wireWax is a new service (still in beta) that takes the concept of YouTube annotations and makes it much better. On wireWax you can build interactive tags into your videos. Each tag that you add to your video have another video from YouTube or Vimeo or an image from Facebook, Flickr, or Instagram. A tag can also include an audio track from SoundCloud or a reference article from Qwiki.
What makes using wireWax different from using the YouTube annotations tool is that clicking on your tags (what YouTube calls annotations) does not send you outside of the video you're currently watching. This means that you can watch a video within a video or view a picture or listen to a different audio track within the original video. When you click a tag in the original video the video pauses and the tagged item is displayed.
Useful resource on leveraging on FB!
Here is what I learnt from these companies use of FB:
From Amazon: Converse with your audience
From Dell: Provide useful how-tos
From Samsung: Show specific uses of edtech
From MS XBox: Provide teasers, trailers, previews, updates
From YouTube: Share viral videos
Dr Ashley, I wonder what the privacy issues were. There is a fair amount of negative notes in this article that could work against our recommendation of iTunes U
In 2007, videotaped lectures from 10 courses were added to the Stanford iTunes site. The content on the site consisted solely of audio and video files until January 2012, when Apple launched the iTunes U app. This app allowed professors to upload additional materials such as homework assignments and class handouts, giving remote students more of a comprehensive course experience.
While remote students can now participate in a course by completing homework assignments and even taking exams, they are still not able to ask questions in class, receive feedback on homework and exams or collaborate with classmates. Several iTunes U courses have attempted to bridge this gap through Piazza, an online forum that allows students from around the world to ask and answer questions and discuss the course.
Remote students are able to register on Piazza to discuss the lectures and assignments with other students, although Hegarty says that iTunes U students often reach out to him for help instead.
https://piazza.com/
The (Free) Efficient Way to Manage Class Q&A
How is this better than email, newsgroups, and discussion forums?
Students actually use Piazza, they love it. This difference stems from how we built Piazza. We've personally met with and spoken to thousands of students and instructors. The result is a beautifully intuitive and simple product that students love and use.
Hi Ashley, would this article reference suffice as 'research reference' per our meeting with Director? Thanks for your input on the Emailer. I'm working on it now.
A hybrid app is a native, downloadable app, that runs all or some of its user interface in an embedded browser component. To the user, a hybrid app is almost indistinguishable from a native one: it is downloaded from the app store or marketplace, it is stored on the device, and it is launched just like any other app
simply load some pages from their web site as part of the app
many companies are not already jumping on the HTML5 bandwagon is the belief that HTML apps cannot access native device features. Indeed, pure mobile web apps
hybrid apps, frameworks such as the open source PhoneGap library make it possible for JavaScript code to query the compass, take pictures, find or create contacts and appointments, and tap many other device features that mobile web apps are barred from accessing
Access to device features is not the only difference between hybrid apps and mobile web apps. Another important difference is that hybrid apps are mostly distributed through app stores: You don’t browse to a hybrid app
the leading smartphones and tablets have very powerful HTML rendering engines, which already support most of the upcoming HTML5 and CSS3 standards
Other organizations are developing hybrid apps, while planning to turn them into HTML5 web apps in the future without having to rewrite them from scratch
From a strategic point of view, development organizations should seriously consider adopting HTML for mobile app development sooner rather than later. The hybrid app model, although not suitable for all app development needs, provides a cost-effective solution for a very wide range of downloadable app types and allows gradual entry into the new world of HTML5 while future-proofing your investment.
this article talks about the future of mobile app development... hybrid app which combines web technology with native devices supports ( camera, microphone, address book etc)
Does make sense as it is cost effective not to rewrite the coding for each and every devices and also taking into consideration the time taken for constant content changes in educational environment here. maybe we should look into ths.
According to a FAQ on Picasa's support site, the photo-sharing service provides up to 1 GB of free storage for photos and videos to its users. But since Google+ actively encourages storing and sharing photos - its Android app even offers an "instant upload" option - there may have been some concern about storage limits among Picasa users.
As it turns out, there's nothing to worry about. If you're signed up for Google+, photos up to 2048x2048 pixels and videos up to 15 minutes long won't count towards this free storage limit. And Google will automatically resize photos for you when you upload them to Google+, so they stay under the free size limit.
That means only photos uploaded directly to Picasa Web Albums over the 2048x2048 size will count towards the 1 GB of free storage, explains Google. And when that limit is reached, photos will be automatically resized.
Meanwhile, for non-Google+ users, there are slightly stricter rules: photos up to 800x800 and videos up to 15 minutes won't count towards free storage. Again, when the 1 GB limit is reached, larger photos will be resized down.
Simply put, this means that whether you're on Google+ or not, Picasa offers unlimited free storage for photos and videos (under 15 minutes). The difference is that Google+ users can upload higher resolution photos to Plus/Picasa without being penalized.
Just heard this from a friend and verified with the above article: "Signing up for Google+ has its perks, all your Picasa Web Album photos smaller than 2048 x 2048 pixels will not count towards the 1GB limit placed on your account, up from the 800 x 800 pixels if you do not have G+. My storage usage just went from 1 GB down to 0 MB LOL
Hurray for Google+!"
If you work in an environment that blocks YouTube access, Videodropper could be a great way for you to download and organize the videos that you want to show and share.
Of course, you would have to do that from home or some other place where YouTube isn't blocked. Then from where you are, you'll be able to open the videos from the download on your computer.
From MOE news digest:
Republic Poly offers 3 -year diploma in mobile software development (Ng Jng Yng, Today, 4/11, p26)Diploma in Mobile Software Development is among the new courses to be rolled out by RP next year (Ong Jue Qi, ZB, 4/11, p14) Republic Polytechnic to offer 3 new diplomas (CNA Online, 4/11) Reports noted that Republic Polytechnic (RP) was looking to tap into the fast-growing mobile application market by offering a new diploma from next year. The three-year Diploma in Mobile Software would enable students to learn about the design and development of mobile applications used in smartphones. Reports highlighted that the students would be taught marketing strategies to sell the applications they had developed. The course would take in 40 students. Reports added that RP hoped to increase its academic intake in the next academic year. RP would be launching two other new diplomas, the Diploma in Consumer Behaviour and Research and the Diploma in Sports Coaching. RP would also be giving out 200 scholarships for the first time in the next academic year and each scholarship was worth $2,500 per academic year. ZB carried comments from P/RP that with more new courses and the new scholarships, RP was confident that it would attract outstanding Singaporean students to study at the polytechnic. CNA Online noted that RP said the new diplomas targeted students with an interest in the growing sports, marketing and mobile industries.
Explain Everything is an easy-to-use design, screencasting, and interactive whiteboard tool that lets you annotate, animate, narrate, import, and export almost anything to and from almost anywhere.
Explain Everything has been a top paid education app since its release in Australia, United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Finland.
Import PDF, PPT, DOC, XLS, Keynote, Pages, Numbers, and RTF files from Evernote, Dropbox, Box, GDrive, WebDAV, Email, iTunes, and any app that allows you to open these files types using "Open In…". Export MP4 movies, PDF documents, PNG images, or XPL project files directly from your iPad.
This seems to be the granddaddy of mVideo and mAPT. But for now, from what I can see, it still works on a post-processing scale - i.e. record, and THEN annotate, not allowing you to add comments or tags in real-time. (Yet.)
But it seems like a very good source of revenue, offering educational licenses, etc.
With the continued penetration of smartphones into the mainstream market, QR codes are becoming more of an option for designers to prompt interaction. The two-dimensional barcode can easily be generated from text, including a website link, and printed on materials in magazines and conferences. An artist in Paris found an unusual use for the black-and-white squares: to animate a tattoo.
Ok, I think this isn't ever going to make it into ANY school... but this is an amazing concept of how we can use QR codes to enhance real-world art in education... i.e. cyberspace meets meat-space (literally).
An idea that I gained from this is that we could use this idea for, say, a printed picture book... if we scanned the QR code in the printed page using our iPhones, the moment the video loaded, we could just place our iPhones directly over the printed page, and it would give a compelling illusion that the printed page had suddenly come to life a la Harry Potter. :)
BTW do watch the video from 2:05 onwards! :) (esp if you're squeamish about watching a tattoo process)
Now, for an iPad-sized tattoo... any takers? ;) (Just kidding!)
Another idea: Imagine we were doing a bio lesson and wanted our students to "see" a beating heart. We could get a mannequin and paste QR codes over the chest. Then the teacher can scan the QR code, load the corresponding Youtube video and place the mobile phone directly over the chest. The result would look to the students as though the phone was a magic window for them to peer through the chest to "see" the beating heart.
So QR codes could be used for 3D object lessons too.
App of the week
Denso
Free, from the Apple App Store
Denso is a couch potato's dream. It is an easy way to discover and organise interesting Web videos.
It works like Instapaper, except that instead of saving text, you are saving videos for future viewing. Sadly, the app will not work with YouTube videos, but it works with many other sources. It has compiled a list of videos to help you find topics that interest you.
You can also watch, share and comment on videos shared by your friends on Facebook and Twitter.
This is a universal app for both the iPhone and iPad but, as with most apps which handle video, it looks best on the iPad.
Perhaps the best thing about this app is that it was made in Singapore.
For those involved in the leadership development project, this recent development is something that might favour Google Sites as the platform of choice.
Something this app has over air display :
Seems you can have a virtual keyboard for typing texts and also play audio and stream video which the air display cannot do from my understanding from Tamas
Hi Ashley, I've been reading through this section for developers: http://tincanapi.com/page-developers/.
From what I understand so far, an LRS should do at least one of the following:
- Standardize and serialize the various types of data from different networks (e.g. Twitter, Facebook) into an LMS-friendly format
- Act as a stand-alone enterprise-level web-service from which other web-services can extract the collated data for their own usage.
The Tin Can APIs look useful so far for our own use (including mobile support), since they support Javascript, Objective C and Java.
I believe these APIs can link up with Google Enterprise Apps for greater LRS functionality too.
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!
How To Pick A Successful IdeaDon’t put everything behind your first idea! You wouldn’t go to the racetrack and put your life savings on 1/3000 odds, would you? Even though we are taught that all innovations come from a visionary who predicted a need for the future, this is usually not the case. Naturally, most inventions come from necessity and others from creative spark. When executing a creative idea with the resources you have available, you will have to make adjustments along the way that may not have been accounted for originally. Johansson suggests that you take the smallest executable step (smallest bet) so you don’t risk everything on your original idea.Once you define the smallest step, you know your scope of risk. This is very important because you can then take baby steps to overcome challenges and utilize resources more efficiently on your road to success (see image below). While strategy is paramount, one shouldn’t get lost in planning and take too long to execute. Stay motivated to move forward, because forward motion even through failure is the key to success.
Making ideas happen isn’t easy and requires patience, determination and hard work. The most important part of it is not just coming up with a promising concept, but rather rethinking it over and over again, implementing it and then putting it to practice.Most inventions come from necessity, so pay attention to small problems in your environment and find simple solutions to these problems. Do not sit idle on the idea — act instead. Take opposing thoughts and resolve them in your innovative designs. And keep innovating all the time, one step at a time. The time will pass, and if you have some luck, you will see your idea growing, flourishing and maybe even turning into a real success. …So what are you waiting for?
Leaving purely technical considerations aside (in some cases the final result is better than in others), the general quality of those magazines is without doubt extremely high and the integration between classic and multimedia content makes their reading experience very pleasant and engaging. But there is a basic limitation that could play a significant role in preventing their widespread diffusion, thereby making them not competitive in terms of economic return. The problem is not the limited number of iPads in circulation, as some may think, but the difficulty – or the inability – to download single issues of a certain magazines on your device because of their excessive size, which usually is around 400 MB.
the general quality of those magazines is without doubt extremely high and the integration between classic and multimedia content makes their reading experience very pleasant and engaging. But there is a basic limitation that could play a significant role in preventing their widespread diffusion, thereby making them not competitive in terms of economic return. The problem is not the limited number of iPads in circulation, as some may think, but the difficulty – or the inability – to download single issues of a certain magazines on your device because of their excessive size, which usually is around 400 MB.
each download may take a period ranging from twenty to seventy minutes if you are connected to a wi-fi hotspot. If you use a 3G connection, instead, the download is inhibited and a message warns you that, due to the excessive size of the file, you must be connected to a wi-fi to continue to the download. Apart from the frustration generated by waiting too long for the completion of the download (especially if you consider that there are an infinite number of alternative sources of information available in a few seconds, for free, just surfing the web), when the user doesn’t have access to a wi-fi network, he is likely to quit the purchase altogether
This limit, which negatively affects sales volumes and profitability of editorial projects aimed at iPad users, will bring developers to rethink radically the structure of such contents and limit their size. Otherwise, a significant proportion of those users who have once experienced the frustration of the download will not want to repeat the purchase a second time.
Something it's not about how rich or engaging the contents are but how the ease of being able to reach for it is. ( infrastructure)
Afterall would you bother buying a magazine from your local newsagent if you had to stand there and wait in a queue for 30 minutes or more.
In mobile browsers, you need to be especially careful about
using timers because of the battery consumption. If you need to use many
high-frequency timers at the same time, try to manage them using
only one timer that will launch different behaviors from the same
process.
The first question we need to ask ourselves is, what happens
when our web page goes to the background because the user switches
focus to another application (in multitasking operating systems) or
opens or browses to another tab or window? Another problem is what
happens when the phone goes to sleep (because of the user’s inactivity
while the script is executing). The behavior of timers can be a little
tricky in these situations.Yet another problem is that timers execute on the same thread as
the main script. If our script is taking too much processor time (a
normal situation with large scripts on low- and mid-end devices), our
timers will be delayed until some spare execution time is
found.If we use a low frequency for the timer (for example, 10
milliseconds), the timer will generally have problems meeting the
timetable.Remember that the JavaScript execution time depends a lot on the
device hardware and the browser’s engine. Even if they’re running the
same operating system, like Android, execution times can differ: for
example, an HTC G1 will be much slower than a Nexus One with a 1-Ghz
processor.
As shown in Figure 4, the real times
are very different on different devices. On low- and mid-end devices,
if they work at all, the result is far from our 200 ms intention—some
low-end devices don’t even accept timers with a frequency of less than
1 second.
Table 11. Timers support compatibility tableBrowser/platformTimers
availableTimers in
backgroundSafariYesStopped. From iOS 4.0:
continue working while in other browser's
window.Android
browserYesStopped.Symbian/S60YesStopped. From 2.2:
continue working while in other browser's
window.Nokia Series
40No webOSYesContinue
working.BlackBerryNo NetFrontYesNo
multitasking.Internet
ExplorerYesStopped.Motorola Internet
BrowserNo Opera
MobileYesContinue
working.Opera
MiniNo Note:The Gmail for Mobile team discovered some issues with timer
behavior on mobile Safari and Android devices, and made the results
public in the team blog at http://www.mobilexweb.com/go/timers. The conclusions
are: for low-frequency timers (1 second or more), there are no
performance issues, and you can add as many as you want; for
high-frequency timers (for example, 100 ms), though, every new timer
created makes the UI more sluggish. The preferred solution is to use
only one high-frequency timer.
A portal dedicated to casual game design from User Interface
,Controls,Innovation,Style,Testing,Target Audience, Gameplay,Design Process, Learning curve,Interviews.
Lot of dicussions in there even with feedbacks from user playing on updated games and what is good and bads about the game.
When students were given their own iPad, they were given full autonomy of their device and had to set it up from scratch. They set up all of their own accounts and installed their own apps, from a combination of required apps to those which they chose themselves. Each student was given a $40 iTunes gift card to use for their purchases. Experience showed that true success relied on moving away from the school being the "boss" of the machine to one where it was student driven and student managed.
It was found that the Ipads are very different from laptops in that students can really relate to them and, when used, they do not become the focus of the learning. Instead they become one device which can be used with all learning tools that students have access to. The iPad became the "red pen" where much of the work got done in other ways and the iPad was used when needed. Laptop computers control thinking and control the desk. When used, they become the focus of the learning. iPads are a technology which has really changed the way students work with computers in the classroom. The real challenge for staff is to embrace this and to understand that you can't expect to have iPads in the classroom and teach the same way that you did when you didn't have them. It changes the way students work and they way teachers teach.
Like your comment about how the iPads don't become the focus of the learning. That's a thought that's been on my mind recently - the importance of the perception of "seamlessness" in tech usage.
That's probably one of the most important reasons a technology gets adapted - no matter how cumbersome it seems at first (e.g. learning how to drive a car) - because the normal usage of the technology doesn't hinder the intended task at hand. (That's why once you learn to ride a bike, you don't think so much about the bicycle itself as you think about moving faster.)
Think Donald Norman in "The Design of Everyday Things" has a term for this: affordability.
So I guess, my thought on the usage of the iPad (and any new tech at hand): The learning of the new tech need not be intuitive. But the everyday usage has to seamlessly flow with the given task at hand - so that the tool and the user become "one" with the task. (Just like how a user fumbles with a pair of chopsticks at first, but once he masters it, his chopsticks "become" part of his fingers.)
Then such seamless technologies get seamlessly adopted as "cognitive-multipliers".
Ashley Tan on 25 Feb 13wireWax is a new service (still in beta) that takes the concept of YouTube annotations and makes it much better. On wireWax you can build interactive tags into your videos. Each tag that you add to your video have another video from YouTube or Vimeo or an image from Facebook, Flickr, or Instagram. A tag can also include an audio track from SoundCloud or a reference article from Qwiki. What makes using wireWax different from using the YouTube annotations tool is that clicking on your tags (what YouTube calls annotations) does not send you outside of the video you're currently watching. This means that you can watch a video within a video or view a picture or listen to a different audio track within the original video. When you click a tag in the original video the video pauses and the tagged item is displayed.
