On iPhones and Apple in general...

It's been five weeks since I got my new iPhone 4... you know, the one with the "GRIP OF DEATH"! 

Yeah... whatever. Try as I might, I can't get the damn thing to loose signal. I've travelled part of the country, into areas that are supposed to be AT&T dead zones, or at least "really ill and doesn't look so good, does he..." zones, and I still get fine reception and no dropped calls. I'm really trying... REALLY! 

That said, I do find that if I move my head just a little bit, the phone pops awake, and for some reason my ear decides it wants to dial a number, so I get these annoying beep beep sounds as I'm talking to someone. Well, we can't have everything, can we. 

I have friends who don't like Apple products (kind of like Mac fan-bois in reverse) because they perceive the company as being snobbish and full of themselves. Sounds a little like Bill Gates to me, but what do I know! I find it interesting that so many people automatically think of you as an Apple fan-boi just because the products they make really fit well into your life. That doesn't make one an obsessive compulsive Apple lover, it makes one a practical human being that chooses the right tool for the job at hand. I will be the first to say Apple products aren't for everyone... they don't play nice with some institutions way of doing things ~ Apple tends to do things a certain way, and if you can't fit that mold, then get something else. That's fine by me. I really think Windows units do the same in their own way, but people tend to ignore them since they don't usually come off as so high and mighty. Nothing like a little arrogance to make people hate your company! I think Steve Jobs ought to learn a lesson from that, but again... what do I know! 

Concerning Jobs and his response to iPhone concerns, get a grip people... it's only a phone! That said... Wake up Jobs... telling people to hold it a different way is just plain wrong. 'Nuff said.

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Teaching Online

Interesting  Q and A about teaching online published by Ohio State:

http://telr.osu.edu/teachonline/faq.htm

The most interesting answer was to the question "How long does it take to develop an online course":

"One standard estimate is 20 hours of preparation per one hour of largely print-based, self-paced instruction."

Doing the math... A 16 week course that meets 2 hours a week (32 hours) would by their estimate take 640 hours to prepare ASSUMING it was largely print-based and self-paced instruction.

IF you worked 8 hours a day for 5 days a week (standard 40 hour week), it would work out to 16 weeks of constant work! You couldn't teach a class during that time or attend meetings or any other duties faculty are regularly asked to do (I mean... that would have to be overtime... right?!?). 

And then of course if you decided that INTERACTIVITY was something important to an online class or if your college for some reason expected more than just a self-paced course to be developed (hmmm... what a thought!), your time could easily go into 32 or 64 or even more weeks to prepare the course! 

Of course, once a course is developed, the prep time should go down appreciably, unless of course your textbook changes... or web pages vanish... or other interactive software comes out that could be useful to your teaching and learning... or you have to make sure your online course follows federal ADA laws, or the LMS you use changes to another one... or... well, you get the idea.

We live in the 21st century... we NEED online learning (whether you like it or not). But we also NEED the time to prepare for this massive challenge and an end to the myth that it takes less time to teach online just because "it can be done from home"! Educators, facilitators, and administrators NEED to start understanding the massive amounts of time and energy it takes to teach online, to learn how to teach online, to learn about all the tools available to to teach online...

        ~ Educators need to MAKE time to learn what is needed, not expect to be able to understand everything by simply taking training required by their institutions. Training can only expose one to what is out there, it CANNOT make one an expert. At best, training shows the way. It is still up to the educator to continue the learning process well beyond the training environment.

        ~ Facilitators need to MAKE time to develop the environments and training guides that will help educators down this difficult road. We need to take time to understand the educators role and to "walk in their shoes" so that THEIR needs, not ours, are met as best as can be done with the limited time and funding we have (yes, I'm one of those damnable facilitators you hear so often about!). 

        ~ Administrators  need to stop thinking in brick and mortar terms. Online does NOT mean "just transfer your old stuff to the internet"! It does not mean lower costs and fewer work hours needed to develop proper paths to teaching and learning. It means there is another road that is going to get jammed with traffic very soon and we better be prepared to develop avenues to ease the congestion! If anything, online environments are MORE complex than traditional face to face classrooms! Anyone who actually teaches students knows this!

Training alone is not enough. A few hours in a training room does not make one an expert in online education, any more than a few hours of flying in a simulator makes one a jet pilot. It takes time, dedication, and just plain hard work to succeed in online teaching. This should be accounted for and supported... with compensation such as reduced work loads and salary increases; with dedication to creating paths to training, either internally or with outside workshops, with incentives to grow as teachers and as learners. We have to, as educators, keep up with the technologies that exist now, that are being developed as we speak, that will exist in the near future and become part of the learning environment far sooner than we can imagine.

#education #moodle #LMS #onlineeducation #edtech #onlinelearning #elearning

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Twitter and Information

I am constantly amazed at how much information I am getting through Twitter. Yes, that 140 character silly little posting really gets information across!

The college I work for is moving from Blackboard Vista (overpriced and bloated) to Moodle, specifically Moodlerooms. I know little to nothing about Moodle and even less about Moodlerooms, but once I posted questions on Twitter, I got links to training and other information from other users! What a blast!

This is what social interaction is about! It is the process of useful information moving from one place to another, across miles, across cultures, across minds! I am currently following educators, tech g33ks, and colleagues, exchanging ideas, finding new avenues of learning, and expanding my horizons.

So much better than hunting for hours in blogs and feeds and whatever else on the Internet, hitting something interesting some of the time, but wasting so much on meaningless drivel. 

All I can say is... give the 21st century a chance... you might like what you find!

 

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Death Grip!

So far, can't seem to do a damn thing to make ANY kind of signal loss on my new and wonderful iPhone 4!

Seems like it is an issue for some, but what is the real percentage of people who have this issue? I know about a dozen people who own the phone and none have the problem. I even went off to Colorado, which according to family there is an AT&T dead zone (or at least a rather ill and not doing well zone!). Had great reception and even did a little Facetime with the wife so she could see her family from home! Please note that inserting a dirty joke at this point did cross my mind...

Anyway, just saw Apples "Smartphone antenna performance" page and so far on the list... Blackberry, HTC, Motorola, Nokia and Samsung (and of course Apple itself!). How sad. It seems they feel they need to go on the offensive just because a small percentage of people can't be bothered to hold their phone slightly differently.

We have food anywhere and anytime we want it, we have air conditioning in summer and heating in winter, we have a political system that we VOTE for that doesn't sent us to concentration camps or gases us dead, and we have phones that communicate around the FREAKIN' world!!! GET A GRIP!

Louis CK says it like it is...

 

 

 

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Technology... my bitch

Forgot I had this Posterous site... thought I'd add something just to see what happens. 

Technology sure is... complicated. I seem to see new things getting developed all the time that somehow are supposed to make life easier. I find they just make life more technological, not easier at all.

It reminds me of the story of the vacuum cleaner. Before it was invented, it was traditional to hang your rugs outside and whack 'em over and over until the dust kind of sort of dropped off. It was not that important that all the dust was gone, just a goodly amount. Then came the first vacuum cleaners. They were hard to use and didn't clean very well, but at least you didn't have to drag heavy rugs outside. So people just got used to a little more dust and a little less lugging heavy rugs around. But of course technology moved on and the vacuum cleaners became more efficient. Instead of reducing the workload though, they changed how we felt about dust. All of a sudden, a little dust was a bad thing and had to be vacuumed up ASAP. So we began vacuuming every month or every week. Sure, they weren't as heavy, they sucked up dust better, but we used them far more often. What was a once a year spring cleaning became a regular ritual.

Sound familiar? We started off with email which started as a once in a while thing and now seems to be what we do all day; then came text, which seems to be the leading cause of carpel tunnel syndrome in our children (okay, maybe not QUITE that bad, but still!); and now social media. We tweet, we blog, we post... all the live long day! Some people can't let it go for more than a few minutes. I know many of my colleagues who run twitter type clients in the background as they do all their other normal duties. Talk about invasive technology! What ever happened to just letting go? And just look at the plethora of blogs out there now... are there any sites left that don't actually have a freakin' blog attached to them?

Half my day seems to be just trying to keep up with the technology of our time... I visit blogs, tweet with fellow instructors and instructional designers, and basically make my eyes blurry and kind of rectangular shaped with all the monitor viewing I do! I think I just need a very long vacation. The problem is, I am infected as well. I can't seem to let go of my iPhone 4 (so freakin' cool that face time, isn't it!), so I am tweeting, surfing, responding to work email, and in general forgetting to actually TAKE THE DAMN VACATION!

Gee... I wonder if this blog post will go out to twitter and flickr as well? It's supposed to... maybe I should fire up the iPhone and check it out... or maybe I'll just go get a latte.

 

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