Is this the answer to my stress?
Some internet cruising led me to Winksite, which is a service that creates mobile websites. I've clicked through some of the samples and tried them on my phone, and it looks pretty good so far. What do y'all think?
Friday, June 19, 2009
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Campus Events Via the IPhone (or other mobile device)
I spent the entire day in a wonderful, thought-provoking division meeting at work. We got to do ice-breakers and meet with committees. We ate cafeteria pizza and drank high-test. It was great fun. At the end of the day, we were treated to a session run by the student activities director, who taped poster board calendar months at the front of the room and asked us for dates of events we wanted to add for the fall semester. She wrote things in green marker on a large flip chart. It was very productive.
At one point in this session, we were showed a professionally printed version of the entire semester's worth of events on one 22 x 28 poster, which was brightly colored with a border of cute butterflies and flowers. The text was impossible to read - unless of course you stuck your face right up next to it. Discussion of not overlapping dates ensued - as the tiny blocks were so jam packed with information it was impossible to make sense of them. Stay tuned for the fall calendar, we were told. Sigh.
Does anybody even look at these? I've seen them on campus, but really, the only time I look at them is when I throw away the big stack someone inevitably leaves outside my office (for ME to hang up?)
I can't speak for everyone, but I'm pretty much not going to any campus event - even if it involves food - unless I'm reminded pretty soon beforehand. A nudge is nice. Otherwise the computer screen sucks me in.
So I took the opportunity to ask the group (about 40 people) if they would be interested in having a text nudge about the day's campus events. Apparently, they've been tossing that idea around for a while, but no one has done anything about it. They want it. The students in the room said they'd like that more than a website they actually have to go to on their own - but a text with a link, or something mobile, they would use. And so they shall have it.
Now I just have to figure out how the heck to make that happen.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Cheaters, Heidegger, and the White Devil
Daniel Sturgis questions whether cheating via the iphone by using digital recordings of course material is actually the beginning of a new method of learning. I think he's on to something important. Some of the points he makes about audio files being an aid in learning to those with auditory learning styles are certainly important, but also not the hot issue teachers have with the technology. Rather, we tend to bemoan the easiness of having information ready to access at all times, which makes it unnecessary to memorize facts. We heard it about the use of calculators in schools, and now we hear it about the use of mobile technology.
Somehow, we feel that "these darn kids" are getting off easy (perhaps destroying society?) because they don't have to memorize the things we did as kids. Is this the old up the hill barefoot to school story? And I don't think that attitude is necessarily helpful, because the fact is technology is here to stay, and it's going to get even more mobile by the time we're in nursing homes and the darn kids are keeping our machines beeping.
Sturgis asks, "The relevant question is whether the student gets anything more from the podcats" than from reading by itself. Great question, great point. It doesn't have to be about not doing the work we did as yougins. It doesn't have to be about jumping through the hoops and suffering through the hurdles we did in college. We know more about learning now. We also have some different objectives. What's important is if it helps the student meet the goal, which is, perhaps, managing the information with a critical eye and reflecting upon the values of the many billion tidbits one can find floating the web. As Sturgis states, "If we continue to emphasize the value of memorizing fafcts, these students will have leess to contibute to the world than those students who hve learned to do something intersting with facts. "
Our worldview has changed, and it has very much been shaped by technology. What it means to be in society is different for our children than it was for us - than it was for our ancestors in the outhouse. Craig Condella questions what the iPod, with its digital files and constant 'outside-of-here-ness' [my words] mean for being, and challenges the critique of mobile devices by applying a Heideggerian lens. (Just when I thought I was done with Heidegger, he creeps up again.) He argues that technology is key. In fact, he states, "The question of being thus amounts to the qustion of how science and technology shape our entire worldview." We cannot escape it, try as we might to find ways to keep it out of the classroom, etc. However, we can ride it and use it to our advantage.
Some skills can be revised for the new worldview. For instance, although the iPod fills our ears with noise, making it difficult to be present in our world because we're in the world of our music, that can be a way to transcend the crowded, stress filled situations that wear us down. Sure, there is a danger that "modern technology becomes the new opiate of the masses," but it doesn't have to be. It's very possible that it can open us up rather than shut us down.
Ut-oh - school called, child sick...more on the white devil later.
......................
Monday, June 8, 2009
If My iPhone Could Go Go Gadget...
I'm asking people I meet (but not on the street), what they want their iPhones to do. They say:
If I had an iPhone then I would like to have it be a universal remote control for home audio AV systems.
In addition, and some of these exist:
An X-Ray camera.
A Configurable task manager (to-do list)
An ISBN (bar-code) scanner
A password generator/archive
Friday, June 5, 2009
Mobile Devices, Applications, & My Future
What have I gotten myself into? Surely I signed up for this class while high on the adrenaline of the May Seminar. Create an iphone app? Sure! No Problem! Little I, blobject that I am, with no composing experience other than my hack job blog and one tiny web design in Composer ten years ago, am going to create an application for a mobile device - preferrably one that works. I couldn't figure out how to stop my screen from face dialing while I was on a call until a year after I had my Treo.
I am apprehensive about the plausability of this project.
Add to that, I have not the faintest idea what would be a doable, useful application. I use my phone to check email, text, tweet, and keep my calendar. Navigation, occaisionally, but it's usually too slow. I like to play the dots game when I'm waiting for appointments. I've seen amazing things for the iphone - the silly flute, the level, name that tune. These things are cool. These things are beyond my capability.
So, I'm whining, yes? Not exactly whining...just...processing.
The way I see it, I don't need another gadget just to have a gadget. It would have to be useful to me, something easy to manipulate, and fill a need that couldn't be more easily filled in another medium.
That said, I do have a few needs, which might produce something half-decent. For one, it would be nice to have a mobile way to access APA/MLA/Chicago styles so I don't have to cart handbooks around. My students would probably like this too. It might be nice to punch in the fields and have a source formatted. An electronic checkbook would be even better. If I could easily input purchases and see a running balance, that would be super cool. For my husband, a vocab word of the day would probably be nice too, since he is ESL - or for me, an Arabic word of the day, since I'm trying to learn it. And finally, a 5 times a day prayer reminder might be nice, if it wouldn't get bogged up by all the tweet messages and texts that bleep every two minutes - especially since I need all the help I can get with this.
The next step is going to be to flesh out what some of these might actually function like and try to decide what's doable and what's not - that is, if the programming book I ordered ever arrives from Amazon. I'm sure I'll come up with something!
Why My New Computer Screen is Flat'n'Square
Upon first reading about this beast called "blobject," I immediately pictured the old computer monitor I swapped out last year when someone who had a flatscreen got fired. Such a space saver, this new monitor! Of course it never occured to me that its design was part of an evolution of the blobject. I just like that I can pick it up and turn it around to show it to students and that I can hang things off its edges. It's much more useful to me.
Now, the concept of the blobject is a bit alluring, I have to admit. I picture little pods of happiness eminating vibes of cushy protectiveness, benevolent body snatchers perhaps. Colorful, mass-produced, reality shielding objects are strangely appealing, if for nothing else their "cuteness." The VW Bug is cute; the tiny squishy frog on my secretary's desk is cute (bulging eyes and all.) That is why two nights ago, I went on an unofficial blobject hunt. A blobject hunt would be fun, I thought.
I thought for sure I would find an abundance of blobby, mass-produced objects with curvy lines - cars, toys, housewares, anything! Of course, the moment of the blobject is supposed to be past, but I live in Reading, Pennsylvania, and we're about 5 years behind the style of everywhere else.
However, once I stepped outside of my house, blobby objects were a little harder to come by, which either means we're still stuck in Art Deco or Art Deco has been revitalized for 2009.
My daughters, five and three, have many blobjects. There is a dance-cam, which records dancing and singing and show it on the TV screen live-time. Very blobby. 
There are microphones, baby doll bottles with curvy bottoms and handles, and even their crocs shoes. Their little kid laptops are smooth and rounded; they have pod chairs. And there are many, many tiny rounded plastic things in the two drawers where I throw the crap they accumulate over the year from vending machines and dollar stores. Sometimes, especially when I ask them to help clean up, my children themselves are blobjects.
There are microphones, baby doll bottles with curvy bottoms and handles, and even their crocs shoes. Their little kid laptops are smooth and rounded; they have pod chairs. And there are many, many tiny rounded plastic things in the two drawers where I throw the crap they accumulate over the year from vending machines and dollar stores. Sometimes, especially when I ask them to help clean up, my children themselves are blobjects. However, once I stepped outside of my house, blobby objects were a little harder to come by, which either means we're still stuck in Art Deco or Art Deco has been revitalized for 2009.
Perhaps technology has reached the innermost recesses of Reading's human existence and has moved on. My Jeep Liberty still has a bubbly quality to it, but she's a bit old now in the model's first iteration. The new ones are much more boxy, as are most of the cars I see on my blobject hunt. Even the gas savers like the Suzuki Crossover, while preserving some rounded edges, are overall pretty angular. The same goes for the computers I looked at, the mp3 players, even the furniture at the mall.
I wonder if the blobject has fulfilled its duty and suffered a slow seeping of gas after the tech bubble finally burst. Have we realized our blobby objects and the "comfort" they provided us don't help as much as we would have liked them to? Have we decided the minimalist blobject works better, upping the function and relegating form to a secondary importance? It's possible, and likely I think, that in a post 9/11 world, we think about necessity more than beauty when it comes to our gadgets. In a world this complex, our stuff doesn't need to be. We like it simple, easy to approach, and portable. Smaller, less flash, more substance. We keep what we value close to home instead of on vaudville for all to bomb.
That, or we're more space conscious. Curvy lines take up more space. Giant blobs of monitors hog desk space. Couldn't it just be that it's cool to be able to make mini things? Flatter things? Things that take up too much space on our crowded earth? Well, whatever the reason, I appreciate my new flat and square computer monitor. I can't say I feel comforted by it, but it's useful nonetheless.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
This App Rocks! (Well, if it existed)
I hate grocery shopping. I hate shopping at Target, and Wal-mart, and the mall too. Mostly, that has to do with shopping with children, who are distracting and impatient, but there is also the problem of forgetting the major thing I went to the store for to begin with. Oh, I write it down. Usually, I lose the list somewhere between the house and the store. Sometimes I put in in my phone as a note, but not usually because it requires too much tiny button pressing.
What would be ideal for me would be a recorder and product nudger. Yes, my killer iphone app would be something I could voice input the items I need to buy, then while shopping, I would be prompted in each aisle what I need to get.
I can picture it clearly, "Danielle, you passed the mayo." Or even better, "There are 100% cotton capris 6 ft to your left." How cool would that be? I would never have to go home without the zuccinni or bathroom cups again.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)