New Apple Lust Objects

thx. yeah it was business related, not health related, so its all cool now. finding a payphone in modern urban america is pretty lolworthy tho

no way payphone usage was up like 500% last year

hahaha

Let alone the glacial pace at which academic institutions move and the wholesale paradigm shift that would have to happen in order for the infrastructure to be in place to distribute all course materials electronically in ebook format.

― Four-TEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN! (HI DERE), Tuesday, 28 July 2009 10:12 (31 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Course materials are now, by and large, electronic. Look at the all conquering Blackboard.

Not in my experience fwiw

I don't know if that's true at all institutions now, but it's been true at every institution I've worked at in the past seven years. And the problem isn't that the students aren't savvy enough to use it. The problem is the old one: how do you get students to read? But that's our problem as instructors, not a tech problem. And it won't prevent Apple from printing money if they can get the UI on such a device right.

Not in my experience fwiw

Not in my wife's either, or at least in terms of a unified data format; she ends up having to piece together data from a lot of disparate heterogeneous sources and convert the resulting melange into PDFs.

I get the impression that Blackboard, etc. tend to be a bigger deal at universities with significant mature student/distance learner populations. But my understanding of the research (which is restricted to astronomy education) is that those universities that use them are still struggling to get the same results out of them. There is still significant resistance to relying on them pedagogically or for testing at univs. worldwide, especially at the "elite" ones. At those places they seem to be simply course websites with PDFs that students are asked to print (or read however they prefer -- of course those that actually read them all print them).

Textbook piracy is an interesting issue here too.

I have used them as a student, but have never used them when given the opportunity as a teacher. I get further by printing that stuff out for them and placing them in their hands.

(This is with the best-resourced and nominally best-motivated students in the UK. Given that the UI today for reading on screen is vile, I can't help feeling your disenfranchising students without access to printing if you rely on that as your info. delivery system.)

I'm just talking about pdf reading; as far as I know very few of my students print them, but certainly many of them download the files (as I can tell from the instructor-side of the software). We're not given guidance from the university as to how to use these in reading, though we did receive a note earlier this summer saying that the US congress is beginning to investigate textbook pricing and so we ought to think creatively of how to cope with restrictions on the kinds of texts we're allowed to assign.

We don't have the resources to print every paper we assign for every student, so it's a decision between requiring them to buy a print-out, and letting them make a decision as to whether they print it out or read it online (or neither of course).

As you've presumably found there's a tendency to download and forget (or hoard, or psychologically think stuff you've downloaded -- or even printed -- is "read"). Difficult to get around, but web-based delivery makes the struggle hardest imo.

This is v. intreresting to me, but re: topic of this thread, I think we're overestimating the economic importance of the education market here. The main reason the fact that college students all use Macs is interesting is that they will likely remain Mac users for the rest of their lives, not because they or their parents spend a lot on Apple hardware while in college. That single use mode everyone raises about tablets (note-taking in lectures) is completely illusory from a profit POV.

(Similar things go for science users: we punch above our weight in terms of our influence on other users, but Apple would be crazy to go after us in particular and I don't think they were when they adopted BSD.)

psychologically think stuff you've downloaded -- or even printed -- is "read"

i have this problem btw.

I don't really have a problem reading PDFs rather than books---thank goodness, as all my books save one are 6000 miles from me for at least the next year. But thanks to my scanner + the net, I'm in good shape.

When it comes to teaching, I've learned how to teach a text while assuming that none of my students have read it. If some have, they'll get even more out of class. And if class goes well, maybe a few who haven't will go back and read it later.

But you're right that the ed market isn't the main reason I think this is a gold mine for Apple, should they seize it. There are many others, like the silver foxes alluded to earlier, who will find such a product desirable (assuming it's done very well, like the iPhone).

When it comes to teaching, I've learned how to teach a text while assuming that none of my students have read it.

Depressing Post is Depressing

that is one of many reasons why I am not suited to be a teacher

because u hav not read the text

"Today: The Bible, By Me."

It was depressing until I figured out that class could still actually be good under those conditions. It helps that my classes can fruitfully be almost entirely discussion (yay philosophy).

Apple Claims New iPhone Only Visible To Most Loyal Of Customers

not very funny, though

ya it is basically "emperor's new phone lol"

oh weird i didnt get it thanks for explaining the joke

hahaha

I bought something from an Apple retail store today, and when I got home I found they had e-mailed me my receipt. HOW DID IT KNOW?

one day the world will be taken over by SKYNET a neural network of iPhones

did they ask you for your email address?

This happened to me when I got my ipod last Christmas ... the receipt thing.

yeah, they always ask me for my email address.

Nope...but I did swipe my credit card.

Come to think of it...it's probably the same credit card I have linked to my iTunes account.

But obviously I'm not going to be satisfied with any answer other than "It knows." said in a really severe and fearmongering manner.

http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/universities-turn-to-kindle-sometimes-to-save-paper

well if six universities are spearheading pilot programs where selected students and faculty receive some portion of their reading on the kindle i guess u were right

that was v big of u to admit max

you sound nervous max

haha xp

think we need a max vs. joe showdown on http://www.longbets.org/

o man there are some pretty amazing predictions on that bitch

most of them seemed like kind of safe bets to me; like, co-ed integration of "some" major league sports team in the US. I'm sure that will happen by that date. it will probably be soccer or something but still.

naw it says major league sports, so soccer doesnt count in the us

Have made a Mac ILX client: Zing: A (beta) ILX client for Macs

GF: New NetNewsWire beta is out today. They've killed Newsgator syncing, so it uses Google Reader (nnwbeta.com). They've also added ads.

Also seems to have wiped all my clippings, ffs.

Tempted to switch over, but not sure how much the new included ads will bug me. Newsgator can go to hell anyway - their updating/web interface/syncing was absolute garbage.

I basically wanted a Google Reader native client, and it does seem to be that. At least the syncing seems better than it was with NNW. Ads are with the Deck, but it's still nasty Eudora-esque stuff, that.

Also seems to have wiped all my clippings, ffs.

― stet, Thursday, July 30, 2009 10:36 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

http://nnwbeta.com/2009/07/30/netnewswire_3_2_beta.html

They’re not gone — it just looks that way.

Since no feature of Google Reader maps exactly to clippings, I’m trying to figure out what to do with clippings. It could be one solution, it could be several.

(Note: as added precaution, NetNewsWire made an HTML backup of your clippings at ~/Library/Application Support/NetNewsWire/ExportedClippings/.)

Also, ads you can't turn off are not a v. compelling feature to me.

Ah top, thanks caek

Newsgator say there's going to be a paid-for ad-free version soon.

...Completely reversing the decision they made two years ago. I will probably go back to Vienna then.

What I really want is a Firefox add-on that can do away with my need for a separate RSS reader but none of them seem any good.