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Old Home page of Daniel K. Schneider @ TECFA

The new one is at http://tecfa.unige.ch/perso/schneider/

* I am an associate professor at TECFA (educational technology unit) in the School of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Geneva. Areas of interest: Communication and information systems, educational technology, social science methodology, and teaching. My work is devoted about 2/5 to technology and ideas prospection (currently Foundations of Educational Technology and Information & Communication Systems), 1/5 to development, 1/5 to real research, 1/5 to administration (software installation and adaptation helping to maintain our various Internet servers,...), 2/5 to teaching. I have a Ph.D. in political science, but you may see me as a technical research associate and educator familiar with a wide range of methodologies and techniques.

En français: Professeur associé et responsable informatique de TECFA, Dr. en sciences économiques et sciences sociales (mention science politique). Domaines de spécialisation: technologies de l'éducation, systèmes d'information et de communication (Internet) , intelligence artificielle et sciences sociales, méthodologie des sciences sociales.

I have a more or less up-to-date CV in french (PDF). This URL has been around for the last 19 years, because cool ones don't change, only contents do ! On April 15 2003 I exchanged my 12-year old portrait and in 2015 you may get an update :)

Getting in touch

Try email. If I don't answer, try again or call. Don't post messages on FaceBook, LinkedIn, Learning management systems or other online services. Chances are low that I will see these.

Dynamic home pages

This page is very rarely updated (maybe once per year), therefore see the next two items:

1. R&D Interests

Current:
Creative commons
Past or not very active right now: I am a member of AECT, AACE, ISLS and IEEE.

2. Some Writings and Publications up

Working papers and other informal publications Book Chapters (Some) Reviewed Conference Papers Ph.D. dissertation:

3. Talks & workshops up

(Some) Talks: (Some) Workshops and conference sessions I helped organizing:

4. Teaching (and Materials) up

A. MALTT Master's Diploma in Educational Technology and guest lectures

(Join us, It is unique in Switzerland. Tuition is Sfr 1000/year) Old courses:

Master and PhD theses

PHD thesis direction (some in co-direction) Master thesis direction (needs updating):
  1. Nathalie Pilard (1999). Etude de 3 modes de déplacements dans un environnement virtuel 3D.
  2. Vanessa Scribante (2000). Impact de deux facteurs d'influence sur l'acquisition des connaissances spatiales dans un monde 3D.
  3. Karima Bouzidi (2001), L'intégration des technologies de l'information et de la communication au sein des écoles: le réseau des écoles de Haute Savoie.
  4. Karine Delhom (2001). La Bibliothèque Virtuelle 3D, Développement d'une interface d'échange de ressources pédagogiques dédié à des enfants d'écoles primaires européennes
  5. Hans-Peter Heeb (2001). RoboWorld, Overcoming the Problem of Cognitive Load in Object-Oriented Programming by Microworlds.
  6. Paraskevi Synteta (2001). EVA_pm: Design and Development of a Scaffolding Environment for Student Projects (co-direction)
  7. Bertrand Resin (2001). Comment améliorer la navigabilité des mondes VRML.
  8. Olivier Clavel (2002) Un environnement de développement pour TECFA, Réflexions et propositions pour la mise en place d'un environnement commun de développement d'application pédagogique au sein de l'unité TECFA.
  9. Fred Radeff (2002). Le portail personnalisable comme interface d'optimisation de ressources académiques.
  10. Catherine Frété (2002), Le potentiel du jeu vidéo pour l'éducation.
  11. Michele Notari (2003) Scripting strategies in computer supported collaborative learning environments
  12. Romain Voisard (2003) Développement d'un système expert d'aide à l'enseignement de l'indice matériel
  13. Elodie Sierra (2003) Scénarios socio-constructivistes pour la classe de mathématiques
  14. Dirk Wagener (2003) Five working hypotheses to examine the feasibility of e-learning institutionalisation in tertiary education
  15. Luis Gonzalez (2004) Quelle place pour les TIC en classe.
  16. Stéphane Lattion (2004) Développement et intégration d'un module d'apprentissage par investigation (inquiry-based learning) au sein d'un portail PostNuke.
  17. Jean-Jacques Duclaux: Développement d'une application permettant d'utiliser les fonctionnalités textuelles du réseau GSM dans le cadre du cours de Recherche Juridique Informatisée. (Juillet 2005).
  18. Mélie Genet: Favoriser la perception des communautés en ligne et la diffusion des connaissances en résumant les informations publiées sur des pages personnelles. (Juillet 2005).
  19. Dorel Gorga: WINE (Web INtelligent Emotion): Développement d'un agent émotionnel au sein d'une plateforme de type PostNuke. (Juillet 2005).
  20. Kalli Benetos: Computer-Supported Argumentative Writer: An authoring tool with built-in scaffolding and self-regulation for novice writers of argumentative texts (2006)
  21. Dajana Kapusova: Développement d'un logiciel de réseau social comme soutien à une communauté de pratiques (2008)
  22. Christophe Vuilleumier: Préparation à la lecture dans un environnement 3D.
  23. Christian Gognat: (2009)
  24. David Coll: Thème: Communautés de pratiques dans Facebook (2009)
University of applied science internships:
  1. Urs Richle: WikiViz - a MediaWiki-extension to visualize semantic MediaWiki-content
  2. Eric Inderbitzin: SimProject(2006)

B. Political Science and Public Policy/Administration Methodology:

I stopped teaching this topic a few years ago.

D. Training courses and course taught elsewhere

I have enough material, experience and good teaching assistants to organize up to three weeks of intensive training in various subject areas, e.g.

E. Training texts (manuals and tutorials), a few examples:

Older stuff:

E. Slides used in my classes (all in FRENCH), a few examples:

I am moving most teaching materials to EduTech Wiki (en) or EduTech Wiki (fr) and avoid using slides in classes.

6. Coordinates up

Postal adress:
Daniel K.Schneider,
TECFA
Faculte de Psychologie et des Sciences de l'Education
University of Geneva
40, boulevard du Pont d'Arve
CH-1211 Geneva 4
(Switzerland)
   
Physical address (for visits and deliveries):
Uni Pignon
42 boulevard du Pont d'Arve
CH-1205 Genève
   
Phone: (..41) 22 379 9377
Fax:   (..41) 22 379 9379
Email: Daniel.Schneider AT unige.ch
   

7. A few thoughts about Web Pages up

About Text:
For many reasons I keep our server as simple as possible. Layout only gets updated every 10 years of so. Simple HTML pages will last and load fast! Most Internet databases I have seen go out of production after 3-5 years.
About Frames:
I hate frames! I hate WebSites with (simple) Frames, because you can't link to these pages. Frames are ok for selfcontained manuals (having an instant TOC balances off the bookmarking problem).
About Web-site reorganizers:
I hate some of these a lot! I really do have trouble with some people who think it's kewl to move around files in their server. Please consider that most academic indexes only get updated once every 1-3 years or never at all. If you feel that your page gets better vibes in some other directory or on some other machine, learn how to do redirections !
Under construction and updating:
MOST of my pages, I finally decided to almost exclusively use a wiki instead of HTML. Mediawiki seems to be stable enough for long term projects. This was and is not the case for CMS. Most of our PostNuke portals, for example, are dead now...
About long pages:
They are easier to maintain, easier to print and harder to get lost in. They are harder to use for quick navigation. That's 3:1 in favor, generally speaking :)
About Flash:
Avoid if you can. I am not against proprietary multimedia for specific tasks and I even teach it, but most Flash sites just slow down the information exchange process. Flash is nice if you plan to write interactive applications, like educational games. If you use vector graphics for information display, rather use SVG. It's a standard and it will interact very nicely with (X)HTML and XML. Also, it (for now) is part of HTML 5.
KISS:
Keep It Simple Stupid ... and rather put contents on the Web (including interactive applications of course). I know how to create fancy webpages but why bother ? Nice designs always run out of fashion anyhow...

8. Search my stuff up

  1. Again: Most of my online writiting is in EduTechWiki
  2. Search our server for my contributions (ADD your KEYWORDS !!)
  3. Search my publications in my on-line bibliography not updated since 1997, but I keep this link as a reminder ...)

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