November 3, 2011
Jawbone Releases UP, A Wristband For Tracking Your Wellness
Cliff Kuang,
Fast Company, November 3, 2011.
A lot of effort has gone into making the design of this thing just right - and even if they miss on some of the details, they may well have made the leap necessary to ensure wide adoption. The product is called UP, it's made by a company called Jawbone, and it's a bracelet that monitors your health: it tracks your sleeping, your exercise and your diet. Not all automatically (at least, not yet) - while it has sensors, you have to put it into sleep mode when you sleep, and enter diet information manually (oh, but how nice it would be to simply scan the food with your bracelet - for now, it simply records the photo). The bracelet, along with smartphone and web app, incorporates social features as well, so you can share your good practices with your friends (or, I guess, be shamed by your bad practices). If you don't think this is the future of online learning, think again. See also here and here.
Free monthly webinars start 5 Nov
Nicky Hockly,
e-moderation station, November 3, 2011.
Something else to add to your calendar: these free webinars being organized by the IATEFL Learning Technologies SIG. Topics include mobile learning, interactive whiteboards, implementing ICT and collaborative projects. Also pretty neat: "This first event is jointly organised with IATEFL Peru, and takes place during their face-to-face conference in Lima. The webinar will be livecast into a conference room, and will be the first experience of this type of event for many of the participants."
[Link] [Comment][Tags: Project Based Learning, Experience, Online Learning]
Open Course Library Launches 1st 42 Courses
Cable Green,
Creative Commons, November 3, 2011.
This is fabulous. Cable Green writes, "On Monday, the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC) released the first 42 of the state’s high-enrollment 81 Open Course Library courses." Of particular interest to me: Introduction to Logic. "The remaining 39 courses will be finished by 2013." The courses have been released in a variety of formats, including Common Cartridge exports, guest login to preview, or HTML downloads (PDF, ePub, XML). Textbooks, like this Pre-Calculus text, are able available as PDF or MS-Word Docs. This is the beginning of the end for expensive course content.
IBM Open-Sources Potential "Internet of Things" Protocol
Scott M. Fulton, III,
ReadWriteHack, November 2, 2011.
According to this article, IBM is open-sourcing an 'internet-of-things' protocol. "It is being called Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol (see also), the machine-to-machine counterpart of HTTP." The proposal explains, "While smart objects and physical world systems are often integrated with Enterprise and Web middleware today, it is often done using proprietary integration models and combinations of a prolific number of custom protocols and industry standards." This proposal cuts through that web of proprietary standards. As Marc Canter commented in G+, "This is IT - this is the protocol we'll all be using..." (no link, sorry). I'm still looking for confirmation - I've found none on the IBM or MQTT sites - I'll update if that changes.
Ed Radio Show Notes, November 3, 2011
- Ed Tech Weekly #202 on the #change11 course's trials with synchronous sessions
- Ed Tech Weekly #203 on OERu, The Missing Middle Piece, & Change11 Interaction ?'s
This newsletter is sent only at the request of subscribers. If you would like to unsubscribe, Click here.
Know a friend who might enjoy this newsletter? Feel free to forward OLDaily to your colleagues. If you received this issue from a friend and would like a free subscription of your own, you can join our mailing list. Click here to subscribe.