I feel like I’ve answered this question many times before, but when Jeff Swain asks I do my best to have something to say.
Play
At its core, play, and by extension video games, is learning. Call it discovery or mastery but a good game introduces new ideas (teaches), leverages existing ones (reviews) and layers them to create unique challenges (tests). Teaching, at its core, is communicating. Verbosity is an academic sleeping pill. A game’s graphics are the player’s teacher and a good teacher is consistent, clear, and concise. Like good pixel art.
I just found this paragraph so clear and crisp that I needed to post it.
THON.
I took my children to the Bryce Jordan Center yesterday so we could visit the Penn State students dancing from Friday until Sunday evening to raise money for child cancer support and research. I try to make it every year and try to give money … this year is no different. Two things if you are seeing this Sunday afternoon, go to the THON site and donate what you can and do yourself a favor and take a peek at the webcast happening on uStream … I just watched families thank the dancers, one saying that his 9 year old daughter had her last dose of chemotherapy last night. As I was watching I saw the uStream spike at 70,000 watching. I imagine they were all in tears as well.
Great tweet …
Schools, Laptops, and Security?
The suit says Lower Merion School District officials can activate the webcams remotely without students' knowledge. The lawsuit alleges the cameras captured images of Harriton High School students and their families as they undressed and in other compromising situations.
Families learned of the alleged webcam images when an assistant principal spoke to a student about inappropriate behavior at home.
My sister in law works in this school district. I can't help but wonder who is really to blame here — super empowered IT groups or super empowered administrators? Either way I am disturbed and disgusted by this turn of events. In a second piece that I read, a girl is quoted as saying, "'Mom, I have that laptop open all the time in my bedroom, even when I'm changing."
I am appalled.
Social Networking Now More Popular on Mobile
A recent study from Ruder Finn revealed that Americans are spending nearly three hours per day on their mobile phones. And what are they doing there? Educating themselves, conducting business, managing finances, instant messaging, emailing? All of the above, as it turns out, and then some. But perhaps the most interesting finding from the new data is the fact that more people are using the mobile web to socialize (91%) compared to the 79% of desktop users who do the same. It appears that the mobile phone is actually a better platform for social networking than the PC.
I find this to be true for me as well — I tend to spend more time connecting to Facebook and Twitter from my iPhone these days. It is rare for me to even have a Twitter client open on my Mac. The mobile apps seem so robust and I can actually spend some time looking through things instead of bouncing in and out of focus. I even have different workflow while using Twitter on my iPhone … when I see a Tweet I want to do more with I just email the Tweet to myself to check out the resource later.
1Password and iPad
I hope it comes as no surprise that we're planning, plotting, and otherwise scheming to bring 1Password to the iPad in a big way. But if you are surprised, well… surprise! I hope it's good news, because we're really excited about our progress. So excited, in fact, that we feel like sharing some of our design concepts with you.
I am hoping one can also use the bookmarklet in mobile safari on the iPad to fill usernames and passwords while in the middle of browsing workflow. The thing about this post is that it shows off how developers can rethink their applications so they actually fit the iPad … it has me even more interested to see what people come up with fo this unreleased device.
Opportunity Cost
But it's almost as shocking that the Times Company is having a discussion over this question at all. Really? You're going to ruin this little gift from Steve Jobs? You're still not sure if you're ready to commit to this internet thing? Sigh.
via gawker.com
I have to say that if the newspaper people blow this opportunity I believe they'll look back in a few years and wonder what happened to their business. In a lot of ways it parallels so many of the conversations we hear in higher education around the adoption of new technology and teaching practices — behind it all is a fear that holds people back from taking the right risks. I get there are millions of dollars at stake with the iPad and potentially new subscription models, but at some point someone has to take the step and see what happens … I wonder if anyone is ready to make that leap?
Featured Speaker: 2/16/2010: Chronicle of Higher Education, Connecting to Compete
This week I will be in Washington, DC to participate as a speaker in the Chronicle of Higher Education's Connecting to Compete event. This is an event targeted at International institutions thinking about how to leverage information technology and social computing to connect with their audiences. It is a real honor to be a part of the event and I hope to share some interesting thoughts to help press the day's conversation forward.
Download the PDF of my slides.