I’ve tried to ignore IE but sadly it has a large user base and is the browser of choice for ‘enterprisey-type establishments’. I love FireFox and I am addicted to numerous extensions (FireBug, Screenshot, Web Developer Toolbar, Del.icio.us, Selenium, etc). I don’t think a day goes by, where I don’t keenly try to sell FireFox to an IE user. …But in reality I too as a developer need to test in IE and therefor must at least have it installed. At least IE now supports add-ons - the Web Developer toolbar might come in handy.

Yep — I’ve always felt like something was missing, when reading PDF files! I’d often be reading a document and think to myself - “Mmmm, No annoying ads”.  … but thanks to Adobe, PDF’s will soon have targeted ads, powered by Yahoo. A whole new revenue stream for some, I guess!

Educational concepts captured on video, uploaded and shared!!! Check out TeacherTube.

Some vids are quite creative eg Paper Trained Teachers in a Video Game World even challenges the concept of sitting still and watching it.

USQ has 9 subjects/units available under the OpenCourseWare hat. More importantly USQ appears to be the only Australian university in the OpenCourseWare Consortium. I wonder why more Australian universities are not involved? Surely it would help to attract international students.

I’m interested in what is ‘under the hood’ of the USQ OpenCourseWare site. So far the content and activities are powered by PHP and static HTML (Dreamweaver Templates). It does not look like Moodle and might be some proprietary USQ made content system. …ah Universities building their own tools, to meet their own needs - Now thats a new idea!

An early xmas present has arrived - Rails 2.01 is out. Thanks Rails Core Team.

The first computer bug was a real bug - a moth. The system was debugged to remove the moth and the moth even got added to the log sheet.

So I am thinking the first bug was the easiest to fix.

Debugging programs and modern day frameworks has a lot in common with Pest management. First there was Pest Eradication but Pests could not be Eradicated. They tried Pest Control but it was too hard to ‘control’. Finally they decided upon Pest Management: “We can’t eradicate the bugs! We can’t control the bugs! We can only manage the bug problem!”

… gives a whole new meaning to Project Management!

I think I’ve just encountered the best explaination of Spring and a super simple example of wiring and rewiring components. If you are a beginner and want to understand Spring, then you must read the first chapter from Beginning Spring Framework 2. The first chapter can be downloaded for free but I recommend purchasing this book if the first chapter is anything to go by…..

… and so the popularity of Ruby increases yet again - Check out the November 2007 TIOBE Index.

Stumbled across some refreshing and amazingly creative edu apps created by Futurelab. They seem to have pulled of creating applications that take advantage of mobile devices, games based learning and inquiry based learning theories.

• Create-A-Scape
  Create a Mediascape - “location-based experiences, games and tours on a handheld device”. Take a map, define regions (eg landmarks), add multimedia related content to your regions and then export to a mobile device format. If the mobile device has GPS, the multimedia will be automatically triggered. The mscape site allows mediascapes to be shared.
• Exploratree
  A tool to create thinking guides - brainstorming/problem solving templates. There are many templates to download.
• Moovl
  Moovl is a simulation tool that allows kids (primary school) to draw and animate objects with physical properties.
• Newtoon
  Build and share games based on Newtonian physics on mobile devices. Well thats what the description says - I could not give this one a try as it is not yet released.

Futurelab looks like a great place to work!

Just one little picture, but Tim Sodhi’s new drag and drop Learning design tool looks so promising - intuitive, simple and most importantly expressive.  The theoretical basis for the tool comes from the “The 8 Learning Events Model and its principles“. Wonder where I can find more info about the tool????