Aalto Media Lab students are awesome.

Now they have collected a list of open source / FLOSS tools for online collaboration during the pandemic. The original file is in the Wikimedia’s etherpad. I don’t want to share the link to that collaboratively editable file, but I copied here the content as it was on Tuesday 9th at 11.30 AM.

When you see our students, say “Hi” and “Thank you!”

AUDIO-VISUAL CONFERENCING

• Jitsi Meet (https://jitsi.org/jitsi-meet/)- free, no limit on participants, browser-based (which means nothing to install for any participants) (but bugs a bit if you are many)

• How to selfhost Ubuntu/Debian – https://guides.lw1.at/books/how-to-install-jitsi-meet-on-debian-or-ubuntu/ (Does anyone know a good documentation for server set up also with trouble solving tips?)

• official installation: https://meet.jit.si/  

• other instances by various organisations: https://meet.mayfirst.org / https://calls.disroot.org / https://vc.autistici.org / https://framatalk.grifon.fr/ / https://meet.librement-votre.fr/ / https://jitsi.milkywan.fr/ / https://jitsi.linux.it / https://calls.disroot.org / https://jitsi.riot.im / https://jitsi2.linux.it / https://meet.guifi.net / https://meet.greenhost.net / https://fairmeeting.net/ / https://meet.artifaille.fr / https://www.colibris-outilslibres.org/ (choose “visio”) / https://meet.collective.tools

• belnet instance: https://jitsi-1.belnet.be

• https://peercalls.com/ (no registration, browser-based, FLOSS)

• https://openmeetings.apache.org – Apache Open Meetings – this is software to install on the server; are there any available instances of it?

• https://unhangout.media.mit.edu/about/ – unhangout

• chatb.org/ simple, FLOSS videochat 

– not libre:

• https://whereby.com/ – limited to 4 people unless you pay for a pro account (ca. $10); browser-based; not FLOSS

• https://bigbluebutton.org/ – can share slides, make notes, go into a break room, etc (better install it on your own server)

• https://www.mumble.com/mumble-download.php – i think Mumble is audio chat only? yes

• https://itshello.co/ / https://talk.vasanthv.com/  (not really FLOSS, but still free to use via author’s installation)

• https://talky.io/ – not sure if this is completely FLOSS or not; i found some info from 2015 that says it is not 100% but nearly: https://blog.andyet.com/2015/06/09/what-is-being-open-sourced-from-talky/

STREAMING
What one-to-many streaming services are available?

• http://giss.tv/ – helen has tried to use this in the past without success

• https://icecast.org/ – need to have a server to install it on

• https://live.autistici.org

• https://obsproject.com/fr/g/

• https://openstreamingplatform.com/ Open Streaming Platform (OSP) is an open-source, RTMP streamer software front-end for Arut’s Nginx-RTMP Module.  OSP was designed as a self-hosted alternative to services such as Twitch.tv, Ustream.tv, Mixer, and Youtube Live.

• https://obsproject.com, Open Broadcaster Software, video/audio streaming software

• https://github.com/mafintosh/hypervision / https://github.com/louiscenter/hypercast – hypervision/ hypercast : server-free decentralised video streaming, based on the p2p DAT protocol. Kinda experimental, but works.

• https://www.crowdcast.io/ – this is open source (https://github.com/crowdcst?ref=stackshare) so if you have your own server i think you could probably install it?? otherwise it is a pay-to-use platform. no downloads, works in a browser, embeddable streams.

VIDEO hosting:

•  https://joinpeertube.org/ PeerTube aspires to be a decentralized and free/libre alternative to video broadcasting services. (FLOSS and free and federated) 

CHAT

• Delta chat https://delta.chat/en/

• MATRIX – An open network for secure, decentralized communication https://matrix.org/ / and one of its clients : Riot https://about.riot.im/

• XMPP – https://xmpp.org/ an open protocol with numerous implementations, including :

• https://conversejs.org/fullscreen.html – Conversejs is “A free and open-source XMPP chat client in your browser”https://pad.riseup.net/p/Autorit%C3%A4reRegressionInZeitenVonCorona-keep

• https://monal.im/

• https://fosstodon.org/@xmpp for more

• Mattermost https://mattermost.com/

• Cabal https://cabal.chat – p2p, server-free distributed group-chat

• The Wire – https://app.wire.com/ – Wire is an encrypted communication and collaboration app available for iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, Linux, and web browsers such as Firefox. Wire offers a collaboration suite featuring messenger, voice calls, video calls, conference calls, file-sharing, and external collaboration –all protected by a secure end-to-end-encryption. Free for personal use. Open source. You need to create an account with an email address.

ETHERPADS

• https://etherpad.wikimedia.org

• https://cryptpad.fr/

• https://pad.systemli.org/

• https://pad.riseup.net/

• https://framapad.org/fr/

• https://pad.publiclab.org

Alternative social networks

• WeDistribute “a publication dedicated to Free Software, decentralized communication technologies, and sustainability” – https://wedistribute.org/

• Welcome to the Fediverse – https://fediverse.party/

Microblogging

• Mastodon – https://joinmastodon.org/ // https://instances.social/ 

• Pleroma – https://pleroma.social/ // https://fediverse.party/en/pleroma

• Misskey – https://join.misskey.page/en/ // https://fediverse.party/en/misskey

Macroblogging 

• Socialhome – https://socialhome.network/ // https://fediverse.party/en/socialhome

• Hubzilla – https://zotlabs.org/page/hubzilla/hubzilla-project // https://fediverse.party/en/hubzilla

• Diaspora – https://diasporafoundation.org/ // https://fediverse.party/en/diaspora

• Friendica – https://friendi.ca  //  https://fediverse.party/en/friendica

• secure scuttlebutt  (SSB) – https://scuttlebutt.nz/

ARTISTIC COLLABORATION

• UpStage – https://upstage.org.nz – real-time collaborative manipulation of digital media (images, animations, audio, live streams, text etc) along with a text chat – for creative play, improvisations, performances & presentations; email info [@] upstage.org.nz if you would like a guest log-in. we are holding events during the pandemic.

• PixelJam — a collaborative console for live coding visuals: https://pixeljam.glitch.me/

• extramuros – language-neutral shared-buffer networked live coding system https://github.com/dktr0/extramuros

• Icestream – audio streaming mixer allows multiple streams for distributed audio performance (server and client). – https://sourceforge.net/projects/icestream/

AUDIO TECH
routing a DAW into video streamingvia @ahihihhttps://github.com/ahihi/daw-loopback-guide
Music Hackspace @MusicHackspaceWe have a new forum! Join the discussion atonline-tools-for-the-pandemic | Etherpad
Ubuntu Studio is a free and open source operating system, and an official flavor of Ubuntu. Ubuntu Studio is the most widely used multimedia-orientated operating system in the world. It comes preinstalled with a selection of the most common free multimedia applications available, and is configured for best performance for various purposes: Audio, Graphics, Video, Photography and Publishing.http://ubuntustudio.org
Routing computer audio https://jackaudio.org
Game development

• Twine – http://twinery.org/

• Ren’Py – https://www.renpy.org/

• Bitsy – http://ledoux.io/bitsy/editor.html

• Fabularium (app) – https://fossdroid.com/a/fabularium.html

• –> more links: http://everest-pipkin.com/teaching/tools.html

• Flatpack – https://candle.itch.io/flatpack 

Self-hosting (with others)

• Freedombox – https://freedomboxfoundation.org/

• Freedombone – https://freedombone.net/

• Yunohost – https://yunohost.org/

• Practical guides and much more – https://homebrewserver.club/ 

• –> more links: https://pad.vvvvvvaria.org/self-hosting-together

• Feminist servers checklist: https://pad.riseup.net/p/femservers-checklist-security 

FOR KIDS

• https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/Ketjes

USEFUL LINKS

• https://beyond-social.org/wiki/index.php/Social_Practices_COVID-19_Teaching_Resources

• https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/World_of_Free_and_Open_Source_Art

• https://coronavirustechhandbook.com/ – Coronavirus Tech Handbook 

• https://syllabus.pirate.care/topic/coronanotes/ – Pirate Care: Flatten the curve, grow the care: What are we learning from Covid-19  

• https://detroitcommunitytech.org/  /  https://detroitcommunitytech.org/?q=teachcommtech – Detroit Community Technology Project

• https://alliedmedia.org/consentful-tech-project – Consentful Tech Project

• https://ps.zoethical.org/c/engagement/prendre-soin/137 – prendre soin

• https://pad.xpub.nl/p/MEDIA-onlineArt_and_resources – HKU Image and Media Technology; recently opened online cultural resources: museums, libraries, streaming of operas, etc.

• https://www.systemli.org/en/2020/03/15/solidarity-as-infrastructure.html – “As a left-wing tech collective, we want to support you in using the right tools while still maintaining a minimum of privacy and security standards. Below are some specific recommendations for tools that we find useful for digital collaborative work processes.”

Sharing is CaringDas COVID19 – Infowiki von mur.athttps://wiki.mur.at/SharingIsCaring

Document Sharing

• NextCloud – https://nextcloud.com/: open source document sharing, alternative for Dropbox, Google Docs, etc. Needs to be hosted on a server. There are some providers, you can sign up for free here: https://nextcloud.com/signup/ (there are quite a few options, but you will need to check each company individually to know how good they might be) or check with your webhost, e.g. Mur.at provides NextCloud for its members.

• https://thegood.cloud/ – uses NextCloud, for individuals it’s free for 2GB

Digital Solidarity Networkshttps://pad.vvvvvvaria.org/digital-solidarity-networks

ARTICLESPURISM Our Essential List of Free Software for Remote Work March 25, 2020  Software  FLOSS applications / Software freedom / Tips and trickshttps://puri.sm/posts/our-essential-list-of-free-software-for-remote-work/
What do feminists have to say on #COVID19. A thread on Resources from (mostly) Global South thinkers. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1244225040507379712.html
The Politics of COVID-19, Readings #14The most important contributions on the political, economic, and social effects of the unfolding crisis.https://covid19syllabus.substack.com/p/the-politics-of-covid-19-readings-471

This week at the Helsinki airport two coronavirus sniffer dogs started to work. More dogs are trained to detect Covid. The dogs are trained to detect the virus by sniffing samples taken by swiping skin with a wipe. The test wipe is then dropped into a cup, a dog will sniff the sample and signal if there is a virus. Fast and simple.

The research and training of the dogs is done by researchers from the University of Helsinki’s veterinary faculty and dog enthusiast. The preliminary research results show that trained dogs might “even perform better than the current Covid-19 tests that are based on molecular techniques”. There are some more studies with similar results.

Training the dogs is not a simple task. The people who have trained the dogs for the Helsinki airport have worked for years to develop the method and conduct research on the topic. A real challenge is how to scale the training program? How to make it possible for more people around the world to train dogs for this purpose?

Good news! It is already happening. In 2019 researchers of the veterinary faculty joined forces with the people of the Aalto Design factory, including Shreyasi Kar, our awesome MA student from the Aalto Media Lab to tackle the challenge. Shereyasi also made her MA thesis on the topic.

A real challenge is how to scale the training program? How to make it possible for more people around the world to train dogs for this purpose?

What the team developed is a functional prototype called Scen Bot, a device to train dogs for smell related tasks such as drug detection, scent tracking, and medical detection. Scent Bot consists of three parts: a device called scentBot; the treatDispenser and a mobile app for remote control and tracking the training.

Dogs can use the Scen Bot independently. The Scen Bot device is left for a dog to play with, to learn and to get automatically treat when being successful with the game. For the human trainer the mobile app will tell about the progress of the training and to modify the program.

I am not sure how far they are today with product development but this e-learning solution for dogs could make a huge difference.

PS. No animals were harmed during the research.

I wrote some weeks ago a Twitter Thread related to the story by the University of Helsinki, telling that university stu­dents’ well­be­ing con­tin­ues to de­cline. To keep this in my own files I copied the tweets to this blog. I made some minor edits, too.

In the fully remote mode we are not able to meet some of the very basic human needs.

In the news article Professor Katariina Salmela-Aro points out that “the basic psychological needs of competence, autonomy, belongingness and meaningfulness have not been met in remote learning”. 

Maybe we could take a closer look of the basic human needs.

When thinking needs you can’t really overpass the Maslow’s theory of hierarchy of needs. If we think about universities we should aim to meet the need for self-actualization and transcendence (meta-motivation). 3/13

You remember that according to Maslow’s theory the most basic needs must be met before people get motivated to achieve higher level needs. There are good reasons to challenge this, but if you are hungry, cold and scared you do not have time to look for self-fulfilment.

You might be now asking what really are these self-fulfilment and self-actualisation? 

I define them as development as a human being or growth leading to more full potential as a human — a conscious creature in the universe. Often this is also called simply learning.

And this leads me back to the question of the university community. We — like all good communities — should be designed for learning. You may call it a learning environment, if you wish.

So what makes a learning environment great? Right. You got it. It should meet all the needs of the people. Then we may think how these are met? This leads us to another theory.

Steven Reiss (2000) has presented a theory of 16 basic desires that motivates human action. There isn’t a lot of empirical research evidence, but I see it as an interesting design framework when thinking about learning environments and universities.

Reiss sees that there are individual differences in these 16 desires. We prioritize different things. As a community, however, we should consider all these individual needs are served. Some people desire one more than another.

This leads us back to the question of wellbeing of a university community and its members. We should think about the human basic needs and desires. We must ask, how well do we meet these needs and desires in the university community? I’ll pick some desires as examples.

In the context of a university the desires like power, independence and curiosity are easy. 

How about acceptance, idealism and family? 

Do we appreciate everyone as they are? 

Do offer possibilities to advance social justice? 

Do we make it possible to have a family life? 

Most of these desires are difficult to meet in remote working. Online courses are a lousy learning environment.

University is so much more than degrees, courses, credits and research outputs. The quality of these depends on the quality of other things.

Finally. What learning, research and creative work needs the most is psychological safety. 

Poor working conditions, bad workspaces, continuous organisational reforms and redundancies do not increase this.

Disclaimer: These are just some bases used in learning environment design research.

I admit, I like the famous Wayne Gretzky cliché quote “Skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been”. 

I, however, just noticed that I have always phrased it a bit differently — and never have used it seriously. My version is: 

“Don’t skate where the puck is, skate where the puck is going to be.”

The difference is not huge but there is a different flavour. If you know where the puck has been but is not anymore in there, skating there is really stupid. When you observe where the puck is, see the situation and learn to read the game — the other players movements — so that you are good at predicting where the puck will be, you are smart. We may conclude that Gretzky’s wisdom is about ability (1) to estimate probabilities, (2) to do predictions and (3) to act accordingly.

To be really good at all these three you must use both decisions making processes; (1) the automatic, intuitive and often unconscious thinking and (2) the slower, analytical reasoning (Daniel Kahneman: Thinking Fast and Slow). In the case of hockey, you can’t really do the second. The game is fast. Therefore, the great players have internalized the second thinking so well that it has become part of the first.

In slower processes, such as life, we are not in a great hurry to do decisions. Still, we make decisions relying on intuitive fast thinking that is often strongly affected by emotions. In life the ability to vary and combine fast and slow thinking is important. In this your ability to recognize your emotions helps a lot.

Emotional, something one could say non-rational, decisions are not bad as a such. The key is that you are aware of it being an emotional decision. For me so called emotional decisions have been my best decisions. In these situations, I can be aware that the probability of things going well are not great, the prediction is unclear. Still, I want to act. I take a conscious risk. The puck may come where I am skating to. Often it does.

I recently read my grandfather’s (born 1909) memoirs. He was not a hockey player. He was primary an officer in three wars, and secondary a businessman. I think he was relatively good at estimating probabilities, but terrible with predictions and actions. He was definitely bad at recognising his emotions.

He quit the school and joined the army in 1926 as a voluntary. He was 17. His father asked him to finish the school before going to the army. He didn’t follow his father’s advise. They didn’t talk much after this.

Although, for him the decision to join the army was strongly emotional, it was not a bad move. Europe was fragile and Finland was a young nation in a need of an army. The puck was going there. In the army he joined the cavalry, because he was good at riding and loved horses. Bad move. He went where the puck was, not where it was going to. When he was serving in the army, came a new law that for the Cadet School you need the upper secondary diploma. The puck was moving again.

After the unsuccessful carrier in the army, he was . . . today you could say . . .  a serial entrepreneur with different kind of businesses. In 1930’s he travelled several times in Europe and looked for business opportunities. In summer 1939 he made his last trip to Baltics, Poland, Germany and Hungary. Hitler attacked Poland on September 1^st. He made it back to Finland on September 7^th 1939.

Soon after the trip he joined the army again. On 30 November 1939 Soviet Union (USSR) attacked Finland. The Winter War began. In the following seven year in three wars, he served as a captain and a major. In his memoirs, the parts where he writes about the war times are full of stories of good luck. There are also good examples of his rational decision making.

Still, very often he claims that in the war he was lucky. He survived from terrible situation and saved others, because he was lucky. I think he was not lucky. I think in the war he was in his best. His ability to put his emotions to background and to do rational decisions, and most likely also fast but good decisions paid off. He was where the puck moved.

When the wars were over, however, the army didn’t have anything to offer him. New situation. Back to business. Back to different kind of decisions making environment.

His later life story is full of examples of bad luck, or bad decisions, as I would call them. Not because he wasn’t able to do rational decision but because he was not good at reading the situation and to predict. Between the lines you can read his inability to recognising his emotions and their affects to his decision. All the obstacles in his life were seen by him as bad luck. He missed the puck.

I don’t even know why I wrote this. It is not really related to anything. Should I press “publish”? OK. Intuitive decision.

“- – if we put before the mind’s eye the ordinary schoolroom, with its rows of ugly desks placed in geometrical order, crowded together so that there shall be as little moving room as possible, desks almost all of the same size, with just space enough to hold books, pencils and paper, and add a table, some chairs, the bare walls and possibly a few pictures, we can reconstruct the only educational activity that can possibly go on in such a place. It is all made “for listening” – – for simply studying lessons out of a book is only another kind of listening; it marks the dependency of one mind upon another.” (John Dewey, 1907)

Who chooses the tools for teaching and learning? The topic comes and goes. Today, in your teaching you may want to use a tool you found online. It can be a cloud service provided by some company or institution that operates in the World Wide Web. You try it out and find it useful.

Then your IT department hears about it and don’t like it, because you are using something the university is not supporting. These days they may even waves the GDPR flag for you.

In my case this was the situation with Zoom (pronunciation). I started to use Zoom in teaching and research six years ago, in 2015. Already at that time it was the most accessible, fast to use and reliable video conferencing platform in the market. Luckily, at that point, I could buy a license to the service for my research group. I also talked about this cool new service for some people in my university’s IT department and asked if we could have a university wide license. They were not so exacted, but still tolerated that I used it. All good.

At some point, I heard that our university got a license to Zoom. Actually, it happened because the CSC – IT Center for Science, a company partly own by our university got it up and running in their own servers. For some reason, however, our university’s IT department didn’t tell anyone in the teaching faculty about it. So, when I accidentally heard about it, I naturally stopped paying my license and moved to our institution’s server. All good.

When moving to the remote teaching mode last spring, I helped tens of my colleagues to get their teaching going on with Zoom. I think that without Zoom our teaching would have practically collapsed. It really saved the last spring. As well, last autumn and this spring the most important tools for teaching are still Zoom and our own course management system called MyCourses.

Another very useful tool for teaching, especially in art and design, is Miro, an online collaborative whiteboard platform. During the pandemic, in many art and design schools, but also in design consultancy, Miro platform have really been a life saver. We may assume that its role in both will stay strong also when we return to campuses.

In the last couple of years Microsoft has strongly invested in developing their Teams product. It is obvious that this is done because of the success of Zoom. In our university we have a license for Teams, too. Somehow it is funny that now all administrational video conferences are on Teams when for teaching everyone uses Zoom. Teams works somehow, when Zoom is robust like the famous toilets of old trains. it is simple to use and provides the most essential video tools for teaching and group work. No doubt, that with students I prefer to use Zoom.

In our university we also have license to Google Drive, that provides the tools that are most commonly used for co-authoring research publications, often across institutional and international borders. In our university administration de facto tool is Microsoft OneDrive. Now the university is also taking in use SAP, to manage business operations and customer relations. I have a very weak idea for what the SAP will be used for. Let’s see.

I am fine to use different tools for different purposes. For me, and I assume for all teachers and researchers, the key reason to choose a tool is that it works for the purpose. The teaching situation is quite unique “business operation”.

The tools used are not only tools to deliver something for a customer, like teaching a student, but they also may promote and simulate or hider and inhibit students’ activities. What is crucial in learning is anyhow what the students do.

In a good learning environment, with meaningful set of tools students have a dynamic interaction with the tools and the environment. You can’t really educate anyone directly — from one mind to another. Education takes place only by the means of the environment and the tools provided. It is a tricky business operation.

In her dissertation, A Design Framework and Principles for Co-designing Learning Environments Fostering Learning and Wellbeing, Tiina Mäkelä (2018), demonstrates how some learning environments are able to support learning and wellbeing, when some are not. Although, Mäkelä writes mainly about physical learning environment many finding in her study can be applied to digital domain, too.

Now when more and more digital tools are taken in use in teaching and learning we should ask who chooses the tools?

You or your IT department?

It’s been now a year and a half of online conferences. In the beginning they were exciting. Great — less traveling!

I have participated several that have bee very well organised. For instance, I was closely following how the Participatory Design conference (PDC 2010) was organised. The PDC’s Handbook for Meaningful and Engaged Conversations is good reading for anyone interested in to organise an online conference.

Usually online conferences sucks. I am going to attend one more, the World Conference on Mobile, Blended and Seamless Learning (mLearn 2021). I am excited to give a talk in there, but same time sad that the conference was not arranged face to face. This will be my last online conference. I am done.

So, what is wrong with online conferences?

The reasons are the same, why some 15 years ago there was a lot of interest to organise unconferences, with less formal talks and more discussions. People felt that in a conference we should focus on the things that are most valuable: the discussions on the topics of the conference, things happening outside the formal presentations. The hackathons, design sprints and game jams are another forms of knowledge sharing and learning that are often better than a traditional conference.

In academic research, having face to face conferences, however, still makes sense. In a face to face conference there is always naturally a lot of other things happening than formal talks: you meet a colleague in the corridor whose research you recently read and have a chat, you have a breakfast with a potential collaborator and build trust, you listen to a great talk and ask some additional questions about it during the coffee break. In online conferences these others things are close to zero — not because many organisers do not see the value of them, but because it is just impossible to organise them. Virtual get-togethers? Thanks, but no-thanks.

So, why these things works in face to face, but not online?

This is simply a question of human nature and human psychology. When we are traveling to a conference, we are out of our daily routines and responsibilities. We are in a mode of meeting other people, to learn from them, to take most out of the time with other people, our colleagues. We are fully immersed to the conference, physically and mentally. In three words: we are present.

In May 2020, two Finnish teachers started to taught 23 Finnish children living in the Al-Hawl refugee camp.

From their homes in Finland, every schooldays at 9 AM teachers sent text, image and audio messages to their students’ mobile phones — school assignments of the day. In the camp children were having a daily schedule to study Finnish, maths, environmental studies, history and later English as it was requested by the students themselves.

Students were different ages and divided into four groups; (1) three to five year old, (2) six to eight, (3) nine to 12 and (3) secondary and upper secondary age. For each group the assignments were based on the Finnish national core curricula for early childhood education and basic education.

During the day children completed the assignments and sent them back to their teachers who then provided feedback in new messages. In a typical day teachers sent hundreds of messages: images, short texts with emojis and voice messages with Finnish children’s poems and stories, such as the Eduard Uspenski’s book Uncle Fedya, His Dog, and His Cat, chapter by chapter — read by the teachers in Finnish.

With private messages teachers were able to tailor their assignments based on each student’s interests. If someone was interested in big animals or maps they got assignments related to them. With private messages teachers got to know the children, listen to them, to understand their needs. This way they were also showing for the children that they really care about them.

Originally the project was supposed to last only couple of months, but as there are still some Finnish children in the refugee camp the distance teaching this way has continued now over a year and half. Those children who already made it to Finland are now attending local schools. It is obvious that, the distance school prepared these children for the new experience, new language and culture. They hopefully understood that they are welcome and there are people who care.

In this beautiful story there is only one major problem.

The messaging app used in the project was WhatsApp. The choice of using the app was understandable, as it was already used by the parents of the children to stay in touch with their friends, family and Finnish authorities. It was right there. Ready to taken in use.

To put forward this kind of distance school, to make it global initiative with WhatsApp, however, would be deeply unethical. Why?

The app is own by Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook) with a long history of collecting data for commercial purposes and political manipulation, selling private data, literally supporting distribution of fake news and ignoring human right violations caused by their platform. WhatsApp does all this, too.

I assume you all agree that all this is exactly what school should not be. Actually, education and schools should fight against all these matters.

What could be done then?

How could we enable this type of distance school, taking advantage of so called smart phones that are already in the hands of billions?

We need a Signal School. In practice, we should organise distance school the way the Finnish teachers organised they school of 23 children in a refugee camp. Except that this time using Signal and having thousands of schools, teachers and children — when ever needed.

If you do not know Signal, let me summarise the main points why it should be the platform for the global mobile distance schools.

Firstly, Signal is free and open source software. This is important. I will come back to this later.

Secondly, in Signal there is privacy by design. The software developer is not collecting any private data from its users. For the messages there is end-to-end encryption and the servers are collecting only data that is necessary for the service to run. No private data. If you do not believe, you can always check the source code — it is widely peer-reviewed.

Thirdly, there are apps for Android and iPhone and desktop programs for Windows, macOS and Linux. All these are open source, too. This means that they are also open for building extensions, such as curricula and assignment banks to help the teachers work.

Fourthly, Signal is owned by the nonprofit Signal Foundation, run by donations and grants. This means that we all may donate to Signal, to fund its future development. And if you are a software developer you may donate your code.

Schools are primary infrastructure for and of a common good, not a business as a such. This is the case with Signal, too.

So, how does Signal compare to WhatsApp when it comes to features?

All the features used in the Finnish distance school are available in the Signal. The only difference is the lack of status (also called stories).

Who should take an action? I really don’t know but I can wish.

World Bank / UN / UNESCO / UNICEF. Obviously. They all have raised the issue of learning losses from COVID-19. With the climate crises we may assume that in a near future we will see more and more school closures here and there. This means that we should be prepared for future crises and not only think “a path to recovery“.

World Economic Forum. WEF have long promoted to connect every school to the internet. Fair enough, children with a mobile phone, Wi-Fi and Signal may then use the schools’ internet connections to join the Signal School. The connectivity is necessary an issue. Therefore the operators should also provide no cost data for children to access the Signal School. The net neutrality, 5G mobile networks and fair and competitive market are also important. I assume WEF promotes all these.

Wikimedia Foundation and Signal Foundation. Compared to the earlier, they are really small players. They, however, have at least two advantages: technological knowhow and mission to make the world a bit better place. The curricula and assignment bank could be build on Wikiversity. To the Signal desktop, primary used by the teachers, there could be an extension using the resources found from the Wikiversity.

Epilogue

After sleeping over this, I felt this blog post needs a list of action points. Some concrete steps that could make us better prepared for the next crises that will close schools again and force us to rely on distance teaching.

1. Educational crises fund. A global fund that is reserved to respond to the future educational crises when schools are closed.
2. Signal School infrastructure. There is a need to build some basic infrastructure to make the Signal work globally and precisely for this purpose. The mobile and Internet operators should make their network open for no cost for all Signal School data traffic. The most responsible operators would naturally keep it this way also outside the time of crises, as the Signal School could be used also to provide basic education for children who are not in school for whatever reason, living in a refugee camps etc.
3. Signal School version. We should develop some software extensions making the use of Signal software easy for teachers and children in the situation of crises and school closures. There could be some ready made educational assignments and pedagogical hints for teachers — simple things like if you haven’t heard from your student in three days give them an audio call and ask how are they doing.
4. Signal School brand. People working in the educational sector should be aware of this. There should be a global marketing and communication campaign.
5. Teacher training. Although the basic features and basic use of Signal is more or less familiar for more or less everyone on this planet, there is a need for teacher training. Teachers are trained to teach in a classroom, not with messages. There are many pedagogical and didactics matters that knowing them their work will be easier and gain better learning results.

I leave it now here. There are better experts and people with more power than me, who could can make this real. “The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.”

Metaverse is a concept primary used in tech and media industries but also by journalists. It is fair to say that nobody really knows what it is or how it will be.

For many, metaverse is the second coming of the Second Life (2003), a 3D virtual world with avatars to hangout and talk with others and to build the world, when some refers to the next generation multi-user online games, such as Roblox (2006), Minecraft (2011) and Fortnite (2017). Common for all these are, that as they are platforms for playing game(s), they are same time places to hangout and talk with others. This way we may call them 3D social media with avatars. Metaverses like these already have a relatively long history.

In addition to the 3D virtual worlds, metaverse is often considered to be a service where the real and the virtual worlds are merged — like in Pokémon Go (2016), the world first commercially successful augmented reality (AR) game. When the developer of the Pokémon Go is currently building a platform for AR developers, it is fair to say that also this kind of metaverse is already here, just full of pokémon.

If we look at the research literacy, we may claim that metaverse is today everything that belongs to the area of mixed-reality, as defined by Milgram and Kishino in 1994.

The article What is mixed reality? by Speicher, Hall and Nebeling (2019) gives a good overview of the more recent research and discussion on the topic.

It could be sensible not to use the metaverse concept at all, but as it is discussed as the future of the Internet, I felt that I want to write something about it, too.

I also have published a research article where we were experimenting learning with mixed reality in mirror worlds. The mixed reality and mirror world are often considered to be a key part of metaverse and, not surprisingly, education — such as corporate onboarding and creative teamwork — has been presented as one area of applications. Therefore, I see that I may have something to say. At lease, I want to say something about the future of the Internet.

Firstly, when it comes to 3D virtual reality, there is very little discussion about the possibilities of using photogrammetry to create multiuser 3D virtual worlds. We humans leave in a rich audio-visual real world. For over two million years we have been learning to leave and act in our environment. We are hardwired by evolution to navigate in a real world, with real people, with real objects. Still, the current 3D virtual worlds are rather cartons that photorealistic replications of the real world.

I believe, that the future of the Internet is not in cartoon-like 3D virtual worlds, but in the replications of real world environments that are photorealistic.

This means that also the avatars in these worlds should be photorealistic. By being computer generated they naturally will still be editable with filters and other forms of image manipulation. This means that the starting point of creating an avatar will be a photorealistic 3D model of the user. The model will be made with photogrammetry that is then edited to be how the user likes it to be. The most important is to have a face that is recognisable by others, similar way as we recognise people from photos. I am convinced that even a rounded paper doll avatar with a face photo is better for social interaction than a cartoon-like avatar.

The first step, however, is to great the photorealistic 3D worlds — replicas of the real environments.

We are getting there. There are some interesting recent research on using photogrammetry to create 3D models of the real world to the Web. It is also interesting that this is not done in the tech companies of the Silicon Value but by the New York Times. Recently their R&D Lab published An End-to-End Guide to Photogrammetry with Mobile Devices and instructions on how to Delivering 3D Scenes to the Web. Furthermore they have released open-source code for people interested in to experiment with it.

As mentioned earlier, the AR is also considered to be an important part of metaverse. Although, it may at first look like totally different than the 3D metaverse, I think these could be integrated. If you think that the core of metaverse will be photorealistic replicas of the real world environments, it means that the data collected about these spaces can be easily brought also to the AR that is experiences in the actual location.

If you now take a look of the first image in this blog post you may imaging a use case where you are standing in the restaurant and looking for a way to find my research group‘s space in the same building. Because the whole building is modelled for the purpose of creating the photorealistic 3D world, also the information about our space is saved to the system. In the situation you could ask your phone “where is Teemu” and get audio instructions to find me, or you could use your phone to project little arrows to the floor guiding you to our office.

With this kind of integration, the Metaverse could be a space for user innovation just like the Web. People could develop such services as adding notes, audio and video clips or AI bots to the spaces, in the real world and in the replica of the space in the virtual world. This information would then be accessible and editable both in the real world and in the virtual replica of the same space. I am sure with this kind of open Metaverse platform you are able to imaging thousands of use cases and applications.

I know that there are challenging if the Metaverse is strongly linked to real spaces and environments. Therefore the 3D virtual world part of the Metaverse, should be open also to develop totally imaginary spaces and environments. The point is that the photorealistic part would be the main entry point for the people and then from it you could find ways to the imaginary 3D worlds.

When reading this you may have wondering who could build this kind of platform that is merging the open photorealistic 3D virtual world and the AR?

The answer is obvious. It must be build by us, just like the Web was and still is build by us. From large part the software pieces to build this kind of Metaverse are already open source. So we could start working on this direction already with our mobile phones with cameras, free software, open standards and the Web.

Mozilla Foundation and other non commercial web-players are really important in the development of the open Metaverse. The Mozilla is already developing the hubs, a multi-user virtual space in WebVR, and probably should be the universal Metaverse platform.

I assume that soon, in a less than 2 years, you can visit me in our photorealistic 3D office in our campus from your laptop. From there you will find me and my colleagues working as photorealistic avatars, good enough for you to recognise us. You will also enter the room as an avatar. If your avatar is a photorealistic replica of yourself, the door is open and we can discuss over audio. If your avatar is a dragon (or you do not have legs!) you must convince me a bit more to open the virtual door for you.

I have been serving the last three years in the Executive Board of the Cumulus Association — the leading global association of art and design education and research. We have over 350 Member institutions in 63 countries.

The Executive Board is elected by the Members. When I decided to stand as a candidate in 2019, I made some promises for the voting Members. I will list them in here.

(I) Improve the Governance of the Association

I think any community is only as good as its governance. This is the case with all human systems. The model of governance defines how fair the system is. When a system grows and have more diversity it needs more governance. Still a good governance can be lean, based on trust among people, where we assume good faith from everyone.

I made the promise to improve the governance of the association, because there were rumours of peculiar practises of favouring some Members over others. Not necessary corruptions as a such, but a culture that is not necessary according to all the principles of good governance.

Therefore, one of the first things we did in the Board was an Executive Board Handbook, that defines how do we in the Board, and in the Association in general, practice good governance. When the basic operational principles were defined, the Board ended-up to work very efficiently. Some people, actually told us that we are doing too much.

When serving in the Board, I also realised that our “association” is actually not a legal person — a registered association under any legal system. With a significant annual turnover and reserves, I felt very uneasy.

As a joke I started to call us a motorcycle gang or mafia, especially when there was talk about “Cumulus-family”. From the legal point of view being a motorcycle gang was not exactly true, as our book keeping and general administration was in the hands of my employer, Aalto University. Nothing we did was illegal. So, if we were not a motorcycle gang, we were a friendly mafia operating under the protection of my employer. When this was realised in the Board, we started to work on to register the association. I consider this to be the most important thing to improve the governance of the association.

In the Board, especially thanks to the President Mariana Amatullo‘s leadership, in the beginning of the term, we also released our Strategic Plan 2019–2022.

As a Board member, I was happy to get many of those issues I felt strong about also to the strategic plan, in addition to the aim to improve the governance. I’ll explain in the following the three other promises I made for the Members. I see them all interlinked. They are also present in our strategic plan.

(II) Make Cumulus Less Eurocentric and More Global

When founded in 1990, Cumulus was a network of couple of European art and design universities and colleagues. That time it was a platform to foster student and faculty mobility within the European Union Erasmus programme. As an organisation it served the rectors, deans and officers of international affairs to agree on number of practicalities and to lobby on the importance of art and design education and research in Europe. This was very important for Europe and the European art and design schools.

I got to know Cumulus in late 1990’s as my University was one of the founding Members. For faculty and students Cumulus didn’t offer much. By students and faculty, at least in our University, it was seen as a a club of the leadership and administrators. This was more or less the situation for the first 15 years of the Cumulus. In 2006 Cumulus started to accept Members outside of Europe. It was growing and collecting more membership fees.

Now we are over 350 Member institutions almost all around the world. In the last couple of years, some Members outside of Europe have asked what are the benefits of being a Member? Everyone pays membership fees, but it easily looks that the European Members are those who get the benefits.

Most of the Board members felt that to stay relevant we must serve better all our Member — to find ways that all the Members will benefit from Cumulus a bit more than a logo in their website. All the Members should not pay the bills of the European club.

Therefore, in the Board we started to look for opportunities to offer scholarships for faculty and students coming from Member schools in the Global South. We also started to work on a solidarity model, that could be used to lower the membership fees for those Member institutions who really can’t afford it. These initiatives are not ready yet, but they were started.

(III) Make Cumulus Student and Faculty Centred

I also promised that in the Board I would focus on developing services for students and faculty. I wanted Cumulus to offer our students opportunities to learn from other (art and design) cultures and expand their world views. For faculty in our Member institutions, I wanted to develop forums to discuss about the art and design education, to share the best practice and to learn from each other.

Again, in the Board most of us thought similarly. In the Board we discussed that to stay relevant, we should focus on the students and faculty and less the people in the administration of our Members institutions.

My colleagues in the Board started to renew the Cumulus Working groups. The aim was to offer the working groups an online platform to initiate and have conversations on matters they mostly care. This was piloted and the plan is that in the next stage these tools will be integrated to out website. This related to the last promise I made.

in line with the plan to focus on students and faculty we also launched the Cumulus for Ukraine initiative to support Ukrainian art and design students and faculty displaced by the invasion. We started to collect information of the programs in our Member schools and opened a “helpdesk” for individuals looking for a place to continue their studies or to become a faculty member in one of our Member institutions. I think this is something we should continue doing also in the future, around the world.

(IV) Make Cumulus Digital First

When applying to the Board I felt that this is the area where I can contribute most. The Cumulus website was terrible. We hardly were present in the social media, in addition to emails we didn’t have any collaboration tools for the Members. We didn’t have an entry in the Wikipedia or page in the LinkedIn. Now we do. We still do not have a system for member relationship management.

For many years the main mode of collaboration in Cumulus has been to get together somewhere in the world, twice a year in the Cumulus conference. Conferences are important and we still need them, but is it necessary to meet two times a year. Who really can afford it? I felt that this is terrible waste of resources, both our Members and the nature. With digital tools we should be able to provide more opportunities for our Members to collaborate and also to get together more locally.

My Board colleagues did an excellent job to redesign and renew the website. We also started to develop the tools for online collaboration, to reconsider the Cumulus conferences, to plan online conferences etc. The pandemic naturally was an additional factor in here. Somehow I was so busy with other things that I didn’t contribute much to this. Luckily there were other Board members with vision, wisdom and capacity to do it.

I think in this area, in the last three years, we have made a great progress. Thanks to the commitment by some of the Board members.

Related to the “Digital First”, I also have worked to design a system where the Member institutions could offer online course to each other students. This is a wicked design problem with thousands of factors affecting in it, but I am still convinced that this is precisely what we should and can do in the Cumulus.

Epilogue

The three years Board term is coming to the end. Soon it is a time to have a Board Election.

In the last couple of months, the Board’s proposal to register the association has raised concerns among some European Members and their friends. The Board, elected by all the Members has, however, been 10 favouring the registration and the new Statues with the necessary amendment. One Board member has opposed the renewal. I call this process a transition from being a motorcycle gang to become a global association. “To be, or not to be.”

I should now decide whatever I run for a second term in the Board. Somehow, I would like to run and maybe have a change to complete the good initiatives we have launched in the last three years.

On the other hand, if we do not register Cumulus association before the new Board starts, I must admit that I have failed.

I have not failed only personally, but I have also failed the Members who voted me to the Board. I was not able to Improve the Governance of the Association — the most important promise I made.

Writing all this makes me peaceful. I did my best. I am sorry if it was not enough.

I am still going to work for the last months of the Board’s term to advance the values I believe in.

“Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low.” Sayre’s law

My first book in Finnish was published last week by the PS Publishing House. We have some plans to have translations, at first in Spanish and at some point in English. The English title could be: Learning Society — What is good for children is good for all.

As you know, if you are reading this, I mainly work in the international field of learning environments research and design, but now for the first time I have written about learning in Finnish, with lessons learned from the Finnish society. With my co-author, educational scientist and director of early childhood education, Mikko Mäkelä, we present reflection on what kind of environment — and indeed what kind of society — enhances learning. We explain what we know from research, but in easy-to-approach language, to bridge research and practice. The target group is very broad: from educators to anyone interested in education and its role in human (and planetary) wellbeing.

To translate the title to English is tricky. The direct translation would be The Good Learning States, but it doesn’t open similar way as the Finnish title. In the Finnish the word “state” (tila) is used in a meaning of a “space“, like a “room“, but also carries the meaning of being dynamic and temporary, like the “state” in a “mental state“. Also the “Good Learning” in the beginning leaves it open for an interpretation is the space of learning good or are the people learning “good”. Therefore, I have thought that the title should be boldly and simply Learning Society. There could be also a sub-title: What is good for children is good for all.

There are four parts in the book.

The first part we start by presenting the pedagogical and educational ideas where the current curriculums and practices of running kindergartens, schools and even universities come from. The aim is to open for the reader how different pedagogical practice are always reflections of the zeitgeist, the values of the time. In the history, however, there are individuals, scholars, thinkers and doers who have thought differently, people like Dewey, Freinet, Montessori, Steiner, Malaguzzi, Neill, Freire, Illich and Mitra. Many of these ideas are today visible in many schools, although a lot of things have been lost in translation and some of them are still considered to be “radical”.

In the second part of the book we get somehow practical, however, still aiming to explain that things are as they are because of earlier generations’ and our decisions. The educational landscape always reflects our values in the society, but sometime may have an impact on them. In this part we present several approaches to design good learning, with emphasis on wellbeing in different corners of the learning ecosystem of the society. In practice, we aim to empower educators to take active role in the design of teaching and learning. To make them to be subjects who can change their and their students physical, socio-cultural and psychological environment. We encourage educators and their students to get out from their classroom — to explore forests, cities, galleries, museums and libraries. We explain why it is important to make learning connected to the surrounding world, and brining to surrounding world to the classroom. Related to this we discuss the importance of communities in learning and how learning and civic life are intertwined.

The third part is dedicated to the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in teaching and learning. Because of growing role of computer-mediated communication and increasingly “datafied society” in general, everyone in the field of education should have a basic understanding of the phenomena. Similarly as in the part one, in here, too, we explain where the ideas of using media and technology in education comes from. We discuss the role of latest technological development in education, including social media platforms, VR and AR and possible utopias and dystopias we can foreseen. Same time, we argue that educators in general should have a strong voice when the ICT is designed for and entering to the field of education.

In the part four we aim to get back to the basics — to the question what makes a human life meaningful. What is the role of art, music and spirituality in human life? Unfortunately we are not able to give an ultimate answer to the question what is the meaning of life, but we have some hints. We end the book with an argument that a good learning can be more than the sum of good physical, socio-cultural and psychological environment. It is a dynamic state, that is build every moment, all the time. This means that also the possible shortcomings in one element can be compensated with another. Still, the good learning state is a “Heraclitus rive”: we can not step into the same river twice, because the rive, neither us is the same.