Carl Størmers Blog

Intervjuer med norske forfattere

Fant en morsom samling med intervjuer med norske vestlandsforfattere om hvordan de jobber. 

Good book about web project management

I am reading an interesting book about web project management, called Real Web Projects.  It has several templates on the web.  Check it out.  The book also has pointers to an interesting site for Argus Center for Information Architecture.  Thank you KP for suggesting this book.  They key:  Making sure the project is well defined and that the different stakeholders all have had their chance to provide input. 

Slik sparer du penger når du ringer til utlandet fra din mobil

Hei, ville bare tipse om en veldig bra applikasjon som kan lastes ned på mobil-telefonen -- www.vyke.com.  Med denne applikasjonen kan du ringe fra mobilen til f.eks. USA til dramatisk lavere priser enn med vanlig abbonement.  Når du har lastet ned applikasjonen funker det slik:

 

1.  Du åpner Vyke på din mobil

2.  Du henter nummeret til den du vil ringe

3.  Du oppgir evt. det nummeret du vil snakke fra (hvis du f.eks. vil snakke fra en vanlig hotell telefon i stedet for å snakke fra din mobil -- nyttig hvis du ikke oppholder deg i Norge)

4.  Du legger på

 

Du blir så oppringt i løpet av 3-4 sekunder.  En stemme sier "please hold while I connect you".  Deretter hører du at det ringer, og når mottageren tar telefonen har du opprettet en samtale som koster nesten ikke noe. 

Things are picking up

Back from vacation!  For  the first time in many years, I had four weeks by the ocean, weather was increadible, water temperature perfect (23-25 celcius).  We had three weeks with the entire family and friends, at Skjæløy, (a summer house of which I own a small share), and at the end I had a week by myself.  Now it's back to work and hopefully, back to blogging. 

Schools in Florida adopt concept mapping

An interesting article in MIT's Technology Review describes how some schools are starting to use Cmaps -- a tool to help students become knowledge constructers rather than  information consumers.  The tool teaches the students to link knowledge and describe inductively, i.e. top-down.   Could Norwegian schools try this please?

Cmaps can be used to assess student knowledge, encourage thinking and problem solving instead of rote learning, organize information for writing projects and help teachers write new curricula.

"We need to move education from a memorizing system and repetitive system to a dynamic system," said Gaspar Tarte, who is spearheading education reform in Panama as the country's secretary of governmental innovation. "Concept maps was the best tool that we found."

A Cmap is a series of concepts, usually nouns, linked by phrases or verbs. Alberto Canas, the institute's associate director and leading Cmap researcher, cites a simple Cmap on birds as an example.

One of several lines radiating from the main concept -- "birds" -- is labeled "have" and links it to such attributes as "beaks," "hollow bones" and "feathers." Another line is labeled "lays" and connects "birds" with "eggs."

"It's really saying 'birds lay eggs' -- that's a proposition -- 'birds have beaks,' 'birds have hollow bones,"' Canas said. "So it's knowledge expressed as propositions."

The software can be downloaded for free at http://cmap.ihmc.us/

Other commercial mind mapping programs:

• Mindmanager from Mindjet.  Great for mindmapping, and can export map to Powerpoint, Word, Excel (requires extra plug-in) and can also import to map from Word and Powerpoint. 
• DecisionPro (cost about $500 for a licence) - great for business modelling.
• Inspiration  - good for process descriptions.