Innovation Bootcamp Exit Survey and Assessment

Thank you for participating in the Innovation Bootcamp. Your feedback is important to us, please take the time (10min.) to complete the following survey (it has questions re: what you learned - so we can measure growth, and questions re: your experience at the Bootcamp).

The survey link is found here.

Thanks again for all your help.

Innovation Bootcamp Survey

Click here to take the Innovation Bootcamp Survey!

Search Engine Insight

Does anyone find the fact that most people are using search engines for random celebrity information disconcerting. Of all the things people could be (re)searching on the web, most (see images) people are looking into areas that have no real benefit to life in general. How sad. Although it does bring up an important issue of information literacy that we might perhaps start promoting a little more.

Computer Filtering

One of my favorite RSS feeds I frequently read is Will Richardson's blog. In one of his recent postings he talking about the frustration of schools blocking (what he believes) is too much content (ex. websites). Here is a quote from his posting:

I say this all the time, but I truly believe that filters make our kids less safe. They step off the bus into unfiltered worlds with no context for making good decisions about the stuff coming at them. It’s a huge problem. But on some levels, the bigger problem is what we are doing to our teachers. It insults the profession to not at the very least provide desktop overrides for teachers when they bump up against a filtered site. Have a policy in place to deal with incidents where teachers make poor choices if that’s what the concern is.

Seriously, am I missing something? Why is that so hard to implement?

The only way we’re going to get students, or teachers, to master the Web is to let them use it.

So, what do you think? It seems to me that there has to be a better system than the ones we are now using. Not to mention, is blocking sites really preventing internet misuse (or does it just spark curiosity)? I know in my past experiences as an educator and parent, I think teaching children about how to properly use the web seems like a more positive action. I understand schools are scared of potential legal repercussions of students' internet misuse, but I think schools are responsible (as are parents) to educate youth on proper web use. If there is not a class on internet safety in schools, then where would it be? At home - hmm... considering a lot of kids are more tech savvy than their parents I am not sure that's a rational solution.

Make an iPhone App - it's worth it.

Digg reported the following:

Steve Demeter developed the iPhone puzzle game Trism as a side project, but now he's quitting his day job. Why? Because he says he's generated $250,000 in profits since he started selling the $4.99 game on iTunes this summer. That's after Apple (AAPL) has taken its 30% cut of total sales, and after subtracting his initial investment of about $5,000

In TEE 350 next semester, that's going to be a our new project: make iPhone apps. Might as well.

Photoshop

Today you will have a few in-class PS assignments to get done before next day (hopefully after these first few days of class you will be able to create your PS masterpiece work of art with ease and creativity (which is the capstone PS assignment)). For today's lecture you will need to repair and combo a few images and then make a text effect. For the picture editing you will need this file. Then for the text edit - go to this website and chooses one of the tutorials to complete. Upload both documents as a single screen shot to moodle before class next day.

RSS Feeds

Here are only a few of the feeds I read (or have read) that might be of interest to you:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/
http://www.webdesignerwall.com/
http://www.darcynorman.net/
http://www.edugadget.com/
http://slashdot.org/
http://www.softpedia.com/
http://weblogg-ed.com/
http://www.engadget.com/
http://www.appleinsider.com/
http://maczealots.com/
http://www.usingmac.com/
http://digg.com/view/technology
http://www.techcrunch.com/
http://del.icio.us/martindale
http://creativebits.org/
http://www.simplehelp.net/
http://eduforge.org/
http://delicious.com/jgroom
http://www.gomediazine.com/
http://blog.webreakstuff.com/
http://weblogs.elearning.ubc.ca/brian/
http://camplesegroup.com/blog
http://thedieline.com/
http://creativecurio.com/
http://logodesignlove.com/
http://davidairey.com/
http://justcreativedesign.com/
http://ilovetypography.com/

Here are some of Chris' (TA):
http://www.izzyvideo.com/
http://www.macreviewcast.com/
http://www.macrumors.com/
http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/index.php