Modeling the Earth on a Palm: Thin-Client Software Makes Heavy Seismic Processing Applications Possible from Any Computer, Any Platform
What do you do when you’re trying to provide access to a “heavy” application such as a geophysical data processing program?
How do you give distance students a chance to do a “virtual lab” and run complicated programs for geology, meteorology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, engineering, and other discipline-specific software programs?
One potential solution involves implementing “thin-client” software such as Citrix MetaFrame on the server that houses the application. According to the American Red Cross, Citrix MetaFrame worked very well. According to one person, “Citrix software was the only solution that would allow us to provide fast access to ECHO on any device - ranging from a PC to a Macintosh to a UNIX device - across any connection.” Continue reading ‘Modeling the Earth on a Palm: Thin-Client Software Possibilities’
Archive for May, 2003
INTO UTOPIA: Low-Cost Business, Association, and Education Centers, Part 2
Planning and the Human Factor
Your integrated information system will not work without coordination and cooperation. I know you’re probably thinking, “But how obvious is that!!” Yes, you’re right. It’s a self-evident reality. But, you’d be surprised how many times even the most basic project management tenets are absolutely overlooked. Continue reading ‘INTO UTOPIA: Low-Cost Business Centers, Part 2′
INTO UTOPIA: Low-Cost Business, Association, and Education Centers, Part 1
Many countries (as well as rural and inner city areas within the U.S.) need low-cost and relatively low-tech solutions in order to not be left hopelessly behind in terms of information sharing and applications.
It’s not really a matter of choice any more. If you’re not on board with multi-user, any place-any time, information sharing, you’re going to be squeezed out. It’s a reality for education and e-commerce. It’s a reality for other areas as well, including associations, commercial enterprises, niche services, and general services. Continue reading ‘INTO UTOPIA: Creating Your Own Low-Cost Business Center, Part 1′
I recently had an opportunity to attend a presentation by Akamai at a major university which is grudgingly facing the twin beasts of Bandwidth Hogs and Budget Cut Ghouls.
You may not be familiar with Akamai directly, but there is no doubt that you use Akamai’s services. Akamai (means “cool” in Hawaiian) was started in 1999 as an project to place web content on servers throughout the world. The result is peak-shaving & load-sharing to manage traffic. The algorithms and basic philosophy remind me of the peak-shaving programs used by electricity providers to deal with high high demand periods. Although Akamai seems to be all about storage, it’s not. It’s all about traffic management, band-width-smoothing, and positioning content close to patterns of end-users so data goes through fewer intermediaries. I first found out about Akamai when I was watching on-demand news clips provided by abcnews.com Continue reading ‘Bandwidth Future Shock and Akamai’
RETURN TO THE FORUM INDEX
XPLANA CW Tools and Strategies
Tools. Xplana CW is being built using PHP5, the latest version of PHP and is due to be released as a public build on August 15. Although PHP5 is currently only in the development stage it adds much needed functionality to PHP. Since Xplana CW is constructed around a strict Object Oriented core, PHP5’s new Object Model is extremely useful. It allows for true private, public, and protected methods. In PHP5, Try/Catch is finally implemented, making elegant error handling finally possible. All in all, PHP5 offers many new benefits to increase the time to market of the application while also increasing its stability. Continue reading ‘XPLANA CW Development Tools and Strategy’
When it comes to online teaching and learning, one of the biggest concerns is cheating. How can I know if the student taking a test or completing a composition is really the student who is supposed to be doing the work? How can I prevent unsupervised students from cheating on their online assignments and quizzes?
The questions are legitimate as cheating has long been a concern in education — from elementary schools to universities. So, while plagiarism, false identities, and good-old-fashioned cheating off your neighbor are not unique to the online world, we have not yet developed models that make us feel very comfortable about the physical separation between students and teachers in the virtual classroom. Continue reading ‘Lessons for Deterring Cheating Online — Watch the Anti-Spam Wars’
Last time I attempted to give a few reasons why technology doesn’t have a dehumanizing effect. People could never become machine-like beings, or be taken over by machines. Today I would like to explore a weak version of the reverse. I will not ask if machines could become human-like beings. Instead, I will ask a more crucial question of immediate concern, that is, “could machines replace humans”? It may sound strange to ask a question with an obvious answer. We already know that some positions no longer exist because some computer or other machine is doing the work a person used to do. This may be correct. However, it is not true that machines are replacing people. But rather that the people was doing jobs that could be done by some machine and now they are free to do something else that no machine can do. It is best to put things into perspective and see why some generalizations are hasty and how the way we state a fact affects our overall understanding. Continue reading ‘MYTH OF SISYPHUS — Can Machines Replace Humans? Part 1′
RETURN TO THE FORUM INDEX
XPLANA CW Calendar and Timeline
Timeline. We began discussing this project in October, 2002. We began work in earnest on the system in February of this year. A beta version will be released in July and Xplana CW 1.0 will be released August 15. At the same time, Xplana will begin featuring two demonstration courses that reveal the full flexibility and strength of the system. Continue reading ‘XPLANA CW Calendar and Timeline’
RETURN TO THE FORUM INDEX
XPLANA CW Concept and Goals
The Concept. The Xplana CW Courseware system is a product that was conceived, like many software initiatives before it, because there didn’t seem to be a tool to do the things we wanted to do. We wanted to emphasize strong and fluid communities in our online courses. We wanted to allow teachers many levels of collaborative teaching. We wanted a system that would allow ten teachers in a department to collaborate on material for a single course and for each of them to share that material while individualizing their own sections. We wanted a system in which students could feel that they were directing their own learning. We believe that learning is about “doing” and that a good courseware system should encourage active thinking and creating. We needed a system in which students could craft their own ideas and share them easily with others in or outside the system. We wanted teachers to be able to feel that they had the same flexibility teaching online that they have in the traditional classroom. We wanted better communication and increased inspiration in our online courses. We wanted a system that could handle all of our really elaborate teaching ideas without significant compromise. We wanted a system that, above all else, emphasized community and communication. Continue reading ‘XPLANA CW Concept and Goals’
Just as I regret not having known about IRFANView to share with my students last semester, I also found the wonderful little ieSpell too late - but it’s at the top of the list for next semester! What is ieSpell? It’s a little plug-in utility for Internet Explorer that allows you to spellcheck any text that you type into a web form.
Eegad, what a genius thing - you can spellcheck what you post to a Blackboard discussion board, I can spellcheck the article that I am typing right now into a webform, all with this simple little browser plug-in.
When I discovered this little tool (thanks to Ryan Sarver at Exit33!), I asked the manager of our Lab builds here at the University of Oklahoma if he could get ieSpell included in our Lab build for the coming Fall semester, and here’s what he wrote back: “I just installed it, and I believe this may just be the best thing since sliced bread. I’ll make sure it finds its way into the lab build.” Continue reading ‘Very Cool Spellcheck Tools’
Loading ...