Exploring the "if this then that" web app: making the Internet work for you

I discovered a neat little web app called ifttt (if this then that) that makes it easy and fun to run "if/then" statements across the internet by utilizing API's of various web apps such as twitter, google reader, instagram, and many more.  For example, I set up three if/then tasks to see how it works. The first task I set up was IF I upload a picture to Instagram THEN automatically save a copy of it in my Dropbox. The second task I set up was IF I make a blog post here on blogger, THEN automatically send a tweet out to my terenceonline twitter followers.  The third task I set up was IF I star an article in Google Reader THEN send a tweet out to my terenceonline twitter followers linking them to the starred article. There are numerous other if/then statements you can set up and I think people will find ways to get creative with it.  This is similar to what Yahoo Pipes was doing back in the day,but this is bit more simple to use. The only draw back I see right now is that you have to authorize IFTTT to access all of the accounts you set up, which isn't uncommon theses days, but may make some people nervous. If you found this article from my twitter then the IFTTT task worked. What are some neat ways that educators can take advantage of IFTTT? One more thing -- This IFTTT recipe page is pretty cool to get ideas of how people are using it http://ifttt.com/recipes

UPDATE:  The blogger to twitter task has not been working, however the Google Reader to Twitter Task worked fine.

The Perfect Tablet for Me - An Obvious Idea in Tablet Innovation that Should Have Been on the Market Last Year

Tablets are excellent tools for content consumption, yet their OS's and overall design limit their ability to produce content. The Asus Transformer and Eeepad Slider were steps in the right direction as devices geared at both consuming and producing content, yet the Honeycomb OS still hampers the content creation process, even with the keyboard. I think a really simple idea would be to use honeycomb OS when the device is being used as a Tablet, yet when you dock it to the keyboard you should be able to choose to switch over to the Chrome OS or Win 7 OS. Apple could do the same thing with an ipad that when docked to a keyboard could switch to the Lion OS for the heavy lifting. Even though Apple doesn't care about Flash, this would enable the device to get the entire internet experience through Lion OS when docked as well. A really simple idea that would enable all the Netbook users of the world to make the switch over to the Tablet Hybrids. What do you think? Is there anything on the market that does this?

Speaking at the WCET Conference - Best Methods of Collaboration in Inst. Design

Best Methods of Collaboration in Inst. Design
November 13, 2010, 8:00 AM-9:00 AM - Pavilion
WCET Conference - http://wcetconference.wiche.edu/

Presenter: Terence Armentano
Presenter: Michael Edwards

In today's connected world, instructional designers and content experts have multiple ways of collaborating on projects. From video conferencing and social networks to blogs, wikis and simple emails, options for collaboration abound but can almost be overbearing. This roundtable will focus the discussion on how best to select and deploy the best and most efficient methods for effective collaboration in instructional design.

Powerful Lecture by Sir Ken Robinson on the Need For a Changing Educational Paradigm

I enjoyed both the content of this lecture and the creative way in which it was produced. I love how the art in this video engaged and connected my brain to the content of the lecture itself. I could see this communication method as a very powerful online learning tool where artists and teachers collaborate to engage the learners. Check it out

New Blog Design, New Post - Innovation always tops greed and complacency. Always.

It's been a while since my last post, but my new blog design, combined with a thought provoking TechCrunch article inspired me to write a fresh new post. I found this article in TechCrunch to be very insightful regarding disruptive technologies and how they change things rapidly. This particular article, titled- The Full-On Assault On Cable Is Underway is about how the CABLE industry in particular is being shaken up by emerging technology giants such as Google, Apple, Amazon, and Netflix. In a nutshell, the internet can provide people with the ala carte TV viewing experience people have been asking cable companies to give them for a long time. But cable companies have been slow to respond to this demand because they had very little reason to do so. Now that TV's are having wi-fi built in, one can connect to the internet and hook up with Netflix, HULU, Google TV, Apple TV, Amazon On-Demand, YouTube and many other options. The main problem with this model currently is content, but that is changing rapidly. I myself canceled cable last year and elected to subscribe to Netflix for $9/month. I can get over the air HD channels too, which is a nice free option. With increased connectivity and options, Cable companies are going to be forced to innovate or as the article puts it, "...surrender and fall back into its role as a dumb pipe for the Internet. Innovation always tops greed and complacency. Always. The assault is underway." Disruptive technologies change paradigms drastically. "The music industry has already been disrupted. The book industry has been disrupted. The mobile industry has been disrupted" and now the CABLE industry is being disrupted. The writing is on the wall for the CABLE company so they better innovate and compete or simply become Internet Service Providers. As this blog is primarily about emerging technologies and education, I can't help but see connections to Higher Education. Bill Gates sees the disruption in Higher Ed and predicts that "In Five Years The Best Education Will Come From The Web." The Colleges and Universities that will be prepared, unlike the CABLE companies, have already been making strategic plans that take into account the nature of disruptive technology and will leverage the technology for the betterment of their institution and their students' experience.

"People probably never thought the Kindle and other similar devices would lead to a changing of the book industry as quickly as it has — but it’s happening, just ask the Borders down the street from me which is going out of businesses." Does your University think more like Amazon or Borders?

Good and Fast Overview Video of IPad

Will the Bloom Box become the "Google" of Green Energy?

Google took the information age by storm. Could this be the black swan, the "google" if you will, of the green energy age? What do you think? Check out this video.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

original source - http://mashable.com/2010/02/21/bloom-box/

Google Vs. Apple - Who is better for the internet?

I was tweeting these thoughts but it's too complex for a series of tweets/sound bites so here is a blog post to elaborate. First the facts. Both Apple and Google are Corporations and therefore have the goal of making profit for their shareholders. Both are doing everything possible to make their shareholders money so there is no good guy/bad guy scenario, it's just economics. However, there is a distinct advantage for the consumer and the evolution of the internet regarding Google's business model vs. apple's business model. This is because of how these companies make their money. Google is, first and foremost, an advertising company and their mode of delivery is the interwebs. Their goal is to get as many people online as possible AND make the online experience as awesome and cheap as possible so they will stay online longer. period. The more people are online the more money they will get from Google Ads. This is how they make 97% of their money and since most people don't even know that fact, I think that just shows that their ads are not so annoying as to bother people surfing the interwebs. Google doesn't care if people are on a mac or pc or really what browser they are using as long as the browser displays ads. They don't make any money from selling Chrome or Android, etc. Those are actually free and open source tools that anyone can use. Motorola can thank Google for the free Android OS that they built their phone on. Yes, these tools serve google's money making purposes in the long run because the android OS makes the internet more accessible, and that's where they want people to be, but they are still free and open and high quality, which makes for a good competitive environment where consumers win. Companies that make money from selling proprietary tools at high cost don't like a company like google who pretty much gives them away in exchange for the hope that you will click on their ads some day. I personally think thats a fair exchange.

Apple is a different company with a completely different way of doing business. Apple makes money not from advertisements, but from selling cutting edge software, hardware, and media. They also sell a computing experience that they believe deserves a premium price tag. Unlike Google, whose main interest is getting people online to click ads, Apple wants people online to buy their media primarily through itunes (music, movies, books, computers, etc). So Apple has to be thinking, "how can we get the most amount of people to buy our media?" Solution = Iphone-like OS and App store. This allows them to control the entire experience from what apps go on the system to whether or not flash will work in the browser. Their method to get what they want means a closed system of control in which they call all the shots. The method for google to get what they want = an open and free internet. I think Apple makes some awesome products, but I still like choices. Though google and apple are very different companies, they both affect the evolution of the internet. Google's ad driven approach creates a much more open internet ecosystem. Apple's app store approach creates a user friendly experience, but a more closed-off internet, in which apple calls all the shots with their app approval system. Which company do you think is better for the internet?

Did You Know 4.0

This is another official update to the original "Shift Happens" video. This completely new Fall 2009 version includes facts and stats focusing on the changing media landscape, including convergence and technology, and was developed in partnership with The Economist. For more information, or to join the conversation, please visit http://mediaconvergence.economist.com and http://shifthappens.wikispaces.com.

Google's New Real-Time Search Streams Breaking News and Live Twitter Updates

From lifehacker, "It's really amazing to see live updates in search results, but there's plenty of people that don't give a hoot about what the folks on Twitter or Facebook are talking about. It will also be interesting to see how Google keeps the signal-to-noise ratio down when huge news breaks and people everywhere are blogging, posting, and sometimes unintentionally spreading false information." See Video of new search in action:

A new kind of computer - A new generation of computing - Google Chrome OS

The power of web apps has ushered in a new generation of computing. Web apps like gmail, youtube, lala, pandora, mint, blogger, wordpress, google maps, netflix, twitter, facebook etc have us all glued to the internet. This is good news for Google. Ever wonder why google gives away almost all of their web apps for free? Because they want you online! Personally, I consider that a fair trade. I get their free apps and in exchange I tolerate Google Ads and sometimes find them helpful unlike random commercials on TV, which DVR's are killing off. Anyway, Google wants everyone to be online all the time and they want that experience to be as awesome as possible because the longer people are online, the more they will see Google Ads, which is how they make 95% of their money. To be honest, google should just start giving everyone a computer on their 16th birthday, kind of like Gillette does with razors. All that to say, Google isn't giving away computers, but they do want to make them cheap and they want them to fly on the internet. Google is working on developing a new computer that runs Google Chrome OS that is soley designed for the internet. It will be centered around SPEED and SECURITY. They are doing this because 90% of the stuff we want to do on the computer is all done on the internet and they like it that way. Google also thinks storing data on your personal computer is old-school so these computers won't do that. Your thinking "HUH?" Google thinks it should all be done in the cloud on secure servers. I know what you are thinking "what about security?!" Well, the facts are that if you are on a PC and you are connected to the internet, chances are the data on your PC is actually less secure than it would be on server protected by million dollar security systems. What's more secure, your house or Fort Knox? Think of cold hard cash vs electronic funds. Some people love to pay with cash and will only feel secure doing so. They hate the idea of online banking because what if it gets hacked? In addition, this person will also feel the need to keep all their mp3's physically located on a personal computer along with all their secure financial information. If that is you, this whole idea will not interest you (at least for several more years). Also, the Google Chrome OS is not for everyone unless technology advances so quickly that it becomes possible to do real hardcore video and graphics editing on the internet with web apps. Seems like too much processing power would be needed at this point, but in the future who knows?

I think the idea is interesting and this is what I love about Google. They are always pushing the status quo and thinking outside of the box. I'm not sure how this will go, but they are challenging people and companies to truly think different and they are doing something about it with their actions. Check out this video on Chrome OS to learn more about it. What do you think about it? Do you think this is the future of desktop computing? Matthew Murray from PC Mag has an interesting article about that topic here. How do mobile apps fit into this equation? Are traditional desktops old school? Do you trust the cloud or do you need your personal hard drive? I think I would buy one if it were $99 or less and I would use it at first just to explore the possibilities. Then I would blog about it :-)

Google's World Changing Project -- You can vote!

Google started a project last year in which they gathered ideas from all over the world on how to best change the world for the better and now people are voting on them. What idea from the list do you find most promising? Which ones should Google make happen? You tell them. Your vote for one of these ideas will help their advisory board choose up to 5 projects to fund, at which point they'll launch an RFP process to identify the organization(s) that are best suited to implementing them. Check them out and vote here -- http://www.project10tothe100.com/vote.html

Titles of Potential Projects:

1. Collect and organize the world's urban data
2. Build better banking tools for everyone
3. Encourage positive media depictions of engineers and scientists
4. Work toward socially conscious tax policies
5. Provide quality education to African students
6. Make government more transparent
7. Create real-time natural crisis tracking system
8. Help social entrepreneurs drive change
9. Make educational content available online for free
10. Drive innovation in public transport
11. Create more efficient landmine removal programs
12. Build real-time, user-reported news service
13. Create real-world issue reporting system
14. Enhance science and engineering education
15. Create genocide monitoring and alert system
16. Promote health monitoring and data analysis

The World is Open

News: 'The World Is Open' - Inside Higher Ed

Technology is changing higher education in more ways than can be counted. Distance education has become common. Leading universities are putting course materials or even entire courses online -- free. The Obama plan for community colleges envisions free online courses that could be used nationwide. Curtis J. Bonk, a professor of instructional systems technology at Indiana University, surveys this landscape in The World Is Open: How Web Technology is Revolutionizing Education (Jossey-Bass). Bonk responded to questions about the book in an e-mail interview.

A very fascinating read.  The open access to educational materials and experts is virtually limitless. What role do universities play in such an open educational world.  For example, in years past, one aspect of accreditation for colleges involved access to scholarly journals, but as the article reveals in the following quote, this has changed drastically in the information age, "When I was in primary school in the 1960s and 1970s, I had to walk next door to borrow the Compton Encyclopedia volume that I needed. They were free for me to use when the neighbors were home. Today, Yahoo! Education provides free access to the Roget’s II Thesaurus (260,000 synonyms and cross references), Colombia Encyclopedia (more than 50,000 entries and 84,000 hypertext cross-references between the content), and American Heritage Dictionary (definitions, word spellings, and word suggestions as well as more than 200,000 entries, 70,000 audio word pronunciations, and 900 full-page color illustrations). If that is not enough, there is the Encyclopedia Britannica, and yes, that trusty Wikipedia that is now the seventh most accessed Web site in the United States." After reading the article, "What are a few ways you expect these movements to change higher education in another 10 or 20 years?"

BLOGS.BGSU a Digital and Educational Revolution at Bowling Green State University

There is a lot more than meets the eye to BLOGS.BGSU.EDU, the homegrown blogging platform developed by Assistant Director of COBL, Terence Armentano. Blogs and microblogs such as Twitter have taken the world by storm. Why? Because they blast open the floodgates of communication. They give everyone a voice and anyone with an internet or even a mobile phone connection can listen in and talk back. Upon closer inspection of BLOGS.BGSU, one will notice it is not just about new technology, it's about a movement, a change in thinking, a paradigm shift, a leveling of the proverbial playing field. It's about what happens to a university when everyone has a voice. For the first time in history, we can leverage the collective intelligence of the university to potentially solve greater and more complex problems in the world. Think about the following scenario: Everyone at the university has unique life experiences and varying degrees of expertise in life. Some have much more life and work experience than others, but surely the sum is greater than its parts. For example, if we have around 20,000 faculty, staff, and students here at BGSU and the average age is 25 then we have 500,000 years of experience between us that we can learn from. BLOGS.BGSU is a great way to leverage such experiences as everyone can contribute. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

BLOGS.BGSU is built upon the Wordpress platform, and everyone with a BGSU email account can login today and start blogging. However, upon closer investigation of the system, one will notice that it can be used to do more than blog. In fact, one will discover the nerve center of a web 2.0 revolution at BGSU in which students, faculty, and staff are creating, consuming, categorizing, and publishing content to the internet as well as networking, interacting, discussing, and critiquing each others posts. The system is so flexible it can be used to build everything from a simple news blog to a web 2.0 portal complete with static and dynamic web pages, blogs, podcasts, flickr integration, Google statistics tracking, and more. Depending on one's goals, the system can be leveraged to create websites, portfolios, tweets, podcasts, journals, news sites, and more. One of the best ways to understand this phenomenon is to view examples of how it is being used. The following are just a few of the creative ways in which people and departments at BGSU are using the system:

Center for Online and Blended Learning
Academic Technology
BGSU Strategic Planning Blog
Dr. Sue Mota - MBA 6070x
Brad's Art 101 Blog
Blackboard Video Tutorial Database Blog
MBA Blog
Jake Graving's Art 101 Blog
Music Library and Sound Recordings Archives News
Center for Teaching and Learning

News from the Curriculum Resource Center

The Rec Well Wire - Connecting Recreation and Wellness Enthusiasts
Dr. Natvig’s BGSU 1000 Blog -This blog is the main site for the music section of BGSU1000

SMC Blog - School of Media and Communication news/event blog
Second Life Virtual Campus
BGSU University Libraries News
Carolyn Kraut - Instructional Designer, COBL
Terence Armentano - Assistant Director, COBL

International Studies - The blog for International Studies majors at BGSU!
Dr. Gwen Evans - Companion site to Third Year Review
Language Learning

Interactive Communication Technologies Course Blog

Jordian Ross - Student Blog and Portfolio

The Tower and the Cloud

Bullet points from Richard N Katz's keynote presentation - Vice President of Educause

• Powershift in Higher Ed- 1100-? (popes>princes>professors>people)
• Stanley Katz - don't mistake a tool for a goal
• Martin Trow - information technology is embedded in, and used by, institutions that have a history.
• Higher Ed shift from public good to private investment
• We are in the information age and we are in the information business
• The cloud is big! How is the cloud growing to envelop our Universities? How is the University using the cloud to extend it's presence? How might the cloud alter the form of our social institutions?
• google search of "professor" takes you to wikipedia and ratemyprofessor.com
• Emergence of the Collective - wikipedia, citizen journalism, seti
• Exponential growth looks like nothing is happening until it explodes - Ray Kurzwell
• We live in a knowledge revolution, but colleges are not at the center of that revolution.
• Increasing access to knowledge does not equal increasing literacy or numeracy.
• The context of IT does not equal the context of higher ed (we do not serve all who can learn, we have not made higher ed more efficient, we have not yet transformed learning)
• Really Neat IT does not equal student engagement and success ( high rates of attrition, evidence of declining engagement, high need of remediation, the vanishing student)
• Everything digital, everyone online, does not equal privatizing of knowledge
• YET Great IT = Great Research
• Open Education is surprising us!
• Cloudy Future: School of Athens?
• We are now a consumer goods.
  
  
  
• Since technology is so high quality, the time is now to ask what is the "idea" of the university? What is the university trying to do? what does the institution really need to do well to manifest its intent? What are the information infrastructure, environment, and services that will enable(or drive) this?
• Do we have a strategy and an infrastructure to: discover, engage, attract, and develop talent? Re-think scholarly communications? Promote scholarly literacy, engagement, and global citizenship? Make the institution influential on local, regional, national, or world affairs.
• Universities are aggregaters of talent.
• Do our policies and incentives reinforce what our infrastructure, services and resources enable?
• Summing it up -- IT has gotten better. So good in fact, it allows us to change things. Profoundly. IT allows others to change things as well, making our task more urgent and more complex. Our challenge is less technical and more one of institutional purpose, adaptability, and will. The needs of our stakeholders are changing. Soon virtual environments to support learning and discovery will rival and surpass "built" ones, in certain cases. The successful university of the future will know its values, have clarity of purpose, and an IT capacity to reflect and extend those values and purposes globally.

I'm Presenting at the 2009 Sloan-C/Moodle Moot Conference

Just a quick update to let you know that I am presenting at the Sloan-C/MoodleMoot 2009 Conference in San Francisco, CA.  I am in San Francisco right now and enjoying the area.  This is my first time in California. It's a bit chillier than I thought it would be ( high 60's) compared to Ohio (80's).  I'm looking forward to the conference as there are quite a few presentations that interest me.   Here is info about my presentation. Feel free to contact me if you are at the conference.

TITLE: 
University 2.0: Open source as a cornerstone

PRESENTERS:
Amanda Rondeau, Director, Emerging Academic Technologies Distributed Education and Instructional Technology Office of the Senior Vice President & Provost, University of Minnesota
Terence Armentano, Assistant Director, Center for Online and Blended Learning, Bowling Green State University
Marc Oehlman, Interim Director, Center for Academic Technology, CSU Monterey Bay
Andrew Roderick, Technology Development Manager, Academic Technology, San Francisco State University

DESCRIPTION:
As budgets decrease, the use of open source software for enterprise-level applications has increased within higher education. This session will examine current open-source development and integration projects at four different campuses and strategies each campus has implemented related to teaching and learning, technology management, and organizational administration.

Colleges consider using blogs instead of blackboard: Getting closer, but not completely thought through, in my opinion

The article titled, "Colleges Consider Using Blogs Instead of Blackboard" in the Chronicle of Higher Education, gets some things right and some things wrong, in my opinion. I want to keep this somewhat short because I could write a novel on this topic. First, they understand that paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for Blackboard might not be the best technological solution to facilitate learning. Second, they have experienced the sheer power of the Wordpress blogging platform, which can be used to develop websites that facilitate online learning, eportfolios, blogs, and more... PLUS it's OPEN SOURCE. Yes, it's license free. "What? Something must be wrong with it then." Nope, only one's inability to understand open source software and how it works. We have implemented Wordpress at BGSU as the foundation of our web 2.0 learning landscape. The platform enables the brilliant minds of our university to easily consume, collaborate, communicate, and create content. It facilitates the publication of audio, video, images, and presentations quite easily. In fact, I am giving a presentation on our Wordpress project at the 2009 Moodle Moot/ Sloan-C Conference in San Francisco. In essence, the Wordpress Platform is very powerful and customizable and could be used to deliver great content. If the only thing they wanted a learning management system to do was to present content and provide an interactive platform for learning, then it would meet their needs just fine, but the Learning Management System must do more than that. Wordpress, without tons of customizations to the core, cannot and does not provide the same functionality that a Learning Management System can provide. A better direction for CUNY to go would be to continue to support Wordpress because it is an amazing teaching and learning platform, BUT ALSO look into implementing Moodle, an open source learning managements system, to replace Blackboard if they are unhappy with Blackboard. I personally think Blackboard and Moodle are equals with very different price tags. Either way, the technological infrastructure of Moodle and Blackboard is designed to do different things than the technology in Wordpress. For example, Moodle and Blackboard both have grade books, test creation tools, advanced discussion forums, assignment drop boxes, and they interface with a variety of Student Information Systems for enrollment management. To draw an analogy from a brick and mortar classroom, Moodle/Blackboard would be a classroom with a locked door equipped with chalkboard, desks, computers, projector, and other cool teaching and learning tools. Wordpress would be like equipping all the computers in the classroom with state of the art technology that enables the teachers and students to take teaching and learning to another level that neither Learning Management Systems can provide on their own. Yes, they will both claim to have blogging features, but as I stated before Wordpress is much more than a blogging platform. My point is that CUNY would be better off looking at Moodle and Wordpress as an open source alternative to Blackboard instead of just Wordpress.

Wolfram Alpha - Making the world's knowledge computable - Now What?

See ya later great knowledge memorizers of the world, and hello great knowledge appliers of the world. Is it me or are the people inhabiting this third rock from the sun, connecting, computing, and collecting knowledge like nothing we've ever seen before. Well, except for maybe the time we humans tried building that Tower of Babel, which ended up not working out so well. Introducing.... Wolfram Alpha, a powerful computational knowledge engine that seeks to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by ANYONE. Connect this to a mobile device and we become walking and talking systematic knowledge carriers. We've had access to knowledge via the internet for quite some time, but this immediate access to systematic knowledge is something a little newer and worth pondering. I wonder if teachers will FINALLY stop creating tests that assess our students ability to memorize facts and start testing the application of those facts to solve real world problems. I'm especially looking at Universities to take up this challenge. With tools like Wolfram Alpha and Google Squared available to us, educational institutions should start building curriculum with the highest levels of Bloom's Taxonomy in mind. Maybe instructional designers could start with the fact that humans have access to just about all the available knowledge in the world and build from there. It sounds kind of funny, but it's true. This doesn't mean everyone understands the knowledge, but for the first time in history we do have easy access to it. Therefore, it is crucial we teach students where to find the knowledge, and then help them develop the skills to apply, analyse, synthesize, and evaluate it. We need to re-think assessment and skill acquisition for this day and age in this Knowledge Economy. It's time for schools to build curriculum that challenge us to really engage in the application of knowledge and not the memorization of definitions, forumulas, and factoids. That's lazy instruction. Yes, there is a place for memorizing in education...It is a good idea for teachers to memorize their students' names and interests. Personally, I don't care how great of a memorizor my accountant is. I want to know if that person can think about whole systems and solve financial problems that can save me money. What does it mean for you to have access to the world's systematic knowledge? How will you apply it? What does it mean for schools? How can they apply tools like Wofram Alpha and Google Squared to their curriculum. What does it mean for businesses? What do you think?

The Official White House on Flickr

A Flickr stream for the Whitehouse is a great idea. I think it gives the public a more personal, social, and connected feel to the government. If you comment on a photo you know someone in the whitehouse will see it and they may even check out your Flickr photos. Pretty cool. Check it out...http://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse

LLT 2009 Conference

I just got back from presenting at the LLT Conference in Columbus, Ohio. It was a rich learning experience and great place to meet colleagues from around the state interested in technology and education.  A  colleague of mine from Rhodes State, Michael Edwards, has a well written review on his blog about my presentation as well as a very neat short video he put together of the Monday sessions featuring Carolyn Kraut, Dr. Bruce Edwards, and myself. 


LLT09 Highlights from Michael Edwards on Vimeo.