Could Google, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube be our new professors?
Set the scene
You’re in a café with a friend and he/she asks a question that neither of you know the answer to. You both have a burning desire to solve the mystery, but what do you do!?
Back in the day
Not so long ago, we would have either decide to agree on a conclusion, we would maybe ask a third party or if there were none to be found call that ‘super geek – all intelligent’ friend, we all have at least one! Assuming of course that they are not too busy creating the next Appleor Microsoft! (love you Dan!).
Do I hear bells ringing, sound familiar? Well, as you know, this has changed somewhat….
Throughout the last century traditional education systems have gone through many developments especially in the last decade or two. I’m sure you too remember sitting in a room facing a blackboard whilst being professed to by a teacher. We would sit there and learn from this educator, often and aged lady with a name like Ms Primbottom. I remember mine oh so well, she wore thick glasses, her face was embellished with a frighteningly sharp nose and she possessed gravity defying skill and aim with a chalk duster! Shudder!
Ms Primbottom would regurgitate Shakespeare, spell out the alphabet, she would attempt to get calculus across and show the exciting points in physics, ahem! Despite her best efforts Ms Primbottom would more than likely be faced with a fairly ambivalent and uninterested class who’s attention was drawn to writing notes and drawing pictures of ‘Spotty Megan’ kissing ‘Edmund the nerd’.
This educator is who we relied on, our main source of new information – other than the dusty books in the library which let’s face it, didn’t get visited often by most!
Today
The internet has changed this, it challenges opinions, allows for free expression, it is available 24 hours a day, it is social and you will be hard pressed to find a topic that has not been discussed, researched and understood thoroughly. All we have to do is whip out our Blackberry, iphoneor laptop, open a Google page and voila! The answer is ours within a few convenient seconds – or possibly minutes if like me you have a blackberry ;o).
Is the internet becoming the lecturer or merely a resource that aids the existing ones? Will the future have CP30 and R2D2 standing in front of a class projecting YouTube videos of Hamlet and chatting in real time to people on Twitter or Facebook about Einstein’s incredible discoveries? It’s quite an amusing image, uh oh, premonitions of the Matrix creeping in……..
via: <a href=”http://www.onlineeducation.net/“> OnlineEducation.net</a>
Tech Trends To Watch In 2011…
2011 Tech Predictions:
Incidents of (state sponsored) tech terrorism will rise (as will inflation and interest rates):
Microsoft will continue to flounder everywhere (Sell shares soon!) except with the office staples such as Windows and Office (Office 2010 is rather good). Apple will continue to conquer & niche the covetable product arena (Watch out for the new iPad Spring/Summer 2011):
If Twitter Was 1 Word…
Some bright spark (No girlfriend) has created a one word Twitter tag cloud from our bio’s;
Just How Big Is Google Anyway?
Google. Massive. Global. Not yet a scary thing yet (Their mantra is ‘Don’t do evil’ which is nice). They are big, very big, but how big?
Google Zeitgeist – What We Searched For In 2010
Google have compiled a video showing how we searched in 2010. It’s very cute. Watch it.
Brought proudly to you by Dan the man
Watch out Spotify!
Google & Apple are hot to take on Spotify, the subscription based music delivery service.
Hear a track you don’t know, Shazam it. Spotify it. Got it. Simple. And all for a tenner a month! (Unless you’re a Beatles fan, and a few others who haven’t signed up). I’m still desperate for a ‘Genius’ style button so I don’t have to make playlists, but apart from that, Spotify just works. It’s great.
So what’s the problem?
For us, the consumer there isn’t one. It’s happy days. We get great music, easily, quickly and cheaply, but Spotify is soon to become the victim.
Apple has been waiting in the wings, watching Spotify prove the business model. Knowing that if iTunes profits were to fall, or if Spotify were a hit (uhuh), they *could* simply turn on a subscription based version. Plus, to nail coffins – This side of Xmas, Google are releasing their own cloud based music service.
So what happens to Spotify?
It will eventually sink I imagine. Unless they move into movies, offer a better service or diversify in some other way. They do have the heads up but Apple and Google have the infrastructure, the licensing agreements and a HUGE international customer base.
Sign up to alternatives now and see what you think. Also keep your eye on Apple TV & AirPlay (especially how the latter could be used in non-Apple products. V interesting.)
PS Watch Facebook Places kill Foursquare & Gowalla location based social media platforms. A sad .com fact of life. Sometimes the 15 minutes is cut a little short.
Dan
www.theengineroom.co.uk
Making sure IT doesn’t start with S and H
The Dark Side of Email
The dark side of email usage, and it’s real cost to the work environment isn’t discussed that often. Some of the lessons we can learn from it just as easily apply to social media sites.
You can find the full list here, but here are some of the highlights:
- Jackson et al (2002) found that people set their mail program to check for new mail every 5 minutes.
- They also found that people reacted to 70% of emails within 6 seconds and 85% within 2 minutes.
- Email doesn’t convey emotions very well, emoticons just don’t cut it compared to face-to-face interaction.
- People are less co-operative over email and even feel more justified in being less co-operative.
- People are more likely to lie over email, as it feels more like chatting and less permanent than a letter.
- People are less restrained due to the online disinhibition effect.
Now you could just as easily apply most of these findings to Social Media. How often do you check Facebook or Twitter for updates or instantly respond when someone asks you something over it?
How long do you keep Hootsuite/TweetDeck open in the background and keep tabbing to it to see if something new has shown up? I know I keep checking it much more than I do email.
Social Gaming
My intrigue on this topic flows from the fact that I am not a social gamer. I have never played on Farmville or any other social media game, so their popularity baffles me.
I once had a conversation with someone who was so concerned with the growth of her crops and the feeding of her cows (in this virtual world) that she continuously called her boyfriend who worked form home to feed and water whatever needed feeding and watering – a little crazy? Apparently not.
Last year, social games, one of the most popular forms of social application, generated over $500 million in revenue — the majority of which came from social games on Facebook, reported Mashable. This is a huge figure and clearly demonstrates the worth of social gaming.
So is it only me who is a bit of a social gaming nobody? Or am I the only one who is a little clueless here?