Tom’s Two Cents

My friend Marion and I are both interested in working with GPS/location-based games. Next semester Brett Shelton is doing another instructional games course here at Utah State University, so we are thinking of working with the class to design two versions of a single game — one to be played at the American West Heritage Center using the WhereIGo tool and another as a PC-based game using a game engine called Visionaire. Marion plans to study the impact of presence on long-term recall of facts. (i.e. do people remember more when they are actually there vs. in a simulation.) I’m not really sure what my part will focus on. Initially, I was going to look at piggybacking on the same game and adapting it for the blind. But the devil is always in the details, and I don’t think I could find enough blind subjects to do a meaningful study. It might also be interesting to do research along the lines of depth of learning. In other words, do you learn more deeply if you are actually there vs. being there virtually? Secondary schools tend to focus on hitting a broad range of learning objectives, so I’m not sure if anyone really cares about deep learning these days.

I am also interested in studying the growth of OpenCourseWare through Facebook, but I’m starting to wonder if it would be enough to build on for a dissertation. The guys who created the CourseFeed Facebook app are in the process of updating CourseFeed so it will include OpenCourseWare courses. I can think of tons of features to go along with this, but at the end of the day I’m not a programmer so I can only hope that CourseFeed developers at TopClass take advantage of all that OCW has to offer. This OCW + Facebook mashup could be the start of a great Personal Learning Environment.

At the end of it all, I also want to make it through this Instructional Technology PhD. Unfortunately, it seems that most of the people I know who are interesed in Personal Learning Environments are down at BYU. So maybe the whole Facebook, OCW, PLE thing just doesn’t have enough traction up here at USU. That’s what interests me, but it seems like you have to pick a topic that also interests your committee chair or you won’t get much support. The whole thing is getting kind of frustrating.

This is in response to my brother’s post, My $.02 on Apple’s Response to Microsoft’s Response.
Even though I use a MacBook Pro these days, I consider myself as much of an Apple critic as a Microsoft critic. The fact that I have used macs a lot lately has actually led to even more mac criticisms, but part of that is just because I’m hard on whatever I use. The other part is that I think Apple is following in Microsoft’s footsteps — but somehow is in denial about it all. While it makes for a funny ad, Apple has no room to talk about Microsoft’s advertising budget when Apple is even more concerned about image. I’m talking about everything from Apple’s highly theatrical upgrade announcements to the black turtlenecks worn by Steve Jobs and all his faithful followers — I mean employees. It’s downright creepy. Maybe you have to be this obsessed to have really good hardware design… I don’t know. But the real question we should ask is simple: who is really delivering what the customer wants? Let’s see…

• Vista license servers… because entering that 25-character Windows XP product key wasn’t fun enough
• iTunes’ proprietary .aac (and coincidentally incompatible with anything else) music file format
• The new and “improved” (and coincidentally incompatible with anything else) .docx document file format

No, thanks. None of that helps me. In a lot of ways it feels like a race to the bottom. And, just like the presidential race, I find myself trying to pick the platform I feel will be less awful… but not really what I want. In this regard Apple is giving Microsoft a real run for its money. And while everyone has been asking Apple for a cheaper mac laptop, when Steve Jobs unveiled the new lineup of new MacBooks this month, the closest Apple came to that request was lowering the price of the old white MacBooks to $999… until those run out of stock. Beyond that the price of the next cheapest MacBook jumps to about $1300. Um… did I mention that it has a fancy new metal case? *sigh*

So don’t let the cute “I’m a mac” ads fool you. Microsoft and Apple are both spending plenty of money on advertising (and fancy new metal cases, if you’re Apple.) They even run ads about the other guy’s ads. Does this sound familiar? In some ways I wish the networks would suspend Microsoft and Apple ad campaigns — at least until the presidential election is over. I can’t deal with both software and political ad campaigns at the same time. Too much of the same useless stuff. And if there is anyone else out there that thinks they can build a reliable computer AND listen to customers at the same time, I’m ready to hear from you.

I have been a resident of Utah for 3 years now, and I am FINALLY being allowed to apply for resident tuition. The form I had to fill out asks for details about every aspect of my life. Let me tell you, the Department of Homeland Security has nothing on the Utah State University residency folks. They want to know where I have lived, worked, and traveled in the past three years. Every trip greater than 15 days has to be documented. They want copies of my taxes, my vehicle and voter registrations, my mortgage statements, as well as information about my wife and my parents. While I am grateful to pay less tuition starting next semester, I am amazed by how much information is required to establish residency. So I wrote my own version of an employment verification letter to make life easier on my supervisor:

To whom it may concern,

Tom Caswell has been an employee of Utah State University since September 2005. He has put up with your tuition residency requirements for 3 years now. He has paid the higher out-of-state tuition rates during this time — even though he has been paying Utah property, income, and sales taxes since the first day he set foot in Utah back in August 2005. Please stop being a bunch of freaking morons and realize that he is now eligible for in-state tuition. Thank you.