Just announced. Warner Music pulls music from Last.fm.
I have long been a fan of Last.fm. I pay for the service. Mostly, I just use it to keep track of the music I play on my iPod and office machine. I wonder if Warner objects that I play Neil Young and Nickelback on my machines and share this information with others. Ah, the business world.
The available options for doing traditional desktop applications online has expanded again. Adobe (Acrobat.com) recently allowed access to a suite of services including Buzzword (word processing) and ConnectNow (online conferencing and white board). Our distance education ventures at UND use Adobe Connect so it is interesting to see a similar free product with the same capabilities I use every week.
For the time being online apps (Google Docs, Zoho) are free, but have other significant advantages. I like the the opportunity to connect from anywhere and any machine. These features seem perfectly suited to the educational environment in which students work from home and school and may connect from different machines in the same lab or library. No more excuses about forgetting your homework.
What is often missed when exploring educational possibilities is the collaborative opportunities providers have added to their web-based applications. I must say I have not used Zoho tools for some time and cannot remember what capabilities are included. I use Google docs a lot and share documents with colleagues for the purpose of collaborative editing. I have yet to use the new Adobe site for actual work, but I have spent some time exploring the features of the word processing program. My first impressions were very positive. Adobe also recently released the online Adobe Photoshop Express. These products are not accessible as a suite at present, but unless Adobe has some plan for a subscription service for some but not all products in mind, it would make sense to see common access for these products/services in the future.
The limitations for the Acrobat site appear to be 5 gigs of storage and 3 participants in a conferencing session.
ReadWriteWeb provides a nice review of Acrobat.com.
Technorati Tags: ndtnt ndtnt08
The following is a screencast of my TNT presentations. Be patient it takes about a minute to to download.
[QUICKTIME http://studytools.psych.und.nodak.edu/wordpress/wp-content/tntpresent08.mov 331 288]
The presentation was recorded using a program called Screenflick and the mike built in to my MacBook Pro. The system seems to work reasonably well as long as I remember not to pace while I talk.
I am presenting at the North Dakota Teaching and Technology Conference on Tuesday. I am using the conference to discuss a new project that consists of a resource I have written (Meaningful Learning and the Participatory Web) and a portal (Participants’ Portal) intended to encourage and organize the contributions of teachers and other educational professionals.
I have been interested in the participatory web as a tool for professional development for several years and have been trying to find a way to facilitate the sharing of resources. Cindy and I have been involved with pre-service and professional development activities for years as authors, classroom instructors, workshop facilitators, and project collaborators. If you keep your eyes open while engaged in these activities and afterwards, you have the opportunity to see a number of great ideas implemented in classrooms. The ideas come from all levels – some interesting ideas from undergraduates who have yet to teach, but are comfortable with technology and great ideas emerging from the long-term experiences of practicing teachers and sometimes shaped by exposure to a new technology tool. The participatory web should offer ways to share these ideas.
The reality is that it is challenging to create a mechanism for sharing. It would seem that one part of the problem is “the launch”. Why would anyone bother to contribute time and creativity to a site that is only a promise? The world is filled with good ideas, but someone must take the first step (and perhaps the second and third). We have decided to go first. We have created a resource we hope is helpful to educators. We are offering this resource and access to a portal to ND teachers. The site offers more than a promise and we hope we can interest some teachers in sharing their experiences in response.
Within the last couple of weeks, I have written several posts focused on textbook costs and suggested I thought it was time to try some new ideas. The project I describe here is related to a broader agenda. We are trying to imagine teacher development and support in a broad and interrelated way. Sharing resources can occur in many ways as long as it understood that we should not expect to receive something for nothing. Sometimes it may be most appropriate to share money in order to receive assistance from someone else willing to contribute time and greater professional experience. Perhaps there may be some other mechanisms through which useful examples and resources can be traded to buy down the costs of the entire development and in-service system. After we have had the opportunity to introduce our project and see what response we can generate, we will offer additional comments.
I have been experimenting with Twitter for a week or so. I am still not certain what I think. Letting folks know what I am doing on a regular basis does not come naturally. BTW – I am in MSP, babysitting, and watching the Twins game. Twins are down to NYY.
I have also decided that I develop a different opinion when following individuals by Twitter and by blog. Over the years, I have focused on certain bloggers and have a high opinion of those I read on a regular basis. My reaction to their Twitter posts (if that is what the brief comments are called) has been very different. I get the impression they are trying too hard. I think big name bloggers are not the appropriate test cases for evaluating this tool. These folks don’t really interact and reading their short comments is not that interesting.
I will have to give it a little more time. Perhaps with a few more followers I will form a different opinion. I am guessing “regular folk” may use Twitter in a different way. I am guessing I will also have to do a better job of contributing to benefit much in return. BTW – I am “grabe” on Twitter.
I am experimenting with a new plugin (tagaroo) from Calais. The service is supposed to suggest useful tags. So far I am not impressed. The suggestion was “twins”. Perhaps I have said nothing the intelligent agent can interpret.
Wait – tagaroo generated intelligent agent.
I think I have made the following observation in previous posts. My wife and I are easy targets when we enter a store that sells technology. There is no system of checks and balances in play. There is no voice of reason. If we don’t own it, there is probably some reason one of us can think of that justifies why we need it. “We need to evaluate this to see if it would be good for kids” usually works.
Our most recent purchase is a Flip Video. The Flip is a $140 (street value – we purchased ours at Best Buy) point and shoot video camera. The camera holds 60 minutes of material and operates on two AA batteries. Moving the content to a computer is a simple matter. On a Mac, the camera shows up as an external drive. You just double click the icon, locate the folder with the video files (you can play a file by double clicking if you are looking for a specific segment), and then drag the files to the computer. Files can be imported to iMovie if you want to edit or export in some other format. File format is MPEG4 AVI (640 x 480).
Some sample videos (stored in Flickr) (Note Flickr converts to flash. I guess I am not certain what this does to the quality.)
Olive meets Mr. Flower
Pan of Lake Coudry
I found the camera very easy to use. For some reason, it surprised me that the image is so steady. Perhaps the position of the hand allows this. You hold the camera out in front of you while watching in the large LCD display. I thought it was awkward to zoom. Pushing the buttons caused an obvious shake. Perhaps for 2X it is not worth the trouble.
This looks like a great camera for students. It also is a nice size for carrying around in a backpack or a jacket pocket.
Langwitches tutorial on Flip.
We rent an apartment on a lake near Alexandria, MN, for the summer. We have shared this apartment with Cindy’s brother and his wife Denise for several years. With gas near $4, the 180 mile trip is costly but affordable. Having a little disposal income allowing such luxuries is one of the benefits of being older. Still, I am somewhat concerned about what this money represents and how the cost would have inhibited my opportunities in earlier days and how it inhibits the opportunities of younger folks today.
We have spent most of our working lives in North Dakota. It has been a great place to live, but I do think think there are limitations that come as a consequence of remoteness. Diversity of experience and professional contacts are important parts of complex thinking. I am not certain remote access via the Internet is a reasonable substitute for soaking up the culture or the FTF social experiences that are a natural part of “being there”. I think it is important for those of us with a focus on the development of “human sciences” to develop the insights that come as a consequences of travel. It is not the trips to the lake that are a limitation here, but the opportunities for international travel and experiences in more metropolitan areas. More and more, the travel funds available in university budgets are inadequate to support the professional development of the faculty. I suppose this looks like vacation days to the general public. I remember the days when NECC was held in Minneapolis. No more. Biases are everywhere and unfortunately there is a snobbishness that limits the locations folks from higher population areas of the country will visit for conferences.
Unfortunately, for those who do not travel much, it is difficult to explain the benefits of broader perspectives. This lack of understanding and remoteness are likely correlated. Hence, those who are most in need of such experiences are less likely to have the opportunity for such experiences.