muraPOI: September 28, 2012

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  • Developing Online Learning Communities with Faculty and Students: This is something I’ve been arguing to do for a long time now — continue the conversation and create a community around the things that we do. We have yet to succeed in this in my day job.

    In the article, Barton K. Pursel and Crystal Ramsay write:

    In traditional faculty-development events, faculty participate in one-off workshops or a series of workshops and seminars. Online technologies now have the ability to take these “one-off” faculty-development events, and turn them into a continuous, community-building experience that continues to support faculty over a much longer time.

    This also goes to one of my peeves about the dissemination and adoption process of educational innovations in general.

    (Via Faculty Focus, September 27, 2012)

  • Comparing the iTunes U iOS App to LMS Mobile Apps: Joshua Kim writes:

    I can’t shake the idea that where mobile devices really shine is as devices for curricular content consumption.

    And really this is what you want…

    Mostly the whole experience on the iTunes U app just feels smooth and polished. Content is easy to find, everything opens up quickly, and everything is logical and seamless.

    I have been bemoaning the need for Web/app interfaces to catch up with the mid-2000s shift in UI/UX to cleaner and clearer interfaces from the late 1990s designs of lots of text and unnecessary complexity. Many LMS’s have this problem, though I can’t say in particular about their mobile apps from first hand experience.

    (Via Inside Higher Ed, September 26, 2012)

And because I haven’t said enough about the iPhone 5…

  • Apple customers now on the front lines of ‘creative destruction’: David Morgenstern captures my feelings about my new iPhone 5. I was much more “excited” when I moved from my iPhone 3g to my iPhone 4. The form factor change and the experience were much more memorable. Going to the iPhone 5 feels like such a small step right now, we’ll see how that fares over time. (I will note that I get Siri now and LTE. I remember vividly the speed increases going from the original iPhone to the 3g, hopefully it’ll be the same going to LTE.) He writes (emphasis added):

    I would add that users and pundits become jaded over time and find it difficult to judge the impact of technology announcements at introduction. Of course, an evolutionary product doesn’t have the same wow factor with each new iteration. Or we can’t imagine the real-world use from a technology demo. I’ve heard this same complaint with Macintosh models, software introductions and operating systems.

    (Via The Apple Core, September 24, 2012)

And to end with something completely different…

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    Buy vs. Rent

    Source: Brandon / NY Times

    Buy vs. Rent – Gray means it was better to rent :(

    Is It Better to Buy or Rent?: I am in no way in a position to buy a house anytime soon. It’s that silly down payment thing which I don’t have. While I would be ecstatic to still be living in the house I custom built, I’m also just as happy that I sold it when I did. This is a great calculator (requires Flash) to explore the trade-offs in buying vs. renting.

    For the record, I probably shouldn’t have bought in the first place from a financial perspective. But it was a great place to live! Here’s the payoff chart for my home vs. renting. Anything in gray says it’s better to rent than to buy.

    (Via The Brooks Review, September 20, 2012)

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