Author Archives: admin

HTML5 Doctype

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The HTML Doctype is used to tell a browser which version of HTML your page is written in. Thus it is very important that it is included on each HTML page. With HTML5, the doctype will be changed to be significantly shorter and easier to remember.

Here is the HTML5 Doctype:

<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html>
<body>

You can see how much this differs from the common HTML 4.01 doctype:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd”>
<html>
<body>

For more info on Doctypes see W3schools

Nintendo going digital with next gen console

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Looks like Nintendo will be joining the club and offering their games online. While they currently have an online store for the wii, this will offer normal retail games that normally require a disk. This is a good move for us consumers for many reasons. It will:

– Provide us with cheaper games (maybe?). Packaging has to increase game cost so if there is not packaging one can assume games will decrease in price.

– Give us instant access to games when they are released

– Games may run faster on SSD drives rather than having to spin via dvd.

– A bad thing: no more used games

– A bad thing: Need for large hard drives which may cause us to buy more

Here is a link to an article on the topic

TED-ED Videos and Lessons

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Now on the TED website (http://ed.ted.com/) you can not only post videos, but you can create quizzes, add materials, and even keep track of your users. Seems pretty cool and is a great way to promote open education. Check out the video that walks you through the new site:

Harvard pushing open access journals

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Harvard is pushing its faculty to publish in open access journals due the high prices that journals charge. Here is the article: http://www.engadget.com/2012/04/25/harvard-overpaying-for-research-wants-open-access/

I have recently been thinking about this concept: I spend a lot of time writing an article, months of revision, and finally get it published only to find that my school needs to pay a significant amount of money to access the article. Not only that, but I am paid nothing and lose rights to it. Additionally, this journal will probably ask me to help peer review their articles, again paying me nothing. This makes no sense. Either the schools or professors need to be paid for this work and should not be charge outrageous amounts of money for journal access since all of the leg work was done for free by faculty. So open access makes sense. Open access journals are usually online and available for free to anyone.

The only problem for myself? I am not a full professor so I need to continue publishing to the ‘top’ journals whether they are open access or not. So while I applaud Harvard’s effort, I hope that they are telling their junior faculty that they do not need to go for the ‘top’ journals but rather open access journals (and open access can be the ‘top tier 1’ journals but I am just assuming they are not in all cases)

Design before Technology

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I just saw a discussion on LinkedIn about this topic and ran into the issue during my student comprehensive exams. I will also write about it at some point but for now I have created a quick video. The main idea: You need to first look at your analysis, objectives, and instructional strategies before you choose your technology. Otherwise you might be setting yourself up for failure if the technology cannot deliver and meet your goals. Too often people ask me if they should be using Flash or Captivate or Articulate and I say: What are your objectives? What are your strategies? What does your analysis say? Is that really the best tool? Do NOT choose technology first:)

Free Educational Games at PBS

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I really love PBS and not because I worked there while I was getting my Ph.D. They offer some great educational tools for educators. Last week in my courses we discussed gaming and gamification in K-12 Education. One of the sites my students were able to ‘play’ with during our game playing session was at PBS. This site offers tons of free educational games, so check it out and try to implement some into your lessons where you can. Keep in mind some are better than others so be sure to try out several:

pbskids.org/games/

Cloud Storage options…Which is best?

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With many dropbox clones making their way into mainstream, I thought I would blog about each of them to show their strengths/weaknesses.

Dropbox – Works on mac, windows, iOS, Android

2GB – Free
50GB – $99 year
100GB – $199 year
Team option – need to contact for details

Box – Works on mac, windows, iOS, Android

5GB – Free
25GB – $9.99 month
50GB – $19.99 month

Microsoft Skydrive – will work on Windows and Mac and iOS

7GB Free
20GB – $10 a year
50GB – $25 a year
100GB – $50 a year

Google Drive – Works on mac, windows, iOS (coming soon), Android

5GB – Free
25GB – $2.49 month
100GB – $4.99 month
1TB – $49.99 month

BitCasa – Works on mac, windows, iOS, Android

Unlimited space for Free!

Apple’s i-Cloud – iOS, Mac, Windows

5GB – Free
10GB – $20 year
20GB – $40 year
50GB – $100 year

Amazon’s Cloud Drive – works on both mac and pc

5GB free
20GB – $20 a year
100GB – $100 a year
1000GB – $1000 a year

My recommendation: Dropbox or Box for ease of use. BitCasa for storage. Also, look out for deals from these services as they compete with each other. For instance, I got 50GB free for life from Box for downloading their Android app when it was first released.

Google Drive: Dropbox’s competitor

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Google has finally released their long awaited Google Drive. This is an online cloud storage solution. It merges google docs and offers 5GB of data for free! It works for Mac and PC and is available via Android devices in the app store. I have downloaded the app and it merged with my google docs. Google stated that they will make an IOS version soon.

Here is the link to the site: https://drive.google.com

Video on Google Drive: