In the schools, too, there is no reward for helping others (indeed, it is heavily penalized). Suppose educational achievement was measured at least partially according to how much (and how well) you helped others. The value of the achievement would increase if the person is a stranger (and conversely, decrease to zero if it's just a small clique helping each other) and would be in proportion to the timeliness and utility of the assistance (both of which can be measured).
Suppose instead students were rewarded for cooperation. Not collaboration; this is just the school-level emulation of the creation of cliques and corporations. Cooperation, which is a common and ad hoc creation of interactions and exchanges for mutual value. Cooperative behaviours include exchanges of goods and services, agreement on open standards and protocols, sharing of resources in common (and open) pools, and similar behaviours.
Imagine receiving academic credit for contributing well-received resources into open source repositories, whether as software, art, photography, or educational resources. Imagine receiving credit for long-lasting additions to Wikipedia or similar online resources (we would have to fix Wikipedia, as it is now run by a gang of thugs known as 'Wikipedia editors'). We can have wide-ranging and nuanced evaluations of such contributions, not simple grades, but something based on how the content contributed is used and reused across the net (this would have the interesting result that your assessment could continue to go up over time).
There is, again, no reason why public service cannot be incorporated into individual assessment. Adding value to fire and police services by means of monitoring and reporting (not the piece-work model of something like CrimeStoppers, but actual prevention), supporting environment by counting birds, sampling water, servicing sports events by acting as a timer or umpire - all these can add to a person's assessment.
I'm not thinking of the simple sort of tasks grade school students can perform. Indeed, a person hoping to attain a higher level qualification would need to contribute to the public good in a substantial and tangible way. Offering open online courses (that are well-subscribed and positively reviewed by the community) should be a requirement for any graduate-level recognition. The PhD used to be about offering a unique research contribution to the field; now it's about paying tuition and being exploited as a TA.
These three things - helping others, being cooperative, contributing to the public good - are obviously not easy to assess. To be sure, it's far easier to ask students simple questions and grade the number of correct responses. But assessing students in this way, far from measuring putative 'content knowledge', is really an exercise in counting without any real interest in what is being counted. It acts as an invitation to cheat, as it places self-interest ahead of the values it is actually trying to measure.
Sharp, HTC and perhaps Apple are set to launch 3D smart-phones in the near future, and
now it seems Research In Motion (RIM) have put plans in place for its
BlackBerries to feature a tridimensional display
all new videos uploaded to YouTube are now transcoded into WebM. WebM is an open media file format for video and audio on the web. Its openness allows anyone to improve the format and its integrations, resulting in a better experience for you in the long-term.
Get ready, folks with no sense of direction; Google Maps 5.0 app for Android is looking to make your
life a lot easier with 3D graphics, more accurate orientation and the ability to
function offline.
So why, then, would it be better to work with a 16-bit image? One word - flexibility. When you're editing an image in Photoshop, sooner or later, if you continue making edits, you're going to run into problems. The most common problem is what's known as "banding", where you've lost so much detail in the image that Photoshop can no longer display smooth transitions from one color to the next. Instead, you get an ugly stair-stepping effect between colors and tonal values.
Augmented reality, or the blending of the real world with computer graphics on the fly, is one of the most exciting fields in tech right now
Zugara, an interactive marketing agency, has built something a bit more practical for the time being. It’s put together the Webcam Social Shopper, offering a way to help you try on clothes online from the comfort of your bedroom.
t lets you overlay a static image on top of your body and pretend you’re wearing it. Which is sort of a start.
Zugara is also trying to weave a social element into the application, offering examples of sharing outfit choices over Facebook or allowing friends to help choose outfits in real time, which could turn out to be the app’s real strength.
Heres a list of apps that we can consider for buying with the amount issued to the team.
Personally i think the ColorExpert app can be useful for print job on the move. it allows you to quickly point and shoot at the objects and get the CMYK color asap which is good for confirming prints job spec.
Get the font app seems to be nice to be quickly recongise font type while on the go.
Designers can take a look at the other apps
There is no point in having a beautiful layout where the user simply can’t achieve basic tasks. If a system is difficult to use, users will leave and probably won’t return.
Stop focusing on getting exposure, and start focusing on making your system usable and engaging for your visitors.
Well,
that was quick. Right after yesterday's surprising announcement,
Sony flew its yet-to-be-released NEX-VG10 camcorder into London just in time for
today's showcase event. Naturally, we had to get our hands on this shiny baby,
and boy we were impressed. In case you missed the news, this snazzy device is
the world's first consumer HandyCam with interchangeable lens, meaning you can
share E-mount lenses with your young NEX DSLRs, or take advantage of
the abundant A-mount lenses with the help of an adapter (which will cost you
extra, mind you). Likewise, there are also hot and cold shoe mounts on the mic
shaft to cater your current camera accessories. Read on for our thoughts on the
rest of the camcorder -- we've put together a little sample clip for you at the
end as well.
There
isn't much to complain about with this $2,000 (and, sadly, possibly £2,000 for
the Brits) piece of kit in terms of appearance and ergonomics. We like being
able to hold it by either the seemingly solid body (using the strap) or the mic
shaft, and both ways provided comfortable grip without much fatigue due to the
light weight (even with the bundled lens). We were also able to quickly master
the jog-dial control next to the 3-inch screen, but for this price, we expected
a touchscreen interface as well to make life easier. As for the bundled F3.5-6.3
18-200mm lens, we found that zooming required a bit more effort than we liked,
so thankfully there's auto focus mode -- just like any ordinary camcorder -- to
save us from further wrist work with the focus ring. We must also point out that
unlike the Olympus PEN,
this Sony camcorder didn't pick up any mechanical noise from its lens auto
focussing; otherwise, this kit totally wouldn't deserve such price tag.
Of
course, what we really care about is the picture and sound quality. All is
revealed in our sample reel below (remember to enable HD playback mode), but in
brief: stunningly accurate colors, sharp 1080/60i picture, and impressive audio
sensitivity (notice how the mic was able to pick up conversations from afar; you
can also enable just the front mics to minimise background noise). You may
notice some shakiness while we were adjusting the lens -- we'll blame it on our
lack of practice from the little hands-on time we had. Regardless, the NEX-VG10
certainly lived up to our expectation, and we look forward to hear what the
filming hobbyists think of this prosumer-level camcorder when it comes out in
September.
Update: commenter
aim120 dropped us a link to Sony's own sample clip. Enjoy!
Image*After is a repository of more than 27,000 free stock images and textures that can be downloaded and reused for noncommercial and commercial uses. The images and textures in the galleries have been donated by amateur photographers and artists. You can search Image*After by image category, image size, and base color. When you find an image you like you can either download it directly to your computer or clip it to a temporary online account while you browse for more images.
this article makes me understand it's not how colorful or tons of materials or fanciful stuffs or brochure you feed to your audience's eyes.
It is about delivering the kind of services we want, good customer support,quality content or sincerity to help them out and associating those services with the logo or brand.
We should think more of the audience point of view to solve their needs than appearing more pushy.
An entertaining and readable article on how to not only use e-learning in the classroom, but also how educators can help get parents involved in e-learning too.
Digital Cosmetic Mirror by industry giant Shiseido can be used to test make-up and recommendations without even having to pick up a mascara brush
Using augmented reality to do sampling is a novel way to involve consumers, and can be a useful technology for saving on waste
The terminal then gives you tailored recommendations. Pressing a few buttons on the touch-screen paints make-up onto your image in realtime, allowing you to see the results instantly. You also try out make-up that is currently making waves, along with printing out before and after photos with product information for you to go make the purchase of whichever colors caught your eye the most.
A set of Android user interface guides, released by Mutual Mobile, seeks to create standards for a platform where "official" standards don't exist.
The guidelines follow the whole process of designing an application and all of its elements, including pop-up windows, colors, fonts and list views, through screenshots, so designers can have examples in front of them during the development process.
LEGOs and Lincoln Logs are for Luddites. Sifteo cubes are the new building blocks.
Each cube has a 128-pixel color LCD screen, wireless connectivity, a 32-bit ARM microprocessor, and an accelerometer that responds to tilting and stacking. You can arrange them to create everything from vocabulary puzzles to building challenges, all of which can be enjoyed by as many people as you can crowd around the coffee table.
Sifteo founders Jeevan Kalanithi and David Merrill previewed the cubes at TED 2009 when they were grad students at MIT. The cubes debuted at CES this year. The design marries classic tactility with new hardware and software.
“Sifteo cubes are the first gaming solution to deliver truly hands-on play,” Merrill said. “[The cubes combine] the latest in embedded computing and sensing technology with a timeless play style.”
Fascinating! Enhancing mobile learning with tactile and spatial play.
I was thinking how we could adapt iPhones or iPads to fit together like what we do for children's building blocks or mahjong tiles... Do watch the video too!
Create fun and amazing sculptural art with the Autodesk® 123D™ Sculpt iPad™ app. Choose a starting shape from the library, then push, pull, and smooth the details. Add color, rub on textures or images, and customize your sculpture to create your own character or work of art
Stephen Downes very alternative thinking on alternative assessment: Helping others, being cooperative, and contributing to public good.
