The Earth captured in time lapse by an astronaut at the International Space Station, cruising at 17,239 miles per hour—that’s 7.7 kilometers per second, or 4.7 miles per second. The time lapse video was taken by NASA astronaut and Oregon State University alum Don Pettit, while he was at the ISS.
Google Releases CloudCourse, an Open Source Learning Platform
via readwriteweb.com
Google made a number of announcements in the past week that are of interest to educators: opening Google Wave to the public and extending Google Voice accounts to students. But one announcement that didn’t receive much press was its release of CloudCourse, the new internal learning platform.
Built on Google’s App Engine, CloudCourse is a course-scheduling tool, fully integrated with Google Calendar. CloudCourse also features approval processes, wait list management, as well as room and user profile information and can be further customized to sync the data with other internal systems.
Google hopes that by releasing this under an open-source license that it can “help developers who want to port or build enterprise applications on App Engine.”
According to Irwin Boutoul, a software engineer at Google, “We actually didn’t design this system with universities in mind - we designed it as a course scheduling tool for enterprises. Nevertheless, CloudCourse can certainly help school administrators, who most likely don’t have the time or resources to worry about hardware hosting and dealing with traffic bursts like the ones that occur during class enrollment periods. We’d love to see universities pick up this platform and code additional features on top of it to make it more relevant to the higher education ecosystem. “
While course management is part of what makes a learning tool appealing, CloudCourse does not yet contain all the functionality that would make it an alternative to the other learning management systems available But as Katie Christo, an instructional technologist at the American International School in Chennai, India says - echoing the frustrations that many teachers have with these alternatives - “I would love something from Google. Moodle is still very basic, Blackboard is worse. It’d be nice to have something that is free, cleanly designed, and integrated with other solid programs.”
And as the source code is open, and as more and more schools explore and embrace Google’s Apps for Education, CloudCourse may become another part of the ed-tech arsenal.
(via urban-listening)
via Clients from Hell
Me: ”I will create a login box on your website. Once someone registers and logs in, the website will recognize who the user is and provide relevant content.”
Client: ”That sounds great. However, instead of a login box I’d like to use biometrics to identify the user.”
Me: ”Not sure what you mean.”
Client: ”When someone visits the website, I want them to be able to put their hand on the monitor. The monitor will then scan their hand to confirm who they are. I think that would be a lot more engaging. How much extra would that functionality cost?”
Me: ”Several hundred million dollars.”
Client: Why are you being a wiseass? Can you do it or not?
Me: ”No. Sorry. That’s a little too advanced.”
Client: ”Fine. I’ll try another web designer.”
Facebook set out its stall to unseat Google and be at the heart of the web experience as it becomes more social. The world’s largest social network unveiled a series of products at its developer conference F8 aimed at helping the company achieve that goal. These tools will make it easier for users to take their friends with them as they browse the web. “We are building toward a web where the default is social,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder. “If you look back a few years ago and even as recently as today, in most cases the web isn’t designed to use your friends. They don’t assume you have a real identity but we are seeing that seep in more and more. “We want to be one of the things that empowers that and right now most users are using Facebook and we hope we can be a good force in driving that forward,” Mr Zuckerberg told the BBC during a news conference.
Business Meeting Subject: New Automation Software.
Client: “I want you to write a software package that will allow us to create client websites automatically. The site needs to allow for multiple upsells after the checkout is complete. And I want to build 5000 a week for clients free and give…
I was on some random blog and I saw a picture of the “fish’n’flush”. I googled around a bit on it, called the company and bought one. Installed it this weekend in Oliver’s bathroom.
What I really thought was so cool about this, besides having a real aquarium on the back of my toilet, was…
