The app seems very well designed and user-friendly: there is even an area inside the app that has helpful short videos that highlight some of the features and show how to use them. Although the “small group sharing app / service” is slowly getting crowded (with contenders such as Wunderkit, and Asana), Kibitz has an interface that is simpler and much cleaner that Wunderlist (although its purpose is slightly different – in Wunderkit and Asana your sharing is task-oriented, in Kibits it’s topic oriented; you cannot create or assign tasks in Kibits like you can in Wunderkit and Asana).

As I see it, Kibits is a promising first step, but it has some shortcomings:

• no ability to assign tasks with priority and deadlines within groups
• currently no web-based interface access (Wunderkit and Asana do have one) or desktop app (Wunderkit has an OS X Lion app)
• no Android app (although one “coming soon” is listed on the website
• seriously dismal ToS (see below)

[SEE NOTE BELOW / The Kibits ToS has been updated, so the issues mentioned below are no longer a concern - thanks to Matt and the Kibits team for taking this feedback seriously, and acting on it so very quickly!] Kibits’s ToS (Terms of Service) is one area that really makes me nervous, with its wide overreach and little regard for users’ privacy/ rights and content. Unlike established social networks and iOS apps that offer access to them (Facebook, for one), Kibits grants itself an “IRREVOCABLE” right to distribute, display, modify, sublicense, etc. my content. WHY?

I understand very well that a wide permission is needed to make the app and service operate, but the insertion of “irrevocable” means that Kibits gives itself the right to continue to store my personal content (for example, photos uploaded to the service), even if I decide to delete such content, or to stop sharing it. There is also no obvious way that I see in the app (or on the website) to delete the profile / account, should I decide not to use it. That’s not acceptable – even with Facebook you can delete the account (and your content will no longer distributed or shared), and similarly, Pinterest has recently amended its ToS recently to address some similar issues (it also has a section “How long we keep your content” that clearly addresses the issue).

While you cannot delete your Kibits account – or at least I can’t find a clear indication that you can, or how you’d do that – Kibits, for its part, reserves the right to terminate your account or delete your content “at any time for any reason at our sole discretion with or without notice to you.” (section 4.2 of ToS). And even though some of the content may be intended to be shared privately (for example with a small group of immediate family or friends), Kibits “reserve the right (but have no obligation) to review any User Content in our sole discretion. We may remove or modify your User Content at any time for any reason in our sole discretion with or without notice to you.”

I like the idea of sharing things with smaller groups of people on a much smaller scale than big social media services such as Facebook or Google+, but the current Kibits ToS makes me really uncomfortable, and I won’t be seriously using the service  / app any time soon.

That’s too bad, because it looks quite promising - I see a lot of potential for may situations and settings, including a huge potential for the use of this app in education (and area of particular interest to me). It looks like a lot of careful planning, design, and engineering went into the creation of this app. I hope that the same care will go to revising of the ToS so that it is more user-friendly, and more acceptable to users concerned with privacy issues, with a clear way provided (and reflected in the ToS) to delete an account and clear explanation what happens then with the account holder’s previously uploaded / shared content.

NOTE / ToS ISSUE UPDATES: After being contacted by Matt (see his comment below), the CEO/Founder of the company, and exchanging a few emails, it’s great to see that they are so responsive to customer feedback – Kibits is currently re-working its ToS, to address the privacy concerns mentioned above. With that issue addressed, Android app on the way, and a possible web access down the line, it looks very promising!

UPDATE ON APRIL 4th: The Kibits ToS has now been updated, epecially the relevant part that addresses all the issues I mentioned above: “This license ends when you delete your content or your account, unless your content has been shared with others and they have not deleted it. When you delete your content or account, your content will be deleted in a manner similar to emptying the recycle bin on a computer.  However, your removed content may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time, but will not be available to others. To delete your account, go to http://www.kibits.com/request-to-remove-account/ and submit the web form.  You will receive a confirmation when your account has been deleted.” This addresses al the above concerns – thanks to Matt & the Kibits team for dealing with the issue so quickly. This DOES indeed inspire confidence!

It also contains a splendid idea for promoting history in schools: the author proposes using pizza to make images of Napoléon, for example… I see a whole range of brilliant educational opportunities opening up: since many schools already feed kids industrial waste byproducts shaped like food, we should consider laws that would at least require that all that stuff must be produced in meaningful, educationally sound shapes, preferably coordinated with the history or social studies curriculum (or at least trigonometry).

And then, BAM! No nugget for you, unless you can name the president or whatever the heck else it represents (if they used shapes of countries or states, I’d have to starve, or learn!). “C’est d’ailleurs une excellente idée.“

In this episode of the weekly Let Lion Roar podcast (on iTunes U), I go over the settings that can make Dashboard appear as it used to before…

Never mind, that tweets have been around since 2007; never mind that the time / date (as required in the new MLA citation format) is irrelevant, unless you know which time zone the reader was in (but that info, oddly, is not required); never mind, that the permalink / URL (like this one: http://twitter.com/#!/iDownloadBlog/status/176004231222931456) - probably the only way to reliably locate the source tweet –  is not required or even allowed; never mind, that the citation leaves such crucial elements as the number of followers and retweets at the time of citation (essential measures indicative of the social impact of the tweet and its sender); and never mind that the word “Tweet,” required at the end of the entry is not the official name of the source, and its actual, official name (Twitter.com) never actually appears in the whole citation entry…

I find this unsurprising, but still somehow sad, as it shows quite patently how obsolete and irrelevant many academic institutions have become in today’s fast-paced world…. The comments after the Atlantic blog post seem to reflect a similar sentiment.

One of ELI 2012 UW-W TechQuest Slides

I am getting ready, and very much looking forward to participating in this year’s Educause Learning Initiative (ELI) 2012 Annual Meeting  / Conference in Austin, TX. One of my UW-W colleagues and I are presenting the overview and results of our technology overview for new students (called UW-W TechQuest).

The complete presentation slide deck (PDF, 34+ MB), and a transcript with slides (PDF, 3.5 MB) are now posted online, on ELI webpage for our session. During the event, the session can be followed on Twitter, #ELI12_SESS34.

OS X LLR Podcast Cover

The newest, 7th episode of my new UW-W podcast (Let Lion Roar!) is now live on iTunes U. In this short screencast, I take a quick look at different ways to deal with Trash in OS X Lion.

In the podcast: deleting files using just keyboard shortcuts (no mouse or trackpad needed); restoring files from Trash back to their original folders; getting rid of Trash for good; and even a secret way to open files directly from Trash, without having to un-Trash them first! All in less than 10 minutes (8:38, to be exact).

At this point, since the launch of LLR podcast in December 2011, the first 6 episodes have been downloaded almost 5500 times.

The more I think about the “flipped classroom” concept, the more I feel that – like so many trendy buzzword-supported ideas in education – the approach isn’t new at all.

My SPAN 330 Sylabus Page, 2007

Thinking back to the years when I taught Spanish Film courses at Lawrence U., I can’t help thinking “but this WAS a flipped classroom!” – even though we didn’t call it that, at the time.

Here is how it worked: Students would read assigned texts (articles, book chapters, handouts), and watch assigned films outside of the classroom. Before each class meeting, students were asked to take an online quiz (usually a simple multiple-choice variety on Moodle, Lawrence U Learning Management System, at the time), as a way to verify that they did not miss an important point of an assigned reading or plot / compositional element in the assigned film (quizzes had unlimited time, and could be retaken several times, with the average of all attempts counting as the final score – this encouraged students to re-try, if they didn’t well the first time).

In-class activities did not include lectures (or film-watching), and instead focused on conversation and discussion: a simple, take-turns walk through the film’s plot (based on a detailed handout with 150-200 small, thumbnail-sized film stills along with the time-codes for each – see image below, right), and then a discussion of how the concepts from the reading were reflected in, or related to, the film in question. The readings, film screening, quizzes, and class participation were all required and some of these elements (quiz scores, discussion participation) were graded. I guess it was a “flipped classroom,” before the now-trendy term was invented… More: I think there have always been courses structured like this, for centuries (no film viewing in the 16th century, though!), especially at universities where student groups were traditionally small, and students were highly motivated.

Stills Handout for Almodóvar's "All About My Mother."

Although it may not be as new as the recent mentions would lead us to believe, I think the flipped classroom it’s a useful and very effective approach. After giving it some thought since my original post about it a few weeks ago, I think I know how it could be implemented in my specific teaching environment: technology training for faculty and staff.

I am planning to try what I’ll call the “app club:” partly, a “flipped classroom;” partly, a book-club approach. Beginning in March, I plan to start posting short videos online on how to use specific software features (we’ll probably start with Adobe Acrobat X), and accompanying self-grading quizzes for each short video (that is, a screencast). We will invite faculty and staff who (we know) use this specific software title to check out the videos, and try taking the quizzes. Then – on a schedule similar to a book-club – once a month, or maybe even once every 5-6 weeks – we’ll invite the group to attend an informal, lunch-time meeting during which we’ll go over any possible questions, or interesting comments generated by participants over the previous month (or 6 weeks, etc.). I even think we could use some fun and informal achievement reward system (for example, printed colorful badges) for those participants who develop high level of mastery and/or participation in the process.

The idea still needs fine-tuning, planning, approvals, and so on, but I think it looks promising, and will offer me an alternative that is  slightly different – and perhaps more effective – than traditional “workshop” approach.

The authoring tool that makes the creation of interactive content inexpensive, fast, and painless is a SUPERB idea: it’s something we really need, and do not currently have, so I was very hopeful when Apple announced their new iBook Author – a (free) tool that promisses to let anyone create rich, interactive eBooks (or iBooks, since they only play on an iPad). Of course, even during the presentation to the press in NYC last Thursday is was obvious that it wasn’t what everybody hoped for: iBooks created with this software cannot be read on Apple’s own computers (not even those running the new OS X Lion), and although most iBooks (ePub files) created in the past can be read on iPhones and iPods, the new ibooks created with iBA cannot – iPad only.

The feature set of iBooks Author gives Adobe’s Digital Publishing Suite a run for its money: iBA is free, elegant, simple to use, and although it doesn’t match all the bells and whistles of the iPad apps generated by Adobe DPS, it’s going to satisfy many authors for whom the prohibitive cost and skill set required to use Adobe InDesign CS5.5 + DPS puts creating interactive documents beyond reach. Most importantly, those who want to publish enhanced eBooks will be able to do so without having to pay $395+ every time the document needs to be published or updated ($395 is Adobe price for single-use DPS-produced app, what Adobe calls DPS Single Edition; and that is on top of the already high CS5.5 cost, and the content is still subject to 30% Apple fee, if sold for $).

That said, although iBA is free, it is not released as beta software: Apple released it as a finished product. As such, it has numerous problems that make it clear that this IS a beta release, far from being ready for actual use or serious production. Some features do not quite work (for example, inserting videos works, but setting a poster frame does not, and the final file has a blank placeholder with no poster frame of any sort, although the video actually plays); the preview of the document on the iPad kind-of works: it crashes the new and also none-too-stable, iBooks 2 app on iOS repeatedly, and frequently. The PDF “export” function shown in Apple live demo generates a static, poorly formatted PDF, with an automatically inserted Apple logo and “iBook Author” watermark at the bottom of EVERY single page. Although Adobe PDF has supported embedded video and audio for years now, NONE of the media included in an iBook are exported as actual playable assets to PDF – mere screenshots are inserted into the PDF in their place. I have no idea why anyone would want such a PDF – perhaps it’s intended for proofreading, but it certainly is not viable as a channel for distribution to readers.

it has to be admitted that iBA is a great early draft / blueprint of what interactive books and tools that will be used to make them will look like in the future. Some features are great: I like the ability to highlight text and add notes that can later be seen together on one screen, for easy review of the studied / read material (although I do not like the fact that emailing your notes excludes the text from the ePub to which the comments referred); I love the animated flashcards interface that allows you to study highlighted text fragments and your own comments; I like the visual navigation with page thumbnails at the bottom of the screen; I like the ability to use / insert Keynote presentations, including any of its great animation features. There will be a lot to like, if the rough edges and stability issues are addressed by Apple some time soon.

Screenshots of sample pages from an iBook I created using iBook Author

There are also other serious non-software issues: any files produced using this app cannot be sold other than through iBooks app/store (although they can be distributed outside of the iTunes if the author does not charge money for the content). I know some people will think it’s OK, but imagine how you would feel if Adobe said that any image produced in Photoshop can only be sold through Adobe’s own store, and they’ll take a 30% cut; or if Microsoft decided that if anything you write in Word generates any income for you, they’d like 30% of it, or it’s a no-go… Or, imagine if every photo you edited in Aperture, Lightroom, or iPhoto gave the software manufacturer an automatic entitlement to 30% of any income the image generates… So, while iBA software is “free”, it limits quite drastically (in a way rarely seen before in software) what you can do with the content you produce using it. Not an approach I’d find acceptable in a professional content production software.

At some point later on iBA has a potential to become a useful tool, but as buggy as it is now, and with its extremely restrictive license it’s not what I hoped for from Apple – certainly a tool I will revisit once it’s updated, but not a reliable, robust content production tool at this point.

Quite some time ago I saw a TED video about Khan Academy  and I have become fascinated by the idea of a “flipped classroom”. I would love to test-drive this idea in a real classroom, and if I ever teach a semester-long class again, I probably will. Today’s article in CHEd brings up a few interesting points: first, as one of the commenters on the article (Robert Talbert) aptly points out, “Simply putting lectures online and then having optional (!) in-class meetings is not what the inverted or ‘flipped’ classroom is about.” He further adds that

“The inverted classroom model switches the contexts of information transfer and assimilation from the traditional model. Transfer takes place outside of class (often through online video) and assimilation inside of class. The operative word here is “AND”. The inverted classroom is predicated on having a robust, active classroom environment where students work on challenging problems aimed at making sense of the information they’ve seen, under the active guidance of an expert learner. Jettisoning the in-class meeting (which is what you do when you make it optional) would be like taking a traditional classroom and jettisoning all the outside-of-class work, because you’re left with essentially the same thing — a bunch of lectures followed by a bunch of exams. And this is not the instructional model that serves students best.”

Second, as is apparent from the thoughts of the Stanford student who took the class, finding the right balance between technology-based learning and personal, one-on-one, traditional teacher-student contact is VERY tricky, and much more so at institutions that are selective, charge their students a lot of money for tuition, and create an expectation of privileged access to resources and instructors for their students.

The whole thing made me think if / how I could possibly use the idea of a “flipped classroom” in m own technology training… Not sure. Will give it some thought…

via BusinessWeek

Here is an interesting interview with Tim O’Reilly about the technology advances in healthcare. Made me think of a few articles I read recently, and new healthcare devices:

• Portable ultrasound devices that work with consumer electronics, such as an iPhone [via BusinessWeek].
• Inexpensive wellness/fitness tracking gadgets, such as FitBit or JawBone Up.