Indigenous knowledge management event

"I'll be courting some disasterWith the Melbourne wrecking crew" - The Indigo Girls (God bless them)

I have just returned from a master class in indigenous knowledge management held in Melbourne.

This is an area I am really interested in partly because I want to learn more about the history of my new home and partly because I think that the desert knowledge, in particular, is going to become really useful as things heat up here and elsewhere. (You can learn more about desert knowledge from the program of the 2008 DESERT INNOVATION FESTIVAL.)

There are many other issues involved in the area of indigenous knowledge management. For example

• how western corporations can learn from owners of indigenous knowledge without exploiting them
• how IT professionals can interact ethically and professionally with owners of indigenous knowledge.

Our track record in both cases is not good. Looking to the future, I hope to integrate indigenous knowledge management into the BIM and L&IM programs I direct at the University of South Australia.

In terms of e-learning, indigenous knowledge is hard to represent for a good many cultural reasons, not least of which is the permission to use knowledge that developers do not own. Also, within some cultures, representing people with multimedia can mean that the material cannot be used when these people die. I think that all of us will come to rely on a good deal of indigenous knowledge for our future survival. There are many challenges ahead. We need to start thinking about the ethical and educational issues before the sun sets.

Interactive Technology and Smart Education - Call for Papers

"Baby this a new age ... maybe we can start a new phase" - Ayo Technology, 50 Cent

As an Emerald assistant editor, I am always interested when Emerald picks up a new educational technology journal and they have just made the following announcment.

Interactive Technology and Smart Education - Call for Papers

Emerald Group Publishing Limited is pleased to announce the acquisition of Interactive Technology and Smart Education (ITSE) and invites authors to submit a paper to the journal.

Interactive Technology and Smart Education (ITSE) is a multi-disciplinary, peer-reviewed journal, which provides a distinct forum to specially promote innovation and human-/user-centred approaches. This is through a passionate emphasis on the need to seriously employ solutions from Human Computer Interaction (HCI) to technology and education. It also encourages combining solutions from HCI with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and/or multimedia and the Web technology to advance innovation in interactive technology generally and its applications in education. The journal also promotes evaluation as a continuous and an integral part of the development cycle of usable solutions/systems (rather than a final stage in the development cycle). By bringing together these specialist fields, the journal aims to bridge an existing gap in interactive technology and educational technology research, which would help advance innovation in these areas.

CoverageContributions are solicited in any of the two main broad themes - interactive technology and SMART education - covered individually or combined. Possible topics include, but are not limited to the following:

• Novel approaches
• Participatory approaches for design and development
• Ergonomics and Human factors
• Interaction, usability and accessibility issues
• Approaches providing solutions for users with various special needs
  Related social and psychological issues
• Other cultural issues (e.g. multilingual and multicultural issues)
• Pedagogical methods and quality assurance
• New emerging technologies (e.g. Multimedia and the Web)
• Computer-supported co-operative approaches and Mediated communication
• Assessment and evaluation techniques and methodologies
  Design (e.g. user interface design, types of interfaces, principles of good design practice)
• Interaction and Interaction Styles
• Usability engineering methods and concepts
• Usability evaluation

Submissions should be emailed to the Editor itse@emeraldinsight.com.