| July 30, 2010 | Posted by Brian Lake under Web Services Blog |
|
We’d like to say happy one year on the job to Shefali – she’s been on the job for a full year and done an astonishing amount of work in that time. Here’s to year two!
As with all such occasions, cake is mandatory.
| July 28, 2010 | Posted by Brian Lake under Conferences, Learning Technologies, Web Services Blog |
|
Web Services are in London today at the Apple store. We’ve recently purchased a sizeable new batch of macs and are hoping to launch our iPhone app this week – we hope to follow with an Android app soon.
Today’s session is on mobile learning in education – I suspect using iPad, iPhone, and ipod touch devices. This suits us as we gear up as an iTunes U partner.
I’ll be updating through the day. Stay tuned.
I always get lost in London…
First up, Steve Molyneux from Sussex College. Talked about how they’ve used wikis and blogs on the mac and how it impacted the student and teacher learning experience.
Second, Podcast Producer and Wiki functionality. How they work, how to set up, and how to create workflows. The idea of the presentation is that it is all dead simple and visual – the value is in making it easy to set this service up, and lower the barrier to entry.
The great thing is that we have this technology in house at Guildford – not sure if we’ll get to use it, but it depends on how the e-learning strategy goes forward and how we implement the institutional VLE plan. Great to have such good options though, and for so cheap. It really addresses issues with literacy skills, and where we go with adjusting to the needs of teachers.
Using the iPad in Further Education.
Yorkshire Coast College: A demonstration of iPad technology in the classroom. I’m particularly interested in the ability to put PDFs on the ipad and distribute them through podcasts. In terms of document handling, its a useful resource.
I’m not so sold on the rest – the 700 quid ipad costs as much as a couple of netbooks – is there a compelling rationale for me to get the phone, rather than 2 netbooks and an ipod touch?
ITunes U – Daryl Hawes
The point of the event today – to see how this works in practice.
The idea is putting content somewhere it can get onto mobile devices. Tying into the mobile store is the main benefit. Mostly related to ease of installation, and how it fits with FE schools. The theme is to engage local communities and businesses. You can also showcase the quality of student work across the country.
How many students are using smart phones? Answer – not as many as you think. But we are preparing for the posibility and the improving environment.
And main question for today answered!
That being – how does the content get referenced in iTunes U? It gets done in podcast producer 2.0 – we can create work-flows around it. Trip is now automatically worthwhile. “In one FE college enrolments were up by 30% due to iTunes U presence”
iPhone apps
Luke Fieldhouse gives a presentation on how apps work and can be useful. Example of Standford university. We have some direct experience of this – signing up to the apps store can be hard for a HE/FE institution. Luke advises that we get in touch with him to smooth the process – its a bit Americanised at the moment. James Clay mentions ‘GameSalad‘ as a way to make iPhone apps easily with no programming experience. Luke also mentions that Apple impose no limit on the amount of similar apps on the app store and that it can be difficult to find the best apps.
Accessibility
Luke shows an example of how iPhone can be used for the blind:
We had an interesting debate about Android inventor vs iphone development. Android is making it easier to develop. James Clay pointed out that Apple has a history of making these apps easier to develop – its early days yet, and we may see more of that soon.
Special needs students funded through Molnet – Iphone has been incredibly useful for them. The idea of the design is to be useful for are afraid of technology. People want to touch and hold things – it is a natural way to interact.
| July 28, 2010 | Posted by Brian Lake under Gadgets, Learning Technologies |
|
we’ve been looking at the iPhone app for Twitter and asking how well it works with our blogging service. Today we look at the same app for the HTC hd2 running Android.
In a way its almost like Twitter – shorter is better as you can’t possibly keep up any sort of pace. But the landscape keyboard does have its moments though. Auto-correction is quite good as well. The voice dictation is promising as well.
In short, we will certainty pursue Android development as our new web site initiatives evolve. Both platforms should cover the majority of mobile devices in the coming years.
| July 17, 2010 | Posted by admin under Learning Technologies, Web Services Blog |
|
The Document Repository is a searchable central document storage area for all college staff, storing: Policies, Procedures, Forms, Plan, Reports, Templates & Risk Assessments. It is a custom built application using .net.
Web Services have recently given it a makeover to improve the user experience:
GO! Nominees please note that repository usernames and passwords havenot changed. Enjoy!
| July 13, 2010 | Posted by admin under Learning Technologies |
Web Services are upgrading to Blackboard 9.1 this summer (the college is currently using Blackboard 7.3) so there will be a number of new and exciting features:
| July 11, 2010 | Posted by admin under Gadgets |
|
I’ve just bought a new iPhone 4 so I thought I’d write a few notes about my experiences so far.
Firstly I’m blogging using the WordPress 2.5 app, it never worked on my old iPhone, I entered all the correct login details but it would always error but this version worked straightaway. I’ve previously owned an iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS. I got the 3GS free in January, as part of a new contract back then I traded the old one in for £165 from o2 recycle. This time round the best deal I found was £230 from usedfone.co.uk for the 3GS. The new phone only cost £209, so I’m actually making money (apart from the contract buy out, I had one month before the cheap contract buy out was up, so given all the iPhone 4 stock problems was beginning to think I wouldn’t bother).
Anyway back to the new iPhone, the old 3GS was upgraded to OS4 so using the new one wasn’t really that different.
Pros
Cons
| July 8, 2010 | Posted by admin under Conferences, Learning Technologies |
|
Hi All,
I attended a presentation with Gary Musham (e-learning manager) on July 7th entitled “The New Classroom: Reframing the Learning Experience.” Essentially it was a product advertisement for Tanberg – a company recently acquired by Cisco. But it gave us insight into where the learning-enhanced classroom is going. At the moment, our pilot classroom is nearing completion – the hardware is in place and the software configuration is under way. It should be recording lectures in standard definition by the fall.
But the room is set up to do more than this. it has been built with the following capabilities in mind:
At the moment we are limited by one bottleneck – the Echo 360 system. It does the job particualrly well, but there are shortcomings:
The alternative is the Codec C60. What is it? It’s a box. But its a very good box. Unlike the box we are evaluating now (the Echosystem) is can combine video streams in real time, and in high definition. It also allows you to record lectures, and hold live conference calls. You can conference with other classrooms, or across the world.
Here’s a promotional video – skip the first minute of commercial-speak and you’ll see a very interesting model of video collaboration.
Whats the catch? Mostly cost. The Cisco system costs about five times as much as the Echo 360 system. But you
get the extra capability, and you own the technology – you don’t rent it. Which means that after a few years of multi-thousand pound payments, you can either continue renting a limited system, or own a conferencing/recording system.
Obviously there are a lot of considerations, and we are only on version 1.0 of our Learning Enhanced Classroom. But this is the direction the project is moving in. We’ll continue to tweak the system through the pilot stage, and then evaluate the addition of video conferencing for revision 1.1.
It’s important to know what you think – is there value in having conferencing capability? Would you like people to be able to call in to a class? These are things we’d like to add, but we want your input. Let Web Services know what you think.
| July 1, 2010 | Posted by admin under Learning Technologies |
|
The first Guildford College iPhone app is nearly ready to be submitted to Apple for Approval. Here’s a few notes of the journey so far.
Technical Requirements
Concept
I wanted to start with an app that was quite simple and achievable, so it wouldn’t take too long and get a Guildford College presence on the app store quickly and before the new academic year started. So I thought for version 1.0, use links to the websites, campus maps, email and telephone. Then build on this for version 1.1 and beyond. I didn’t want to add prospectus PDFs because we have 5 for Guildford and 1 for Farnham, combined they would make the app too big and would take too long to download even on wifi.
I used the following software:
Design
I found an excellent iPhone Photoshop template resource. Based on iOS4, it includes all the elements you need to design proof-of-concepts or production ready assets. I used this to create the interface design and button style. I then saved out all of the buttons, logos etc as transparent PNGs ready for import into xcode.
The icon is quite simple, dark ‘Gc’ text on a white background. Similar to the favourite icon used on the websites. This was saved out twice, once for the itunes store artwork (512×512 iTunesArtwork.png) and secondly for the iPhone icon (57×57 icon.png).
I used Google maps (my maps) to create three maps for Merrist Wood, Stoke Park and Farnham College. I added different coloured placemarks for key points at each campus giving a short description and importing a photograph. Marketing then approved the content. and they were then added to the Guildford College and Farnham College websites using iframes (good example of being able to reuse/repurpose work).
Development
I used an Apple sample Tab based project as the starting point. I needed 4 buttons, one for home and one for each campus menu. I created the three menus screens, the home page and finally the three webview controllers for the maps. The menus and webviews all use near identical code. Once the code was written I could link up the buttons.
The maps are quite slow at loading, slower than using the inbuilt map functions. I’ve added some activity spinners on ‘webviewdidload’ but they do finish a little early. I considered using inbuilt maps but they are slower to setup and if I wanted to make a change I’d have to resubmit the app.
Testing
I’m using my own personal iPhone 3GS (OS4 installed) and an iTouch (OS3.1.3) to test. Because I’ve added a ‘call’ button I needed to check this switched off if the user wasn’t using an iPhone. The simulator is good but it can’t test everything. Once happy I took screenshots (Apple + shift + 3), cropped them to 320×480 and uploaded into iTunes Connect.
Conclusion
xcode isn’t the best bit of software I’ve ever used, it constantly spawns new windows, I’m forever moving windows about to clear some space, hopefully the new version will improve this but I’m unsure when it’s due out. Also when you look at the project folder in Finder it doesn’t use the folder structure from xCode so all of the files are dumped on the top root level, making it harder to in things and lastly try not to rename any files, I spent over an hour fixing broken references when I renamed a few class files.
I haven’t heard anything good about Apple’s communication when submitting apps so it will be interesting to see what happens. I’m expecting it to take a week after submission before I hear anything back, unsure if it being free, simple and from educational establishment will make any difference.
App submission update
Just come unstuck when trying to upload app into the app store using iTunes Connect. To create apps you need valid ‘developer’ and ‘distribution’ certificates and provisioning profiles. Because we are using the Apple University Program we aren’t allowed:
All we can do is create an app and deliver it to 200 registered devices, time consuming and not much use. So we’ll have to sign up to the standard program at $99 per year.
30/07/2010 update
I am now finally a signed up ‘Standard’ developer, (only taken a month!). It has taken me all morning to get the certificates, provisioning profiles all working in xcode and linked up to the iPhone 4 and our new iPod Touch. But next problem is when I log into iTunes Connect to submit the app, I’m not in the right account, its still linked up to the Higher Education Developer account. So I’ll wait for response from Apple’s support, hopefully it won’t take too long to put right.
10/09/2010 update
Apple have approved the Guildford College app, only took 11 days. They also fixed the dual iTunes account problem I was having. App isn’t available through store yet, it needs to be updated with the new college branding before it is allowed to be live, so all being well v1.1 will be available at the end of September.
29/09/2010 update
iGuildford app is now live.
Useful Links
Here’s the iPhone/iTouch button icon and screenshot of the Merrist Wood menu screen:
