Professor Peter Pirolli
Joint Major: Psychology & Anthropology.
Palo Alto Research Center

Personal Website

Peter Pirolli is a Research Fellow in the Augmented Social Cognition Area at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), where he has been pursuing studies of human information interaction since 1991. Prior to joining PARC, he was an Associate Professor in the School of Education at UC Berkeley. Pirolli received his doctorate in cognitive psychology from Carnegie Mellon University in 1985. He is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association for Psychological Science, the National Academy of Education, and the Association for Computing Machinery Computer-Human Interaction Academy. His recent book is titled “Information Foraging Theory: Adaptive Interaction with Information.” He is Associate Editor of Human Computer Interaction.

Professor Mike Sharples
Director, Learning Sciences Research Institute,
University of Nottingham

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Mike Sharples is Professor of Learning Sciences and Director of the Learning Sciences Research Institute at the University of Nottingham. He has an international reputation for research in mobile learning and the design of learning technologies. He inaugurated the mLearn conference series and is President of the International Association for Mobile Learning. As Deputy Scientific Manager of the Kaleidoscope Network of Excellence in Technology Enhanced Learning he coordinated a network of 1100 researchers across 90 European research centres. His current projects include: PI: Personal Inquiry, a collaboration with the Open University UK to develop 21st century science learning between formal and informal settings; a national Digital Economy Hub on pervasive and contextual technologies; and research into curriculum and pedagogy to inform the UK Government’s Harnessing Technology Strategy. Recent projects include MyArtSpace for mobile learning in museums and the L-Mo project with Sharp Laboratories of Europe to develop handheld technologies for language learning. He is author of 170 publications in the areas of interactive systems design, artificial intelligence and educational technology.

Friedrich W. Hesse
Leibniz Institut fur Wissensmedien
Knowledge Media Research Center
at the University of Tuebingen

Personal Website

The externalized knowledge is beeing more and more a central topic when one talks about development in the Internet. Different areas of teaching and/or learning and also different sources of information had a separate life before (e.g. schools, universities, mass media, museums, work places and leisure times) and are now getting linked by new Internet tools. From this perspective education and training are no longer mainly restricted to classical places and institutions offering formal education and training but also connected to workplace learning and even learning during leisure time. Thus the separation of formal and informal learning is turning into a new combination of both.

The talk will address paradigmatic changes in learning research and highlight in detail the potential of the so-called "Social Networks" and "Social Software Tools". Such new tools can serve as a concrete bridge between formal and informal education. The nature of the new information resources has changed the way we do (peer) teaching and how we learn from each other. Knowledge processes are even partly taken over by these Internet tools. We have to understand their underlying mechanism and ultimately make use of them for educational purposes.

Short CV:

Friedrich W. Hesse is the Executive Director of the Knowledge Media Research Center (KMRC), Tuebingen, Germany and Chair of Department for Applied Cognitive Psychology and Media Psychology at the University of Tuebingen. He received his Ph.D. in 1979 from the University of Aachen and qualified as professor of psychology (1990) at the University of Goettingen. Since 1990 he has been professor of psychology in Tuebingen - from 1993 until 2000 as Head of the Department of Applied Cognitive Science at the German Institute of Research for Distance Education (DIFF) and since 2001 as Executive Director of the KMRC. Since 1999 he has held his current chair at the University of Tuebingen. His main research interests include learning with new media, net-based knowledge communication, Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) and group awareness.