Category Archives: professional development

What I’ve been up to

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Happy New Year! It’s been a while since I’ve posted an update here. Time to get cracking on those work projects for the new year, both ongoing and new ones. Here’s a brief outline of what I’ve got going on:

Quickbase

The improvements we saw in staff efficiencies over the past year have been tremendous, including:

  • the ability to better track IT requests
  • automated much of the course creation process that had been previously handled manually
  • automated much of the quality assurance process
  • better tracking and automation of permissions, IP agreements, and copyright sources

Over the next few months, plans will be in the works to also integrate budget information, time tracking, and tasks. It’s a lot of work but always rewarding when you get good feedback and see real results in the form of improved use of people’s time. No more redundancies and bloated amounts of time spent on “administrivia”!

Evolution usability testing

This one’s coming soon, and it’s something I’m pretty excited about. I’m going to be working with Mike Brooks on devising a plan for testing our new and improved Evolution student and faculty interfaces. It’s something we’re definitely rolling out in most World Campus courses over the next year,  and we have a good opportunity now to do some usability testing with our students and faculty, and develop a longer term feedback plan for when the new interface rolls out. We’ll be trying out a newish usability testing application, Silverback: http://silverbackapp.com/

Blogs

I don’t really have a specific plan or application in mind here yet, but I’d love to see Blogs@PSU have more of a role in World Campus courses and programs. I’m tinkering with the creation of a “geoblog” similar to the application created by Chris Stubbs over at ETS (and I’ve consulted with him about this), the Geoblog for students studying abroad:
http://geoblog.psu.edu/
I think something like this would be a great way for World Campus students to connect and share. The visual of the map adds a sense of place and connection that might be lost by students just saying text-wise where they live or work. Stay tuned.

Mobile announcements

Over the summer I took a workshop on the creation of Web mobile and native iPhone apps. The workshop only lasted one day so it really only allowed the participants to dabble in this stuff, but I was able to put together a very crude prototype of a mobile announcement app that we could use in our World Campus courses. I hope to refine this prototype a little further and share it with my colleagues.

More published writing

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Last semester I took ADTED: Historical and Social Issues in Adult Education. To sum up, we talked about issues like the fundamental purpose of adult education, the role of experience and background (like race, socioeconomic class, etc.) in adult education, the role of power in adult education practice, and, most pertinent to me, the role of technology in adult education.

I’ve published the four critiques I wrote for this class, and they have been added to my list of writings on the left hand side of this page. I’ve enabled tags on my pages (something Movable Type wasn’t doing by default), so you can access a collection specifically of my ADTED 510 writings using the tag “adted510”.

Summer’s End

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Yesterday was Labor Day, widely recognized in this country as the official end of summer. Am I sad? A little. But truth be told, I am excited (though a little anxious) to begin class tomorrow.

I am working towards my M.Ed. in Adult Education, and the class I’m taking is entitled Historical and Social Issues in Adult Education (ADTED 510 here at PSU). I enjoy being in the Adult Education program; its focus on critical reflection grounded in practice is an ideal compliment to the work I do and the interests I have. The program requires LOTS of reading, writing and dialog – in short, it encapsulates the ideals of a traditional socratic education. It is rigorous and intellectually challenging. I expect to continue to have my assumptions tested by the learning materials, the faculty, and my learning peers. I have 12 credits to go in the M.Ed. and hope to be finished by Summer 2011.
Why do I torture myself like this? Isn’t it easier to just operate on the same assumptions that have brought me life and career success to this point? Why spend ridiculous sums of money for an education that is in no way guaranteed to pay itself off anytime soon (and tuition is ridiculous these days, even with the 75% discount I get as a PSU staff member)? The answer lies in the intangibles, and I suppose the best analogy I can come up with is to compare intellectual pursuit to physical fitness.
I spend a monthly fee to go to a local gym, which I try to frequent at least 3-4 times a week. If I could run or follow exercise tapes like some of my peers, I would, believe me, to save money. Physical limitation dictate that I can’t, however – besides, I like the social atmosphere of an exercise club. But I digress. Even though I can’t run, I still have a deep need for rigorous physical exercise. The benefits are numerous and so are the drawbacks to not exercising – without regular exercise, my body gets soft, my mood sours and I lose some ability to focus. With regular exercise and meeting its associated goals, I get a sense of pride and accomplishment that is nothing to scoff at. I believe that equally important is the regular and rigorous exercise of the mind and intellect. Doing things the same way all the time, never really learning or being intellectually challenged, leads to the same type of atrophy that lack of exercise leads to. This is a belief I have for which I have no concrete proof (though I’m pretty sure that mentally challenging activities can stave off dementia in the elderly). I just feel it. I am a lifelong learner, just as I am a lifelong exerciser.
I will come back to this blog space as I can as the semester progresses. I won’t bore you with the mundane details of my individual class assignments here (unless the class requires it), though I will still post my writings to the Writings section. My intention is to use the blog for outside-of-class reflections on how what I’m learning relates to my work or life. Adieu for now.

My week with the iPad

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One week is hardly enough time to really understand how the iPad might apply to and enhance work, play, and life, but I have to give my iPad back so others at the office have a chance to take it home. (Is it telling that I said “my iPad” just now? Heh heh…)

Without further ado, here are some of my initial takes on my week with the iPad. Further time and testing might have revealed more likes/dislikes and good/bad/needs improvement features, but I think I did a decent job putting it through its paces. Apple’s all about the user experience, so my review will focus on my impressions of that.
General: The touch screen interface was very intuitive to use. Of course, I already have an iPhone, so the transition was pretty much seamless for me. The keyboard leaves a lot to be desired though. I actually found myself making a lot more mistakes than I do typing on my iPhone. It’s too big for one-finger or two-thumb techniques that work well on the iPhone, too small really to comfortably type with both hands, and without being able to feel the keys, it’s very easy to make mistakes.
Reading: In general, I found reading on the device to be a very positive experience and I feel this is one area where it really shines. After a couple years of trying to read longer items on my iPhone (news articles, blog posts, etc.), I found the experience on the iPad to be quite welcome. The USA Today and New York Times iPad apps are intuitive and very much like actually reading a newspaper. Text size can be changed on-the-fly and images zoomed. Reading books through iBooks was even nicer, though there were ultimately problems. First the good: 
  • The text and page-flipping interface were quite lovely and provided a seamless experience (read: no delay in rendering when flipping pages, as on the Kindle). 
  • Text  size could again be changed on-the-fly.
  • Screen brightness can be changed on-the-fly, giving opportunity to lessen eye strain
  • Orientation can be “locked” with a switch on the side of the iPad, so if you tend to fidget and move around while reading, you won’t have to worry about your iPad flipping its orientation.
  • Text can be easily searched, bookmarked, and copy-and-pasted.
  • Much, MUCH, better than reading on either an iPhone or a laptop. The iPhone is too difficult, a laptop is too awkward and restricting (can’t really roll over on your side).
Now the not-so-good:
  • Though screen brightness can be changed on-the-fly as I mentioned, it’s still ultimately a backlit LCD display, which can create numerous problems. First there is the problem of glare. I’m not a fan of reading in the bright sun regardless (even in the shade), but for anyone who enjoys reading on the beach, this could be a problem. I had trouble with glare even trying to read on the bus with sunlight coming in the windows, or at home with my nightlamp on. I found it was easier to just turn my nightlamp off and use the glow of the iPad to read by. Tough to get used to at first, but I might be able to over time. Still, I spend a lot of time in front of a backlit monitor in the course of my job – do I really want to do this late at night in my leisure time?
  • Though it’s much better as I said than an iPhone or a laptop, it’s still got some weight to it, making it maybe not ideal for leisure reading. Maybe again, something to just get used to.
  • This is an odd one, but I wanted to note it. The iPad is COLD. I noticed it particularly the last couple nights since we’ve been having a freak May cold snap. It’s nice to cuddle up under the covers with a “dead tree” book on cold nights, but the iPad’s aluminum backing seems to such some of that warmth out of you. I suppose the coldness could be lessened with the right kind of cover, but then again, that would add to its weight.
Games: I installed the Words with Friends HD app (pretty much Scrabble) since I already had a couple of games going with friends on my iPhone and wanted to try it out. What a difference! This is a true strength of the iPad – as a gaming interface, it is superior to just about anything else. It’s large enough for a complicated game like Words with Friends to take place without a lot of zooming around, and it’s much more portable than a laptop. And the tiles are pretty close to real life Scrabble tiles! I like Words with friends because there is no time limit or pressure like there is in a real life game; you play at your leisure, when you have the time, and you are notified when your friends have made a move. Chess with Friends is another social game that works like this; I imagine the interface and gameplay is just as lovely there.
Other: I love to cook. So when I saw the Epicurious app for iPad, I was full of excitement! On the iPad it works much the same as on the iPhone – you search for seasonal recipes or by dish type or by whatever you have on hand. You can select many recipes, perhaps for a dinner party you are planning or just family menu planning for the week. You can add your recipes to your “shopping list” where the ingredients are compiled and organized by type (produce, dry goods, seasonings, etc.). Your list is presented as a checklist which you can check off beginning at home based on what you have in your kitchen. From there you have your complete shopping list! Since it’s organized by type, it’s very quick and easy to shop from. Then, when you are ready to prepare your meals, you can just set the iPad up on a stand in your kitchen and use the very lovely and easy-to-read recipe interface as your reference.
I took the iPad with my shopping list to Wegman’s over the weekend. Though it’s very nice and easy to shop with, ultimately it was awkward to lug around. Couldn’t exactly stick it in my pocket – I longed for my iPhone again for that purpose. Ideally, there would be a way for my iPad (I said “my iPad” again, uh oh) to communicate through Bluetooth with my iPhone, so that I could compile my shopping list at home and “beam” it to my iPhone to take with me. And vice versa, if I’m out shopping and see seasonal or sale items and find recipes using them through my iPhone Epicurous app, I could save them and “beam” them back to my iPad (said it again!) at home and work from it in my kitchen. In this sense I don’t see the iPad as a truly “mobile” device – I’d rather call it “highly portable” or something like that.
What do you think? Have you had a chance to work/play with the iPad yet?

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. :)