Tom Caswell

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  • Project Feedback Survey for INST 5205/6205 Class

    I am helping with Bobbe’s INST 5205/6205 class presentations. For those of you in the class, please fill out this survey for each group (except your own). I will post anonymous results here, so check back tomorrow. Thanks!

    Update: Here is the anonymous feedback. You all did very well.

  • OpenEd Tech 2009: Are we almost there?

    The OpenEd Tech Summit meetings held in Barcelona yesterday and today are over. As I head back to my frozen home in Logan, Utah, I will think more about what made this gathering so memorable. Perhaps it was the small meeting size, or the excellent choice in participants. There were many opportunities to network and “feed my Facebook.” Eva did a fantastic job coordinating every detail. I especially loved the walking tours of the older parts of Barcelona.

    The collaborative work on the future of eLearning was enjoyable and engaging. Our group took a bold step in collaborative, community driven accreditation by giving Debby Knotts a certificate in Multidisciplinary Transnational PowerPoint Management Within Collaborative Working and Learning Teams (Typist). Paul Kirshner and my other colleagues in Group D made a point of asking for another OpenEd Tech Summit in 2009. All I can add is an impatient, “Are we almost there?”

  • Links from my AECT seminar: Web2.0 to support teaching and learning

    Thanks to all who participate in this seminar! I hope it was helpful.

    Some great ideas and links were shared today as we discussed the components that make up Web2.0. Here are the presentation slides. Also, here is a link to my class website (wiki) for preservice elementary school teachers: http://lab-inst.usu.edu/groups/inst4010/. Another great place to learn more about Web2.0 in learning is David Wiley’s Blogs, Wikis, and New Media for Learning OpenCourseWare course.

    And here are links to some of the most interesting sites that were shared:

    http://chinswing.com/ (A versatile audio sharing site — love it!)

    http://livemocha.com (A social language learning site — where was this when I was a French teacher?!)

    http://zamzar.com/ (Online file conversion tool — very cool)

    http://www.edu20.org/ (An interesting Learning Management System, or LMS)

    http://www.toondoo.com/ (Reminds me of ComicLife on the mac)

    http://edublogs.org (A blogging platform just for educators. Sue Watter’s blog is particularly good)

    http://teachertube.com (Similar to YouTube, but focused on education)

    http://merlot.org (A peer reviewed learning content repository)

    An example of embedding/reusing content:

    We also talked a bit about OpenCourseWare. Here are a few examples, and links to learn more:

    http://ocw.mit.edu (MIT’s OCW)

    http://ocw.nd.edu (Notre Dame’s OCW)

    http://ocw.usu.edu (Utah State’s OCW)

    Start an OCW Interested in starting an OpenCourseWare at your institution? Start Here!

    eduCommons A Free OpenCourseWare Management System

  • Moving contacts from Blackberry phone to T-mobile’s G1

    I was concerned about how I would move all my addresses and phone numbers from my Blackberry Pearl to my new Google Android phone, but it went really smoothly thanks to a very nice vCard to CSV Converter I found online. I was able to export my addresses from both Outlook and Apple’s Address Book app to vCard format. From there, I used the converter to make CSV files that would be Gmail compatible (so as not to lose any data). Then from the Contacts section of Gmail, I used the Import link to import all these CSV files. Gmail did a great job of merging all my duplicate contacts, since it had already stored email addresses for many of them. The creepy thing about this is that now Google has all my contact info. The cool thing is that now I can access it from any computer or phone (so I won’t have to do this again if I stick with Android phones). So please Google, remember not to be evil. 🙂

  • First impressions after a week with the G1 Android phone

    It’s been a week now, so I am prepared to offer my opinion on T-mobile’s G1 Android phone. Overall, I am still glad I bought the G1. The HTC phone hardware gets a B, while the Android operating system gets closer to an A. Here are a few thoughts:

    Battery life. As expected, the battery life on the G1 is pretty poor. After a couple hours of heavy use, only 25% of the battery remained. After talking to some of my friends the battery life seems comparable to the iPhone. Hopefully I will be able to drop a better battery into it as they improve.

    Android Market Apps (with some bugs). The G1 comes with just a few Google-based applications plus calculator, camera, etc — but new apps are appearing on the Android Market every day. I don’t have time to go into all of the ones I’ve installed right now (I think I’ve installed a couple dozen at this point), but I like what I see so far. Many still have some bugs, but I was expecting that. Updates seem to be coming out regularly, and most of the popular apps are quite stable. All of them are free as of right now, so I guess you get what you pay for 🙂 The top 3 apps on my wishlist are a flickr image uploader, a geocaching app that tracks caches offline, and a turn-by-turn navigation app. My top suggestion for the Android team is to allow a way to exit apps. But I’m sure someone will put out an application killer app soon.

    That’s it for now. At some point I’ll review my favorite 3 apps, including one that could be the start of a really fun location-based game.