Link: http://www.gdocsdrive.com/I just downloaded and checking GDocsDrive which allow you to access your Google Docs from your windows desktop. It allows drag and drop. I am testing it to see if it is suitable.
Monday, May 23, 2011
Tools: Get your Google Docs to your desktop
Link: http://www.gdocsdrive.com/I just downloaded and checking GDocsDrive which allow you to access your Google Docs from your windows desktop. It allows drag and drop. I am testing it to see if it is suitable.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Definitions of Mobile Learning
Definitions
- Mobile learning (or m-learning) is the combination of e-learning and mobile computing that promises the access to applications which support learning at anytime and anywhere [Holzinger, A., Nischelwitzer, A., Meisenberger, M. (2005). Lifelong-Learning Support by M-learning: Example Scenarios. ACM eLearn Magazine, 2005(11)]
- Mobile education is learning delivered or supported solely or mainly by handheld and mobile technologies such as personal digital assistants (PDAs), smartphones or wireless laptop PCs. [Source: Current State of Mobile Learning, www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/346/875.].
- Personalized learning is learning that recognises diversity, difference, and individuality in the ways that learning is developed, delivered, and supported.
- Situated learning isl earning that takes place in the course of activity, in appropriate and meaningful contexts (Lave and Wenger 1991).
- Authentic learning is learning that involves real-world problems and projects that are relevant and interesting to the learner.
Tips:
From: http://elearningslam.blogspot.com/2008/11/designing-mobile-elearning-courses.html [bit old, but has some values]
- The rule of thumb, is to provide about twice the amount of content that can be viewed on the screen: If an average mobile screen supports 300 characters, limit your pages to 600 characters.
- Avoid placing important text inside graphics. The mobile browser may shrink graphics so that they fit on the small display size. Any text that is in the graphic will also be shrunk, potentially to a size that is illegible.
- Avoid rich/multimedia content until a new standard is universally adopted.
- Have two different style sheets, with the appropriate one loading at run time based on the device. One for desktop and the other one for mobile device.
- Use small or unobtrusive graphics and logos
- Avoid navigation bars that may take up a large percentage of the screen.
- If you want to include complex navigation, place these at the end of the page content so that learners have access first to the primary content.
- Avoid background graphics.
- Pull-down menus don't necessarily work on mobile devices (because of uneven JavaScript support), so consider using arrows to take learners through a tour of your course.
- Graphic navigation icons should be simple arrows or a descriptive word such as “next” or “back”.
- Navigation frames work well on some devices, make sure your content can be downloaded quickly.
Stats
[Source: ITU World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators database, 2010]
- By the end of 2010, there will be an estimated 5.3 billion mobile cellular subscriptions worldwide, including 940 million subscriptions to 3G services.
- Access to mobile networks is now available to 90% of the world population and 80% of the population living in rural areas.
- People are moving rapidly from 2G to 3G platforms, in both developed and developing countries. In 2010, 143 countries were off ering 3G services commercially, compared to 95 in 2007.
- Towards 4G: a number of countries have started to off er services at even higher broadband speeds, moving to next generation wireless platforms – they include Sweden, Norway, Ukraine and the United States.
CI: What is the "Controlling Instinct"?
I keep using the term: "Controlling Instinct" in my blogs. What is it?
I have coined the term. I am not aware that it was used before in the same context I am using it. It is popular in the sense that a person should control his instincts. In my context, it means the set of values that instinctively control us. These are values that we build up in our subconscious, without recognized that, and it becomes the drivers of our action, understanding of the world around us and controls our communication, reaction, and the day to day decision making. In many cases, it controlls our passion and drive us to think emotionally rather than intellectually.
For example, tale the concept of "family". It is simple, universal and understood clearly by all. Its basic connotation is "the people I feel I belong to and who can make me feel safe and who I can trust". However, the actual meaning and definition of the word differs largely between one person and another. For those who do well in the educational system, family means the immediate direct family: Parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts and children. For another person who lived in an agrarian setting, it will mean the extended family that includes all the tribe. With the younger generation, it is forming a new meaning: the set of friends on the Internet.
In my premises, most controlling instincts are developed through observance and not through education. Education will play a role as well. But mostly, the person can recognize the education created instincts. The actual controlling instincts is not recognized in an individual. For example, the idea of "Time". Education explain to us the value and meaning of time. Encourage us to be on time. Forces us to adhere to deadlines. Still, Time has a deeper controling instinct. For an industrialist, time is fixed and nonstopable. To an agrarian person, time is flexible and repeatable. So, an industrialist student, will understand the time presented in education. To the agrarian, time presented in education is a challenge and an obstacle in achieving as expected in education.
Most of our controlling instincts are built at an early age. Younger than 8 years. I believe that the ability of kids to learn is far superior than adults. There are many reasons for that. Mainly neurological. A baby learns by trial and error and observation. They try to internalize the world around them. A red flame is harmful. A sour lemon tastes strangely. All of these experiences become controlling instincts. If the family laughs when the child touches flames this makes the kid think that harming himself is good, and we have a masochist. If the parents does not allow the toddler to look at a girls body, but permits looking and male bodies, the boy become gay. And so on. We learn by observing behavior. And these observation generate our controlling instincts.
So far, I am able to group the translation of the meaning of a value-set into three groups: those who were living in an agrarian background, those who were living in an industrial background and those who were brought up in the Internet Age.
I have coined the term. I am not aware that it was used before in the same context I am using it. It is popular in the sense that a person should control his instincts. In my context, it means the set of values that instinctively control us. These are values that we build up in our subconscious, without recognized that, and it becomes the drivers of our action, understanding of the world around us and controls our communication, reaction, and the day to day decision making. In many cases, it controlls our passion and drive us to think emotionally rather than intellectually.
For example, tale the concept of "family". It is simple, universal and understood clearly by all. Its basic connotation is "the people I feel I belong to and who can make me feel safe and who I can trust". However, the actual meaning and definition of the word differs largely between one person and another. For those who do well in the educational system, family means the immediate direct family: Parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts and children. For another person who lived in an agrarian setting, it will mean the extended family that includes all the tribe. With the younger generation, it is forming a new meaning: the set of friends on the Internet.
In my premises, most controlling instincts are developed through observance and not through education. Education will play a role as well. But mostly, the person can recognize the education created instincts. The actual controlling instincts is not recognized in an individual. For example, the idea of "Time". Education explain to us the value and meaning of time. Encourage us to be on time. Forces us to adhere to deadlines. Still, Time has a deeper controling instinct. For an industrialist, time is fixed and nonstopable. To an agrarian person, time is flexible and repeatable. So, an industrialist student, will understand the time presented in education. To the agrarian, time presented in education is a challenge and an obstacle in achieving as expected in education.
Most of our controlling instincts are built at an early age. Younger than 8 years. I believe that the ability of kids to learn is far superior than adults. There are many reasons for that. Mainly neurological. A baby learns by trial and error and observation. They try to internalize the world around them. A red flame is harmful. A sour lemon tastes strangely. All of these experiences become controlling instincts. If the family laughs when the child touches flames this makes the kid think that harming himself is good, and we have a masochist. If the parents does not allow the toddler to look at a girls body, but permits looking and male bodies, the boy become gay. And so on. We learn by observing behavior. And these observation generate our controlling instincts.
So far, I am able to group the translation of the meaning of a value-set into three groups: those who were living in an agrarian background, those who were living in an industrial background and those who were brought up in the Internet Age.
CI: Wikipedian Controlling Instincts
I have talked before about my experience with Wikipedia. As well, I mentioned in a couple of previous posts (here and here) that the Middle Eastern Revolutions should not be considered a FaceBook revolution, but a Wikipedian Revolution.
In this post, I will outline some terms that reflects the controlling instincts of a Wikipedian:
I am still working on the right choice of words. And I will explain them in another post.
In this post, I will outline some terms that reflects the controlling instincts of a Wikipedian:
- Stubbing: the drive to contribute
- Idling: Make use if Idle Time
- Tolerance: accepting difference
- Collaboration: work with others without expecting return
- Non-personification: can work with strangers
- Contribution: sense of giving
- Vim: taking initiative
- copyleft: does not believe in copyright. Believes ideas are contributors to other bigger ideas and it does not matter who started it
- manytasking: can work on more than one task at the same time.
- Everchanging: change world around him is the norm.
I am still working on the right choice of words. And I will explain them in another post.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Learning: Sir Ken, Theatre, Education and Personalized Curriculum
The Link: http://blip.tv/learning-without-frontiers/sir-ken-robinson-march-2011-learning-without-frontiers-4928095
Some quotes:
- A person graduating from an educational experience must have his confidence improved.
- Human Resources is like Natural Resources... Individuals have deep talents that are buried deep within their surface, educators need to mine them like other resources.
- 3 Purposes to education: Personal (connect people to their own sense of possibility, give them sense of creativity, and give them self confidence), Cultural (enable identity, share the identity of other and tolerance) and Economic (must address economic needs and prepare for evolution, prepare ourselves to the challenges of economy.)
- TV Program to watch: How Many People Can Live on Earth: if everybody consume food and water like a person in Botswana, Earth can handle a population of 15B, if we consume like someone in North America: 1.2B only.
- HG Wells: civilization is a race between education and catastrophe.
Quotes: Lazy like a Fox
I was watching Evan Roth video when he related the idea of "Lazy like a fox" to the idea of low work, maximum impact. I always believed that efficiency is a superior state of laziness and I have been thinking if this is making me justifying laziness. Does it? Evan does not believe so. What I do not like about him is he is using it to annoy people who annoys him. I still hate to use a negative approach even in a positive way.
Some terms of his outstanding terms: Severe Cultural Impact; Traditional Education taught us "To Obey". New education should promote: "disobey!".
You may watch his video here:
Some terms of his outstanding terms: Severe Cultural Impact; Traditional Education taught us "To Obey". New education should promote: "disobey!".
You may watch his video here:
Tools: MyOpenID A site to manage my blogsphere identity
Link: http://www.myopenid.com/
OpenID: enables you to quickly register and login users on your site via their existing Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Twitter, or OpenID accounts. Import rich user profile data, and publish user activities from your site to multiple social networks. Increase registration rates, generate qualified referral traffic from the social networks, and grow brand awareness.
OpenID: enables you to quickly register and login users on your site via their existing Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Twitter, or OpenID accounts. Import rich user profile data, and publish user activities from your site to multiple social networks. Increase registration rates, generate qualified referral traffic from the social networks, and grow brand awareness.
Tools: Canvas by Instructure: An LMS in the Cloud
Link: http://www.instructure.com/Canvas rolls all the best LMS features into one complete package. It has features like integrated multimedia, ePortfolios, web conferencing and learning outcomes, to name a few. The Canvas Cloud model ensures that you'll have instant access to the best tools available and won't get stuck waiting for your LMS to catch up. (From their website)
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Politics: Syrian Revolution... again
I am with the Syrian people who are screaming for freedom, dignity and the right to live decent life. I have survived Syrian system brutality and understand what the young Syrian are passing through. Still, I do not see the Syrian revolution as elegant as the Egyptian revolution. There are many differences. The one I want to highlight in this post is "life". When I witnessed the Egyptian revolution, I admired how much they valued the life of every single Egyptian person. I have not seen them advocating martyrdom to win the revolution. They called for each one to preserve their life so that they can enjoy the coming freedom. The multitude would cry dearly if ONE person got hurt. On the "We Are All Khaled" website, which has more than 1 million participants, thye lamented every hurt or agony an Egyptian passed through even if it was hunger.
The Syrian revolution is another story. On their website, they call for the Syrian to die for the sake of the revolution. They encourage them to die. I feel so sad when I see someone videoing a hurt person instead of helping him, only to show the world the brutality of the regime. I understand the rationale of their act. I do not agree with it. They want the world to see the brutalities to support the revolution. This is wrong. They should not reply on the support of the world to overthrow the regime. They should rely on themselves. They should protect every Syrian soul. Otherwise they prove that their values are in the wrong place. They will be the new tyrants. They still use the old archaic methods of playing on the nerves, the guilt feeling, the artificial heroism.
This is why I see the Egyptian revolution is more elegant. And this is the difference between the "culture of life" compared to the "culture of death".
Again, I wish the Syrian get their freedom. They deserve to live in dignity. They are a great people.
The Syrian revolution is another story. On their website, they call for the Syrian to die for the sake of the revolution. They encourage them to die. I feel so sad when I see someone videoing a hurt person instead of helping him, only to show the world the brutality of the regime. I understand the rationale of their act. I do not agree with it. They want the world to see the brutalities to support the revolution. This is wrong. They should not reply on the support of the world to overthrow the regime. They should rely on themselves. They should protect every Syrian soul. Otherwise they prove that their values are in the wrong place. They will be the new tyrants. They still use the old archaic methods of playing on the nerves, the guilt feeling, the artificial heroism.This is why I see the Egyptian revolution is more elegant. And this is the difference between the "culture of life" compared to the "culture of death".
Again, I wish the Syrian get their freedom. They deserve to live in dignity. They are a great people.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Mobile Learning
The organization I'd like to discuss is Apple. The devise that impressed me was the 6th sense tool.
My first encounter with learning with mobile phones was back in 2000 when two Japanese students demonstrated how they used the mobile phone in their learning. Back then, it was still based on the old GSM technology and its real potential was not obvious. Still, it had an impression on me to have anywhere/anytime learning, even if it was a text based.
In 2003, I was amazed with Citrix on iPaq devices. Using the right wireless setup, we were able to connect my iPaq to my office PC through a Citrix add on and run an AutoCAD application on the tiny iPaq device... that impressed me because I was able to follow up on the construction of our new campus anywhere with this device. But the screen was annoyingly small. This gave us the idea that we need to develop an instructional program to train teachers on how to prepare their students to the mobile world. This never materialized.
Until 2010, the mobile phone was nothing but a device that allowed me to make phone calls, text and check my emails. When the iPhone was introduced, it was a new gadget. It did not introduce anything unfamiliar to me... until I saw a demo about its uses in medicine. I was amazed. The doctor gave a patient an iPhone with the right connection and tools to monitor his status 24/7. All data were sent back, wirelessly, to a central server in the doctor's hospital. When the iPhone detect an abnormal trend in the patient vital indicators, the hospital is notified, an ambulance is sent to where the patient is and remedy is given... although the patient would not know that anything is wrong... In this way, the patient is treated BEFORE he gets sick or get hit by any damaging stroke. That is when I recognized that mobile phone is becoming part of our life and I needed to pay more attention to it as a device, a way of life, a learning tool and an educational item.
The iPhone, and its "younger brother" the iPad has revolutionized mobile connectivity. The number and type of Apps that exists on these devices is shaping our life (here, "our" refers to my family). From real time cooking tips in the kitchen, to showing NetFlex movies in the living room and staying connected with our family wherever we are in the world. It allowed us to live on the risky side of life. We do not have to plan our trips anymore. We pick the right flights, hotel booking, restarants, adventure just when we need them. And we are saving money. We get wealth of information just when we want them. And they are up-to-date. I can enumerates many more.
If nothing else, one App could make the use of mobile computing useful in education: the eBook readers. Imagine students carrying all their academic books (even a full library), notes, learning tools in a small device that weighs less than a pound. Isn't this alone worth investing in mobile devices at schools?
However, the device that made me speechless and deeply impressed is... let it speak for itself:
My first encounter with learning with mobile phones was back in 2000 when two Japanese students demonstrated how they used the mobile phone in their learning. Back then, it was still based on the old GSM technology and its real potential was not obvious. Still, it had an impression on me to have anywhere/anytime learning, even if it was a text based.In 2003, I was amazed with Citrix on iPaq devices. Using the right wireless setup, we were able to connect my iPaq to my office PC through a Citrix add on and run an AutoCAD application on the tiny iPaq device... that impressed me because I was able to follow up on the construction of our new campus anywhere with this device. But the screen was annoyingly small. This gave us the idea that we need to develop an instructional program to train teachers on how to prepare their students to the mobile world. This never materialized.
Until 2010, the mobile phone was nothing but a device that allowed me to make phone calls, text and check my emails. When the iPhone was introduced, it was a new gadget. It did not introduce anything unfamiliar to me... until I saw a demo about its uses in medicine. I was amazed. The doctor gave a patient an iPhone with the right connection and tools to monitor his status 24/7. All data were sent back, wirelessly, to a central server in the doctor's hospital. When the iPhone detect an abnormal trend in the patient vital indicators, the hospital is notified, an ambulance is sent to where the patient is and remedy is given... although the patient would not know that anything is wrong... In this way, the patient is treated BEFORE he gets sick or get hit by any damaging stroke. That is when I recognized that mobile phone is becoming part of our life and I needed to pay more attention to it as a device, a way of life, a learning tool and an educational item.
The iPhone, and its "younger brother" the iPad has revolutionized mobile connectivity. The number and type of Apps that exists on these devices is shaping our life (here, "our" refers to my family). From real time cooking tips in the kitchen, to showing NetFlex movies in the living room and staying connected with our family wherever we are in the world. It allowed us to live on the risky side of life. We do not have to plan our trips anymore. We pick the right flights, hotel booking, restarants, adventure just when we need them. And we are saving money. We get wealth of information just when we want them. And they are up-to-date. I can enumerates many more.
If nothing else, one App could make the use of mobile computing useful in education: the eBook readers. Imagine students carrying all their academic books (even a full library), notes, learning tools in a small device that weighs less than a pound. Isn't this alone worth investing in mobile devices at schools?
However, the device that made me speechless and deeply impressed is... let it speak for itself:
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