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Thanks go to my friend and colleague Tyler Wall for passing on this interesting story:

Nairobi School of Theology (NIST-IL) is using a mobile phone application called mLearning to allow students in the Leadership Training for Christian Leaders program to work on their courses from their mobile phones. NIST-IL has conducted two pilot studies of their mLearning program and found that mobile students had a higher completion that their face2face peers in the control group. Many face2face students busy schedules and heavy traffic prevented them from attending lectures and completing the required exams.

Read the full article…

Research by Dr. Steven Blair a public health professor at University of South Carolina reveals that:

men who reported more than 23 hours a week of sedentary activity had a 64 percent greater risk of dying from heart disease than those who reported less than 11 hours a week of sedentary activity

Similar research has been conducted around the world and the general consensus is that the healthiest and most productive workers are the most active.

Since sitting so bad for office workers the following strategies are recommended:

  • Encourage frequent breaks
  • Make your meetings mobile
  • Think treadmill or standing desk
  • Start a wellness program

Read the full article…

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At the 3:00 minute mark of this talk, from the Open Education Conference in May 2009, Gardner Campbell relates trying to introduce faculty to the potential of connected world by comparing to giving out bags of gold.

”It’s as if day after day, I say, ‘I have a bag of gold, would you like a bag of gold?’ and they say, ‘How do you have time for bags of gold?’”

This is a classic example of squandered potential. Thanks Gardner.

BlackBerry PlayBook

Dwayne Harapnuik —  September 28, 2010 — Leave a comment

RIM is heralding their BlackBerry PlayBook as a true competitor to the iPad. Time will tell. While the device is slightly smaller than the iPad it does pack significantly more power and flexibility with a dual core processor and 1 GB of RAM and output connectivity options. The device appears to have great potential but isn’t due to early 2011–by this time Apple will more than likely have an upgrade to the iPad so it is unlikely that this will be an iPad killer.

RIM Official Blackberry PlayBook site…
Engadget Review…
BlackBerry PlayBook: Beware of the demo-ware tablet…

Zotero Everywhere

Dwayne Harapnuik —  September 23, 2010 — Leave a comment

Zotero is moving closer to being the ultimate bibliographic tool. Zotero Everywhere will offer stand alone desktop versions for Mac, Windows, and Linux and integration into a much wider variety of web browsers.

The Zotero press release provides a detailed explanation how how this new Zotero will work but doesn’t address the question of when this will happen.

Read the full press release…