World Economic Forum awards bronze ICT readiness medal to Finland...and some thoughts on "Localization 2.0"

I have not updated this blog for quite a while as most experiences went into facebook...anyway, the current report of the World Economic Forum is a good reason to do so.. As a start: Finland has reached the bronze medal, 3rd place just behind Sweden and Singapore...but the details are much more interesting: http://www.weforum.org/issues/global-information-technology/the-great-transformation The report has quite interesting data on the categories of ICT readiness (environment index, readiness index for individuals / government/business, usage index) as well as a couple of random case studies. Every index has its weaknesses and it could by argued why this or that category exists (e.g. the business phone installation fee) or is missing (e.g. individual competences) - however, the data collection seems quite solid and provides insights into countries (check out the drill down data viewer http://www.weforum.org/issues/global-information-technology/the-great-transformation/network-readiness-index) The rest of the report is, however, more than disappointing. Related to my own field, I find buzzwords like TRANSFORMATION 2.0 and LOCALIZATION 2.0 - the authors of the chapter on localization 2.0 have the great insight that we now actually need to talk to people when we localize products or take culture into consideration - such a chapter in a WEF publication, ignoring the past decade of research on internationalization, what a disappointment (poor British Telecom - the authors' company- relying on those ideas...). Actually, this attitude seems to be consistent in the report. All in all, a good data collection with plenty of marketing for the authors' institutions, some interesting thoughts and relevatively poor recommendations, at least from the ICT view. Still, we made it to the bronze medal...

Global virtual collaboration

Well, yesterday I was supposed to hold a keynote speech at the Chilean Conference on Learning Technologies - well prepared, connections tested and everything was perfect...until...well, until the conference started...slow connections, technical difficulties, murphy's law worked fine for me...

anyway, with the help of trusted colleagues, we were able to do some improvisations - even though I was rather embarrased, my colleagues helped out a lot - this is probably what counts in international collaborations - so, be always prepared to have a PLAN B :-)

By the way, the intended speech was on OER in the global context...recording (part of PLAN B) attached....

History. Bi-laterally. Globally?

Today I was participating in a seminar on history teaching materials: http://www.narc.fi/Arkistolaitos/ajankohtaista/tiedotteet/eurhistoria_jky.html
History? Books? This does not fit into this blog? Well, judge yourself...
Colleagues from Germany and France have actually developed the first bi-lateral history book on the 20th century - you can imagine what kind of effort this is...well, I couldnt imagine before how hard it is to write on issues which seem to be rather clear - but there is the national culture, didactic traditions, and most of all different viewpoints...anyway, the event was in Jyväskylä, organized by Finland National Archive, joined by the German and French ambassadors - after the impressive presentations of amazingly engaged people on how different research and teaching is done in the countries involved and the presentation of the even more impressive outcome, I had the chance to fantasize a bit on the future...a summary?
1. Take a really unique book and its digital version
2. Consider to open it up to relevant communities
3. Imagine what could happen now...Finnish colleagues writing about their view on WW2 history, Spanish colleagues providing input on the times between the wars, Russian students commenting on the way of presentation, German teachers showing how the resource works in a German school with a given curriculum, researchers discussing controversially on European history teaching...how many different types of valuable resources could we get in a very short time???
4. Gather and cluster all those issues...isnt it amazing what could come out when you really gather all the related materials?
5. And then imagine the outcome...maybe not a book - but a load of materials from all over Europe ready to be taken and used...great stuff to understand European history!

Well, maybe I should not fantasize about it too much, but it is just such a wonderful example what we could do when collaborating across borders - and utilizing the power of openness...

ITK Conference in Hämeenlinna

At the ITK conference, a conference mainly for (Finnish) teachers, several topics came up when we particpated for COSMOS and #NORDLET . Collaboration in gaming and social networks were extremely trendy - not new, but is has gained lots of attention - however, the global component of this seems to be still very unclear.

Good news: Open Content is a hot topic here, we saw a lot of interesting presentations and products - now it is the big question how to bring all this together - there is more need than ever for a European initiative! Lets see how the Nordic Baltic Initiative can contribute...

Global Education at the Scifest in Joensuu

We are at the Scifest in Joensuu, lots of exciting activities on science education - lets see how Finnish teachers are ready for going global...

more: http://www.scifest.fi/

and some pictures

Call for Papers

Well, some cool publication opportunities coming up:

1. As part of this year’s EBRF conference, the “Research Forum to Understand Business in Knowledge Society”, I am hosting the 1st Workshop on the Globalisation and Internationalization of Knowledge-Intensive Systems (GIKIS). The conference will be in Jyväskylä, Finland, from September 23rd to 25th. Due date for abstracts is April 30th, 2009.
See the call here: http://users.jyu.fi/~japawlow/EBRF2009_CFP_GIKIS.pdf

2. Special Issue of International Journal of IT Standards and Standardization Research (JITSR) on Learning Technology Standards, Abstracts due 30th of June, 2009, more here: http://users.jyu.fi/~japawlow/JITSR_call_for_papers_Special_Issue_Learning_technologies.pdf

Are we preparing our students for a globalized job market?

More and more discussion are held (outside this blog...) about outsourcing, offshoring, nearshoring and so on - but has our education system taken this into account? On the policy level, this might be the case - but in practice? Looking at curriculum frameworks in both, Higher Education as well as vocational training there is more talk than implementation...
A critical analysis on IT curricula and some potential solutions here: A paper on a global technology competency framework. It is a basis for discussion, e.g., in the IS community, not a proposal - suggestions and ideas are more than welcome!