google

The Google Netbook

Leave a comment

I have always been quite pleased with my Google Nexus One, so when I heard about the Google Netbook, the Cr-48 I was quite intrigued.

Unlike the Nexus One, the Cr-48 runs the Chrome OS and not Android. Google have been quite clear, as far as they are concerned, Android is for handheld devices and Chrome is for laptops or netbooks.

Of course the CR-48 is not a consumer device, but a test machine to demonstrate how Chrome will work. Which probably accounts for the “catchy” name.

This is not a powerful machine, it has a single USB port, video out, wifi, 3G. It has a (relatively) large 12.1” screen. It is also quite heavy!

According to WIRED:

While scrolling web pages, playing some web-based games and watching videos from YouTube and the Onion, I noticed some jerkiness and skipping. Flash Player is pre-installed (and presumably sandboxed) but watching Flash videos is a bit of a sucky experience, especially in full-screen mode.

This is certainly my experience with underpowered netbooks in the past, I have found the video experience very poor. One thing I do say about the iPad is that the video experience is very good.

WIRED do say though:

But everything at least works as advertised, and it’s still totally usable.

The key behind Chrome OS is that it is a browser based OS with all the apps you use and main storage in the cloud. Hence connectivity is a key issue. Can see this not been an issue in an institution with good wifi coverage, obviously more of an issue when using such a device outside, on a train or other area without good connectivity.

If the price is right then these devices will be something that institutions might want to consider for using with learners, possibly providing learners with their own device for use in lessons, in the library and at home.

At the moment more often than not, institutions will provide computers in suites, rooms and in the library. This requires a fair bit of infrastructure and support. By providing devices to learners, this negates the need for a large number of computer rooms (some specialist rooms will still to be needed) and also allow learners to use the device when and wherever the learner is. The institution then becomes more of a service provider, delivering an infrastucture that allows learners wireless internet access (and possibly printing). The institutional VLE, Web 2.0 services and communication tools will allow the learner to access learning when they want to, rather than when the institution says they can.

Providing devices to learners costs money, cheap netbooks have been a possibility in the past, but the linux underpowered 7” devices we have seen in the past haven’t really proved that popular with learners. As soon as you make the devices bigger and add Windows, you also add a large price tag too. Will a Chrome powered netbook be the next evolutionary stage of the netbook? Will this be a device that changes the IT culture of educational institutions? Or will it be merely something that geeks like, but no one else uses?

Unfortunately I will probably never see, let alone use the Cr-48 as the pilot programme for the US only. Ah well…

jiscel10, podcast

e-Learning Stuff Podcast #068: That’s my idea! No it’s mine!

Leave a comment

Ideas, sharing ideas are discussed along with Java and Screenr problems, discussion forums, Bloom’s taxonomy and the 1% rule.

With James Clay, David Sugden, Lilian Soon, and Dave Foord.

This is the sixty eighth e-Learning Stuff Podcast, That’s my idea! No it’s mine!

Download the podcast in mp3 format: That’s my idea! No it’s mine!

Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes

Since this show was recorded a recent update 3.6.13 to Firefox for OS X has “fixed” the Screenr bug we discussed at the beginning of the show.

In the recording we refer to a podcast I made for the JISC Online Conference.

Shownotes

facebook

Friendship Issues

2 Comments

On the BBC News Magazine is a an interesting article on “friendship” between parents and their children.

When Facebook was entirely dominated by people under the age of 25, things were simple. But now an important social question has arisen – should you “friend” your child, or accept a parent as a “friend”?

The article discusses the nature of Facebook friendship and that most young people would prefer not to be Facebook “friends” with thier parents.

Lindsay Stewart, 15, completely understands why you’d refuse a parent’s friend request. Her household have agreed on not becoming Facebook friends. “Mum said that she was going to get on Facebook,” Lindsay says. “She said she wasn’t going to ask to be friends. Me and my brother were relieved.”

“It’s a community,” she explains. “Our parents aren’t there in our groups in school.”

“I primarily joined Facebook to have conversations with my friends. My mum is my mum. I like her, but she’s not necessarily what I’d call my friend.”

This attitude and reasoning is actually in my opinion quite sensible and also demonstrates why that teachers should never be friends with their learners. It’s not just about having separate accounts, one for home and one for work when working with learners, it’s about how the learner and his or her community use Facebook and the role a teacher plays in that community. If a learners doesn’t want to be “friends” with their parents, then do they really want to or even should they be “friends” with their teachers?

I usually recommend to practitioners in my college that they would be better off creating a page or group that their learners can subscribe to, so that the issue of friendship doesn’t come up. Some would say in a post 16 college environment that this is different to a school. However I would also argue that the issue of friendship on Facebook is something that should be avoided at an FE College and even at a University.

I see Facebook not as a learning network, but a social network that learners can use for learning or for communication and collaboration. As practitioners we should be streaming content and information into that network, but shouldn’t be a part of that network. Learners need to be able to choose how and where they access this content from practitioners and forcing “friendship” to achieve this is in my opinion wrong and open to future problems. This is also reflected in many of the learner surveys which indicate that learners do not want institutions “invading” their social space. This is not the same thing though as learners not wanting to learn in their social spaces. This they often do and have been doing for ever in physical social spaces, it is only logical that this will happen in online social spaces.

Services such as Facebook and for many blurred the lines between social and professional, if institutions provide clear guidelines to staff and learners on usage, it allows the advantages of such systems to be utilised., whilst minimising potential risks.

100 ways, audio, vle

100 ways to use a VLE – #73 Hosting audio

Leave a comment

Though there are audio sites out there on the web that will host audio. Sometimes you may not want the recording to be public out on the web. In that case hosting audio on the VLE may be an ideal solution.

If the audio is of a lecture on a tricky subject, or contains licensed content that you can place on the VLE, but are not allowed to freely distribute then placing the audio on the VLE may be a better option than uploading to a public site such as Audioboo. Sensitive recordings of research subjects, or patients, are more reasons why you may host the audio on the VLE.

The final key reason you may want to place the audio on the VLE is that the recordings are of or by learners and they may not wish to have their work or their views available publicly. Of course there are sites out there that can be password protected, but at least the VLE does most of that hard work for you.

Audio can be useful to enhance and enrich learning, one lecturer I know records short summaries of the lessons and the assignments. Some learners find this more engaging than reading them on paper or on the screen.

Recording debates and discussions, allows learners to reflect and review them at a time and place to suit the learner, rather than just relying on notes and memory.

By placing the audio on the VLE, you can place it in the context of learning, enabling learners to clarify how the recording works in respect of the rest of the course or topic.

For ease of access, by placing the audio on the VLE, the learners will be able to click and download the audio file to place it on say a mobile device.

Though the server may not be configured to deliver or stream video, it is often much easier (and places less technical demands on the server) for the server to stream audio. From a learner perspective, audio requires less bandwidth than video, so can often be easily accessed on poor internet connections such as mobile internet.

Teaching has had an oral tradition that goes back for thousands of years. With a virtual learning environment, using audio recordings can allow learners a choice on how they access content, instructions and advice.

stuff

Stephen Fry: The Internet and Me

1 Comment

Stephen Fry

I quite enjoyed reading this article by Stephen Fry on the BBC News website (even though it is 18 months old) when I found it for the first time.

Stephen Fry – wit, writer, raconteur, actor and quiz show host – is also a self-confessed dweeb and meistergeek. As he confesses “If I added up all the hours I’ve sat watching a progress bar fill up, I could live another life.”

One of the main reasons I like it is one particular quote that I have used time and time again in meetings.

This is an early thing I said about the internet at the time things like AOL were still huge. I said it’s Milton Keynes, that’s the problem with it. It’s got all these nice, safe cycle paths and child-friendly parks and all the rest of it.

But the internet is a city and, like any great city, it has monumental libraries and theatres and museums and places in which you can learn and pick up information and there are facilities for you that are astounding – specialised museums, not just general ones.

But there are also slums and there are red light districts and there are really sleazy areas where you wouldn’t want your children wandering alone.

And you say, “But how do I know which shops are selling good gear in the city and how do I know which are bad? How do I know which streets are safe and how do I know which aren’t?” Well you find out.

What you don’t need is a huge authority or a series of identity cards and police escorts to take you round the city because you can’t be trusted to do it yourself or for your children to do it.

And I think people must understand that about the internet – it is a new city, it’s a virtual city and there will be parts of it of course that they dislike, but you don’t pull down London because it’s got a red light district.

For me this is a nice analogy of how institutions should look at the internet when thinking about their learners. It’s not about closing off the city to our learners. It’s much more about informing and making learners aware not just of the benefits of the city and the wonderful places that can be seen, but also that there are places in the city they may want to avoid.

When I was teaching European Studies many years ago, we took a group of students to Amsterdam to look at European culture. There are some wonderful things to see in Amsterdam, however myself and my colleagues made sure we were just as aware of the “not so nice” places to ensure that we could provide the right information and advice to our learners.

There is of course those learners who will ignore you and go where they shouldn’t (and this also happened on our trip to Amsterdam) and the key here is to ensure that those learners know what to do and to whom they should seek help and support if they do decide to ignore the advice and venture into the sleazy areas.

The internet has many wonderful sites, tools and services. In my opinion an institution needs to provide the right guidance and advice (digital literacy and information literacy) to our learners to make sure that they can make the most of and find the best of what the internet has to offer. They also have a duty of care to inform learners about the less desirable areas of the internet and how to deal with those parts too.

podcasting

Podcasting Workshop Reflections

Leave a comment

Today I ran our final event for our MoLeNET Academy, a podcasting workshop.

Quite a good turnout and lots of hands-on activity and discussion. We covered a fair amount of ground covering content, audience, tools, techniques and usage of podcasts in teaching and learning.

We used a range of equipment and services including Edirols, video cameras, Audioboo, iPadio and software such as Audacity and Garageband.

It made me reflect, and that people have asked, that it might be helpful to write and post a series of blog articles on podcasting. It would cover not just the technical aspects of podcasting, but also pedagogical aspects, assessment perspectives and opinion on areas such as iTunes U.

Hmmm, that could work.

app of the week, e-book, google

Google Books – iPad App of the Week

Leave a comment

Google Books – iPad App of the Week

This is a regular feature of the blog looking at the various iPhone and iPad 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.

This week’s App is Google Books.

The Google Books app offers access to over 2 million Google eBooks on your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad. Take your favorite books with you on the go.

Great Reading Experience

– Change font, search within book, information about book
– Night-reading mode
– Offline reading mode

Discover Millions of Titles

– Millions of books in every imaginable category, from New York Times bestsellers to favorite classics
– Over 2 million free ebooks available instantly
– Over 400,000 ebooks for purchase
– Free preview pages
– Unlimited storage of books in the digital cloud
– Worry-free archive

Syncs With Your Google Books Library

– Find books at http://books.google.com/ebooks and add them to the ‘My Google eBooks’ shelf to sync
– Access all your ebooks wirelessly from the digital cloud; no dedicated e-reading device required
– Automatic page position synching across devices — pick up reading where you left off

Free

Okay firstly an important disclaimer, this app is not currently available in the UK iTunes Store and more importantly even if you could get hold of the App from the US Store and install it on your iPad (or iPhone) you can’t buy any books for the App, though you can download free books.

Google announced Google eBooks on the 6th December.

Today is the first page in a new chapter of our mission to improve access to the cultural and educational treasures we know as books. Google eBooks will be available in the U.S. from a new Google eBookstore. You can browse and search through the largest ebooks collection in the world with more than three million titles including hundreds of thousands for sale.

Alas the eBookstore is US only, though outside the US you can download free books. In this post however I am going to focus on the app and look at the service in another blog post at a later date. A key part of the service though is how it links to your Google account.

Google have also released an App for the iPhone and the iPad. However as already stated this is not (yet) available in the UK store.

Having managed to get hold of the app, how does it compare. Like the Kindle App if you want to buy books (and could) these have to be purchased via the browser. Likewise choosing free books is also done via the browser.

The experience if very similar to the Kindle or iBooks apps and like those apps you can change text and colours to meet your needs. There is no way of highlighting text or making notes, this makes it less useful to learners who may want to do such a thing.

It does make me smile when Google extol one of the features of their service is an offline reading mode! One of the reasons I like native e-book readers (either as apps or devices) is that they work when a browser doesn’t, like when there is no connectivity. For me it’s not a feature, but an expectation.

Overall the app is what you would expect from any kind of e-book reader app, nothing outstanding and nothing special. However where Google Books falls down as an app is that in the UK you can’t buy books. So at this time, it isn’t really worth the effort or time to get the app, as you might as well use the Kindle app or Apple’s iBooks. Maybe in the future this will change, we’ll wait and see.

stuff

Snow problem there then…

1 Comment

Any regular reader will know I have this thing about snow and snow closing down educational institutions despite having the technology in place to continue even if bad weather disrupts travel and transport.

Nice to read on the Microsoft UK Schools Blog of Monkseation school making the most of their “IT system”.

As the school website itself says

We want to thank all staff, students and parents who have all worked together to ensure that students could continue their learning at home during the closure of the school. The school’s electronic communication system, website and Learning Platform enabled us to get messages out promptly and set work for all students.

A good thing though that the leaking roof didn’t disrupt the server room!

Now I would say that though the IT system certainly helped, it has to be more than that, the culture of the organisation must support the setting of work via the learning platform. The teachers and learners have to be aware that if snow (or a leaking roof) means that the physical site is closed then they need to go to the learning platform for their learning. It would be something that was organised and prepared for in advance. There was an expectation that this is what was needed and not just done at the last minute. I would also suspect that learners and staff were able to easily use their learning platform as they were already using it when there wasn’t snow.

Could your learners use your learning platform or VLE? I would guess so if you’re reading this, but what about other learners in your institution?

podcast

e-Learning Stuff Podcast #067: Where do I live?

Leave a comment

The new Kinect, defining innovation, supporting innovators, snow (again). The e-Learning Stuff panel discuss all of these and James forgets where he lives!

With James Clay, David Sugden, Lilian Soon, Ron Mitchell, Rob Englebright and Di Dawson.

This is the sixty seventh e-Learning Stuff Podcast, Where do I live?

Download the podcast in mp3 format: Where do I live?

Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes

Shownotes

ipad

Why the iPad will never replace newspapers….

2 Comments

Why the iPad will never replace newspapers….

Though the video is a joke, it should remind us that devices such as the iPad generally don’t always directly replace an existing medium or technology. We still have plays even though we also have books, cinema and television.

Yes it has an impact and in some cases quite a big impact, think how the car has replaced horses… though sometimes it doesn’t always happen as expected, for example cars have not yet totally replaced trains and we are still investing in railways and trains.

I do see the iPad having an impact on the book, magazine and newspaper markets, but I don’t see the iPad (at this time) replacing them. It will enhance and enrich the reading experience, but will not be a total substitute. I now read a lot on the iPad, but in the main it has replaced reading from my laptop rather than paper based media. I still buy and like reading newspapers, I still like buying or borrowing and reading books. I do buy magazines on the iPad, but in the main these have been “new” magazines and I have continued to purchase the paper magazines as before. The Kindle App (and my Kindle) have had an impact on my reading, but generally in a positive way, in that I read more now than I did before.

Do you think the iPad is going to replace paper media, or is it just a different way of accessing information and content?

news and views on e-learning, TEL and learning stuff in general…