The beta for Captivate on Mac!

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I just came across a great article from the Metaverse Roadmap Overview with some interesting findings, discussions and survey results around virtual worlds, game-based learning, augmented reality and other innovative ways or using virtual world technologies mixed with “real world” ones to create new realities.

As stated in the article:

“Virtual worlds increasingly augment the economic and social life of physical world communities. The sharpness of many virtual and physical world distinctions will be eroded going forward. In both spaces, issues of identity, trust and reputation, social roles, rules, and interaction remain at the forefront.”

Opera Unite launched earlier this week, providing services that make it possible for users to share content seamlessly with one another via the Web with no need for uploads! Many tech blogs like TechCrunch are all over this.

Warning, *dork* attempt at a poetic verse: “The cloud just got lighter and can probably fly higher.”

Read the Introduction to Opera Unite.

Anyways, this is great news (and let’s see how long it lasts before someone makes it a security issue or unscrupulous hackers find a way to take advantage of the system). Right now, most of the applications that let you share content from your computer to the internet require at least an initial upload or are limited to small files, etc. The services offered in the Opera Unite bundle (with more to come since they are letting developers design apps to their service) create a direct connection through the Web to your audience’s computers without the need for an uploads or plugin downloads on the viewers’ side. Basically turning any home computer into powerful Web servers.

I love the idea of sharing with no FTP, no middlemen…

It seems to be a one way road still, meaning I give my friends access to certain folders (or websites) on my computer and they can see access those files. I am still not sure (haven’t done enough testing) to see if they can then put their own files in that folder I shared with them, making it a mutual file repository.

In the future, it would be interesting to see them design something that would allow for file EDITING online for easy simultaneous collaborative authoring, similar to what LiveDrive does with Zoho and iPaper integration.

from TechCrunch

Too much information out there to keep up with…

What about creating your own Web Apps (browser-based applications) for your most visited websites?

On Windows, use Mozilla’s Prism. Click “download Prism for Windows on the following page and follow the instructions.

For Mac OSX, use Fluid, which works in a similar fashion to Prism but is made to be compatible and integrated with Mac OSX.

I understand crowdsourcing courses, lessons and other eLearning-related material can be a tough call for any sector (corporate, K12, etc.). But has anyone had any experience crowdsourcing the development of learning experiences from a user feedback perspective at least? 

One question could be how is crowdsourcing feedback different from simply putting a feedback button on your website or a particular lesson or product? Crowdsourcing seems to be more powerful since instead of relying on static feedback submitted by individual users at a given time, when feedback is given in a community-driven platform, it can much more powerful. Users will spark discussions around one’s content in a dynamic manner, sharing their thoughts and ideas from perspectives others might not have considered if submitting a single “feedback ticket”.

So, again, has anyone used crowdsourcing for engaging the learners in the development process?

Services that use crowdsourcing for feedback and product ideas include (not limited to):

Get Satisfaction 

UserVoice

IdeaScale

SuggestionBox

Spigit

CrowdSound

BrightIdea

Google Moderator

CrowdSpirit

IdeaBlob

OK, I might need to stop here, the “idea/innovation management” crowdsourcing field seems to be the one that suffers the most from “cloning” in the social media era… almost like they ran out of ideas for innovative takes on the same topic…

Here is a more comprehensive list of crowdsourcing modalities and websites.

I don’t have a tablet PC or a drawing board (electronic or not). I guess I could create wireframes on basic  computer tools like Pencil even using the highlight tools on Microsoft PowerPoint, for instance.

But one tool I discovered recently makes it much easier to come up with mockups very quickly: Balsamiq Mockups. The tools has a small cost ($79 at the time of this posting) but it is worth it.

Features

• Drag and drop interface
• Hand-drawn look and feel (makes the mockups look like just that: mockups, allowing you to communicate your ideas with enough freedom for creativity in the actual development process and without raising too much expectation from the developers since what you are offering is nothing more than a *mockup*)
• Several standard built-in navigation and user interface elements ready to be customized
• Ability to export as PNG
• Ability to create new mockups from an existing one
• Repository of icons and images

Features that would be nice to have (at least some I can think of off the top of my head)

• Native “print” functionality
• Custom lines and hands-free drawing. Right now you’re limited to the icons and shapes available in the tool’s repository.
• Collaborative editing possibility – either by sync’ing your local files in real time over the Internet or by providing an online-only version (I’d rather have the first option in case I don’t have internet connection for some reason).
• Sharing capabilities (to services like those covered on ShareThis and AddThis.
• A “website” mentality type of mockup. With “real-time” navigation, allowing a person to navigate through the (mockup) website and have that experience from a user perspective. This would need a mockup to have multiple pages linked to a main index. Similar to FlairBuilder and  Napkin Look & Feel’s approach.
• As pointed our by StuffThatHappens, a built-in storyboarding feature (storyboarding templates?) would be an asset as well.

Competition

The only similar tool I have found is iPlotz (I do not have this software and can’t make a comparison here) but it does seem to offer an online collaborative version of the tool (a bit overprices if you ask me). Their desktop app costs $75 (as I post this entry). Might also be worth checking out. Here is a post comparing both tools. Beware: it has been written by a competitor, FlairBuilder).

Twitter is a phenomenon that keeps growing in popularity.  With new developers creating  tools to integrate with it, Twitter keeps getting new features everyday and extra data portability functionality…

Twitter also has many look-alikes out there. Does anyone see advantages to Twitter “clones” such as Rejaw and YouAre, and white label or self-hosted solutions ShoutEm  and Laconi.ca? Especially for academic institutions and corporate learning departments?

Any advantage at all in trying to replicate Twitter’s functionality? Any added features that you may find useful?

Of course learning languages can be both fun and challenging. 

Still in Brazil (in my teenage days) I learned English mostly by listening to my favorite artists, translating their music and making up dialogs in my mind while taking a shower or walking down the street… yes, that crazy…

I also used to go on the ICQ website’s “people & chat” (back in the day) to the regional public chats in the UK, USA and other places were English is spoken as a native language. 

Playing free computer games (or cheap ones) like Age of Empires and watching movies also helped a lot.

It takes some effort and creativity to learn a language (and passion and persistence not to forget it).

That’s why I get so excited when I stumble upon posts like this one by Dmitri Popov about learning languages with open source and webtop applications…

Dr. BJ Fogg & Daniel Berdichevsky at Stanford University are gathering articles from various authors into a nice book around the psychology of Facebook.

You can read more about it on their blog.

In response to Koreen Olbrish’s post about learning that takes place in ARGs:

Here is a good place to find out what ARGs are being played currently. One of the best examples of ARGs I think was the one that warmed players up for the release of The Dark Knight. Just explore the puzzles there, incredible. If I am not mistaken, that ARG was developed by 42Entertainment (the same agency that created the Nine Inch Nails one. Also check out ARGnet for current ARGs.

ARGs are a very interesting resource for instruction, since you can mix the content with the storyline. Deliver puzzles that reveal messages that involve content, for instance…

They can be fairly cheap to do since all technologies needed for the game are right here, for free with Web 2.0:

• Facebook, Ning, for discussions;
• blogs for characters’ updates and direct contact with players,
• wikis for players to interact and exchange clues, etc.
• Youtube for video feeds and trailers.

Even the planning can be done collaboratively (e.g. flowcharting the gameplay via Gliffy with other designers, if geographically disperse)…

Also, VW can be used in the plot or even as the main meet up hub… These are just examples of social media resources that can be utilized in making a cheap and entertaining ARG.

ARGs are very engaging since they mix reality (clues and puzzles with characters that feel real, and player-player interaction)…

A problem on educational ARGs: ARGs tend to rely on having a VERY broad potential audience, say the whole world, and a portion of that population will enter the rabbit hole… well, how can you get 30 players (say you’re creating an ARG for a group of people at a conference) to “buy” the first clue and engage in the game? Maybe 2 of the 70 will actually find the first clue and engage… well, you can manipulate them, sending other clues, clarification, direct messages from game characters until they buy in.. but, the players must have a certain interest to stay in game… and not everyone is a “gamer”…

Just a few thoughts…

I love ARGs and think they have potential… we just need a few more publications with success stories, failures, things to avoid, etc. in EDUCATIONAL situations…, I think…

Take a look at the concept of mARGs (mini ARGs), shorter, with a specific, small audience. People at LAMP have been doing a great job on that .