Month: February 2010

Google Buzz

/ Cole Camplese / Leave a comment

I got into Google Buzz this afternoon after only having mobile access since last evening and now that I see it in my Gmail client I am instantly seeing potential. I’m not willing or able to qualify that potential as it is awfully new, but I will say that having a social component connected to the application I spend the most time in (Gmail) will have some real value. I’ve already had the most substantive conversation in a social application with a colleague who doesn’t routinely participate in other social web spaces … I think the tight integration with Gmail will make a difference even though my first reaction was to bristle at the idea of a social network invading my email. I am hoping some of my conversations get moved to Buzz and stay out of email.

Buzz

I’ve seen several people complain that it is “just another place to update status” and I have to disagree with that. This feels more like a productive and connected network that can empower work. Again, I can’t qualify that until I’ve been here long enough. For now I’ll just keep trying to stay focused and get some work done.

Cooperation

/ Cole Camplese / 2 Comments

The web is a platform and it is great to see excellent, rival services able to work together to build a superior product. I have put out some questions to the Flickr team about how this came about and some of the inner workings of the deal, but I am pretty sure that it would have only been done if the Flickr and Google Maps teams were working together.

via radar.oreilly.com

Pretty interesting that Flickr photos are now shown in Google Maps street view. It is exciting to see and allows the crowd sourced, geo-tagged view of the World to be made available in a rival service.

We are all Students

/ Cole Camplese / Leave a comment

It seems to me that if we can cultivate the habits of teaching and learning in such an environment, we will be well on our way to "adapting our teaching and learning practices to meet the needs of today's learners." I would insist, here, however, that faculty too should be included under the heading "today's learners." 

via www.personal.psu.edu

On his reflections of the 2010 Horizon Report, Dr. Chris Long offers some interesting thoughts that I think are worth considering. The quote I pulled out above seems to nail something that many of should be well aware of — that we are all learners. It is one of the things we need to consider when we talk about the "new" in "new literacies."

Visualizing my Life

/ Cole Camplese / 2 Comments

I was meeting with Scott McDonald this morning talking about a few things and the topic of data visualization came up. I’ve been interested in visualizing data since working on the Horizon Report, especially to get a handle on what is happening in my professional life … as an example tracking projects in meaningful ways has always been difficult for me. I’m not really all that interested in time spent on the projects, but more along the lines of where on campus we have touch points, who are we working with, and what kinds of things are we doing are all much more interesting to me. I’ve just not found a way to really map all that.

Scott showed me DAYTUM as an example of simple personal data tracking and visualization … I was instantly floored by what I saw. It gives you a really simple way to keep track of all sorts of things. I doubt it will solve the issue I mentioned above, but I am kicking the tires a bit with some personal things — at the moment I am tracking my daily exercise time either running or on Wii Fit, how I spend each day of the month (working not working, vacation, or sick), and the number of meetings I have across certain categories. I think it’ll help me get a better snapshot of where my time goes in a week. I doubt I’ll produce anything like the Feltron Report, but who knows where it could lead.

Data_viz

Scott and I instantly jumped to ideas on how we might use it in class. Next week we think we will be asking them to design some ways to take advantage of it and visualize their collected data over a few weeks and see what they come up with.

Mule Design Studio’s Blog: The Failure of Empathy

/ Cole Camplese / 3 Comments

I went back for a second helping of Avatar this Sunday. There’s a scene early on in the movie where one of the scientists walks across the lab carrying the “mobile computer slab of the future.” We’ve seen one of these in almost every sci-fi movie of the last 50 years. It comes free with a jetpack, I suppose. Except this time, one month later, my 12 year old son turns to me and whispers “Look Dad, it’s an iPad.”

via weblog.muledesign.com

When I saw Avatar with my friend and colleague, Scott McDonald, the iPad hadn't been announced yet but we both looked at each other and had an unspoken, "that's what the iPad is going to be like" moment. I think, like Gruber noted in his post that, "Mike Monteiro gets it."

What’s it Good For?

/ Cole Camplese / 17 Comments

The biggest impact of the iPad would be in the textbook market, said several officials interviewed by The Chronicle.

via chronicle.com

I wonder if this is actually the case. I'd love to hear what people think. I'd like to organize a pilot that looks at several key questions — note taking, portfolio management, eBooks, personal publishing, podcasting (lecture recording) and some other ideas that would be great to collect from the Internets. Anyone care to offer some thoughts on what we could study if we figured out a way to make iPads available to groups of faculty, staff, and students on our campus?

250 a Month!

/ Cole Camplese / 8 Comments

The iPad models that come with Wi-Fi and 3G will let users choose, on a month-by-month basis, whether to pay AT&T for 3G data service at one of two service levels. The unlimited plan is $29.99 per month, just like the iPhone's data fee; the 250 MB per month plan (combined upload and download) is just $14.99 per month. Will that suffice?

via db.tidbits.com

I too didn't think 250 MB a month would be enough until I looked at my own iPhone usage data … since I got my 3G I have averaged less than 100 MBs a month in usage. I am sure there are months when I use more than 100, but 250? The crazy thing is that I keep wifi off most of the time because of the VPN issues I have at Penn State. I think I can manage on 250MB a month. That is a huge surprise to me.