Alev's

After conference activities 36th COMPSAC 2012 conference

2011-08-20T03:17:00.000-07:00

Thinking of a holiday after the conference is possible by having a tour of wonderful places in Turkey, this will give you the opportunity to see places besides İzmir, the pearl of Turkey

Next years COMPSAC 2012 will be in İzmir, Turkey

2011-08-19T10:46:00.000-07:00

After a successful COMPSAC 2011 in Munich Germany, we are gearing for next years COMPSAC 2012 IEEE 36th Annual Computer Software and Applications Conference.

"Trustworthy Software Systems for the Digital Society"

It will be in İzmir TURKEY between July 16, 2012 - July 20, 2012.

An official video prepared for Expo 2015 will give you a reason to come in addition to COMPSAC

A video showing pictures from İzmir is accompanied with a local folk song by famous singer ZARA

You can prefer to attend to after cenference activities...

We are looking forward to see you

Excellent news: There is EDUCATION track in COMPSAC 2011- Computer Software and Applications Conference

2011-01-09T13:32:00.000-08:00

Here comes another COMPSAC conference. This year it will be in München Deutschland (Germany). This years motto is "The Computed World: Software Beyond the Digital Society".

Best part is there is a :Education and Learning TrackThe Education Track at COMPSAC will focus on the educational underpinnings that are needed to support creation of trustworthy and dependable software. Topics include education areas that support creation of trustworthy and dependable software such as related curricula and course offerings, use of educational IDEs early in the curricula, educational experience reports, case studies, professional certification, outsourcing/international issues, and industry/university collaboration. We are particularly interested in integration of these topics into existing computer science and software engineering degree programs, as well as development of new programs.

Track chairs: James Cross, Auburn University, USA (crossjh at auburn.edu)
Timothy Shih, National Central University, Taiwan (timothykshih at gmail.com)

If you are interested to write a paper (I will do so...)
Deadlines are such as:

Jan 16, 2011: Main conference abstracts due
Jan 30, 2011: Main conference full manuscripts due
Apr 2, 2011: Main conference author notifications
May 2, 2011: All final manuscripts due
May 2, 2011: Author registration

Don't be late... Lets meet in Munich this summer

Joint Technology Enhanced Learning Summer School 2010 Ohrid

2010-04-07T12:44:00.000-07:00

I was there as a PhD student in 2008...

Facilitating New Forms of Learning with Collaborative Technologies

2010-02-22T01:50:00.000-08:00

I have been using facebook, social networks, wikis since 2007 with our students in IT Department. Graham Attwell and Cristina Costa suggested an online conference in Network trainers. Now I have seen that it is shared by them "Facilating new forms of learning with Collaborative Technologies".

Facilitation new forms of Learning with Collaborative Technologies

View more presentations from network_trainers.

I have also presented with Begum Çubukçuoğlu a course that we gave in Computer Teacher Education Department. Now we are prapering a paper about our experiences.

3rd International Conference on Security of Information and Networks(SIN 2010)

2010-01-30T09:32:00.000-08:00

After the first two conferences in North Cyprus, the third one will take place in Tagonrog, Rostov-on-Don, Russia from September 7-10, 2010. You can get more information from the web site. Also the conference web site SIN 2010 is ready.

Testing to post a blog from iphone

2010-01-09T15:21:00.001-08:00

Although it is not that userfriendly I am sending this blog via email
from iPhone to blogger.

Sent from my iPhone

E.M.U
Eastern Mediterranean University

Teaching Database Administration with Oracle for 21st century learners

2009-07-03T04:27:00.001-07:00

I am getting ready for giving ITEC474 Database Administration with Oracle course for next semester. Although I have been given this course for 9 semesters, I have not done it since 2006-7 Spring semester. Last time I was using Oracle Enterprise, so that the students were doing admin facilities and creating their tables and users on the DB server from distance.

Now I am looking for new teaching and learning approaches so that the students will learn and use 21st century skills. Today I started looking for options on the Internet, and met with Oracle wiki. Surprisingly it was created by Wetpaint. Now this will be my registration to 3rd wetpaint wiki.

If you are using any Web 2.0 approaches to teach Database Management and Administration please write it. And I will update my blog as soon as I find some other resources.

Wetpaint Wiki For e-Learning Project Management

2009-06-13T00:43:00.001-07:00

My ITEC401 Graduation Project students are doing a wiki for North Cyprus Social Studies Course. They have gone through wikimatrix to choose the suitable wiki. They selected Wetpaint. Although I wanted them to use Wikimedia, since they are not experienced it came a little complicated. Besides the primary school teachers and students are going to do the updates, after our team finalizes. I am still thinking to work on and use wikimedia to have our own database and various functionalities.
I have found this from web, which I think will be usefull to the first time users. Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Wetpaint Wiki For Project Management

View more OpenOffice presentations from Carole Mcculloch.

ITEC422 Project Management team created a wiki as course project

2009-05-29T12:56:00.000-07:00

NEWSINIT wiki is created as a course project by team of 27 international students. You can read the blog post in wordpress.

Social Networks for Eastern Mediterranean University IT (CSIT) Alumni

2009-05-20T06:15:00.000-07:00

Dear graduates of EMU IT Department,

Please keep contact with other graduates. I have written the addresses in my blog in Wordpress
Social networks is also a good way to communicate and collaborate with people in your profession.

2nd International Joint Robotics Competition and Symposium (IJRCS 2009) in ISPARTA, Turkey

2009-05-10T13:20:00.000-07:00

IJRCS ’09, 2nd International Joint Robotics Competition and Symposium will take place on 20-24 May 2009, in Süleyman Demirel University, Isparta, Turkey
In Technical Co-Sponsorship of IEEE Turkey Section IES/RAS Joint Chapter

Call for Papers
==============
The aim of the three-day single-track symposium on Robotics @IJRCS 2009 is to bring together leading roboticists from academia and industry with backgrounds in various sub-fields of robotics to foster an intensive exchange of information and know-how. The conference language will be English. Paper submissions on all aspects of robotics but especially on new methodologies, algorithms, system architectures and novel applications are solicited. A selective review process will be carried out through a large international program committee to ensure academic quality. All presented papers will be published in the post-conference proceedings book by an international publisher. Authors are invited to participate in the activities of the competition as well.

In addition to oral and poster presentations of refereed papers, invited talks by the following internationally renowned researchers will complete the conference program:

Prof.Dr. Okyay Kaynak,
Boğaziçi University, and UNESCO, Turkey.
"Quo Vadis, Mechatronics?"

Dr. Francesco Mondada,
Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland.

Prof.Dr. Abdülkadir Erden,
Atılım University, Turkey.
“Bio-inspired Robots for Mechatronics Engineering Education”Prof.Dr. Vladimir Pavlovsky
, Moscow State University, Russia.

Prof.Dr. Ümit Özgüner,
Ohio State University, USA

“Driving in Istanbul in an Autonomous Car”

Assoc.Prof.Dr. Ferat Şahin
, Rochester Institute of Technology, USA

"System of Systems Simulation Framework for Testing Swarm Robots using DEVS"

Dr. Haldun Komsuoğlu,
University of Pennsylvania, USA

“Dynamic Legged Mobility Systems”
Microsoft
MS Robotics Studio Developers

Topics

Symposium on Robotics @IJRCS 2009 is for robotics technology and its practical applications. Specifically, papers on original and unpublished research, development and innovative use cases in the following topics are of special interest (but are not limited to):

Mechanisms: Design of new kinematic structures, parallel kinematic machines, humanoid robots, hands, legged systems, reconfigurable robots.
Manipulation: Kinematics, dynamics, control, trajectory generation, contact modeling, dexterous manipulation, grasp synthesis, assembly, programming, sensor integration.
Mobile systems: Mobile robot controls, motion planning, mapping, localization, collision avoidance, navigation, exploration, task/mission planning, sensor integration.
Field robotics: Localization, mapping, perception, situational awareness, outdoor applications
Intelligent robotics and multi-robot systems: Distributed systems of sensor networks, multi-robot systems, and networked robots.
Robotic perception: Tactile perception, range, vision, intelligent perception action systems.
Human-robot interaction: Safe robotics, haptics, tactile interfaces, tele-operated systems.
Smart materials for robotics: Sensors, actuators and control mechanisms as smart materials for use in robotics.
Estimation, learning, and programming: Bayesian techniques, modeling, imitation learning, programming by demonstration.
Robot Learning: Learning models, plans and control policies, inference, integration with architectures.
Evolutionary robotics: Evolution of robots, neural controllers, communication, cooperation and competition, co-evolution, novel / improved algorithms for the evolution of robot systems.
Anthropomorphic robotics: Prosthetic/robotic hands, exoskeletons, walking robots, social robots.
Robotics and automation: Development and programming, automation engineering, automated methods in the milieu.
Semantic robotics: Semantically intelligent robotics, cognitive robotics, semantic robotic agent system, semantic Web, ontology engineering.
Standards and common platforms for robotics: Development software, middleware, evaluation-comparison

Submission
----------
One-page extended abstract of a proposal is required initially. Selected abstracts will be allocated time in the symposium program and included in the abstracts booklet on CD. At least one of the authors of each accepted abstract must register as a full participant of the symposium. Following the symposium days, authors will submit the properly formatted full-length paper for inclusion in the post-conference proceedings. Proceedings book of the symposium will be published under an ISBN number by Trafford Publishing, Canada. The proceedings book will be available Worldwide from Trafford and through book stores. A copy of the proceedings book will be airmailed to the registrants of the symposium free of charge. Extended abstract and full paper may be submitted through IJRCS 2009 submission site: https://cmt.research.microsoft.com/IJRCS09/.

Important due dates
-------------------
Extended abstract due date: 15 May 2009 (Check www.ijrcs.org for updates)
Acceptance notification: 17 May 2009
Author registration: Starting 15 May 2009
Full paper submission: 5 June 2009
Camera-ready papers: 26 June 2009

Further Info:
------------
Additional information on “Call for Papers”, “Call for Competition”, and paper submissions may be obtained at the IJRCS 2009 web site at http://www.ijrcs.org . The previous event in this series was the International Joint Robotics Competition (IJRC 2008) organized by and held in the hosting of Eastern Mediterranean University (www.ijrc2008.org).

Organizers
----------
Eastern Mediterranean University, TRNC
Süleyman Demirel University, Turkey
Sakarya University, Turkey

Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland

K. N. Toosi University of Technology, Iran
Mehmet Akif Ersoy University, Turkey

Moscow State University, Russia
Atılım University, Turkey

Symposium Chair: Assoc.Prof.Dr. Atilla Elçi(EMU)atilla.elci@emu.edu.tr

Symposium Co-Chairs:Asst.Prof.Dr. Mehmet Albayrak (SDU)
Ins. Behnam Rahnama (EMU)

2nd International Conference on Security of Information and Networks (SIN 2009) in Famagusta North Cyprus

2009-05-07T12:21:00.000-07:00

Come and visit Famagusta (we call Mağusa) with sun and wonderful beaches. My husband Atilla is the conference chair of SIN 2009.

CALL FOR PAPERS
===================
2nd International Conference on Security of Information and Networks (SIN 2009)
6-10 October 2009 Salamis Bay Conti Resort Hotel, Gazimagusa, North Cyprus

http://www.sinconf.org

In Technical Cooperation with ACM Special Interest Group on Security, Audit and Control (SIGSAC)
----------------------------------------
Organized by
------------
-Dept. of Computer Engineering, Eastern Mediterranean University, TRNC, North Cyprus
-Dept. of Security of Information Technologies, South-Russian Regional Scientific-Educational Center for Information Security Problems, Southern Federal University, Taganrog, Rostov, Russia
-The Information and Networked Systems Security (INSS) & The Intelligent Systems Group (ISG), Dept. of Computing, Macquarie University, Australia

IMPORTANT DATES
===============
Workshop / Special Session Proposals: open.
Paper Submission by: 10 May 2009
Tutorial Proposal by: 10 May 2009
Tutorial Notification: 25 May 2009
All Author Notification: 13 June 2009
All Papers Camera Ready by: 1 July 2009
Author Registration due date: 1 July 2009
Tutorial Dates: 6-7 October 2009
Conference Dates: 8 – 9 October 2009
Workshops Date: 10 October 2009

Supported by
------------
Russian Foundation for Basic Research
National Research Institute of Electronics and Cryptology (UEKAE), Turkey
IEEE Turkey Section
IEEE Computer Society Turkey Branch
Chamber of Computer Engineers, TRNC, North Cyprus
Internet Technologies Association (INETD), Turkey
Linux Users Association (LKD), Turkey
others tba

Sponsored by
------------
Unitary State Enterprise "Sistemprom", Moscow, Russia
Moscow Engineering Physics Institute (MEPhI), Moscow, Russia
Technopark (GMTGB), TRNC, North Cyprus
Microsoft Turkey
EC-Council, USA
others tba

Hosted by
---------
Department of Computer Engineering, and Internet Technologies Research Center (ITRC)
Eastern Mediterranean University, Gazimagusa, TRNC, North Cyprus

Project Management in IT

2009-04-07T05:04:00.000-07:00

For my course ITEC422 "Project Management in IT" we have created a wiki page and students are using it to collaborate and communicate. They also use it for doing their semester long course projects. For all of them this is the first wiki experience, except wikipedia . They can improve their usage by identifying their goals. We are using wikispaces for this purpose, that time I didn't have time in investigate other wikis and just started to use this. If you are interested you can check the wiki matrix for comparing wikis, to choose the one that suits you and your goal.

Welcoming Change: Generations and Regeneration; Professional Development of Faculty in Higher Education

2009-03-24T15:53:00.000-07:00

This year's 34th annual POD Network Conference 2009 theme is "Welcoming Change: Generations and Regeneration". It will be held on October 28th - November 1st in Houston, Texas USA. It is organized by POD Network which I am a member.

Main topics related to Professional Development of Faculty in Higher Education are:

Generational differences
Emerging technologies
Embracing learner-centered teaching paradigms
Sustainability issues
Reinvigorating established teaching and learning centers
Creating new centers and integrating them into campus culture
Facing the challenges of downsizing and limited budgets

I am really proud to be a reviewer. Besides WoHCI 2009 in Seattle, I am planning to go to Houston. Also it will give a chance to write a paper on my topic.

Agency in Media Networks - WoHCI 2009 Call for Papers due extended to 23rd March

2009-03-08T13:51:00.000-07:00

Hello,
WoHCI 2009 Call for Papers due extended to 23rd March. Please find the flyer on
http://tinyurl.com/aceutj. You can distribute it to your colleagues interested in this topics. We will meet in Seattle on 20th July. This will be a great gathering with those who have interest in social networks and media mining and the other topics published on the flyer.

Year of social networks! Extended! Cfp for WoHCI 2009

2009-03-04T12:56:00.000-08:00

1st IEEE International Workshop on Human Computer Interaction (WoHCI) 2009 paper submission deadline is extended since there was a lot of requests for extension.

Now you can send your papers until 23rd March 2009. We are looking forward for your papers related to media networks. This will be a great opportunity to meet researchers working on community media mining (media network analysis, community and media co-evolution) and HCI technologies (usability, sociability, privacy, security and trust), thus defining their future roles in social networks.

You can see that this year will be "year of social networks" from Ralf Klamma's blog. There are many conferences and workshops on this theme.

Fal: Telling the fortune of higher education students

2009-03-03T23:36:00.000-08:00

Turkish people after we drink Turkish coffee, we turn our coffee cups upside down on the plate. When the cup is cooled down, some people who are good at fortune telling start to look at the designs of coffee left outs inside the cup. They can tell what will happen in future. We call it "Fal".

This week is the first days of our 2008-2009 spring semester, and yet the students are not coming to the classes. In past years at least there were some hardworking enthusiastic students who come to the first lecture of semester. When I was thinking of this and with all discussions of looking at future in winterschool and EU projects and related research. I started to look at "Fal" of HE students:

1. They will learn informaly in HE. They will prefer learning with games, multimedia, social networking.
2. They will prefer experiencing it before learning the theories.
3. Kolb's experiential learning life cycle for them will turn counter-clockwise: starting from concrete experience to active experimentation to abstract conceptualization to reflective observation...

4. They will want to learn in their own way. They need different learning environments so that they can choose.

5. They will prefer learning with technology in various courses with appropriate pedagogical use.

5. They will start learning formally (the way we now want them to learn) after they graduate when they are on the professional environment. So the importance of adult learning, competence development, lifelong learning, and professional learning will increase.

When I was thinking of these I have received Malinka's blog whether "training" will still exist in 2019. Also the preface of the following book make me think that not only in e-learning courses but in other courses we should consider their suggested meta-model

Koper, R. & Tattersall, C. (2005).
Preface to Learning Design: A Handbook on Modelling and Delivering
Networked Education and Training.
Journal of Interactive Media in Education 2005(18).

Any more ?!? Suggestions?? Objections?? Looking at "Fal" is an art more than a science, and fortune telling is more intrinsic :)) want to read about some

Lets meet in Seattle...Call for Papers WoHCI 2009

2009-02-18T04:49:00.000-08:00

Call for Papers WoHCI 2009

Seattle,Washington, July 20 - July 24, 2009
_____________________
Agency in Media Networks

In conjunction with the 33rd Annual IEEE International Computer Software and Applications Conference COMPSAC 2009 (http://conferences.computer.org/compsac/2009/ ) Workshop on Human Computer Interaction WoHCI 2009 (http://conferences.computer.org/compsac/2009/workshops/WOHCI2009.htm ) provides an international meeting of researchers to explore the fundamental synergy of community media mining (media network analysis, community and media co-evolution) and HCI technologies (usability, sociability, privacy, security and trust), thus defining their future roles in social networks. Media networks - networks of media traces left by human activities on the Web - are a hot topic in the Web 2.0.

Program Committee
Jacob Biehl, FX Palo Alto Laboratory, California, USA
Kursat Cagiltay, Middle East Technical University, Turkey
Luis Castro, University of Manchester, UK
Tom Erikson, IBM's Watson Labs, USA
Darren Gergle, Northwestern University, USA
Denis Gillet, EPFL, Switzerland
Victor Gonzalez, University of Manchester, UK
Wolfgang Graether, Fraunhofer FIT, Germany
Anna Hannemann, RWTH Aachen University, Germany
Davinia Hernandez-Leo, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona
Michal Jacovi, IBM Haifa, Israel
Effie Lai-Chong Law, University of Leicester, UK
Wendy Moncur, University of Aberdeen, UK
Felix Mödritscher, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria
Gary Olson, University of California, Irvin, USA
Kai Pata, Tallinn University, Estonia
Wolfgang Prinz, Fraunhofer FIT, Germany
Nalin Sharda, School Engineering and Science, Victoria University, Australia
Peter Sloep, Open University of The Nederlands, The Netherlands
Markus Strohmaier, Graz University of Technology, Austria
Lucia Terrenghi, Vodafone Group Research & Development, Germany
Marko Turpeinen, Royal Institude of Technology, Sweden

Important Dates
March 7, 2009 Workshop paper submission due 12 p.m. (CET)April 10, 2009
Workshop paper notification (electronic)April 30, 2009
All final manuscript and author pre-registration due

Workshop Organizers
Alev Elci, Eastern Mediterranean University, North Cyprus
Zinayida Petrushyna, RWTH Aachen University, Germany
Katja Kurdyukova, University of Augsburg, Germany
Ralf Klamma, RWTH Aachen University, Germany

Tencompetence Winter School (tcws09) Innsbruck

2009-02-02T23:20:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I have arrived to Innsbruck. Started the journey on 31st January, one day in Istanbul, and arrived to Innsbruck via Vienna. Take a taxi from airport where the driver came out to be Turkish. Although at first sight I have understood and said few words in Turkish he seemed to ignore. Anyway he was very helpfull to give the first tips about Austria and Innsbruck. The hotel we are staying is 15 minutes car drive to the town, on a small hill where you turn from a fantastic church in Vill. After I took my room I had a walk down the hill, on the way back I have met Maria my dear Greek friend from previous summer school. At the dinner we met with others.
The first day satrted with "Networks for Life Long Learning" by Peter Sloep. He talked about Open Social.

7 Things about me... do you really care...?

2008-12-30T13:31:00.000-08:00

…probably not, but have been tagged by Cristina Costa and decided to answer the challenge. I am supposed to reveal 7 things about me and pass on the challenge to other seven people.

So as the rules say, you will need to:

* Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
* Share seven facts about yourself in the post - some random, some weird.
* Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.

Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

This is a real challenge, when somebody asks this question f2f I can start telling about many things, more than 7 immediately. Ok, let me start.

1. First one is when I was 5 years old. We were travelling from Ankara where my grandparents were living to our home town, and my face became to be swollen. My parents went from train station directly to hospital. Where I was diagnosed with a serious kidney problem. Doctor said even if I ate any food at that situation I would die. And I had been hospitalized for 2 months, eating no salt, meat,etc. where the children nearby beds were enjoying their meals. It was a difficult situation, but the doctor said I had very strong infrastructure that I could recover in 2 months. My mother says it was because of the honey I have eaten which a relative brought as a present, a huge box of honey, and I was eating occasionally. There is another part of this story where my cousin who was just learning to read was bringing already read story books when she visited me. My mom was reading them over and over since there was nothing else to do. I learned to read in the hospital. And this resulted that in primary school they tested and let me start from 2nd grade. So 2 months of hospitalization saved 1 year of my school year... Of course honey!! Not only my health, honey underlie all my success... I always eat before I go to exams, and when I feel week.

2. I studied 2 years in one school and then 2 years in another. I was always having health problems, missing many school days, so I was not a good student. After primary I took exams for a special middle school with english medium education. Although nobody was expecting from me (even me), I was accepted to this school. It was great happiness to my mother and father.

3. I was very good at mathematics and in the first year of high school I have decided to be a math teacher. But the last year my closest friend said that their relative, who was a Prof. told her to study math but concantrate on computers. He said computers is a new subject which will be popular in the following years. So I decided I will do the same. But the first time in my education life I failed from 3 courses, and I had to take graduation exams for these courses. All the summer I had to study hard. That year university exam questions were stolen which I was lucky since I had to take the entrance exam again after summer. It helped me to score higher. As a result of university entrance exams I have chosen mathematics and took 7 computer and programming related courses.

4. My mother was very young when she got married, so I was always happy to have a young mother. Everybody things she is my sister. So I said I want to be a young mother. Married at 22, had children when 23 and 25. Now I even have two cute grandchildren: Truva and Dogu(Jaqquin).

5. When I was graduating from university I was busy doing my last projects, finishing my thesis. I was not thinking of working. Until one of my teachers came and asked me about my plans. I said I want to stay in our university as an academician. He said that there is no Computer Department yet, so I can only be a programmer in Computer Center. So he suggested that I will start to work in a private company. Where my teacher's friend was the director. Without my will I went just to see the office and talk t0 them... Finally got the job as system support specialist for Unisys systems within 2 weeks. Which took 12 years of my career in that company. Continued in different countries for 10 more years ...

6. Years after... an e-mail looking for part-time instructor took me to the career that I was dreaming. I started to teach in university (thanks god I have done my masters when I was working in the private sector).

7. Now after being a grandmom I am doing my phd in educational sciences. Why phd? Why educational sciences?? I have seen that my son had some difficulty in learning and adopting to the current education system!!! So I thought I want to help the new generation so that they can learn as appropriate to 21st century. Inorder to help students I am interested in faculty development in teaching and learning. Also I would like to use ICT-based, TEL, CoP environments. So that faculty will use them in their learning process, and when they are teaching they will use it for students learning process.

Hımm... Already 7... Thanks for your patience...

For this meme I am tagging to Ralf Klamma, Eduardo Peirano, Doug Belshaw,

need to find 4 more :(

"Edusocial" learning environments

2008-12-29T14:19:00.000-08:00

Well I am using social environments such as ning and wikispaces to create an educational learning environment to my students. I know there are many educators using these. I don't know if there is a name to identify this usage. But I wanted to use it as "edusocial". If there is or are other terms used for this purpose please let me know.

Here are the ones we I am using in my courses:

I would like to also know about some research on the use of edusocial learning environments. Please comment...

Approaching New Year 2009

2008-12-25T13:27:00.000-08:00

Well it has been long, that I have not bloogged. I have a busy schedule trying to write intro to my dissertation, and give four courses. In these I try to use the technology enhanced environments and Web 2.0 tools that I was just introduced in Summer School in Ohrid.

The project management in IT students prepared a wiki. They are not really comfortable with its usage. Although they arranged all the pages and the content. Hoping that in the last one month they will get used to using and learning with it. Although we are getting some hits from various countries. It is private at the moment, so everyone can see but not update it.

The Computer Education future teachers are using a ning social network for sharing information. These were very enthusiastic to use the network in the beginning of the semester. They have added videos and pictures realeted to technology in general and educational technology in specific.

The other network we are using is for a term project course. They are doing an animation project using Alice. This is the first time they are using Alice. Hoping that they will come out with a nice project.

Ok, the last thing I want to write about is a message I got from POD network. Louis Schmier http://therandomthoughts.edublogs.org/ wrote it. I would like to give you this as a present.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Hoping that our dreams will come out in 2009.

Information Technology in Education I

2008-10-15T12:00:00.000-07:00

We have started our course and I have created an educational and social network in "ning" cite101. There are around 50 students in two groups. The other group's teacher is Begum. Started by introducing the network to the students. Nearly all of them are now registered. At the beginning we asked them to set up their profiles, change their individual web, set apperance, and place photos. They seem to be enthusiastic for being a part of this network.

Now some studens who are more digital background made a great difference, by adding music, photos, videos. One student placed a video of nanotechnology where Begum mentioned in her first lecture. Today my son send me a link Live age design competition. When I was looking for that I have found an interesting design game for a circuit board. I put it on my page and now I am planning to show it to our students in the lab hour.

Although the students ICT levels are varying, since some graduated from computer vocational high schools and some from regular schools; we will try to arrange the course so that most of them will be actively participating. For this rason we have given a questionnaire to discover their ICT skills in the beginning.

Video Conferencing

2008-10-04T11:58:00.000-07:00

Johanna Prince University of Maine Farmington wants to arrange a video conference with our students to make an interview about how technology is used in schools in North Cyprus. Her students are studying to be elementary school (ages 5-14) teachers and she works with them on integrating technology into the classroom. My students are in Computer & Instructional Technology Teacher Education Program where they will be teaching from 6-17 (K-12). They are attending to Information Technology in Education course. I am really happy since our students will have this opportunity to discuss aboout educational technology.

New school year new Technology Enhanced Environments

2008-10-03T01:35:00.000-07:00

Well after attending to Prolearn Summerschool in Ohrid Macedonia I have recognized to do some more changes to the learning environments of my students. This semester I will give 4 courses: "Project Management in IT" for 4 year IT students, "System Analysis and Design" and "Graduation Project" for 2 year Computer Programming students. There is a new one CITE101 - "Information Technology in Education" Course in Computer & Instructional Technology Teacher Education Program of Educational Sciences Department in Eastern Mediterranean University.

Now what will I do?? I have decided to use wiki in "Project Management in IT". For this purpose I have created http://pminit.pbwiki.com/ using free pbwiki but I need more options where premium is required. Now it gives upgrade option.

For my 2 year programming and CITE101 studentsI prefer social plus educational networks where I have chosen ning http://cite101.ning.com/. Now I am ready to go... On monday the courses will start, and we will see how they are collaborating and learning via these TEL environments.

A quote by Scott Page

2008-07-23T04:39:00.000-07:00

"Diverse people working together and capitalizing on their individuality, out-perform groups of like-minded experts"

Knowledge Modelling & Maturing Process

2008-06-19T12:35:00.000-07:00

This workshop by Andreas Schmidt & Pablo Franzolini from MATURE project was about SOBOLEO. This system is developed for web-based collaborative engineering of ontologies & annotation of web resources. Andreas talked about and presented the learning landscape framework. During knowledge maturing process within this framework knowledge management, e-learning, and human resource management are gaining importance in different phases. Knowledge maturity is established from individual level and then enlarged to collective level as a result of collaborative exchange. At this level knowledge maturity can be observable by the artifacts. Weblogs and wikis can be used for distribution. Top-down approaches as teaching, using LMS, and professional development strategy (HR development as Andreas said) can not be suitable for maturing since the creativity and motivation of users are not fully considered.
In the workshop we have used SOBOLEO for Social bookmarking where you can annotate web adresses under a general root. We, in our groups take the concept of "mobile learning" and created concepts that are general and related to mobile learning. Since all participants were adding and deleting at the same time, there was a coas of deleting the concepts of others. The tool we haved used was missing the visual aesthetics. But it was a nice exercise to understand the reasons that lied under the deleting where Linda said some concepts were irrelevant and there was no definition for those... When we are creating concepts we have to be careful that it has a meaning in that context for others. Well anyway this was the first workshop where I learned a lot, my knowledge maturing process started in this workshop.

The weekend in Macedonia

2008-06-16T07:33:00.000-07:00

Saturday after a small tour in Skopje, where Victor guided me and Akila (from Algeria living in Saudi Arabia). After missing 2 o'clock bus we made it to Ohrid and thanks to Klime to meet us and give a ride to our hotel. The collaboration started from the airport where we started to discuss our Phd topics with Akila, where we found a lot of things to support each other. Then we meet with the other participants in the hotel. We meet and with Cristina from Portugal living in UK. Interestingly some of the participants are "global nomads" :) So we started to get to know each other and research interests immediately. It was impressive that every one of us was enthusiastic for sharing and discussing about their research studies.

Sunday at 11:00 am with took a boat to go to St. Naum. We have visited the church, ate lunch, and did some shopping. We started our trip with a nice sunshine but ended up with rain on the way back. The building of friendships continued during the excursion. At night we had a cocktail party and dinner.

Ohrid and environments has a nice view; different tones of green and blue with all colored flowers. Also the people is friendly and helpful. Also the summerschool and workshop organizers were all supportive and helpful.

First step to a valuable experience

2008-06-13T11:51:00.000-07:00

Hello All, this is my first blog entry...

I am not only excited to write to my first blog -- since I was a kid and writing diary to share my teenage secrets -- also to attend to TEL summer school in Ohrid. I am looking forward to the summer school to meet with the instructors and PhD students who share interests in technology and learning. I have a lot to learn from them besides sharing my experiences with them.

So tommorrow early morning I will fly from North Cyprus to Istanbul and then to Skopje, Macedonia. Well hearing a lot about this wonderful country from history and lately shown TV series in Turkey; I want to visit and see around.

My scholarship is contributed by SEE-ERA.NET. First I want to thank them and I appreciate all those who put an effort to gather us: technology enhanced life-long-learners...