Yesterday I gave a short presentation about Augmented Reality. Since its a technology that is frequently in the news these days, I thought an overview would be worth presenting. For those interested, you can download the PDF presentation at http://www.drop.io/idiia_talk_AR . Notes are included in the PDF under each slide. Be sure to mouse over text on slides that give examples as these link out to other websites.
Thanks,
Keene
To say its a mobile computing world is an understatement. Its a tidal wave that is flooding the tech universe and to gain some perspective on just what this means, its worth checking out this video. The stats say it all and make for a very compelling case. The world is going mobile and its up to educators to figure out how this is going to affect students, teachers and the entire education and learning process.
Did You Know 4.0 video
Keene
Yesterday I gave a small overview of Twitter to a small group on campus as the first part of the Fall Semester iDIIA Talks. The link below takes you to the PDF of the handout that I gave out. It has lots of resources, links, tips and suggestions for using Twitter. Enjoy!
Download the handout here: http://drop.io/diia_talk_twitter
Keene
New Media Manager
Today’s The Wired Campus section of the Chron features UT Austin associate professor of radio, TV, and film S. Craig Watkins on social networking and media. He discusses his soon-to-be-published book The Young and the Digital: What the Migration to Social Network Sites, Games, and Anytime, Anywhere Media Means for Our Future.
In a Q & A with Marc Beja, Watkins gives his perspectives on social media in the classroom. Especially interesting are the comments. The Q & A is brief, so consider browsing reactions to what information is included in this article.
Following up on Keene’s breaking Twitter news below, a New York Times article says it’s not the 12-17 year-olds who are driving the popularity. Seems Twitter is for adults, not kids. Do you use Twitter? It does take a little getting-used to. Try crafting a brilliant (or even cohesive) thought in 140 characters. With self-limiting parameters, Twitter becomes a word game as much as a tool to communicate, a puzzle that requires a bit more reflection.
In some ways, Twitter resembles an electronic version of “The Wave,” or the fluid transfer of energy sketched throughout a flock of birds rising from a field or power line. While the chirpy blips do resemble the noisy nattering of birds, it’s this dynamic energy pattern that more fully describes the rise and fall of “Tweets” at any given time.
Twitter has become a high-powered viral marketing tool, which is perhaps another reason why it appeals more to adults than youngsters. It’s an “in-the-moment” transfer of information about new products, social events, commentary, and sometimes even an emergency hot line.
Twitter can even function as cutting-edge global journalism, as in the recent elections in Iran. Twitter gave the world glimpses beneath the veil of the media shutdown into what was happening on the ground, in real time.
You can’t get much more powerful than that.
Even after posting approximately 60 entries, clearing 2,364 spam comments, and live-blogging SXSWi and AccessU, I still can hardly believe it has been a whole year since the DIIA Blog came online. The experts say that a blog is only as good as its content, and I sincerely hope that readers found the DIIA Blog to be a rich source of up-to-date information, insight, amusement, resources, and perspective.
It was personally gratifying to see page hits approaching the 100,000 mark while live-blogging at SXSWi, knowing that we were spreading the word about DIIA among the industry movers and shakers.
AccessU, although smaller in scale, brought attention to the vital importance of accessibility to everyone who uses the World Wide Web. It was there that I coined my mantra, “Curb cuts for computers!” as an analogy for how accessible design benefits all of us. Glenda Sims (UT), Sharron Rush (Knowbility), and all the caring geniuses who developed the standards have made me a life-long advocate of designing for usability. We will all most likely face obstacles in communicating via the Internet as we age, so why not plan ahead?
Most of all, I have enjoyed learning more about the world we live in–from my blogging colleagues, and from the research I’ve engaged in to find something worth blogging about. I hope to hear from more DIIA voices in the years ahead, bringing wider-ranging, thought-provoking information to our attention, and engaging in dialogue through comments–although not the spammy ones, please!
If you use a Mac platform, Amy Miller has developed some nifty widgets to ping you when a new post goes up. Dana DeLoca, DIIA’s creative videographer and photographer has added a rich visual dimension through the “Photo of the Day” to complement our wordy posts, along with her fantastic sidekick AJ Landeros (Mr. iPhone). Truly, it takes a village…
My birthday wish for the DIIA Blog is to see it expand and grow, touching more lives, enhancing the University of Texas at Austin experience for faculty, staff, and students, and drawing in a wider circle of commenters to challenge and engage us in fruitful dialogue.
Blog on!
In July, Thomas Freedman of the The New Democratic Leadership Council published a short call to arms paper about outfitting every school child with a eTextbook reader. He heavily refers to Amazon’s Kindle, including it even in the title of the paper A Kindle in Every Backpack: a proposal for eTextbooks in American Schools. The paper outlines plenty of good reasons why our education systems should embrace eTextbooks and their associated e-readers. These are very clear. However, I think to get the impact Mr. Freedman is advocating, two things need to be addressed which are not mentioned in the paper. One is that instead of a particular device such as an Amazon Kindle, the focus should be on a universal, open source format. This format can deliver the textbook content to many different e-reader devices instead of just one or two that work with a proprietary format. And second, the technology Freedman mentions that kids want is not exactly ready for the e-readers of today. Let’s take a look at these two critical areas as they are important to this discussion.
Amazon’s Kindle format is fairly closed and the tight control Amazon exerts over it was evident recently when George Orwell’s 1984 was yanked digitally off the devices without the owners knowing it until after the fact. It caused quite a stir and had Jeff Bezos candidly apologizing for this. In this day and age, closed formats need to tread very lightly and e-books are no exception. Yes, I understand that we need to deal with copyright and rights management. Hopefully the lessons of the music industry can be applied to this nascent area of technology. The Kindle does support other formats which are more open as well in all fairness, but they are clear that they want you to buy your content from them.
As it stands now, there are plenty of proprietary formats already floating around from Amazon, Sony and soon, Barnes and Noble when they work with Plastic Logic to deliver e-books. Now, I can understand that distributors would want to seal off competiors by making their devices only read their proprietary format, but for educational purposes, this is not a good thing and so I think it should be clearly stressed that for such a national inititiative, an open e-reader format should be embraced and supported, perhaps with government support. Don’t let one tech company lock everyone into one format. Keep the eTextbook format by demanding, by law, that eTextbooks should be as openly accessible as possible. Just as paper textbooks can be loaned, shared and exchanged easily in the traditional book format, so too should an eTextbook. Learning cannot be proprietary.
Enter the Portable Document Format (PDF) that has become our ubiquitous digital document format. While it was created and is controlled by Adobe Systems, they have given the PDF format a long enough leash that it is supported on all major platforms and is quite portable in the digital domain. And while PDFs can have some embedded multi-media, this is far from the norm. Its mostly text and images that you get with a PDF. Many of the current e-readers do support the PDF format and can display their contents on the E-Ink screens. The viewing mileage you get out of looking at PDF on something like a Kindle or Kindle DX will vary. Its not great but it works on the E-Ink screens. E-Ink is developed by a private company and licensed out to the manufacuterers who want to use the E-Ink screens on their devices. The big problem with PDFs on e-readers, especially the smaller ones, is that the documents are static. The images and words do not flow to fit neatly on the small screen for reading. You have to zoom in on a page, then scroll around to read it, or you are stuck looking at the PDF at one size such as the case with the Kindle DX, which has a large screen, but you can’t resize a PDF to suit your viewing needs. One e-reader manufacturer does make a device that is specifically for looking at PDFs. It uses its own software to take a PDF and make it fit on the page nicely with text flowing around images and fitting on the smaller screen better. Its not perfect, but its a step in the right direction. But again, we are really talking about text and images, not other types of multimedia.
This brings up the other point related to Mr. Freedman’s article. He mentions the ability for students to take quizzes and have multimedia, etc on such devices. Well, that may take some time and if that is truly desired in the near future, then one needs to look at other devices such as laptops, netbooks or tablets that have operating systems (and batteries) capable of handling video, animation, web connectivity and interactivity (i.e. Flash). He points out that about half of students questioned about what they wanted in their classrooms responded with wanting access to real time data visualized like what you get with Google Earth. As a huge fan of the GeoWeb, I could not agree more, but you are not going to get a Google Earth experience on a Kindle or other e-reader (btw, Google Earth requires some high bandwidth connectivity and a decent graphics card to really shine). E-Ink is rumored to have color screens out perhaps in the the next year or so and is playing with them in their labs now. However, for this technology to support all the multimedia goodness we are used to on our full computers, this may still be out a few years. For now, the e-reader devices promise heaps of books in your pocket (see no backpacks needed) and the ability to have instant access to your personal library. But they are mostly still a passive reading experience. And that is fine, but don’t expect them to sing iTunes and do the Flash app dance. The Kindle does have a rudimentary web browser and its Verizon Whisper sync wireless technology is nifty for delivering books, blogs and newspapers, something the other devices are lacking to a large degree, but e-readers are not multimedia machines (yet). A possible exception to the multimedia dilemma is found on Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch which are quite capable multimedia devices and decent, if not perfect e-readers too. I have found the iPhone Kindle app to be surprisingly good at reading Amazon’s Kindle books. The device is always there so I read at times I normally would not, such as waiting in line to get on a plane, see a movie, etc. Its there when the moment strikes to read a few pages. In addition several iPhone apps offer decent PDF viewing experiences too such as Readdle’s ReaddleDocs app or their new PDF Expert app. AirSharing and AirSharing Pro also offer some good PDF reading capabilities. And it is highly likely that Apple will release some form of a tablet like device in the next six months that will handle multimedia along with e-books so this could perhaps bring the future to us a little faster than E-Ink screens will.
So these are my words of caution for embracing eTextbooks for all school kids. I think this needs to happen and it will happen, I just hope it happens smoothly and those that make it happen keep formats open and embrace new technology that will merge the written word with the moving image and beyond. This perhaps will get people reading in an entirely new way while transforming the learning process and moving the venerable textbook into the age of bits and bytes.
Keene
You can read the PDF (perhaps with your e-reader!) of Mr. Freedman’s paper here.
For those interested in seeing videos of the 2009 NMC Summer Conference keynotes, I would wholeheartedly suggest you follow this link to see the archived video feeds. They all are worth checking out if you have time. If you can’t see them all, I would suggest look at Kathy Sierra’s video, Marco Torres’ presentation and the closing tribute to Doug Engelbart, the creator of the mouse and other technology that we use everyday now.
The annual NMC Conference winds down on this third day. Its been a full two previous days and this final day is an abbreviated half day that has a morning session followed by the Excellence Award and the closing keynote.
In the final session block of the conference I attended what was my favorite presentation. Titled Connecting Mass Audiences to Ecosystems using 3D Visualizations, it was given by Dr. Fred Watson of California State University- Monterey Bay (co-sponsor of the conference this year). Watson has a team at the university that produce short animations and videos with very detailed and realistic visualizations for use in visitor centers, documentaries and online interactive projects. They target resource managers, students, researchers and the general public. The group producing this work is called EcoViz and they provide their services well beyond the walls of the university. Fred showed examples of their work in Yellowstone National Park for its main visitor center. He also showed work done in the Monterey Bay ecosystem including the Cordell Bank and Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuaries. It was great stuff and all done with custom software he and his team have created. EcoViz hopes to release the software to the public in the next year or so. You can see more of these excellent projects at: http://ecoviz.csumb.edu/home/
Following this final session of presentations, was the giving of the annual NMC Center of Excellence Awards. These went to three institutions who have done ground breaking, innovative, creative work in the area of New Media. The recipients were:
Abliene Christian University, Abliene, Texas: For their ground breaking work in integrating mobile technology into the campus, particularly centered around Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch.
The Center for Digital Storytelling Berkeley, CA: For their long ongoing efforts to train and evangelize the process of digital storytelling with new media tools. For over a decade and a half they have been pioneers in the new forms of digital storytelling that is now so prevalent with Web 2.0 tools.
Universitat Oberta de Cataluna, Barcelona, Spain: Their award was given for their work in creating an open, accessible, rich online higher education experience for Spainards and others around the world.
All three of these institutions were deserving, gracious and inspirational in their work and acceptance of the awards.
Finally, the ending keynote was a tribute to pioneering technologist, Douglas Engelbart who was honored by the NMC for his achievements in interactive computing, particularly the invention of the mouse, an indispensable tool to all who use computers today. Unfortunately, my flight schedule did not permit me to see this presentation.
That wraps up a snapshot of this year’s conference. Next year it will be held again in California, but this time it will be in the LA area at Disneyland and University of California - Southern California (UCSC).
For photos of the conference, head over to Flickr where over a thousand pictures have been tagged with NMC2009 by conference attendees. This link takes you directly to the search for this tag.
Keene
Day 2 of the annual NMC conference kicked of with a delightful keynote by musician, producer and educator Marco Torres. Marco, who works with George Lucas, gave a fantastic talk about the education and how to tackle some of the issues surrounding our educational institutions. Marco is primarily an expert at K-12 education, currently with an emphasis on years 9-12. The upshot of his keynote is that story gives stuff purpose. Broadcast methods have changed and expanded drastically since the time most current teachers were students and not giving kids the ability to express themselves thorough these avenues of new media denies them a chance to learn and express themselves. He posed the question, are students producers or recipients of information? And what students are given by teachers affects them so if the options are limited for expression, it limits them in the learning process. He went on to note that several areas in the media landscape have done particularly well with high school students. The Food Channel’s Alton Brown, the Discovery Channel’s Myth Busters and the ABC’s Lost series all have extremely engaging content that is presented in different ways that engage the learning and exploration process. Alton Brown uses a variety of history, science, role playing and informal presentation about how food “works.” Myth Busters’ hosts don’t lecture to their audience, but are engaged in learning just as viewers are. Finally, the TV series Lost has exploded across many age groups an people have created wikis, mindmaps, maps, blogs and other mashups explaining the story and its many nuances and details.
In the end Marco explained that the rigidity and outdated modes of schooling are getting in the way of learning. In a word, students find school boring. He challenges us to explore the use of multimedia and encourage its use by students, even its something that might be out of a teachers comfort zone. He gave a stunning example of a student who, on his own, learned to play five instruments and went on to do a re-interpretation of the original Star Wars soundtrack in a Mariachi style. George Lucas himself liked it so much that he hired the student. Torres’ pointed out that the school music class would not let him play because he did not play the style that the instructor was accustomed. Good food for thought.
The session I attended after this was a great introduction and overview of geotagging given by Case Western Reserve University’s Mace Mentch. He gave the overall basics of the geotagging process and presented a few examples of geotagging tools and then ran through an example of how to do geotag one’s photos. It was a good presentation that provided a clear perspective of a trend that is only going to get bigger and more prevalent for any data that has geospatial coordinates.
Finally, the last group of sessions of the day saw me attending another excellent presentation by the University of Mary Washington’s New Media Specialist Andy Rush. Andy showed off his New Media group’s website made with WordPress and then proceeded to give a great run down of some particularly helpful WP plugins that he has used.
They are the following:
Feed WordPress: Syndicates posts from other blogs giving credit to the blog site where the post originated.
WordPress Touch: Reformats you WP site on the fly to look good on an iPhone, iPod Touch or Android device.
Dagon Sitemap Generator: Generates nice site maps of your WP site.
SimpleTags: Adds tag clouds to your WP site
FAQtastic: Very nice and easy to use
BrokenLinks: Checks for broken links on your site
FlickrRSS: Embeds an RSS feed from Flickr to show sites
Theme Test Drive: Lets you preview your site with different themes applied
He wrapped up by talking about two resources he has produced those at the University. One is the Digital Media Cookbook website which provides “recipes” for using and producing digital media. The second is part of the New Media website at Mary Washington called the Digital Toolkit which provides resources and solutions for producing, editing and distributing digital media. To find these resources, one searches under the Tag cloud at the website for Toolkit. Entries under this tag will give you tips about specific technologies and techniques to apply to your digital media.
It was a great talk from a seasoned professional so there were some good takeaways.
In the last block of sessions for the day, I gave an overview of the database and search tools DEVONthink Pro and DEVONagent. Both are powerful tools for finding and organizing large amounts of database. It was attended by a small group interested in what this tool can do. The new version provides numerous new features that make it a compelling upgrade.
This wrapped up Day 2 for me. Day 3 is a half day ending wrapping up the conference.
For photos of the conference, head over to Flickr where over a thousand pictures have been tagged with NMC2009 by conference attendees. This link takes you directly to the search for this tag.
Keene
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