You can download the entire report here, but I’ll quickly put up the main findings.
To be an effective face to face instructor, students were looking for an instructor who is:
- Respectful
- Knowledgeable
- Approachable
- Engaging
- Communicative
- Organized
- Responsive
- Professional
- Humorous
For distance education streams students looked for instructors who are:
- Respectful
- Responsive
- Knowledgeable
- Approachable
- Communicative
- Organized
- Engaging
- Professional
- Humorous
The report concluded “the data clearly indicates that the characteristics of effective teaching transcend the mode of delivery.”
The report is lengthy at 69 pages plus the appendix, but it has some solid “common sensical” points that I think just about any instructor can take away.
According to the BBC, Facebook mobile dwarfed the rest of the mobile web in usage with 2.2 billion minutes and Google and Microsoft pulling in a combined 600 million minutes in December. If you look at this UK data combined with the PEW data from earlier in the week it really suggests that the 17-30 year old demographic is focusing it’s online activity on what it can do while mobile. When you think about why Facebook, the answer seems to be obvious. On the smaller screen, the “life portfolio” that is Facebook makes much more sense. When you are “out and about”, you don’t want to have to remember where your “mates’” blog is, you’d rather just put in his/her name and go there without having to worry about logins or the other elements that are common to the unwalled web, thus reducing the need/want to post or comment on traditional blogs.
One of the things that make a good picture according to the people who write books about making good pictures is the use of symmetry, similarity and contrast. I don’t always try to compose using those “rules”, but on occasion, I do spot an opportunity to juxtapose elements and every now and then, it seems to work out really well. This was the case with this shot. The flowers were part of the ground cover and the Palms are, well feature trees, so when I spotted them together, I thought there might be something to shoot and sure enough, it turned out well. The UWA certainly helped to get everything in the frame, so I guess every now and again those “rules” actually can be put to good use.
PEW is reporting that there is a drop in blogging among the under 30 demographic, a general lack of adoption of Twitter, except for high school girls who seem to be getting keen on it. The reason for this drop seems to be Social Media.
But for all the drop in activity that might be caused by the increased adoption of Social Media, there might be an increase of people who will start using traditional blogging for some of the advantages it has (length, data portability) that social media updating doesn’t allow. To me, I would think that if you’ve got a population that is keen on sharing what it is doing with everyone and anyone, but it is one that has just enough time to input a couple taps to update a status, then the lack of longer compositions make sense. But as people get a chance, and are able to reflect on those smaller updates, I think you’ll see old skool blogs coming back.
At the same time, it doesn’t seem to me that old skool blogging is going to take this laying down. Wordpress has released tools for all three major mobile platforms and this tool could help traditional blog find a place in this mobile and fast paced world.
Well, after a couple of false starts, I am finally able to post from the app. It is very much like the Blackberry app that I grew quite fond of, but with a few unique hiccups. First, when you are setting up the blogs, you need to have a solid connection as the app tends to time out quickly. Second, the first time you go into a blog you’ve just added, it will take a while loading comments and then you can move to posts that will take some time to load as well. After that, it’s pretty slick.
I finite interesting to watch Wordpress make sure it has a mobile presence in this increasingly microblogged world. I’d write more, but my battery is dying.
I’ve only ever seen Monarch Butterflies a handful of times growing up as they are not very common in Alberta – though they have been known to migrate into Southren Alberta. So when I saw them on the Island, I was quite excited to get one more shot off my list. Especially because they are not really common to TCI either.
So, I was expecting these butterflies to act like those I know in Alberta, flighty, but generally tame. Oh, was I wrong, they move fast and to call them flighty is an understatement. I only managed to get them sitting on a stem a couple of times (after what seemed to me to be fighting with another butterfly) and I wasn’t able to get them gliding in the air at all. I also learned that they are really only active in the early part of the morning.
I managed to get two scenes with these butterflies, this with the long lens and another with my UWA (that was fun, but that story is for another time). A little patience and some quick hands are to thank for this shot.
Well not anything other than a big hand held game console. Apple had tried before with the Pippin, but for the life of me, and without productivity apps, this is a consumption device. Granted, productivity apps can come through the cloud, but right now, this device is just a client. You might be able to manipulate some content, but not really create it.
Sure it’s also an eBook reader, but I don’t think people are going to pay $1000 for that (I don’t know the price on the device right now, the keynote is in the background), I don’t know if people are going to pay that much for a “take it anywhere” game console.
Sure it’s cool, but I don’t think I’m really sold yet. Now if it is less than the KindleDX, then I might certainly go for it (not having to pay for the 3G connection will help the price). But I guess I’ll have to see it myself to make the call.
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I guess I spoke too soon, there is iWork for the iPad.
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The price starts at $499 for a wifi version (plus $150 if you want a 3G) – So it’s not that bad, better value than a Kindle right now. Maybe this is the dawn of the smartbook.
I’ve mentioned before that I don’t really like the “e” or the “digital” that gets tagged on an older technology to define it as “new” – especially when that “new” is now over a decade old. It seems that Bucky Kat has picked up on this and has come up with the next modifier, but unlike the others, I think I can really get behind this one.
I forgot if I found this through RSS or Twitter, but here it is:
Rapid digital game creation for broadening participation in computing and fostering crucial thinking skills
Nikunj Dalal, Parth Dalal, Subhash Kak, Pavlo Antonenko, Susan Stansberry
International Journal of Social and Humanistic Computing 2009 – Vol. 1, No.2 pp. 123 – 137
10.1504/IJSHC.2009.031002
I haven’t been able to get to the article as the library system is having issues right now, but according to the abstract and the lay articles that it’s generated, the use of non code based creation systems is a good thing for kids of all ages. This seems to be a no brainer, but thankfully there is now research to back it up. If you give people access to generate content in an media that they are comfortable with, you are more than likely to see good things come about. The important thing here is that the researchers have removed that complicated UI layer (like I was talking about in the last post) and have allowed the creators to work in an environment that more closely resembles the finished product.
I was thinking over the weekend about photography and how previously, you almost needed to be a chemist to get the most out of your images and thinking about how removed that was from the actual act of photography and how “digital” has changed that. Now someone takes a shot and can use it immediately and often with the same device that created the image, no black box required. Systems like the Rapid Dev environment would seem to do the same thing. People build in an environment that mimics the environment that they are going to experience when the project is finished effectively this research tells me that maintaining the “vocabulary” certainly helps when you are trying to get people to explore. If all you are wanting to get out of a game that you create is move A from 1.1 to 1.2 and have it explode, you don’t need to worry about the physics of collision detection and optimizing the math behind the path finding. Just like when you snap a picture, you want to be able to take it and share it quickly – you don’t want to deal with fstop and the rest – after all, the camera likely has hidden that from you. If however, your camera tells you all that, you have a vocabulary that then makes sense when you use tools that can then go and manipulate those settings.
This is something that I remember from my days in grad school taking a look at UI design – what goes into designing an icon. It struck me that even in this new age of increased definition, we are still trying to simplify the interface. This is a challenge that will continue and it seems to be at the root of many of the issues surrounding IT. Once people understand the basic vocabulary of the computer, they are able to understand what the little house looking icon might mean, and what the camera icon might mean. But for those who are coming from a different background that doesn’t share the same primary concepts that get distilled into icons, this simplification just goes to make computing more difficult. Even for the people who live and breathe in a computerized environment, a slightly different icon, even if it is the same theme can be problematic. I found this with my new phone. The picture icon isn’t a camera, it’s aperture blades. I don’t know about you, but even me being a computer and photo geek, it took me a couple times to “get” the new icon. I knew what it did, but I still had to do a mental double take, understanding the icon only by knowing what the other icons were and through elimination understanding the “take picture” button.
This simplification is certainly a double edged sword and it will be interesting to see how it changes now that we’ve got a new generation coming of age that has grown up with the icons of two generations past, it will be interesting to see what we will see in GUIs of the future. Especially when you consider that the majority of these designers will no longer have a North Atlantic background.
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