Wikipedia and Videogames!

I spent about an hour and half on wikipedia last night looking at possible topics for our projects. I think that I want to do my presentation on portable digital audio players- all kinds not just iPod. I'm still not sure about a trend yet though but what a great resources! I knew my 11 year old 6th grade son would think this was so cool. So I showed him how it worked and asked him to look up whatever he wanted. So he spent about 45 minutes looking up the history of video games and asking me if I'd played them when I was a kid and Mom how do you say this. His choice didn't surprise me, but what was so interesting is that just prior to going to wikipedia, I was looking at Wired. There was an article entitled a Generation of Game Boys, Girls about universities offering more video game-related courses in response to the digital media industry's appetite for skilled workers and the tastes of a new generation of students raised on Game Boy and Xbox. This brought several ideas to mind in terms of this Game Boy/Girl Generation- 1. The challenge of creating coursework that engages them 2. The trend of the universities to offer classes that would be of interest to this generation 3. The re-design of digital media programs in colleges 4. The challenge of creating coursework for an audience that combines ages from this generation and many others as well My two favorite comments from the article are: Della Rocca compares it to the emergence of film studies programs decades ago. Dismissed at first, they now produce big-name directors in a field now considered by many to be a serious art form. "Just like when rock and roll came of age everybody wanted to be a rock star, as video games have come of age, everyone wants to be a developer," said Carolyn Rauch, senior vice president of the Entertainment Software Association. I know for my 11 year old this is true. His list of what he wants to be when he grows up went from a train engineer when he was between 6 to 8 years old to a video game designer/programer when he started playing videogames between 9 and 10 years old.

Collaborative Work Environment Assignment

A collaborative work environment can consist of several different features, tools and abilities including document managers, web folders, calendars, schedulers, task managers, to do list, web/audio conferencing, messaging (email and instant), web database, discussion forums, team rooms, personal information management, contact directories, opinion polls, announcements, project management/visibility, customer relationship management, supplier management and multi-channel publishing of a single content item via web site, email, fax, print, handheld wireless devices. If I were to design a collaborative work environment for myself in my current position at Kennedy Krieger Institute (KKI) it would include messaging (email and instant), calendar, scheduler, task manager, project manager, contact directories (internal and external), discussion forums, opinion polls, announcements, document manager and multi-channel publishing of a single content item. Currently KKI uses Novell GroupWise, a business collaboration tool, that has a calendar, scheduler, task manager, contact directories (internal only), email and instant messaging (while on-site only). Xerox copier/fax/scanners are located in each building at each site which allows everyone the ability to scan documents to PDF format and then email the document to yourself or others within KKI. A collaborative work environment is useful for instructional technologists to communicate with the team working on a training project including SMEs and contractors. I especially like the idea of having a single point of access to frequently-used resources like files created with Word, Excel, Access or PowerPoint, graphics, written narrative/scripts, sound files, etc. Since a collaborative work environment really can be anything that helps you communicate, I would say that you could create a something for under $100. A blog would be a cheap and easy way to begin. Business blogs have become a place to share knowledge and expertise with customers or employees. This sharing can be accomplished by postings to the blog or by providing links to information. There are several levels between this simple model and the ultimate model but it all depends on what you need. The intranets.com model is a reasonable solution as well with pricing as low as $60 per month for five users and provides powerful collaborative tools. Bonus: What does groove.net and Lotus Notes have in common? Both provide a collaborative work environment accessible from anyplace yet provides a single point of access for resources like email, calendar, instant messaging, scheduling, and other collaborative tools as well as providing advance replication technology which allows both products to be accessed anytime.

Great gadget and gizmo blog for consumer electronics

www.gizmodo.com

Electronic Communication With Co-Workers: Is it the only way?

Today most communication is done through some sort of electronic medium- phone (land line or cell), email, text messages, or fax. Telecommuting to work has become a popular alternative instead of coming to the office. Out of ten of my office type friends about half of them are offered the opportunity to work from home on a weekly basis. However, all of them are required to come to the office each week. I think this is significant. Lets look at the non-office type of worker- the trade person. Can the plumber, electrian, painter, welder use electronic communications instead of coming to the office/job site? No not usually but you would be surprised an the amount electronic communication that does exsist mainly for administrative purposes. Out of ten of my trade person friends about 90% use email or cell phones to communicate with the administrative staff each week. Not only does the type of job influence the use of collaborative work environments but individual personality and learning types have a role as well. I could explain a storyboard of a website to my boss at least three or four times and she still doesn't understand it until I develop a working protype and personally walk her through it in her office. She just can't make the connections from a static storyboard drawing to an interactive model. Then there is the a director in another department that insists on meeting to further discuss simple requests by email. It is not necessary but that is the director's preference. So is electronic communication with co-workers the only way- No. Will it ever be- Probably not. But we've come a long way baby, so only time will tell. Work can not be completed without some sort of in-person collaboration.

Audio- Minidisc Recorder

Hi! We were discussing the audio issue for our Speech Language Pathologist who are recording their sessions with their patients. My co-worker found this cool mini-disc recorder by Sony for about $78 which holds 80 minutes of audio. It has a USB (im, ex)port that enables digital, bi-directional computer connectivity at speeds of up to 32x, and a broad selection of Windows versions, both classic and current, is supported. The department is probably going to buy one of these for each of its therapist. Buying info and specs on B&H Photovideo at http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=&A=ShowProduct&Q=&sku=315274&is=REG Sony also offers a Hi-MiniDisc version which holds 1 Gig of information. They offers a musician package for setting up a mini-recording studio that runs about $300 and includes a microphone, Hi-Minidisc, and AcidExpress software. You can check it out at http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/eCS/Store/en/-/USD/SY_DisplayProductInformation-Start?ProductSKU=MZRH910KIT&Dept=audio&CategoryName=pa_DigitalMusicPlayers_MiniDisc_HiMDWalkman

iTune/iPods/Nano

iPhones and Nano http://wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,68797,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_9

History: Engelbart

On December 9, 1968, Douglas C. Engelbart and the group of 17 researchers working with him in the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, CA, presented a 90-minute live public demonstration of the online system, NLS, they had been working on since 1962. The public presentation was a session in the of the Fall Joint Computer Conference held at the Convention Center in San Francisco, and it was attended by about 1,000 computer professionals. This was the public debut of the computer mouse. But the mouse was only one of many innovations demonstrated that day, including hypertext, object addressing and dynamic file linking, as well as shared-screen collaboration involving two persons at different sites communicating over a network with audio and video interface http://sloan.stanford.edu/MouseSite/1968Demo.html

Intranet Needs Analysis

http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_needsanalysis/index.html

Greasemonkey

A new browser tool lets you rewrite anyone's homepage. By Paul Boutin of Wired magazine. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.09/start.html?pg=7?tw=wn_tophead_6

Introduction

Hello! This is my first post to any blog including this one that I just created. I am a graduate student in Instructional System Design at UMBC and as part of my course work for Current Trends in Instructional Design I must create and post to a blog. The primary goal of the course will be the same as the goal of this blog to examine theories and practices of instructional technology.