Prawfs Blawg on buying an iPad

There is a really good post titled, Why I Plan to Buy an iPad for Teaching, about the way an American Law Professor plans to use an iPad as a writing tablet projecting on to the screen behind. The post not only compares the dynamics of teaching in this way to the use of a chalk board, but also, in a comment by Bruce Boyden, “…to Jerry Seinfeld’s bit about how the cordless phone changed the dynamic of slamming the phone down in anger.”

Presentation Technology – horses for courses

The questionnaire has provided some really useful information already (for more about the survey…)

Andrew Worth, Learning Design Advisor at the School of Services Management, Bournemouth University, has given me permission to quote the following:

“…it is really starting to get down to horses for courses, who is the audience, what is the message, and will the tool get in the way of the message.”

Andrew uses PowerPoint for quick and short, or business presentations but he also uses non-linear software such as MindManager (see post about MindManager here…). Andrew mentioned colleagues presenting using stand alone video, podcasts, blogs, wikis, Flickr, Picasa, Google Maps and so on. This echoes data I have received from interviews and other questionnaire respondents.

Managing critical knowledge in higher education

One of the leads that I have from the Digital Learning Net jiscmail list is the area of mind mapping software, some links below:

• A ‘simple and free web application that let’s you brainstorm online’: http://www.bubbl.us/
• MindManager 8 for Windows
• A paper from an academic in the US about using Mindjet’s MindManager software: Managing critical knowledge in higher education: KMWorld