Modis Europe, Eindhoven
July 2007 -
Technical Communications Consultant

Allen Systems Group, Belfast
April 2004- June 2007
Technical Author, Online Help Developer

docuware GmbH, Darmstadt
February 1992 - April 1995
Technical Author/Translator, Technical Editor, Online Help Developer

Daveg GmbH, Darmstadt
September 1991 - January 1992
Technical Author/Translator, GUI localizer

Honeywell Bull SA, Paris
October 1990 - March 1991
Technical Author

Hewlett Packard,Grenoble
May 1990 - September 1990
Technical Author

Stock Exchange, London
February 1986 - May 1986
Technical Author

ICI Ltd., Billingham
July 1985 - February 1986
Technical Author, Technical Editor

Digital Equipment Corp., Basingstoke
July 1988 - December 1988/
June 1984 - October 1984
Technical Author

Olivetti SpA, Ivrea
May 1981 - May 1984
Technical Author, Technical Editor

Philips, Eindhoven
February 1979 - March 1981
Technical Author, Trainer

Ferranti Computer Systems Ltd., Manchester
January 1978 - January 1979
Technical Author

TakeStock Ltd., Dublin
April 2002 - April 2004
Application developer for portable stock-taking application, application/DB interface and DB reporting utility

Cresselle Technologies, Dublin
April 2000 - April 2001
Senior Software Analyst for the identification, testing and deployment of Open Source and commercial packages to provide solutions for mobile communications and web applications.

Freelance Help Systems Developer, Nijmegen
July 2007 -
Help Systems Developer for http://www.chsoftware.net

Freelance Web Developer, Belfast
April 2007 -
Web Developer for http://www.monobelfast.com

Freelance Web Developer, Dublin
August 2001 - April 2002
Web Developer for http://www.emiliosbeetles.com and http://www.smoothbrothers.com

Intel, Dublin
April 2001 - August 2001
Web Application Tester for http://www.scoilnet.ie

Esat Ltd., Dublin
January 2000 - April 2000
E-Commerce Site Developer for multiple customer sites

Freelance Web Developer, Darmstadt
May 1999 - December 1999
Web Developer for http://www.wendel-arbeitsbuehnen.de

docuware GmbH., Darmstadt
January 2000 - April 2000
Web Developer for http://www.sartorius.com/ and http://www.byk-sangtec.com/

Good Information Systems Ltd, Dublin
April 2001 - December 2001
Development and Management of company IT strategy.
Design, implementation & development of company LAN/Intranet.
Development of Internet Communications (email, Fax, VoIP).

Elkana Ltd, Southport
October 1984 - July 1985
Installation and testing of Accounts and Stock Control applications.
Specification of hardware and software for system expansion.
Training of six operations staff

docuware GmbH , Darmstadt
May 1995 - May 1999
Technical input to the long-term communications strategy of the company.
Development of document, multimedia and website production systems.
Development of CD-ROM and Internet products.
Specification & procurement of external resources.
Production & delivery of customer presentations.

European Space Agency, Noordwijk
September 1989 - March 1990
Direct contract with the Technical Directorate (ESTEC) of ESA, in Noordwijk the Netherlands, for the provision of a Documentation Storage and Retrieval System.
Integration of the documentation systems with those developed for the previous ESA project at the Operations Directorate (see below)

European Space Agency, Darmstadt
December 1988 - August 1989
Contracted to the Operations Directorate (ESOC) of ESA, in Darmstadt, Germany, for the provision of a Document Storage and Retrieval System for the Colombus project.

Documentation/Online Help
Acrobat, DITA Open Toolkit 1.1, Doxygen, FrameMaker, Illustrator, Microsoft Office, OpenOffice SDK, Pagemaker, QuarkXpress, RoboHelp, WebWorks

Graphics/Media
Avid VideoShop, CorelDraw, Flash, GIF Construction Set, Macromedia Director, PaintShop Pro, Photoshop, Processing 1.0, SnagIt, RealProducer, Wink Tutorial/Presentation Creator

Intranet/Internet
Apache Web server, Borland Jbuilder, Cold Fusion, DreamWeaver, HTML-Kit, IBM VisualAge, Intershop, MS IIS, Mdaemon, PERL, PHP, Ruby on Rails, WebRamp, Visual Basic, Visual C++

Testing/QA
AWBot, Microsoft WAS tool, Mercury QuickTest Suite, RSW e-Test,

Mobile Communications
HP Jornada, NokiaWAP Server, PalmPilot, Windows CE SDK, Universal Program Generator, XTNDConnect Server

Databases
Sybase, 4^th Dimension, MS SQL Server, PostGres, MySQL, Oracle 9i

Open University Course

On starting my MA in Online and Distance Education course at the Open University was when I first encountered the concept of Personal Learning Spaces. The OU provided me with a Web space which gave me access to my:

• course records
• Details of the qualifications I have chosen
• Relevant OU Resource links
• Personal links
• email

It also provided Firstclass, a feature-rich messaging and communications solution whose Collaborative Groupware, provides users with the ability to effectively communicate and share valuable resources and information via email, conferencing, directories, individual and shared calendars and online chats.

FirstClass also supports a Unified Communications option that seamlessly converges user’s email, voice and fax messages into their FirstClass mailbox enabling a wide range of ways to access all your messages via the device of your choice including cell phone, telephone, personal computer, web browser and personal digital assistant - anytime, anywhere.

Group Working & Learning Environments

“a Personal Learning Environment is a facility for an individual to access, aggregate, configure and manipulate digital artefacts of their ongoing learning experiences.”
from: The present and future of Personal Learning Environments (PLE)

The above definition describes quite accurately the Personal Learning Environment I am using for my Open University course. Then I came across Tony Karrer’s blog posts on Personal Working & Learning Environments, and his observation that;

“What this has come to make me realize is that for the vast majority of knowledge workers (including myself), there should be no separation between my Personal Learning Environment (PLE), my Personal Knowledge Management system, and my day-to-day set of tools that enhance my knowledge worker productivity. Learning-Knowledge-Work - they really are the same and I need to do them all at once.”

This summed up my situation perfectly, and through following the discussions on Tony’s blog and those he linked to, I learned how to extend my Personal Learning Environment first into a Personal Working & Learning Environment and then, linking into my existing collaborative working spaces to create a Group Working & Learning Environment (work in progress).

eLearning 2.0

“E-learning as we know it has been around for ten years or so. During that time, it has emerged from being a radical idea–the effectiveness of which was yet to be proven–to something that is widely regarded as mainstream. It’s the core to numerous business plans and a service offered by most colleges and universities. And now, e-learning is evolving with the World Wide Web as a whole and it’s changing to a degree significant enough to warrant a new name: E-learning 2.0.”

Source: E-learning 2.0 from eLearn Magazine.

“The traditional approach to e-learning has been to employ the use of a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), software that is often cumbersome and expensive - and which tends to be structured around courses, timetables, and testing. That is an approach that is too often driven by the needs of the institution rather than the individual learner. In contrast, e-learning 2.0 (as coined by Stephen Downes) takes a ‘small pieces, loosely joined’ approach that combines the use of discrete but complementary tools and web services - such as blogs, wikis, and other social software - to support the creation of ad-hoc learning communities.”

Source: e-learning 2.0 - how Web technologies are shaping education from Read/Write Web.

Education 3.0

“..education is approaching a potential tipping point, where major changes are about to happen as a result of developments in technology, social networking, deeper understanding of educational process, as well as new legal and economic frames of reference. The set of changes constitute what we refer to as Education 3.0, and it impacts on the roles and behavior of key stakeholders. Education 1.0 is mainly a one-way process, Education 2.0 uses the technologies of Web 2.0 to create more interactive education but largely within the constraints of Education 1.0. Education 2.0 is laying the groundwork for Education 3.0, which we believe will see a breakdown of most of the boundaries, imposed or otherwise within education, to create a much more free and open system focused on learning.”

Source: The genesis and emergence of Education 3.0.. from firstmonday.

“The concept of Education 3.0 has been used to categorize a possible future scenario of change in higher education in which we will see breakdown of most of the boundaries, imposed or otherwise within education, to create a much more free and open system focused on learning. Education in the 20th and early 21st Centuries (Education 1.0) has been based on scarcity. An increasing abundance of free and open resources for use in education means that learning resources are no longer scarce, and a proliferation of networking and learning technologies that blur the distinction between play and study, means that sources of learning are no longer as scarce as they once were and that professors are not the only valid means to ensure that learning takes place ”

Source: Quality Assurance in an Education 3.0 world from Dkeats.

Voluntary Work

PNYV_MYCEL

MYCEL stands for Multimedia Youth Conferencing and Electronic Learning. The aim is to provide tools and resources for distance dialogue, communication, presentation and cooperation through ICT. The MYCEL-Colab will feature free opportunities for international multimedia conferencing, useful resources for distance training for teachers and school communities, cyber sessions to conferences and universities, and free online courses on global issues.

My investigation of Opensource Collaborative Work & Conferencing Tools produced an initial list of possible contenders which is available on my Labspace site

PEOI

For this project, I was asked to analyze the current website, suggest immediate improvements and develop a long-term plan for migration to a better Course Management System (or Virtual Learning Environment).

Initial analysis of the PEOI Web site revealed serious problems. Being based on frames, the browser title bar was not reflecting the title of the content page and of course, individual frames could be loaded outside the frameset. The site also lacked metainformation in the pages.

A little research among my peers on the Net produced two simple javascripts to solve the frame problems and a lot of brainstorming produced an optimized set of metainformation tags.

My investigation of Opensource Course Management Systems produced an initial list of possible contenders which is available on my Labspace site

• EduSpaces
• The Content Wrangler
• NextGen Teachers
• Open Networkers
• Mick Hawkes Art
• International Collaboration
• Remixing History

• Apple Learning Interchange
• Connexions
• DimensionX
• Processing
• RPG StoryTeller
• Scratch

• Adobe Labs
• DITA Users
• eduforge
• OpenOffice
• Sun Developer Network
• WOS Portable

• BSCW
• Open Learn Labspace
• WebHuddle
• YouOS

• Information Architecure
  Institute
• Institute of Scientific
  &Technical Communicators
• Internet Society
• Wireless Internet Institute

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