Apple’s iCloud on the Horizon

I just blogged recently about the confirmation of the iCloud on my iPad blog, but thought it would be worth a mention over here, too.  Especially given Wired‘s great write up about this 4th go-round for Apple.  A choice quote:

Apple is finally getting serious with online media services. The company began building a 500,000-square-foot data center in North Carolina in 2009, which would support an enormous volume of data. […] “The companies that are building the biggest data centers tend to also have the biggest cloud ambitions,” said Rich Miller, an editor of Data Center Knowledge, regarding Apple’s data center […]

Given that I haven’t used MobileMe since it was Mac.com way back in the early 2000s, I’m very excited to see what Apple has in store. If this gives me the ability to upload my music to online storage and access it from anywhere on any Apple device, I’d be willing to pay just about any reasonable monthly fee they can come up with. I suspect I’m not alone in this thinking, either.

Fan Pages Hurt

I spent this fine afternoon creating a brand new Facebook Fan page for the Media Commons as our old Group page was set to be frozen in carbonite – with no option for mercy.  Armed with advice from our resident social media guru, I set to work with a spring in my step.  Most everything went fairly smoothly and we started racking up fans even before the bulk of the move was complete.  However, I hit a snag when it came time to start adding apps.  

Critical Documentary Making

The data demonstrated that critical documentary making is a pedagogically rich classroom ac- tivity, providing holistic experiences for pupils through connecting school life with the outside world; facilitating pupils’ explorations of societal issues which may support a sense of belong- ing to the wider community; empowering pupils to develop skills which can be used for voice and to make a difference; and enabling pupils to learn to critically read the media and become competent with information and communication technology which is transferable to other school activities.

A thesis posted on DML’s site on research conducted on the impact of documentary filmmaking in the classroom.  While Rosalind Cooper was looking specifically at Finnish primary school children, I think the findings (exemplified by the above paragraph pulled from the abstract) really apply at the college level – especially at some of the more rural Commonwealth campuses.  

IDS Mobile Media Kit

I was recently tasked with putting together a collection of gadgets and accessories that could comprise a Mobile Media Kit to be distributed to interested Instructional Design staffers throughout the Commonwealth. Once I found a suitably versatile Lowepro bag I set about filling it with a 32 GB iPod touch (in the same Belkin Ergo case with strap that we’ve been using for our Mobile Media Pilot), PED-3 tripod mount, GorillaPod, iRig Mic and Griffin stylus. I also put together a pack-in sheet that will let recipients know on which apps we would recommend spending a $25 iTunes gift card.