I came across the creativetechs blog last week.....what a great site! They offer great tech tips and training workshops (if you live in the Seattle area.)
You will find great tips on:
If you haven't discovered the great resources at Futurelab from the UK (see previous posting) time to browse through a great website! Just a quick review....what does Futurelab do? Well, "Futurelab is passionate about transforming the way people learn. Tapping into the huge potential offered by digital and other technologies, they develop innovative resources and practices that support new approaches to learning for the 21st century."
Of the many great resources that is produced from Futurelab, one of these is their bi-monthly magazine called VISION.
This issue has some articles that could encourage some great discussions with your education community:
Need to get motivated with some great music for a workout? Rainy day and feeling a little lazy? Or, need some motivating music to get some housework done?
You can download this little application (Mac or PC) called Moody by CrayonRoom. Once downloaded it becomes paired with your iTunes and while you play through your songs, just click on a coloured square that reflects the "mood of the song."
There is a 16 colour grid that corresponds with emotions from intense, calm, sad and happy....with everything in between.
So now you can create a playlist according to your mood :)
School Chat....
This would be an interesting way to have students in Drama, Dance or English look at bringing emotion to various types of plays or performances. Music teachers would be able to work with their students to explore how emotion is tied in with music. We tend to be visual learners....an interesting way to explore the connections between music, colour and emotion.
So you own an iPod, iPhone or other Apple products....time to discover iLounge.
Then just for fun (but some of the tips are serious).....50 Things you can do with your iPod
Check out Apples iTunes U and Mobile Learning
miShare is a cool little product that lets you share your files and playlists between iPods without having to use a computer to do this.
iPods in Education from Tony Vincent. Great website that explores various ways "that iPods can be used for teaching and learning."
Want a peek into future technologies that will be coming to house, office or school near you?
MERL (Mitsubishi Electric Research Labratories) is an arm of the Mitsubishi Electric Corporation. MERL focuses on research in 5 areas:
The New Media Consortium (NMC) and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) just released the 2008 Horizon Report. "Each year, the Horizon Report describes six areas of emerging technology that will have significant impact on higher education within three adoption horizons over the next one to five years."
The 6 technology trends identified in the report that could shape education in 2008 are:
2007 was an interesting year in technology and innovation. PC World sums this up in an article "The 25 Most Innovative Products of the Year." Everything from a mobile phone to cloud computing....the PC, the web and mobile devices have evolved.
Some of the most innovative products that the staff at PC World selected are:
Google Gears
The old saying..."if you can't beat em, join them" seems to fit with this new web service/concept.
Since Napster came on the web scene, people have been downloading and sharing media files...especially music files. Now a musician is taking the "downloads" into his own hands.
We7 (in beta) started in April of 2007 "by Rock legend Peter Gabriel, technology entrepreneur Steve Purdham and financial investor John Taysom to bring advertisers a new ad delivery mechanism."
The target audience for We7is ages 14-65, re-enforcing ad messaging through "multiple delivery methods including B2C (Business-to-Consumer), B2B (Business-to-Business) and community delivery."
January 15, 2008 was a milestone for We7 with the 1 millionth track downloaded on that day from the website. Who benefits from this service? We7believes everyone wins and apparently investors believe it is a winning combination with a 6 million dollar investment deal just closed on January 21, 2008.
School Chat....
Now before drama, dance, and other teachers that pay huge royalty fees for school performances start jumping up and down with excitement....read the terms and conditions first (yes I know....who actually reads those....). The free downloads are for personal use only.
Hopefully the folks at We7 will look at an education community business model that schools will be able to access as well?
Playing games over the years has moved out of the arcade around the corner and into the home or on a mobile device. Games are used for learning, recreating simulations, and just for fun.
Using the social network hook, MyGLife.org is moving beyond the player and into users (youth 13 yrs and older) becoming game developers.
MyGLife.org is developed by World Wide Workshop, a "organization dedicated to conceptualizing and developing applications of Internet media technology to enhance learning, creativity and understanding among children and youth in developing communities around the world."
MyGLife.org has "100s of "educational activities, simulations and tutorials to play, learn, explore and contribute new ideas online."
Designed to help youth:
An article on ScientistTech website writes about a group at Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center in Phoenix, Arizona that are testing Wii to be used with their surgical residents. They have found that "surgical residents performed better during simulated surgery after playing on the Wii console." The belief is....this is due to the console's "novel 'Wiimote' control system, which allows players to direct on-screen action using a wireless wand that detects acceleration in three dimensions."
Researchers found that "Wii-playing residents scored 48 per cent higher on tool control and performance than those without the Wii warm-up." They also found that some games were especially good "because players must use small, precise movements of the wand."
There is development now for game software that can be played on Wii that is specific for surgical procedures. The researchers believe that Wii has the "most potential of any console for trainee surgeons."
Read more....
Just came across a site that I found quite intriguing. We are always taking the world around us and digitizing it through photos, video and audio files....here was a process that brought what we have created digitally into the "real world."
Export to World was designed Linda Kostowski and Sascha Pohflepp and they their aim with this project was to "copy objects from Second Life's walled economy of simulated things. We export those into the real world by transforming them into life-size papercraft models."
What will you need to create the virtual objects into the real world?
Working in 3D, I am going to try this on some of my own 3D models.....keep you posted on that one.
How do you park a smart car in the city? Well stack it of course. Researchers at MIT have come up with a prototype called the "City Car."
The City Car is a stack able smart car that seats 2 passengers. The City Car is NOT a replacement for personal transport but is a model that is similar to the grocery cart stack or luggage carts at the airport. The hope is that this vehicle will become more of a socially accepted model of transportation within a densely populated urban environment.
For example, people that live outside of an urban area but drive into work sometimes have an option to park outside the city limits and then take in mass transport to the city centre. the City Car would be able to replace the large city buses or trains that move mass transit into the city centre.
Would this have a positive impact and reduce the carbon footprint of a city? Interesting concept.
Mobility and usability is what Belkin is bringing with a marriage of the iPod and a new product called TuneStudio. You can now easily create "high-quality digital recordings directly to your iPod."
"This mixer allows the input of up to four different instruments or audio sources, and records the audio onto your iPod for instant playback."
Musical instruments can be attached along with microphones. Whether it is jam sessions or recording assessments for the classroom....all the audio gets recorded directly to the attached iPod.
Creating a Podcast? TuneStudio can be used to record the Podcasts in a studio or on location (it is a very portable unit.) 
Compatible with the following iPods:
A great tool to incorporate into the school community for use in the classroom.
One of the many great perks of being a part of the Adobe Education Leadership (AEL) program is learning about new technologies, applications or services that are up and coming. Tech Wednesday (they are "Tech Thursday" for us in the Southern Hemisphere) are live Acrobat Connect presentations that Adobe hosts almost weekly. AELs and other Adobe user groups are invited to view/participate in the presentations. They are great and range from new product releases to 3rd party customers. I wasn't able to attend the presentation live this morning, but since the live presentation was recorded through Acrobat Connect, I was able to easily view it later by accessing a web link.
This morning Mitch Grasso - the co-founder of SlideRocket was the presenter. SlideRocket is an exciting new (you can sign up for a beta account on the website) web based application that has been designed using Adobe Flex and Adobe AIR.
SlideRocket is pushing presentation desktop products like PowerPoint and KeyNote by allowing users to "design, manage and share libraries of slides and assets, and to deliver presentations in person or remotely over the web." It has many of the features you have come to use in the desktop products plus more!!!
The cool thing about SlideRocket is that you (as the publisher of the presentation) can add users with different permissions and roles. Some of the other unique aspects of SlideRocket:
E.O. Wilson (a professor and honorary curator in entomology at Harvard University) presented at TED in March 2007 which is quite an inspiring and fascinating talk for any age group. A video that should definitely be shown in every biology class. He encourages everyone to get to know more about the insects and small creatures, to learn more about our biosphere.
There are over 500 bacteria (now known) that are friendly living in your throat and mouth alone. Biodiversity is a yardstick with which to measure the health of planet Earth. Much of early biology consisted of identifying and classifying creatures. As the world famous Ecologist E.O Wilson says, “Everything is connected”. It is these interactions and the totality of life, which give rise to the term biodiversity. Biological diversity can be defined as the variety of living creatures, including their ecological roles and their genetic diversity. Biodiversity is in short the “creation” in its mind-boggling entirety.
HIPPO is an acronym that Wilson uses to describe the threats to biosphere:
key tools needed to inspire preservation of earth's biodiversity - it is called the Encyclopedia of Life. A website that has a page for each species on earth that makes this information available for everyone on the earth. Could scientists and the everyday person can come together (almost in a wiki format) to develop the Encyclopedia?Over dinner tonight the discussion turned to batteries. Yes, I know what you are thinking....not the most exciting dinner conversation, but it actually got into quite a conversation.
We were actually talking about Pleo (see yesterday's posting) and I was telling everyone that it has about a 1 hour battery life and starts to get sleepy when the battery starts to run down.
Two of us at the dinner table love gadgets....I mean we absolutely love new techi gadgets and that , unfortunately, involves charging and batteries. Whenever I pack I have cables and battery chargers and extra external chargers to charge all my gear in case batteries die. Now I have found some clever little travel tools that will reduce the amount of cables you need to carry as you can just "switch the plug ends." I was given as a gift an Electronics USB Cell phone/PDA/iPOD/Charger Kit by Tumi and it is great! It really reduces the amount of cables you have to carry and when traveling overseas you only need the one adapter as it switches to all international power plugs.
I also never leave home without my Tunejuice by Griffin Technology. It is a great little
battery extender for any of the iPods (except the little shuffle). Just pop in 4 AAA batteries and if your iPod starts to die you just plug it into the bottom of the iPod. Griffin Technology reports that "TuneJuice will provide up to 14 hours of additional audio play, or 2 more hours of video viewing." I can't verify the length of time as my Tunejuice has not run down yet while in use. I think the longest I have used it is 5 continuous hours and it was still going strong.
So my point is, as much as we love our technology and gadgets we do have a charging/battery issue. I just read an article from ScienceDaily that reports this problem may be solved very shortly. A report that researchers from Stanford University have "found a way to use silicon nanowires to reinvent the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that power laptops, iPods, video cameras, cell phones, and countless other devices." (read further)
Research into this technology has been going on for sometime, but it seems the team at Stanford has cut through and solved any of the previous problems. These new batteries "produces 10 times the amount of electricity of existing lithium-ion, known as Li-ion, batteries. A laptop that now runs on battery for two hours could operate for 20 hours."
Exciting stuff! No reports yet when consumers might see this available on the market, but you can bet it might be around the corner.
Wondering what to do over the Christmas or Summer (yeah Southern Hemisphere) Holidays?
Why not try some of the latest public betas hosted on the Adobe Labs website.
Brio - next generation of Acrobat Connect
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/brio/
Flex 3 public beta 3 available on Labs
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flex/
Adobe AIR beta 3
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/air/
BlazeDS beta
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/blazeds/
Adobe AIR update for Flash CS3 Professional beta 3
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/AIR:Flash_CS3_Professional_Update
Adobe AIR Extension for Adobe Dreamweaver beta 3
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/AIR:Dreamweaver_CS3_Extension
Virtual Parallels collide at the Synthetic Worlds Institute at the University of Indiana.
Arden was developed by Professor Edward Castronova and colleagues to explore the economic changes that can occur in a synthetic world and real world and how one impacts the other. Arden "gives social scientists an entire populated world on which to perform experiments - something always lacking in the real world." (BBC.com)
The Shakespeare era has been created to engage with online players to create a social laboratory without the users realizing it. Social scientists will start tweaking within Arden and see how the synthetic community within Arden will respond.
Takes the white lab rat to a whole new level.
Classroom chats.....
Will synthetic worlds take over social research? Is it a reflection of directions that societies will take...evolve to? Will social scientists be able to predict and be able to stop potentially harmful events from happening? Time will tell.....
Sometimes a person needs to chat about things for no other purpose than they are cool or fun.
Musicovery is both that....a little web application that has been designed to connect your tastes in a visual manner.
User Interface (UI) is something that has always been important to digital designers, but I believe it is something that is going to be VERY IMPORTANT for the 21st century. A visual UI that focuses on inclusion across gender, cultural and age boundaries is one that will be successful.
Thoughts......
Is the UI for musicovery the UI of the future? What will the UI for future-proofing look like?
Some people laugh when you say Web 3.0 or semantic web....they don't believe there will be a "Web 3.0" but rather something completely different.
The folks at Project10X will argue that Web 3.0 is the next wave and it is starting now!
Project10X is a "research consultancy specializing in next wave semantic technologies and solutions. The firm’s clients include technology manufacturers, global 2000 corporations, and government agencies."
A quote from a report just released by Project10X looks at the 4 stages of Internet growth....
"The semantic wave embraces four stages of Internet growth.
