APPLE iPhone: In medicine, its all about community

In my graduate degree, there is a heavy emphasis on community. With several friends who work in the medical field, I have wondered how the Doctors share information in their community. On the Apple web site, focusing on iPhone in Enterprise. I found a very interesting article on the medical industries ability to share information. The keystone in this data community is of course the Apple iPhone.

The case study that I found interesting comes from the findings of the Doylestown Hospital [595 West State Street, Doylestown, Pennsylvania 18901].

The three highlight points from the article are:

01 – The Doctors have their finger on the pulse.

02 – It is vital that the links secure.

03 – Positive impact at the patients point of car.

Here is the link to site if you want to read the case study.

I found the supporting video very informative. This video demonstrates the advantages to working in a collaborative community.

A TERABYTE DRIVE: Graham’s shameless plug for more storage

Hello all out there in blog town. Are you suffering from files, files, files & more files? For years as a media developer, I have been suffering from too many pixels & too small of a bit bucket. As a graduate student studying Education Media Design & Technology, the amount of pixels continues to swell while my existing bit bucket stays the same. So how did I finally turn the page of my storage dilemma? I bought a 1 terabyte mirrored external raid drive!

Yeah babby!!!

Are you wondering how this external drive helps an educator do his job. This question is like asking a chef why he bought a maximum capacity freezer. With this new drive, I will be able to archive all my work. This 1 terabyte drive will afford me the space to render pristine, high quality video to be repurposed in ways that I have not even been able to think of.

Here is the killer nerd part of my new drive, it is a hardware raid system. Well what does that mean in non-nerd speak? Simply put, because it has two, 1 terabyte drives when data is written to drive “A” it simultaneously writes the exact data to drive “B”. Hold on to your data cable boys & girls, it only gets better. If, yes if, drive A takes the eternal bit nap, all of my precious work has been protected to drive B. Sweetness!

With the price of hard drives falling through the floor over the past five years, this amazing data systems was less than $400.oo.

The name of the drive is appropriately named the “Gardian MAXimus”. If you are interested in this product here is the link to its page on the macsales.com web site. By the way it is compatible with both the Mac & the PC.

By the way, have you ever wondered how a hard drive works? Check out this video by the creative geniuses at common craft

QR TAGS IN THE SCHOOL: A virtual treasure hunt through education

I remember when the ubiquitous barcode showed up in the early 1980’s. My Mom & her friends picketed the local Pigley Wigley grocery store over the fact that that Graham Crackers & all the products on the shelves did not have the price sticker on them any more [true story, I kid you not].

Today, barcoding technology has taken the next step. Some people have termed this new barcoding technology as “2d barcodes”. How they came up with this name is beyond me. The real name of new barcoding technology is a QR code.

You may ask your self, what do QR tags have to do with education? The interesting thing about a QR tag is that it is a printed hyperlink to a web site. One cool way we could use QR tags is in a history class. Instead of lecturing on the discovery of America, the teacher could do a simulation of Christopher Columbus & the discovery of the new world. In the school, the teacher could place 10 – 12 QR tags that the students would have to find. This process of discovery would simulate Columbus’ discovery of the new world. When the student finds  each QR, it would open a new web site. This site would have pertinent information about that stage of the Columbus expedition. At the end of the web site would be a clue of where/how to find the next QR tag.

Here is additional information on QR tags:
01 – What can you do with a QR Tag

02 – What are QR tags & what can you do with them

03 – An iPhone app for reading QR tags

04 – How to mock up a QR tag in Adobe Photoshop

Here are two video on QR codes:

LINTICULAR PHOTOGRAPHY: Now students can enjoy their photography in 3d

I still find Web 2.0 tools truly amazing. To appreciate how much kids love photography, all I have to do is look at my niece & nephews. Several times, I have been asked by students, why the photograph of the mountains look so flat compared to the real world. That has always been an awesome question. Unfortunately, to answer their question, I find that I have to be a “photo-geek”. In my search for ways to improve my photography I found Snapily, a Web 2.0 site that is a solution until we have holographic imaging.

After the photographer submits a series of images to Snapily, the company sends you a 3d photograph. This product is based off of an old process called lenticular imaging. I know you have seen examples of lenticular photography before reading this blog. The following is an example of a lenticular product. Disney World sells a types of post cards of Donald Duck, with a lenticular postcard when you turn the object from side to side you see Donald wave at you.

I know the saying, you have to see it to believe is over used. However in the case of Snapily, you really do have to see it to believe it. With a little bit of teaching imagination, I believe a Snapily product could become a cool teaching tool.

CLASSROOMS OF THE FUTURE: What if Princess Leia & other Star Wars holograms could teach political science

I am a child of the 1970s. In 1977, a phenomenon hit the theaters, a little known director by the name of George Lucas released a movie called “Star Wars”. Yeah I know it has a much longer name, to keep it simple I still call it Star Wars. Through out the Star Wars movies, we see lots of holograms of good guys & bad guys.

Like many people, I too agree that holograms are cool & futuristic. I have dismissed holographic technology as a a sci-fi fantasy. Well, ladies & gents, Star Wars holography has come to the newsroom at CNN.

Traditionally, CNN has been the technology incubator for cool-stuff. It was not that long ago that CNN converted a cell phone into a video cell phone. Using this video cell phone technology, CNN trumped the competition & aired the news segment before any other network.

Well CNN has done it again. They have taken reporter Jessica Yellin, and turned her into a “Princess Leia hologram”.

Imagine if you will, turning a teacher into a hologram! How cool would this be for distance learning. How excited would students be if they could have a holograph of George Lucas teaching a history of film class.

Remember, Buck Rogers is not hanging out in the 25 century. He got here last Tuesday.

COPYRIGHT LAW: Presented by the right person is very interesting

Inventors need to feel free to create knowing that they are covered by a shield. That is why there are patents. Artists need to feel that they are free to create the next great piece of art. That is why there are copyright laws. While I am not an expert in intellectual property, I am a photographer who attempts to keep up to date with copyright laws. Most people are unaware that when you write or draw upon a medium as simple as a paper napkin, the “art” that you have just created is automatically covered by copyright laws.

Just the mention of this phrase “copyright law”, will clear out a room faster than you could ever imagine. If you are a photoshop dude, you most likely know who Scott Kelby is. One time when I was visiting Scott Kelby’s web site, he had an interview with Ed Greenberg. Mr. Greenberg is an intellectual lawyer who specializes in copyright law. My first thought was eek, an attorney. My second thought was double eek, copyright information. I need to book mark this site when I can not sleep.

You can not believe just how entertaining Attorney Greenberg’s presentations of dry, complex legal copyright are. A great teacher is the combination of knowledge & entertainment.

Video 01 of 02:

Vidoe 02 of 02:

If there was a category in the Academy Awards for best presentation of legal information, Ed Greenberg would win every year.

In my opinion, Google Images is the biggest “Nuke” invented to eviscerate the concept of copyrights. I have explained many times the concept of copyrights to my students. Unfortunately, they just don’t understand. They don’t understand that you can’t just grab a picture off the internet, as if you were grabbing a free Grape Snow cone from the lunch lady.

If you are interested in copyrights protected by the United State Copyright Office, I have included a link to US Copyright office.

Furthermore, if you would learn to how to electronically file a copyright, I have set up a web site link.

KEYBOARDING INFORMATION: Nothing fancy, just simple information for my friends

I thought you all would like to know how to type symbols using the Mac’s keyboard. I hope this helps, when I was working on the Mac for the first time, I was stumped. I hope this is of help to you.

Copyright symbol ©: option + g

Trademark symbol ™: option + 2

Registration symbol ® : option + r

APPLE iPhone/iPod TOUCH: What was Apple’s true vision in 1987

There is no doubt that Apple’s iPhone & iPod touch have captured peoples imaginations. If you had looked into your crystal ball less than five years ago & predicted the iPhone/iPod touch, your friends would have thought that you were crazy. There is no way that they would have believed that one day you would have an information appliance that does what an iPhone/iPod touch does. Your friends would have laughed out of the coffee cafe when you told them that this information appliance would be able to watch videos, play games, surf the internet, find your way via GPS, call your friends, check your stocks, take & manage pictures.

In 1996, I was one of the people who purchased an Apple Newton Pad 120.

The Newton was the forerunner to the Apple iPhone/iPod touch. Unfortunately, the Newton was a device that was way before its time. When I used my Newton in corporate meetings, people were just amazed at its capabilities.

Steven Seagal was so impressed with the Apple Newton Pad 120, that he used it as his “Bat Belt” in the 1995 movie release of “Under Siege 2: Dark Territory”. If it was not for the Apple Newton contacting the Pentagon, the crazy technology terrorist would have blown up the world [isn’t that the theme of all his movies].

I remember back in 1987, Apple’s CEO John Scully developed a new computing paradigm. He envision a product he called the “Knowledge Navigator”. If people would have paid attention to what Apple saw in its technology crystal ball, they would have seen the genesis of idea for the iPhone/iPod touch. I wish it would not have taken close to 20 to productize the Knowledge Navigator a.k.a. the iPhone/iPod touch.

I hope you enjoyed the videos I shared with you on this posting of my blog.

ADOBE CAPTIVATE: Part of the Adobe eLearning suite

I have been looking at Adobe Captivate for creating educational titles. The first thing that I appreciated was the way Captivate integrates with Microsoft PowerPoint. Let’s face it, PowerPoint is the de facto standard presentation software. PowerPoint is so ubiquitous, that my 7 year old nephew is creating PowerPoint slides in class.

The one thing that we all need more of is time. I really like the user interface that Adobe devised for Captivate. It looks like great content can be created quickly & easily.

In the past when I was designing/developing CBT [computer based training] courses I had tried to learn Macromedia Authorware. This was the strangest piece of software I had ever tried to learn, its “flow chart” metaphor was just to cumbersome. I always defaulted back to Macromedia Director, some of my co-developers thought that Director was a arcane as Authorware. Regardless of the authoring platform, clients want the same thing. They need interactive elements, quizzes & ways to keep track of the student’s scores.  Kids today are part of the “short attention span theatre generation”, if it does not capture their imagination they loose interest very fast. One compoent of Captivate, is its ability to employ game development widgets.

Captivate is a very deep yet powerful software tool. In hope this blog entry was of interest to you.

ADOBE SYSTEMS: New Adobe eLearning suite

Bundles, bundles & more bundles, we see it everywhere. When you buy a pizza, you get chicken wings [food bundles]. When you buy a cell phone, for a penny, you get a second cell phone [telephone bundles].

The good folks at Adobe Systems have been bundling their software for several years. You can get bundles if you are a Print designer, a Web designer, or a Video designer. Now there is a bundle for eLearning professionals.

This bundle features new tools designed specific for eLearning. Stay tuned for more information on this Adobe Suite.