Category Archives: Internet

Google’s News LMS (Apps for Education)

Internet, MOOC, Online Learning, , , , , , ,

A colleague at work alerted me to the news that Google has a new free LMS for schools. Google Classroom will be the new tool that adds a Learning Management System to Google Apps for Education.

Campus Technology has a brief piece of news here, and Google has a page where you can sign up for an invite.

There is a certain degree of déjà vu all over again with the news. Google has released, or announced, similar initiatives in the past:

Google is known for discontinuing great products and services (such as Lively, Wave, Google Reader), seemingly because a product manager leaves or moves on to another project. Whilst being a free option, there may be some risk in committing to the new Google Classroom.

CourseMaster, edX, and my LMS Wishlists

Internet, MOOC, Online Learning, , , , , , ,

Coursemaster

On Friday, I had the chance to talk with Daniel McKelvey (VP of Business Development at CourseMaster).  CourseMaster is positioning itself as an edX service provider. edX is open source, so those with both the technical resources and the inclination can download and install their own instance of the software. Alternatively, organizations can turn to a third party like CourseMaster.

In our conversation, Daniel positioned CourseMaster as having three distinct advantages (i.e. elements added by the company):

  1. LMS core (branded, fully serviced and supported)
  2. Faculty dashboard
  3. Social collaboration and gamification

Support is for both faculty and students.

The business model is based on users (defined as interacting with 20% of course content) and duration of the course.

This looks interesting, and I intend to investigate further. Working on getting some colleagues to collaborate on a pilot.

The faculty dashboard and collaboration modules are what I am most interested in. Currently, Learning Management Systems are still pretty much Web 1.0. Most educators use the LMS as a publishing platform, and student interaction gravitates towards discussion, quizzes, and the uploading of files. Hopefully we will soon see Learning Management Systems approach Web 2.0 interactivity.

For example, services like Doodle allow me to quickly (and automatically) negotiate the best time for a group of colleagues to meet. Imagine if a LMS allowed for that type of automated decision making for the composition of student groups (based upon skillset, timezone preference, and/or project preference).  Affordances like this are what is needed in a LMS, particularly as we see increasing time demands on both students and faculty. I still have yet to see true collaboration tools built into the leading LMS providers that come close to the power of Google Docs, Skype, or Facebook. WordPress is a model that I would like to see Learning Management Systems follow here, where you could browse for plugins that add the collaboration functionality you need (that being said, WordPress  can be used as a LMS).

Blue Jeans: Web-Based Videoconferencing

Internet, Online Learning, , , ,
Blue Jeans

Blue Jeans

A colleague at work suggested I look at Blue Jeans, a web-based videoconferencing service  (similar to Google Hangouts or Vidyo). I had never heard of the service until the suggestion. Blue Jeans looks interesting, and does 80% of what Scopia does (another service we use).

Cost seems to be about $50 per user per month. I don’t know if that would be a floating license. I think the service is worth testing, and will try and find some time to do so. Vidyo, their competitor, had a strong product when I looked at it last, so I am wondering how well it competes (in terms of usability and cost) with VidyoH2O for Google Hangouts.

Adobe Seminar (Exploring Creative Cloud for Enterprise)

Internet, Mobile, MOOC, , , , , , , , , , ,

Adobe Pen and Book

Adobe Swag

I attended the Adobe Seminar (Exploring Creative Cloud for Enterprise) this morning. At the event I and a colleague asked these two questions:

  1. Where can faculty (who may be intimidated by the Adobe resources for creative professionals) get documentation on how to use the Creative Cloud programs? i.e. Where can you get info on the fundamentals?
  2. Where can faculty get and see examples of best practice in education using the Creative Cloud programs?


The answer to question one was:

https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/learn/tutorials.html
(and click on Fundamentals)

The answer to question two was:

http://edex.adobe.com
Adobe Education Exchange. Membership is free, but needs an Adobe ID.

Adobe Education Exchange also has a series of MOOCs (providing a certificate) that train educators in the various tools. This is something I highly recommend. I plan on enrolling when I have time…

Brief Notes

I jotted down some brief notes from the seminar, which I share here…

The focus of the morning was on Adobe Creative Cloud, but Adobe Marketing Cloud was mentioned in passing (analytics, social, media optimization, targeting, etc.). I have not looked at this in the past, but should do so soon.

Adobe Creative Cloud was positioned as being good value to the user, with upgrades being released more frequently,  instead of the traditional release cycle. Somewhat ironically, we could see some updates being applied to one of the presenters’ machine during the keynote

Photoshop

Photoshop warping was demonstrated by Rick Borstein, which allowed for some very clever manipulations of images. Not something I will most likely use, but fun to watch in action. Linking was more likely, which allowed for non-destructive changes. We saw a Camera RAW filter in action, then some 3D Modeling in which 3D files were grabbed from another application, manipulated, with then the option to export directly to Shapeways, print to one of the MakerBot 3D printers, or save as an STL file.

Illustrator

Corner editing applied to multiple assets simultaneously was shown in Illustrator, along with a new pencil tool which used fidelity settings. We saw a perspective view which now allowed for the moving of station points, and non-destructive editing of text, then free transformations.  Brushes are now easier to work with, and images can be used as a brush.

InDesign

Most of the Adobe products have a dark (black) interface and background, but in InDesign now allows the user to change interface, so that things look a little more upbeat. The program is now able to work with right to left scripts (i.e. Arabic script). Fonts have improved search options/filtering (search entire name) with the option to favorite up to ten fonts. With hyperlinks, the character styles are automatically applied, and InDesign validates that URL is correct. Impressively  it can create QR codes natively – with subtle effect like change colour and scale (this I liked). You can also save InDesign files as older versions (to work with collaborators on older versions of software),  but some options may not be editable.

Making the Mobile Web Work

Andrew Trice (Technical Creative Cloud Evangelist), then spoke about “Making the Mobile Web Work.” He started off with some demonstrations of sites not working well on mobile devices, or sites expecting users to change behavior (i.e. the orientation of their iPad). He then showed mobile designed sites which looked truly awful on desktop machines (huge buttons and text). He was of the opinion that touch targets get very hard on smartphones if you have to keep on zooming in and out (to which I am in agreement) – this is not an optimal experience….

Muse

Muse was was earlier described by Rick Borstein as being InDesign for the Web, with the option to create animations in  HTML 5.

Andrew explained that Muse was designed from the same team that worked on InDesign, so the design metaphors were similar. For an InDesign user, Muse would be intuitive and familiar. Muse has an extensive choice of fonts, but can rely on web-safe fonts. Integration with Adobe Web fonts is possible.

Muse can publish as HTML, or export into Dreamweaver.

Responsive Design

Andrew positioned Responsive Design as taking two paths:

  1. Create a dedicated version for each device/platform (i.e. site optimized for desktop, another site optimized for mobile)
  2. CSS rendering on-the-fly.

Muse can export HTML for each supported platform, and follows approach #1.

Andrew then recommended Adobe Generator for Photoshop CC, and the use of  layers from Photoshop to generate assets (you can decide whether these will be png or jpeg, along with the appropriate sizes).

Edge Reflow

Reflow is a responsive design tool, which created appropriate CSS via media queries for breakpointed versions of a site. This allows the use to create different size versions of a site, which display elegantly on various devices.

EdgeCode

EdgeCode is a branded version of Brackets, and allows for quick changes of CSS and code, with the ability to preview immediately. It is a plugin for very rapid development. I liked it.

Premier and Audition

The session ended with demonstrations of Premier and Audition. I am pretty happy scraping up quick-and-dirty videos with ScreenFlow, but this is something I will look at eventually.

The morning was helpful. I did not win the iPad Mini that was given away, but was still happy to be there. The MakerBot examples were extremely impressive too.

 

Google Glass: Part 1

Gadgets, Internet, Mobile, , , ,
Google Glass

Google Glass

This is going to be a short post… I received my Google Glass a few weeks ago, and I although I set up the various Glassware applications and started wearing the device at work (but not in public), I have done little in the way of testing.

I am going to start to post observations and test from here on.

I was thinking of seeing how well the video camera would work for recording lectures, and have quickly discovered that this is not particularly feasible. After about 20 minutes of recording, Glass alerts me that the battery is running low. I had about 29% battery left at that point, and will see how long I can record with a fully charged device.

Voice command work largely well. Using the gestures is sometimes an easier way to accomplish a task though.

Overall, the device fees like a solution is search of a problem. The technology is extremely impressive, but needs developers to make Glass more than a novelty.

More later….

Steamed

Internet, Misc, , , , ,

For the first time in quite a few years I have a Windows PC (Surface Pro) at home, so I thought I would check out a few PC games. Nothing too taxing on the tablet, the Surface is not really a games machine. As luck would have it, Steam was having a sale. I now have a mini-library of older games to play:

  • Final Fantasy VII
  • Half-Life
  • Half-Life 2
  • Portal

Video Mode Change Failure

Unfortunately Half-Life refuses to play on the Surface Pro, with this error message:

The game has detected that the previous attempt to start in OpenGL video mode failed. The game will run in software mode.

Solutions on the Web suggest changing the Set Launch Options:

-software , -OpenGL, did not work for me (the game ran, but in a unusably small window).

-w 640 -h 480 allowed me run the game in a usable window.

Half-Life

Aha, now I have a playable game

-w 1024 -h 768 allowed me run the game in a better window.

Half-Life

This isn’t going to work…

I believe the screen dimensions of the Surface Pro are 1920 x 1080, so I gave that a try:

-w 1920 -h 1080

However, that resulted in a window that exceeded the bounds of the display. For the moment I will stick with XGA.

Next, getting a suitable joystick/gamepad…

HubSpot’s Executive Playbook

Internet, Internet Marketing, , , ,

HubSpot SwagI spent this morning at HubSpot’s Executive Playbook, a presentation in four parts focussing on inbound marketing and sales. I was pretty impressed by how polished and prepared the organizers were – all the common mistakes I see at presentations were not in evidence. Registration was handled well, WiFi details were prominently printed in the handouts, the quality of materials was impressive, sessions started and ended on time, sound worked perfectly, etc. I enjoyed the what I saw and heard.

PDF versions of the presentations are available at http://offers.hubspot.com/playbook13

The four parts were:

1: Jessica Meher (Head of Enterprise Marketing at HubSpot) spoke about the lack of love in in marketing, and how to address this. The key takeaway here (and something I have felt for a while) is that traditional interruptive marketing methods are no longer appropriate, and the smarter way to engage with prospects (and ultimately customers) is to be a resource that people want to find and use.  The line used was:

Don’t interrupt what people want to consume. Be what they want to consume.

2: Phill Harrell (VP of Enterprise Sales at HubSpot) focused on the tension between Marketing and Sales, and suggested “Smarketing” as a five-stage solution in which both teams cooperated with common goals and understanding:

  1. Building a Smarketing Organization.
  2. Agreement on Terminology.
  3. Implement a SLA.
  4. Manage Smarketing.
  5. Establish Inbound And Outbound Teams.

However, I think one of the fundamental reasons why HubSpot has been able to achieve this close collaboration is that this design was built into the company from the beginning, with automated reporting functionality. This data supports the close collaboration and helps resolve disputes and differences.

3: John McTigue (Kuno Creative‘s Executive Vice President and Co-Owner) detailed a very interesting case study in which a $100,000 investment resulted in over $400,000 sales two months later. He noted that stock photography did not work as well as showing actual images and real people.

4: Erin Wasson (UrbanBound‘s VP of Marketing) shared her experience of creating content for inbound marketing. Her slides are not available online, but the key takeaway of her segment was that:

Create personas! They really work!

and:

Selling through education’ vs. PPC

HubSpot has a follow-up conference in Boston in August. I won’t be there for that, but wish I could be.

Burning Chromebook: Day 5

Internet, Internet Marketing, Mobile, , , , , , , ,
Chromebook and MacBook Air

Chromebook and MacBook Air

I doubt if I will have a huge need to use SFTP/SSH on the Chromebook, but I did spend some time taking a look. At the moment I believe there are two options available to me:

  1. Secure Shell Terminal emulator and SSH client.
  2. ShiftEdit.

There is also a Chrome Extension (FTP Client), but based upon the reviews this is not something I will pursue.

No issues with Chrome so far. I imported my old Safari bookmarks and plan to test Desire2Learn access over the weekend. This is where I think I might see some quirks, but D2L indicates that the browser is supported.

TweetDeck worked well. Unlike some of the early versions this version has spell check.

I don’t plan to integrate my work and home email accounts into Gmail. The webmail options are functional, albeit a little clunky. With home email I will have to decide which of the three options are best for me:

  1. Horde
  2. RoundCube
  3. SquirrelMail

MacBook Air

Chromebook

Notes

Office Word

Google Docs

No issues so far. Spell check does not seem to be available offline. This might be fixed by installing an extension.

Office Excel

Google Sheets

No issues so far.

Office PowerPoint

Google Slides

Some formatting issues with imported files. “Present” not an option unless using native slide format.

iWork Keynote

Google Slides

Files

Considerable formatting issues with imported slides. Downloaded QuickTime mov, m4v, and mp4 files playable in Files.

iBooks Author

No equivalent.

Was not expecting to find an equivalent.

Dreamweaver

ShiftEdit.

Works well. Did not see spell check as an option.

Photoshop

pixlr

Tested with some basic cropping and resizing. Need to test more extensively.

Cyberduck
  1. Secure Shell Terminal emulator and SSH client.
  2. ShiftEdit.

No issues so far.

Safari

Chrome

No issues so far.

Twitter

TweetDeck

No issues so far.

Email

Gmail and Webmail

No issues with Gmail so far. Have to configure webmail.

Screenflow

  • Google Hangouts

  • Screenr

  • Screencastle

Have not tested.

iTunes

Google Play Music

Working well. Music Manager has uploaded the majority of my library.

Evernote

Evernote Web

No issues so far.

Dropbox

Dropbox

No issues so far.