Video analysis...on my phone

It wasn't so long ago that video analysis was a hugely complicated task and extremely expensive. This is no longer the case.

Here is a sample video that I analyzed using the Vernier Physics application:




If this is what we can do with mobile devices right now, I can't wait to see what the future holds!

Google Sync - Sync your Google Calendar and Gmail Contacts with your phone

I just set up my iPhone calendar and iPhone contacts to sync with my google calendar and gmail contacts. This is exactly the kind of functionality that I was looking for...I now have the ability to update my calendar and contacts on either my phone or my google account. WARNING: If you do this, be sure to backup your iPhone contacts to whatever desktop address book application you use on your computer (I use Apple's "Address Book").

This process also works with their Google Apps network, which means contacts and calendar information from your school's google network will sync in the same way. This is good to know as we're very seriously considering moving from our current email communication suite (FirstClass) to Gmail and Goolgle Apps.

Operating System Wars are Back...this Time on Mobile Phones

I'm very excited about the promise of highly mobile, inexpensive phone devices as learning tools. Incredible learning applications like the gFlash flash card application and the Stanza eBook reader seem to appear at the iTunes app store on a daily basis. But here is my hang up...if members of a learning community build up a collection of flash cards with gFlash and publish them, those flash cards are only viewable by folks who have an iPhone or iPod touch. The flash cards created via gFlash aren't even available to view via a desktop or laptop computer. As a teacher, I would like the educational content that I post for my learners to be accessible via a variety of platforms and devices (wouldn't it seem odd, for example, if I created a review game that could only be viewable on a computer running windows xp??)

Now throw in the mobile devices of other members of the learning community - these devices might run different operating systems such as Google's Android, the Blackberry OS, or Windows Mobile. To my knowledge, there is very little interoperability of applications amongst these devices. From what I can gather, iPhone application developers are not necessarily making their applications available in the Android Market/Store, for example.

Perhaps it is a pipe dream, but I believe these applications should be developed with standards that allow them to be easily purchased and installed on a variety of devices. Until this happens, I think we're going to be back where we were at in the 90s with applications that only ran on specific operating systems.

Ustream on the iPhone Coming Soon!

This is incredible. Ustream on the iPhone (3G only, though) is coming very soon! You'll now be able to listen live to the Gator Radio Experience on your iPhone...wOOt!!

Check out the Ustream Blog for more information on their cool iPhone app!

My First eBook...on an iPhone

Last year I read my first eBook using the Amazon Kindle that our librarian at my previous school purchased. I really, really enjoyed the experience of reading Kite Runner on the Kindle. The digital ink had an unbelievable resemblance to paper and I loved many of the other Kindle features.

I was inspired by Dave Cormier over at Edtech talk to give one of the eReader apps on the iPhone a chance after he was spreading the iPhone love on a few of the December Edtech Weekly webcasts. I chimed in that I thought the iPhone would be a little hard on the eyes and Dave mentioned that this wasn't his experience at all. So I downloaded Stanza a few weeks ago and ended up loading a few free titles from the Gutenberg project on my phone. But I never really seemed to get anywhere with reading them. So yesterday I downloaded Andrew Keen's, "Cult of the Amateur," from the Stanza online store for about $14 (more on Keen's book in a future post or two). I figured that if I paid a little cash I'd be motivated to read the book. And this certainly turned out to be the case as I completed Keen's book in two days. It is my goal to create a little video review of the eBook reader on the iPhone and post it on YouTube, but until that happens, here are a few things I liked and didn't like about the experience of reading a book on the iPhone for the first time:

Pros:
1. I loved being able to toggle text size and spacing between lines. I believe this feature turns the iPod Touch/iPhone into a wonderful piece of assistive/adaptive technology for leaner's with special needs.

2. I enjoyed setting bookmarks that I could come back and refer to at a later date. I want to create a blog post about some of the points that Keen made throughout his book, and being able to set a few bookmarks along the way will help me refer back to the sections that piqued my interest.

3. Reading in the dark was pretty nice. I woke up early in the morning today and turned on the iPhone to continue reading without having to turn on any lights. Because the Kindle doesn't have a back light, you need a lamp in order to read in a dark room.

Cons:
1. I hope I'm not destroying my eyes. While my eyes don't feel strained when reading, I can't help but feel like looking at a device with a backlit screen for prolonged periods of time will contribute to vision issues down the road. I guess only time will tell on that one. Check back to this blog in 20-30 years (who knows, maybe sooner) and I'll let you know how this has worked out.

2. I felt like I was turning the page quite frequently, which I'm guessing slowed down an already slow reader. Obviously, when you have such a small screen, you're going to have to turn the page more frequently. This wasn't overly annoying, but I did notice it a bit. Also, I wish the Stanza eReader was programmed so that the iPhone home button could turn the page instead of having to tap the screen for page turns. This is where having a trackball like the Google Phone or the Blackberry has would be helpful. Not having a trackball is one weakness of the iPhone in my opinion...I feel like my finger is a distraction when I'm constantly putting it on the reading surface (this goes for reading and scrolling web pages as well).

3. Books in the Stanza eBook store seem to be quite expensive. Keen's book was $14 at the Stanza store and the Kindle edition over at Amazon is $9.99. The soft cover version of the book over at Amazon is $11.20, so I feel that $14 is a bit steep. This price differential isn't that bad, actually, especially in comparison to the next book that I want to read. Jane Mayer's book, "The Dark Side..." sells for $9.99 via the Kindle edition and $10.85 via paperback over at Amazon while the Stanza store offers it as an eBook for $27.50. That price differential is completely ridiculous and needless to say, I won't be purchasing many more eBooks over at Stanza unless I win the lottery (which is impossible, as I don't play the lottery).

4. Some/many Stanza books are laced with DRM, which makes it extremely difficult to put the book that your purchased on multiple devices. As it turns out, Keen's book could only be read on my iPhone...I couldn't even put it on my computer to read. I guess this is appropriate as Keen has a bee in his bonnet regarding new ways of distributing digital content. Also, I purchased Keen's book via the Stanza store on my computer. When I went to download the book wireless to my iPhone, I was prompted to enter the credit card information used to purchase the book online into my iPhone. I found this to be a hassle and a security risk as well (the fewer the number of times I have to enter my credit card on web forms, the better).

Anyway, that is it for now. Like I said, I'll try to post a video review at some point in the future.

iPhone 101 Wiki up and running

Eugenie Paick, a teacher here at Castilleja, recommended that we start an iPhone users community in Firstclass (our workgroup email system) so that teachers could share ideas for how they use iPhones personally and professionally. I thought Eugenie's idea was EXCELLENT, but I suggested that we open it up to a broader community and post it in a place where anyone could access the content and contribute to the space. So, we formed an "iPhone 101" wiki. While it definitely focuses on the iPhone, I'm hoping it morphs more into the realm of highly portable, networked devices and their impact on the learning landscape.

Feel free to contribute to the wiki over at: http://iphone101.wikispaces.com/.

And thanks, Eugenie, for the great idea!!