All posts by James Clay

app of the week, coffee, iphone

myStarbucks UK – iPhone App of the Week

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myStarbucks UK – iPhone App of the Week

This is a regular feature of the blog looking at the various iPhone Apps available. Some of the apps will be useful for those involved in learning technologies, others will be useful in improving the way in which you work, whilst a few will be just plain fun! Some will be free, others will cost a little and one or two will be what some will think is quite expensive. Though called iPhone App of the Week, most of these apps will also work on the iPod touch.

This week’s App is myStarbucks UK

Free

For some unknown and arcane reason (well some comments I made on Twitter I believe) it has come to pass that across the e-learning world (and beyond) that I am a coffee addict.

Or it might be that I don’t touch instant coffee with a barge pole and only drink what I believe to be real coffee! You know the kind made with beans…

Now I do visit Starbucks, but to be honest it is not my first choice when I buy coffee, but it isn’t as bad as some places I have been to.

There is now an official Starbucks App on the iTunes store.

The official UK iPhone application from Starbucks! Want to find a store that’s open nearby or near a place where you’re meeting a friend? Now you can do that and more with myStarbucks. Explore our whole bean coffees, find delicious food and nutrition information, and build your own perfect drinks. Want to share? You can send your drinks to your friends by email, SMS, and via Facebook and Twitter directly to their iPhone or iPod ®Touch.

The only real reason to get this app is to find your closest Starbucks, and that’s about it.

You may recall, back in February 2008, I wrote about a proposed Starbucks App.

Imagine going to Starbucks having already ordered your drink from your iPhone?

Well this App doesn’t do that. It does list what drinks and food you can buy, but doesn’t tell you if they have sold out of a particular muffin or sandwich.

However if you do like drinking Starbucks coffee (maybe you are a fan of their Frappacinos) then this is certainly one useful App if you are ever in a place you don’t know and want a coffee.

e-book, ipad

Books that teachers can rewrite digitally

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The New York Times reports on the introduction by Macmillan of DynamicBooks.

Macmillan, one of the five largest publishers of trade books and textbooks, is introducing software called DynamicBooks, which will allow college instructors to edit digital editions of textbooks and customize them for their individual classes.

Professors will be able to reorganize or delete chapters; upload course syllabuses, notes, videos, pictures and graphs; and perhaps most notably, rewrite or delete individual paragraphs, equations or illustrations.

I have in a previous blog post, just before the release of Apple’s iPad discussed Sports Illustrated’s concept of a digital magazine. Current e-Books are either very much plain text with simple diagrams (designed to be read on e-Book Readers) or can only be accessed through a browser (such as Ebrary).

Since seeing the iPad, and having talked about e-Books in the past, I can see future e-Books being more than text, with animated diagrams, video clips. DynamicBooks allows practitioners even more control in these new e-Books.

Interesting to note that:

The modifiable e-book editions will be much cheaper than traditional print textbooks.

This may mean that there will be a first choice for many practitioners and learners.

gloucestershire college

Cheese

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Do you remember ever playing Trivial Pursuit?

You recall the general knowledge quiz game, where you had to fill in your six pieces of cheese (or cake) covering six different subject areas.

One of the traits of playing the game was that you favoured certain subject areas and avoided others. You liked History and Geography, but avoided Arts & Literature. As a result you answered many questions on the subjects you liked and virtually ignored the subject you didn’t.

When it comes to embedding of learning technologies (ILT) into a curriculum area, managers of those areas do something similar.

They may be excellent at pushing the use of interactive whiteboards with their staff and teams; but as they don’t like the VLE that much, it gets ignored or only paid lip service.

Likewise when using learning technologies to solve issues in the area; you may use it to solve some areas, whilst ignoring other areas.

The same happens when it comes to writing ILT action plans for curriculum areas. These plans will favour particular technologies and some problem areas. Other technologies and other problem areas will get ignored.

In order to avoid this happening, we have decided to make use of the cheese concept for Trivial Pursuit in order to ensure that curriculum teams make best use of the range of technologies available, ensuring none are left out; likewise ensuring that learning technologies are used to solve issues in a range of areas, rather than one specific area or a few areas.

The areas we have chosen for our cheeses are based on the needs of our corporate college ILT Strategy.

We have two sets of cheese, one with a technology focus and one with a learner focus.

Technology Focus

Learner Focus

In later blog posts I will go into more detail about the different cheeses and exemplar action plans for those cheeses.

The key though for managers is that they MUST plan and COMPLETE action plans for each of the twelve cheeses. They can’t just ignore a cheese because they “feel like it”.

This should have the result that across the college there is a more holisitic approach to embedding of ILT into the curriculum. That weaker areas are not ignored in favour of stronger areas. Eventually the whole college will be moving forward in the use of ILT to enhance and enrich the learner experience; something that is essential as the world of technology is moving too.

We’ll see how this goes…

Photo source.

stuff

Dell Mini 5

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Engagdet has an interesting article on their first impressions of the Dell Mini 5 prototype.

Dell’s puzzled the world for quite some time with its outlandish Mini 5 — at first glance it’s just another Android-based MID, but a quick fiddle with it reveals the full-fledged 3G phone inside.

The MID (Mobile Internet Device) is a form factor that has been tried before, but the MID as a modern concept was announced by Intel in 2007. They are mid way between a smartphone and a fully functional laptop or Tablet PC.

They are designed to provide entertainment, information, location based services, communication and sharing. In this day of social networking, twitter, facebook; they are aimed at individual for personal use rather than corporate use.

This of course doesn’t stop learners using them for learning.

So what of the Dell Mini 5? According to Engadget, the Andorid powered device will include:

…a five-inch 800 x 480 capacitive touchscreen, Snapdragon QSD8250 chipset (with CPU clocked at 1GHz), Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS and WCDMA radio.

WCDMA means that it can use internet on the move (read 3G). At this time, no idea if the Dell Mini 5 will have phone capabilities. Update: As noted in the comments, “Actually, we did report that the Mini 5 does make phone calls, and that the call quality is satisfactory on both ends.”

It also comes with a camera:

The main camera offers five-megapixel pictures of reasonable quality, along with decent 640 x 480 video capture but with slight rolling shutter effect (aka “jelly motion”). The accompanying camera app has a wealth of settings for both modes: scene, white balance, brightness, contrast, and resolution. Extra settings for photo mode include flash, self-timer, multi-shot, shutter sound, GPS location and flicker adjustment, whereas video mode has options for video format (MPEG-4 and H.263).

The device has a on screen keyboard for text entry, though as it has Bluetooth, you probably can use a Bluetooth keyboard for dedicated text entry (as you can do with a Nokia N95).

This device allows for both content consumption and content creation. Two key features of any device that learners use for learning. With WiFi and 3G this means that the learner will have the connectivity to access learning resources on the move or in college (if you have a student wireless network). It will also allow for real-time communication via the VLE or a social networking service of some kind, eg Ning or Twitter.

So will learners actually buy a device like this?

Hmmm, well you can ask the same question of Apple’s iPad that has a lot less capability.

Learners (especially in FE Colleges) have not really bought into devices such as the iPhone; though I am surprised by how many have the N95 and N86. They prefer full size laptops over micro-laptops. Having shown and tried devices such as the Nokia N810 with learners, they thought it was “okay” but preferred other mobile devices and “proper” laptops for serious text entry.

The Dell Mini 5 sounds like an exciting innovative device, however I am not sure if these MID devices will be taken up and used by learners in large numbers.

Would you buy the Dell Mini 5?

100 ways, vle

100 ways to use a VLE – #2 Noticeboard

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A noticeboard is… what, a board with notices on it!

Okay…

Well it’s a little more than just a board with notices on it. It’s a way of giving learners information about their course, their learning, their assessments and other college related information.

The problem with a physical noticeboard is that it takes a fair amount of time to keep it updated, valid and accurate. Another key problem with a noticeboard is that it is constrained by its physical location, you can’t access the noticeboard when the college is closed for example, or when you are busy elsewhere in the college (eg in a class).

A virtual noticeboard on the VLE can remove many of the issues with a physical noticeboard.

Learners will be able to see which is the newest notice (it probably is the one at the top of the list of notices).

Some VLE noticeboards allow you to configure when a notice will appear. This will allow practitioners to post notices in advance and they will “magically” appear on the right date and time. These same noticeboards also will “magically” remove the notice once it is out of date. This makes it so much easier for practitioners to administer the noticeboard, it makes it easier to keep in the information current; it also ensures that learners only see the right material and not stuff that is out of date!

Logging tools or stats on the VLE allow the practitioner to check who has actually accessed the noticeboard – obviously it can’t tell who has read it (but then you can’t do that with a real noticeboard). The other aspect though of a virtual noticeboard on the VLE is that learners can post comments (or replies); handy if they need clarification or don’t have a clue what you mean!

Due to the virtual nature, it is possible to edit and add to existing notices, useful if deadlines of assignments change, say due to snow.

The most obvious advantage is that learners can choose when to read the noticeboard; they can choose at a time and place that suits them. With a physical noticeboard, they must make an effort to be in the same physical location as the noticeboard and take the time to read the notices.

They will forget…

With a noticeboard on the VLE they can go back and check the notice.

With a noticeboard on the VLE, and if configured correctly, they might be able to grab an RSS feed of the noticeboard notices; this can then be embedded into their iGoogle, into their Facebook stream, on their phone as SMS, through their PS3 on their TV.

Of course you can enhance your notices with audio and video; try doing that on a physical noticeboard! As you can embed video into notices or attach audio recordings; suddenly your notices can be come more engaging.

Another feature of many VLEs is interactivity; now add that to your notices and you will be able to get immediate responses from your learners about your notices. These could be text responses or polls.

Having said all that it would also make sense for the learners to be aware of the virtual noticeboard and as a result you may want to put a notice on the physical noticeboard to check the virtual noticeboard on the VLE!

Photo source.

iphone, video

Is the future of learning in TV?

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Despite the growth of the internet, television is still a technology which most people have, most people use and dominates a lot of peoples’ lives.

Even the most popular videos on YouTube are predominantly from television programmes.

This week sees the start of Seesaw TV, an online service that allows you to catch up with TV and view programmes from an archive of over 3000 hours of footage. Seesaw is funded by advertising – viewers see unskippable 60-second ad breaks before and during each show.

The BBC said it was also considering releasing apps later this year for its popular iPlayer service.

So despite the growth of the internet, television is still big and still predominates people’s time. For some young people, too much time…

Video games, mobile phones and TV are keeping children up at night, answers to a BBC questionnaire suggest.

Intel believe that television will still be at the heart of our homes in the future.

Justin Rattner, Intel’s chief technology officer, told BBC News.

“TV will remain at the centre of our lives and you will be able to watch what you want where you want.”

He continues…

“People are going to feel connected to the screen in ways they haven’t in the past.”

The statistics of YouTube are amazing.

In September 2008 I reported on my blog that 13 hours of video were been uploaded to YouTube every minute!

Now 20 hours of video are being uploaded every minute!

I rarely sit down and watch television these days, but that is just me, for others, they love the Apprentice, Dragons’ Den, Doctor Who, Merlin, etc… This is very apparent from dipping into Twitter, as tweet after tweet is about a particular programme.

It’s not as though I don’t watch television programmes, but am now more likely to watch them recorded via a laptop, an iPod or on the computer. I rarely watch live TV anymore and when I do I get confused as I can’t rewind or fast forward through the adverts…

So what about our learners?

Are they just watching video on the internet or do they mainly watch television? There certainly has been a huge growth in video on the internet, but likewise there has been a huge increase in the number of TV channels available.

To ignore video and its usefulness in enhancing teaching and learning is in my opinion a mistake. Video has huge potential to engage learners and to allow them to see and hear about things and stuff.

Video has the ability to stimulate discussion and debate (think of the impact of TV on Twitter). A video clip can be used to start of a learning activity that will result in verbal conversation or even a written activity.

Video does not replace teachers, neither does the internet. They are merely tools that allow for a more enhanced and enriched learning experience.

Photo source.

stuff

USB Microscope

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There are many different types of cameras on the market, and a fair few USB cameras out there.

At Gloucestershire College we have just invested in some new USB cameras, however these are not standard USB cameras, these are USB Microscope cameras.

Install the software, connect the USB microscope and then place whatever you need under it. Once in focus and or zoomed in you can then take an image or capture a video.

You also have the possibility of a live preview, therefore showing what is happening live under the microscope through a data projector, even to an interactive whiteboard.

This is an eyebrow.

There are many uses for this in various curriculum areas.

The obvious choice is Biology to look at biological specimens under the microscope.

Hairdressing and Beauty Therapy have many uses for looking at hair and skin in much more detail.

Computing can stick the microscope into a PC or over a circuit board to see it in more detail.

Engineering can use it to look at issues with components or engine parts.

There are a wealth of uses, what would you use it for?