Category Archives: technology

What do hashtags # and other symbols on twitter and facebook mean?

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What is twitterspeak? Well it’s how we communicate on twitter and other social media sites of course:)

The hashtag (#) is simply a way to search. This was designed for twitter and is used as a way to search. So if I were discussing mobile learning in a post I could say #mobilelearning and then anyone searching twitter for mobile learning posts could more easily find mine. Now people are using this on facebook, however, facebook does not currently use these to search but that could be changed in the future.

Another symbol used on twitter is the @ symbol. This is used to refer to someone. So if someone were speaking about me, their post might include @raypastore which would then link to my profile. Again this is being used on facebook but does not actually link to the referenced person.

I hope this helps clear up two of the most common ‘symbols’ used on facebook and twitter and help people understand what they mean and how they are used.

Make a shortened ‘tiny’ url

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Want to post a link to twitter but it’s too large? Ever wonder how people create those tiny urls? Well they are very simple to create. All that you need to do is copy your url, go to a site like bitly.com, which is the most popular, paste the url in the box and it gives you a shortened url. For instance, here is the url for this blog: http://bit.ly/zWTT8l

Here is a video which demonstrates the process:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_OtexpH8JU]

Future of game and training development for the designer

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Games are becoming significantly easier to create. I say this because the most popular games on the market right now like Mass Effect 3 and SWTOR use off the shelf, free, game engines. Normally, games are developed using their own engines, which take a lot of time and money to develop. However, off the shelf engines are becoming just as good. The best part is that many of these off the shelf engines are free and opensource.

Now before I get into ease of development, these engines still require a significant amount of programming and are not really made for the novice. However, there is a trend to make these engines more designer friendly, meaning less programming and more ‘building’. Examples of this can be seen in Google App Inventor (now at MIT), Scratch, Squeak, Gamemaker etc. The reason that game engine designers want engines to entail less programming is that programmers are not game designers, they are programmers but at this point only the programmers can use the engines. They want and need designers to use their engines to build games, which will in turn make their engines more popular.

This trend is happening in training development as well. We are seeing a push to develop with software like Articulate, a program that does not take a lot if any programming experience to develop sound instruction. This makes the instructional designer also now a developer, and more marketable as programmers are not required to develop the instruction. This however, does take time away from the instructional designer thus someone still needs to develop whether it’s the programmer or designer.

Essentially the point of this post is that I see game and training development starting to fall into the hands of the designer more than it is. In fact, I would not be surprised if our field starts focusing on ‘building’ – that is understanding programming logic and constructing games and training, instead of actually having to program at all.

CES 2012

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For those interested in the latest and greatest gadgets and computer technology coming out this year, check out the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2012 – jan 10-13. Many cool devices will be shown….one of which I am looking forward to seeing is a quad core phone. I would also like to see phones with 10+mp which would not be surprising as 12+ ones have been released overseas.

Here is the link to CES 2012: http://www.cesweb.org/

10 things your IT wants you to know….

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Thought this was pretty funny:

1. Don’t argue with me.
2. If you say you’re an idiot for doing something, I’ll likely agree.
3. Don’t lie about what you did, we’ll find out anyway.
4. IT might be awesome and powerful, but even we have limitations.
5. Don’t cry wolf.
6. It’s pretty likely you don’t have the most important job.
7. Like an elevator button, we won’t come to you faster if you keep pushing ours.
8. Email me, we’ve got 5 devices that tell us when we get a new email.  However, many of us still only have one that tells us when you left a voicemail.
9. Don’t cry.
10. We can do most, if not more than the things you think we can do, but we don’t because we don’t really care.

Here is a link to the article with descriptions of each point on the list

MIT expanding open courseware

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MIT is going to be expanding open courseware by actually offering certificates from it. However there is a catch, or two:) The certificates will not be from MIT, rather a non-profit organization, and it will cost money.

My thoughts on this concept: Great in theory but this is going to go nowhere. People do NOT have the motivation or time to do things like this. Online courses in general have high drop out rates due to lack of motivation. So my question to MIT, what are you going to do differently here? Why should I take one of these courses and complete it? I just do NOT see the motivation but that does not mean it’s not there, I just might not have read it or maybe it’s still in development.

Link to article

Google App Inventor moving to MIT Media Lab

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For those wondering about this transition, here is a link to some good info from MIT.

Here is some of the main info:

When will the Google App Inventor service shut down?

Google support of App Inventor will end on December 31, 2011.

When will the public MIT App Inventor service be available?

We MIT anticipate the public instance of App Inventor will be available for the general public to access some time in the first quarter of 2012.

Will my current App Inventor projects transfer automatically to the MIT service?

No, legally Google is not allowed to give your project data to MIT. You will need to download your projects to your computer and upload them to the MIT service when it becomes available.

What do I need to do to preserve my projects when the Google service shuts down?

You will need to download your projects to your computer. The “Download all projects” button will create a zip file of all your projects. Unzipping that will produce a folder with all your projects (each project itself is a zip file) and you can upload them individually to a new App Inventor service when it becomes available.

Link to the rest:

 App Inventor transition to MIT

 

Are we overestimating technology use in younger generations?

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For this piece, I am speaking about the current undergraduate – 18-22 year old in college, and not computer science majors. My experience is mostly with education and communication majors. Having taught at two different universities in the last several years, and teaching many technology classes, I have had a lot of experience with students of this age their perceptions and experience with technology. So…

I think we believe these students are inundated with technology, are experts, and all have new iPhones. What I am finding in my classes is quite the opposite. Here are my observations:

The students are not inundated with technology in their classes. In fact, many come to my technology classes with a little anxiety because they are going to have to use the computer in new ways. What I find is that many of my students are comfortable using Word and Powerpoint. They can check email and do basic web searches using Google. When I ask who has heard of Google Docs, maybe 1% of the class raises their hands. And this isnt just Google Docs, this goes for many Web 2.0 technologies with the exception of Facebook. Do these students all have new iPhones? I find that in general, less than 50% of my students have smartphones.  In fact, some have hand me down smart phones from their parents. None have ipads but a few have used them because their parents might have one. All of my students have laptops. None have standard desktops. This is not surprising as the cost of laptops has decreased a lot in the last few years. A portion do have Macs which are more expensive.

So what does this all mean? I believe it means that these students are not using every new gadget that comes out. They do not have the money to buy the latest smart phones. And they are not tech experts, in fact, they are just as nervous about new technology as older generations in my opinion. Now will this change? I believe so. I have observed the current elementary/middle school students doing significantly more with technology in the classroom. So I believe in the next 5-10 years the undergrads will be much more technology driven than the current generation.

Having said all of that, there are the students that remind me of myself. They make it a priority to have the latest and greatest. They can recite every popular web 2.0 technology and read blogs such as mashable daily. But these are not the norm. These are the techies:)

HTML5: When will it be ready for prime time?

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At this point, HTML5 is not ready to be used, which is why pretty much everyone is NOT using it. I recently did a test of a few of the major HTML5 tags, such as the video tag, one that will be most common, and it failed on more than 50% of the browsers I tested it on. I tested this on firefox, IE, Opera, and Safari for the mac and pc. Then on mobile devices including ipad, iphone, and android froyo. You can test the page yourself by clicking this link. Check to see where it works and does not.

So at this point, I would strongly recommend NOT using HTML5 until is becomes more standardized. Its just full of too many holes. As new browsers get released these holes may become larger or smaller so you really need to just pay attention. W3C has said the standards would be ready by 2014 and you currently can ‘trick’ all browsers into working but honestly I am not going to write code for every browser possibility. That is not the point of HTML5 and if that is the case I might as well use a plug in.

Anyone interested in learning html5 should check out: http://www.w3schools.com/html5/default.asp

And anyone interested in learning more about why HTML5 is not ready for prime time should check out this link. This site describes why youtube is continuing to use flash player and not HTML5: http://www.streaminglearningcenter.com/articles/what-is-html5.html