“Students. PCs. Free Xbox 360. The Redmond team’s at it yet again. Similar to last year’s deal, Microsoft’s hooking students up with a 4GB Xbox 360 if they drop some cash on one of its Windows machines. It’s simple: shell out over $699 on a PC, or $599 if you’re in Canada, and you’ll be walking out with a shiny new console free of charge — naturally, you’ll have to do so at participating shops such as Best Buy, Fry’s, Newegg, Staples, The Source and, of course, Microsoft’s own stores. The promo is set to kick off here in the States on May 20th, while those living in the True North can take advantage of it starting today. And before you ask — yes, you will need to show your scholar credentials to get in on the bargain.”

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/18/microsoft-buy-pc-free-xbox-360-promotion/

An article about the ipo: http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/17/technology/facebook-ipo-final-price/index.htm

Watch the IPO (FB) on NASDAQ: https://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NASDAQ:FB

Source: http://www.onlinecolleges.com

“Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is the study and the practice of usability. It is about understanding and creating software and other technology that people will want to use, and will find effective when used. The concept of usability, and the methods and tools to encourage it, achieve it, and measure it are now touchstones in the culture of computing” – Carroll (2002)

HCI is how we interact with computer hardware and software. Not just computer though, but all machines – such as your car, dishwasher, airplane etc. The point of HCI is to make these technologies more ‘user friendly’ so that they are easier for us to interact with both physically and mentally. The key to HCI being usability – so expect more blog posts on usability.

UNCW Board of Visitors Instructional Technology presentation: uncw_InstruTech2012

Here is the article about Verizon: http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/16/verizon-cfo-says-grandfathered-unlimited-plans-on-the-way-out/

From the article:

“A woman opens an old steamer trunk and discovers tantalizing clues that a long-dead relative may actually have been a serial killer, stalking the streets of New York in the closing years of the nineteenth century. A beer enthusiast is presented by his neighbor with the original recipe for Brown’s Ale, salvaged decades before from the wreckage of the old brewery–the very building where the Star-Spangled Banner was sewn in 1813. A student buys a sandwich called the Last American Pirate and unearths the long-forgotten tale of Edward Owens, who terrorized the Chesapeake Bay in the 1870s.

These stories have two things in common. They are all tailor-made for viral success on the internet. And they are all lies.

Each tale was carefully fabricated by undergraduates at George Mason University who were enrolled in T. Mills Kelly’s course Lying About the Past.

Their escapades not only went unpunished, they were actually encouraged by their professor. Four years ago, students created a Wikipedia page detailing the exploits of Edward Owens, successfully fooling Wikipedia’s community of editors. This year, though, one group of students made the mistake of launching their hoax on Reddit. What they learned in the process provides a valuable lesson for anyone who turns to the Internet for information.”

Read the rest here: http://mashable.com/2012/05/16/fake-wikipedia-caught-by-reddit/

“Their system, called Brainput, is designed to recognize when a person’s workload is excessive and then automatically modify a computer interface to make it easier. The researchers used a lightweight, portable brain monitoring technology, called functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), that determines when a person is multitasking. Analysis of the brain scan data was then fed into a system that adjusted the user’s workload at those times. A computing system with Brainput could, in other words, learn to give you a break.”

More of the article here: http://mashable.com/2012/05/14/brainput/

“After being out for less than a week, Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition has sold over 1,000,000 units. Other impressive stats were also included in today’s press release, such as 5.2 million total hours of game time and 2.4 million hours of multiplayer.”

http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/11/report-apple-dumping-google-for-own-maps-app-in-ios-6/

Here is the article

My take is that the article is wrong. Not that I think ADDIE cannot be replaced, I think it eventually needs to be, but the article tells me nothing. No info why ADDIE is ‘bad’ and no info on how they would change it. In fact, the only thing I get from the article is that the people who wrote it are using ADDIE incorrectly and do not understand the process.  Here is my response to this article in a linkedin forum:

“So why use another process? What does it do differently than ADDIE? I have seen many people try to replace it and yet they cannot – for good reason. ADDIE works. While a systematic process, ADDIE is not linear. If you are using it in a linear or limiting way, you are using it wrong. Additionally, these two bullet points in the article contradict one another and show you would be using ADDIE wrong if you developed training that has little impact:

* departments spend too much money and time on training that has little, if any, impact on the performance of the learners.

* is in the constant cycle of allocating ever diminishing budgets which are not adequate to build training that has any return-on-investment.

And this bullet point shows me you are not doing a proper learner analysis or using the right instructional strategies (again not using ADDIE correctly):

* are becoming disillusioned and unmotivated by the boring, lifeless click-through training to which they are subjected.

And to address your points, if your ISDers are not using ADDIE correctly or doing proper instructional design and you are running into these types of issues, why blame ADDIE? It seems that the problem is that you are using it incorrectly. In fact, you are probably cutting corners somewhere. I usually see this when reviewing training which looks like flash cards – boring and not effective. Why? The ISDers did not actually design the instructional strategies to match the learning objectives and then did not asses properly (i.e., they did not use ADDIE correctly).

I guess my question for anyone getting rid of ADDIE for another model is, how are you ensuring quality? Because if you are cutting something out of ADDIE then you are cutting quality somewhere. If you are adding to ADDIE then I could understand because ADDIE by itself is missing a PM and Communication piece but its understood that its not meant to have them either.”

Check out the demonstration:

http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Product/Minecraft/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d802584111f7

http://wolfenstein.bethsoft.com

From the article:

“Detecting autism in children can be a difficult, expensive, and time-consuming process that requires the trained eye of a medical professional. But researchers Guillermo Sapiro and Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos believe that the Microsoft Kinect gaming sensor could assist in that task.

As part of an experiment at the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Child Development, Sapiro and Papanikolopoulos set up a series of five Microsoft Kinect sensors in the playroom of a school. There, the motion-detecting cameras recorded the movements of the children, aged 3 to 5, and sent the collected data to a series of PCs. The computers then calculated what children were most at risk for autism based on their hand movements and activity levels. Children whose activity levels differed greatly from their peers were flagged for further study by medical professionals.

Researchers admit the cameras are no substitute for the opinion of a real doctor, but say they could still help determine which children require closer examination for signs of autism. “The same way a good teacher flags a problem child, the system will do automatic flagging and say, ‘Hey, this kid needs to see an expert,’” says Shapiro.”

More of the article here

http://www.amazon.com/Guide-Surfing-Surfer-Should-Before/dp/147527839X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1336527572&sr=8-1