I it just me or the International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning talks mainly about research done on instructor side of things? I am more interested in learning about learners and their psychology. Maybe I am yet to hit a journal that targets Adult Learning specifically.
The article that gripped me quite a lot was Jon Baggley’s Portable Applications in Mobile Education, again, centered around faculty convenience, but engaging. Side note: Apparently there is a evaluation website for education collaboration software that Baggley & co-workers maintain on IRRODL: Online Collaboration Tools: Evaluation Reports. Anyways, before we stray too far from the topic: there is a bunch of applications quite useful to a traveling user of information technology – something that can be installed and sustained on a USB drive web-browers, desktop (USB-Top?) email clients, word-processors, DVD players (VLC!) are available in a portable version, which means, install on your USB drive and carry it around. Read Here
Friday, November 10, 2006
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Tablet PCs: Exciting Discussions
Over the past couple of weeks there was an interesting discussion on the cutting edge of Tablet PC deployment in higher education in North America. These were some of the take home points which I found useful for my own decision-making purposes. Caveat! Its only a couple weeks of discussions not a real litt review!
Tablet PC Models
Lenovo X41s are slow to bootup, but great performance reviews. Regular defragmentation will keep problems at bay.
Motion Tablet PCs available through Dell have a superior mic array.
Toshiba Protégé The Purdue deployment was riddled with hardware issues like deadzones etc.
HP TC4200/4400 Work well. Intel Core Duo expected to be a better performer than Centrino.
Performance Related Configuration Tips
HDD Speeds 7200rpm is recommended over 4200rpm
Processor Duo Core better than Centrino
Wireless Access Have Professional Grade Access, With Access Points in Every Classroom, as against shared access.
WEP used in most places without non-broadcasting SSIDs.
Software
Collaboration DyKnow deployed or being piloted at most places
Utilities
Agilix GoBinder
Mind Manager Concept Mapping Application
PDF Annotator
Primo PDF Like Cute PDF Printer
DiskKeeper Pro Degragmentation for Performance
Websites i found, other than this blog, which are a part of my TabletPC Custom Search Engine:
Mark Payton’s Blog http://vermontslate.blogspot.com/
UV Tablet PC Implementation http://www.uvm.edu/~tabletpc/
Rose-Hulman Tablet Project http://rose-hulman.edu/irpa/tablet
Jim Vanades of HP Philanthropy Program
http://hp.com/go/hpteach-hied [Web]
http://hp.com/go/hied-blog [Jim’s Blog]
[Webconferenced Discussions World Tablet PC Experts: Archives]
http://www.uwex.edu/ics/stream/uwc-rock/hp/
SOURCES:
Academic and corporate contributors to the wipte-purdue mailing list.
Tablet PC Models
Lenovo X41s are slow to bootup, but great performance reviews. Regular defragmentation will keep problems at bay.
Motion Tablet PCs available through Dell have a superior mic array.
Toshiba Protégé The Purdue deployment was riddled with hardware issues like deadzones etc.
HP TC4200/4400 Work well. Intel Core Duo expected to be a better performer than Centrino.
Performance Related Configuration Tips
HDD Speeds 7200rpm is recommended over 4200rpm
Processor Duo Core better than Centrino
Wireless Access Have Professional Grade Access, With Access Points in Every Classroom, as against shared access.
WEP used in most places without non-broadcasting SSIDs.
Software
Collaboration DyKnow deployed or being piloted at most places
Utilities
Agilix GoBinder
Mind Manager Concept Mapping Application
PDF Annotator
Primo PDF Like Cute PDF Printer
DiskKeeper Pro Degragmentation for Performance
Websites i found, other than this blog, which are a part of my TabletPC Custom Search Engine:
Mark Payton’s Blog http://vermontslate.blogspot.com/
UV Tablet PC Implementation http://www.uvm.edu/~tabletpc/
Rose-Hulman Tablet Project http://rose-hulman.edu/irpa/tablet
Jim Vanades of HP Philanthropy Program
http://hp.com/go/hpteach-hied [Web]
http://hp.com/go/hied-blog [Jim’s Blog]
[Webconferenced Discussions World Tablet PC Experts: Archives]
http://www.uwex.edu/ics/stream/uwc-rock/hp/
SOURCES:
Academic and corporate contributors to the wipte-purdue mailing list.
Stumble on great sites? Create a personalised search engine, or two
Search Engines: The Threat
Good information on the internet is useful, only if not sandwitched between hoards of commercial websites who "spam" the engines by using keywords that have NOTHING to do with their content. Believe me, I've been an search engine optimization expert of sorts for hobby projects and I've seen all the dirty tricks. Search engines try and create algorithms to filter out spamming websites. These search engine spammers use false keywords, redirects, white-text and all sorts of dirty tricks.
Search Engines: The First Principles
The basic principle of operation of a majority of search engines is all-inclusiveness. Unless a website is found guilty of hard-spamming, it is not banned from a search engine.
Quickest Solution: Personalized Search Engines
If you are an avid reader, even of print media, you will come across genuinely resourceful websites, which might contain 80% of the answers you seek. These include websites with trusted content, blogs of reknowned authorities in a field etc. The best idea in this case is to create your own personalized search engine.
What I've tried:
Google Co-op: Seems impressive. Just started using it. I have created a general-knowlege lookup engine and now working on specialised knowledge search engines, the first one being a TabletPC knowledge search engine.
Apart from fine controls it offers a novice meta-search engine designer like me, I like the ability to custom skin it. It is also possible to collaborate and create a search engine with your colleagues or team-mates. One of the best uses I see is faculy & researchers rolling out their custom search engines, which would be help-ful for students to form basic solutions. However, if it is not used exclusively, only then the envelope of knowledge will expand for the person in question, but atleast, there will be no junk search results from an innacurate source ("a psycho blogger behind a fancy template situation").
But the best feature I like about Google Coop is Google Marker, a brower toolbar tool to quickly add a website you are browsing to any of your search engine. Very much like the delicious toolbar tools. I love it already.
Other Similar Service:
Rollyo - Somehow, I stopped using it. It did not index my chosen sites properly.
Conclusive Remarks:
I see personalized search engines as a step up from social bookmarking. The effort is pretty much the same: discover a resource, tag it. However the resulting output is much sweeter: not a bunch of links to go back to, but ability to search what they lead up to. I will accept CSEs over Social Bookmars. (Google's code calls the Personalized Search Engine a CSE - Custom Search Engine).
Give my search engines a spin: continue to read the extended entry:
My General Knowledge Search Engine
My Tablet PC & Digital Ink Tech Search Engine
Good information on the internet is useful, only if not sandwitched between hoards of commercial websites who "spam" the engines by using keywords that have NOTHING to do with their content. Believe me, I've been an search engine optimization expert of sorts for hobby projects and I've seen all the dirty tricks. Search engines try and create algorithms to filter out spamming websites. These search engine spammers use false keywords, redirects, white-text and all sorts of dirty tricks.
Search Engines: The First Principles
The basic principle of operation of a majority of search engines is all-inclusiveness. Unless a website is found guilty of hard-spamming, it is not banned from a search engine.
Quickest Solution: Personalized Search Engines
If you are an avid reader, even of print media, you will come across genuinely resourceful websites, which might contain 80% of the answers you seek. These include websites with trusted content, blogs of reknowned authorities in a field etc. The best idea in this case is to create your own personalized search engine.
What I've tried:
Google Co-op: Seems impressive. Just started using it. I have created a general-knowlege lookup engine and now working on specialised knowledge search engines, the first one being a TabletPC knowledge search engine.
Apart from fine controls it offers a novice meta-search engine designer like me, I like the ability to custom skin it. It is also possible to collaborate and create a search engine with your colleagues or team-mates. One of the best uses I see is faculy & researchers rolling out their custom search engines, which would be help-ful for students to form basic solutions. However, if it is not used exclusively, only then the envelope of knowledge will expand for the person in question, but atleast, there will be no junk search results from an innacurate source ("a psycho blogger behind a fancy template situation").
But the best feature I like about Google Coop is Google Marker, a brower toolbar tool to quickly add a website you are browsing to any of your search engine. Very much like the delicious toolbar tools. I love it already.
Other Similar Service:
Rollyo - Somehow, I stopped using it. It did not index my chosen sites properly.
Conclusive Remarks:
I see personalized search engines as a step up from social bookmarking. The effort is pretty much the same: discover a resource, tag it. However the resulting output is much sweeter: not a bunch of links to go back to, but ability to search what they lead up to. I will accept CSEs over Social Bookmars. (Google's code calls the Personalized Search Engine a CSE - Custom Search Engine).
Give my search engines a spin: continue to read the extended entry:
My General Knowledge Search Engine
My Tablet PC & Digital Ink Tech Search Engine
Saturday, October 28, 2006
Current Issues in Distance Education: todo list
To be revieved and updated...
Online journal of distance learning administration
http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/
Online journal of distance learning administration
http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/
Current Issues in Distance Education: International Review
The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning
Vol 7, No 2 (2006), ISSN: 1492-3831
Good Stuff: Articles are available as MP3!!! Lets take dat on da bus!
These articles look interesting & relevant from the current issue:
A Multi-Island Situation Without the Ocean: Tutors' perceptions about working in isolation from colleagues
Ilse Fouche
Distance education is generally seen as a very isolating experience for students, but one often forgets that it can be an equally isolating experience for teaching staff, who sometimes must work in isolation from colleagues. This study examines the experiences of nine tutors at one of the 10 biggest universities in the world...
Adaptation for a Changing Environment: Developing learning and teaching with information and communication technologies
Adrian Kirkwood, Linda Price
This is an article seems like more of a big-picture article, something quotable in the first paragraphs of papers.
This article examines the relationship between the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) and learning and teaching, particularly in distance education contexts. We argue that environmental changes (societal, educational and technological) make it necessary for Higher Education in general, and distance education in particular....
This Article below applies to the situation when faculty, as against students are geographically diverse. The author is trying to address the lack of research in this area. We have a faculty member who teaches geo-diverse students enrolled at SPH UM Ann Arbor, while working in Penn State and living with his family in the state's capital. This makes this reading relevant to me:
Academics Telecommuting in Open and Distance Education Universities: Issues, challenges and opportunities
Cheuk Fan Ng
Another relevant reading. Targeting faculty in Western Canada, an attempt made to create a culture of Faculty Development as Community Building in the context of distance learning:
Faculty Development as Community Building
B.J. Eib and Pam Miller
The following would be an interesting reading: watching the field for possible common apps for their portable versions, especially Camtasia Recorder so that settings are saved and there is no complication of dealing with settings as a user moves from computer to computer.
September – 2006
Technical Evaluation Reports
57. Portable Applications in Mobile Education
Jon Baggaley
Vol 7, No 2 (2006), ISSN: 1492-3831
Good Stuff: Articles are available as MP3!!! Lets take dat on da bus!
These articles look interesting & relevant from the current issue:
A Multi-Island Situation Without the Ocean: Tutors' perceptions about working in isolation from colleagues
Ilse Fouche
Distance education is generally seen as a very isolating experience for students, but one often forgets that it can be an equally isolating experience for teaching staff, who sometimes must work in isolation from colleagues. This study examines the experiences of nine tutors at one of the 10 biggest universities in the world...
Adaptation for a Changing Environment: Developing learning and teaching with information and communication technologies
Adrian Kirkwood, Linda Price
This is an article seems like more of a big-picture article, something quotable in the first paragraphs of papers.
This article examines the relationship between the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) and learning and teaching, particularly in distance education contexts. We argue that environmental changes (societal, educational and technological) make it necessary for Higher Education in general, and distance education in particular....
This Article below applies to the situation when faculty, as against students are geographically diverse. The author is trying to address the lack of research in this area. We have a faculty member who teaches geo-diverse students enrolled at SPH UM Ann Arbor, while working in Penn State and living with his family in the state's capital. This makes this reading relevant to me:
Academics Telecommuting in Open and Distance Education Universities: Issues, challenges and opportunities
Cheuk Fan Ng
Another relevant reading. Targeting faculty in Western Canada, an attempt made to create a culture of Faculty Development as Community Building in the context of distance learning:
Faculty Development as Community Building
B.J. Eib and Pam Miller
The following would be an interesting reading: watching the field for possible common apps for their portable versions, especially Camtasia Recorder so that settings are saved and there is no complication of dealing with settings as a user moves from computer to computer.
September – 2006
Technical Evaluation Reports
57. Portable Applications in Mobile Education
Jon Baggaley
Friday, October 27, 2006
Current Issues in Distance Education: Distance education, Distance education report
DISTANCE EDUCATION
May 2006; Vol.27, Iss.1
Li-Fen Liao examines something called the Flow Theory framework of online learning by constructing two "flows" and testing them on 253 distance learning students. It turns out that the ways in which a learner interacts with the instructor and the way he/she interacts with the learning interface is more significant than learner-learner interactions. This kind of information is useful in deciding between distance learning systems, when there is a feature-money trade off.
DISTANCE EDUCATION REPORT
WilsonSelectPlus was down - will try again.
May 2006; Vol.27, Iss.1
Li-Fen Liao examines something called the Flow Theory framework of online learning by constructing two "flows" and testing them on 253 distance learning students. It turns out that the ways in which a learner interacts with the instructor and the way he/she interacts with the learning interface is more significant than learner-learner interactions. This kind of information is useful in deciding between distance learning systems, when there is a feature-money trade off.
DISTANCE EDUCATION REPORT
WilsonSelectPlus was down - will try again.
Current Issues in Distance Education: AmJDisted
Hoping to do these readings soon:
A. The American journal of distance education: 2006, Vol. 20, No. 3.
-- Editor Moore writes about Dialog in Adult Education
-- In the abstract for The Effectiveness of Distance Education in Allied Health Science Programs: A Meta-Analysis of Outcomes by Stacy L. Williams the interesting thing to note was: working professional students significantly outperformed graduate and undergraduate students.
THE ONE THING I HAVE BEEN TRYING TO FOCUS IN OUR CURRENT ENDEAVORS IS TO TRY TO focus on the strength of our cohort and not the weaknesses. I guess I might have found the scholastic reasons of the first such strength.
Moisey et al. explore the issue of developing learning objects, identify three facilitating factors and nine barriers to success in their paper Factors Affecting the Development and Use of Learning Objects
Aah! Cristina and Yili Liu's paper using our distance learning materials gets published! notable quote: study showed no difference in information recall between the different module lengths and formats; however, as module length increased, participants were more likely to not complete the modules. Christina's paper: Web-Based Distance Learning Technology: The Impacts of Web Module Length and Format
Stella Porto reviews a new book: An Administrator’s Guide to Online Education.
Kaye Shelton and George
Saltsman. Greenwich, CT: Information
Age, 2005, 192 pp., $69.95 (softcover).
-- This should be put on the library's ordering list. Review Here.
A. The American journal of distance education: 2006, Vol. 20, No. 3.
-- Editor Moore writes about Dialog in Adult Education
-- In the abstract for The Effectiveness of Distance Education in Allied Health Science Programs: A Meta-Analysis of Outcomes by Stacy L. Williams the interesting thing to note was: working professional students significantly outperformed graduate and undergraduate students.
THE ONE THING I HAVE BEEN TRYING TO FOCUS IN OUR CURRENT ENDEAVORS IS TO TRY TO focus on the strength of our cohort and not the weaknesses. I guess I might have found the scholastic reasons of the first such strength.
Moisey et al. explore the issue of developing learning objects, identify three facilitating factors and nine barriers to success in their paper Factors Affecting the Development and Use of Learning Objects
Aah! Cristina and Yili Liu's paper using our distance learning materials gets published! notable quote: study showed no difference in information recall between the different module lengths and formats; however, as module length increased, participants were more likely to not complete the modules. Christina's paper: Web-Based Distance Learning Technology: The Impacts of Web Module Length and Format
Stella Porto reviews a new book: An Administrator’s Guide to Online Education.
Kaye Shelton and George
Saltsman. Greenwich, CT: Information
Age, 2005, 192 pp., $69.95 (softcover).
-- This should be put on the library's ordering list. Review Here.
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Firefox Extensions & Add-ons
Inspired by a Searcher: The Magazine for Database Professionals article, I went to the Firefox extensions website to make my internet experience a little better:
Drag & Drop File Upload
CLICK! by snapshot.jkn.com - This is useful when many snotty publishers do not make archives available (I have dealt with small time newspapers which do not sell old article, not give permalinks!) This tool takes a snapshot of a webpage.
Gmail Space: allows you to use your Gmail Space (2 GB) for file storage. It acts as a remote machine. You can transfer files between your hard drive and gmail.
Performancing a full featured blog editor that sits right in your Firefox browser and lets you post to your blog easily.
Session Saver: Session Manager saves and restores the state of all windows - either when you want it or automatically at startup and after crashes. Additionally it offers you to reopen (accidentally) closed windows and tabs. If you're afraid of losing data while browsing - this extension allows you to relax...
Nuke Anything Enhanced 0.54 Allow hiding of almost anything -for example before printing - via context menu "Remove Object".
AI Roboform Password Manager and Web Form Filler that completely automates password entering and form filling.
Drag & Drop File Upload
CLICK! by snapshot.jkn.com - This is useful when many snotty publishers do not make archives available (I have dealt with small time newspapers which do not sell old article, not give permalinks!) This tool takes a snapshot of a webpage.
Gmail Space: allows you to use your Gmail Space (2 GB) for file storage. It acts as a remote machine. You can transfer files between your hard drive and gmail.
Performancing a full featured blog editor that sits right in your Firefox browser and lets you post to your blog easily.
Session Saver: Session Manager saves and restores the state of all windows - either when you want it or automatically at startup and after crashes. Additionally it offers you to reopen (accidentally) closed windows and tabs. If you're afraid of losing data while browsing - this extension allows you to relax...
Nuke Anything Enhanced 0.54 Allow hiding of almost anything -for example before printing - via context menu "Remove Object".
AI Roboform Password Manager and Web Form Filler that completely automates password entering and form filling.
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Monday, July 17, 2006
Mics for in-class pickup
Wireless mics win the race. There is no re-curring setup time for wireless handheld mics in Centra-in-Class situations.
Wired mics take cables which are difficult to setup/teardown and maintain and the number of such mic needs to be much larger to cater to a reasonably sized class of 12 or more. There is no science behind the number 12 here.
Flywatters (Peizoelectric), originally suggested by some campus experts were poor in performance because of battery consumption and rapid pickup degradation on draining batteries. These would be great for Streaming/On-Demand Media but not for Centra audio. Centra audio compression kills the flyswatter sound. Handheld mics work best with Centra because of directed pickup. Omnis in general would not do well when doing Centra.
Wired mics take cables which are difficult to setup/teardown and maintain and the number of such mic needs to be much larger to cater to a reasonably sized class of 12 or more. There is no science behind the number 12 here.
Flywatters (Peizoelectric), originally suggested by some campus experts were poor in performance because of battery consumption and rapid pickup degradation on draining batteries. These would be great for Streaming/On-Demand Media but not for Centra audio. Centra audio compression kills the flyswatter sound. Handheld mics work best with Centra because of directed pickup. Omnis in general would not do well when doing Centra.
The effect of Mic Mounting In-class: desk-stand versus hand-held
In-class participants tend to position the mics for better pickup when there is NO MIC STAND ON THE DESK. Putting a mic holder on the desk is inviting pickup trouble as the in-class participant may swivel in the chair and move around. When the mic is in their hands, they would move it with them and the pickup is more consistent.
Group Dynamics: Enforcing mic usage
The in-class group in a Centr-in-Class situation does not expect to use the microphone when coming to class. So, the habit formation takes some time as they cannot imagine the frustration the distance learning undergoes as a result of missing an in-class student's comments/questions - especially when the instructor does not repeat them (too long/forgot/too short/judged trivial).
The microphones where not strongly imposed on day 1 - as a result, no one in-class indulged in this non-incentive task. The GSIs were requested to enforce mic use, by interrupting in-class students who were about to express themselves. Within 2 sessions the in-class population adapted to the mics and naturally asked for the mic in advance of making comments or asking questions. Much to the relief of everyone.
Judging from their facial expressions during inital interruptions of their verbal expression, it was clear that they didn't mind being reminded again and again to use the wireless handheld mic. Earlier, we had a situation where we did not have wireless handheld mics, but a network of desk mics. I will post about the advantages of wireless mics over wired mics & mic mounting in a different post.
The microphones where not strongly imposed on day 1 - as a result, no one in-class indulged in this non-incentive task. The GSIs were requested to enforce mic use, by interrupting in-class students who were about to express themselves. Within 2 sessions the in-class population adapted to the mics and naturally asked for the mic in advance of making comments or asking questions. Much to the relief of everyone.
Judging from their facial expressions during inital interruptions of their verbal expression, it was clear that they didn't mind being reminded again and again to use the wireless handheld mic. Earlier, we had a situation where we did not have wireless handheld mics, but a network of desk mics. I will post about the advantages of wireless mics over wired mics & mic mounting in a different post.
Anatomy of Support Needs for a Centra-in-Class Course
Just to log the kind of support effort. A day in the life of Centra-In-Class:
Meeting With Admins, Support Requests (Exams/Ctools, General Technical Questions) 2 Hours x 6 times?. (Vic)
Production Design: Assuring mics, batteries, ordering batteries, supervising setup/teardown, sound checks, camera checks etc.
Media Assistant's time : 45 mins before & 30 mins after class.
Contingency Video Post-Processing in case of requests (this is critical in deciding whether we want to support offline viewing regularly or only in case of failure of Centra): 3hrs/lecture.
Managing/maintaining CTools site: For the course: Course admin's times + 5-6 hours eLearning Specialist's time (Vic).
Easily Predictable Costs:
eLearning Specialist: Class Duration
2 Media Assistants: Class Duration x 2
2 GSIs: Enforcing Microphone use for in-class participants.
Meeting With Admins, Support Requests (Exams/Ctools, General Technical Questions) 2 Hours x 6 times?. (Vic)
Production Design: Assuring mics, batteries, ordering batteries, supervising setup/teardown, sound checks, camera checks etc.
Media Assistant's time : 45 mins before & 30 mins after class.
Contingency Video Post-Processing in case of requests (this is critical in deciding whether we want to support offline viewing regularly or only in case of failure of Centra): 3hrs/lecture.
Managing/maintaining CTools site: For the course: Course admin's times + 5-6 hours eLearning Specialist's time (Vic).
Easily Predictable Costs:
eLearning Specialist: Class Duration
2 Media Assistants: Class Duration x 2
2 GSIs: Enforcing Microphone use for in-class participants.
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Trends in Social Software by Burton Group
http://www.educause.edu/LibraryDetailPage/666?ID=ERS0604
At first, I thought how can one spend 44 pages of writing effort on a loose and vagabond topic like Social Software (SS), but being in the coming thick of design of a social networking application, my ears were perked and I waded through paragraphs of cliches. But its not such a bad effort. In fact, I liked the definitions, survey of current services/products and authors' notes on SS (Flickr, delicious etc.).
The trend within actual corporations has been quite quiet. McDonalds and Avon think they may be able to garner some value via blogs which mashup corporate agenda and personal speak. However, I wonder who was the airplane company employee fired for blogging out loud.
Anyways, the report says, as far as larger institutions are concerned to put SS on the emerging technology list. i.e. Strong reasons do not exist to jump right into public social bookmarking or blogging. However, use the technologies with specific applications.
I have always been saddened by the fact that 'blogging' loses its charm when its treats the world as its audience. Blogging to an established audience provides impetus to use the tool and use it well. Like the McDonald's blog is done by their VP, who is a PhD and talks about nutrition and quality of food (yeah :~). But an established audience brings out quality in communication via these mass social cannons of opinions that blogs are. I remember reading somewhere during the dawn of blogging "Any lunatic hiding behind a fancy template can produce a blog..." - implying the lack of quality. In Higher Ed, if teachers ask students to blog (or use any other SS) with exposure to assessment and/or grading - then the quality game becomes exciting. Google Jockeying is one such example of a vagabond classroom trend being tamed by the instructors for pedagogical benefit [See 7 Things You Should Know About Google Jockeying].
Another application of SS that struck me was usability studies. I have seen website design/redesign discussion spread out over months without much to see. If the content-owners decide to be flexible about content placement and navigation design, they can base it on SS use on their sites. e.g. Allowing the audience to tag what they like and then reviewing the toplevel navigation links based on the folksonomies (tag clouds) generated would be helpful in design.
The report recommends: 'Allow your IT developers to use "Ruby on Rails / AJAX"'... mmm... a good comment but totally out of context, maybe. Just maybe.
R
At first, I thought how can one spend 44 pages of writing effort on a loose and vagabond topic like Social Software (SS), but being in the coming thick of design of a social networking application, my ears were perked and I waded through paragraphs of cliches. But its not such a bad effort. In fact, I liked the definitions, survey of current services/products and authors' notes on SS (Flickr, delicious etc.).
The trend within actual corporations has been quite quiet. McDonalds and Avon think they may be able to garner some value via blogs which mashup corporate agenda and personal speak. However, I wonder who was the airplane company employee fired for blogging out loud.
Anyways, the report says, as far as larger institutions are concerned to put SS on the emerging technology list. i.e. Strong reasons do not exist to jump right into public social bookmarking or blogging. However, use the technologies with specific applications.
I have always been saddened by the fact that 'blogging' loses its charm when its treats the world as its audience. Blogging to an established audience provides impetus to use the tool and use it well. Like the McDonald's blog is done by their VP, who is a PhD and talks about nutrition and quality of food (yeah :~). But an established audience brings out quality in communication via these mass social cannons of opinions that blogs are. I remember reading somewhere during the dawn of blogging "Any lunatic hiding behind a fancy template can produce a blog..." - implying the lack of quality. In Higher Ed, if teachers ask students to blog (or use any other SS) with exposure to assessment and/or grading - then the quality game becomes exciting. Google Jockeying is one such example of a vagabond classroom trend being tamed by the instructors for pedagogical benefit [See 7 Things You Should Know About Google Jockeying].
Another application of SS that struck me was usability studies. I have seen website design/redesign discussion spread out over months without much to see. If the content-owners decide to be flexible about content placement and navigation design, they can base it on SS use on their sites. e.g. Allowing the audience to tag what they like and then reviewing the toplevel navigation links based on the folksonomies (tag clouds) generated would be helpful in design.
The report recommends: 'Allow your IT developers to use "Ruby on Rails / AJAX"'... mmm... a good comment but totally out of context, maybe. Just maybe.
R
Monday, June 19, 2006
Web 2.0 Discovery: The Yahoo! API
Yahoo! has overtaken Google in the AJAX Open API deal. While Google opens up Maps and stuff, Yahoo! takes the wind out of the competition's sails by opening up the entire DHTML/XML/Javascript library for building rich internet applications. Free, even for commercial use.
I tried to play with it over the weekend, but need to work from Yahoo's examples, because it didn't quite work for me while following the API documentation. Probably syntax, schmintax.
Go here: http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/
YUI Library Controls:
* AutoComplete
* Calendar
* Container (including Module, Overlay, Panel, Tooltip, Dialog, SimpleDialog)
* Menu
* Slider
* TreeView
YUI Library Utilities:
* Event Utility
* DOM Collection
* Connection Manager
* Drag and Drop Utility
* Animation Utility
YUI Library CSS Tools:
* CSS Page Grids
* CSS Fonts
* CSS Reset
-- Noice, Maite.
Google Does US Government
Beltway Bandits Just Wanna Have Fun... ;)
It will bring up interesting things. I searched for "India" and it brought up the biography of a presidential pet called "India" in the top 5 results: http://www.whitehouse.gov/kids/india/.
But banter apart this is a great resource for anyone wanting to write federal grants. I try to search, say for smoking and good hits. Lets try to search something closer to my research area: assistive technology... I expect to get section 508 all over... lets see...
Nope... its more of state accessibility guidelines and section508 is not even in the top 5. http://www.section508.gov/index.cfm.
Anyhoo, happy USGoogling.
Google Does Shakespeare
Shakespeare would ask: ...What stuff 'tis made of? And Google would have an answer. Lame opening line but its a segway into this post: Google does Shakespeare. This is a fantastic example of how to do things right:
Notice worthy:
--- Pre-loaded Tabbed Browsing of Categories.
--- Extra features "Search for Mr. S on News, Video etc."
--- Google earth treat on all places Shakespeare.
Overall its a fantastic example on how to build a reference resource on a person.
Monday, June 5, 2006
"Google Jockeying" a new term...
Google jockeying is an interesting term that I just encountered on the ELI website (Elearning Initiative / Educause)
http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7014.pdf
http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7014.pdf
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Quicktime Convertor
Took some time to find something to save spending $30 on Quicktime Pro
http://www.windowsmarketplace.com/track/TrackResultClick.aspx?u=prices.aspx&p=0:0:1:4433:2488864:D:293:-1:3:83:-1:-1:-1:100:-1:1:7:-1:-1&stext=quicktime
Another One (Update):
http://www.download.com/Front-End-Convert-Drop/3000-2170-10452586.html?part=winmp&subj=dl&tag=feed&jump=winmp
http://www.windowsmarketplace.com/track/TrackResultClick.aspx?u=prices.aspx&p=0:0:1:4433:2488864:D:293:-1:3:83:-1:-1:-1:100:-1:1:7:-1:-1&stext=quicktime
Another One (Update):
http://www.download.com/Front-End-Convert-Drop/3000-2170-10452586.html?part=winmp&subj=dl&tag=feed&jump=winmp
FREE! FREE!! FREE!!! iPod Video Maker
Awright. Never thought I'd hit this, but there is a little piece of free software on Windows Marketplace that converts videos (including rm) to mp4! This is gooooood. Very gooood.
Free iPod Video Converter
by Jodix Technologies Free iPod Video Converter provides an easy and completed way to convert all popular video formats to iPod video. You can enjoy DVD/VCD and AVI, MPEG, WMV, RM, RMVB, DivX, ASF, VOB video files in your iPod with few
Free iPod Video Converter
by Jodix Technologies Free iPod Video Converter provides an easy and completed way to convert all popular video formats to iPod video. You can enjoy DVD/VCD and AVI, MPEG, WMV, RM, RMVB, DivX, ASF, VOB video files in your iPod with few
Sunday, May 14, 2006
Podcasting Legal Guide
Podcasting Legal Guide: Rules for the Revolution by Colette Vogele, Esq. of Vogele & Associates, Stanford Center for Internet and Society, Mia Garlick of Creative Commons, Stanford Center for Internet and Society, and The Berkman Center Clinical Program in Cyberlaw, Harvard Law School.
http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/Podcasting_Legal_Guide.pdf
http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/Podcasting_Legal_Guide.pdf
Monday, May 1, 2006
IT Sensibility
Something we knew, but never do:
http://feeds.computerworld.com/Computerworld/Software/News?m=732
For Tips on:
* Licensed software
* Software maintenance
* Labor
* Business-based sizing
* Creative financing
http://feeds.computerworld.com/Computerworld/Software/News?m=732
For Tips on:
* Licensed software
* Software maintenance
* Labor
* Business-based sizing
* Creative financing
Webcam built into the Monitor!
Image: Apple
Real Eye-to-Eye Contact now possible! (Now = Future)
from Engadget, posted by CultofMac:
We could soon see a new kind of display screen from computer maker Apple – one that simultaneously takes pictures while showing images.
The clever idea is to insert thousands of microscopic image sensors in-between the liquid crystal display cells in the screen. Each sensor captures its own small image, but software stitches these together to create a single, larger picture.
HP to Support mySQL
I thought this news-bit stood out in the plethora of Software news out these days. A big daddy corp lending application support (not just dev) is always interesting news. Cost is usually the driver. All is here:
http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/software/story/0,10801,110891,00.html?source=x54
http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/software/story/0,10801,110891,00.html?source=x54
Monday, April 17, 2006
Get your feet wet with AJAX
This tutorial is geared towards PHP developers, assuming no JavaScript knowledge. (Non-Programmer + This tutorial = Nice)
http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/kassemi20050606.php3
http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/kassemi20050606.php3
An Intro to AJAX (& then a sales pitch)
This is a sales pitch video, but it explains quite well AJAX within the big picture of web development.
http://www2.sys-con.com/webinararchive.cfm?registered=on&pid=57
http://www2.sys-con.com/webinararchive.cfm?registered=on&pid=57
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
WIPTE 2006: Origami
At the Microsoft booth at WIPTE 06. Eliot was kind enough to snap a picture and email it back in a snap. Eliot was the MSFT rep. Cool conference!
Friday, April 7, 2006
WIPTE 2006: GoBinder for NoteTaking
Vermont Academy, Small & Beautiful, with special programs for learning challenged and non-Ivyish students.
Agile GoBinder... Outlooky Application, that is more than just PIM.
Its like the marriage of PIM applications and LMS. This marriage can produce many pffsprings, but this is an ofspring that is 'PersonalLMS'.
More like OneNote+MS Outlook Calendar
the actual LMS is Moodle. GoBinder and Moodle are unable to talk right now. GoBinder SDK is available. Moodle is open source. so its just waiting for a matchmaker to marry them.
GoBinder is possibly working on linking to WebCT, Blackboard but Moodle may not be their priority right now. I mean, if they did develop it, that would be cool, because a lot of institutions would love to go into a free LMS and then GoBinder sales would go up.
---just me 10 cents from me fantasy as the GoBinder Strategic manager.
Features:
- Calendar/Tasks etc.
- Searchable database
- Ink/Text combo
- Scheduling/Gantt Chart
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT: TabletCasting. Agile is working on capturing audio synced with notes. Now were talking business Baby! plus, GoBinder is free for faculty.
Agile GoBinder... Outlooky Application, that is more than just PIM.
Its like the marriage of PIM applications and LMS. This marriage can produce many pffsprings, but this is an ofspring that is 'PersonalLMS'.
More like OneNote+MS Outlook Calendar
the actual LMS is Moodle. GoBinder and Moodle are unable to talk right now. GoBinder SDK is available. Moodle is open source. so its just waiting for a matchmaker to marry them.
GoBinder is possibly working on linking to WebCT, Blackboard but Moodle may not be their priority right now. I mean, if they did develop it, that would be cool, because a lot of institutions would love to go into a free LMS and then GoBinder sales would go up.
---just me 10 cents from me fantasy as the GoBinder Strategic manager.
Features:
- Calendar/Tasks etc.
- Searchable database
- Ink/Text combo
- Scheduling/Gantt Chart
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT: TabletCasting. Agile is working on capturing audio synced with notes. Now were talking business Baby! plus, GoBinder is free for faculty.
WIPTE 2006: Utilizing the Tablet PC to Enhance Group Work in a Learning Community
PACE U is in Brooklyn. They are seeing whats going to happen if TabletPC were given to freshmen and see its effect on groupwork.
They were also funded by MSFT Tablet PC grant, bought 5 Tablet PCs with it.
Computer/Humanities profs collaborated to create a new course
Content of the collaborative course in Computers and History:
How are computers (esp Security) potrayed in Movies?
There were other interesting things they were looking at as threads from the above topics (Security arrangement at Wall St.; Computer/Forensics)
**** for meeting w/Nallee-dmendez-CRLT
23 Students / 5 Tablet PCs
1 Tablet PC: 4-5 Students do group activities during class time only.
Sometimes Tablets were checked out on the weekends by individuals who were more artistically inclined. this was allowed to allow individual inking skill development.
They were using Windows Journal (raised some eyebrows amongst the audience). (People generally use Office OneNote with an LMS.)
LMS by Pace: Blackboard
Activities for evaluation:
Peer reviews: Presentations, Essayes, ProgrammingCode
Method (Non Tablet Based): 4-5 people group, computer operator is not the author, others giving feedback. This did not work. So they assigned Driver+Navigator to help driver with collection of feedback & annotation, while the peer review was in progress.
Method (Tablet PC)
So experiments were set up, read the paper for more info.
Giving the impression that the evaluation specialist was a group-dynamist rather than a instructional technologist (verify in paper).
Outputs:
Develops Leadership?
Increases Collaboration?
Helps Decision-making?
Helps non-classtime communication?
April 26/27 TabletPC user conference at Pace University
http://csis.pace.edu/csis/news/tablepcweb.htm
Questions which were not asked in this research:
Is the enhanced productivity a novelty effect or is it a true, sustainable engagement.
Do students pay attention to their work or get distracted by the technology?
They won the 2005 Tablet PC award again.
They were also funded by MSFT Tablet PC grant, bought 5 Tablet PCs with it.
Computer/Humanities profs collaborated to create a new course
Content of the collaborative course in Computers and History:
How are computers (esp Security) potrayed in Movies?
There were other interesting things they were looking at as threads from the above topics (Security arrangement at Wall St.; Computer/Forensics)
**** for meeting w/Nallee-dmendez-CRLT
23 Students / 5 Tablet PCs
1 Tablet PC: 4-5 Students do group activities during class time only.
Sometimes Tablets were checked out on the weekends by individuals who were more artistically inclined. this was allowed to allow individual inking skill development.
They were using Windows Journal (raised some eyebrows amongst the audience). (People generally use Office OneNote with an LMS.)
LMS by Pace: Blackboard
Activities for evaluation:
Peer reviews: Presentations, Essayes, ProgrammingCode
Method (Non Tablet Based): 4-5 people group, computer operator is not the author, others giving feedback. This did not work. So they assigned Driver+Navigator to help driver with collection of feedback & annotation, while the peer review was in progress.
Method (Tablet PC)
So experiments were set up, read the paper for more info.
Giving the impression that the evaluation specialist was a group-dynamist rather than a instructional technologist (verify in paper).
Outputs:
Develops Leadership?
Increases Collaboration?
Helps Decision-making?
Helps non-classtime communication?
April 26/27 TabletPC user conference at Pace University
http://csis.pace.edu/csis/news/tablepcweb.htm
Questions which were not asked in this research:
Is the enhanced productivity a novelty effect or is it a true, sustainable engagement.
Do students pay attention to their work or get distracted by the technology?
They won the 2005 Tablet PC award again.
WIPTE 2006: Lunch, the way it should be...
Interesting lunch with folks from Virginia Tech and Clemson U.
VirginiaTech engineering is making TabletPC a requirement for incoming freshmen in their engineering school. This is their plan for supporting the technology, as per a very concerned member of their community attending WIPTE:
" Uh, Um... wha..? "
They should be scared... very scared. This kinda makes me realize, all those anti-technology forces in my world, they are doing a good job of preventing such "accidental" impositions. I feel sorry for the incoming freshmen. If I were a journalist, I would follow up this lead with an investigation. he he.
anyhoo, we moved on to an interesting conversation about microsoft and the good stuff it was doing to the world:
- TabletPC SDK - free, simple and easy to use.
- ConferenceXP - free, opensource
- supporting this first conference
We discussed the way Microsoft has made attempts to change the ways in which the world looks at it, especially geekdom.
Now when presenters take unjustified potshots at MSFT. Makes the presenters sound dated. Then we marvelled at the internal process improvement video "If Microsoft Designed the iPod:"
Linked from youtube.com:
VirginiaTech engineering is making TabletPC a requirement for incoming freshmen in their engineering school. This is their plan for supporting the technology, as per a very concerned member of their community attending WIPTE:
" Uh, Um... wha..? "
They should be scared... very scared. This kinda makes me realize, all those anti-technology forces in my world, they are doing a good job of preventing such "accidental" impositions. I feel sorry for the incoming freshmen. If I were a journalist, I would follow up this lead with an investigation. he he.
anyhoo, we moved on to an interesting conversation about microsoft and the good stuff it was doing to the world:
- TabletPC SDK - free, simple and easy to use.
- ConferenceXP - free, opensource
- supporting this first conference
We discussed the way Microsoft has made attempts to change the ways in which the world looks at it, especially geekdom.
Now when presenters take unjustified potshots at MSFT. Makes the presenters sound dated. Then we marvelled at the internal process improvement video "If Microsoft Designed the iPod:"
Linked from youtube.com:
WIPTE 2006: My Post Lunch Agenda
1pm Session
I'll be attending the Utilizing the Tablet PC to Enhance Group Work in a Learning Community presentation and try to seek answers to the many project design questions. This is good education for future grant writing, I am assuming. These people are winners of the Microsoft Tablet PC grant.
This analysis focuses on an experiment in which Tablet PCs were introduced as both a central feature of the pedagogy and as a catalyst for group work in a Learning Community...
Link to Paper
I'm going to miss the DePauw U presentation on deployment of DyKnow on thier 2300 student campus.
2pm
I'll be learning about Agilix GoBinder, a note-taking related solution on Tablet PCs.
3pm
Integrating Tablet PC Technology into the Dimensions of Learning Pedagogical Framework - presentation title speaks for itself. Interesting from the point of view of learning evaluation, education research.
I'll be attending the Utilizing the Tablet PC to Enhance Group Work in a Learning Community presentation and try to seek answers to the many project design questions. This is good education for future grant writing, I am assuming. These people are winners of the Microsoft Tablet PC grant.
This analysis focuses on an experiment in which Tablet PCs were introduced as both a central feature of the pedagogy and as a catalyst for group work in a Learning Community...
Link to Paper
I'm going to miss the DePauw U presentation on deployment of DyKnow on thier 2300 student campus.
2pm
I'll be learning about Agilix GoBinder, a note-taking related solution on Tablet PCs.
3pm
Integrating Tablet PC Technology into the Dimensions of Learning Pedagogical Framework - presentation title speaks for itself. Interesting from the point of view of learning evaluation, education research.
WIPTE 2006: Interdisciplinary Project Using TabletPC
So the speaker just went into a monolog, monotone... and I could catch a few words: laptops, iPaq... and someone asked at the end of the presentation... "Um, what is an iPaq?"
that summarises the sad state of the presentation. Its a powerful and good project, but there could have been a different presenter to the project.
Its how they say "On Coffee"... jittery and scary presentation.
Good stuff: Its an ambitious project. Java application to build project management features by a team of undergrads and profs. MS Project wasn't good enough on multiple devices.
that summarises the sad state of the presentation. Its a powerful and good project, but there could have been a different presenter to the project.
Its how they say "On Coffee"... jittery and scary presentation.
Good stuff: Its an ambitious project. Java application to build project management features by a team of undergrads and profs. MS Project wasn't good enough on multiple devices.
WIPTE 2006: High Schoolers Developing Apps Using TabletPC SDK
Firstly: this session has a wow! factor.
Rapid Prototyping with the Tablet SDK – Software Development Experiences for High School Students
Authors: Jeffrey L. Popyack
Dept. of Computer Science
Drexel University
& More Authors
There is a special program for talented high schoolers in PA called the "PA Governor's Sch of Info Technlgy" (PGSIT).
Pretty strong line-up of classes. (Visual Studio programming, distributed computing and networking, HCI, Information Ethics, S/W project management).
Tour of the TabletSDK
>>> C# is the language of choice.
>>> Lots of good examples to work with in the SDK (Freely available from MSFT)
>>> Very light code for these simple applications.
>>> e.g. Its so easy - a simple ToString methods converts ink to text!
>>>
Where did the inspiration come from? From the author's trip to TechEd conference.
Rapid Prototyping with the Tablet SDK – Software Development Experiences for High School Students
Authors: Jeffrey L. Popyack
Dept. of Computer Science
Drexel University
& More Authors
There is a special program for talented high schoolers in PA called the "PA Governor's Sch of Info Technlgy" (PGSIT).
Pretty strong line-up of classes. (Visual Studio programming, distributed computing and networking, HCI, Information Ethics, S/W project management).
Tour of the TabletSDK
>>> C# is the language of choice.
>>> Lots of good examples to work with in the SDK (Freely available from MSFT)
>>> Very light code for these simple applications.
>>> e.g. Its so easy - a simple ToString methods converts ink to text!
>>>
Where did the inspiration come from? From the author's trip to TechEd conference.
WIPTE 2006: Friday Morning Keynote (Day 2)
"You higher ed people should tell us - you want incoming students to use TabletPCs"
This is an urge by the morning's keynote speaker.
Joel Backon
Director of Technology and History Teacher
Choate Rosemary Hall
It was a misdirected address, given the crowd which was largely higher ed. However, higher ed needs to listen to a new perspective. His attempts at "bringing down the system" were motivated by popular fiction works. I can't even recount how many weak sources he tried to quote to motivate the crowd. They may be revered in some circles, but did not seem to "OOh! and AAh!" the crowd.
I or anyone could have made the same mistake in presentation situations. Its forgivable. I am not big at criticism, but sometimes its sad to see a Keynote not do a Keynote's job.
I look forward to keynotes as being inspirational. Giving hints for a future path. Something fresh, connected to established norms.
"I wish there were handwriting recognition that would do math equation" --AAAAARGH! People in the audi scoffed... which he instantly picked up and said something like.... "yea, works for me but not for my Math teachers...".
I am no Microsoft employee, but if there are MSFT reps in the audience, the speaker feels it's open season for hunting. Picking on easy targets may not create a positive impression. Beating up MSFT employee for audience entertainment is an aging technique.
Pedagogical dwelling on note-taking was quite enlightening. I could connect with this part. But again, the argument had a predictable follow up. Given all the sessions yesterday, the tone could have been "So, hey, you do this" and move on. There is no need to expand on solutions which have marinated our brains yesterday.
Why am i so crnky? Is he making me cranky? I am not usually cranky.
In general, I think we need fresh thinkers, not product peddlers. Standford's Mechanical Engineering professor was fresh and inspiring to listen to. Yesterday's keynote from Clemson U was engaging.
"Why do people call me to follow up an email?" Huh!!!
"The good way to sell your product is to showcase successful users" - Sounded right until he said - "This is a message only to vendors in the room" - Huh! 2 minutes ago he was prasing DyKnow as the killer app of TabletPCs.
"Standardize your pens, you vendors" - This made good sense. Good Keynotey stuff.
Would I invite this guy to speak at my party? Not in his current avatar. Is is strong? No, weak arguments.
This is an urge by the morning's keynote speaker.
Joel Backon
Director of Technology and History Teacher
Choate Rosemary Hall
It was a misdirected address, given the crowd which was largely higher ed. However, higher ed needs to listen to a new perspective. His attempts at "bringing down the system" were motivated by popular fiction works. I can't even recount how many weak sources he tried to quote to motivate the crowd. They may be revered in some circles, but did not seem to "OOh! and AAh!" the crowd.
I or anyone could have made the same mistake in presentation situations. Its forgivable. I am not big at criticism, but sometimes its sad to see a Keynote not do a Keynote's job.
I look forward to keynotes as being inspirational. Giving hints for a future path. Something fresh, connected to established norms.
"I wish there were handwriting recognition that would do math equation" --AAAAARGH! People in the audi scoffed... which he instantly picked up and said something like.... "yea, works for me but not for my Math teachers...".
I am no Microsoft employee, but if there are MSFT reps in the audience, the speaker feels it's open season for hunting. Picking on easy targets may not create a positive impression. Beating up MSFT employee for audience entertainment is an aging technique.
Pedagogical dwelling on note-taking was quite enlightening. I could connect with this part. But again, the argument had a predictable follow up. Given all the sessions yesterday, the tone could have been "So, hey, you do this" and move on. There is no need to expand on solutions which have marinated our brains yesterday.
Why am i so crnky? Is he making me cranky? I am not usually cranky.
In general, I think we need fresh thinkers, not product peddlers. Standford's Mechanical Engineering professor was fresh and inspiring to listen to. Yesterday's keynote from Clemson U was engaging.
"Why do people call me to follow up an email?" Huh!!!
"The good way to sell your product is to showcase successful users" - Sounded right until he said - "This is a message only to vendors in the room" - Huh! 2 minutes ago he was prasing DyKnow as the killer app of TabletPCs.
"Standardize your pens, you vendors" - This made good sense. Good Keynotey stuff.
Would I invite this guy to speak at my party? Not in his current avatar. Is is strong? No, weak arguments.
Thursday, April 6, 2006
WIPTE 2006: TabletPC Give Aways: I won a Tablet PC!!!!
YESSSSS! I am a winner of a Tablet PC.
I want to thank my....
I want to thank my....
WIPTE 2006: Corp Panel w/Online Blog
4pm
So the corporate panel is about to begin and there is a real-time, online blog:
http://wipte.blogspot.com
Jane Prey's 5 Minutes from Microsoft invites creative ideas
4 14pm
HP's Jim Vanides: "Technology is about what students produce, not what students consume" - from one of his interactions in K-12 schools.
4 17pm
DyKnow's Laura Small
The history of DyKnow and its wide application & experience. The product is mature and so is the service.
4 20pm
HP has funded tabletPC studies in Italy and Australia in fields of Nursing...
4 36pm
Any new Ink Features in Vista?
Elliot from MSFT "Vista is Coolness"
- Added Ink Analysis APIs (Uncharted, no books available)
- Text Recognition, Hndwriting Personalization (90s technology from handhelds)
- discontiguous selections in file folders (automating Ctrl+Click) with AJAX style selection.
4 45pm
Q to Panel: What is the 5 year vision?
one gem answer (MSFT): Desktop's survival is threatened. February was the first time that laptop sales exceeded desktop sales.
4 57pm
Annotation is golden. Path to annotation (animated annotations) is Platinum. -- HP's Jim
So the corporate panel is about to begin and there is a real-time, online blog:
http://wipte.blogspot.com
Jane Prey's 5 Minutes from Microsoft invites creative ideas
4 14pm
HP's Jim Vanides: "Technology is about what students produce, not what students consume" - from one of his interactions in K-12 schools.
4 17pm
DyKnow's Laura Small
The history of DyKnow and its wide application & experience. The product is mature and so is the service.
4 20pm
HP has funded tabletPC studies in Italy and Australia in fields of Nursing...
4 36pm
Any new Ink Features in Vista?
Elliot from MSFT "Vista is Coolness"
- Added Ink Analysis APIs (Uncharted, no books available)
- Text Recognition, Hndwriting Personalization (90s technology from handhelds)
- discontiguous selections in file folders (automating Ctrl+Click) with AJAX style selection.
4 45pm
Q to Panel: What is the 5 year vision?
one gem answer (MSFT): Desktop's survival is threatened. February was the first time that laptop sales exceeded desktop sales.
4 57pm
Annotation is golden. Path to annotation (animated annotations) is Platinum. -- HP's Jim
WIPTE 2006: DyKnow DyKnow everywhere
It is high time that I learnt about DyKnow... its been a subject of discussion and expenditure in many areas.
This particular session is The Calf Path*: One University's Experience with Pen-enabled Technologies where a Title III Strengthening Institutions grant for $1.7 million focused on infusing technology into general education courses was awarded to UCA in October 2001.
Here is the full paper from U of Central Arkansas:
http://www.itap.purdue.edu/tlt/conference/wipte/Papers/cone_charlotte.pdf
So, what's new for me? Not the technology but this animal that I encountered: A title III grant:
Having seen the Winona State presentation and then this presentation, it looks like smaller institutions have much more maneuverability, as Universities. As a University, UM is big and decentralized and a lot will depend on how our decentralized units choose to believe and think. the eLearning retreat should be a critical milestone - no points for saying that.
This particular session is The Calf Path*: One University's Experience with Pen-enabled Technologies where a Title III Strengthening Institutions grant for $1.7 million focused on infusing technology into general education courses was awarded to UCA in October 2001.
Here is the full paper from U of Central Arkansas:
http://www.itap.purdue.edu/tlt/conference/wipte/Papers/cone_charlotte.pdf
So, what's new for me? Not the technology but this animal that I encountered: A title III grant:
The purpose of the Title III grant is to accomplish a twofold goal: to infuse technology into instruction while simultaneously enhancing interaction among all classroom participants.
Having seen the Winona State presentation and then this presentation, it looks like smaller institutions have much more maneuverability, as Universities. As a University, UM is big and decentralized and a lot will depend on how our decentralized units choose to believe and think. the eLearning retreat should be a critical milestone - no points for saying that.
WIPTE 2006: TabletPC Utopia: 100% TabletPC Deplymnt
Ken Graetz is director of distance at Winona State, MN
His job is to make all these people use them:
they are not pilot testing - everyone (staff + students) have one! Whoa?
Background:
7500 tablets deplyed currently working with Gateway (6000 undergrads, 1000 grads)
Students/Faculty offered choice: Mac iBook or Gateway? 3% chose iMacs.
M275s were the starting Gateway. Now replacing them with M285.
50% of faculty integrated Tablets in their instruction. Using OneNote instead of the projector.
LMS is http://www.desire2learn.com/
The Pedagogy:
- Turn in statistics homework as one file, which is a blended mode file with text, handwriting, screen captures from SPSS etc.
- the idea is that the homework is being turned in as it should have been with complex formulae, SPSS graphs and text as one digital file
- Used dropbox feature of LMS (D2L)
- Grading using digital ink.
Trends:
58% assignment submission used Word
40% assignment used OneNote
Many students stopped using OneNote
--- Why? Less familiarity
--- No training in how to set up notebooks in OneNote
--- Mis-submitting personal notes due to lack of traiing (Homework + Mom's to-do list + grafitti) - Really funny!
His job is to make all these people use them:
they are not pilot testing - everyone (staff + students) have one! Whoa?
Background:
7500 tablets deplyed currently working with Gateway (6000 undergrads, 1000 grads)
Students/Faculty offered choice: Mac iBook or Gateway? 3% chose iMacs.
M275s were the starting Gateway. Now replacing them with M285.
50% of faculty integrated Tablets in their instruction. Using OneNote instead of the projector.
LMS is http://www.desire2learn.com/
The Pedagogy:
- Turn in statistics homework as one file, which is a blended mode file with text, handwriting, screen captures from SPSS etc.
- the idea is that the homework is being turned in as it should have been with complex formulae, SPSS graphs and text as one digital file
- Used dropbox feature of LMS (D2L)
- Grading using digital ink.
Trends:
58% assignment submission used Word
40% assignment used OneNote
Many students stopped using OneNote
--- Why? Less familiarity
--- No training in how to set up notebooks in OneNote
--- Mis-submitting personal notes due to lack of traiing (Homework + Mom's to-do list + grafitti) - Really funny!
WIPTE 2006: Does the Pen Really Matter / DyKnow Demo
DOES THE PEN REALLY MATTER?
David Mutchler, Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
http://www.itap.purdue.edu/tlt/conference/wipte/Papers/mutchler_david.pdf
Paper shows results from survey about things like, giving Tablets to students, use of Tablets for undergrads, some controlled studies of students using Tablet PCs.
Live interactive "Wiki" Whiteboard - DYKNOW - developed with a HP grant at
http://www.dyknow.com/
A live ice breaker excercises using DyKnow:
The client is free. Similar to classroom presenter.
David Mutchler, Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
http://www.itap.purdue.edu/tlt/conference/wipte/Papers/mutchler_david.pdf
Paper shows results from survey about things like, giving Tablets to students, use of Tablets for undergrads, some controlled studies of students using Tablet PCs.
Live interactive "Wiki" Whiteboard - DYKNOW - developed with a HP grant at
http://www.dyknow.com/
A live ice breaker excercises using DyKnow:
The client is free. Similar to classroom presenter.
WIPTE 2006: Some Take Aways: Tablet PC Recommendations
[From some brainstorming usin DyKnow]
Whats the best Tablet PC?
Electrovaya SC-3100 ($2100 – $2600) [& others]
Lenova X41 ($1800 - $1900) (IBM)
Whats the best Value Tablet PC?
HP TC4200 ($1550)
Gateway ($1000-1300)
Whats the best Tablet PC?
Electrovaya SC-3100 ($2100 – $2600) [& others]
Lenova X41 ($1800 - $1900) (IBM)
Whats the best Value Tablet PC?
HP TC4200 ($1550)
Gateway ($1000-1300)
WIPTE 2006: Ubiquitous Presenter - Classroom Presenter
Classroom Presenter & Ubiquitous Presenter
General
-- Very Hot technology!
-- Eliminates the need for clickers!
-- feedback is instant, anonymous, and
-- Very similar to centra's functionality with whiteboard and annotated slides
-- includes polling and instantaeous graphing of responses
-- Ubiquitous presentor is independent of ConferenceXP
-- Its a Java based technology (push tech?).
-- Instantaneous feedback is OK unless the cognitive load of the feedback on the instructor does not disable him!
Ubiquitous Presenter at UV
- Web based networking
- Supports PDA, Laptop, Cellphone,
- 3 Second polling
- They are providing server for use right now!!! http://up.ucsd.edu
- Summer they will release code for setting up our own server.
- Abilty to review later stroke by stroke
- Stores instructor work as well as student work.
- Ink – Requires Java
- Text Only version – enter text in boxes and move it around.
- Multiple choice – pop quizzes
- Student have the option of engagement:
o MC
o Text
o Draw
o Etc.
Paper – SIGCSE paper available through their digital library – GET IT
THEY WANT COLLABORATORS in various disciplines
No statistics yet on learning evaluation, they are open to collaborate on student learning.
Page hits increase steeply during the mid-terms. Actually 2 days before… and really between 12am and 9am before the midterm. – People are using it in CS classes in UCSD.
The review does not include audio, but they are interested in collaborating with people who could work with them to build those capabilities.
Interesting: Students go back and review other student submissions because they want to see how level is their playing field. They go back and see other student's submissions and gain self efficacy.
General
-- Very Hot technology!
-- Eliminates the need for clickers!
-- feedback is instant, anonymous, and
-- Very similar to centra's functionality with whiteboard and annotated slides
-- includes polling and instantaeous graphing of responses
-- Ubiquitous presentor is independent of ConferenceXP
-- Its a Java based technology (push tech?).
-- Instantaneous feedback is OK unless the cognitive load of the feedback on the instructor does not disable him!
Ubiquitous Presenter at UV
- Web based networking
- Supports PDA, Laptop, Cellphone,
- 3 Second polling
- They are providing server for use right now!!! http://up.ucsd.edu
- Summer they will release code for setting up our own server.
- Abilty to review later stroke by stroke
- Stores instructor work as well as student work.
- Ink – Requires Java
- Text Only version – enter text in boxes and move it around.
- Multiple choice – pop quizzes
- Student have the option of engagement:
o MC
o Text
o Draw
o Etc.
Paper – SIGCSE paper available through their digital library – GET IT
THEY WANT COLLABORATORS in various disciplines
No statistics yet on learning evaluation, they are open to collaborate on student learning.
Page hits increase steeply during the mid-terms. Actually 2 days before… and really between 12am and 9am before the midterm. – People are using it in CS classes in UCSD.
The review does not include audio, but they are interested in collaborating with people who could work with them to build those capabilities.
Interesting: Students go back and review other student submissions because they want to see how level is their playing field. They go back and see other student's submissions and gain self efficacy.
WIPTE 2006: Screencasting in Stanford
Ed Carryer - Mechanical Engineering - Stanford Univ
Used Acetate for 18 years - because loves annotations. Likes to whip out annotated overheads whenever students ask questions.
1989/90 SITN (Stanford Instr Television Network) started a course.
-- televised... ok
-- recorded... lots of review value
-- taught in an empty 200 capacity auditorium (similar to engineering's DL classroom).
-- PIP format
Students like it:
-- TIVO effect (watch later)
-- Review (watch again)
Revolution in Fall 2002:
- Camtasia (Persistent Ink)
- Co-teaching with a Powerpoint proficient co-instructor
- Tablet PC ended hand eye co-ordination issues with separate tablet (case for instructors who tape at home as against in class where sympodiums are available).
- Tablet Extensions for Microsoft Office.
Gave birth to “screencasting� in January 2003 (video captures of screen action)
- Started small – small class, changed a few lectures.
- Moved to screencasting entirely in Spring by notchng upto graduate class.
His choices in technology:
- 12� felt like an overhead, 10� was too small
- Felt need for more buttons, and need to turn of edge buttons.
- Recommends USB mics - on board soundcard is crap (just like our experience)
- He actually instructs in class wearing a headset mic.
- Produced Windows Media + Stanford’s Own Streaming Server
- 5 fps
It was interesting – when his Tablet crashed during the presentation, his keypad was useful to tab between windows and recover from the error.
Surveying:
- Paper Survey: Twice per “quarter� – After midterm and after finals.
- Other results – students hated ppt without annotations, because it felt “canned� and not that worth the while.
Versus Overheads:
- 96% students think that they Somethat/Strongly agree that the images due to TabletPC Projection was much better (67%) Somewhat/strongly agree.
- Readability: 95% Strongly Agree, 67% Strongly Agree
- 69% in-class students go back and review the materials (guessing, foreign students who are not that slick with English).
Next Steps – Future:
- Cursor Visibility (he turns on mouse trails to make the cursor more visible – we should do this)
- Alternate delivery – Classroom Presenter – Very exciting –
o Remote Screen
o Big Crosshar cursor
o Cannot use Camtasia and Classroom Presener at the same time because Camtasia wants H.W acceleration turned off and Presenter wants it on (otherwise becomes sluggish).
Questions:
Does he do distance ed?
- No because 75% of students are in the lab
- Lab and the community-sense
Podcasting of videos?
- Yes, he is probably going into it…
Attendance Problems?
- No problems… students like to be in class and ask questions in class
- Some people with class conflicts are taking this class 100% online, and results will be available at the end of it.
Gave a DVD of all his lectures at the end of it.
Used Acetate for 18 years - because loves annotations. Likes to whip out annotated overheads whenever students ask questions.
1989/90 SITN (Stanford Instr Television Network) started a course.
-- televised... ok
-- recorded... lots of review value
-- taught in an empty 200 capacity auditorium (similar to engineering's DL classroom).
-- PIP format
Students like it:
-- TIVO effect (watch later)
-- Review (watch again)
Revolution in Fall 2002:
- Camtasia (Persistent Ink)
- Co-teaching with a Powerpoint proficient co-instructor
- Tablet PC ended hand eye co-ordination issues with separate tablet (case for instructors who tape at home as against in class where sympodiums are available).
- Tablet Extensions for Microsoft Office.
Gave birth to “screencasting� in January 2003 (video captures of screen action)
- Started small – small class, changed a few lectures.
- Moved to screencasting entirely in Spring by notchng upto graduate class.
His choices in technology:
- 12� felt like an overhead, 10� was too small
- Felt need for more buttons, and need to turn of edge buttons.
- Recommends USB mics - on board soundcard is crap (just like our experience)
- He actually instructs in class wearing a headset mic.
- Produced Windows Media + Stanford’s Own Streaming Server
- 5 fps
It was interesting – when his Tablet crashed during the presentation, his keypad was useful to tab between windows and recover from the error.
Surveying:
- Paper Survey: Twice per “quarter� – After midterm and after finals.
- Other results – students hated ppt without annotations, because it felt “canned� and not that worth the while.
Versus Overheads:
- 96% students think that they Somethat/Strongly agree that the images due to TabletPC Projection was much better (67%) Somewhat/strongly agree.
- Readability: 95% Strongly Agree, 67% Strongly Agree
- 69% in-class students go back and review the materials (guessing, foreign students who are not that slick with English).
Next Steps – Future:
- Cursor Visibility (he turns on mouse trails to make the cursor more visible – we should do this)
- Alternate delivery – Classroom Presenter – Very exciting –
o Remote Screen
o Big Crosshar cursor
o Cannot use Camtasia and Classroom Presener at the same time because Camtasia wants H.W acceleration turned off and Presenter wants it on (otherwise becomes sluggish).
Questions:
Does he do distance ed?
- No because 75% of students are in the lab
- Lab and the community-sense
Podcasting of videos?
- Yes, he is probably going into it…
Attendance Problems?
- No problems… students like to be in class and ask questions in class
- Some people with class conflicts are taking this class 100% online, and results will be available at the end of it.
Gave a DVD of all his lectures at the end of it.
WIPTE 2006: Notes on Keynote
Barbara Weaver, Clemson University
Tablet PC keynote address -
Clemson is a agricultural/animal husbandry type of university.
Started the laptop initiative in 2002. Work started in earnest in June 2002.
Implementation of Tablet PC by an English teacher in Clemson University
Hired 6 grad students for faculty development program.
Strong competition in retaining graduate students from computer science & electronics engineering (other faculty steal students)
Had a faculty member walk upto her after faculty training and blasted her - "Nothing you said was helpful, you have wasted 2 days of my life"
Story "Larry Grimes" (Live presentation using Breeze, just for the heck of it, at a conference, and stood there and drank coffee).
Developed "Laptop Faculty Lab" for faculty learning.
Andrew Levin teaches music appreciation - wanted rich internet application for his course - with social software component. "Music Grid" was born.
"Message Grid" evolved out of various other departments wanting to add that social / discussion component to their pedagogy. (Devlpr - Roy).
Animal Vet Science were all "tablet enabled".
Change in Provost situation caused big problems (succumed to cancer after fighting 2 years). Late Provost was a big champion of laptops.
Now they wanted to go back to Ink... so there was the case of the missing ink.. stuck between traditional ink-thinking faculty and laptop driven economy.
The gap could have been filled with a Tablet PC.
She sends a call for ppl in need of help: and the same acrid professor comes back and says "all she said was proven right over time". (the highlight!!!!) the facMem asked went to a lunch meeting and couldn't stop telling her about his realization.
Now the laptop lounge became a tech lounge with Tablets, ipods, clickers.
PROBELMS!! - Current spaces are not exactly lappy/tabby friendly. (e,g, auditoriums).
So they have what are "Scale Up" rooms which are more geared towards technology:
- room for lappy/textbook
- room for instructors to move around
- Sympodiums
- best Scale Ups around
Governor says - if you put up Ink produced materials, then you have to make it 508 compliance.
- Have no idea how they are going to do it
- The only faculty not worried are `the one who are
70% students said they learnt best when faculty is annotating powerpoint slides and
75% felt they were more engaged
65% want materials to show up on thier lappys automatically.
55% want to add notes to these
45% wish they had a tablet (they are figuring out how to get there).
Her grandson Isaac - 8 year old learnt to use the tablet PC, highliting and all the
Take aways:
focus on pedagogy, not the technology.
interdisciplinary collaboration is important to really blossom application of technology.
get faculty who are willing to change.
engage students.
Personal likes:
Grading - especially eportfolios
also grading Word documents, including the comments, wherein ink can be written - this is more close to real world.
Image from the WIPTE Blog:
Tablet PC keynote address -
Clemson is a agricultural/animal husbandry type of university.
Started the laptop initiative in 2002. Work started in earnest in June 2002.
Implementation of Tablet PC by an English teacher in Clemson University
Hired 6 grad students for faculty development program.
Strong competition in retaining graduate students from computer science & electronics engineering (other faculty steal students)
Had a faculty member walk upto her after faculty training and blasted her - "Nothing you said was helpful, you have wasted 2 days of my life"
Story "Larry Grimes" (Live presentation using Breeze, just for the heck of it, at a conference, and stood there and drank coffee).
Developed "Laptop Faculty Lab" for faculty learning.
Andrew Levin teaches music appreciation - wanted rich internet application for his course - with social software component. "Music Grid" was born.
"Message Grid" evolved out of various other departments wanting to add that social / discussion component to their pedagogy. (Devlpr - Roy).
Animal Vet Science were all "tablet enabled".
Change in Provost situation caused big problems (succumed to cancer after fighting 2 years). Late Provost was a big champion of laptops.
Now they wanted to go back to Ink... so there was the case of the missing ink.. stuck between traditional ink-thinking faculty and laptop driven economy.
The gap could have been filled with a Tablet PC.
She sends a call for ppl in need of help: and the same acrid professor comes back and says "all she said was proven right over time". (the highlight!!!!) the facMem asked went to a lunch meeting and couldn't stop telling her about his realization.
Now the laptop lounge became a tech lounge with Tablets, ipods, clickers.
PROBELMS!! - Current spaces are not exactly lappy/tabby friendly. (e,g, auditoriums).
So they have what are "Scale Up" rooms which are more geared towards technology:
- room for lappy/textbook
- room for instructors to move around
- Sympodiums
- best Scale Ups around
Governor says - if you put up Ink produced materials, then you have to make it 508 compliance.
- Have no idea how they are going to do it
- The only faculty not worried are `the one who are
70% students said they learnt best when faculty is annotating powerpoint slides and
75% felt they were more engaged
65% want materials to show up on thier lappys automatically.
55% want to add notes to these
45% wish they had a tablet (they are figuring out how to get there).
Her grandson Isaac - 8 year old learnt to use the tablet PC, highliting and all the
Take aways:
focus on pedagogy, not the technology.
interdisciplinary collaboration is important to really blossom application of technology.
get faculty who are willing to change.
engage students.
Personal likes:
Grading - especially eportfolios
also grading Word documents, including the comments, wherein ink can be written - this is more close to real world.
Image from the WIPTE Blog:
Monday, March 13, 2006
AJAX Celebrates 1st B-Day (Last Month)
Next Year I Hope to be on the guestlist!
http://weblogs.java.net/blog/gmurray71/archive/2006/02/happy_1st_birth_1.html
http://weblogs.java.net/blog/gmurray71/archive/2006/02/happy_1st_birth_1.html
Nancy Allee Honored
Some great news this morning!
Nancy Allee has been approved for membership in the Academy of Health Information Professionals at the Distinguished Member level.
"denotes the highest standards of professional competency and achievement in the field of health care information."
Nancy Allee
Link to the roster: http://www.mlanet.org/academy/roster1.html
Nancy Allee has been approved for membership in the Academy of Health Information Professionals at the Distinguished Member level.
"denotes the highest standards of professional competency and achievement in the field of health care information."
Nancy Allee
Link to the roster: http://www.mlanet.org/academy/roster1.html
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Wireless Projectors: Seen & Heard
Someone mentioned Wireless Projectors which go well with tablet PCs if the instructor is moving around the classroom:
Its the AirProjector, an accessory which allows ordinary projectors to be wirelessly enabled, which I thought was worth the mention:
http://www.alliance-intl.com/airprojector/
Its the AirProjector, an accessory which allows ordinary projectors to be wirelessly enabled, which I thought was worth the mention:
http://www.alliance-intl.com/airprojector/
Podcasting Automation
Podcasting Script
Release: 02.22.2006
The rss.cfm script went live. This is a script that picks up mixed media from an afs directory and generates a podcast.
Features:
Media Types Supported: mp3, aac, m4v, mp4, m4a, m4b
Takes two URL parameters to locate the media: course ID (e.g. HBHED654) and semester (e.g.W06)
- these two parameters are the directories created under 'podcast', however these have to be valid courses listed under course database with a valid instructor
Bugs:
- No error handling for cases where course description or instructor query fails - need to add defaults.
- The title for PDFs is coming out to be "Lecture Audio for..." - this needs fixing.
Release: 02.22.2006
The rss.cfm script went live. This is a script that picks up mixed media from an afs directory and generates a podcast.
Features:
Media Types Supported: mp3, aac, m4v, mp4, m4a, m4b
Takes two URL parameters to locate the media: course ID (e.g. HBHED654) and semester (e.g.W06)
- these two parameters are the directories created under 'podcast', however these have to be valid courses listed under course database with a valid instructor
Bugs:
- No error handling for cases where course description or instructor query fails - need to add defaults.
- The title for PDFs is coming out to be "Lecture Audio for..." - this needs fixing.
Editing Box Under $2000!
NY Times as featured this story for this box with ambitious features.
MiKo, a portable media work center from Open Labs, is a computer designed to make music and a whole lot more.
if (Video Editor + Sound Studio >= $2000) {
Shoutout(Great!!!);
}
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Seen & Heard: Windows Vista....
"Windows Vista will natively support wireless projectors over some standardized protocol."
in a dev list...
in a dev list...
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
New ConferenceXP Capabilities
University of Nebraska, Lincoln has developed new capabilities for ConferenceXP, the open source project sponsored by Microsoft. Open source and Microsoft in the same sentence? Yessir. I have seen eye brows go up at meetings at this statement from people who are far from supercilious.
(UNL)Anyhoo, ConferenceXP is a free, opensource, conferencing product that works best in Multicast, but runs allright for clients on a Unicast network too, as we tested and established last month. ConferenceXP consists of the Client, Archive, Reflector and Venue services which are essential building blocks.
Researches are developing 'capabilities' within the open source framework. UNL has created two: Buddy Group and Question Answering. They are calling for interested parties to test these out. I can only feel that Conference XP is moving closer to Centra, which has capabilities like remote participants can 'raise hands' express approval/disapproval through icons & emoticons, have application sharing, whiteboard, pop quizzes etc.
Watch out for CXP! Become a .Net distributed application developer if you really want to make it big.
Read it all up at http://www.conferencexp.net
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
NSF cyberinfrastructure office
June 1st will see Dan Atkins, founding dean of the School of Information will lead the NSF Cyberinfrastructure Office at the
University of Michigan.
http://www.umich.edu/~urecord/0506/Feb13_06/07.shtml
University of Michigan.
http://www.umich.edu/~urecord/0506/Feb13_06/07.shtml
Monday, February 13, 2006
Rodney McPhail of the Dept. of Biological Science, Purdue University has reviewed a product in his blog: Pod Podagogy.
The product is iPresent for Mac only. This manages creation of slideshows and managing them on the iPod for slideshow presentations. PPT, Keynote and PDFs are supported.
THIS IS NOT ENHANCED PODCASTS as my first impression was. But anyways, good to learn about a new professor, a new product and a new blog at the same time.
There are other cool software at http://www.zapptek.com/index.html for making your iPod into a PDA, document tex-to-speech etc.
The product is iPresent for Mac only. This manages creation of slideshows and managing them on the iPod for slideshow presentations. PPT, Keynote and PDFs are supported.
THIS IS NOT ENHANCED PODCASTS as my first impression was. But anyways, good to learn about a new professor, a new product and a new blog at the same time.
There are other cool software at http://www.zapptek.com/index.html for making your iPod into a PDA, document tex-to-speech etc.
Friday, February 10, 2006
A Web of Flyswatters
Yesterday I tried out a configuration of 4 flyswatters (Crown Soundgrabber 2s) in SPH2 Auditorium to see how well instructor and audience audio can be obtained without depending on individual serving mics (lapels, Shure 58s, or wireless avatars which are handed around and passed around).
The idea is to avoid audio-postproduction, which is such a productvity killer and time waster. So here are few samples which includes flyswatter-only audio, mixed live by yours truly. The mic positions in the SPH2 Auditorium is indicated:
Interaction with a student on the east side of the auditorium:
Interaction with a student on the center column of the auditorium:
Interaction with a student on the center & east column of the auditorium:
The idea is to avoid audio-postproduction, which is such a productvity killer and time waster. So here are few samples which includes flyswatter-only audio, mixed live by yours truly. The mic positions in the SPH2 Auditorium is indicated:
Interaction with a student on the east side of the auditorium:
Interaction with a student on the center column of the auditorium:
Interaction with a student on the center & east column of the auditorium:
SOA & Reap: A Brave New WebWorld
SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) is the now and future of web application development. SOA is about exposing webservices for consumption and interaction and the hot skills are building integrations.
A SOA expert, who works specifically with WebMethods, a business integration tool (correct me here, I am new to using this jargon) says that the biggest institutions will be busy building and exposing webservices and the smaller ones will be working to integrate with them. A very simplistic view of a really vast field, for starters.
Google's Map API and Amazon's Book Lookup API are probably examples. How will it pan out in higher education? Central administrative services consumed by distributed units is one application and is probably being done in a highly custom mode by coding specialists working to integrate legacy and current systems.
What might be services for the richmedia library? Content, yes. Metadata, more so. Something that is not available for low cost, being made available to the masses. We'll see how this churns and turns.
What are the hot SOA products?
WebMethods
WebSphere etc.
Although this information may not be news to people already working in ERP/CRM, this was news to me, learning about the expanse and intensity of implementations this consultant friend of mine has been through in the last 4 years: from government to education, to publishers to retail, from network solution providers to healthcare... he's seen and done it all in the field of WebMethods.
A SOA expert, who works specifically with WebMethods, a business integration tool (correct me here, I am new to using this jargon) says that the biggest institutions will be busy building and exposing webservices and the smaller ones will be working to integrate with them. A very simplistic view of a really vast field, for starters.
Google's Map API and Amazon's Book Lookup API are probably examples. How will it pan out in higher education? Central administrative services consumed by distributed units is one application and is probably being done in a highly custom mode by coding specialists working to integrate legacy and current systems.
What might be services for the richmedia library? Content, yes. Metadata, more so. Something that is not available for low cost, being made available to the masses. We'll see how this churns and turns.
What are the hot SOA products?
WebMethods
WebSphere etc.
Although this information may not be news to people already working in ERP/CRM, this was news to me, learning about the expanse and intensity of implementations this consultant friend of mine has been through in the last 4 years: from government to education, to publishers to retail, from network solution providers to healthcare... he's seen and done it all in the field of WebMethods.
The World of Smartboards, Sympodiums is about to change
The technology is multi-touch screens, developed at NYU (as per post on the Cult of Mac blog). And the interesting part is that Apple has patented these interactions, which means... a TabletMac?
[Video was removed as it was posted on YouTube without proper copyright permissions - search "multi touch" on YouTube to see possible legal versions. The video thumbnail should appear like this:
]
[Video was removed as it was posted on YouTube without proper copyright permissions - search "multi touch" on YouTube to see possible legal versions. The video thumbnail should appear like this:
]Tuesday, February 7, 2006
DIY Podcasting Workshop
Last Tuesday (Jan 31)
The first and proably last of this semester's podcasting workshops went quite well. Attendance was from the Dean's Office, Internet2 and the school in general.
Everyone was able to get through the registration for the three services necessary to start phone-podcasting.
MBL said she might have students phone blog from New Orleans. Others wanted to see how it might pan out in their organizations.
Lets see...
The first and proably last of this semester's podcasting workshops went quite well. Attendance was from the Dean's Office, Internet2 and the school in general.
Everyone was able to get through the registration for the three services necessary to start phone-podcasting.
MBL said she might have students phone blog from New Orleans. Others wanted to see how it might pan out in their organizations.
Lets see...
Sunday, January 29, 2006
Update: UpLoad.cfm Created
UpLoad.cfm form has been created and tested locally on the lab's dev server (not the SPH dev server).
Applications:
This form could be modified to create upload forms for various stages of processing. Especially to send audio for processing to the video lab before it becomes a podcast.
so... pbbly create a RawUplaod.cfm from this file later.
The features of this cool code are:
1. Mime-type restriction for upload
2. File size restriction for the uploaded file so that it doesn't kill the server or anything.
Drawback: The mime-type checking is done on the server after the upload - this is not a major problem as such, because its not that it checks file size after upload. Its just the mime type. However, the question is - what if some-one gets a malicious file with wav/mp3 extention to upload?
In that case, we have to make sure that this page is restricted to authorized users only.
Next Steps:
1. Create a processing page for adding metadata to the file on upload. Not in the same form, because there shouldn't be a frustrating situation where the upload failed and all the entered metadata needs to be entered again. That would frustrate people. However, we don't want the uploaded file to be orphaned if there was no data entry on the metadata page - so update the database with the filename, date of creation, Coursename, length (size in bytes) values. The AddMetadata page will then take over.
2. AddMetadata Page: Update the record created in the previous page with additional Metadata. Give choice of loading fields from a set template and then doing only minor changes. Also, ability to add searchable text from a powerpoint file is a great idea. The rtf export of the powerpoint slide, with demarcated slide numbers. This might be a little too ambitious.... but, well!
More later.
Applications:
This form could be modified to create upload forms for various stages of processing. Especially to send audio for processing to the video lab before it becomes a podcast.
so... pbbly create a RawUplaod.cfm from this file later.
The features of this cool code are:
1. Mime-type restriction for upload
2. File size restriction for the uploaded file so that it doesn't kill the server or anything.
Drawback: The mime-type checking is done on the server after the upload - this is not a major problem as such, because its not that it checks file size after upload. Its just the mime type. However, the question is - what if some-one gets a malicious file with wav/mp3 extention to upload?
In that case, we have to make sure that this page is restricted to authorized users only.
Next Steps:
1. Create a processing page for adding metadata to the file on upload. Not in the same form, because there shouldn't be a frustrating situation where the upload failed and all the entered metadata needs to be entered again. That would frustrate people. However, we don't want the uploaded file to be orphaned if there was no data entry on the metadata page - so update the database with the filename, date of creation, Coursename, length (size in bytes) values. The AddMetadata page will then take over.
2. AddMetadata Page: Update the record created in the previous page with additional Metadata. Give choice of loading fields from a set template and then doing only minor changes. Also, ability to add searchable text from a powerpoint file is a great idea. The rtf export of the powerpoint slide, with demarcated slide numbers. This might be a little too ambitious.... but, well!
More later.
Coldfusion Podcasting Solution: Revival
On Friday, the 27th, I was able to retrieve and test the old coldfusion code from last year, which spews out a RSS feed into the browser. Still waiting for the Coldfusion development server to be Fixed. It seems like it is on their January To-Do list. Hopefully once that is up, this derailed project will take off and we can serve some podcasts - piping hot.
Also, the original idea behind the diracaster.php script was to get something working since the coldfusion dev server was down. Now that it will come up, we will no longer need the php script and the lands can rejoice in coldfusioness again.
Also, the original idea behind the diracaster.php script was to get something working since the coldfusion dev server was down. Now that it will come up, we will no longer need the php script and the lands can rejoice in coldfusioness again.
ConferencedClass: More Sunday R&D
Today, I think I achieved a small breakthrough - being able to interface audio from 1 soundgrabber into the instructor's Centra station without any noise.
Waiting on the AAA batteries: I think an interesting dry run would be with ALL the gizmos connected, because in the past I've seen wierd noise sources when the actual setup is established.
Here are some noteworthy settings for the pre-amp and M-Audio Mixer which worked out today:
Shure Pre-Amp Fed to M-Audio Interface by XLR-XLR connector.
Shure Pre-Amp Settings:
Wired Lapel: 7 (10 Scale)
Soundgrabber: 9 (10 Scale)
Master: Almost 12 (12 Scale)
M-Audio External Sound Card:
Mic Input: 1330 (clock comparision)
Mix: 100% Input
Output: 100% (Maxed)
Adjustment Principle
Adjusted sound levels at all stages until Centra Audio Wizard was not recording significant noise. This will be a part of the setup on conferenced class mornings.
G'nite
Waiting on the AAA batteries: I think an interesting dry run would be with ALL the gizmos connected, because in the past I've seen wierd noise sources when the actual setup is established.
Here are some noteworthy settings for the pre-amp and M-Audio Mixer which worked out today:
Shure Pre-Amp Fed to M-Audio Interface by XLR-XLR connector.
Shure Pre-Amp Settings:
Wired Lapel: 7 (10 Scale)
Soundgrabber: 9 (10 Scale)
Master: Almost 12 (12 Scale)
M-Audio External Sound Card:
Mic Input: 1330 (clock comparision)
Mix: 100% Input
Output: 100% (Maxed)
Adjustment Principle
Adjusted sound levels at all stages until Centra Audio Wizard was not recording significant noise. This will be a part of the setup on conferenced class mornings.
G'nite
Friday, January 27, 2006
Apple Podcasting Class: At the Dude
This is a good class to take. John Hickey, Apple Systems Engineer was the instructor.
Some take aways for me:
1. Export in QuicktimePro as Mpeg4 BUT name it as .m4a instead of mp4 (the default).
2. I used to think that podcasting directions is a silly thing to do. But!!! Found some useful insight:
Podcast for Directions: Why not silly -
- prevents nausea
- allows people to use their attention properly
- idea of a professor who 'read' his coursepack to
3. The itpc:// protocol was something new. This was the question running through my heart last evening "How the heck do I cut down a user's step of copying and pasting the podcast URL. Whoa!!! Apple has Internet Explorer obeying the itpc protocol to launch iTunes! That was an eye opener. - This should be included in the podcasting workshop.
4. Other good stuff:
Podcast Interviewing: the new iLife has integrated iChat (4 videos at a time), Garageband, iPhoto etc etc. This is fantastic stuff, really.
Garageband: Very efficient and easy production of enhanced podcasts! Mind blowing, sire. Photo syncing, automatic ducking (lowing bg music when speaker speaks, jingles, canned loops).
5. The iMac photo presentation (and the reflection effects) are done using latest AJAX technology.
6. Profcast - what I din't know was the ability of a presenter to switch between presentations while creating an enhanced profcast. Keynote and Profcast integration was quite good.
Some take aways for me:
1. Export in QuicktimePro as Mpeg4 BUT name it as .m4a instead of mp4 (the default).
2. I used to think that podcasting directions is a silly thing to do. But!!! Found some useful insight:
Podcast for Directions: Why not silly -
- prevents nausea
- allows people to use their attention properly
- idea of a professor who 'read' his coursepack to
3. The itpc:// protocol was something new. This was the question running through my heart last evening "How the heck do I cut down a user's step of copying and pasting the podcast URL. Whoa!!! Apple has Internet Explorer obeying the itpc protocol to launch iTunes! That was an eye opener. - This should be included in the podcasting workshop.
4. Other good stuff:
Podcast Interviewing: the new iLife has integrated iChat (4 videos at a time), Garageband, iPhoto etc etc. This is fantastic stuff, really.
Garageband: Very efficient and easy production of enhanced podcasts! Mind blowing, sire. Photo syncing, automatic ducking (lowing bg music when speaker speaks, jingles, canned loops).
5. The iMac photo presentation (and the reflection effects) are done using latest AJAX technology.
6. Profcast - what I din't know was the ability of a presenter to switch between presentations while creating an enhanced profcast. Keynote and Profcast integration was quite good.
Password Protecting Podcasts
I was able to password protect individual podcast mp3s using simple directory authentication on my personal server. Now I have to try that with Kerberos cosign.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Conference XP: Test Drive
Thanks to Bob Riddle at Internet2, we were able to test drive Conference XP using our Black Friday $10 Labtec webcams. It worked great. We were using the server Bob has setup at the Internet2 on S. State St. as a reflector. It also acts as the test archival and venue server.
Things went smoothly. The following things were tested:
1. UW Presenter
2. Screen Streaming
3. Multiple videos - 3 cams online - great view.
4. Voice quality was great using ordinary headsets.
Things went smoothly. The following things were tested:
1. UW Presenter
2. Screen Streaming
3. Multiple videos - 3 cams online - great view.
4. Voice quality was great using ordinary headsets.
DAMS Update
DAMS Update: Project name changed to BlueStream. Since I have been in a lot of meetings with the DAMS folks, the update for me personally was in the CSS stylesheet of the interface. Lot of the cool features I had seen before. One thing, I thought was new, was publishing video podcasts. But investigation found that it was a proof-of-concept - m4v's did not come from their video compression core 'FlipFactory'. Hopefully, we might be able to work in server based video crunching, which is the most attractive aspect to me personally.
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Storage Space: Holographic Storage at Turner Entertainment
Step aside Blue Rays and HD-DVDs... Holographic storage will blow us away:
From a Computerworld article:
“The holographic disk promises to retail for $100, and by 2010, it will have capacity of 1.6TB each. That’s pretty inexpensive,� said Ron Tarasoff, vice president of broadcast technology and engineering at Turner Entertainment. “Even this first version can store 300GB per disk, and it has 160MB/sec. data throughput rates. That’s burning. Then combine it with random access, and it’s the best of all worlds.�
more... (useful numbers)
Some useful numebers:
Turner Entertainment:200,000+ movies
25,000+ commercials
49,000+ promotional spots
Current Storage Solution:Digital tape libraries from Storage Technology Corp. as well as a caching system of disk arrays.
Current N/W data rate capacity:The company now has 96 1Gbit/sec. Ethernet connections
Future:it plans to upgrade those to 10Gbit/sec. streams in the near future
The Vendors
DHD called 'Tapestry' by InPhase Technologies, Inc. (Longmont Colorado)
Optware corp, Japan
Raving:
Tarasoff (Turner person) said InPhase’s hardware performed flawlessly, feeding a promotional spot to its networks about as quickly as its tape library system does. “Their production version promises to be much faster than tape, but we’ve not seen that yet,� Tarasoff said.
From a Computerworld article:
“The holographic disk promises to retail for $100, and by 2010, it will have capacity of 1.6TB each. That’s pretty inexpensive,� said Ron Tarasoff, vice president of broadcast technology and engineering at Turner Entertainment. “Even this first version can store 300GB per disk, and it has 160MB/sec. data throughput rates. That’s burning. Then combine it with random access, and it’s the best of all worlds.�
more... (useful numbers)
Some useful numebers:
Turner Entertainment:200,000+ movies
25,000+ commercials
49,000+ promotional spots
Current Storage Solution:Digital tape libraries from Storage Technology Corp. as well as a caching system of disk arrays.
Current N/W data rate capacity:The company now has 96 1Gbit/sec. Ethernet connections
Future:it plans to upgrade those to 10Gbit/sec. streams in the near future
The Vendors
DHD called 'Tapestry' by InPhase Technologies, Inc. (Longmont Colorado)
Optware corp, Japan
Raving:
Tarasoff (Turner person) said InPhase’s hardware performed flawlessly, feeding a promotional spot to its networks about as quickly as its tape library system does. “Their production version promises to be much faster than tape, but we’ve not seen that yet,� Tarasoff said.
Juan Cole's: A Blogging Success story from UM
Juan Cole is a blogging success stories. Respected, well researched blog that is used by journalists, politicians and academicians all over. Juan Cole is a History professor who presented the CRLT seminar on his professional blogging activities since the early 2000s.
The success of the blog lies in its transparency and authority. Today, anyone can start a blog... and let it die. But Juan's blog-flame has burnt strong for years which makes it a good success. The best part of the presentation was that the presenter was not a tech person trying to sell an idea, but a person, comfortable with the technology, having a pleasant conversation. Felt great.
Building a Blogging/Wiki-ing/Podcasting culture:If this has to be done, high-need groups need to be recognized and then showcased. For the podcasting culture to grow as an academic phenomenon, the experts should, as a group produce one podcast from each department - updated 1-2 times a week. OK, maybe I am asking for too much, but that's whats cool - our own little public health radio, that michiganradio and npr can solicit as an expert source. The richmedia we have is totally instructional in the central sense of it.
Bottom line: Content is King
More...
Two different blog indexes on the web:
Blogdex: Ranks posts by their 'contagiousness', a term about which we were not quite sure about.
Technorati: Which plainly indexes blog and calculated their popularity from the inbound links.
Other interesting websites that came up:
Collective Blogging by Experts
http://www.crookedtimber.org/
Young Academician's Blog Allegedly* Costs him Tenure
http://www.danieldrezner.com/*Alleged by the blogging community, denied by the academician himself
The success of the blog lies in its transparency and authority. Today, anyone can start a blog... and let it die. But Juan's blog-flame has burnt strong for years which makes it a good success. The best part of the presentation was that the presenter was not a tech person trying to sell an idea, but a person, comfortable with the technology, having a pleasant conversation. Felt great.
Building a Blogging/Wiki-ing/Podcasting culture:If this has to be done, high-need groups need to be recognized and then showcased. For the podcasting culture to grow as an academic phenomenon, the experts should, as a group produce one podcast from each department - updated 1-2 times a week. OK, maybe I am asking for too much, but that's whats cool - our own little public health radio, that michiganradio and npr can solicit as an expert source. The richmedia we have is totally instructional in the central sense of it.
Bottom line: Content is King
More...
Two different blog indexes on the web:
Blogdex: Ranks posts by their 'contagiousness', a term about which we were not quite sure about.
Technorati: Which plainly indexes blog and calculated their popularity from the inbound links.
Other interesting websites that came up:
Collective Blogging by Experts
http://www.crookedtimber.org/
Young Academician's Blog Allegedly* Costs him Tenure
http://www.danieldrezner.com/*Alleged by the blogging community, denied by the academician himself
DAMS preview coming up in 1 day
DAMS update is on the way... lets see what we have Tommorow!
DAMS Showcase & Campus Report
January 26, 3:00p-4:30p
Forum Hall
Fourth Floor, Palmer Commons
DAMS Showcase & Campus Report
January 26, 3:00p-4:30p
Forum Hall
Fourth Floor, Palmer Commons
DAMS Showcase & Campus Report
January 26, 3:00p-4:30p
Forum Hall
Fourth Floor, Palmer Commons
DAMS Showcase & Campus Report
January 26, 3:00p-4:30p
Forum Hall
Fourth Floor, Palmer Commons
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Conference XP: Feet Wet
The day at the lab belongs to conference XP. The 4 missing cameras arrived from Just deals.com, which were ordered for Conf XP.
Also, Tom Bray was in the studio and we met Bob Riddle on a Conference XP meeting. Although we were on Unicast here at SPH, using the reflector set up at Internet2 on S. State St, the videos looked good. There were 4 windows on screen: New York, Wisconsin, Puerto Rico and Ann Arbor. All streaming the media quite well. The latency did not appear as a bother.
Also, Tom Bray was in the studio and we met Bob Riddle on a Conference XP meeting. Although we were on Unicast here at SPH, using the reflector set up at Internet2 on S. State St, the videos looked good. There were 4 windows on screen: New York, Wisconsin, Puerto Rico and Ann Arbor. All streaming the media quite well. The latency did not appear as a bother.
Monday, January 23, 2006
CES Show Review
Tom Bray was at CES and shared his experience. Especially, of interest to librarians would be the auto-page-turner scanner www.atiz.com
Tom's Report
Tom's Report
Public Health Podcasts
This was long awaited. How to find Public Health podcasts. Dentistry has taken the much anticipated step in putting together a way to look for good podcasts.
http://www.lib.umich.edu/dentlib/resources/guides/podcast.html
http://www.lib.umich.edu/dentlib/resources/guides/podcast.html
Absenteeism in UC Berkley
Prof finds attendance down to 20% after a compbination of media was made available for download. This is a undergraduate course in computers. The media available were: podcasts, videos, handouts and detailed notes.
http://ktla.trb.com/news/la-me-noshow17jan17,0,6775200.story?coll=ktla-news-1
http://ktla.trb.com/news/la-me-noshow17jan17,0,6775200.story?coll=ktla-news-1
Boston U
This is a little different application of Podcasting compared to your usual story about a lecture being podcast. This is about podcasting meetings at the Center for Digital Imaging Arts (CDIA) at Boston University. They are podcasting meetings of thier Production Practicum project. Cooler, we get.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/prweb/20060119/bs_prweb/prweb334820_2
http://news.yahoo.com/s/prweb/20060119/bs_prweb/prweb334820_2
Podcasting Products
The first personal suite to be released in M-Audio's Podcast factory which we acquired this semester. The harwarde interface is quite useful as it converts XLR & phone input to USB signal for a PC/Mac. So this interface acts like a high quality external soundcard, which is useful in applications which cannot afford the interference noise in the audio signal.
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