New iPhone App

Just a quick post, trying out the new Posterous iPhone app... Not sure if I'll end up using it much, but you never know!

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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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Just testing

Just testing out the posterous site. Hope this works! 
It should go to twitter (fotostuf); 
flickr (blognoxious); 
and my blog (the importance of blogging earnest)

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Obama and Space

Just found a well written posting on the Obama Space plan...

1. NASA gets more money, not less

2. Constellation program is being cancelled

3. A heavy lift rocket is being proposed

4. Screw the moon... been there, done that

So... why is everyone against the plan??

The dumb get dumber...

...but at least they believe in themselves!

(click on SHOW TRANSCRIPT)

Democracy is ALWAYS unfair!

Don't believe me? Just read the article!

Vlingo on the iPhone

I've been playing around with an app I found... Vlingo. Very cool. You can use your voice to use your maps app, do searches, work with social networking sites (I use Twitter) and dial on your phone hands free!

If you pay money, you can also send email and text. It is well worth the free features, but I am not impressed with having to pay $9.99 just to do email and text.

Here is appjudgements review...

http://revision3.com/appjudgment/ip_annie_vlingo

ROKU/NETFLIX Review

We got rid of cable TV for various reasons and are very happy with the cost of the ROKU and Netflix. For $99 it is a good value. If I had had an XBox or now on Playstation, I could have had Netflix for free, but since I'm not interested in TV games, it was much cheaper just to go with ROKU. They are updating the box with new channels, which makes things even better! Have had so much fun seeing all those old series from the 60s and movies that I would never bother buying on DVD, so the value is quite good.
The only issue is a very inconsistent quality... it quite often starts with "4 dots", but then within a few minutes decreases to "2 dots" in quality and stays that way the rest of the night. Looks very pixilated. Not sure if it has to do with the WiFi connection or not.
The HDMI connection failed once, but then started again the next day... not sure why. I emailed ROKU and got a response with corrections to try very quickly, but since it started working again, didn't need to try them out.
Overall, good value, but needs some tweaking!

steampunk

For no reason I can fathom, I have become enchanted with the look of steampunk fashion. Not sure why really, you have to admit it is rather bizzare, but maybe it stems from my early readings of Moorcock's "Warlord of the Air"... sigh, I miss those reinvented days!

Tank Man...

Sung to the tune of "Suffragette City" (with apologies to David Bowie)

Tank man… just leave us alone, you know
Tank man… We say get off the road, I gotta
Tank man… I gotta straighten my gun
This young and brave man just showed the world we're no fun

Tank man… we block the internet
Tank man… no view but the governments
Tank man… we'll just shoot you blam blam
You said you have to free me but we… and then we…

Oh don't lean on me man, cause you can't afford the sentence
In a prison cell, darkly
Oh don't lean on me man, cause you ain't got time to check out
Our prison cells, darkly

You're outta sight… and that's alright

Tank man… oh we say no democracy, go away
Tank man… We will break you, you see, okay
Tank man… hey your fame is worldwide
But not in our town and not on our side, here we come

Oh don't lean on me man, cause you can't afford the sentence
In a prison cell, darkly
Oh don't lean on me man, cause you ain't got time to check out
Our prison cells, darkly

You're outta sight… and that's alright

In a prison cell, darkly
Our prison cells, darkly
In a prison cell, darkly
Our prison cells, darkly
In a prison cell, darkly
Our prison cells, darkly

AHHHHHH.... WHAM BAM THANK YOU MAN!


Take a moment... and wish for things that could have been.

Twit

I'm on Twitter now... does that make me a twit?
Probably so...

New President

Took this with my iPhone while at the airport...

The End of an Error!

Just landed at the airport, walking towards the exit, when I noticed a television on in a small vending area. I noticed it was the inauguration, so had to sit down and watch it. After a while, I looked back and noticed a whole crowd of people that were doing the same!

Then the moment came... "Congratulations Mr. President"! Everyone near that television began to cheer, began to clap, and even began to cry. What a moment... a new President, a peaceful transition of power, and a renewed hope for the future. In the end, it doesn't matter what party you belong to... this is a GREAT country!

Apple Gaming... or not

Just read an article about Apple not understanding "gaming". Not being a "gaming" person, I can't say what the gaming community understands, I can't really see it through their eyes, and I most certainly don't want to offend anyone. That said... I just can't agree with this idea. Apple knows exactly what they are doing.

Yes, gaming is a BIG market. But so what? It just isn't the market that Apple wants to emphasize. People seem to be only seeing a big market and are not looking at the demand it will take to capture that market. As opposed to the "too many eggs in one basket" problem, I think this is a problem of having too many baskets and not enough eggs! Apple would like the market share (and the population that want to use Apple computers but don't because of the lack of gaming options) and would love the MONEY that comes with it, but there is a much larger reality that must be faced. A company that moves into territory that has nothing to do with their expertise will ultimately fail. Having all those baskets with no eggs to fill them with will destroy a company. There is just so much one company can do, and if they add more baskets, they either have to have more eggs, or have to pull eggs out of the baskets they already have filled. It weakens one market, and never really strengthens the new market. Failure all around, and that is NOT good eats!

This is not to say that there are no success stories for diversifying, but for the most part, the really successful companies either keep with what they know (and do it very well) or get rid of what they did in the past and completely change what they do. Look up the history of DuPont and many of the chemical companies. They went all over the map, but not until they got rid of whatever they were doing previously. They put a strong emphasis on the new market without having to be dragged down by the old one. This just isn't the case with Apple. Their strengths are not in jeopardy, their products not some kind of old technology that is going to go away. To add other products will take away from their successes, not add to them.

Being in the education industry, I meet with many who are now getting degrees in Digital Gaming and Simulation. Most of them want to hack away at a computer... they tolerate Windows, LOVE Linux, but aren't really happy with the Mac OS. And that is fine by me. No problems with that... REALLY! But for me, and the market that Apple seems to sell to (yeah... that would be me!), doesn't care about hacking anything. We want something we can buy and that will work. We don't care to tweak, to modify, to break down and rebuild, to redesign. It just isn't fun to us. We are a totally different market than the gaming community, and Apple has made their decision on who they sell to. And that is fine by me too!

There is one point that I don't understand, and maybe someone can clarify it for me. What is so important about games on a computer anyway?? If I want to have games at all, and remember I'm not one that does, so forgive my ignorance, I can just go get a Playstation a Wii, or whatever else is popular in the market. I hook it up to the television and have at it. Why on earth would I want to run it off a computer with a much smaller screen, or worse, on a laptop with a screen far far smaller than even the smaller modern televisions out there now? I just don't get the attraction. Someone please explain. I may change my opinion if you do!

iPhone - Thick... as a brick

Apple is NOT deliberately "bricking" iPhones. There. I've said it. And here is why ~

1. Apple warned everyone that updates could cause problems on hacked phones. What else do you need to know?
2. The updates are necessary additions to a wonderful / beautiful / really cool piece of UNFINISHED software. Does no one remember how Leopard got stalled because all the designers were taken off to get iPhone ready in time? Well, it still wasn't enough to get the iPhone right the first time. But then again, what piece of software is? It is still a better interface than any other phone I have ever had.
3. Apple is adamant about keeping anything they create stable. This is just not possible if everyone and their mother can add whatever hack they want. There just isn't any control. You can like it, hate it, or be indifferent about it, but that is just the way it is.
Here is a quote from Jobs himself:

“You don’t want your phone to be like a PC. The last thing you want is to have loaded three apps on your phone and then you go to make a call and it doesn’t work anymore."

Gee… what a thought… have a product that doesn't die on you. Guess it isn't a PC after all!
On a Yahoo Finance page from September 24:

"Apple has discovered that many of the unauthorized iPhone unlocking programs available on the Internet cause irreparable damage to the iPhone's software"

4. Last time I checked, if I work on my car and damage it with third party parts, it isn't the responsibility of the automobile maker… it's mine. Why should a phone be any different? If you want to hack… go for it! But YOU are responsible. DEAL.

You may agree with this assessment or not, or even have absolutely no opinion whatsoever, but I would like to hear from those that are far more in the know than I, specifically those that use hacks, those that are far more technically savvy than I, and anyone else that owns and iPhone and is interested in the subject.

Cardiac (Avoided)

Okay... so I have been praising the iPhone for a few days now. It's time to show a downside.

I was listening to music and charging the phone at the same time, when all of a sudden... no music.
I looked over and noticed the screen was dimmed but still visible, so I thought, no problem, just wake it up or something, right? Very wrong. The phone is locked up, not moving, not turning off after I press the sleep/wake button at the top... over and over and over and over again!!

I am now in panic mode... I'm off for a much deserved break tomorrow and the phone is dead in the water. Not only that I notice it is getting hot. Oh hell! Now what do I do? I quickly get online, get an appointment with an Apple Genius at my local store (luckily I live near one!), and drive off at break neck speed, fuming all the way!

The good part of this story is, no wait... the GREAT part is, I don't even go up to the counter when I arrive... an incredibly nice person comes up right as I walk into the store and says hello and is everything going well? I pause, confused (does this kind of kindness exist at retail stores anymore?), and go... no, all the while holding up the iPhone. He stops, actually looks and acts concerned, and immediately takes the phone. Within a few seconds, as I am telling the story and getting agitated all the while, he resets it! While I'm still flustered, he looks at me and says... it's okay now. Dumbstruck, I very intelligently respond... huh? grrbl? bllllthth? duuuuuuuuh... and realize... He's a GENIUS!

All it took was holding down the aforementioned sleep/wake button AND the Home button at the same time for about 12 seconds. I cannot say enough for the people at Apple stores. I have NEVER been let down by them. They can't get paid enough! Do you hear me Apple... PAY THEM MORE! They are your first and BEST sales force by far and deserve the credit!

The downside you ask? It's simple... why doesn't Apple give us enough information in the first place to take care of issues like this? I mean, the documentation that comes with the phone is laughable, and unless you know where to look... and you have an internet connection, you won't be getting the downloadable User Guide any time soon! If there is any failing in an Apple product, it is the accompanying documentation... or lack thereof!

Get with the program Apple! I don't want to spend endless hours in chat rooms and forums asking questions whenever something goes wrong. Common problems should be documented and provided for with the product. How long did it take to show an Apple retail sales employee this? Can't you pay someone to add that training to some kind of user guide that comes with the product? It doesn't take a genius to figure out not everyone lives near an Apple store (although they do seem to be popping up almost as fast as Starbucks does! Maybe you should get together with them and provide an Apple store everywhere there is a Starbucks?

Will that be non-fat with your Mac, sir?