The JEM Network was active for three years: from August 2006 to August 2009. The Network organized 19 workshops, seminars and schools during three years: about one event every two months. The purpose of the network was to advance the use of information technology in education with a special focus in mathematics. These meetings have certainly contributed to that goal.

The first few talks, that I have attended today at the International Conference on Web-based learning 2009, have been about metadata. Erik Duval gave first a powerful keynote talk, and several session speakers have continued on that. We need perhaps some sort of metadata of metadata etc. We already have repositories of repositories, which Duval is promoting.

This semester I have been using the Interwrite Personal Response System (see http://www.interwritelearning.com/products/prs/radio/detail.html) in the classroom. Instructor using this system prepares questions that will be shown to the students on a video projector screen in the classroom. The questions are multiple choice, and students answer by clickers.

Zoom H2 microphone

I have been in the business of producing calculus podcasts for a while. Now we experimented reproducing a mathematical talk as a podcast. Together with Emil Volcheck and Tony Shaska I organized a special session at the Joint Meeting of the AMS and MAA that took place in Washington, DC this January. Emil had a Zoom H2 portable audiorecorder that we used to record Peter Buser’s talk. Together with Buser we then recreated the slideshow, and matched that with the recorded audio. The result is available at http://gallery.me.com/mika.seppala#100437.

To get a true picture of the performance differences, I took snapshots of CPU and memory usage of Mac Pro and of MacBook Air while the computers where producing the movie discussed in my previous blog entry.

The picture above shows the CPU usage of my Mac Pro, and the picture below that of my MacBook Air.

I am spending a lot of time with podcast production. During the process of learning this trade I have gone through lots of hardware and software. From Windows to Mac, from USB microphones to condenser microphones etc.

The French ministry of education organized a meeting entitles “L’Apprentissage des Sciences dans L’Europe de la Connaissance” that is right now taking place in Grenoble. Minister Xavier Darcos, the French minister of education, is talking and mentioned that, in France, during the last several years, physics has lost in average 5.5% of the student body a year. Several other countries report similar trends.

The JEM server was down most of today, Saturday, September 27. The JEM server is located in a machine room of the Physics Department, and, of course, none of the administrators of the machine room was reachable off hours. Together with Antti Alamäki I then went to Campus, got the security guard to let us in to the machine room, and rebooted ubu, the JEM server.

This blog comment is related to Olga Caprotti's blog entry "Mission Accomplished."

We are in the business of advancing the use of information technology in education. At times I feel that this is a Mission Impossible.

The basic calculus course at the University of Helsinki has been offered online for many years. The course was completely revised this time. We are trying to activate students by asking them to contribute to weekly forum discussions, and by giving generous extra credit for that. Next time I may make that a compulsory part of the course.