Category Archives: stuff

stuff

Create Android Apps (easily)

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Google today announced the App Inventor for Android.

To use App Inventor, you do not need to be a developer. App Inventor requires NO programming knowledge. This is because instead of writing code, you visually design the way the app looks and use blocks to specify the app’s behavior.

Lots of practitioners have wanted to create Apps (in the main for the iPhone it has to be said) but when they download the SDKs they suddenly realise how out of their depth they are. This tool looks like it will be much much easier to create Android Apps.

I found the following comment interesting.

You can create a quiz app to help you and your classmates study for a test.

It would appear form this that Google are aiming the app not just at teachers but also learners.

Though the iPhone has been very successful and had a lot of publicity, in terms of sales Android has sold a lot more phones. So it is more likely that our learners will have Android phones in the future.

An interesting development in my opinion.

Video of the App Inventor in action.

Photo source

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PAT Testing…

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The future of mobile learning has to be in user owned technology.

From a sustainability perspective, no educational institutions (especially in the current economic climate) would be able to provide all learners with a mobile device or a laptop – even if they are getting cheaper!

However… sometimes the question of PAT testing student equipment arises from someone within the organisation. It is then decided that students can only bring in their laptops if they have been properly PAT tested or they can bring their devices in, but can not plug them in or in extreme examples students will be banned from bringing in their own devices.

I have read and checked the relevant legislation and I have phoned the HSE to confirm this.

There is NO legal requirement to PAT test student equipment, a formal visual inspection is sufficient under the current legislation.

See more details in this HSE leaflet.

The HSE were quite clear that they would not expect colleges to PAT test student devices.

Think about hotels for example, who NEVER PAT test guests personal laptops. Read this leaflet which has more information.

However… having said all that there may be good reasons to ensure that student equipment is PAT tested.

If you have an old building with rubbish wiring, it might make sense (from a risk assessment perspective) to PAT test.

Some insurance companies REQUIRE PAT testing, but check with your insurance company.

The answer to your H&S Officer is provide them with a proper risk assessment and the documentation from the HSE. Ask them to then explain why PAT testing is required beyond what is required under the legislation?

Or…

Ask H&S to set up PAT testing sessions for students, they want to do it, let them do it. Give them an indication of the session frequency required.

Or…

It actually doesn’t take that long or too much effort to train people to PAT test equipment, even the testing equipment isn’t that expensive. Train all relevant staff, Learning Resources, IT Technicians, other Technicians, teaching staff!!!! and get them to do the PAT testing.

Finally ignore all the “smart” people who tell you that PAT testing is an example of redundant acronym syndrome syndrome.

Disclaimer: ALL information containing in my post is for informational purposes only and should never be construed as legal advice. For proper legal advice you should consult a lawyer.

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Froyo’ing – These are the droids you are looking for…

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Google last week announced the release of Android 2.2.

Unlike other phones I could mention, even though the update was announced my Google Nexus One said “it was up to date”. You have to wait until the phone provider sends out the update.

In my case that’s Google…

Waiting…

Certainly won’t be waiting as long as Motorola Droid users who had to wait six months for 2.1, but still waiting…

Then on Saturday night I noticed a post on Lifehacker.

Want to try out the neat new stuff in Android 2.2, a.k.a. FroYo, but haven’t lucked into an update notification yet? Follow these instructions to download a 2.2 update, install it, and get Flash up and running.

I downloaded the zip file and following these instructions updated my  Nexus One on Sunday morning.

The first thing I wanted to do was try out the Flash player… specifically I wanted to see how BBC iPlayer would perform. My first site was BBC News and I was very pleased with how the live stream of BBC News worked on the Nexus One.

Very similar experience to the EyeTV App on the iPhone, but obviously streaming from the internet and no need for the Mac to be on. I then tried to watch a programme from the archive, the film Brazil as it happens and… well the site asked if I was old enough! And trying to zoom into the checkbox was not particularly easy. However it did work!

As did Doctor Who!

Android 2.2 does off a little more than just allow you to view Flash on the web.

Android now has Exchange support, this is a feature I have found very useful on the iPhone. Despite what you may think of Exchange, it is a service that many organisations and institutions use, so by having support on Android, it allows for Enterprise deployment of phones like the Nexus One.

You can also now use the Flash when shooting video, great for when there is little or no natural light.

The Nexus One with Android 2.2 can now be used as a portable WiFi hotspot. This is something I have been doing for some time with Joikuspot on the Nokia N95 and was one of the main things I missed from the Nexus One, missing it no longer.

This is also something that is missing from the iPhone and technically it would be able to do it…

The key improvement though of 2.2 is improved performance and I certainly have found my Nexus One to be a little more zippy and faster than before.

I would never recommend bypassing the traditional upgrade process, but when the update does come I would recommend upgrading.

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EdTech 2010, some thoughts

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EdTech 2010 has now finished and I have left Athlone. I opened the conference with my keynote, entitled Cultural Shifts.

The keynote looked at the importance of culture and changing culture if we are to not just embed the use of learning technologies, but create a culture that embraces new technologies and pedagogies, rather than resist them.

The feedback I got was that it went down well with the delegates at the conference and created a buzz and conversations throughout the conference.

It was my first time to EdTech and I enjoyed the conference.

I have found that attending learning technology conferences always provide something new and interesting to take away. Even if the conference is based on a different sector or in a different country, there are lessons that have been learnt that we can learn from. Despite the differences the issues and challenges we face in different countries and different sectors, what we know and what we learn is more often than not transferable and easily adapted to our own institutions and learners.

There were some really useful and interesting presentations and talks and I hope to blog about them later.

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Cultural Shifts

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This morning I delivered my keynote at EdTech 2010.

It went down very well and I hope to have the Slideshare and video up soon. It appears to be taking a very long time for Slideshare to convert my presentation, might need to convert it myself first to PowerPoint from Keynote before uploading.

I am enjoying EdTEch 2010, lots of useful presentations and discussions. Making some useful contacts and found some great resources; such as these bricklaying videos.

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Travelling

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Today I spent most of the day travelling to Athlone in Ireland for EdTech 2010 where I am delivering the opening keynote. Travelling to a different country shows how reliant we are (well how reliant I am) on connectivity and communication.

Arriving at Dublin Airport, though my iPhone connected easily to the O2 phone network and I am on O2 in the UK, I got a nice little text message from O2 to tell me how expensive it is to use the phone and data whilst in Ireland.

At £3 per MB this is very expensive for “normal” usage of the iPhone for e-mail, web browsing and using services such as Twitter and Flickr. I did consider buying a data bundle in advanced from O2 but at £50 for 50MB I decided no way.

I also did consider buying a SIM for my unlocked Nexus One, but as I am only here for a few days I didn’t think it was worth it, and what I really wanted from a local SIM was data not calls and texts.

In the end I decided that I could live without connectivity for the time I am in Ireland. Where and when I needed to use the internet I would use WiFi.

What I did quite like in Dublin was the availability of free WiFi in cafes and restaurants. I could buy a coffee and use the WiFi, whereas in the UK it is more likely these days to find that the WiFi is a BT Openzone or other costly wireless hotspot.

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Computeraid and elearning in Africa

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Post from Peter Kilcoyne
ILT Director
Worcester College of Technology

pkicoyne@wortech.ac.uk

Thanks very much to James for asking me to write a few posts about Computeraid and their support for elearning in Africa.

Computeraid (www.computeraid.com) is a great organisation that collects, refurbishes, wipes hard drives for PCs in the UK and ships them out to Schools, Hospitals, Universities and other community organisations.

Computer Aid

This picture shows a container of refurbished PCs being unpacked by one of their African partner organisations.

Over the last fe years Computeraid have been working with Universities in a number of African countries supporting them in implementing e-learning.

Online learning has great potential to open up educational opportunities to many Africans.  Compared to the UK, HE provision is much more limited and is beyond the reach of many due to the cost of fees, limited numbers of scholarships and the physical distance that many people live from Universities.

A great example of how an institution that Computeraid is working with is planning to use elearning to increase access to HE is the Zambian Open University.

ZAOU

ZAOU at present has a population of around 5000 distance students who study through an entirely paper based system. They aim though to increase that to around 50 000 students through adopting elearning. Compared to using paper based system staff and students will get great benefits in efficiencies, speed of delivery, use of communication and collaborative learning tools and e-assessment.

Computeraid are supporting this project in a number of ways. They are shipping out containers of PCs for use by staff and students.They are also supporting development of provision of small learning centres around Zambia and the development of e-learning and technical skills amongst staff at ZAOU.

An example of the innovative solutions that computeraid have developed to provide access to the Internet and ICT is this solar powered cybercafe which is built in a shipping container.

 

Computeraid have also helped ZAOUs development of elearning skills amongst its staff through funding two visits by myself to Zambia to run e-learning training sessions and a reciprocal visit from five ZAOU staff to Worcester College of Technology.

Pictures of Moodle Training  in Lusaka

Moodle training At Open University of Zambia

Moodle training at elearning conference

Moodle training at elearning conference Lusaka Zambia

Pictures of ZAOU visit to Worcester College of Technology

ZAOU and SLT meeting

ZAOU at WCT

Dust clouds permitting I’ ll flying back to Lusaka on Wednesday to do some more Moodle training with staff from ZAOU and a number of other universities.

I hope to do one or two more posts on James’s blog to let you all know how it’s going.

Finally please find out what happens to your organisations old computers and consider donating them to Computeraid.

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Learning with AR

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Learning with Augmented Reality.

LearnAR is a new learning tool that brings investigative, interactive and independent learning to life using Augmented Reality. It is a pack of ten curriculum resources for teachers and students to explore by combining the real world with virtual content using a web cam. The resource pack consists of interactive learning activities across English, maths, science, RE, physical education and languages that bring a wow-factor to the curriculum.

As noted on my Twitter community of practice some of these things work and some less so.

eLearning with AR. Hmm…I think the anatomy elements have potential but not convinced by the multi-choice quizzes as surely it would be much simpler to set that up in a browser and engage with it through a more traditional ICT way…?

I have to agree, some of the concepts need a little more work to be innovative, some are too much like replicating pen and paper!

What do you think? Does this have potential?

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iTunes U

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I have been thinking about iTunes U for a while now.

My main issue at the moment is why?

I am not concerned about the application process, as other colleges have undertaken the process.

Nor am I concerened about doing all the design work for the front end. Apple has useful guides and we have the resources to do this too.

I am slightly concerned about the following line from Apple’s website:

At a minimum, your institution should have 150 audio and video files of acceptable quality ready to go on day one, with a plan for posting updated content on a regular basis.

It’s not that we don’t have this level of content, nor am I concerned about whether it is to an acceptable quality, my slight concern is whether any of the content contains third party content that we may be licensed to use within college or on the VLE, but won’t have the rights to re-distribute those third party materials.

My main concern or worry is why!

Why would we use iTunes U?

We still need to host the materials.

We need to apply.

We need to sort out RSS.

We need to plan for regular content.

But why would we use iTunes U?

Apple say:

With an open iTunes U presence, your school can gain recognition — not to mention a competitive edge — as you reach out and share your knowledge.

I think I can see this from a University perspective competing for learners who may look at things like iTunes U. I am not so sure that our learners will be looking at or persuaded by us being on iTunes U.

I like the concept of iTunes U, but I can’t see why I should be using it.