::: The EdTech Advantage :::

Day 2 of PETC-2 started with a presentation by Eric Johnson. He talked about topics such as convergence, rise of the “participatory culture”, increase in smartphone use and acquisition as well as the commensurate increase in bandwidth, the new web, RSS, and W3C.

According to Eric, as devices and services converge, supply and demand for video, audio, imagery, text, and multimedia have all accelerated dramatically. These have contributed to the emergence of a participatory culture that has created an additional demand for “always on access”. (See the work of Mark van’t Hooft and colleagues from Kent State University’s Research Center for Educational Technology on “Ubiquitous Computing“.) This increase is also fueled by (or may have led to) the increase in speed, availability, and affordability of wireless networks

Eric also pointed the rise of the “participatory culture” that involves blogging, podcasting, moblogging, and social promotion — where news stories are promoted based on their popularity. There are very radical changes now. It used to be “just the internet” — now there’s much more — and these new technologies and means of access have lots of implications for smartphones and handheld computers.

Eric proposed the idea of and “Internet Evolution” where the web is now the “new normal” in the American way of life. Teens and generation Y (18-28 year-olds) are significnatly more likely than older users to send and receive instant messages, play online games, create blogs, download music and search for school information. This “new normal” is now reaching a majority status. Eventually, those who do not go online will constitute the minority in the U.S. (What will be the implications in education? Will there be equal access to the technology and services? How will this be funded?)

Eric briefly talked about technologies used in schools such as RSS (Really Simple Syndication), podcasting, and WiFi. He also went through a few things to think about: the increase of smartphone use (the cell phone is the most personal and ubiquitous gadeget around), and the increase in availability and speed of network bandwidth. (Prices are coming down day after day for these things. But will prices truly diminish to zero?)

Eric’s presentation closed with a discussion of the W3C mobile initiative — which is to make efficient content browsing of the web from mobile devices.

Kevin Mamajek (Systems Engineer for Education at Palm, Inc.) took over the floor after Eric. He talked about programming for the Palm handheld computing platform. He didn’t teach us how to program, but gave us (a lot of) information on this subject — going through the available tools for programming for the Palm. He enthusiastically discussed his recent projects on prototyping — a process that allows clients to see a methodology that they’re thinking about, actually on a handheld computer. This entails working very quickly with the available tools, being creative and resourceful along the way.

Kevin also talked about three areas of programming: creating databases, forms, and coding. “New programs” can be created through database (and simple form-creation) programs such as HanDBase, SmartList to Go and FileMaker Mobile. More complex forms created through data collection technologies such as the solutions from Pendragon and Satellite Forms also provide another means of creating customized “programs” for specific uses. These two ways of creating specialized solutions are fairly easy to understand and use. The third area of programming that is more complex, but produces true new programs for the Palm handheld involves coding through programs such as NSBasic, AppForge, C, C++, and VisualBasic.

After the discussion on programming, Kevin continued to talk about troubleshooting for the Palm handheld. He showed us what particular folders are important to look for when troubleshooting in the WIndows platform — such as the palm, palmone, and handspring folders. (Since I use the MissingSync instead of the Palm Desktop program on my Mac, my mind kind of flew out of the room at this point — thus I don’t remember much about this discussion. Sorry, Kevin.)

We had wonderful sandwiches for lunch after the presentations. It was a quick chow down since we needed to assemble early to leave together for The Tech Museum. (Which is another Blog Entry on its own.)

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Filed under: Educational Technology, Palm Handhelds, Professional Dev't.