Entries Tagged 'Web 2.0' ↓

I’m in my second month of using an iPhone.  I had reservations about getting an iPhone due to cost (both of the phone and the data plan) but I have no regrets.

To get started with my iPhone I’ve added several productivity, social networking, and media apps.  The first thing I really needed was a good task management app.  I chose Toodledo because it was the best full featured app that works with Google calendar.  I had been using Remember the Milk with Google calendar but I found that Toodledo has more features.

I also added Evernote.  I’m still working on how I will use this app to corral information from many different sources.  I like the interface and the fact that there are web and client versions of the software all which sync.  I only wish that the software had a way to capture a drawn note  such as YouNote.  I’m still searching for an app that will allow my to draw on the screen.

I added the Google app but I’ve been disappointed that there is no method for entering appointments on the calendar there.  I ended up synchronizing the iPhone calendar app with my Google calendar.  I have also installed the Google Earth app.

For social networking I added the Facebook app and the Twitterific app.  I hear the Tweetie app is also very good.

Other useful apps I’ve installed are Pandora, Urbanspoon, NYTimes, and Stanza.  I’m still searching for an app to extend the camera and photo functionality.   I did find the Griffin Clarifi case and I’m considering purchasing it to improve clarity, especially for recognition with Evernote.

I was so pleased to hear NPR’s Morning Edition spot this morning with Miles Hoffman about how YouTube has become a valuable resource for old footage of classical greats performing such as Rubinstein, Heifetz, Piatigorsky, and Callas. I checked YouTube some time ago but didn’t find enough there to promote it to faculty. I see now that many new videos have been posted within the past year. Check out the one with Rubinstein, Heifetz, and Piatigorsky playing Mendelssohn with Rubinstein turning his own pages. Amazing!

I read an interesting article yesterday in the Chronicle’s Wired Campus Blog about using Twitter in the classroom.  Professor David Parry said that using Twitter helped the students feel more like a community and he said that “It was the single thing that changed the classroom dynamics more than anything I’ve ever done teaching”.

I can certainly see how Twitter could be used as a backchannel and have similar benefits to audience response systems.  But these technologies are mostly helpful for courses with large enrollments where connections and discussions are difficult to achieve - if not impossible.  For those teaching smaller courses, this kind of in-class interaction may be counterproductive, especially in upper level courses.  As an instructional technologist promoting new technologies to faculty at a small liberal arts college (with lots of senior faculty!), I consistently have the challenge of convincing faculty to  use any new technology.  Many already consider laptops in the classroom a distraction.  However, some faculty might be willing to subscribe to a student’s Twitter if they are already very connected to that student.  I never convinced many faculty to instant message but that’s because they didn’t want to seem available to students 24/7.  Since Twittering is not chat, it may be a more attractive communication tool.

I’m really interested in Twitter’s possibilties.  I think for the right professor and the right course, it could really enhance interaction and take the course to a new level.  It may also be attractive to faculty who are already connected to their students and communicating regularly.  Time to start Twittering myself for further evaluation!

When I decided to retool my website at work into something useful, I first thought I would use Blogger. I had used Blogger once before while teaching a class on music technology. But I decided that I wanted the blog to stand on its own and to be hosted on a server other than the web server at work in my personal directory. I knew it was time to break down and buy a my own domain name.

While domain shopping, I considered buying my name as a domain. I decided not to do that for reasons mentioned previously. I didn’t want the blog to be about me, so why would I choose that as a domain? After checking many variations of instructional, technology (two very long words), digital, learning, etc., I was happy to discover that digitalearning.org was available. At that point, I stopped shopping for the cheapest domain/host available and decided to focus on which blog tool I would use. I found this great webpage at the USC Annenberg Center for Communication that compares many blogging tools. After reading the page, I decided on WordPress with price being a big factor. It’s free!

The WordPress website has a lot of great information including information on finding a web host. Based on their recommendations I chose bluehost. There may be better deals out there and I won’t go through all the specs in this post, but after a quick check on Go Daddy and many other recommendations on the WordPress website, I considered their offering the best. I particularly liked the auto installation feature of WordPress and many other tools like TikiWiki and Moodle. A domain name, domain listing privacy, and site promotion are also included in the bluehost offering.

Deciding on a domain name and finding a web host were the easiest parts of the job. After signing up with bluehost and installing WordPress, I then spent what seemed like forever deciding on a theme for my blog. Be warned; there are a ton of themes. You can sort the themes by layout and colors, etc, but I had limited success with this.

If you’re starting a blog with a new domain, best of luck. I hope you’ll find this information useful.

Last year, I was looking at my website at work and I thought, who would look at this? I mean, who wants to see a small picture of me that’s about ten years old, my job description and where I went to school? I had forgotten something I learned in 1996 when I first learned how to create web sites. That is - make it useful. Sure, on my old website I had links to user guides that I had created and to other technology websites. Maybe those were useful. But I realized that for years I had been using the web to research technologies to serve the faculty I support and for my own purposes and that process had been a one way street.

I hope that this blog, which will focus on my personal and professional (instructional) experiences with technology, will be useful, especially to other instructional technologists. Let the opinionated commentary begin!