Archive for the ‘google’ Category

  • Google Games in the classroom

    Date: 2010.07.12 | Category: google, ict | Response: 0

    Google’s recent 100$ million investment in zynga has got the dregs of the internet flapping over Google trying to muscle in on Facebook’s market share of the social gaming portion of the internet.

    Google suck at Social, and probably always will.  This is because even though the line between our work and play is often merged we have to actually pro-actively try to keep the two separate.  Google Me will suck, Google Buzz sucked, Google Wave sucked.  Why?  Because we are human.  Google can’t break/fix that.  My advice:  Launch Google Me, very quietly.

    Zynga have maybe 20 games available, yes they are huge on the platforms they run on (facebook/twitter etc) but there are 1500+ educational games available that have nothing to do with Zynga that wont even be affected by Google…  Unless..

    The fact is….

    Google didn’t invest in Zynga for Zynga’s games.  They invested in Zynga to get the expertise of providing massive web based games to create social networks.  I can see Google going off to places like Armor games, bitbitallion etc. and trying to get them on board.   Let’s face it, Google know how to write a well documented, easy to use API so if they can persuade other vendors to monetize their content and improve their games by using Google then why not?  (See Adsense/Adwords).

    I wrote an abstract piece on this and began building an open platform that is similar to Xbox Live.  I called it XPArena and it is very private closed beta.  I’m still working on it.

    So how does this affect education?

    The way I see it Google have enough capital available in Zynga to create an open platform for social game integration.  This platform would operate in a similar way to XPArena or XBox Live, allowing pupils to share educational games, show off their high scores, compete with friends, collaborative with friends.  Teachers could review pupils work and assess their progress.  Google could potentially also work on a recommendation engine that recommends games based on what a pupil likes to learn by playing.

    How can Google make this work? Google should create a platform, not a service.  Allowing third parties to leverage their technology and keeping the Google Brand away from the learner/consumer.  PLEASE Google don’t tie this platform into Google Me or Wave etc..

    Some questions/answers

    Will you need a Google account to play a vast array of online games in the future? No.

    Will you need a Google account to share your gaming experience on Zynga games in the future? Yes.

    Are Zynga making any education games? No.  But if you look hard enough you can find SOME educational value in the odd game.

    Will Google use Google Checkout for Zynga games? Yes.

    Will Google remove Zynga games from Facebook when they launch Me? No.  It would damage Zynga’s revenue stream too much and would see a flurry of angry farmville players switch from Google to Bing for search.

    Will Google place their own Ads on Zynga games in that annoying way they do? Yes.  Even if you are paying you will see ads.

    Will it suck if Google just invest without any outward reaching goals? Yes.  If they focus purely on social networks it will be a waste of money.

    Is the internet crying out for a good social gaming platform that is away from main stream social networks? Yes!

    Did Google purchase Zynga to make their shareholders happy? No.  They are already happy, see the index.

    Do I want a job at Google Games? Sure if they can afford me ;)

  • An unpopular blog post – 7 ways to cut ICT costs

    Date: 2010.07.04 | Category: Live at Edu, Primary School ICT., bradford, google, ict, primary, primary school, web2 | Response: 1

    It is never popular talking about how schools can save money on ICT or areas where spending is just too high.  Sorry if you fall out with me on this one..  These are all suggestions, I don’t endorse any in any way, shape or form (this is mostly for political reasons…).

    For the most part you get what you pay for, so any savings may mean a drop in quality and a negative impact on teaching and learning.  The conservative education policy is (we assume) run by people with more knowledge than myself so when they say schools need to spend less on ICT all I do is figure out how..

    It is up to you to decide how they will impact your teaching and learning.


    1. Printing

    Potential savings in average 2 form entry school: £500

    Yep, the ugly ink spewing beast is still costing even the smallest of primary school thousands of pounds every year mostly in toners and ink.  So how can a school save money?

    a) Use a managed printing solution to reduce the cost per sheet and to restrict the amount certain users can print.

    b) Use on-line collaboration such as email more effectively

    c) Encourage parents to get on-line and use an e-newsletter / social networking

    2. MIS support

    Potential savings in average 2 form entry school: £2000

    Why is it that one application costs nearly as much to support as the entire network full of applications used on the curriculum side?

    a) Change your support provider to a more cost effective option

    b) Use e-registration and remove the need to replace that nasty OMR

    3. Internet connectivity

    Potential savings in average 2 form entry school: £2000

    Internet provision from Becta approved providers usually costs 2 to 4 times that from a local internet provider, this is because they usually bundle educational services into the package and/or tools to collaborative with other schools in your area.

    a) Change to a local internet provider offering less bandwidth at reduced rates

    4. Backups

    Potential savings in average 2 form entry school: £250

    Tape backups are horribly inefficient, unreliable and costly.

    a) Use remote backup services

    5. AV

    Potential savings in average 2 form entry school: £500

    Most schools have now spent up on purchasing interactive classroom stuff, replacement bulbs can cost up to £500 each

    a) Maintain your projects by pro actively cleaning filters and performing regular maintenance

    6. Software Licensing

    Potential savings in average 2 form entry school: £500

    Microsoft have now released their Office web apps so when you come to purchase new devices you can almost ignore the cost of Microsoft Office licensing.

    a) Get familiar with Live @ Edu & Office Web Apps or Google Web Apps

    b) Become familiar with the vast array of free web 2 tools for schools

    7. Technical support

    Potential savings in average 2 form entry school: £500

    From personal experience I know a major cost of technical support is the time spent visiting a specific machine.  There are obvious advantages to having an on-site engineer.  Face to face support is still by far the best we have right now but that is because we haven’t really explored the realm of good remote desktop support for our curriculum networks as of yet.

    a) Encourage your technical support provider to explore on-demand live remote desktop support and monitoring

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  • Android install APK

    Date: 2010.06.28 | Category: android, google, ict | Response: 1

    So you are beta testing an application or whatever and you have been given an .apk file to install.

    Before we start make sure you have the android device driver installed, if not you can download it here.

    1.  Plug the phone in to your PC with a USB Cable.  When prompted DO NOT mount USB.

    2.  On the phone goto Settings –> Applications then click the Unknown sources tick box.

    3.  On your PC Download the Android SDK

    4.  Extract the Android SDK to c:\androidsdk

    5.  Copy the .apk file you were given to c:\androidsdk\tools

    6.  Click Start –> Run then type in:

    c:\androidsdk\tools\adb install -r c:\androidsdk\tools\whatever.apk

    Make sure you replace whatever.apk with the name of the file you copied.

    7. Your application should now be installed.  Visit the application menu on the Android device and look for your icon.

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  • Ye Olde Android adventure – Day 2

    Date: 2010.06.15 | Category: Primary School ICT., android, classdroid, google, ict, primary, primary school, school, schools, sdk | Response: 0

    Today as I ventured towards Droidville I met a sage who reminded me about some useful keystokes.

    Eclipse: Control Alt Down duplicates line
    Emulator: Rotate screen – Control F11

    As I moved closer to Droidville the air began to fill with hope, thousands of hopeful children and teachers poored into the streets, so I quickly hid and jumped into Bar Youtube (Part of the Starbucks chain) and watched another video to further my understanding of the power of Android, another good one this time by Ye old O’Reilly

    Building my team to fight the forces of evil

    I got in touch with a developer through rent-a-coder called Kumar Bibek who has 3 years experience fighting the forces of evil (developing Android apps). We had a conversation that went something line:  ”I can make the bow, can ye make the arrow?”  We agree’d on 100$ for the array (final bits of the work that were out of my skill set).

    Overview of the bits I’m doing:
    Making Classdroid look fit for a princess (Layout design/User interfaces)
    Making Classdroid easy to use  (Application flow)
    Making Classdroid link together (Intent assignments)
    Designing how Classdroid will save our princesses minions (Database design)

    Overview of the bits he’s doing:
    Not shooting the messenger (Code to read/write preferences/settings to/from SQLite)
    Carrier Pigeon nurturing (Control method for post to Wordpress)
    Controlling the Eye of  Gondor (Camera SDK modifications)

    In the Sage’s library I found a piece of parchment with some notes scribbled on it:
    Resource = text,pictures, sound objects, layout….
    Intent = change the page
    View = new page layout/display
    \n = newline when using text elements

    Very cryptic clues, maybe I will need them to enter the great hall of Droidville?

    It’s been a long day…..

    As the day drew to a close and the Sun nestled the hills of Azrowilsden I discovered Wordpress have an android application that does 80% of what I want to do from a control point of view so I’m going to hack into that to save me needing to write the function that posts the RPC over XML to Wordpress.  This is why the world should embrace more open source, it empowers us all instead of dumbing us down like iLem users who are too scared to google how to create an android application (or don’t see it being a valuable use of their time).

    As the iLem users fall off their platform I am gently warmed inside by the knowledge that we are creating a better, more open world without any corporate borders.  One application at a time.

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  • Ye Olde Android adventure – Day 1

    Date: 2010.06.15 | Category: Primary School ICT., android, google, ict, primary, primary school | Response: 0

    Today I started on my journey towards Droidville, past the gargoyles of SDKs and into the realm of eclipse. I began my journey equiping myself with the finest weapons possible in the form of eclipse and android sdk including all the power ups and runes. I stopped for lunch at bar youtube where I indulged in an excellent documentary and began my developing whilst following the gentle, slightly distant voice of the presenter. “Whisper control shift oh! to the sage and ye be blessed with organized imports” I heard him mutter under his breath..

    Hours went by and the youtube video was stopped, rewound and replayed various times, as the sun set I had my Hello world working and some UIs designed, unfortunatly my Hello World app is called com.golf.. The icon is set. If this is groundhog day let it end…

    Flute playing and shots of rolling hills come into screen..

    Will tomorrow bring safer travels for our hero?

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