The 4 R’s of Brainstorming New Ideas
Posted by enzofsilva in eLearning 2.0, instructional design, learning, schools on August 19, 2010
In his free eBook “Designing for the Web”, Mark Boulton suggests a 4R approach to brainstorming ideas for a project. While the eBook is geared toward Web Design, those working as Instructional Designers and educators can also benefit from these tips as creative professionals.
Here are the 4 R’s as presented by Mark.
“Revolution:
Revolution is turning an idea on its head. Taking assumptions and reversing or removing them. E.g. A pub has four walls and a roof. What if it didn’t have walls, but still had a roof?
Re–Expression:
Re–express the idea in a different way or point of view. E.g. What if you were five years old and your parents were buying a booster seat for you. What makes a cool booster seat in your eyes?
Related Worlds:
Think of a related world and use ideas from that world. E.g. Cooking and Gardening. What elements of gardening could be used to sell more recipe books?
Random Links:
Forcing a connection with a random object. E.g. A social networking website and a cactus. Random links often generate ideas which are off brief, but that doesn’t matter. Sometimes, the most truly innovative ideas can come with random links. I’m sure Citroén designers were using Random Links when they decided to make the 2CV look like a snail.”
I would add yet two more R’s of my own:
Revisiting:
Sometimes going back to an old concept, a note, a diagram or even just letting an idea sit for while and then reconnecting with it, exploring it further, can produce good results.
Rebooting:
When an idea seems to be going south: stop devoting energy to it. Start again from a fresh, new perspective. Go work on another project (if you’re of the multitasking kind) and then come back to the initial point of this project: what is the problem I’m trying to solve?
The ebook can be accessed here: http://designingfortheweb.co.uk/book/part2/part2_chapter9.php
Unsuck-It, a Glossary for Business Jargon
Posted by enzofsilva in learning on August 14, 2010
“We must leverage the power of crowdsourcing to create robust and engaging solutions that meet the needs of our clients as we work collaboratively with SMEs and stakeholders…”
This is not an unrealistic example of typical meeting conversations one can have in the business world…
Some meetings are just foreign language for many people…
When communication needs to be clear within a team but also in communicating ideas out of the team to other people involved in a project, Unsuck It comes to the rescue with a nice searchable glossary that finds good replacements and explanations for common overused jargons.
Next time a jargon pops up in your head as you are writing a document, make it an “action item” to avoid repetition and empty words by consulting resources like Unsuck It and a good ol’ dictionary…
http://unsuck-it.com/
Handylight Tethering iPhone App is Back
Posted by enzofsilva in mobile on August 7, 2010
The Handylight app is available again.
Don’t get so excited: it is not THE Handylight (the original one had been yanked from the App Store a few days ago).
It still costs $0.99 bur the hidden tethering option doesn’t work. If you follow the instructions correctly you will, however, get a *useful* purple flashlight right on your iPhone! 
Is Apple not monitoring their store closely enough? Why do they block certain content but not apps that are clearly a scheme (in this case profiting from a previous popular app)?
Are they trying to teach people a lesson (thou shalt not tether unless we approve it)!?
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/handy-flashlight/id383845539?mt=8
Isolating eLearning
Posted by enzofsilva in learning on August 2, 2010
The term “social” has become quite popular amongst those involved in Web development, marketing, journalism, and many other fields. Education isn’t immune to that trend. “Social media” seems to now have claimed the title of overused term from “Web 2.0.”
However, these technologies that allow sharing of information, more importantly, coordination of efforts and co-authoring of knowledge, do in fact play an important role in society and Education.
Technologies like micro-blogging, wikis, blogs, social bookmarking, and many others are commonplace in any Educational Technology blog these days.
But why is it that corporations and institutions seem to to keep focusing mostly on the mass production of self-contained, self-paced, self-service learning experiences canned in Learning Management Systems (LMS) that only care about reporting page clicks and final scores in formats friendly to our famous Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM)?
Whenever social media is implemented in the workplace or at school, it seems more like an attempt to “do what everyone else is doing so we’re not behind” but everyone struggles to understand the real value of doing it. It’s almost like it social media is secondary to our traditional forms of learning support.
With the current state of eLearning, we are creating isolated and isolating, lonely, mechanical learning experiences and blaming it on “autonomy”, on “self-pacedness…”
The focus needs to be shifted to the value in creating networks of learners to support informal, life-long learning that takes place in “communities of practice” that offer real life learner-to-learner support and empathy. eLearning as it is now, “courses” encapsulated in Flash and HTML, needs to become the secondary learning experience… or at least be just a support knowledge repository, a place learners go to only to start understanding concepts before diving into discussions with their peers in their communities. In the least, we need to allow learners to go build discussions around the existing courses. Experiences similar to what technologies like VoiceThread allow us to.
The issue is, perhaps, that institutions don’t know how to track real learning. They know how to tally number of page clicks and quiz scores, but not life-long, real learning…
Google Forms Branching – Digital Story Telling
Posted by enzofsilva in Educational Games, Technology, Web 2.0, eLearning 2.0, learning, social media on July 26, 2010
The Google Apps team published a blog post explaining improvements to the Forms tool allowing form creators to easily configure branching of pages depending on the respondent’s choice for every question.
This feature has a lot of potential for digital story telling. Teachers or students can create interactive stories that evolve with the reader’s every choice.
In fact, the Google Apps team emphasizes this possible use on that same blog post with the sample interactive adventure “The Hunt for the terrible Dr. von Schneider”. To interact with this story, just click this link and then click “Choose this template” on the next page. This will add the form to YOUR spreadsheets. Go to your http://docs.google.com account and open the “Copy of Choose your own adventure form” spreadsheet. Click “Form” and “Go to live form” on the tool bar. Voilà!
It is a short little adventure but it illustrates the concept fairly well.
Based on the Google Apps team’s post, as easy as 1, 2, 3:
1. To create a story, go to Google Docs and create a new form with an enticing choice at the beginning.
2. Check the box next to Go to page based on answer while editing the question. Select the corresponding pages they should be directed to based on their answer.
3. Users can be sent back to the same page after being split apart during the story. Under the Add Item menu, select Page break. Then, select what page you’d like your form respondents to be directed to under the drop down menu in the page break.
Uses of the iPhone/iPod/iPad in the Classroom
Posted by enzofsilva in Educational Games, Technology, Web 2.0, eLearning 2.0, learning, schools on June 16, 2010
I came across a short presentation by Grace Poli from Union City High School on Slideshare.net. The presentaion focuses on practical ways for using the iPod Touch in class, but of courses the uses of all of Apple’s mobile devices are interchangeable most of the time since they have similar technical specifications.
Here are some highlights and resources from the presentation.
Resources and Ideas
- Apple Learning Interchange – http://ali.apple.com
- Learning in Hand – http://learninginhand.com
- iPods in Education Webcast – http://macenterprise.org
- iPods in Education: The Potential for Language Acquisition – http://e2t2.binghamton.edu/pdfs/ iPod_Lang_Acquisition_whitepaper.pdf
Unexpected Uses of the iPods
(http://www.oculture.com/2007/04/10_unexpected_u.html)
1. Train Doctors to Save Lives – American College of Cardiology indicates iPods are used to listen to recorded heart sounds to teach medical students how to better recognize different conditions 2. Bring Criminals to Justice – United States federal district court has started using iPods to hold copies of wiretap transmissions in a large drug-conspiracy case 3. Get Yourself Into Serious Shape – TrailRunner is a free program that helps you plan your route and then loads your iPods with maps, distances, and time goals
4. Tour Around Great Cities – iSubwayMaps lets you download subway maps from 24 major cities across the globe. They range from New York City, Paris, and Berlin to Moscow, Tokyo and Hong Kong. Audio tours of New York and Paris downloard Soundwalk narrated by a celebrity for $12.
5. Calculate the Right Tip – TipKalc helps you figure out the tip and grand total
6. Record Flight data – LoPresti Speed announced plans to use iPods as flight data recorders in light aircrafts (will have the ability to record over 500 hours of flight time data)
7. Throw a Meaner Curveball – Pitcher for the Houston Astros, started using video iPod to review pitching frame by frame to improved overall techniques 8. Learn Foreign Language – University students are using iPods to record lectures, take notes, and even create electronic flash cards 9. Memory Stick – save your Microsoft office files 10. Wikipedia – download one of the largest encyclopedias on your iPod (FREE)
More ideas from other practitioners can be found in the Apple Interchange Learning Community which I highlighted in a previous post.
Google Launches Its Own Open Source Learning Platform – CloudCourse
Posted by enzofsilva in Web 2.0, eLearning 2.0, learning, open source, social media on May 26, 2010
In an arena dominated by Moodle, Google launches its own open source learning platform: CloudCourse.
According to the blog “Open Source at Google”, the application was released with the intention of driving developers to develop Web applications with Google’s App Engine. The team encourages developers to look into the source code to find out how specific Web application development challenges were overcome. The team of developers at Google hopes CloudCourse to become a sort of poster child for App Engine.
But what can CloudCourse do? According to the developers:
Built entirely on App Engine, CloudCourse allows anyone to create and track learning activities. CloudCourse also offers calendaring, waitlist management and approval features.
CloudCourse is fully integrated with Google Calendar and can be further customized for your organization with the following service provider interfaces (replaceable components):
- Sync service – to sync CloudCourse data with your internal systems
- Room info service – to schedule classes in your locations
- User info service – to look up user profile (employee title, picture, etc)
The technologies used to develop CloudCourse are: App Engine, Django, Python and the Closure Javascript library. According to the team that developed it: should be a breeze to install…
Let me know (in the comments here) what your experience is like if you do try to use ClourCourse.
Enzo’s Weekly Twitter Updates
Posted by enzofsilva in languages on May 22, 2010
- Is this Google's first interactive Doodle? Celebrating Pacman's 30th birthday. Play it on the main Google page! http://ow.ly/i/1Gno #
- FreeReading – ree, high-quality, open-source reading program addressing literacy development for grades K-3 http://tumblr.com/xafa7ocq6 #
- Saline Area Schools talks about Google Apps http://youtu.be/x7VPie-Yd0U #
- Solaris 10 System Administration – day 3… #
- Coleção de revistas/periódicos brasileiros em Linguística Aplicada. Adicionem mais links http://linguisticaaplicada.pbworks.com/ #
- SA-200 Solaris Administration Student Guide… http://twitpic.com/1olp5d #
- Attending SA-200-S10 "Solaris System Administration Part I" the rest of the week… #
- Veritas Valet Et Vincet. #
Enzo’s Weekly Twitter Updates
Posted by enzofsilva in languages on May 22, 2010
- Is this Google's first interactive Doodle? Celebrating Pacman's 30th birthday. Play it on the main Google page! http://ow.ly/i/1Gno #
- FreeReading – ree, high-quality, open-source reading program addressing literacy development for grades K-3 http://tumblr.com/xafa7ocq6 #
- Saline Area Schools talks about Google Apps http://youtu.be/x7VPie-Yd0U #
- Solaris 10 System Administration – day 3… #
- Coleção de revistas/periódicos brasileiros em Linguística Aplicada. Adicionem mais links http://linguisticaaplicada.pbworks.com/ #
- SA-200 Solaris Administration Student Guide… http://twitpic.com/1olp5d #
- Attending SA-200-S10 "Solaris System Administration Part I" the rest of the week… #
- Veritas Valet Et Vincet. #
Enzo’s Weekly Twitter Updates
Posted by enzofsilva in languages on May 15, 2010
- The alphabet from Google Earth… via @scene360 http://bit.ly/bcmhW3 #
- Teach and learn, exchanging knowledge in your area of expertise… http://www.unclasses.org – community powered learning #
- Let's play We Rule on the iPhone! My gamername is 'enzofsilva'. http://bit.ly/d4seUk #
- Smart use of Google adwords "Copywriter Uses Executives' 'Vanity Googling' To Land A Job (VIDEO)" http://huff.to/ctFpPF #
- Some reasons why online productivity suites are the way to go. "Google: Don't upgrade Office, add Docs" http://bit.ly/btZcg8 (via @cnet) #
- Why??! "Hugo Chavez Hires 200 People to Manage His Twitter Account" – http://bit.ly/d2Qcp7 (via @mashable) #
- Teaching Kids About Business – http://bit.ly/cpAZNf (cc @marshacollier) (via @chrisbrogan) #
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