The event is scheduled for March 7th (Wed) in San Fransisco 10am PST or 1pm EST. Here are several places to watch the event live:
http://techiezlounge.com/watch-live-streaming-of-ipad-3-event-ipad-3-event-timings.html
http://www.droolable.com/apple-ipad-3-event-live-streaming-online
Read about it from the following blogs who will be posting live:
Many times clients, students, peers, etc. come to me and say “We want to build this in Flash/Articulate/Insert fav software here”. My first comment is: What are the learning objectives? Then I look at the needs analysis and instructional strategies to be used to see if they all align. Too many times does the justification for the technology used not coincide with the learning objectives.
What happens is that we tend to get caught up in the technology side of things. I guess this is common as we are instructional technologists, however, this is not what we want to get caught up in. Remember, technology is a tool that helps us teach material. It is an aid. We use it when it is the best method to accomplish our goals and objectives (even though sometimes realistically its our only option). So often I see training developed in an advanced authoring tool like Flash that probably could have been developed in PPT, which would have saved money and development time, and still met the learning objectives.
So what question should clients, students, peers, etc. be asking? They should be asking: Here are our learning objectives, what are the best technologies/instructional strategies to convey them to the learners? This is much better than the other way around. Remember, objectives should guide instructional strategies and the technology used, the technology shouldnt guide how the objectives are presented. They should be presented using a strategy that is effective, not one limited by software.
4G refers to the speed that data is received on your cell phone. Currently most phones use 3G speeds, such as the iPhone. This means that when connecting to the internet it feels like you are using old dial up modems. Current 3G phones get about 1-2 MBPS speeds while 4G is closer to 10-20 with the possibility of getting up to 100 once the technology is available, so its significantly faster. 4G feels like you are using wireless high speed internet. The best comparison between 3G and 4G is dial up vs high speed internet. Here is a good article which goes into the details of 1G-4G.
However, one interesting fact, Verizon just released data showing that while their 4G coverage area serves 200 million customers, only 5% of their customers are using 4G services. This means that people are just not really using the high speeds. Personally I use it all the time. So much better than 3G. Here is an article that discusses this issue
So the iPad event has been scheduled for next wed. This more than likely means iPad 3 is going to be announced.
New features iPad 3 is said to have:
Quad core processor
Siri
Better camera
I run into so many lessons/instructional programs that have such poorly worded objectives. This causes me to really question the instruction, especially the assessment, which means that I am already thinking its not effective. So here is how you write learning objectives.
A learning objective should contain 4 pieces of information: Audience, Behavior, Condition, and Degree:
Install Box on your Android phone by March 23rd and get 50GB of storage for life for free. Cant pass this up. I believe it applies to IOS users as well.
Android – https://market.android.com/details?id=com.box.android&hl=en
IOS – http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/box-for-iphone-and-ipad/id290853822?mt=8
While not quite there yet, it is pretty cool:
Here is what soldiers think of CoD/BF3. I do not think anyone thought any differently. Obviously no one would really run around in the open shooting
From the article:
Developers of games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3 spend millions of dollars to ensure their games are as realistic as possible. Everything from the noise of guns firing to the war-torn environments are created with meticulous care. Military experts are brought on board to ensure that details look and feel as true to life as possible.
Everyone understands that shooting games are fantasies but how close is the experience to real-life combat situations? We asked three soldiers who have served their country in dangerous war-zones.
They explain that as much as they enjoy playing games, the real-life experiences are vastly different. And while games can be very good at portraying physical environments, they aren’t even close to recreating the emotional strain of combat. Also, while games focus on the individual, real soldiers are trained to focus on the team.
To continue from yesterdays post, my students installed moodle last night. I just wanted to share the process and lessons learned from this experience:
1. I had all students buy their own websites with shared server access where they each installed moodle. They are each creating their own courses in my class.
2. I had them download FTP.
3. I had them download Moodle and upload it to their servers. A note here, make sure they unzip the file. I had maybe 1/3 of my students try to upload the zipped file and of course it would not work. Also, uploaded took quite a while in some cases. Moodle is 91mb and has around 10,000 files, so it can easily take 30-60+ minutes to upload. Be prepared for this.
4. Next we set up Moodle. Now this will change depending on what kind of server you are using. This process was not too bad. Some students needed help due to some slight configurations that needed to be made to get everything working but overall this part was fairly easy.
5. Some students just had no luck. I also students who tried to use other web hosts that they own their own websites through and of course those services were sufficient to run moodle so they did have to buy sites from icdsoft as I had originally recommended. For the students that had no luck, I simply asked them for their usernames/passwords and upload the Moodle files myself. This solved all the problems – thus is was user error causing the problems.
I hope this has helped anyone looking to do something similar.
Today in class my students will be installing Moodle on their websites. There are really three main steps that need to take place for them to be able to use Moodle and I thought this would be helpful for them or anyone else wanting to do something similar in their courses.
1. Have a server. I have my students buy their own website (http://icdsoft.com/promo-code/course359) for $38 and just use the server that comes with that site. Its very easy.
2. Download and install FTP. FTP which stands for File Transfer Protocol allows them to transfer files from their desktop to their website. It is the middle man. There are many free FTP programs online. I personally like cyberduck.
3. Go to Moodle.org and download the standard Moodle package. They then upload this onto their website using the FTP program from step 2.
At this point they go into their browser and install Moodle. Set up will vary depending on the type of server you are using. Its actually a very easy process that can be done in as little as 10 minutes.