It’s Friday April 29th, 2011 and welcome to episode 119 of TechTalk4Teachers, I’m Tom Grissom. We’ve got a real treat for you on todays show as we will be talking about ebooks. Ebooks have been in the news a lot lately and many schools and universities are considering their use on a wider scale in the classroom. While ebooks have been around for a number of years now many schools and universities are considering school-wide implementations. There are however a number of issues that need to be worked out before a successful ebook program can be implemented on a larger scale.
Right Click Here to Download MP3
(40 minutes 58 seconds)
For todays show we talk with Karen Whisler who is the Head of Collection Development at Booth Library here on the campus of Eastern Illinois University. On the surface ebooks look so easy to use and we educators often see articles extolling the virtues of ebooks, but there are also a number of challenges with implementing a successful ebook program. Gadgets are constantly changing, ebook formats are evolving, Digital Rights Management and licensing fees need to be addressed on the front end before an ebook program can be successfully implemented.
So, without further delay here is my interview with Karen Whisler about ebooks for educators from earlier this week.
Kindle and Library Lending
http://venturebeat.com/2011/04/20/kindle-library-lending/
Eastern Illinois University Booth Library
http://www.library.eiu.edu/welcome.html
Booth Library - Books, Videos, and More
http://www.library.eiu.edu/resources/books.html
Technology Pick of the Week
For my Technology Pick of the Week this week I would like to encourage everyone to take a look at MyMediaMall and Overdrive. I have provided links in the shownotes to MyMediaMall as well as the Overdrive software that you will need. This is a wonderful resource that is available at many libraries across the country.
http://www.mymediamall.net/3A79CF6F-75E4-4CAF-B211-1D584C42E1CF/10/342/en/Default.htm
http://www.overdrive.com/software/omc/
If you are a faculty, staff, or student here at EIU you already have access to MyMediaMall here on campus and also off-campus if you use your EIU Library Card number to logon.
For others in Illinois many local libraries, such as mine, also offer the MyMediaMall service to their patrons. If you are in a different state or country be sure to checkout your options as MyMediaMall advertises itself as a global company. If you are outside the United States please drop us an email if you can access MyMediaMall or if you are using some other service to access ebooks.
Since we are coming up on the summer months I encourage you all to give MyMediaMall a try. I use MyMediaMall for both ebooks and audio books and it is one way that I keep up-to-date on current topics of interest to me. It is also great for recreational reading or listening.
I would also like to ask, what’s on your reading list for the summer? If you are interested you can leave a comment on our TechTalk4Teachers blog with your reading recommendations for other educators. I mentioned the ebook Blink by Malcolm Galdwell and I downloaded the audio version of this book to my Zune and am listening to it now. It is 7 hours of audio content which is a lot but because I can listen to it when I am doing other things I can multi-task.
Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
http://www.mymediamall.net/3A79CF6F-75E4-4CAF-B211-1D584C42E1CF/10/342/en/ContentDetails.htm?ID=0FC87C78-8E45-4829-BD99-3210CBE9FEFE
If you have a long commute audio books are a great way to access content you might not otherwise get to and maybe make your drive a little more enjoyable. Many cars have AUX ports in the Radio to plug in a MP3 player so you can use the car radio speakers to listen. Audio books are also great to listen to while exercising or doing household chores.
That wraps it up for episode 119 of Tech Talk for Teachers. I want to thank Karen Whisler for being our guest on todays show and sharing her wealth of knowledge on the topic of ebooks. Show notes for this episode and archived episodes are available on the web at the EIU Instructional Technology Center website at www.eiu.edu/itc To leave a comment or suggestion, please send an email to techtalk@eiu.edu or leave a comment on the Tech Talk for Teachers blog. Until next time, this is Tom Grissom. Keep on learning…
Tom Grissom, Ph.D.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Episode 118 – Flipping a Classroom, Khan Academy, and New Learning Analytics
It's Thursday, March 31st 2011 and welcome to Episode 118 of TechTalk4Teachers, I'm Tom Grissom. We are a little past mid-way point through the spring semester here at EIU and faculty and students are busily working their way through their courses. Many educators are constantly on the lookout for new methods to be a more effective teacher and thanks to the advances in technology you do not have to look far these days.
Right Click Here to Download MP3 (9 minutes 51 seconds)
There has recently been a crescendo of interest growing in education circles regarding a former TechTalk4Teachers Pick of the Week. This former pick has received new funding and is helping students from all around the world learn new things by simply watching YouTube videos and all for free.
I'm going to “flip” the format of todays show and you will see why in just a moment. Since I began TechTalk4Teachers I have made the Horizon Report a yearly technology pick and I have not yet had the opportunity to talk about the report this year.
Technology Pick of the Week
So before this semester gets away from me my technology pick of the week, this week, is the 2011 version of the Horizon Report published by the New Media Consortium. I use this report in both my undergraduate and graduate level technology classes as a reading assignment to help my students get up to speed with the latest educational technologies. Students are often amazed at the pace of adoption of new technologies and this report provides plenty of real world examples for students to explore.
When I tell them this report is about 40 pages long I usually hear some moans and groans but they are short-lived as I setup a discussion group where we discuss this report online over a two week period. This gives students the flexibility to chunk the material into more manageable pieces and provides a social component for them to share their impressions as they digest what they read and provides a way to share their reactions with the entire class. If you have not read this years Horizon Report I strongly encourage you to do so and a link is provided in the show notes.
2011 Horizon Report
http://www.nmc.org/publications/2011-horizon-report
As the name implies this report takes a look out over the horizon to observe new technology trends and how they are impacting teaching and learning. The report is broken down into three time-frames for technologies that are 1 year or less away from adoption, 2 to 3 years from adoption, and those that are 4 to 5 years away from being adopted on a larger scale. Of course predicting the future is always a risky business and unforseen technologies often enter the picture and take the education world by storm without much notice. Most recently the iPad and Android tablets serve as examples that have entered the mainstream consciousness of educators in the past year and many are experimenting with this new form factor.
Most of you can probably guess what the near term technology influence is, mobile phones and ebooks. As smart phones become more affordable and as wireless broadband access becomes more available the mobile phone is poised to enter the learning mainstream. I mentioned on last months show that smart phones are now outselling PC's for the first time and I believe that this trend will continue in the future. Mobile phones will not replace PC's in the immediate future but new combinations and form factors are competing with the traditional Personal Computer for use in schools.
The same is also true of ebooks, with the success of the Kindle and now new tablet and slate form factors, ebooks are beginning to be taken seriously as legitimate replacements for physical books. Several schools are piloting ebooks as possible replacements for their physical counterparts.
http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2011/03/25/mct_caebooks.html
Learning Analytics
The one thing in the Horizon Report that was placed four to five years out is something called Learning Analytics. Learning Analytics are technologies that can be used to measure learning by collecting and interpreting information using data-mining techniques to assess student academic progress. Many in the teaching field become a bit uneasy when there is talk of data-mining models for use in teaching and learning because it seems like such a sterile environment to teach and learn in. When some teachers hear this many envision students becoming just numbers to be analyzed and this is antithetical to the viewpoint of most teachers. However, teaching is both an art and a science and I believe we need both sides of the equation to be effective teachers. Learning analytics are in the infant stage but new developments with the Khan Academy have thrust learning analytics into the spotlight over the past two months.
I have talked about the Khan Academy before and it has been receiving a lot of press lately. Now, with new additions to the Khan Academy learning analytics has suddenly jumped ahead five years and is now front and center and on the minds of many educators. The Khan Academy has recently received some funding that has suddenly catapulted this online academy into the national spotlight.
Khan Academy
http://www.khanacademy.org/
Sal Khan has developed over 2000 short videos on a variety of subjects and placed them on YouTube for students to access across the world for free. I have provided a few links in the show notes for you to explore further and I highly recommend you watch his presentation.
Here is a short video clip from his recent TED talk, I will play about a minute of it to give you an idea what the Khan Academy is about if you have not heard of it before.
Khan Academy TED Talk - 2011
http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education.html
Alright, that was Sal Khan giving an introduction to his Khan Academy at a recent TED talk. The full presentation is about 20 minutes long and I encourage you to give it a watch if you want to see what the next level is and where the Khan Academy is heading in the future.
If you are familiar with Google Analytics imagine taking that technology and using it to display and track student progress from the videos students watch on YouTube and also being able to analyze the exercises students complete. The data generated is very detailed and provides a look at student academic progress across time.
Now, imagine being a teacher where you can have your students sign-up your class where you could use Khan Academy videos to supplement your students learning. If you so choose and have administrative approval you can setup a class and where you can monitor your students progress using learning analytics that the Khan Academy has designed. The service keeps track of each students individual progress. Data that is collected for every student include what Khan Academy videos they watch, how long they watch, and there are also exercises embedded within the videos that can be tracked to monitor progress. Students can see their progress and even earn badges along the way as rewards for completing lessons.
A color coding system is used so that teachers and students can easily see where there needs to be more work, green is good, and red needs more work. Teachers can see individual as well as the entire class statistics on how students are doing if they setup their classes to use the Khan Academy. Because learning analytics are so new educators should check with their schools polices before using such services and obtain administrative approval. It really is remarkable the data that can be collected and at the same time a bit concerning because teachers have not had access to so much detail before.
Flipping your Classroom
The Khan videos have been around for a while and many teachers are using the videos to “flip” the traditional classroom model of instruction. Some teachers are assigning the videos as homework to be watched at home and then use students scheduled class time to work on problems where the teacher can float around the room and assist any student with any questions they may have.
This flipped model gets the teacher out of the transmission mode of instruction and allows the teacher to give more individual attention to students. It is lecture by night and homework by day, flipping the traditional model. I have provided a link in the show notes to how some teachers are using the flipped classroom so be sure to check them out.
Reverse Instruction: Dan Pink and Karl’s “Fisch Flip”
http://www.connectedprincipals.com/archives/1534
To Flip or Not to Flip
http://marynabadenhorst.global2.vic.edu.au/2011/03/19/to-flip-or-not-to-flip/
What do you think, have you used the flipped classroom approach?
That wraps it up for episode 118 of TechTalk4Teachers. Show notes for this episode and archived episodes are available on the web at the EIU Instructional Technology Center website at eiu.edu/itc To leave a comment or suggestion, please send an email to techtalk@eiu.edu or leave a comment on the Tech Talk for Teachers blog. Until next time, this is Tom Grissom, keep on learning…
Right Click Here to Download MP3 (9 minutes 51 seconds)
There has recently been a crescendo of interest growing in education circles regarding a former TechTalk4Teachers Pick of the Week. This former pick has received new funding and is helping students from all around the world learn new things by simply watching YouTube videos and all for free.
I'm going to “flip” the format of todays show and you will see why in just a moment. Since I began TechTalk4Teachers I have made the Horizon Report a yearly technology pick and I have not yet had the opportunity to talk about the report this year.
Technology Pick of the Week
So before this semester gets away from me my technology pick of the week, this week, is the 2011 version of the Horizon Report published by the New Media Consortium. I use this report in both my undergraduate and graduate level technology classes as a reading assignment to help my students get up to speed with the latest educational technologies. Students are often amazed at the pace of adoption of new technologies and this report provides plenty of real world examples for students to explore.
When I tell them this report is about 40 pages long I usually hear some moans and groans but they are short-lived as I setup a discussion group where we discuss this report online over a two week period. This gives students the flexibility to chunk the material into more manageable pieces and provides a social component for them to share their impressions as they digest what they read and provides a way to share their reactions with the entire class. If you have not read this years Horizon Report I strongly encourage you to do so and a link is provided in the show notes.
2011 Horizon Report
http://www.nmc.org/publications/2011-horizon-report
As the name implies this report takes a look out over the horizon to observe new technology trends and how they are impacting teaching and learning. The report is broken down into three time-frames for technologies that are 1 year or less away from adoption, 2 to 3 years from adoption, and those that are 4 to 5 years away from being adopted on a larger scale. Of course predicting the future is always a risky business and unforseen technologies often enter the picture and take the education world by storm without much notice. Most recently the iPad and Android tablets serve as examples that have entered the mainstream consciousness of educators in the past year and many are experimenting with this new form factor.
Most of you can probably guess what the near term technology influence is, mobile phones and ebooks. As smart phones become more affordable and as wireless broadband access becomes more available the mobile phone is poised to enter the learning mainstream. I mentioned on last months show that smart phones are now outselling PC's for the first time and I believe that this trend will continue in the future. Mobile phones will not replace PC's in the immediate future but new combinations and form factors are competing with the traditional Personal Computer for use in schools.
The same is also true of ebooks, with the success of the Kindle and now new tablet and slate form factors, ebooks are beginning to be taken seriously as legitimate replacements for physical books. Several schools are piloting ebooks as possible replacements for their physical counterparts.
http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2011/03/25/mct_caebooks.html
Learning Analytics
The one thing in the Horizon Report that was placed four to five years out is something called Learning Analytics. Learning Analytics are technologies that can be used to measure learning by collecting and interpreting information using data-mining techniques to assess student academic progress. Many in the teaching field become a bit uneasy when there is talk of data-mining models for use in teaching and learning because it seems like such a sterile environment to teach and learn in. When some teachers hear this many envision students becoming just numbers to be analyzed and this is antithetical to the viewpoint of most teachers. However, teaching is both an art and a science and I believe we need both sides of the equation to be effective teachers. Learning analytics are in the infant stage but new developments with the Khan Academy have thrust learning analytics into the spotlight over the past two months.
I have talked about the Khan Academy before and it has been receiving a lot of press lately. Now, with new additions to the Khan Academy learning analytics has suddenly jumped ahead five years and is now front and center and on the minds of many educators. The Khan Academy has recently received some funding that has suddenly catapulted this online academy into the national spotlight.
Khan Academy
http://www.khanacademy.org/
Sal Khan has developed over 2000 short videos on a variety of subjects and placed them on YouTube for students to access across the world for free. I have provided a few links in the show notes for you to explore further and I highly recommend you watch his presentation.
Here is a short video clip from his recent TED talk, I will play about a minute of it to give you an idea what the Khan Academy is about if you have not heard of it before.
Khan Academy TED Talk - 2011
http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education.html
Alright, that was Sal Khan giving an introduction to his Khan Academy at a recent TED talk. The full presentation is about 20 minutes long and I encourage you to give it a watch if you want to see what the next level is and where the Khan Academy is heading in the future.
If you are familiar with Google Analytics imagine taking that technology and using it to display and track student progress from the videos students watch on YouTube and also being able to analyze the exercises students complete. The data generated is very detailed and provides a look at student academic progress across time.
Now, imagine being a teacher where you can have your students sign-up your class where you could use Khan Academy videos to supplement your students learning. If you so choose and have administrative approval you can setup a class and where you can monitor your students progress using learning analytics that the Khan Academy has designed. The service keeps track of each students individual progress. Data that is collected for every student include what Khan Academy videos they watch, how long they watch, and there are also exercises embedded within the videos that can be tracked to monitor progress. Students can see their progress and even earn badges along the way as rewards for completing lessons.
A color coding system is used so that teachers and students can easily see where there needs to be more work, green is good, and red needs more work. Teachers can see individual as well as the entire class statistics on how students are doing if they setup their classes to use the Khan Academy. Because learning analytics are so new educators should check with their schools polices before using such services and obtain administrative approval. It really is remarkable the data that can be collected and at the same time a bit concerning because teachers have not had access to so much detail before.
Flipping your Classroom
The Khan videos have been around for a while and many teachers are using the videos to “flip” the traditional classroom model of instruction. Some teachers are assigning the videos as homework to be watched at home and then use students scheduled class time to work on problems where the teacher can float around the room and assist any student with any questions they may have.
This flipped model gets the teacher out of the transmission mode of instruction and allows the teacher to give more individual attention to students. It is lecture by night and homework by day, flipping the traditional model. I have provided a link in the show notes to how some teachers are using the flipped classroom so be sure to check them out.
Reverse Instruction: Dan Pink and Karl’s “Fisch Flip”
http://www.connectedprincipals.com/archives/1534
To Flip or Not to Flip
http://marynabadenhorst.global2.vic.edu.au/2011/03/19/to-flip-or-not-to-flip/
What do you think, have you used the flipped classroom approach?
That wraps it up for episode 118 of TechTalk4Teachers. Show notes for this episode and archived episodes are available on the web at the EIU Instructional Technology Center website at eiu.edu/itc To leave a comment or suggestion, please send an email to techtalk@eiu.edu or leave a comment on the Tech Talk for Teachers blog. Until next time, this is Tom Grissom, keep on learning…
Monday, February 28, 2011
Episode 117 - We Live in Amazing Times – Watson Wins!
It’s Monday, February 28th, 2011 and welcome to episode 117 of TechTalk4Teachers, I’m Tom Grissom. A short month this month but an eventful one for the human race none the less, more on that later in the show.
Right Click Here to Download MP3 (28 minutes 45 seconds)
This month I had the honor of speaking at the opening session of the Students Involved with Technology Conference held here at Eastern Illinois University. This conference is held yearly in Illinois and also has concurrent conferences in other areas of the State for K12 students. In the past this conference was held in the Bloomington/Normal area and this was the first time to my knowledge that the event was held at EIU. The conference is setup by students for students and gives K12 students the opportunity to share their knowledge and skills with one another. We had several volunteer student presenters present on various technology topics as well as some adult experts presenting on topics such as making music on your computer and a session called computer guts, where students could learn more about what makes a computer work. Our School of Continuing Education organized this years event and did a great job.
We had an excellent turn out of over one-hundred and twenty K12 students participating in this years event. With a wide range of student ages ranging from 3rd graders to high school students I presented a talk called “We Live in Amazing Times” to share some of the history of computing that has occurred in my lifetime and how those trends will continue for the student participants as they grow older and experience their own amazing times ahead as technology evolves and improves in the future. Here is the recorded audio from the opening session.
http://www.sitconference.org/ SIT
Session Transcript coming soon….
We Live in AMAZING Times PowerPoint Presentation (PDF)
http://eiu.edu/techtalk/We Live in AMAZING Times_02122011PDF.pdf
We Live in Amazing Times PowerPoint (PDF) Alright, that was the talk I gave at the SIT Conference held on Saturday February 12, 2011 here on the campus of Eastern Illinois University. It was interesting talking to some of the students throughout the day about their understanding of technology and where they think it is going in the future. First I had to come to grips with the fact that we now have elementary students in school that were born in the 21st Century and will never have any first-hand experience at all with 20th Century technology and culture.
As we teach we must reach into the future world our students will live in but also provide a solid background of fundamental concepts and enduring truths. The students did get a kick out of the 30 pound laptop that I demonstrated but could not believe that such a device ever existed or that people would actually use one. I had a conversation with one of the students who observed that the Kindle ebook reader I demonstrated used less energy to turn to the page due to the e-ink technology that the Kindle uses. We need to encourage such thinking and curiosity as we need a lot more green energy development in the future to make devices as power efficient as possible.
Several students were very interested in how to make computer music and the conference had a session just for that. Many of the students were interested in the Microsoft Kinect and expressed interest in finding ways to use it including computer gaming and new uses not yet invented. There were sessions on Robotics, Facebook Privacy, Technology and TV News, Social Networking Safety, Flash Animation and many more. I remember the days of elementary and middle school where I would take things apart just to see how they worked. The challenge was always putting it back together so it would work again. This de-construction and re-construction is necessary to learn more about the way things work. Our students today need the opportunities like this to learn in a safe and constructive environment where the hands-on / minds-on experience of making things is encouraged.
Whether it be computer projects like creating computer generated music, drawing cartoons using Flash animation, or producing their own TV shows project-based learning activities are fun and the learning lasts over time. These types of projects and opportunities are where children make quantum leaps in their knowledge and understanding. It was a fun day and everyone learned something new.
IBM Watson
As a follow-up to the amazing times talk I gave at the conference I want to mention IBM Watson this month. The Watson Jeopardy show aired the week after I gave my presentation to the students but I hope that teachers across the nation took some time this month to discuss this amazing mile-marker in the evolution of technology. The IBM computer called Watson, named after IBM’s first President Thomas Watson, matched the abilities of two of the smartest humans in the world in a game of Jeopardy. The computer was up against the two best Jeopardy players in the world. Ken Jennings the 74 time undefeated champion of Jeopardy and Brad Rutter. Watson won the game with a total of $77,147 to Ken Jennings $24,000 and Brad Rutters $21,600 over a two day period.
It really was quite an impressive feat. I have provided a link in the show notes to a PBS NewsHour article complete with a series of videos about the behind the scenes story of IBM Watson and how scientist are working on the next generation of artificial intelligence.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2011/02/watson-wins-ibms-machine-rages-against-jeopardy-champs.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watson_(artificial_intelligence_software)
Smart Phones Outpace Sales of Computers
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/smartphones-tablets-sell-personal-computers-2011-deloitte-trends-20110118-054249-075.html
Alright, that was the talk I gave at the SIT Conference held on Saturday February 12, 2011 here on the campus of Eastern Illinois University. It was interesting talking to some of the students throughout the day about their understanding of technology and where they think it is going in the future.
First I had to come to grips with the fact that we now have elementary students in school that were born in the 21st Century and will never have any first-hand experience at all with 20th Century technology and culture.
As we teach we must reach into the future world our students will live in but also provide a solid background of fundamental concepts and enduring truths. The students did get a kick out of the 30 pound laptop that I demonstrated but could not believe that such a device ever existed or that people would actually use one.
I had a conversation with one of the students who observed that the Kindle ebook reader I demonstrated used less energy to turn to the page due to the e-ink technology that the Kindle uses. We need to encourage such thinking and curiosity as we need a lot more green energy development in the future to make devices as power efficient as possible.
Several students were very interested in how to make computer music and the conference had a session just for that. Many of the students were interested in the Microsoft Kinect and expressed interest in finding ways to use it including computer gaming and new uses not yet invented.
There were sessions on Robotics, Facebook Privacy, Technology and TV News, Social Networking Safety, Flash Animation and many more. I remember the days of elementary and middle school where I would take things apart just to see how they worked. The challenge was always putting it back together so it would work again. This de-construction and re-construction is necessary to learn more about the way things work.
Our students today need the opportunities like this to learn in a safe and constructive environment where the hands-on / minds-on experience of making things is encouraged. Whether it be computer projects like creating computer generated music, drawing cartoons using Flash animation, or producing their own TV shows project-based learning activities are fun and the learning lasts over time. These types of projects and opportunities are where children make quantum leaps in their knowledge and understanding. It was a fun day and everyone learned something new.
IBM Watson
As a follow-up to the amazing times talk I gave at the conference I want to mention IBM Watson this month. The Watson Jeopardy show aired the week after I gave my presentation to the students but I hope that teachers across the nation took some time this month to discuss this amazing mile-marker in the evolution of technology. The IBM computer called Watson, named after IBM’s first President Thomas Watson, matched the abilities of two of the smartest humans in the world in a game of Jeopardy. The computer was up against the two best Jeopardy players in the world. Ken Jennings the 74 time undefeated champion of Jeopardy and Brad Rutter. Watson won the game with a total of $77,147 to Ken Jennings $24,000 and Brad Rutters $21,600 over a two day period. It really was quite an impressive feat.
I have provided a link in the show notes to a PBS NewsHour article complete with a series of videos about the behind the scenes story of IBM Watson and how scientist are working on the next generation of artificial intelligence.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2011/02/watson-wins-ibms-machine-rages-against-jeopardy-champs.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watson_(artificial_intelligence_software)
Here is a question for you, after reviewing the videos do you call Watson a he or an it?
Technology Pick of the Week
My Technology Pick of the Week this week is a new smart phone app that I mentioned in the SIT keynote presentation called Google Translate. I really do believe that the Smart Phones that are coming on to the market today mark a similar point in history as the Altair and first Personal Computers in the 1970’s did for my generation. Smart phones are evolving very rapidly and are now being paired with cloud computing services that make the mobile devices as powerful as the mainframe computers not so long ago. In fact, they are increasingly being connected to mainframe type computers by high-speed wireless connections to take advantage of massive amounts of computing power that was previously impossible for the average person to access. All of this computing power is now in a cell phone sized device that many of our students carry with them all the time.
I have provided links in the show notes to the Google Blog that discusses Google Translate program as well as a YouTube video of a Google Translate demonstration. In the YouTube Video you will see an example of where a person that speaks English wants to buy a pair of shoes in Germany. The English speaker says that they want to buy a pair of shoes and then the Google Translate app that is now available on Android translates the English sentence into German. That’s pretty cool but in the next part of the video the German store keeper speaks into the Android phone in German and it is translated from German into English so that the English speaker can understand his answer.
Conversation Mode for Google Translate on Android (Blog)
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/new-look-for-google-translate-for.html
You Tube Video of Conversation Mode in Google Translate
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtMfdNeGXgM&feature=player_embedded#t=26m24s
Translate supports 53 languages, from Afrikaans to Yiddish, and voice input is currently available for 15 languages with more sure to come in the future.
Yes, translate does make mistakes from time to time but this really is absolutely amazing technology. We are getting closer to the Universal Translater that was used on so many episodes of Star Trek I watched while growing up, science-fiction is becoming a reality.
That wraps it up for episode 117 of TechTalk4Teachers. Show notes for this episode and archived episodes are available on the web at the EIU Instructional Technology Center website at eiu.edu/itc To leave a comment or suggestion, please send an email to techtalk@eiu.edu or leave a comment on the Tech Talk for Teachers blog. Until next time, this is Tom Grissom, keep on learning…
Right Click Here to Download MP3 (28 minutes 45 seconds)
This month I had the honor of speaking at the opening session of the Students Involved with Technology Conference held here at Eastern Illinois University. This conference is held yearly in Illinois and also has concurrent conferences in other areas of the State for K12 students. In the past this conference was held in the Bloomington/Normal area and this was the first time to my knowledge that the event was held at EIU. The conference is setup by students for students and gives K12 students the opportunity to share their knowledge and skills with one another. We had several volunteer student presenters present on various technology topics as well as some adult experts presenting on topics such as making music on your computer and a session called computer guts, where students could learn more about what makes a computer work. Our School of Continuing Education organized this years event and did a great job.
We had an excellent turn out of over one-hundred and twenty K12 students participating in this years event. With a wide range of student ages ranging from 3rd graders to high school students I presented a talk called “We Live in Amazing Times” to share some of the history of computing that has occurred in my lifetime and how those trends will continue for the student participants as they grow older and experience their own amazing times ahead as technology evolves and improves in the future. Here is the recorded audio from the opening session.
http://www.sitconference.org/ SIT
Session Transcript coming soon….
We Live in AMAZING Times PowerPoint Presentation (PDF)
http://eiu.edu/techtalk/We Live in AMAZING Times_02122011PDF.pdf
We Live in Amazing Times PowerPoint (PDF) Alright, that was the talk I gave at the SIT Conference held on Saturday February 12, 2011 here on the campus of Eastern Illinois University. It was interesting talking to some of the students throughout the day about their understanding of technology and where they think it is going in the future. First I had to come to grips with the fact that we now have elementary students in school that were born in the 21st Century and will never have any first-hand experience at all with 20th Century technology and culture.
As we teach we must reach into the future world our students will live in but also provide a solid background of fundamental concepts and enduring truths. The students did get a kick out of the 30 pound laptop that I demonstrated but could not believe that such a device ever existed or that people would actually use one. I had a conversation with one of the students who observed that the Kindle ebook reader I demonstrated used less energy to turn to the page due to the e-ink technology that the Kindle uses. We need to encourage such thinking and curiosity as we need a lot more green energy development in the future to make devices as power efficient as possible.
Several students were very interested in how to make computer music and the conference had a session just for that. Many of the students were interested in the Microsoft Kinect and expressed interest in finding ways to use it including computer gaming and new uses not yet invented. There were sessions on Robotics, Facebook Privacy, Technology and TV News, Social Networking Safety, Flash Animation and many more. I remember the days of elementary and middle school where I would take things apart just to see how they worked. The challenge was always putting it back together so it would work again. This de-construction and re-construction is necessary to learn more about the way things work. Our students today need the opportunities like this to learn in a safe and constructive environment where the hands-on / minds-on experience of making things is encouraged.
Whether it be computer projects like creating computer generated music, drawing cartoons using Flash animation, or producing their own TV shows project-based learning activities are fun and the learning lasts over time. These types of projects and opportunities are where children make quantum leaps in their knowledge and understanding. It was a fun day and everyone learned something new.
IBM Watson
As a follow-up to the amazing times talk I gave at the conference I want to mention IBM Watson this month. The Watson Jeopardy show aired the week after I gave my presentation to the students but I hope that teachers across the nation took some time this month to discuss this amazing mile-marker in the evolution of technology. The IBM computer called Watson, named after IBM’s first President Thomas Watson, matched the abilities of two of the smartest humans in the world in a game of Jeopardy. The computer was up against the two best Jeopardy players in the world. Ken Jennings the 74 time undefeated champion of Jeopardy and Brad Rutter. Watson won the game with a total of $77,147 to Ken Jennings $24,000 and Brad Rutters $21,600 over a two day period.
It really was quite an impressive feat. I have provided a link in the show notes to a PBS NewsHour article complete with a series of videos about the behind the scenes story of IBM Watson and how scientist are working on the next generation of artificial intelligence.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2011/02/watson-wins-ibms-machine-rages-against-jeopardy-champs.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watson_(artificial_intelligence_software)
Smart Phones Outpace Sales of Computers
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/smartphones-tablets-sell-personal-computers-2011-deloitte-trends-20110118-054249-075.html
Alright, that was the talk I gave at the SIT Conference held on Saturday February 12, 2011 here on the campus of Eastern Illinois University. It was interesting talking to some of the students throughout the day about their understanding of technology and where they think it is going in the future.
First I had to come to grips with the fact that we now have elementary students in school that were born in the 21st Century and will never have any first-hand experience at all with 20th Century technology and culture.
As we teach we must reach into the future world our students will live in but also provide a solid background of fundamental concepts and enduring truths. The students did get a kick out of the 30 pound laptop that I demonstrated but could not believe that such a device ever existed or that people would actually use one.
I had a conversation with one of the students who observed that the Kindle ebook reader I demonstrated used less energy to turn to the page due to the e-ink technology that the Kindle uses. We need to encourage such thinking and curiosity as we need a lot more green energy development in the future to make devices as power efficient as possible.
Several students were very interested in how to make computer music and the conference had a session just for that. Many of the students were interested in the Microsoft Kinect and expressed interest in finding ways to use it including computer gaming and new uses not yet invented.
There were sessions on Robotics, Facebook Privacy, Technology and TV News, Social Networking Safety, Flash Animation and many more. I remember the days of elementary and middle school where I would take things apart just to see how they worked. The challenge was always putting it back together so it would work again. This de-construction and re-construction is necessary to learn more about the way things work.
Our students today need the opportunities like this to learn in a safe and constructive environment where the hands-on / minds-on experience of making things is encouraged. Whether it be computer projects like creating computer generated music, drawing cartoons using Flash animation, or producing their own TV shows project-based learning activities are fun and the learning lasts over time. These types of projects and opportunities are where children make quantum leaps in their knowledge and understanding. It was a fun day and everyone learned something new.
IBM Watson
As a follow-up to the amazing times talk I gave at the conference I want to mention IBM Watson this month. The Watson Jeopardy show aired the week after I gave my presentation to the students but I hope that teachers across the nation took some time this month to discuss this amazing mile-marker in the evolution of technology. The IBM computer called Watson, named after IBM’s first President Thomas Watson, matched the abilities of two of the smartest humans in the world in a game of Jeopardy. The computer was up against the two best Jeopardy players in the world. Ken Jennings the 74 time undefeated champion of Jeopardy and Brad Rutter. Watson won the game with a total of $77,147 to Ken Jennings $24,000 and Brad Rutters $21,600 over a two day period. It really was quite an impressive feat.
I have provided a link in the show notes to a PBS NewsHour article complete with a series of videos about the behind the scenes story of IBM Watson and how scientist are working on the next generation of artificial intelligence.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2011/02/watson-wins-ibms-machine-rages-against-jeopardy-champs.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watson_(artificial_intelligence_software)
Here is a question for you, after reviewing the videos do you call Watson a he or an it?
Technology Pick of the Week
My Technology Pick of the Week this week is a new smart phone app that I mentioned in the SIT keynote presentation called Google Translate. I really do believe that the Smart Phones that are coming on to the market today mark a similar point in history as the Altair and first Personal Computers in the 1970’s did for my generation. Smart phones are evolving very rapidly and are now being paired with cloud computing services that make the mobile devices as powerful as the mainframe computers not so long ago. In fact, they are increasingly being connected to mainframe type computers by high-speed wireless connections to take advantage of massive amounts of computing power that was previously impossible for the average person to access. All of this computing power is now in a cell phone sized device that many of our students carry with them all the time.
I have provided links in the show notes to the Google Blog that discusses Google Translate program as well as a YouTube video of a Google Translate demonstration. In the YouTube Video you will see an example of where a person that speaks English wants to buy a pair of shoes in Germany. The English speaker says that they want to buy a pair of shoes and then the Google Translate app that is now available on Android translates the English sentence into German. That’s pretty cool but in the next part of the video the German store keeper speaks into the Android phone in German and it is translated from German into English so that the English speaker can understand his answer.
Conversation Mode for Google Translate on Android (Blog)
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/new-look-for-google-translate-for.html
You Tube Video of Conversation Mode in Google Translate
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtMfdNeGXgM&feature=player_embedded#t=26m24s
Translate supports 53 languages, from Afrikaans to Yiddish, and voice input is currently available for 15 languages with more sure to come in the future.
Yes, translate does make mistakes from time to time but this really is absolutely amazing technology. We are getting closer to the Universal Translater that was used on so many episodes of Star Trek I watched while growing up, science-fiction is becoming a reality.
That wraps it up for episode 117 of TechTalk4Teachers. Show notes for this episode and archived episodes are available on the web at the EIU Instructional Technology Center website at eiu.edu/itc To leave a comment or suggestion, please send an email to techtalk@eiu.edu or leave a comment on the Tech Talk for Teachers blog. Until next time, this is Tom Grissom, keep on learning…
Monday, January 31, 2011
Episode 116 – Do not shutoff my Internet and the Four Horsemen
It’s Monday January 31st, 2011 and welcome to episode 116 of TechTalk4Teachers, I’m Tom Grissom. Another month has gone by since the last podcast and the world has changed once again.
Right Click Here to Download MP3
(10 minutes 10 seconds)
This past month has witnessed protests in Tunisia and Egypt in attempts to oust the current dictatorial governments. Social media has played a huge role in these protests, so much so that the government of Egypt has cut-off cell phone and Internet service in the country in an attempt to disrupt protestors. Organizers of the protests were using Facebook and Twitter prior to the Internet cutoff to coordinate protests, so, the government made the decision to turn off the Internet switch. As of the time of this podcast some cell phone coverage has been restored but there is still no Internet access in Egypt. This is a very fluid situation and it is unclear whether President Mubarak will remain as the leader of Egypt as of the time of this posting. Tunisia was successful in their attempts to depose the Tunisian dictator but it did not come without the loss if life. Current events are always unpredictable but offer educators the opportunity to talk about democracy and what life is like in other countries.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/01/14/tunisia.protests/index.html
Modern communications technologies have allowed for instant communication on a world-wide scale. It is a bit disconcerting, but not surprising, that any country can just turn off a switch to disrupt communications in the face of a crisis. One reason the Internet has been so successful on a global scale is that it was designed to be very robust with the capability of re-routing information if needed.
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/how_egypts_internet_kill_switch_works
The Internet was born in 1969 as part of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency as a way to build a communications network that could communicate with other networks through internetwork packet-switching.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet
The idea was that if one part of the communications network went down for some reason the rest of the network would remain operational and find an alternative path if possible. That works well as long as the network node you want to communicate with is alive but if you cannot access devices on a portion of the network you are out of luck. In essence this is what has happened in Egypt as their Internet has gone dark while the rest of the worlds Internet access remains functional. That is a good thing unless you happen to live in Egypt where you are directly impacted by the blackout.
Network engineers have worked very hard on building a reliable networking infrastructure that is capable of routing around problem areas where congestion occurs or access is unavailable. If the pathway to a specific device is unavailable then there is no communication possible unless a redundant pathway is established.
Egypt finds itself in the midst of protests with no Internet communications possible because the portion that serves Egypt has been shutdown. It is a tragic situation and one that we can only hope will be resolved peacefully.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/01/30/egypt.what.next/index.html
The Internet has become so successful that we are experiencing growing pains as there is now a coming crisis of not having enough Internet IP addresses to add more computers and devices to the Internet. With the explosion of smart phones that are capable of connecting to the Internet we are nearing the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses. Do not worry as there is a plan to move from IP Version 4 to IP Version 6 that will solve this problem but it does mean that the Internet infrastructure will need some revamping to accommodate the new format. I have provided a link from a PCMag article if you would like to know more about this upcoming change due to growing pains on the Internet:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2376887,00.asp
The Four Horsemen
In other news this month the world of technology witnessed changes for two of the four leaders from what has become known as the four horsemen of the technology industry. Leaders at Apple and Google have had a change in status at their respective companies this month. The so called four horsemen of the tech industry change from time to time but it is not hard to argue that Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Intel have been on this list in recent years.
Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple, has taken a leave of absence due to health concerns and Eric Schmidt of Google has stepped down as the CEO of Google as part of a corporate restructuring. Schmidt will remain as part of the management team along with Sergey Brin and Larry Page at Google. It remains to be seen what changes the announcements may have on the future business of these tech titans but both announcements caught the tech world by surprise this month.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/157088/steve_jobs_to_step_down_temporarily_as_apples_ceo_for_health_reasons.html
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_ceo_eric_schmidt_steps_down_larry_page_take.php
Steve Ballmer of Microsoft is also making some executive changes at the top with the replacement of Bob Muglia, head of the Server Business Unit at Microsoft. At Intel, CEO Paul Otellini , is also facing changes with Microsoft possibly porting its next version of Windows to the ARM architecture. The Intel architecture that Microsoft has supported exclusively for years will likely face some competition with the ARM architecture.
With so much of a shakeup at the worlds largest tech companies the world is changing once again.
January also marks the time when these companies announce their quarterly earnings reports and all four of these horsemen recently reported record years and are riding high on the horse. A link is provided in the show notes if you are interested in reading the Press Releases regarding the recent quarterly earnings from these companies. You can really learn a lot about these companies from these press release statements:
Microsoft Reports Record $0.77 Earnings Per Share in Second Quarter
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2011/jan11/01-27fy11q2earningspr.mspx
Apple Reports First Quarter Results
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/01/18results.html
Google Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2010 Results and Management Changes
http://investor.google.com/earnings/2010/Q4_google_earnings.html
Intel Reports Record Year and Record Fourth Quarter
http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2011/01/13/intel-reports-record-year-and-record-fourth-quarter
I scanned the reports for information and if I did my math correctly these four companies had just short of 67 billion in revenue with over 18 billion dollars of that being net income. And this is just for the QUARTERLY results! For the average person that is an almost inconceivable amount of income.
What is net income?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_income
The four horsemen of Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Intel have a tremendous impact upon the lives of millions of people every single day.
Technology Pick of the Week
My Technology Pick of the Week this week is a free ebook reading program that is cross-platform. Calibre will run on Windows, Macs, and Linux and is an open source ebook reader / management program. I am pronouncing it (Caliber)Calibre as that is the way that Kovid Goyal, the creator of the program, pronounces it. I have heard several people call it “Calibre” but I will honor the creator of the program and call it Calibre here. I have provided links in the shownotes to the Download site as well as an introductory video of its capabilities that is worth a watch if you want to know more about this free ebook reader.
Calibre open source ebook reader
http://calibre-ebook.com/
What I like about Calibre is its cross-platform support as well as the support for the majority of ebook formats. The two most popular formats being EPUB that the Barnes and Noble nook uses and the MOBI format the Amazon Kindle uses. The only catch is that Calibre will not work with all ebooks due to Digital Rights Management issues, also known as DRM. DRM is currently used on the Nook, Kindle, and other ebook readers in efforts to keep electronic books from being pirated.
It feels like we have seen this song and dance before as publishers are using proprietary DRM formats to protect content to the detriment of consumers. If you lived through the transition of digital music from CD’s to downloadable MP3’s you can unfortunately expect a similar experience with ebooks. When Apple came out with iTunes the music Apple sold was protected by DRM. DRM uses proprietary software that may lock you into a particular device, in the case of Apple it is the iPod/iPhone. If you want to use another MP3 player you could not if the music was DRMd to a particular device.
The music industry has gradually limited DRM and much music today can now be purchased without DRM. A negative of buying digital copies is that if the service decides to change the format the consumer may be forced to buy the content again in the “new and improved format”. This happened with Apple at one point where consumers were faced with re-buying songs they already purchased if they wanted to buy a higher quality version of songs.
Coming off this history I do not want to repeat the mistakes of the past but I find myself in a similar spot with the current state of ebooks. Having lived through the messy world of DRM music I now find myself in the DRM ebook world. It will be a while, maybe never, but I dream of a day that I could read a book I purchased on Amazon in the Kindle format and read it on a Barnes and Noble Nook, or read it using some open source program such as Calibre or in my Google ebooks folder. Right now the solution is to lock into a particular format or buy the old fashioned paper-based version of the book, currently I am using the Kindle format for purchased ebooks but Google offers the advantage of access from an inclusive gmail account. Then there is the iPad and the slew of Android tablets that support ebooks. Hmmm, choices.
How about you, are you using ebooks? Are you finding any barriers with using ebooks in schools? I would love to hear from you so please send me an email to techtalk@eiu.edu or better yet record your question or comment in a sound file, keep it brief and to the point and send it to me as an email attachment. Selected comments will be shared on the next episode and played on air if you send in an audio comment. One thing I think we educators need to do more of is to comment on each others blogs, wikis, and podcasts to share more with one another by participating in the content we use. When was the last time you posted a comment or participated on a podcast?
That wraps it up for episode 116 of TechTalk4Teachers. Show notes for this episode and archived episodes are available on the web at the EIU Instructional Technology Center website at eiu.edu/itc To leave a comment or suggestion, please send an email to techtalk@eiu.edu or leave a comment on the Tech Talk for Teachers blog. Until next time, this is Tom Grissom, keep on learning…
Right Click Here to Download MP3
(10 minutes 10 seconds)
This past month has witnessed protests in Tunisia and Egypt in attempts to oust the current dictatorial governments. Social media has played a huge role in these protests, so much so that the government of Egypt has cut-off cell phone and Internet service in the country in an attempt to disrupt protestors. Organizers of the protests were using Facebook and Twitter prior to the Internet cutoff to coordinate protests, so, the government made the decision to turn off the Internet switch. As of the time of this podcast some cell phone coverage has been restored but there is still no Internet access in Egypt. This is a very fluid situation and it is unclear whether President Mubarak will remain as the leader of Egypt as of the time of this posting. Tunisia was successful in their attempts to depose the Tunisian dictator but it did not come without the loss if life. Current events are always unpredictable but offer educators the opportunity to talk about democracy and what life is like in other countries.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/01/14/tunisia.protests/index.html
Modern communications technologies have allowed for instant communication on a world-wide scale. It is a bit disconcerting, but not surprising, that any country can just turn off a switch to disrupt communications in the face of a crisis. One reason the Internet has been so successful on a global scale is that it was designed to be very robust with the capability of re-routing information if needed.
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/how_egypts_internet_kill_switch_works
The Internet was born in 1969 as part of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency as a way to build a communications network that could communicate with other networks through internetwork packet-switching.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet
The idea was that if one part of the communications network went down for some reason the rest of the network would remain operational and find an alternative path if possible. That works well as long as the network node you want to communicate with is alive but if you cannot access devices on a portion of the network you are out of luck. In essence this is what has happened in Egypt as their Internet has gone dark while the rest of the worlds Internet access remains functional. That is a good thing unless you happen to live in Egypt where you are directly impacted by the blackout.
Network engineers have worked very hard on building a reliable networking infrastructure that is capable of routing around problem areas where congestion occurs or access is unavailable. If the pathway to a specific device is unavailable then there is no communication possible unless a redundant pathway is established.
Egypt finds itself in the midst of protests with no Internet communications possible because the portion that serves Egypt has been shutdown. It is a tragic situation and one that we can only hope will be resolved peacefully.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/01/30/egypt.what.next/index.html
The Internet has become so successful that we are experiencing growing pains as there is now a coming crisis of not having enough Internet IP addresses to add more computers and devices to the Internet. With the explosion of smart phones that are capable of connecting to the Internet we are nearing the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses. Do not worry as there is a plan to move from IP Version 4 to IP Version 6 that will solve this problem but it does mean that the Internet infrastructure will need some revamping to accommodate the new format. I have provided a link from a PCMag article if you would like to know more about this upcoming change due to growing pains on the Internet:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2376887,00.asp
The Four Horsemen
In other news this month the world of technology witnessed changes for two of the four leaders from what has become known as the four horsemen of the technology industry. Leaders at Apple and Google have had a change in status at their respective companies this month. The so called four horsemen of the tech industry change from time to time but it is not hard to argue that Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Intel have been on this list in recent years.
Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple, has taken a leave of absence due to health concerns and Eric Schmidt of Google has stepped down as the CEO of Google as part of a corporate restructuring. Schmidt will remain as part of the management team along with Sergey Brin and Larry Page at Google. It remains to be seen what changes the announcements may have on the future business of these tech titans but both announcements caught the tech world by surprise this month.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/157088/steve_jobs_to_step_down_temporarily_as_apples_ceo_for_health_reasons.html
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_ceo_eric_schmidt_steps_down_larry_page_take.php
Steve Ballmer of Microsoft is also making some executive changes at the top with the replacement of Bob Muglia, head of the Server Business Unit at Microsoft. At Intel, CEO Paul Otellini , is also facing changes with Microsoft possibly porting its next version of Windows to the ARM architecture. The Intel architecture that Microsoft has supported exclusively for years will likely face some competition with the ARM architecture.
With so much of a shakeup at the worlds largest tech companies the world is changing once again.
January also marks the time when these companies announce their quarterly earnings reports and all four of these horsemen recently reported record years and are riding high on the horse. A link is provided in the show notes if you are interested in reading the Press Releases regarding the recent quarterly earnings from these companies. You can really learn a lot about these companies from these press release statements:
Microsoft Reports Record $0.77 Earnings Per Share in Second Quarter
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2011/jan11/01-27fy11q2earningspr.mspx
Apple Reports First Quarter Results
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/01/18results.html
Google Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2010 Results and Management Changes
http://investor.google.com/earnings/2010/Q4_google_earnings.html
Intel Reports Record Year and Record Fourth Quarter
http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2011/01/13/intel-reports-record-year-and-record-fourth-quarter
I scanned the reports for information and if I did my math correctly these four companies had just short of 67 billion in revenue with over 18 billion dollars of that being net income. And this is just for the QUARTERLY results! For the average person that is an almost inconceivable amount of income.
What is net income?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_income
The four horsemen of Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Intel have a tremendous impact upon the lives of millions of people every single day.
Technology Pick of the Week
My Technology Pick of the Week this week is a free ebook reading program that is cross-platform. Calibre will run on Windows, Macs, and Linux and is an open source ebook reader / management program. I am pronouncing it (Caliber)
Calibre open source ebook reader
http://calibre-ebook.com/
What I like about Calibre is its cross-platform support as well as the support for the majority of ebook formats. The two most popular formats being EPUB that the Barnes and Noble nook uses and the MOBI format the Amazon Kindle uses. The only catch is that Calibre will not work with all ebooks due to Digital Rights Management issues, also known as DRM. DRM is currently used on the Nook, Kindle, and other ebook readers in efforts to keep electronic books from being pirated.
It feels like we have seen this song and dance before as publishers are using proprietary DRM formats to protect content to the detriment of consumers. If you lived through the transition of digital music from CD’s to downloadable MP3’s you can unfortunately expect a similar experience with ebooks. When Apple came out with iTunes the music Apple sold was protected by DRM. DRM uses proprietary software that may lock you into a particular device, in the case of Apple it is the iPod/iPhone. If you want to use another MP3 player you could not if the music was DRMd to a particular device.
The music industry has gradually limited DRM and much music today can now be purchased without DRM. A negative of buying digital copies is that if the service decides to change the format the consumer may be forced to buy the content again in the “new and improved format”. This happened with Apple at one point where consumers were faced with re-buying songs they already purchased if they wanted to buy a higher quality version of songs.
Coming off this history I do not want to repeat the mistakes of the past but I find myself in a similar spot with the current state of ebooks. Having lived through the messy world of DRM music I now find myself in the DRM ebook world. It will be a while, maybe never, but I dream of a day that I could read a book I purchased on Amazon in the Kindle format and read it on a Barnes and Noble Nook, or read it using some open source program such as Calibre or in my Google ebooks folder. Right now the solution is to lock into a particular format or buy the old fashioned paper-based version of the book, currently I am using the Kindle format for purchased ebooks but Google offers the advantage of access from an inclusive gmail account. Then there is the iPad and the slew of Android tablets that support ebooks. Hmmm, choices.
How about you, are you using ebooks? Are you finding any barriers with using ebooks in schools? I would love to hear from you so please send me an email to techtalk@eiu.edu or better yet record your question or comment in a sound file, keep it brief and to the point and send it to me as an email attachment. Selected comments will be shared on the next episode and played on air if you send in an audio comment. One thing I think we educators need to do more of is to comment on each others blogs, wikis, and podcasts to share more with one another by participating in the content we use. When was the last time you posted a comment or participated on a podcast?
That wraps it up for episode 116 of TechTalk4Teachers. Show notes for this episode and archived episodes are available on the web at the EIU Instructional Technology Center website at eiu.edu/itc To leave a comment or suggestion, please send an email to techtalk@eiu.edu or leave a comment on the Tech Talk for Teachers blog. Until next time, this is Tom Grissom, keep on learning…
Friday, December 31, 2010
Episode 115 - To the Cloud
It’s Friday, December 31st, 2010 and welcome to episode 115 of TechTalk4Teachers, I’m Tom Grissom. It’s the last day of the year and the last day of the first decade of the 21st Century. We have heard a lot about the 21st Century education over the past decade and now perhaps we can finally put to bed the rhetoric of what skills a 21st Century educator should possess.
Right Click Here to Download MP3
(16 minutes 22 seconds)
Looking back over the past ten years has proven to be just as exciting as the decade of the 1990’s when the public Internet was born. The 1990’s witnessed a blistering pace of innovation as the .com boom got into full swing. The 2000’s have enjoyed an equal dose of innovation and I am sure we will see similar growth and innovations over the coming decade.
Plain and simple, the number one skill a person needs to have in this day and age is the ability to adapt to change because change is guaranteed to happen. In order to adapt we need to know how to learn, un-learn and re-learn while holding onto our values and what we deem important so we educators still have a lot of work ahead of us.
The past ten years have witnessed a plethora of next generation Internet services known as Web 2.0 and many have become household names. Maybe you can recognize a few them from this list; Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Skype, YouTube, Flickr, Wikipedia, WordPress, and Delicious to name just a few. How many did you recognize? Every single one of these services did not exist at the beginning of this past decade. Today many of us take for granted iPods, iTunes, mobile phones with apps and Internet access, podcasts like this one, and many of the free Web 2.0 services that did not exist a decade ago.
Like many tech savvy educators I use Twitter and Delicious nearly every day as I find them very valuable to have as part of my professional toolkit and best of all both services are free. Twitter is growing and now has nearly 200 million users and is still going strong. Delicious on the other hand has a questionable future as Yahoo announced this month that Delicious was on the list of sites that the company was considering shutting down and/or selling.
The Twitter business model is still evolving but it is safe to say that Twitter like many other Web 2.0 companies need a revenue model to succeed in the long term, otherwise they too may find themselves in the predicament that Delicious now finds itself in. There is no such thing as a free lunch and many free Web 2.0 services have come and gone over the past decade. Many are supported by advertising dollars and some like Ning have moved to a paid model in order to survive.
Yahoo purchased Delicious in 2005 and I have been using this social bookmarking service since its inception. The fate of Delicious is still unclear at this time but many users of the service have begun the move to a similar social bookmarking service called Diigo. I have provided a link in the show notes to an article that describes the process of moving your bookmarks from Delicious to Diigo if you are a Delicious user and find yourself in this current state of uncertainty.
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/38733/delicious-is-shutting-down.-heres-how-to-migrate-to-diigo-instead/
I love Delicious for its drop dead simplicity as well as the ability to subscribe to bookmark tags and share with others. I have already exported my bookmarks to my local computer and will be transferring them to Diigo in the coming days but I have not given up hope that Delicious may be reincarnated by another company that will buy Delicious and continue the service, hello Google are you listening?
Google is one of those companies that has flourished this past decade. Google began as a research project by Sergey Brin and Larry Page in 1996 while PhD students at Stanford University. While no one can doubt the success Google has enjoyed as the search engine of choice that most of the world uses the company has not been content to rest on its laurels. Here are just a few of the additions Google has made over the past decade.
Blogger – 2003
Gmail - 2004
Google Earth -2005
Google Docs - 2006
YouTube – 2006
Android Open Handset Alliance - 2007
Google Chrome Browser - 2008
Google Chrome OS – 2009
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html
Google CR-48 Notebook - 2010
http://www.google.com/chromeos/pilot-program-cr48.html
Not a bad decade of innovation for Google and they are poised to go head to head with Apple and the iDevices portfolio of products and services in the coming decade.
Speaking of Apple this decade has witnessed a revitalization of Apples product line and services and Apple has also racked up an impressive portfolio of innovations. Apple introduced the first generation of the iPod and OS X in 2001, created the iTunes service in 2003, introduced the iPhone in 2007, created the App Store in 2008, and introduced the iPad this year in 2010. Apple has relied upon a closed system approach that has proven very successful and has set the stage for the coming decade to witness many battles between the open model of Google versus the proprietary model of Apple.
Don’t forget there is another horse in this race to the future, Microsoft. Before you get to feeling too sorry for Microsoft remember that the older desktop/laptop model is still doing fine. Even with the recent recession the computer industry is set to sell one million PC’s each and every DAY this year and Microsoft still has a world-wide market share of over 90 percent.
http://www.zdnet.co.uk/blogs/jacks-blog-10017212/while-pc-shipments-will-grow-to-a-million-per-day-netbooks-are-in-decline-10018477/
Microsoft’s search engine Bing is also growing and while late to market Bing has a US market share of nearly 12 percent.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20025890-93.html
Microsoft also has a strong and burgeoning software as a service model that fits in nicely with cloud computing. This year Microsoft has bolstered their Office Web Apps product that provides a more attractive interface than their Google Apps competitor and has partnered with FaceBook and created the docs.com service with access to more than 500 million FaceBook users. Microsoft is also innovating with its new Windows Phone 7 mobile operating system and is taking a very different approach than Apples iPhone and Googles Android phones.
There is also a dark horse in this race that I think we educators need to take a closer look at for the upcoming decade, open source. Open source alternatives have the potential to save schools and universities millions of dollars. Google is basing a lot of their innovations on open source products like Android that is based upon an open source Linux kernel. Apple’s OSX is even based upon BSD Unix which is an open source operating system that Apple adapted for their own needs. If Google and Apple can adapt open source software for corporate use I think we educators can adapt many open source resources to benefit our needs at little to no cost. The coming decade will provide educators with just such an opportunity as many of the pieces are now in place to become more independent including open source software, broadband delivery networks, ebooks, audio and video podcasts, and creative commons resources and content that are constantly being developed for the common good.
As we head into this next decade ask yourself, what am I doing to contribute to society to make this world a better place? Never before have so many people had the opportunity to create and share their passions with the world. This model is very different from corporate America but the tools and infrastructure now exist for one person to change the world. The economies of scale are eliminating many business models and we are ending up with larger and larger companies as industries consolidate. But this consolidation has also opened opportunities for individuals and small groups to contribute to society in ways that were previously very difficult to scale. We are living in a time when bits and bytes are becoming the currency of consumption and broadband access will increasingly become more important to the quality of services offered. What is offered and consumed is up to us.
The past decade has been a march to the cloud and has culminated with the CR-48 notebook that Google announced earlier this month as part of their vision for the future. The CR-48 notebook uses the new Google Chrome operating system which basically is a streamlined browser where you do all of your work on a low-cost laptop. Obviously you must be connected to the Internet to use the CR-48 notebook since you are using the browser to access your work. All your programs and files are accessed and stored in the cloud. If you have an always-on and reliable Internet access this model has a lot of promise, however at this moment connectivity is still the weak link for this model as coverage areas are still spotty and connectivity costs remain too high for widespread adoption bhy the masses… but it is a step in the right direction.
Google CR-48 Pilot Program
http://www.google.com/chromeos/pilot-program-cr48.html
The current PC model is getting long in the tooth and the constant updates and patches require a lot of overhead and maintenance. This is true for both PCs and Macs as new updates occur on a weekly basis on both platforms. If you have iTunes loaded on your computer you know what I mean. As we move to having multiple devices per person such as a desktop PC, a laptop, a slate device, and a mobile phone managing and securing multiple devices will become even more onerous. That is why I think the CR-48 is a step in the right direction but it will also need to have a more robust offline capability for those times where Internet access is either slow or non-existent. But, as soon as you add the offline ability you are going back to the PC model and adding complexity to the operating system so there will be some growing pains as the CR-48 project evolves.
The computer industry has witnessed several paradigm changes as innovations have offered new possibilities. Computers began as mainframes in the 1940’s and 50’s requiring huge rooms to operate, next came mini-computers in the 1960’s, Personal Computers in the 1970’s, Servers and Local Area Networks in the 1980’s, the Internet in the 1990’s, and Web 2.0 in the 2000’s. The 2010’s are poised for the continuing the move to cloud computing as miniaturization continues. Increased processing power in smaller packages and broadband connectivity now make it possible for mobile devices to become full-fledged computers in their own right.
This all is not without risks as putting all your eggs in one basket has never been a good idea in computing. One reason the PC took off was that it gave users the freedom and independence to be off the mainframe computer, when the mainframe went down so too did all the work and productivity. We now appear to be heading back to a more mainframe type environment in the cloud. There will be problems and outages in the future so we need to prepare ourselves in the event of such outages. The Cardinal Rule of computing is to always have a backup of your data and in the brave new world of cloud computing you will also need to be prepared if something happens in the cloud, just as you are today if something happens to your PC. Having a Plan B is always required when it comes to technology. It remains to be seen if the wireless broadband infrastructure can become ubiquitous, reliable, secure, and affordable enough for ALL people to move to the cloud. The next decade is going to be interesting.
Technology Pick of the Week
My Technology Pick of the Week this week is a new service from Google called Google ebooks. The competition for digital resources is fierce as Google is now taking on Amazon, Apple, Barnes and Noble, and other brick and mortar bookstores directly with their newly announced ebookstore. A link is available in the show notes to the Google ebookstore along with a short video segment introducing the new service.
Google ebookstore
http://books.google.com/ebooks
It’s time to set your reading free (video)
http://books.google.com/help/ebooks/overview.html
You may remember that Google was a key player in Project Gutenberg as Google digitized millions of pages of older books that were out of copyright. Now Google is making deals with publishers as well as having access to over 3 million titles thanks to resources like Project Gutenberg. Believe it or not ebooks were invented in 1971 by Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg.
Project Gutenberg
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page
About Project Gutenberg
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:About
Google is entering a crowded space and is facing major competition from some pretty big players that have a head start on Google.
Amazon is banking on their Kindle platform to deliver ebooks to consumers and is supporting a wide variety of devices including their own Kindle ebook reader device, Kindle for PC, Kindle for Mac, Kindle for iPhone/iPad, Kindle for Android, Kindle for Blackberry, Kindle for Windows Phone 7, and Amazon recently announced the beta version of Kindle for the Web that frees you from having to have specific devices to read your ebooks. Amazon announced this month that the Kindle device has become the #1 best seller of all time for the company. Amazon also quietly announced that you can now lend ebooks to your friends for a period of up to two weeks. The people you lend to do not have to have a Kindle and the owner of the ebook does not have access to the ebook while it is on loan. A link is in the shownotes for more information about lending Kindle ebooks.
Kindle ebook Lending
http://www.digitaltrends.com/gadgets/amazon-introduces-kindle-ebook-lending/
Not to be out done by Amazon Barnes and Noble announced this week that their ebook reader “the Nook” became their best selling item in the company’s 40 year history. The Nook already featured a way to lend books to your friends so the Kindle is playing catch up in this area.
http://www.informationweek.com/news/smb/ebusiness/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228900212&cid=RSSfeed_IWK_All#
Apple is banking on the iTunes App Store and the iBooks model as their deployment platform of choice. You can read ebooks on your iPod, iPhone, and iPad with ebook apps and purchase books directly from the Apple iBookstore.
Apple iBookstore
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ibooks/id364709193?mt=8
There are many issues as we make this transition to ebooks. In researching the notes for todays show I ran across an article from 2005 from Library Issues that provides an overview of the then Google Digitization project and some of the issues libraries are facing in moving to ebooks. As you probably know copyrights remain a big sticking point with making copyrighted works available in an electronic format.
Google's Digitization Project — What Difference Will it Make?
http://www.libraryissues.com/sub/LI250004.asp
The current state of ebooks is a microcosm of what the next decade will have in store for us. Goliath companies like Google, Apple, Amazon, and others are in a gold rush for obtaining access and rights to content so that it may be digitized and monetized in the spirit of capitalism. The content, the devices, and the bits and bytes required for delivery all have monetary value and companies will make money in each of these three major areas.
Other smaller David-like organizations like Project Gutenberg rely upon volunteers and have in their mission to provide content to the masses in as free and low-cost manner as possible. The truth will most likely fall somewhere in the middle as these things sort themselves out over the coming decade. The good news for educators is that we have the opportunity to build and share this content and distribute it in the methods of our choosing and this is a good thing.
That wraps it up for episode 115 of TechTalk4Teachers. Show notes for this episode and archived episodes are available on the web at the EIU Instructional Technology Center website at eiu.edu/itc To leave a comment or suggestion, please send an email to techtalk@eiu.edu or leave a comment on the Tech Talk for Teachers blog. Until next time, this is Tom Grissom. Have a Happy New Year and most of all keep on learning…
Right Click Here to Download MP3
(16 minutes 22 seconds)
Looking back over the past ten years has proven to be just as exciting as the decade of the 1990’s when the public Internet was born. The 1990’s witnessed a blistering pace of innovation as the .com boom got into full swing. The 2000’s have enjoyed an equal dose of innovation and I am sure we will see similar growth and innovations over the coming decade.
Plain and simple, the number one skill a person needs to have in this day and age is the ability to adapt to change because change is guaranteed to happen. In order to adapt we need to know how to learn, un-learn and re-learn while holding onto our values and what we deem important so we educators still have a lot of work ahead of us.
The past ten years have witnessed a plethora of next generation Internet services known as Web 2.0 and many have become household names. Maybe you can recognize a few them from this list; Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Skype, YouTube, Flickr, Wikipedia, WordPress, and Delicious to name just a few. How many did you recognize? Every single one of these services did not exist at the beginning of this past decade. Today many of us take for granted iPods, iTunes, mobile phones with apps and Internet access, podcasts like this one, and many of the free Web 2.0 services that did not exist a decade ago.
Like many tech savvy educators I use Twitter and Delicious nearly every day as I find them very valuable to have as part of my professional toolkit and best of all both services are free. Twitter is growing and now has nearly 200 million users and is still going strong. Delicious on the other hand has a questionable future as Yahoo announced this month that Delicious was on the list of sites that the company was considering shutting down and/or selling.
The Twitter business model is still evolving but it is safe to say that Twitter like many other Web 2.0 companies need a revenue model to succeed in the long term, otherwise they too may find themselves in the predicament that Delicious now finds itself in. There is no such thing as a free lunch and many free Web 2.0 services have come and gone over the past decade. Many are supported by advertising dollars and some like Ning have moved to a paid model in order to survive.
Yahoo purchased Delicious in 2005 and I have been using this social bookmarking service since its inception. The fate of Delicious is still unclear at this time but many users of the service have begun the move to a similar social bookmarking service called Diigo. I have provided a link in the show notes to an article that describes the process of moving your bookmarks from Delicious to Diigo if you are a Delicious user and find yourself in this current state of uncertainty.
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/38733/delicious-is-shutting-down.-heres-how-to-migrate-to-diigo-instead/
I love Delicious for its drop dead simplicity as well as the ability to subscribe to bookmark tags and share with others. I have already exported my bookmarks to my local computer and will be transferring them to Diigo in the coming days but I have not given up hope that Delicious may be reincarnated by another company that will buy Delicious and continue the service, hello Google are you listening?
Google is one of those companies that has flourished this past decade. Google began as a research project by Sergey Brin and Larry Page in 1996 while PhD students at Stanford University. While no one can doubt the success Google has enjoyed as the search engine of choice that most of the world uses the company has not been content to rest on its laurels. Here are just a few of the additions Google has made over the past decade.
Blogger – 2003
Gmail - 2004
Google Earth -2005
Google Docs - 2006
YouTube – 2006
Android Open Handset Alliance - 2007
Google Chrome Browser - 2008
Google Chrome OS – 2009
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html
Google CR-48 Notebook - 2010
http://www.google.com/chromeos/pilot-program-cr48.html
Not a bad decade of innovation for Google and they are poised to go head to head with Apple and the iDevices portfolio of products and services in the coming decade.
Speaking of Apple this decade has witnessed a revitalization of Apples product line and services and Apple has also racked up an impressive portfolio of innovations. Apple introduced the first generation of the iPod and OS X in 2001, created the iTunes service in 2003, introduced the iPhone in 2007, created the App Store in 2008, and introduced the iPad this year in 2010. Apple has relied upon a closed system approach that has proven very successful and has set the stage for the coming decade to witness many battles between the open model of Google versus the proprietary model of Apple.
Don’t forget there is another horse in this race to the future, Microsoft. Before you get to feeling too sorry for Microsoft remember that the older desktop/laptop model is still doing fine. Even with the recent recession the computer industry is set to sell one million PC’s each and every DAY this year and Microsoft still has a world-wide market share of over 90 percent.
http://www.zdnet.co.uk/blogs/jacks-blog-10017212/while-pc-shipments-will-grow-to-a-million-per-day-netbooks-are-in-decline-10018477/
Microsoft’s search engine Bing is also growing and while late to market Bing has a US market share of nearly 12 percent.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20025890-93.html
Microsoft also has a strong and burgeoning software as a service model that fits in nicely with cloud computing. This year Microsoft has bolstered their Office Web Apps product that provides a more attractive interface than their Google Apps competitor and has partnered with FaceBook and created the docs.com service with access to more than 500 million FaceBook users. Microsoft is also innovating with its new Windows Phone 7 mobile operating system and is taking a very different approach than Apples iPhone and Googles Android phones.
There is also a dark horse in this race that I think we educators need to take a closer look at for the upcoming decade, open source. Open source alternatives have the potential to save schools and universities millions of dollars. Google is basing a lot of their innovations on open source products like Android that is based upon an open source Linux kernel. Apple’s OSX is even based upon BSD Unix which is an open source operating system that Apple adapted for their own needs. If Google and Apple can adapt open source software for corporate use I think we educators can adapt many open source resources to benefit our needs at little to no cost. The coming decade will provide educators with just such an opportunity as many of the pieces are now in place to become more independent including open source software, broadband delivery networks, ebooks, audio and video podcasts, and creative commons resources and content that are constantly being developed for the common good.
As we head into this next decade ask yourself, what am I doing to contribute to society to make this world a better place? Never before have so many people had the opportunity to create and share their passions with the world. This model is very different from corporate America but the tools and infrastructure now exist for one person to change the world. The economies of scale are eliminating many business models and we are ending up with larger and larger companies as industries consolidate. But this consolidation has also opened opportunities for individuals and small groups to contribute to society in ways that were previously very difficult to scale. We are living in a time when bits and bytes are becoming the currency of consumption and broadband access will increasingly become more important to the quality of services offered. What is offered and consumed is up to us.
The past decade has been a march to the cloud and has culminated with the CR-48 notebook that Google announced earlier this month as part of their vision for the future. The CR-48 notebook uses the new Google Chrome operating system which basically is a streamlined browser where you do all of your work on a low-cost laptop. Obviously you must be connected to the Internet to use the CR-48 notebook since you are using the browser to access your work. All your programs and files are accessed and stored in the cloud. If you have an always-on and reliable Internet access this model has a lot of promise, however at this moment connectivity is still the weak link for this model as coverage areas are still spotty and connectivity costs remain too high for widespread adoption bhy the masses… but it is a step in the right direction.
Google CR-48 Pilot Program
http://www.google.com/chromeos/pilot-program-cr48.html
The current PC model is getting long in the tooth and the constant updates and patches require a lot of overhead and maintenance. This is true for both PCs and Macs as new updates occur on a weekly basis on both platforms. If you have iTunes loaded on your computer you know what I mean. As we move to having multiple devices per person such as a desktop PC, a laptop, a slate device, and a mobile phone managing and securing multiple devices will become even more onerous. That is why I think the CR-48 is a step in the right direction but it will also need to have a more robust offline capability for those times where Internet access is either slow or non-existent. But, as soon as you add the offline ability you are going back to the PC model and adding complexity to the operating system so there will be some growing pains as the CR-48 project evolves.
The computer industry has witnessed several paradigm changes as innovations have offered new possibilities. Computers began as mainframes in the 1940’s and 50’s requiring huge rooms to operate, next came mini-computers in the 1960’s, Personal Computers in the 1970’s, Servers and Local Area Networks in the 1980’s, the Internet in the 1990’s, and Web 2.0 in the 2000’s. The 2010’s are poised for the continuing the move to cloud computing as miniaturization continues. Increased processing power in smaller packages and broadband connectivity now make it possible for mobile devices to become full-fledged computers in their own right.
This all is not without risks as putting all your eggs in one basket has never been a good idea in computing. One reason the PC took off was that it gave users the freedom and independence to be off the mainframe computer, when the mainframe went down so too did all the work and productivity. We now appear to be heading back to a more mainframe type environment in the cloud. There will be problems and outages in the future so we need to prepare ourselves in the event of such outages. The Cardinal Rule of computing is to always have a backup of your data and in the brave new world of cloud computing you will also need to be prepared if something happens in the cloud, just as you are today if something happens to your PC. Having a Plan B is always required when it comes to technology. It remains to be seen if the wireless broadband infrastructure can become ubiquitous, reliable, secure, and affordable enough for ALL people to move to the cloud. The next decade is going to be interesting.
Technology Pick of the Week
My Technology Pick of the Week this week is a new service from Google called Google ebooks. The competition for digital resources is fierce as Google is now taking on Amazon, Apple, Barnes and Noble, and other brick and mortar bookstores directly with their newly announced ebookstore. A link is available in the show notes to the Google ebookstore along with a short video segment introducing the new service.
Google ebookstore
http://books.google.com/ebooks
It’s time to set your reading free (video)
http://books.google.com/help/ebooks/overview.html
You may remember that Google was a key player in Project Gutenberg as Google digitized millions of pages of older books that were out of copyright. Now Google is making deals with publishers as well as having access to over 3 million titles thanks to resources like Project Gutenberg. Believe it or not ebooks were invented in 1971 by Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg.
Project Gutenberg
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page
About Project Gutenberg
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:About
Google is entering a crowded space and is facing major competition from some pretty big players that have a head start on Google.
Amazon is banking on their Kindle platform to deliver ebooks to consumers and is supporting a wide variety of devices including their own Kindle ebook reader device, Kindle for PC, Kindle for Mac, Kindle for iPhone/iPad, Kindle for Android, Kindle for Blackberry, Kindle for Windows Phone 7, and Amazon recently announced the beta version of Kindle for the Web that frees you from having to have specific devices to read your ebooks. Amazon announced this month that the Kindle device has become the #1 best seller of all time for the company. Amazon also quietly announced that you can now lend ebooks to your friends for a period of up to two weeks. The people you lend to do not have to have a Kindle and the owner of the ebook does not have access to the ebook while it is on loan. A link is in the shownotes for more information about lending Kindle ebooks.
Kindle ebook Lending
http://www.digitaltrends.com/gadgets/amazon-introduces-kindle-ebook-lending/
Not to be out done by Amazon Barnes and Noble announced this week that their ebook reader “the Nook” became their best selling item in the company’s 40 year history. The Nook already featured a way to lend books to your friends so the Kindle is playing catch up in this area.
http://www.informationweek.com/news/smb/ebusiness/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228900212&cid=RSSfeed_IWK_All#
Apple is banking on the iTunes App Store and the iBooks model as their deployment platform of choice. You can read ebooks on your iPod, iPhone, and iPad with ebook apps and purchase books directly from the Apple iBookstore.
Apple iBookstore
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ibooks/id364709193?mt=8
There are many issues as we make this transition to ebooks. In researching the notes for todays show I ran across an article from 2005 from Library Issues that provides an overview of the then Google Digitization project and some of the issues libraries are facing in moving to ebooks. As you probably know copyrights remain a big sticking point with making copyrighted works available in an electronic format.
Google's Digitization Project — What Difference Will it Make?
http://www.libraryissues.com/sub/LI250004.asp
The current state of ebooks is a microcosm of what the next decade will have in store for us. Goliath companies like Google, Apple, Amazon, and others are in a gold rush for obtaining access and rights to content so that it may be digitized and monetized in the spirit of capitalism. The content, the devices, and the bits and bytes required for delivery all have monetary value and companies will make money in each of these three major areas.
Other smaller David-like organizations like Project Gutenberg rely upon volunteers and have in their mission to provide content to the masses in as free and low-cost manner as possible. The truth will most likely fall somewhere in the middle as these things sort themselves out over the coming decade. The good news for educators is that we have the opportunity to build and share this content and distribute it in the methods of our choosing and this is a good thing.
That wraps it up for episode 115 of TechTalk4Teachers. Show notes for this episode and archived episodes are available on the web at the EIU Instructional Technology Center website at eiu.edu/itc To leave a comment or suggestion, please send an email to techtalk@eiu.edu or leave a comment on the Tech Talk for Teachers blog. Until next time, this is Tom Grissom. Have a Happy New Year and most of all keep on learning…
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Episode 114 - Outside the Education Bubble
It’s Tuesday, November 30th, 2010 and welcome to episode 114 of TechTalk4Teachers, I’m Tom Grissom. We are back from a week long Thanksgiving break where I was lucky enough to take a technology holiday and managed to have a solid week of no online activities for the first time since I can remember. I hope those of you in the U.S. also had an enjoyable Thanksgiving break and found some time to reflect on all the blessings we have as Americans. One of those blessings for me is a great public education.
Right Click Here to Download MP3
(10 minutes 11 seconds)
It has been a very busy November here in our college as we are ¾ of the way through the fall semester. We also had our NCATE Accreditation site visit this month that involved all teacher education faculty, staff, and students and we are now awaiting the official report. Accreditation is very important for teacher education programs as it provides mechanisms for measuring and assuring quality programs that benefit our students. As the technology person in our college I was extremely involved in the preparation for the site visit including webmaster duties and committee work over multiple years. After such a busy month I was ready for a bit of a break.
I had some home remodeling work to do last week so I was occupied the entire time with a lot of hard physical work. I made it a point NOT to go online but rather take a break from all the high-tech I experience daily. I come back to work refreshed and with a new perspective along with some aching muscles that I forgot that I had until they reminded me. Those of us in the education field, especially those of us involved with educational technologies, have a tendency to see things through the filter of our own work and often live in the moment of now. We can’t wait for the next greatest thing to come along and tell the world about and how this changes everything. Too often we live in the bubble of our career choice and forget that others may not share our excitement for the next greatest thing that comes along.
Sometimes other technologies catch my eye that are not directly related to education but their underpinnings have great educational potential if harvested and directed in a focused and purposeful manner. Computer gaming is one of those areas that often leads in technological innovation but may take a while to find appropriate uses in the classroom.
Before I left for Thanksgiving break I came across this stat about the xBox 360 game, Call of Duty - Black Ops that sold $360 million dollars in the first 24 hours of going on sale. This is quite an impressive feat for a computer game title. Even more impressive is that it kept up the momentum and reached had $650 million in sales by the end of the first week. I would say this is an unqualified success and I would wager that few educators paid any attention to this news at all as it is typically outside their bubble of concern. Today the computer gaming industry rivals the movie industry and each release is a high-stakes gamble to see if new titles will find success in the market.
http://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/call-of-duty-black-ops-sets-sales-record-of-360-million/
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Call-of-Duty-Black-Ops-Sets-650-Million-Dollar-Sales-Record-in-Five-Days-167451.shtml
So, what does this little side trip have to do with TechTalk4Teachers? First, computer gaming has always had a role in education and often pushes the technological envelope for action and engagement. Games provide for immediate and formative feedback that allows the player to continually improve their skill levels as they reach new levels of the game. Games, when well constructed, follow sound instructional design principles. While Call of Duty Black Ops is rated as a mature game and not appropriate for children the creators have found a balance of storyline, amazing graphics, and a multiplayer mode that immerses the player in the action.
What got me thinking about this over break was the movie, “Waiting for Superman” that caused quite a stir in educational circles back in September and October. On Twitter the tweets were flying around the Waiting for Superman movie and what it meant for public education.
Waiting for Superman website
http://www.waitingforsuperman.com/
Waiting for Superman was produced by award winning documentary film maker Davis Guggenheim who also directed An Inconvenient Truth, the documentary about Al Gore’s message on global warming. The movie Waiting for Superman focuses on the failing public education system and the charter school movement.
Back in late September NBC hosted a “special” week devoted to education and how public schools are failing. The NBC education week showcased the movie Waiting for Superman for the entire week using it as a center piece for town hall style meetings regarding the woes of current state of public education in the U.S. It was unfortunate that the scope of the conversation was focused around the movie and obviously served as free PR at the expense of many other voices in public education that have a great story to tell. Public education is an easy amorphous target that gets beat up regularly in the media. Public education is also a shining light that has the noble goal of educating ALL children regardless of race, creed, disability, or socioeconomic status.
So, if you are an educator did you hear about the Waiting for Superman movie? Did you watch it? Maybe I am living inside the education bubble but I know many colleagues have. Now, next question, did you hear about the new Call of Duty – Black Ops game released this month? Chances are you did not. I did not see any TV advertisements or any week-long series on major TV networks promoting the game either.
So given the obvious importance of public education for the nation you would think that a documentary movie about public education that has consequences for generations to come and has been hyped by all the major television networks, Oprah, and magazine coverage in Time and the New Yorker; you would surely think the movie would garner enough interest to be a major financial success at the theatres, right?
It depends in which bubble you are living in and your definition of success. As far as dollar sales goes it is no contest, Call of Duty wins by a landslide. Want to guess how many millions in sales Waiting for Superman has sold to date? Remember, Call of Duty – Black Ops raked in $650 million in sales the first week. So what is your guess for total box office sales for Waiting for Superman? According to boxofficemojo.com Waiting for Superman has sold 6.2 million dollars in tickets to date in a little over 2 months. It just amazes me that there is that much difference after a massive PR campaign to get the word out about the movie.
http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=daily&id=waitingforsuperman.htm
So we have a First Person Shooter (FPS) game rated for mature audiences that has a 100 fold advantage in sales over a documentary movie on public education that may have important implications for public education policy. That in a nutshell is what educators are up against in trying to have meaningful dialogue about the state of public education, we are often drowned out by what is occurring in other “bubbles”.
I felt that there needed to be a little more balance to NBC’s education week coverage but unfortunately discussing the important and deeper implications of improving public education apparently does not make for good TV. Public education is however critical to the success of our nation. I have included a link in the show notes to an article that Diane Ravitch recently published entitled The Myth of Charter Schools that I believe deserves equal promotion to the documentary movie Waiting for Superman. Her conclusion, as is mine, is that no child should have to wait and win a lottery for a top-quality educational experience. Superman should not sell lottery tickets.
The Myth of Charter Schools by Diane Ravitch
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/myth-charter-schools/?pagination=false
Technology Pick of the Week
My Technology Pick of the Week this week also has to do with computer gaming and is the new xBox360 Kinect Gaming system that features a sensor that responds to your presence in the room. You essentially become the controller. This technology is in its infancy but already people are hacking the Kinect system and coming up with some interesting applications that I am sure Microsoft did not envision.
I have provided a link in the show notes to an article from PCMag that has embedded videos showing some of the Kinect hacks from YouTube.
Video: Five Coolest Kinect Hacks
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2373505,00.asp
I know this is an audio podcast but I encourage you to visit the show notes and go to the provided links about Kinect. The first two videos listed are my favorites. In the first video is labeled Super Mario Kinect where the Kinect is hacked to put you in a Mario game where your actions are replicated on the screen. You can run, jump, lean, and shuffle your way up the various levels of the game as your Mario character mimics your moves. If this technology becomes perfected it may just be the cure for the video game culture of being a couch potato and not exercising because this game can wear you out in a hurry.
The second video labeled Star Wars Kinect shows how the creator of the hack moves a broom handle around the room and it magically appears as a Star Wars light saber on the screen. Imagine the gaming possibilities that you could do with this hack. The Kinect interface is bridging the virtual and real world in a way that we have not seen to date. If you have some time take a look at the YouTube videos and I think you will be impressed with the possibilities.
Speaking of YouTube I have one more shameless plug to share with you as my Technology Pick of the Week. I recently posted a series of four videos on the ITC YouTube Channel about the Basics of Using the Smart Notebook Version 10.6 with a Smart Board. You can visit the ITC YouTube Channel at youtube.com/eiuitc I have also provided a links to the Smart Board how-to videos on the ITC YouTube Channel in the show notes, if you use a Smart Board be sure to check them out.
Right Click Here to Download MP3
(10 minutes 11 seconds)
It has been a very busy November here in our college as we are ¾ of the way through the fall semester. We also had our NCATE Accreditation site visit this month that involved all teacher education faculty, staff, and students and we are now awaiting the official report. Accreditation is very important for teacher education programs as it provides mechanisms for measuring and assuring quality programs that benefit our students. As the technology person in our college I was extremely involved in the preparation for the site visit including webmaster duties and committee work over multiple years. After such a busy month I was ready for a bit of a break.
I had some home remodeling work to do last week so I was occupied the entire time with a lot of hard physical work. I made it a point NOT to go online but rather take a break from all the high-tech I experience daily. I come back to work refreshed and with a new perspective along with some aching muscles that I forgot that I had until they reminded me. Those of us in the education field, especially those of us involved with educational technologies, have a tendency to see things through the filter of our own work and often live in the moment of now. We can’t wait for the next greatest thing to come along and tell the world about and how this changes everything. Too often we live in the bubble of our career choice and forget that others may not share our excitement for the next greatest thing that comes along.
Sometimes other technologies catch my eye that are not directly related to education but their underpinnings have great educational potential if harvested and directed in a focused and purposeful manner. Computer gaming is one of those areas that often leads in technological innovation but may take a while to find appropriate uses in the classroom.
Before I left for Thanksgiving break I came across this stat about the xBox 360 game, Call of Duty - Black Ops that sold $360 million dollars in the first 24 hours of going on sale. This is quite an impressive feat for a computer game title. Even more impressive is that it kept up the momentum and reached had $650 million in sales by the end of the first week. I would say this is an unqualified success and I would wager that few educators paid any attention to this news at all as it is typically outside their bubble of concern. Today the computer gaming industry rivals the movie industry and each release is a high-stakes gamble to see if new titles will find success in the market.
http://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/call-of-duty-black-ops-sets-sales-record-of-360-million/
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Call-of-Duty-Black-Ops-Sets-650-Million-Dollar-Sales-Record-in-Five-Days-167451.shtml
So, what does this little side trip have to do with TechTalk4Teachers? First, computer gaming has always had a role in education and often pushes the technological envelope for action and engagement. Games provide for immediate and formative feedback that allows the player to continually improve their skill levels as they reach new levels of the game. Games, when well constructed, follow sound instructional design principles. While Call of Duty Black Ops is rated as a mature game and not appropriate for children the creators have found a balance of storyline, amazing graphics, and a multiplayer mode that immerses the player in the action.
What got me thinking about this over break was the movie, “Waiting for Superman” that caused quite a stir in educational circles back in September and October. On Twitter the tweets were flying around the Waiting for Superman movie and what it meant for public education.
Waiting for Superman website
http://www.waitingforsuperman.com/
Waiting for Superman was produced by award winning documentary film maker Davis Guggenheim who also directed An Inconvenient Truth, the documentary about Al Gore’s message on global warming. The movie Waiting for Superman focuses on the failing public education system and the charter school movement.
Back in late September NBC hosted a “special” week devoted to education and how public schools are failing. The NBC education week showcased the movie Waiting for Superman for the entire week using it as a center piece for town hall style meetings regarding the woes of current state of public education in the U.S. It was unfortunate that the scope of the conversation was focused around the movie and obviously served as free PR at the expense of many other voices in public education that have a great story to tell. Public education is an easy amorphous target that gets beat up regularly in the media. Public education is also a shining light that has the noble goal of educating ALL children regardless of race, creed, disability, or socioeconomic status.
So, if you are an educator did you hear about the Waiting for Superman movie? Did you watch it? Maybe I am living inside the education bubble but I know many colleagues have. Now, next question, did you hear about the new Call of Duty – Black Ops game released this month? Chances are you did not. I did not see any TV advertisements or any week-long series on major TV networks promoting the game either.
So given the obvious importance of public education for the nation you would think that a documentary movie about public education that has consequences for generations to come and has been hyped by all the major television networks, Oprah, and magazine coverage in Time and the New Yorker; you would surely think the movie would garner enough interest to be a major financial success at the theatres, right?
It depends in which bubble you are living in and your definition of success. As far as dollar sales goes it is no contest, Call of Duty wins by a landslide. Want to guess how many millions in sales Waiting for Superman has sold to date? Remember, Call of Duty – Black Ops raked in $650 million in sales the first week. So what is your guess for total box office sales for Waiting for Superman? According to boxofficemojo.com Waiting for Superman has sold 6.2 million dollars in tickets to date in a little over 2 months. It just amazes me that there is that much difference after a massive PR campaign to get the word out about the movie.
http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=daily&id=waitingforsuperman.htm
So we have a First Person Shooter (FPS) game rated for mature audiences that has a 100 fold advantage in sales over a documentary movie on public education that may have important implications for public education policy. That in a nutshell is what educators are up against in trying to have meaningful dialogue about the state of public education, we are often drowned out by what is occurring in other “bubbles”.
I felt that there needed to be a little more balance to NBC’s education week coverage but unfortunately discussing the important and deeper implications of improving public education apparently does not make for good TV. Public education is however critical to the success of our nation. I have included a link in the show notes to an article that Diane Ravitch recently published entitled The Myth of Charter Schools that I believe deserves equal promotion to the documentary movie Waiting for Superman. Her conclusion, as is mine, is that no child should have to wait and win a lottery for a top-quality educational experience. Superman should not sell lottery tickets.
The Myth of Charter Schools by Diane Ravitch
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/myth-charter-schools/?pagination=false
Technology Pick of the Week
My Technology Pick of the Week this week also has to do with computer gaming and is the new xBox360 Kinect Gaming system that features a sensor that responds to your presence in the room. You essentially become the controller. This technology is in its infancy but already people are hacking the Kinect system and coming up with some interesting applications that I am sure Microsoft did not envision.
I have provided a link in the show notes to an article from PCMag that has embedded videos showing some of the Kinect hacks from YouTube.
Video: Five Coolest Kinect Hacks
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2373505,00.asp
I know this is an audio podcast but I encourage you to visit the show notes and go to the provided links about Kinect. The first two videos listed are my favorites. In the first video is labeled Super Mario Kinect where the Kinect is hacked to put you in a Mario game where your actions are replicated on the screen. You can run, jump, lean, and shuffle your way up the various levels of the game as your Mario character mimics your moves. If this technology becomes perfected it may just be the cure for the video game culture of being a couch potato and not exercising because this game can wear you out in a hurry.
The second video labeled Star Wars Kinect shows how the creator of the hack moves a broom handle around the room and it magically appears as a Star Wars light saber on the screen. Imagine the gaming possibilities that you could do with this hack. The Kinect interface is bridging the virtual and real world in a way that we have not seen to date. If you have some time take a look at the YouTube videos and I think you will be impressed with the possibilities.
Speaking of YouTube I have one more shameless plug to share with you as my Technology Pick of the Week. I recently posted a series of four videos on the ITC YouTube Channel about the Basics of Using the Smart Notebook Version 10.6 with a Smart Board. You can visit the ITC YouTube Channel at youtube.com/eiuitc I have also provided a links to the Smart Board how-to videos on the ITC YouTube Channel in the show notes, if you use a Smart Board be sure to check them out.
ITC Youtube Channel
http://www.youtube.com/eiuitc
That wraps it up for episode 114 of TechTalk4Teachers. Show notes for this episode and archived episodes are available on the web at the EIU Instructional Technology Center website at eiu.edu/itc To leave a comment or suggestion, please send an email to techtalk@eiu.edu or leave a comment on the Tech Talk for Teachers blog. Until next time, this is Tom Grissom. Keep on learning…
http://www.youtube.com/eiuitc
That wraps it up for episode 114 of TechTalk4Teachers. Show notes for this episode and archived episodes are available on the web at the EIU Instructional Technology Center website at eiu.edu/itc To leave a comment or suggestion, please send an email to techtalk@eiu.edu or leave a comment on the Tech Talk for Teachers blog. Until next time, this is Tom Grissom. Keep on learning…
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Episode 113 - Gone Phishing
It’s Thursday October 28th, 2010 and welcome to episode 113 of TechTalk4Teachers, I’m Tom Grissom and I’m Adam Dodge. With me today in the studio is Adam Dodge who is here to talk more about Information Technology security. Back in August we invited Adam to talk about the importance of userids and strong passwords. Since October is Cyber Security Awareness month I thought we would invite Adam back for more information about protecting all of the IT resources we all come to rely upon daily.
Right Click Here to Download MP3
(25 minutes 11 seconds)
Links mentioned in this episode:
Antiphishing Working Group - http://www.antiphishing.org
OnGuardOnline - www.onguardonline.gov
National Cyber Security Alliance - www.staysafeonline.org
Facebook Security - www.facebook.com/securityTechnology Pick of the Week
For my Technology Pick of the Week this week I am recommending that you take a look at a new feature in Google Docs, in particular Google spreadsheets that is called Chart Editor that was announced earlier this week. A link is a available in the show notes to the Google Docs blog that features a video of what the new Chart Editor can do. Please give it a watch to see all the new features this tool offers.
Most exciting to the visual learner is a feature called motion chart that allows you to visualize data over time by creating a mini-movie of the chart. When I first watched the video overview it reminded me a lot of another presentation I watched way back in 2006 from the TED Talks series by Hans Rosling entitled “Hans Rosling shows you the best stats you’ve ever seen”. I also highly recommend you watch this TED video and even though it is approaching 4 years old, the data lovers of us will smile at his presentation. It is one thing to see data in the common boring tabular data style of columns and rows and another thing to see the data come alive and move overtime. This allows you to see trends you never knew were there, a pretty powerful learning tool. The new chart editor is not as sophisticated as the Hans Rosling presentation but it is the first time I have seen the chart motion feature in a freely available Web 2.0 tool like Google Docs. A link is provided in the show notes to the Hans Rosling video.
TED Video: Hans Rosling shows you the best stats you’ve ever seen
http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html
That wraps it up for episode 113 of Tech Talk for Teachers. I want to thank Adam Dodge of our ITS department here at EIU for taking the time to talk to us about the importance of cybersecurity along with some other tips on how to be more secure and safe online. Show notes for this episode and archived episodes are available on the web at the EIU Instructional Technology Center website at www.eiu.edu/itc To leave a comment or suggestion, please send an email to techtalk@eiu.edu or leave a comment on the Tech Talk for Teachers blog. Until next time, change those passwords, this is Tom Grissom. Keep on learning…
Tom Grissom, Ph.D.
Right Click Here to Download MP3
(25 minutes 11 seconds)
Links mentioned in this episode:
Antiphishing Working Group - http://www.antiphishing.org
OnGuardOnline - www.onguardonline.gov
National Cyber Security Alliance - www.staysafeonline.org
Facebook Security - www.facebook.com/securityTechnology Pick of the Week
For my Technology Pick of the Week this week I am recommending that you take a look at a new feature in Google Docs, in particular Google spreadsheets that is called Chart Editor that was announced earlier this week. A link is a available in the show notes to the Google Docs blog that features a video of what the new Chart Editor can do. Please give it a watch to see all the new features this tool offers.
Most exciting to the visual learner is a feature called motion chart that allows you to visualize data over time by creating a mini-movie of the chart. When I first watched the video overview it reminded me a lot of another presentation I watched way back in 2006 from the TED Talks series by Hans Rosling entitled “Hans Rosling shows you the best stats you’ve ever seen”. I also highly recommend you watch this TED video and even though it is approaching 4 years old, the data lovers of us will smile at his presentation. It is one thing to see data in the common boring tabular data style of columns and rows and another thing to see the data come alive and move overtime. This allows you to see trends you never knew were there, a pretty powerful learning tool. The new chart editor is not as sophisticated as the Hans Rosling presentation but it is the first time I have seen the chart motion feature in a freely available Web 2.0 tool like Google Docs. A link is provided in the show notes to the Hans Rosling video.
TED Video: Hans Rosling shows you the best stats you’ve ever seen
http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html
That wraps it up for episode 113 of Tech Talk for Teachers. I want to thank Adam Dodge of our ITS department here at EIU for taking the time to talk to us about the importance of cybersecurity along with some other tips on how to be more secure and safe online. Show notes for this episode and archived episodes are available on the web at the EIU Instructional Technology Center website at www.eiu.edu/itc To leave a comment or suggestion, please send an email to techtalk@eiu.edu or leave a comment on the Tech Talk for Teachers blog. Until next time, change those passwords, this is Tom Grissom. Keep on learning…
Tom Grissom, Ph.D.
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