app of the week, e-book, ipad

Why the Net Matters: How the Internet Will Save Civilization – iPad App of the Week

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Why the Net Matters: How the Internet Will Save Civilization – 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 Why the Net Matters: How the Internet Will Save Civilization.

This groundbreaking app from bestselling author David Eagleman is a new way to experience narrative non-fiction, only available on the iPad.

The app allows the user to access each chapter at random using a unique navigational interface. Once in a chapter you can pull out to see where you are in the course of the argument, and see how far you have progressed through the content.

Each chapter contains tailor-made chunks of text with dozens of images, videos, webpages and interactive 3D models. These can be enjoyed alongside the text, or on their own once the text is swiped away in landscape mode.

Fully readable and adaptable to portrait or landscape, the app uses all the functionality familiar from iBooks such as page swiping and a bottom navigational bar, but re-configures it into a new experience that brings the content alive.

David Eagleman has spent years researching this topic and plans to release regular updates so that the information is current, and the content evolves.

£4.99

I am not sure I can recommend this app, the main reason I bought it was to see how a book could work on the iPad away from the iBooks or Kindle style interface. In that this book does work, the interface is easy to use and you can move from one section to another with ease. The book makes good use of images, diagrams, animations and video.

The author has indicated that he will “update” the book as time goes on. In other words the book will evolve over time.

You can copy (therefore making it easy to cite) from the book.

On other book applications this is very difficult if not impossible. Though even I am not sure how to cite from a book such as this one. This is something that I need to look into further, but as more and more “virtual” books like this are published, the more we in the academic community will need a consistent way of citing such tomes.

So from a technical perspective I think the book works. As for the content? Well I thought it was interesting, but the topic is something you are interested in or not.

Update: this app is no longer available.

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Are you addicted to the Twitter?

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So are you addicted to Twitter?

Do you check and post to Twitter:

At events and conferences?

During meetings?

When you get into work you check the Twitter before checking your e-mail?

At home whilst cooking?

When sitting on the sofa when watching TV?

In bed before you go to sleep?

It’s the first thing you look at when you wake up?

Do you decide on where to have coffee based on the free wifi so you can check the Twitter?

When you bought a new phone, was the fact that it could run a Twitter app one of the main reasons for purchase?

When handing over contact information do you say @user rather give you your email address?

Maybe a more important question is could you give up the Twitter?

Or do you want to leave a comment saying it not’s called the Twitter it’s just Twitter?

So could you stop using Twitter? Not for ever perhaps. Maybe just over the holiday period? Or the weekend?

Or is it not about stopping, but thinking about the importance of Twitter in terms of everything else.

Personally for me the Twitter is about the coffee. It’s the conversation you have with colleagues over coffee in the morning, it’s the conversation you have at a coffee break during a meeting or an event, it’s the conversation you have over coffee at a conference during the breaks. It is a conversation without the constraints of geography and in some ways time.

For me though it does not replace all those conversations, it adds to them, it enhances them, but in the main I still have those other conversations. I don’t use Twitter to avoid those or instead of them.

Of course lots of things are said during those face to face conversations, mundane things such as the quality of the coffee, talking about articles and programmes, people we’ve met, people we’ve seen, the quality of the presentations, keynotes and sessions.

There are also people we avoid during those conversations, those that only talk about themselves, those that only promote what they do, those that have opinions about everything: in other words those that don’t listen and talk all the time.

With conversations over coffee, one of the key features is that you don’t hear all the conversations, and you don’t necessarily hear the beginning or the end. You dip into conversations, you join in, add, converse and leave. Of course if you don’t join in that conversation, rarely will you be missed, people may talk about you, or things you do, but generally you won’t be missed and you probably won’t even be thought about.

Which brings us back to using the Twitter.

If you are start using Twitter instead of real conversations then you may want to think about how you are using the Twitter. At the end of the day the Twitter stream is not important. It doesn’t matter if you miss any of it, you don’t need to check it all the time.

If you feel you need to take a break from the Twitter then you probably do.

For me Twitter is an important tool that I find very useful, there is a great community on there, however I can say the same about casual conversations over coffee. However like any casual conversation it’s not important to hear the whole and every conversation. You dip in and you can dip out. When you go away to events or on leave you will miss conversations at work, but generally you don’t need to hear them, important stuff will get to you if required.

I know that if I don’t engage with Twitter that most people won’t notice and for me that doesn’t matter.

Oh and I promise not to say the Twitter anymore!

app of the week, ipad

Project – iPad App of the Week

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Project – 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 Project Magazine.

A revolutionary multimedia magazine built specially for your iPad – packed with international culture, entertainment, design, business and travel. And nuclear weapons. Oh, and Jeff Bridges.

Free and then £1.79 per issue

I have reviewed magazines in this series before and consider that though a PDF virtual copy of a magazine on the iPad isn’t really taking advantage of the potential of the iPad, there are some publishers though who are seeing that a magazine on the iPad can be more than a digital version of the paper edition.

With Project, Virgin Digital Publishing are even avoiding a paper edition and only publishing on the iPad. The magazine has might be expected video, audio and interactive diagrams.

There are (like WIRED) quite a few adverts.

The interface is not simple and there is quite a detailed help screen explaining how to navigate through the magazine.

For me this is one of the weaknesses of the iPad, unlike a Windows PC or a Mac running OS X, there isn’t a coherent user interface guide for iPad apps. So magazines like WIRED or Project use different navigation and buttons for moving around the magazine to different articles. Though Apple provides quite detailed  iOS Human Interface Guidelines app developers and publishers aren’t really recognising the user need for a consistent interface, especially with magazines. Comics on the other hand, most comic publishers are now using the GuidedView Technology from Comixology. This allows different comic publishers to use the same user interface for reading comics on the iPad. Hopefully something similar will emerge not just for magazines but also for e-books.

So what of the content of Project?

Well it reminded me of WIRED with a bit of Empire thrown in and a broadsheet weekend newspaper. There aren’t a huge number of articles, but is only £1.79.

I did enjoy reading it, and found some articles of interest.

The key will be though, will I buy the next issue?

Hmmm, not so sure.

google

The Google Netbook

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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!

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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