The News Review:
- College Students Score Higher In Classes That Incorporate Instructiona…
- Qwaq Brings Virtual Worlds To Business Collaboration
- Microsoft considering ffice functionality for iPhone
College Students Score Higher In Classes That Incorporate Instructiona…
Science Daily – Science Daily (press release) – Mar 25, 2008
To date there has been limited literature addressing the effectiveness of such classes McFarlin said. McFarlin’s traditional kinesiology class met twice a week for a 90-minute lecture in a large auditorium. He used Microsoft PowerPoint slides with Flash media to present course material. He reported that as is customary in large auditorium classes interaction was minimal between students and professor. His hybrid class met once a week for a traditional 90-minute lecture but augmented the lesson with various forms of instructional technologies. The second lecture each week was administered by WebCT an online venue for students to review course material. An animated character of McFarlin–an interactive SitePal avatar created by ddCast of New York–welcomed students to the site and provided class announcements.
Qwaq Brings Virtual Worlds To Business Collaboration
InformationWeek – Mar 25, 2008
However if you *have* spent a lot of time in a virtual world — especially if that virtual world is Second Life — you’ve seen that for all the strengths that Second Life has it has many shortcomings as a business platform. Qwaq is an attempt to address those shortcomings. Using Qwaq you can bring in documents such as PowerPoint presentations videos Microsoft Word documents spreadsheets and more and you can discuss the documents and collaborate on changing them. You can do the same with 3-D objects created with just about any popular 3-D design and drawing software. You can create freehand diagrams on a shared whiteboard and discuss those diagrams. All of those things are really hard to do in Second Life. Additionally Qwaq has security features that are lacking in Second Life.
Microsoft considering ffice functionality for iPhone
PhoneMag.com – Mar 25, 2008
To the extent that Mac ffice customers have functionality that they need in that environment we’re actually in the process of trying to understand that now” Tom Gibbons corporate vice president Specialized Devices and Applications Group Microsoft“We do have experience with that environment and that gives us confidence to be able to do something. The key question is what is the value that we need to bring? We’re still getting comfortable with the SDK right? It’s just come out. So we had a guess as to what feasibility would be like now we’ll really get our head wrapped around that” Tom Gibbons corporate vice president Specialized Devices and Applications Group MicrosoftNow that doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll see Word Excel and PowerPoint on the iPhone any time soon but it does sound like they have at least viewers with perhaps basic editing functionality for those file types in mind. Considering the iPhone with Firmware 2. 0 is being positioned as equally happy in the boardroom as it is in a fashionista’s manbag it’s a feature enterprise users will expect not just appreciate.