Crucial Thought Rss

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MobiOne Promo Code - app development software One of the highlights of my year thus far has been publishing iOS apps with kids. We've gotten two apps successfully published in the App Store and are working on several more. As of this writing, we have one in review that we hope will be approved soon. I often get asked how we publish apps, since this is not something that is typical...

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Chris selected as K12OnlineConference keynote speaker Each year the K12OnlineConference provides tremendous professional development for free, and entirely online. This year, they have selected me as one of their keynote speakers. I am thrilled to have been chosen and look forward to participating in the conversation. Read the full post announcing all the keynote speakers here.

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Two quick links on Cognitive Load Theory I've been fielding lots of questions lately about Cognitive Load Theory. Here are two quick links that may be useful. First is an article talking about the practical implications of CLT on the design of learning. The second are some "recent" (as of 2003) developments regarding CLT. Happy reading! Update: I clarified the second...

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Practical advice on kids and Android app development After hearing about my students' success developing an Android app, I've gotten several emails asking for more details as to how I practically worked with my kids. Here are some pointers that I offered to the first person that emailed me, perhaps they are of some use to you. Please note that your mileage may vary. It's ok to not be...

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Publishing an App Inventor app to the Android Market As I mentioned earlier, my students and I published an Android app to the Android Market. See those links for more information on the background. This post is decidedly technical. First, once we finished the coding process, we packaged the app for to download to the computer. This is an option in App Inventor. This downloaded an .apk file....

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Aug

17

Linuxworld Expo 2006…

Posted by cmcraft | Comment: (1)

Category : Educational Technology, General

Right now in San Francisco, CA, on the heels of Apple’s WWDC not too far away, is the Linuxworld 2006 Expo and Conference. While I certainly couldn’t attend, the topics of discussion give us a chance to take the pulse of the Linux and open source world, and find any good tips for the educational realm. Some of the topics expectedly focus on Enterprise IT topics, but a couple struck my attention. I am searching for the podcasts of these keynotes, but so far to no avail. First, a Stanford Law professor names Lawrence Lessig spoke on what he describes as the Free Culture movement, and the threats and struggles within. No doubt he highlighted the strain of a consumerist tendency seen in those who partake of open source software but do not contribute in any respect.

Next up on the keynote list was Greg Besio, Corporate Vice President of Software for Motorola with a talk called Creating “Must Have” Mobile Experiences with Linux. In an educational society when we are confiscating cell phones instead of leveraging them, this talk could have fantastic ramifications for a more student-driven cell phone culture in schools. Sun Microsystems has been talking a lot lately about Sun ME, their mobile version of Java, allowing developers to write programs for mobile phones. Getting back to Linux, a consortium was set up with major players back in June to develop and agree upon a standard version of Linux.

So lots of open source news these days. I will try to keep you more posted, especially in regards to how this may impact education. Until next time…

Aug

15

Podcast Episode 4 – Let’s take a moment and define open source…

Posted by cmcraft | Comments Off

Category : General

I listened to a pretty amazing presentation recently from the O’Reilly Media Open Source Conference of 2005 which has audio being only recently released. The talk I listened to was by Kartik Subbarao, who is a high-up in the Enterprise IT market. He also works for Hewlett-Packard. HP has a great method of dealing with open source software because when they improve on a stretch of code, they then release that new code back into the wild, for others to partake. We as educators can often be strictly consumers of open source software and not provide any productive community benefit to the open source community writ large. I propose ways to contribute, even if (like me) you are not a developer and the idea of looking at source code causes your head to swim. I am no programmer, not since the days of Logo. I know a good bit about HTML and PHP, but don’t delve much past that. I spent too much time screaming at the Borland C++ screen some years ago and I think that traumatized me.

So on that happy note, here is podcast episode 4. Enjoy, and as always please feel free to comment or begin a discussion in the forums off to the right.

Aug

05

Betas, aren’t they those fighting fish?

Posted by cmcraft | Comments Off

Category : Software

I have been following the Firefox 2.0 Beta versions with bated breath. I am so happy that I made the switch away from the blue E on my PC. Firefox is everything good about open source and a community based project. So why do I bring this up?

They have just released a beta version in their nightly builds section that implements the new Visual Refresh theme. You can see the post I saw here. You will also note a download to the portable version of Firefox, which will allow you to test the software without messing up your current profile should there be a bug. Simply download it, extract it, and then delete the folder when finished. Remember, this is absolutely beta software and may will have an error or two. They say it works on a mac, but I have only tested it on a PC. I intend to go and compile it on Linux to see how that works.

This is a good and stable release, for a beta. If you aren’t one to typically forage into beta software, give this one a shot. You will see sublte yet powerful differences between Firefox 1.5.0.x and Bon Echo (2.0 Beta).

So good luck, have fun, oh, and yes, the bad marine jokes will stop.

Aug

03

New discussion board thread…

Posted by cmcraft | Comments Off

Category : General

Jan Wee’s comment on Episode 3 sparked a lengthy post in the discussion board.

To get there, click on Discussion Board on the right.

What do you think about that question? I’d love to hear your comments!

Aug

02

Podcast Episode 3 – Let’s go clamming…

Posted by cmcraft | Comments: (2)

Category : Software

First let me say that I have fixed my feed issues…you can subscribe using iTunes using the links to the right. Yes the first two are the same, but I am fighting with the music store to get my feed included.

This episode is all about Clam, a free and open source antivirus software. The main website is www.clamav.net and the Windows port can be found at www.clamwin.net.

Bottom line? I like it alot, and I use it. Now, I really only use it on my Windows PC but it is installed on my Linux machine as well. I am experimenting with the Mac OS X port, but really only for my own learning process.

Clam doesn’t deal with spyware/malware/greyware so you will need some other solution for that, as I am sure you are already aware.

And for the record, I still do an occasional online scan using Trend Micro’s Housecall.
So there it is, happy listening!

Chris

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