Bullet Points are dead

Great article in ZDnet's education forum on the importance of great presentations. We read a lot about this in one of my Instructional Design classes last winter. There is a great book called "The Presentation secrets of Steve Jobs, that tells you how to change your presentations to something great. The link above will take you to an article that will summarize the book. It is a good read.

Six things to learn from the Ipad

Six things to learn from the Ipad
This is a great article on what laptop maker needs to learn from Apple. There is now a fundamental shift in the thinking of people when it comes to battery life portability and especially "instant on" capabilities.

I think the landscape has radically changed for the better and I don't even own one.

Evan. . .

Do you really need a wireless carrier????

How to text without a cell phone

Interesting article under CNET's news section. There is an app that will now allow Ipod Touch (not phone) users to text from their touch to any other phone. They get assigned their own phone number and the texting is free. In the last couple of months they have given out 1.6 million "phone numbers" to these text only devices.

I knew texting was popular among teens, especially young teens, but this seems to take it to an entirely new level. The company who makes this is also looking at a text to voice feature that will allow you to text a message and have it ring to a regular phone.

I love how technology keeps getting more and more interesting.

Personal Information - Turn around is fair play

Privacy Battle Gets Personal for Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg

This has to be one of the more uncomfortable positions to find yourself in. You make billions (yes that is with a B) on getting people to expose their most personal thoughts and feelings to their friends, families and even complete strangers and then some other website (valleywag.com) hires someone to follow you around 24/7 documenting every aspect of your personal life that they can find.

The discussion of personal privacy is a hot one. Where does your right to have a personal life end and the right for the public to know begin. There is an old saying that goes something like your freedom ends when your fist hits my face. But with the digital arena is not a digital fist just as devastating as a physical one?

When you walk around your house you expect to have a degree of personal privacy. But the minute you walk out the door your "expectations of privacy" are greatly diminished. But how far should they be diminished. If someone was following you into the grocery store taking pictures of each item that you buy would that not be pushing the limits of personal privacy? What about the type of soap you buy, or even more critical the prescriptions that you get at the pharmacy. I don't think that I would want someone documenting all of those things on some blog that never really disappears.

At some point we are going to have some kind of backlash against the type of information that can be posted. It will be interesting to see how all of this shakes out.

Internship half over and what have I learned??

With my internship half over, I thought now would be a good time to reflect on what I have learned so far.

First: Do an internship on site, not online. I know that we live in a very connected world, as my Web 2.0 class continues to emphasize, but when you are just getting your feet wet in a new area of expertise, I really think it is important to be able to gain insights from lots of different people. Even the casual conversations around 'the water cooler' give you a great deal of insight as to what the people are like, the skills that they use on a daily basis, and the challenges that the company is facing.

Second: Remember in your Instructional Design classes when they talk about content experts, and how you have no power over them, but desperately need them in order to finish projects. It is all true. Bribe, beg, plead but do what ever you have to do to get their help. They are invaluable.

Finally, you don't know everything, even though it may seem like what they want you to do is exactly how you were taught to do it in Dr. Reiser's classroom. It is not. Every corporation has their own way of doing things and the most important thing that you have to learn is how to quickly adapt the principles of Instructional Design into the corporate way of doing things.

I am really liking this internship. I just wish I could stay longer. . .

Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age

In discussing Education in the classroom this seems to me to be a very appropriate article. It seems that this will be one of the big issues in the next ten years as students come to college with little idea of what is the difference between common knowledge and crediting authors for their works. And to be completely upfront, I have to thank Anne Mendenhal at FSU for linking me to this article on Facebook. I would also like to thank the NY times, and the author, but I can't remember his name so follow the link. . . :)

Time spent on Social Networks Up 43%

Social networks getting more of Americans' time online

This is a great article on the changes that are taking place in American's online habits. Social networks are up by more than 43% over last year while time spent on e-mail is down 25%. Other areas where on-line usage was down:

Portals were down 19% and Instant messaging was down 15%.

It appears that Social Networking is still growing strong and the desire to connect with each other has not abated.