The link is in Chinese. If you can read it, go ahead.
Otherwise, read on.
To have Firefox opens multiple default home pages in different tabs, put multiple URLs into the Tools|Option|General|Home Page. Separate each URL using a pipe character "|".
Alternately, open your homepages in different tags. Go to Tools|Option|General|Home Page, just click [Use Current Page].
Once the biggest name in web browser, Netscape released version 8, but according to TechWorld, over 40 bugs were discovered within hours of its release.
One of the most important bug which may affect my work is the rendering of xml. While it nice to be able to choose between Gecko or IE rendering engine using a little icon at the left of the status bar, it also makes IE's XML rendering returns a blank screen, not only within Netscape 8's own IE mode, but the IE itself. The current work around suggested is to uninstall Netscape 8 AND remove an entry in the registry. (see MSDN blog entry)
As noted earlier, Fablusi is heavily dependent on client-side processing. I have chosen to use a JSON-like protocol between the server and client. I would have chosen to use xml. If it were the case, Fablusi would have been broken under Netscape 8 and would have caused it to break when using IE after its installation.
I was composing this post using IE 6 (after verifying the bug reported above). However, just before I post, I right-clicked to do a spelling check. To my greatest horror, no spell checking was available.
I now realise how useful all the extensions in Firefox have been. This post is now copy and pasted into a firefox browser ... (I am happy ever after).
By the way, I have installed a GreaseMonkey "Technorati Tags for Bloggers" which allows me easily add the tags to this post.
Have come to appreciate the role, value and importance of social learning, situated learning, learning in community and culture. That more is learned on the playing fields and in discourse with peers than from the sage on the stage. Even in very structured training situations, it is the break time conversation, the second-hand explanation from a colleague that situates the new concept, validates its importance and sanctions its legitimacy.
My first post about digital divide pointed out that I did not believe there would ever be a satisfactory solution to equality in terms of digital access to information and resources.
Although theoretically, digital information can be reproduced at marginally zero cost, the access to these bits and bytes still depends on physical equipment which must be produced at a cost with a finite production capacity. Hence my argument was that there will always be differences in different stages of availability at different communities.
Chasing the Dragon's Tale has a post asking what "If computers become inexpensive, really inexpensive..." and raises the issue of power even if computers are in the price range (about AUD400) of current mobile phones.
I did a bit of search on the average power consumption of PC and would happy to settle at 220W (150W for the desktop computer + 70W for the monitor). The cost of providing such power to remote area using alternate energy source (say solar panel) would be around AUD2000 (using 4 1000 x 4000 mm panel with an output of 60W each would cost around AUD500 in Australia). This is still far from within the range of most under-developed countries. Although solar panel have a service life of 20 years, it is still a significant investment. If such money were available, there would be other competing needs for the scarce electrical power resource in the remote areas.
Another important point about digital divide is the assumption of ubiquity of the communication network. Yes, once an optical fibre is laid, the cost of communication is almost next to nothing. Yet, the initial infra-structure investment is huge and demanding. Again, if any fund is available, there would be competing needs for the fund for other more urgent infra-structure expenses, e.g. fresh water supply (although there is an exciting Australian invention which may help solve this problem in remote villages) or medical services.
While I like to see more equality in terms of providing digital access to communities, I don't see any chance of getting any better in a long time.
This is a paper that I am going to present in AusWeb05 (co-authored with Roni Linser). Comment welcome.
Both role-play simulations and Virtual Worlds as pedagogy have now been around for some time and are both considered to be highly effective in creating effective and memorable experiences for learners. But whereas the rendered gaming model of virtual worlds seems to have captured the imagination of trainers, educators and researchers, the role-play model seems to have languished somewhat. This paper explores some of the pedagogic and psychological issues for learning associated with the rendering or non-rendering of virtual worlds. We argue that while rendered environments can contribute to learning, they are often too shallow for purposes such as fostering strategic thinking and problem solving. In such cases, non-rendered virtual worlds may be better in using and fostering the required imaginative capacities of learners.
As we embark on the development of something, anything in fact, we no doubt will find ourselves in situations where we are reusing part of previous work we have done. Programmer uses the technical term "function" to encapsulate a block of code which is used in several occasions (reuse). Later, of course, we have methodologies such as object-oriented development etc. This post is not about such technical details.
When we write our lesson plans (is there anyone still doing this?, ok, assume we do), we found ourselves repeating several patterns which we are comfortable with. May be it looks like "revision of previous lesson, introduction of new idea, details, examples, more details, more examples....". Again this is a re-use, a reuse of the pattern.
The conversation style I am using in Conversation With My Evil Twin has a template behind it. I always have a "background" section and a boilerplate passage "Once upon a time, on a sunny evening ...."
When a team starts to work collaboratively on a project, we begin to introduce guidelines, rules etc in order to make the reuse more efficient, ie minimise the re-invention of wheels. (Ok, the guidelines and rules are also introduced for other reasons too, but here we focus on those guidelines and rules which are related to re-use). When the team is small and close, these guidelines and rules are negotiated and formed informally. As the collaboration team grows, with more members from more diverse background joining the team, this process of articulating the guidelines and rules starts to have a life of its own. This is called the standardisation process. As long as this process is driven by the active users (members of the collaboration teams who actually use the guidelines and rules in their daily work), these guidelines and rules are fluid, changing as needs arise and continuously re-negotiated. However, when the process is taken over by "managers", this is then driven by a completely different set of motives and agenda. "Political" considerations become more and more important. These start to surface and enforced: "stability of standards", conformance and examples where organizations attempt to 'refocus' anyone who is perceived as doing any innovative work 'out of the box' because this is perceived as either 'non corporate', 'off message' or just plain inefficient (Derek Morrison, World's largest deployment of Moodle? (part 2)) James Gosling call this calcification in an 1990 online article (http://www.java.sun.com/people/jag/StandardsPhases/index.html) which is no longer available online.
Once certain "standards" are recognised as important and strategic by the upper management, the power of negotiating, modifying, extending etc of these standards are taken away from the actual users. Actual users are typically disconnected from the standard process (may be the users of standards are not interested in the political battles of setting standards, or they are deem as not representative enough from the organisation's point of view that their representation are replaced by more "senior" members who have no hand-on experience of the "product" they are trying to standardise.)
I will stop here and let you imagine what will happen next ...
Does this sound familiar to you? I hope not.
By Thomas Nocera, registration needed to read the article.
In an earlier post, I reported on the "gameness" and concluded that these "gameness" elements are equally applicable in the design of learning activities. Thomas further points to a number of theories that
astute game developers can benefit from mastering
The theoretical knowledge of what keeps humans engaged in relationships is important. Relationships are fundamentally dyads - where 2 people are engaged in 2 way communications in an ongoing, satisfactory, even if not completely pleasurable way. Understanding the motivating reasons why we remain in communication with each other is an essential component of game developer knowledge.
"the exchange theory". As it applies to interpersonal communications: people will stay in relationships (or, communicating with each other, or playing a game)as long as their individual perception is that they are getting more out of it (the relationship, or the game) than they are putting into it.
I have written a post about a typical corporate scenario in my Corporate e-learning blog.
I am at a loss as to how to handle the onslaught of junk email that is routinely sent internally throughout my company by fellow employees including the executive staff and mostly the CFO, my boss.
This morning I received yet another "John 3:16, Jesus Loves You, forward this to ten people" chain letter email with the animated graphics and all that crap.
From a corporate learning point of view, is there a lesson that we can learn? If there is any HR people reading my post, you should think about the consequence this may have.
Any better solution? I think there is at least one. I will reveal that tomorrow.
