Terence Armentano - eResume & ePortfolio

Check out this cool certificate I got from Firefox for helping them set a world record for the most downloads of a software app in one day. Firefox 3 is awesome and has tons of add-ons that you can download to make your browsing experience excellent. Plus, since it is open source, everything is free so don’t worry about forking over tons of money. I think it is time for people to put their Internet Explorer and Safari browsers to bed. But remember, the browser is only awesome if you know how to use it, so do some research on it and start customizing it to your needs. I’ll do some jing videos in the future of some cool add-ons that I use with Firefox.

The Open Handset Alliance, a group of more than 30 technology and mobile companies, is developing Android: the first complete, open, and free mobile platform. To help developers get started developing new applications, Google is offering an early look at the Android Software Development Kit.

So what makes Android so special? Why not just get an iphone?

It is Open - Android allows you to access core mobile device functionality through standard API calls.
It is Breaking down boundaries - Combine information from the web with data on the phone — such as contacts or geographic location — to create new user experiences.
All applications are equal - Android does not differentiate between the phone’s basic and third-party applications — even the dialer or home screen can be replaced.
Fast & easy development - The SDK contains what you need to build and run Android applications, including a true device emulator and advanced debugging tools.

Google is giving away $10,000,000 to developers that come up with the coolest applications for the mobile phone technology. This is a great way to spur on innovation and get some really cool apps developed for the phone. Here is a video from one of the winners of round 1 in the development contest. This application does some pretty amazing things with bar code information.

There is no Google phone, however, Android is an open platform that will be able to run on many mobile phones similarly to how an operating system can be installed on many different kinds of computers.

This technology could make some really significant advances in providing education to people worldwide. In a blog post I wrote back in 2006, I posted some research from MIT, which indicated that “cellphone usage in Africa is growing almost twice as fast as any other region and jumped from 63 million users two years ago to 152 million today. According to the the MIT website, “Africa is well-suited as a testbed for the development of a mobile phone programming curriculum. Given their massive adoption and widespread use, as well as the recent technological advances in their computational power, mobile phones are ideal substitutes for the personal computer throughout the continent.”

TechCrunch, a reputable technology blog, reports that “Sometime soon, perhaps this week, Facebook will turn the year-old Facebook Platform into an open source project, multiple sources have told us. The immediate effect will be to allow any social network to become Facebook Platform compatible - meaning application developers can easily take their Facebook applications and have them run on those social networks, too.

This poses some interesting scenarios for Colleges and Universities that would like to leverage the facebook platform in the educational environment. It will be interesting to see how this differs from other social network scenarios such as google’s OpenSocial, the clone-able Ning system (which I also use to run my online teaching community), and the fully open source Elgg system. Which of these will be most useful in the education environment. They each function differently and are offered in different ways to the consumer. What do others think?

Terence

I was at the Sloan-C Conference this past week and I attended a presentation about Open Education Resources and more specifically the WikiEducator Project. The idea is that with the use of free networks, technology, and open educational resources, we can turn the digital divide into digital dividends. It was a very thought provoking presentation and one that every educator should know about. You can view Wayne Macintosh’s online version of the presentation here. WikiEducator Presentation. After viewing the presentation and you begin to get inspired by open content, check out this link to 20+ places to download free public domain e-books. Let us know your reaction to the WikiEducator Project by leaving a comment. I think the WikiEducator project combined with the 1 laptop per child project can provide a good framework for the bridge that stands over the digital and educational divide.

There is a lot of buzz about Web 2.0. It seems that a new Web 2.0 application is built every day that leverages the brainpower of a community, uses ajax, and enables greater connectivity between people on the internet. Google is working to make standards so that the new social landscape on the internet is seemless by getting developers to agree on standards for building the applications so that websites can leverage each others content. They call it OpenSocial and it’s pretty interesting. Read the text below and watch the video for more about the idea and process of using open standards.

-From Google’s website
The web is better when it’s social

If you’ve been involved in web development, you’ve noticed the continued trend towards more social applications. The web is definitely more interesting when you can build apps that easily interact with your friends and colleagues. With this trend has also come a growing list of site-specific APIs that developers must learn.
Introducing OpenSocial

OpenSocial provides a common set of APIs for social applications across multiple websites. Using standard JavaScript and HTML, they enable developers to create apps that access a social network’s friends and update feeds.
Many sites, one API

Common APIs mean you only have to learn once in order to build for multiple websites. OpenSocial is currently being developed by Google in conjunction with members of the web community. The ultimate goal is for any social website to be able to implement the APIs and host 3rd party social applications.

I am a big fan of open source technologies especially in the realm of education. Because open source technologies are free to use, many people mistakenly assume they are inferior in quality and support. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth. For example, the $100 laptop program runs on a modified open source distribution of linux. Moodle is used in schools and universities world-wide and it is a free open source Learning Management System that can be scaled from 1 user to 50,000 users. Open Office is a free open source office suite, which is quite comparable to the expensive and market dominating MS Office Suite.

The desktop computer has been dominated by Windows and challenged by Apple (You the know the commercials, I am a PC…I’m a MAC). However, is it possible that a free open source operating system can compete with the big dogs? Well, with the huge shift in the wide-scale use of web applications and the ever increasing role of the google online empire, an open source operating system might be in a prime position to really compete in the market. Plus, it helps to get a boost from the biggest retail store in the world, Wal-mart. Recently, Wal-Mart announced that they will be selling a $200 computer running the Ubuntu Linux Operating System. For those curious about Ubuntu, Mike Kudela, instructional designer for BGSU, wrote an informative article about Ubuntu for the BGSU distance learning newsletter, titled “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC, I’m an Ubuntu?“

I have a passion for spreading education in underdeveloped areas in the US and around the world and I think open source can play a major role in connecting the human netork and Ubuntu computers would be a great way to get the ball rolling. Thanks to Brian Childs for sending me the links to this info.

“What if there was a library which held every book? Not every book on sale, or every important book, or even every book in English, but simply every book—a key part of our planet’s cultural legacy.”

These folks plan to do just that with the help of everyone in the world using a customized wiki to build The Open Library. Talk about dreaming big. I’ll have to keep tabs on this project and see where it goes. They have already hooked up to the Internet Archive’s book scanning project so that you can read the full text of all the out-of-copyright books. They also located a copy of the Library of Congress card catalog, phoned publishers and asked them for their data, created a brand new database infrastructure for handling millions of dynamic records, wrote a new type of wiki that lets users enter structured data, set up a search engine to look through it all, and made the resulting site look good.

The site is an early technology preview, and many things are still in flux or not operational. In the meantime, you may want to take a guided tour. Thanks to Mike Kudela for sending me the link!

Open-source software is impacting business, transforming governments and enabling education across the planet. Open-source is built on the principle that the source code of a program should be readily accessible, so that users have the right to maintain, adapt and improve the software they use in any way they see fit. Linux, Firefox and Wikipedia are just three of its success stories, which are too many in number to count. But where did open-source come from, and where is it headed next?

The feature length documentary Revolution OS offers excellent insights into both questions, tapping into the thoughts and stories of the people that made open-source a reality. Read Full Article Here or Watch the documentary in it’s entirety below.