Beyond Creativity

Electronic Portfolios and Blogs - How are they interlinked?

In 2004 I visited the ePortfolio conference in La Rouchelle and presented an idea-process portfolio paper written by myself and Hanne Murto. Since  then I have had interest in combined ePortfolio-Blogs.

There is an open source project called SAKAI . They have created an ePortfolio system that handles RSS-feeds (including blogs). SAKAI is a huge project integrating many (especially) US universities. Although it has an administrative focus, the platform has some interesting collaboration features.

Currently there is a lot of discussion whether collection of blogs actually create an ePortfolio. And what Persistent Identity really means! See for example Nils Peterson's blog.

It would be great to hear your comments about this topic.

Afterword: I tried to locate Das Boot in wonderful La Rochelle. Hopeless, I took a long walk along the seashore and when I arrived at the shipyard it was closed. The movie replica is available in Munich, Bavaria Studios. In 2000 I had a funny experience to walk through it and wonder why it is in the middle of Derrick settings ;-)

Some papers: FeBR 2005 Tampere + IADIS 2006 Dublin Creativity and Mobile Learning

  Hi! I am recovered ;-)

Just to let you know: My latest paper "Designing Information Systems for Creative Problem
Solving and Learning" was published in the Frontiers of eBusiness Research (FeBR) 2005 -series. If you are interested, please, read the paper here. Comment / feedback is welcome :)

There will be a more detailed article concerning innovation process, creativity, personality types and information systems. With Lex Higgins we are planning to submit it for the Blackwell's Creativity and Innovation Management Journal.

Next summer there will be IADIS International Conference Mobile Learning 2006 in Dublin. I am currently writing a paper for it with Antti Syvänen. Our draft is called "How Can Electronic Portfolios Facilitate Collaborative Problem-Finding in the Innovation Process?"  Our session will be "Creativity and Mobile Learning". No wonder ;-)

Publish or perish. Is it really so? " A productive scientist is no longer necessarily a successful scientist", says Graeme Eisenhofer. Writing is awesome, but the most difficult part is to get started and stay tuned without interruptions :-)

Administrative Burden Makes Researcher a Dull Boy

Getting finance is tough and complicated nowadays.

In a recent case it took almost a year to:
- make a pre-application
- discuss with European and US partners
- get it accepted to get to the second round
- get more project partners
- discuss about money&terms of participation
- to write the actual project application
- wait for the decision.
- wonder why the officers have not even read your application and appendixes in time 
- speed up the process

And guess what? This particular decision was negative. Have a new try, they said. This is infuriating, especially when this preparation work normally takes tens or hundreds of hours (out of your research) and you work for free.   

No easier way to go? Are these processes similar around the globe ? Any good advice?

Like a German proverb says: "Pech im Spiel, Glück in der Liebe". Hopefully so ;-)

Victor E. Frankl says that we need to have multiple clay feet that help us to handle draw-backs. I think that he has a point. 

Does Technology Prevent Creativity?

    
Thanks to Lowell Monke, I am getting rather critical about tools and technology supporting creativity. In many cases technology distracts our concentration, causes problems to our social network and interferes with our natural rhythm of life. Monke's "Breaking Down the Digital Walls" is an interesting book and I am looking forward to read the forthcoming book. In the meanwhile, please take a look at his thought-provoking article "The Human Touch" . Just to give you an example of Monke's thinking: "What 'Information Age' values tempt us to forget is that all of the information gushing through our electronic networks is abstract; that is, it is all representations, one or more symbolic steps removed from any concrete object or personal experience".   

Another wake-up call came, when I read an interesting report from National Science Foundation (NSF) workshop about Creativity Support Tools. There were some guidelines for these Creativity Support Tools introduced . To me they are like from an HCI manual and similar to Shneiderman's  "Leonardo's Laptop: Human Needs and the New Computing Technologies"  - you remember those 4-phases: Collect - Relate - Create - Donate.

What bothers me is the concept "Social Creativity" described the report. This concept and the related research is to me very inconsistent, it is mostly based on communities-of-practice research, not creativity research. I noticed it already when I participated a social creativity session in the HCI International (UAHCI) conference in Las Vegas.

What is missing from those guidelines? Maybe time management, off-line working and reflection support?! Guidelines could also emphasize when n-o-t to use electronic tools (:| Being social in the Internet is valuable, but what we need is perhaps time to think and have personal experiences, not artificial ;-)

Hey, I am still researching creativity support tools. No doubt about that :-)