Le blog du Centre NTE

If more than half of IT projects fail, then we’re working in a domain where failure is the norm. What to do about it? In his engaging talk at Flash on the Beach in December 2006, Aral Balkan takes on the fundamental question: how do we reduce the risk involved in software development, or in other words: change happens, how do we deal with it? His advice for responding to change in a low risk manner involves adopting agile development processes, with a special emphasis on extreme programming and user-centered product development. A compelling message indeed…

Listen in:

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Playing time: about 13 and a half minutes
Language: English

Links:

Aral Balkan’s session at Flash on the Beach:

http://flashonthebeach.com/sessions/index.php?pageid=308

Agile Manifesto:

http://agilemanifesto.org/

Aral Balkan article on User Centered Product Development:

http://aralbalkan.com/687

Standish Group report on IT project failure:

http://www.projectsmart.co.uk/docs/chaos_report.pdf

Aral Balkan article on process:

http://www.ariaware.com/consulting/process.php

asunit for unit testing ActionScript:

http://www.asunit.org/

We’re here: http://nte.unifr.ch/blog/podcast/

LIFT describes itself as a conference about the challenges and opportunities of technology in our society. I had the good fortune to be at LIFT in February 2007, the conference’s second edition. For this podcast, I asked some people for their impressions of LIFT, and if possible if they could sum up their experience in just 3 words…

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Clip audio : Le lecteur Adobe Flash (version 9 ou plus) est nécessaire pour la lecture de ce clip audio. Téléchargez la dernière version ici. Vous devez aussi avoir JavaScript activé dans votre navigateur.

Playing time: about 7 minutes
Language: English and French

Links mentioned:

http://lift07.org/

We’re here: http://nte.unifr.ch/blog/podcast/

Quigli.ch is a web-based flash card application made by Rainer Steiger and Andreas Weber. It’s not your everyday flash card program though. Andreas Weber talks to us about what techniques and concepts Quigli is based on, and why doing fun things with facts helps you to learn them better.

Listen in:

Clip audio : Le lecteur Adobe Flash (version 9 ou plus) est nécessaire pour la lecture de ce clip audio. Téléchargez la dernière version ici. Vous devez aussi avoir JavaScript activé dans votre navigateur.

Playing time: about 13 minutes
Language: English

Links mentioned:
quigli.ch online flash cards and more
ppp-sin.ch public private partnership – schule im netz
telematiktage bern 5-9 march 2007

We’re here: http://nte.unifr.ch/blog/podcast/

We’ve heard about podcasting in higher education, yet most examples are recordings of entire lectures made available later as a podcast (see for example our interview with David Malan of Harvard University). We got to talk to another breed of podcasting professor, Robert Stidwill of Zurich University, who has created custom podcasts for his Biology course for veterinary medicine students. Professor Stidwill’s students get a short audio presentation of topics that he chooses based on students’ reactions during class: a learning podcast à la carte as it were.

Listen in:

Clip audio : Le lecteur Adobe Flash (version 9 ou plus) est nécessaire pour la lecture de ce clip audio. Téléchargez la dernière version ici. Vous devez aussi avoir JavaScript activé dans votre navigateur.

Playing time: about 10 and a half minutes

Language: English

Links mentioned:
OLAT learning management system

Visit us here: http://nte.unifr.ch/blog/podcast/

How would you define eLearning? To find out what the term eLearning means, my colleague Rolf and I did a little just-for-fun field research outside at the student café. Since we were in Fribourg we got a nice taste of the multilingual university culture, with a mix of French, German and Swiss German, as the students told us what eLearning means to them. An interesting bit of research indeed…

Listen in:

Clip audio : Le lecteur Adobe Flash (version 9 ou plus) est nécessaire pour la lecture de ce clip audio. Téléchargez la dernière version ici. Vous devez aussi avoir JavaScript activé dans votre navigateur.

Playing time: 7 minutes
Language: English, French, German, Swiss German

We’re here: http://nte.unifr.ch/blog/podcast/