap and with a questionable health aspect. Does that mean that you get a cheap education at the Takeaway University, but one that is also of inferior quality?

At the Takeaway University you should be able to order anything that’s on the menu in any order and also multiple times.

Are there different Takeaway Universities specializing in certain menus, i.e. study programs?

Is the Takeaway University a university on demand?

Does the Takeaway University deliver content in bite-sized servings for quick consumption during a short break?

Takeaway University

When I watched “The Stoning of Soraya M.” yesterday, I thought to come up with another 9 movies to create a list of movies that you may not have watched, but might want to hunt down.

You will notice a strong Indian theme in my selection. When I lived in Munich, it was very easy to get a hold of Indian movies and thus, I watched quite a few of them. Not all tear-jerkers, but also critical and thought-provoking.

Rang de Basanti

This 2006 movie by Rakesh Omprakash Mehra tells the story of a group of young people who participate in a docudrama to realize that there are many parallels between their lives and that of revolutionaries in India in the 1920s.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The drama was well noticed around the world for its critical portrayal of issues in contemporary Indian society. I added this movie to my list because it let’s young people who have been more or less happy-go-lucky discover history on their own, become aware of their political and historical surroundings, and take a stance. It is also a frightful example of how similar situations in a country’s present can be to its past.

Elements Trilogy

Deepa Metha’s trilogy of the movies Fire (1996), Earth (1998), and Water (2005) deals with controversial topics in Indian history: homosexuality, the partition of India, and the treatment of widows.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Fire was the first Indian movie I ever watched. It was not a typical Bollywood movie at all, and an Indian friend was very surprised that I had seen that movie as it had received a very critical reception in India. I guess, the more critical Indian movies are more acclaimed abroad while Bollywood produces musical fantasies that let people escape from reality.

My friend had suggested I watch “Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (DDLJ)” because that was an Indian movie that was and still is very popular in India (has been running continuously since 1995 in Mumbai theaters!).

Bride and Prejudice

Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” in contemporary India and the U.S.A. The movie was released in 2004 and adds a cross-cultural dimension to Jane Austen’s original.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Dor

This 2006 Indian movie centers around forgiveness, traditions, the strengths of women and the will to overcome obstacles.

Click here to view the embedded video.

(Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a clip with English subtitles.)

Inside Man

A movie with Denzel Washington has to be on my list as well. This one by Spike Lee from 2006 is a great movie because of its clever storyline.

In addition, I will always remember it because it starts out with the very popular “Chaiyya Chaiyya” from the movie “Dil Se“. While sitting in the movie theater we discussed how a friend could not be made to watch an Indian movie even if it were a critically acclaimed one. We just had to laugh heartily when the movie started with a song from a Bollywood movie, and he liked it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

August Rush

Kirsten Sheridan’s 2007 movie stars Robin Williams in a serious role. I was most fascinated by the sincerity of the movie along with the great guitar playing / slapping. It’s a modern fairy tale.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Pirates of Silicon Valley

This docudrama is a must for everybody interested in the birth of the personal computer and the rivalry between Apple and Microsoft.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Children of Heaven

The adventures of two Iranian siblings are told in this moving film by Majid Majidi from 1997. The brother accidentally lost his sister’s shoes and tries to get them back while they share one pair of shoes trying to hide the fact from their parents.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Stoning of Soraya M.

This movie by Cyrus Nowrasteh from 2008 is based on a true and horrific story about a woman who was wrongfully accused of adultery by her husband and stoned to death. However, it is not just the story of this woman, but more the story of a remote village in Iran where traditions, conspiracy, and hypocrisy rule.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Untraceable

Diane Lane features in this thriller from 2008. She is set to find the serial killer who streams the killing of his victims live on the Internet in a perverted way because the more people watch the quicker the victims die. It is a critique of online voyeurism. This movie is nothing for light-hearted people.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Dave Cormier and George Siemens requested help in determining the future of education. In my vision brainstorm I produced the following video response.

Click here to view the embedded video.

[HD quality available on the YouTube page]

I used the song “Learn to Fly” by Josh Woodward. It is one of my favorite songs, and I think it fits quite nicely in this context because Katie spreads her wings, looks to the future, and does not give up. The same can be said about people who want to bring about change in education or any other area. You need to be determined and not be discouraged by setbacks.

The video is licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-ND because some photos had the stipulation to not change them while others required the “Share alike”. The license I chose was a compromise.

Transcript

The education in the future should not be a monotonous learning space, but filled with an abundance of diversely colored learning scenarios ranging from more receptive modes, e.g. the classic lecture, to highly interactive ones. Interactivity is not measured in the amount of technology used, but in the way people connect.

By then traditional forms of learning like face-to-face classrooms, blended learning courses with a teacher and tutor, online courses like Connectivism and Connective Knowledge where the lines between “teachers” and “learners” blur, or streamed presentations with a backchannel will be complemented, if not surpassed – depending on the near or distant future – by learning scenarios that are more immersive, e.g. with the help of augmented reality. And these are just formal and non-formal learning scenarios.

But, advancing technologies that I cannot even fathom now, are not the determining factor in the future of education. Much more important is the change in attitude that is needed.

I want to learn together with people inside my institution as well as outside freely. Many colleagues still work on their own and do not embrace sharing and exploring beyond their chosen field of research.

As we are engaged in lifelong learning, we should welcome the multiple faces of learning, use them plenty and not stick to a comfortable 2 or 3.

The future does not happen in the future, but it starts now with us taking small steps into the direction of the future that we envision currently to see it changed at every step.

When will you start to fly to the future?

Photo credits

(in order of appearance and on the faces scene from left to right and top to bottom)

me, OliBac, asparagus_hunter, PhotoGraham, janusz_l, nic0, Lynn (Gracie’s mom), Martin_Heigan, gilderic, onkel_wart, jazamarripae, [ piXo ], RuSt, estherase, me

Other contributions

So far I know of responses from Andreas Auwärter, Tony Hirst, Alan Levine, D’Arcy Norman, Martin Weller, David Wiley.

Bob Reuter drew my attention to the Web Behaviour Test that can be found on the BBC site. I created an account and took the test. My answers revealed that I am a web bear who has the following characteristics:

I am a web bear according to the web behaviour test

Slow-moving: Web Bears like you browse the internet at a leisurely pace – just like real world bears who like to take their time over things.

Solitary – Like real bears, Web Bears tend to be solitary animals. Your results show that when you are looking for information, you are less likely to use social networks or other sites whose content is created by its users, preferring instead to go it alone.

Adaptable – Web Bears are highly adaptable multitaskers, able to do several things at the same time. Real-bears are also very flexible, particularly in their diet, and will eat fish, insects, salmon and even scavenge in human refuse for new sources of food.

I am always a bit critical about such tests. Of course, they provide some truths, but some of the characteristics I am supposed to have puzzle me a bit.

Slow-moving

I guess, they got that result from the amount of time it took me to continue to the next page while reading the search results. Often I am much faster than I was on this test. Here I wanted to make sure that I choose the best option available as I only got one shot. But I do tend to read the brief descriptions below the links on Google so that I do not necessarily spend time on pages that are not worth visiting. This habit has manifested itself since the first links on the result pages have become links to sale web sites.

Solitary

Being solitary seems to have a negative connotation in this context. In the test I was asked to search for nutrition and other factual information. Applying basic information literacy (or as Howard Rheingold calls it “crap detection“) skills, I look for trustworthy sources. These are not necessarily blog posts by random people who do not have any reputation in the field, but sites from organizations that I know have authority. For calculating the Body Mass Index I could have chosen almost any site because that is a set formula, but many sites only regurgitate what can be found on an official site or do not show the entire picture. Hence, I prefer to refer to a site of some standing.

Had I been asked to solve a computer or software problem or anything that resembles a do-it-yourself activity, I would have most likely chosen a forum discussion, blog post or video to assist me and not a vendor homepage.

Thus, for me it depends on the type of information I am looking for which internet sites I will populate for finding an answer. If facts are concerned, I’d like to stick as close to an official source as possible, if other issues are concerned that require to discover a certain procedure, I will most likely be more successful in user discussions. Depending on my knowledge about the field and experts in the field, I may also choose to search somebody’s blog instead of the site of an organization if I know that they are years behind in their research.

I am solitary in the sense that I do not have Facebook open all day long or broadcast what I am doing to Twitter and / or Facebook at all times. Usually, I scan Facebook updates only briefly in the evening, but have Twitter running all day. However, I am not reading all messages. Echofon in Firefox is funny in the way it displays messages: Some are displayed, others are just “You have received 7 new tweets” and I would have to open them actively. Thus, many go unnoticed throughout the day.

Being solitary or social should not only be seen in regard to consuming information. There could have been a question on what to do when the answer cannot be found on a site. Social also means that you actively ask questions in a discussion forum or ask your Twitter / Facebook buddies etc. Consuming information is one thing, but participation is quite another and in today’s age with the possibilities of social media well worth looking at in such a test.

Adaptable

My test results must have been mixed up with somebody else’s. At the beginning of the test I selected that I hardly ever do two things at a time. Later, during the concentration tests, I scored pretty well when there were distractions. So that probably counts for my multitasking. Most of the time I think that I cannot multitask very well. I like to concentrate on the task that I am performing so that I do not get sidetracked and forget something.

Having a phone conversation while writing an email is not really possible for me as I am not able to give the caller my undivided attention that s/he deserves. But of course, I can jot down notes, send a link etc. However, I do have Twitter and email open all the time and briefly check updates throughout the day. If something interesting comes across on Twitter, I usually open the URL in a new browser tab for viewing it later. Thus, I do multitask a little, but actually think that I still do these things sequentially:

I read something online -> I see that Twitter has new messages -> I briefly scan them -> I go back to my reading OR I follow a Twitter link in a new tab and scan the link’s content and bookmark it.

Now. Which web animal are you? Are you a bear, elephant, fox, hedgehog, leopard, elk, octopus, or ostrich?

A few days ago I learned that this building will be torn down soon.

Delhaize, the Belgian supermarket chain that currently resides in this building will tear it down to construct a new one. Though the old name of the store was not taken down when Delhaize moved in, this supermarket chain did not have the monopoly anymore as other supermarkets are also present.

The name of the former store "Monopol" (Monopoly) was telling: no competitors. This reminds me a bit of the “good ol’ GDR times” just in the capitalist west.

Not the monopoly anymore

Knots, bends, entangled strands – it had to end.

That’s what I thought when I took a good look at my necklaces a couple of weeks ago. I remembered that something like a jewelry / necklace stand / tree existed and searched the web to find some answers. All commercial ones looked kind of unstable, did not have much space for the jewelry, were too short / small / tall, or were not to my taste. I also ran across a Swiss artist’s (Reto Baumann) interpretation of a jewelry tree.

That’s when I decided to make my own. I was going home for Christmas where I knew I would have a workshop, my dad still had tons of wood to choose from, and I would have all the tools I needed. I had called ahead to ask if he had any suggestions for the material of the “branches” as they needed to be made of some metal that could be bend easily but not too easily.

When I was at home, my dad and I looked for a nice piece of wood. We eventually found a piece of locust that would work perfectly. My dad used a big electric saw to shape it nicely. Then we sanded it lightly to bring out the texture.

We had a good collection of rods from 2 mm to 7 mm thick in my dad’s workshop. I chose brass rods of 3 mm that are used for welding because they were flexible enough to be bent without problems, but sturdy enough to keep from changing their shape if something was draped over them. The length of the individual rods we decided on was 0.5 m with one longer one of 0.6 m and a shorter one of only 0.4 m. Altogether I had 10 rods to bend. I used tongs for the bending process while keeping the rod immobilized in a bench vise. I also used some steel wool to put a shine on the rods.

After I finished the bending, I drilled 10 holes into my wooden base and varnished it twice. Twice because the “hair” of the wood would stand up after the first coat of varnish. Thus, I had to apply some strokes with the steel wool and could varnish a second time. The diameter of the holes was the same as the rods which allows me to avoid having to glue the rods into the wooden base unless necessary. Currently, only one rod moves around a bit. The others are pretty tight. Furthermore, having the rods a bit mobile, I can change their position. I already realized that I should have drilled the holes a bit closer to the white rim (I could only drill within the brown center) to set them further apart. When I put the rods in the wood for the first time, I had to re-bend a couple of them a bit, but that was also to their advantage.

Here is my jewelry tree, my Xmas gift to myself:

Jewelry tree made out of locust wood and brass rods

And the tree in action:

My jewelry tree with most of my necklaces

It is nice that I am reminded to renew my membership in the library by January 2, 2010. But why the heck can’t I get into the interlibrary loan form when I am already logged in? I do need to renew my membership immediately though it is not up for another 54 days. It is just “approaching”. When I called the library, the renewal was done within seconds and the friendly person from the interlibrary loan department (he’s a gem getting articles really quickly and being helpful all the time) said there was nothing I could do besides the renewal.

Expiration is approaching

Fortunately, the library did not leave a paper trail that would rival Alan’s experiences.