@nstone: Good luck with the 1000 words! Just think of it as a couple of blog posts... ;-)
Category Archive for ‘Technology’ at dougbelshaw.com

Archive for the 'Technology' Category

The feature that will make Posterous better than Edublogs is…

Published
by
Doug Belshaw
on 6 August 2008
in Education and Technology
.

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…themes! Or at least backgrounds and the ability to change the colours on your blog home page - à la Twitter.

<<< Rewind! For those who haven’t come across Posterous, it’s a great blogging platform that just works. You can blog by logging into your account as with normal platforms, but the real power of Posterous comes through it’s ability to ‘intelligently’ deal with anything you send to post@posterous.com.

In fact, sending an email is all you need to do to set up a blog in the first place. I love how straightforward it is to use - it certainly sticks to the 7 Essential Guidelines for Functional Design as far as I’m concerned! Text formatting from your email is retained on the blog post, links to YouTube become embedded videos, PDFs and text files become Flashpaper-like previews, and images become galleries. Check out my test posts here and here! :-D

As far as next year and my E-Learning Staff Tutor role, this is perfect for recommending for classroom teacher blogs. It’s just so easy to get stuff up there and online! For students, however, a Twitter-like ability to change colours, backgrounds, etc. needs to be there before they’re likely to be sold on it… :-p

Thanks to @tombarrett and @johnjohnston for making me aware of Posterous!

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3 reasons I returned my iPhone 3G

Published
by
Doug Belshaw
on 1 August 2008
in Technology
.

A couple of days ago I bought an iPhone 3G. Today I returned it. Although it’s an amazing device and revolutionary, it didn’t really suit me. My Nokia N95 is pretty much exactly what I want at the moment - it’s like comparing a quality family car like our Ford Focus C-MAX with a supercar such as the Koenigsegg CCX:

Whilst it’s great looking at and borrowing someone elses supercar, you wouldn’t want to go to Tesco’s in it, would you? It would be impractical. And so the iPhone proves to be. Here’s the 3 main reasons why I returned the iPhone 3G:

1. It’s difficult to text

With the N95, as with most mobile phones, it’s possible to compose and send text messages with one hand. It’s not straightforward to text on the iPhone - it requires two hands and is fiddly to enter characters using the QWERTY keyboard.

2. Hannah wasn’t happy

Although if I’d really liked it this wouldn’t have been an issue, my wife didn’t like the fact I’d taken out a contract with 02 when I’ve still got a few months remaining on my Orange contract. We get free broadband and VOIP calls with the latter contract, you see… :-p

3. It’s painfully proprietary

Although you can jailbreak it and there are workaround to create your own ringtones on the iPhone, it’s not always straightforward. It makes you feel like you’re using someone else’s device rather than your own. It’s kind of the same reason I bought and then returned a Nintendo Wii earlier this year.

What I’d like to see is a touchscreen tablet, slightly larger than the iPhone, that can connect both to wireless networks and to mobile broadband via HSDPA. I’d carry that around in addition to my N95 (or equivalent). Either that, or something that has a touchscreen and a keyboard… :-D

edte.ch barnraising: get involved in forming a community!

Published
by
Doug Belshaw
on 27 July 2008
in Education and Technology
.

The edublogosphere is a wonderful place. It’s a place that’s grown almost exponentially since I joined it 3 years ago, making it a wonderfully diverse arena for discourse. :-)

However, sometimes it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and lost. How do you get in touch and interact with those facing similar situations and challenges as yourself? In addition to a network, there’s a need for groups.

Enter edte.ch. As I’ve already discussed, edte.ch is to be a place for educational technology professionals and students. I’ve no financial interest in the project: I’m acting as domain name owner, facilitator, and contributor. :-D

I want it to be a grassroots community, a place for postgraduate students to find people to bounce ideas off, an arena for instructional technologists to discuss barriers and opportunities. But I need YOUR help to get this off the ground.

  1. If you’re an educational technology professional or student, imagine the type of community to which you’d like to belong.
  2. Imagine how you’d interact with that community.
  3. Contribute your ideas to the barnraising section of edte.ch
  4. (optional) Share links to good stuff at http://friendfeed.com/rooms/edtech
  5. (optional) Get involved in a synchronous chat towards the end of the week (to be organized) about the future of edte.ch

Although I’ve obviously got my own ideas, I don’t want to be overly-prescriptive. I’m a great believer in the ability of people to organise themselves on a grassroots level. I’ve already been contacted by a great number of people who would seem to be in need of something like this. I know I am - let’s make it work! :-p

*Wondering what I mean by ‘barnraising’? It’s a predominantly Amish practice and a two-day event where the community comes together to build a barn. I first came across this in the film Witness.