The value of instant messaging as a tool for communication is undisputed. It’s advantages over applications like chat are simple — less bandwidth, easier distribution to multiple devices, efficiency of communication, and greater control of privacy.
Privacy — That’s right, privacy. Consider the case of an ex-colleague of mine who uses multiple screen names. He has one that he uses at work and that is “public” to his boss and associates. He has another that is “private” and only known by his close friends. He has another that he uses with his students. What is interesting is that he can and does use all three at the same time using Trillian, and the people on the other end are none the wiser. Continue reading ‘Making IM Work for Education — Part 1′
Medco Health Solutions, Inc. owns and operates the world’s most sophisticated pharmacy. And it’s a good thing. FastCompany has an article that spells out the growing need for pharmaceutical services and the lack of people going into the field. Continue reading ‘Future Pharmacies as Models for Education’
According to a study from Jupiter Research, people in homes where the annual income is less than $35,000 a year spend about 50% more time a week playing video games than those in homes with incomes above $74,000. Continue reading ‘Survey Says: Education Can Learn Some Lessons from Gaming’
I’m in meetings with a group of developers this week and there has been much discussion about user testing and building in good quality assurance into products.
I reminds me of a time last year, when I was still in my former life as an IT Director for a large university. I was working with our development team on a learning portal for our faculty. As with all internal projects, we had suffered through our share of scope creep and were rapidly approaching hard deadlines for taking the system “live.” One day, shortly before launch, we had a sign-off meeting where we were going to give, hopefully, a team approval for the product. One of the team members spoke up midway through the meeting and suggested we add one last feature. It would make the whole thing absolutely complete, he argued. There were mostly nods of “Yeah, that would be perfect,” but there was one lone dissenter. “How could we do that to our poor customers?” she asked. ” We’ll just end up doing something ‘to’ them instead of doing something ‘for’ them.” Continue reading ‘User Testing for Courses? What a concept!’
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