Author: Cole Camplese

Quick iPad Mini Thoughts

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A couple of really quick observations after a few weeks with the iPad Mini. First, it is really all I use these days. Even my 11″ MacBook Air has stayed home most days as I find myself more and more satisfied with the flexibility the mini affords — the size and weight more than make up for any small limitations I bump into.

I am now doing my presentations from the mini and Keynote is every bit as powerful on this device as my laptop. Travel is a joy as all I need is the mini, one power cord, and my Bose Quiet Comfort headphones … And the battery lasts a couple of days.

The other thing I am finding is that the software I am using has swung in a very different direction. Yes, I still use yammer, Evernote, and various social apps everyday but the crazy thing is how good the whole crop of new google apps are. They now occupy nearly a whole row on my first screen. I love that google is finding ways to compete on iOS while still building Android. I think google is starting to push apple on the UI side which will lead to new innovation.

All in all the mini is a great device — for me. I use the Verizon version with the LTE access so I can be connected all times, much like I can with my iphone. That is a huge deal as I use it one handed walking across campus a lot. I was honestly lusting after the 13″ MacBook with retina display, but I just don’t see it fitting into my workflow at the moment. I know there are lots of people who dislike the iPad, but I find it to be a great device that supports nearly all I need to do when not sitting at my desk.

Invited Presentation: Krause Innovation Studio, Penn State 12/14/2012

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This morning I get to spend time talking with my colleagues from across Penn State at an event hosted by the College of Education in the Krause Innovation Studio. The Studio is directed by my very good friend, Dr. Scott McDonald. Scott also happens to be both my collaborator on the Disruptive Technologies in Teaching and Learning grad course as well as on sabbatical! So, while I am excited to talk about our course, the spaces we evaluated in the Occupy Learning program, and discuss how we are thinking of leveraging this work going forward I am a bit disappointed that I cannot present with him. I will have a chance to share a whole new presentation discussing Occupy Learning and how we worked to better understand the affordances of physical teaching and learning spaces across our campus. As a bonus I get to do it in the Learn Lab classroom where Scott and I taught last spring semester.

Learn Lab Teaching

New PSU Tech Tutors Site

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Tech Tutors

Above is a screen shot of the PSU Tech Tutors site … not only is it great design and a great program (training for students by students), the whole thing is built on our new WordPress stack. The new service that we are calling sites.psu.edu allows people at Penn State to not only construct typical wordpress style blog sites, but full on web presences. We’ve licensed dozens of professional themes, have put them through the accessibility ringer, and are making site building easier than ever.

Adding Instagram Photos to a WordPress Blog

/ Cole Camplese / 3 Comments

As I make the slow switch back to publishing here at my self-hosted wordpress site from my beloved tumblr, one of the things that is bothering me is that publishing an instagram photo is not one button simple. With the iOS instagram app I can easily push my photos to my tumblr as well as other services like twitter, Facebook, flickr, etc but not to a self-hosted space. So, since I am returning to a place I haven’t been to in a while I thought I would ask the Internet how to do it, and what do you know, my old ed tech blogging buddy D’Arcy Norman had it solved! What a surprise, right?

Just like D’Arcy I am using the ifttt (if this, then that) service to make the magic happen. Unlike D’Arcy I decided to only pull instagrams over that I use a specific hashtag (#cc) on, so I am using a different recipe. That way I can still post to various places without flooding a specific channel … I may change my mind on that in the future, but for now that is the way I like it. It also takes anything coming in and drops it into a category aptly named, “instagram” … nice. I am also playing around with the “Add Linked Images to Gallery” wp plugin (again, just like D’Arcy) to make a local copy of the instagram image. Who knows how long my facination with my wp space will last, but I am enjoying getting it back in shape and publishing here again.