I am an education professional with a graduate degree in Education Technology. Based on my review of the literature, and my own research...
I would love to hear a bit about what research you've done and what your views are. I studied multimedia design, but near the end of my degree became far more interested in educational media. Any chance of sending me an email (should be public) so I can ask a few questions and pick your brains? Hoping to do more in this line of work, and would be keen to get advice on what to read, what to study, who to talk to, what best-practices to look at etc
While you do have to learn your way around the native APIs I find I can avoid writing pretty much any "native" javascript - so you don't have to learn the intricacies of the syntax, just the environment you'll be working with - and the compile time errors will help you avoid syntax errors anyway.
As for debugging, the JS output is usually similar enough that info the debugger gives you can be translated back, but it is definitely slower. Both Chrome and Firefox are planning support for "source maps" - which map the JS output to the original language source. The haxe community is pretty keen to support the appropriate maps as soon as these features land... which should make it all a lot easier.
(Disclaimer: don't work for anyone haxe-related, just a user and a fan)
I'll vouch for haxe. I use it on any web-dev projects where I get the chance, both Client and Server side.
Basically it's a language that compiles to other languages - JS, ActionScript and PHP being among them. When using it for targeting javascript, you get some advantages:
* Strong typing, like you're used to
* Compile time error checking
* Code-completion (based on the compiler, really helpful for avoiding Typos)
* Some powerful libraries - tweening, remoting (passing objects and function calls to the server etc)
The big disadvantage is it's harder to make it work with native libraries. Not impossible, but harder. JQuery support comes built in, and there are "externs" for several of the popular libraries, and you can make your own, but it is usually more work initially. I still think it's worth it for the things mentioned above.
This blog post from Mozilla points out that in the past the assumption was that a new addon was broken in a new version, until proven otherwise. With the new release system, Mozilla is hoping to change this so the assumption is that the old addon is compatible with the new version, until proven otherwise.
I don't know how long it will take for this change of culture to set in, but hopefully by the next cycle developers will have made sure their addons no longer mark themselves as incompatible by default.
If you encounter an App that behaves poorly, uninstall it, rate it low in the market and harass the developer. That's what the rating system is for.
When I uninstall an app I usually don't bother to go back in to the app store and rate it poorly. Even if it's a great app that I find really useful, I usually don't bother to look it up in the market and give it a good review.
But this data is useful for people. What could help is if the "Applications" menu made it really easy to submit a rating (and optionally a review) without having to look up the app in the store - submit it right there from the menu. And if you go to uninstall it, why not ask for a rating and a quick review then also?
I think the article's point that gestures are not as easily discoverable as menu items is a good point, and fixing this would fix many other problems.
As an example, firefox's "Options" or "Preferences" is stored in different places on different platforms, but because I know to search menus, I can find it fairly quickly, even if it was not where I expect it to be.
With gestures there's no easy way to see what action a given gesture might execute without doing the guesture. And you're sometimes afraid to try because not every app has an undo feature. What if different platforms standardised on a way to show which gestures you're about to execute. So if you long press on an item, it could display some gesture tips on the screen - a circle of labels could demonstrate that dragging right means "open", dragging left means "back", dragging up is "share" and dragging down is something else. This way, even if the gestures were different on different platforms or different apps, the method for discovering them could be standardised.
I work in a private Australian high school, and our principal has recently decided that he wants every student to have an ipad.
We had a sales rep from Apple come out, and asked him this, if they can be locked down. The answer was basically no, what you get on a consumer ipad is what the kids will have on their school one. Apple's answer to students playing games on them: "that's a social problem, and it needs a social solution". A commenter above mentioned that even with books you can draw in the margins, and boring lessons will remain boring lessons, and distracted kids will still be distracted kids.
So I think the iPad will give the opportunity for really good teachers to make their lessons more interesting than Angry Birds or whatever game people are playing now. (Heck, why not make an angry birds clone that ties into a very basic maths lesson about quadratic equations?) But for teachers who don't know how to make their content interesting, it'll be easier than ever for the kids to find a wealth of distracting activities to keep them occupied.
I hope any schools that go ahead with an ipad-for-every-student program have some good quality teachers, my school included...
I'm using Indefero (http://indefero.net/).
It's PHP based, and made to be similar to google code, so very bare bones - but I find that is less intimidating to non-developers.
(BTW, the website emphasises prices and planning and stuff, but it is open source - the prices are for their hosted service.)
Also, KDE needs a built-in (meaning no extra stuff to install, lightweight, no glitches, no elaborate tray pop-ups) no-mouse-required, minimal-keyboard-gymnastics way of entering all Unicode characters into everything that accepts text.
It might not cover all Unicode characters, but you can get a lot of useful characters using the Compose key. I first heard about it from this blog post, which explains it well.
You can set it up in KDE -> System Settings -> Input Devices -> Keyboard -> Advanced -> Compose Key.
Of course, that's just a few handy characters, not support for all of unicode. So your point still stands.
Couldn't agree more. I was a long time Illustrator user when I had to create some simple vector graphics on a work computer without Illustrator installed, and so downloaded and installed Inkscape.
I was impressed, so much so that it's my main Vector Graphics editor now. I have a few moments where I miss Illustrator, but far more moments where I'm impressed with Inkscape. I don't use it because I'm too cheap to afford Illustrator, or for ideological open source reasons. I use it because for me, it's the better tool for the job.
Well worth checking out for anyone who needs to do some vector graphics...
What I find funny is that if you wait 3 or so minutes for the animation to end, it offers you the chance to sign up for their "newZletter". Upon clicking the link you are told "Sorry, this isn't working at the moment, try again later".
The site hasn't changes since I first found it in 2003:)
I'm running Ubuntu 8.04, which is a year old so settings might have changed but here's the default behaviour in Nautilus (the equivalent of Windows Explorer).
The extensions are not hidden. So "myfile.doc" and "myfile.doc.exe" both display the full name, with the extensions.
If I choose to rename a file, by default only the portion before the final extension is selected. So "innocent.doc" will select only "innocent" and "suspicious.doc.exe" will select "suspicious.doc".
If you do change the extension, say from ".html" to ".jpg" it will now try to open it in the image viewer (and will fail).
If you get rid of the extension, renaming "photo.jpg" to "photo", it seems to check the mimetype and pick the appropriate icon or thumbnail to display, and opens with the correct application.
If an executable file tries to launch it will usually ask you "Display" "Execute" or "Cancel".
I find it interesting that without file extensions, the system still seems to work just fine. But they seem to be added because that's what people are used to, and that's what they receive in downloads / attachments and the like. And if there's a malicious file executable ending in '.doc', the user is expecting it to open in OpenOffice, so the it tries that, even if it knows it's the wrong mime-type, because that's what the user is expecting.
After all, you can't fill the megachurch with actual *SUBSTANCE* or *ORTHODOXY*
I actually download some of Mark Driscoll's podcasts, agree with some of his thinking, disagree with other bits.
It's interesting though that his church seems to be thriving precisely because it tries to keep its substance and stick to old-school orthodox beliefs. Driscoll is known for his in your face this-is-what-the-bible-says-and-if-you-disagree-you're-wrong style... and it's one of the only megachurches I know of that really holds to conservative beliefs and is happy to let everyone else know what they think - no dumbing it down to please the lowest common denominator.
Regardless of how much I agree or disagree with his teaching, I admire the way he holds to his beliefs and isn't afraid to teach them just because it mightn't go down so well with the crowd.
So the trick is this: when you edit a.DOC file with OOo, convert it to the OOo format (.sxw) as soon as you start. Make sure the format is OK. Keep the file in.sxw format inside the company.
When you need to interface with the outside world, publish the.DOC by saving in this format if needed.
I agree with you, and this is how I usually try to run things at home. Receive it in.doc, convert it to.odt, then if I need to send it out convert it back to a.doc. It's works well enough, but I was just thinking, would it be possible to have a simple program or script that does the conversion for you, but transparently.
What I mean is, could you somehow add functionality to your email and web browser so that all incoming files in email and from webpages are automatically converted from.doc to.odt, then saved to your hard disk. Then when you try to send an email / upload a document (or even burn to a CD or copy to a USB drive?), it will ask if you want to convert it to MS Office format.
As it is, I usually end up with two copies of every document lying around... one in the MS Office format, and one in the Open Document format. Unfortunately sometimes I make the mistake of editing different versions and having some changes in each but not in both... and it just gets confusing.
Could you make some sort of script / plugin that would do the conversion for you in common places where you take in or send out files (I'm thinking mostly email).
I would probably wait until the mozilla website officially opens Firefox 1.5 Release Candidate 2 to the public. Then there will be release notes on the website, which will probably let you know what's happenning with sea monkey.
While I don't deny the impact having your link in your slashdot sig must have, could the (sort of) invisible text on your web page have something to do with it? I'm pretty sure that's something google doesn't approve of. Even though it is just using a white text colour on a white background, the same applies. You're just using as many keywords as you can on the homepage, and you can't think of how to get them all in your actual content, so you just make it so the user doesn't notice.
After realising that, I became significantly less interested in your site.
I live in Perth in Australia. I was talking to one of my friends tonight, and one of his friends from school committed suicide on Monday.
This is tragic in itself, but knowing how so many people here use blogs and livejournals (especially students around this age, only one year younger than me), the information about this spread incredibly quickly. Within 12 hours probably half the students in perth knew, and not from the mainstream media. The combination of the school gossip-line and the internet allow news of things like this to spread very fast.
Of course, the problem we have is not that the news spread, but that others may be encouraged to do it. I believe my goverment is right in trying to limit the information you can get on suicide by searching the internet. You know how easy it is to go from any webpage you're on to a google search for something, especially for a student whose grown up using the internet.
Here's the question? Is it worth the risk of people reading a suicidal persons livejournal, and then, depressed by the entry, search the internet for methods of suicide, possibly to use on themselves? I don't see it as unlikely. I jump through web pages from journal entries all the time, except my searches are more likely to do with linux or web design. But it could easily happen with suicide. I have no problem with them imposing this ban.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe free speech is actually a right here in Australia. IANAL, but I remember my history teacher, who also taught political and legal studies said it wasn't actually a basic right under our constitution.
Now, we always act as if we have it (all the american law shows we have would make us think we have the same constitution), and I'm yet to encounter an issue of the government not allowing free speech. But I believe the queen, (or her representative, the governer general, who generally just does what the prime minister says) can allow limitations to the freedom of speech. I know during one of the world wars they banned the use of the word "sausage" among others, because it was too German.
Not sure on all of this, so correct me if I'm wrong.
I read somewhere else on this page that it is due to using an optimised version of Firefox. (One made to run faster on your processor). A couple of others are experiencing the exact same problem.
Try uninstalling completely, and then re installing. Alternatively, keep using 1.0 until they release versions that are optimised for your processor type.
I see what you mean, I have downloaded firefox a couple of times myself. But on the other hand, I have also downloaded a single install file and then proceeded it to install it on my computer, my brother's computer, and my Dad's laptop.
Schools, universities and businesses that are using firefox will be adding even more users that are not included in the download count on the website. I think the number of users who have not been registered on the download count will balance or even outweigh the number of users who have registered multiple times on the count.
The argument you're making was also made by Andrew Kantor from USA Today in this article. His basic argument was that without a solid understanding of science, we limit our ability to understand, apply and innovate in areas of technology. Therefore, Christians who disagree with evolution are outdated and no longer in touch with either science or technology, limiting the progress of our society.
One article I read in response to Kantor was from Answers in Genesis (an overtly Christian group of scientists) who basically argued against Kantor's claims. And quite successfully, in my opinion.
If you are interested or have time, I recommend reading both. Admittedly I don't know much on the subject myself, that's why I'm referring to other people's arguments. Anyone else have any other comments?
Slashdot Mirror
I am an education professional with a graduate degree in Education Technology. Based on my review of the literature, and my own research...
I would love to hear a bit about what research you've done and what your views are. I studied multimedia design, but near the end of my degree became far more interested in educational media. Any chance of sending me an email (should be public) so I can ask a few questions and pick your brains? Hoping to do more in this line of work, and would be keen to get advice on what to read, what to study, who to talk to, what best-practices to look at etc
Jason
I use haxe and I thought I'd comment here.
While you do have to learn your way around the native APIs I find I can avoid writing pretty much any "native" javascript - so you don't have to learn the intricacies of the syntax, just the environment you'll be working with - and the compile time errors will help you avoid syntax errors anyway.
As for debugging, the JS output is usually similar enough that info the debugger gives you can be translated back, but it is definitely slower. Both Chrome and Firefox are planning support for "source maps" - which map the JS output to the original language source. The haxe community is pretty keen to support the appropriate maps as soon as these features land... which should make it all a lot easier.
(Disclaimer: don't work for anyone haxe-related, just a user and a fan)
I'll vouch for haxe. I use it on any web-dev projects where I get the chance, both Client and Server side.
Basically it's a language that compiles to other languages - JS, ActionScript and PHP being among them. When using it for targeting javascript, you get some advantages:
* Strong typing, like you're used to
* Compile time error checking
* Code-completion (based on the compiler, really helpful for avoiding Typos)
* Some powerful libraries - tweening, remoting (passing objects and function calls to the server etc)
The big disadvantage is it's harder to make it work with native libraries. Not impossible, but harder. JQuery support comes built in, and there are "externs" for several of the popular libraries, and you can make your own, but it is usually more work initially. I still think it's worth it for the things mentioned above.
Other sites that might explain it better: http://www.haxejs.org/ http://haxenode.org/
This blog post from Mozilla points out that in the past the assumption was that a new addon was broken in a new version, until proven otherwise. With the new release system, Mozilla is hoping to change this so the assumption is that the old addon is compatible with the new version, until proven otherwise.
I don't know how long it will take for this change of culture to set in, but hopefully by the next cycle developers will have made sure their addons no longer mark themselves as incompatible by default.
If you encounter an App that behaves poorly, uninstall it, rate it low in the market and harass the developer. That's what the rating system is for.
When I uninstall an app I usually don't bother to go back in to the app store and rate it poorly. Even if it's a great app that I find really useful, I usually don't bother to look it up in the market and give it a good review.
But this data is useful for people. What could help is if the "Applications" menu made it really easy to submit a rating (and optionally a review) without having to look up the app in the store - submit it right there from the menu. And if you go to uninstall it, why not ask for a rating and a quick review then also?
As an example, firefox's "Options" or "Preferences" is stored in different places on different platforms, but because I know to search menus, I can find it fairly quickly, even if it was not where I expect it to be.
With gestures there's no easy way to see what action a given gesture might execute without doing the guesture. And you're sometimes afraid to try because not every app has an undo feature. What if different platforms standardised on a way to show which gestures you're about to execute. So if you long press on an item, it could display some gesture tips on the screen - a circle of labels could demonstrate that dragging right means "open", dragging left means "back", dragging up is "share" and dragging down is something else. This way, even if the gestures were different on different platforms or different apps, the method for discovering them could be standardised.
I work in a private Australian high school, and our principal has recently decided that he wants every student to have an ipad.
We had a sales rep from Apple come out, and asked him this, if they can be locked down. The answer was basically no, what you get on a consumer ipad is what the kids will have on their school one. Apple's answer to students playing games on them: "that's a social problem, and it needs a social solution". A commenter above mentioned that even with books you can draw in the margins, and boring lessons will remain boring lessons, and distracted kids will still be distracted kids.
So I think the iPad will give the opportunity for really good teachers to make their lessons more interesting than Angry Birds or whatever game people are playing now. (Heck, why not make an angry birds clone that ties into a very basic maths lesson about quadratic equations?) But for teachers who don't know how to make their content interesting, it'll be easier than ever for the kids to find a wealth of distracting activities to keep them occupied.
I hope any schools that go ahead with an ipad-for-every-student program have some good quality teachers, my school included...
-jason
Also, KDE needs a built-in (meaning no extra stuff to install, lightweight, no glitches, no elaborate tray pop-ups) no-mouse-required, minimal-keyboard-gymnastics way of entering all Unicode characters into everything that accepts text.
It might not cover all Unicode characters, but you can get a lot of useful characters using the Compose key. I first heard about it from this blog post, which explains it well.
You can set it up in KDE -> System Settings -> Input Devices -> Keyboard -> Advanced -> Compose Key.
Of course, that's just a few handy characters, not support for all of unicode. So your point still stands.
Couldn't agree more. I was a long time Illustrator user when I had to create some simple vector graphics on a work computer without Illustrator installed, and so downloaded and installed Inkscape.
I was impressed, so much so that it's my main Vector Graphics editor now. I have a few moments where I miss Illustrator, but far more moments where I'm impressed with Inkscape. I don't use it because I'm too cheap to afford Illustrator, or for ideological open source reasons. I use it because for me, it's the better tool for the job.
Well worth checking out for anyone who needs to do some vector graphics...
Can't agree more on reading The Design of Everyday Things. I'll have to take a look at The Non Designer's Design Book.
To anyone interested in interface design, I'd also recommend one by the same author, Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things, or the book mentioned in the article, Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
Those three books were very easy reads and probably taught me more about interface design than the my 3 years at uni. I thoroughly recommend them.
What I find funny is that if you wait 3 or so minutes for the animation to end, it offers you the chance to sign up for their "newZletter". Upon clicking the link you are told "Sorry, this isn't working at the moment, try again later".
The site hasn't changes since I first found it in 2003 :)
I find it interesting that without file extensions, the system still seems to work just fine. But they seem to be added because that's what people are used to, and that's what they receive in downloads / attachments and the like. And if there's a malicious file executable ending in '.doc', the user is expecting it to open in OpenOffice, so the it tries that, even if it knows it's the wrong mime-type, because that's what the user is expecting.
After all, you can't fill the megachurch with actual *SUBSTANCE* or *ORTHODOXY*
I actually download some of Mark Driscoll's podcasts, agree with some of his thinking, disagree with other bits.
It's interesting though that his church seems to be thriving precisely because it tries to keep its substance and stick to old-school orthodox beliefs. Driscoll is known for his in your face this-is-what-the-bible-says-and-if-you-disagree-you're-wrong style... and it's one of the only megachurches I know of that really holds to conservative beliefs and is happy to let everyone else know what they think - no dumbing it down to please the lowest common denominator.
Regardless of how much I agree or disagree with his teaching, I admire the way he holds to his beliefs and isn't afraid to teach them just because it mightn't go down so well with the crowd.
If you want to read a bit more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deluge_(mythology)
I find it interesting that alot of places mention giant floods, some of the accounts, such as the epic of gilgamesh, pre-dating the Jewish text.
Whether both a referring to a real historical event, or whether the Jewish story has been derived from the Babylonian one, well that's up for debate.
Ten!
Nine!
Eight!
Seven!
Six!
Five!
Four!
Three!
Two!
One!
One!
Happy New Year!
For the record, in XP:
In Ubuntu:
I agree that sensible names should be used. Some distributions do a good job catering for people like us. Some don't.
I agree with you, and this is how I usually try to run things at home. Receive it in .doc, convert it to .odt, then if I need to send it out convert it back to a .doc. It's works well enough, but I was just thinking, would it be possible to have a simple program or script that does the conversion for you, but transparently.
What I mean is, could you somehow add functionality to your email and web browser so that all incoming files in email and from webpages are automatically converted from .doc to .odt, then saved to your hard disk. Then when you try to send an email / upload a document (or even burn to a CD or copy to a USB drive?), it will ask if you want to convert it to MS Office format.
As it is, I usually end up with two copies of every document lying around... one in the MS Office format, and one in the Open Document format. Unfortunately sometimes I make the mistake of editing different versions and having some changes in each but not in both... and it just gets confusing.
Could you make some sort of script / plugin that would do the conversion for you in common places where you take in or send out files (I'm thinking mostly email).
Just a thought...
-Jason
I would probably wait until the mozilla website officially opens Firefox 1.5 Release Candidate 2 to the public. Then there will be release notes on the website, which will probably let you know what's happenning with sea monkey.
While I don't deny the impact having your link in your slashdot sig must have, could the (sort of) invisible text on your web page have something to do with it? I'm pretty sure that's something google doesn't approve of. Even though it is just using a white text colour on a white background, the same applies. You're just using as many keywords as you can on the homepage, and you can't think of how to get them all in your actual content, so you just make it so the user doesn't notice. After realising that, I became significantly less interested in your site.
I live in Perth in Australia. I was talking to one of my friends tonight, and one of his friends from school committed suicide on Monday.
This is tragic in itself, but knowing how so many people here use blogs and livejournals (especially students around this age, only one year younger than me), the information about this spread incredibly quickly. Within 12 hours probably half the students in perth knew, and not from the mainstream media. The combination of the school gossip-line and the internet allow news of things like this to spread very fast.
Of course, the problem we have is not that the news spread, but that others may be encouraged to do it. I believe my goverment is right in trying to limit the information you can get on suicide by searching the internet. You know how easy it is to go from any webpage you're on to a google search for something, especially for a student whose grown up using the internet.
Here's the question? Is it worth the risk of people reading a suicidal persons livejournal, and then, depressed by the entry, search the internet for methods of suicide, possibly to use on themselves? I don't see it as unlikely. I jump through web pages from journal entries all the time, except my searches are more likely to do with linux or web design. But it could easily happen with suicide. I have no problem with them imposing this ban.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe free speech is actually a right here in Australia. IANAL, but I remember my history teacher, who also taught political and legal studies said it wasn't actually a basic right under our constitution.
Now, we always act as if we have it (all the american law shows we have would make us think we have the same constitution), and I'm yet to encounter an issue of the government not allowing free speech. But I believe the queen, (or her representative, the governer general, who generally just does what the prime minister says) can allow limitations to the freedom of speech. I know during one of the world wars they banned the use of the word "sausage" among others, because it was too German.
Not sure on all of this, so correct me if I'm wrong.
I read somewhere else on this page that it is due to using an optimised version of Firefox. (One made to run faster on your processor). A couple of others are experiencing the exact same problem.
Try uninstalling completely, and then re installing. Alternatively, keep using 1.0 until they release versions that are optimised for your processor type.
Schools, universities and businesses that are using firefox will be adding even more users that are not included in the download count on the website. I think the number of users who have not been registered on the download count will balance or even outweigh the number of users who have registered multiple times on the count.
One article I read in response to Kantor was from Answers in Genesis (an overtly Christian group of scientists) who basically argued against Kantor's claims. And quite successfully, in my opinion.
If you are interested or have time, I recommend reading both. Admittedly I don't know much on the subject myself, that's why I'm referring to other people's arguments. Anyone else have any other comments?