iMatt :: The Blog of Matt Clare

Pearson and Google launched their open class platform this week. Its a Learning Management System (LMS) tied to Google Apps domins. Two subjects often covered by this blog.

My short take is that the service looks useful for recreating an isolated web space that respects the need for private on-line areas student privacy and publisher copyright suggest. It’s not as open as I had hoped, but it is more real-world collaborative than any other LMS I’ve used.

My quick assessment, with updates from Tuesday October 18, 2011 4:51 PM:
Positives:

• Private – both in web isolation and in student records
• Private but easy to add others
• Free to add to an Google Apps domain – good option to those already using Google Apps versus other LMSs
• Has document collaboration powered by Google Docs
• Easy to use
• Simple link to publisher content
• UI is polished, including maximize option for all content

Negatives:

• Standard Cloud control concerns
• Unless your institution is paying for a commercial LMS licence the migration costs will likely outweigh any transition costs
• Configuration of items is often done through a Moodle style view/modify (edit) metaphor – can’t say I’m a fan – but so many instructors want a “student view”
• Crude controls of public (rest of the web) versus private, biased to private
• It’s infrastructure, not an innovation
• The menu structure and/or list of tools appears to be extensively cached – is this the return of the turn of the millennium Perl based tools and I need to “publish” something somewhere? – kidding
• There’s no logout button?

Also, you can add other participants via their E-Mail address, but no E-Mails are sent and there otherwise seems to be no way for them to access the OpenClass without being part of the Google Apps domina?
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My top-five Research In Motion jokes about their streak of poor products and refusal to attribute their current situation to their unconventional Co-CEO model:

1. Research In Motion is said to be losing so much money now that Gary Bettman and the city of Glendale are interested in investing.
2. At RIM our motto is “The buck stops here… and over there.”
3. At RIM we know that “Those that learn from history repeat it”. In fact, this is exactly how we pitch our products to our CEO, an then repeat for our CEO.
4. RIM’s mistake with the Blackberry Playbook was underestimating the overlap between tablet consumers and people that use E-Mail.
5. Do you know why messages are so secure on a Blackberry? No one uses it.

Best of luck to a Canadian innovator…. that could use some good luck.

www.flickr.com mattclare’s Storm Wednesday August 24, 2011 photoset

Here are a few pictures of lightning from the storm that came through Burlington Wednesday August 24, 2011.

Many have heard me complain that I’m not a fan of AWOLNATION’s hit song “Sail!”.

One thing I often cite is how few unique words are in the song. I finally ran the numbers:

AWOLNATION’s four minute and twenty seconds song “Sail” has 85 words, but, only 36 of those words are unique!

Here’s how those 36 words break down:

Here’s the PHP script I used to do the analysis mattclare.ca/~mclare/blog/sail.phps

Over four months ago I ordered a WoPad from PandaWill.com, so far I’m glad to have the exposure to the Android platform, and for some tasks the larger screen works well. But, the bottom line is it does not replace what any of the Apple iOS devices do.

The Device

The best part about the WoPad is that with express shipping it costs less than $200.00 Canadian. The free Android operating system that Google provides allows seemingly random manufacturers to assemble a collection of hardware, add the Android OS and suddenly have a tablet for sale.

The WoPad offers a capacitive screen or pressure sensitive. I won’t consider anything without a capacitive screen to be a modern tablet, so I ordered the capitative screen so that I wouldn’t look like a cafeteria worker trying to punch-in a trays worth of food into it. That said, the WoPad’s capacitive screen is slow to respond, that or perhaps it’s ability to process touches is very slow, but more on that in a bit.

The WoPad also has an SD card reader, standard headphone jack, standard USB connector for external media, a mini-usb connector so that the WoPad itself can be an external drive. There’s also a micro-HDMI port (I have yet to test) and it’s non-standard power connector – however it will trickle charge off of the mini-USB cable.

Android

The first thing I did when I received my WoPad was ask a colleague to “root it” and install the latest Android ROM that the WoPad would could support.

The ROM he used was based on this thread over at SlateDroid.com www.slatedroid.com/topic/14507-wopad-froyo-custom-rom/ Using these steps www.slatedroid.com/topic/12854-how-to-flash-a-rooted-rom/

If it weren’t for my keenness to get the latest ROM it would have never needed to be connected to a computer. A challenge Apple’s “peripherals” have yet to overcome.
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