Monthly Archives: January 2010

Mobile phone development

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At the end of October last year, I attended a day-long workshop on Quickbase. The sessions at this “Tech Fest” were led by real world developers who had come up with unique solutions in their own deployments of the Quickbase product. Now, I have blogged previously about the intricacies of the productivity problems we’re trying to solve with our own Quickbase solution, and I believe we’re getting closer to implementing some real solutions that will make everyone’s job in the office easier (thanks in NO SMALL PART to the efforts of our database guru Jeanette Condo). The Tech Fest really got me thinking on a grander scale about what possibilities there are not only with Quickbase but with other ed-tech related projects as well. Two sessions in particular that really inspired me to run with it were a session on jQuery and one on using jQtouch for iPhone development.

I’ve recently upgraded to a paid personal account on Safari since Penn State’s access only includes a subset of the full Safari library, and not a lot of recent works. I’m learning jQuery fast and finding that I really love it. Just like css, jQuery allows you to keep your HTML pages clean and uncluttered. Unlike css, which controls the styles on and appearance of your pages, jQuery adds dynamic and interactive effects. It’s pretty slick and easy to learn. It helps to know some javaScript, but luckily I’m not too rusty from my days coding javaScript in the 90’s. Back then, a lot of javascript actions were inserted directly into the HTML, as was any element styling or document layout coding (read: HTML tables for layout). I’m most familiar and comfortable with client-side scripting, which is how jQuery primarily works, so this is all a piece of cake!
Here are the books I have on my Safari shelf for learning jQuery (with links to their Amazon pages):
Now to return to the title and the original purpose of this post. Knowing jQuery is a good foundation for becoming familiar with jQTouch, which is the library of javascript methods used by the iPhone and other mobile devices (so I’m told, but only real-world testing will tell). Supposedly too there are utilities for turning your jQTouch-based mobile apps into native iPhone apps (negating the need to learn much Objective C). Mobile apps for productivity purposes in the workplace sound intriguing to me. Time tracking or project management while on the go? Would potentially eliminate some of the inevitable “catching up” time on these necessary evils when returning from a conference or offsite meeting. Maybe I am just dreaming, but I think it would be fun to try. Besides, in a more mission-focused sense, if we are to pay attention to the needs of our learners, mobile learning is really looking like the next big thing. Perhaps it is better to rephrase “mobile learning” as “reaching our learners where they are” because I think that is really what we are looking at enabling with mobile phone development. The 2010 Horizon Report lists mobile computing (their term) as a technology for educators to adopt in one year or less. We are here now, folks!
In that vein, I plan to read about mobile phone development from a strategic and planning standpoint by reading this:
This book seems to touch on the actual details of mobile app development but does not delve much into it. For the real nitty-gritty, I plan to read this:
One more thing on the jQuery front. I have some ideas, based on the exercises I’ve done, for ways to improve the usability and interactivity of our course content pages that I plan to share with the Evolution programming team.
That’s all. If you have any thoughts on any of this, please leave a comment. In particular, if you know of any good resources or books on jQuery, jQTouch, or mobile development that I haven’t listed, please let me know.

Organizing

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I’ve been working on organizing my blog a bit in order to consolidate more of my writings from my graduate classwork  here at Penn State. I started this process last semester but sort of let the ball drop a bit. Well now I can say I’m officially caught up! You’ll see among the items on the left under Writings are two papers on mentoring and training colleagues and a lengthier paper entitled “Proposal: A Social Learning and Collaboration Platform.” I was prompted to add these items as I prepare my formal application materials for the graduate degree program. These were all papers or essays written to fulfill requirements of classes in the Distance Education certificate program, really a stepping stone for the full master’s degree in Adult Ed. I fully intend to continue the process of sharing my classwork here on this blog as I continue my coursework (pending admission of course!) I feel that my work and intellectual growth will be enriched by the comments and critiques of my colleagues and friends as well as my classmates. As I read back on some of my work, I get excited about the possibilities that going “back to school” will bring in terms of my personal and professional growth!

Post Script: In an effort to organize all my formal course work better for later reference, I “tagged” all my writings by topic and by class. Unfortunately it seems the Movable Type tag cloud widget used at Penn State does not include page tags along with blog entry tags. I don’t want to post my formal class writings as blog posts (which I tend to think of as being more informal). Does anyone have a solution to this? I have submitted this to official Blogs support, but perhaps crowdsourcing will yield a creative solution as well. :)