Quick Review of Spotify

September 1, 2011 by chris in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

I have been using Spotify for about a month or so. Here are some thoughts/things to keep in mind.

  1. The beta only applies to desktop version. The smartphone/iPhone version costs money.
  2. It is really good. You can make playlists and the song catalog is very difficult to stump
  3. However, it doesn’t have everything. For example, there is very little Peter Gabriel.
  4. It also has the ability to catalog your own music

    5. Bottom line: I think I still like Sirius or Pandora better; Pandora because it is free for smartphone. With both Pandora and Sirius I will always hear good music I hadn’t thought about or discover new artists that I end up really loving.

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Quick Review of Google Music

June 16, 2011 by chris in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

I got my invitation about midnight last night just as I was laying down. I didn’t have a lot of time to mess with it today. But if you don’t know anything about technology addicts, you know it isn’t something I can readily control.

So here are some quick thoughts:

1) Fast-Fast. I signed up and had 100 songs uploaded in probably less than 10 minutes.
2) I only had to promise scout’s honor that I wouldn’t upload illegally acquired songs. I don’t see how this is going to be feasible. My wife and I have between us hundreds of CDs from the last 20 years. I have shared music with friends ala mix CDs and vice versa and I have content that I got in those freeewheelin Napster days. I haven’t downloaded anything like that in many years, but everything is jumbled up. How’s a person supposed to operate?

That’s it for now. I will be interested to see it on iPhone and elsewhere.

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Video: Learning Styles Don’t Exist

May 18, 2011 by chris in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

My professor Gary Anglin reccomended this YouTube video to our EDC 710 class in the Spring semester. While I still like to refer to one’s personal preference with regard to instruction, Dr. Daniel Willingham really makes the case for eschewing this formerly regarded framework for delivering instruction.

Learning Styles Don\'t Exist

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Deficits of ADDIE Model

February 18, 2011 by chris in theory | Leave a comment

I see a lot of ID folks repeatedly quoting the ADDIE model. As a very generic way of introducing ID, it may work OK. However, how do we fit into this model the following issues:

Needs/Front-end analysis
Learner characteristics
Formative Assessment
Task Analysis

What I am arguing I guess is that the model is awfully generic. It seems to me that ADDIE is more concerned with process consulting or project management. Toward that end, you could apply one of many of generic models such as SWOT analysis to the act of designing instruction.

Is there an answer? Last semester my colleagues and I devised a rubric for analyzing online training modules based on Gagne’s Nine Events of Instruction. Perhaps this has been done before. For me, it just seems to frame the act of instruction within leaner-centric constructs.

I don’t have nearly enough time to write about this in a scholarly way, so if anyone is out there ready to support my viewpoint or even to lambaste me, please go ahead! :) Also, please be gentle. I am still building my chops.

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Clark Kozma Debate

February 18, 2011 by chris in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

For people who want a brief synopsis of this long-standing intellectual debate, please go to The Media Debate.

It seems like with any of these opposing viewpoints, there are constructs within each that have merit.

I am in the middle of studying this in some detail. Clark is absolutely right and has empirical evidence to support these views. His assertion has the ring of common sense. Yet as a technophile, it troubles me that media had no direct impact on learning outcomes.

Now I am reading Kozma and beginning to see Clark as having a macro view of media as it pertains to instructional design. If you take a broad approach, he is right. If all images, video audio and computer generated media are the same, applied the same and perceived in the same way, then it will never make any difference. But I think Kozma is saying that it is not the same. The two viewpoints are not so different in one way of thinking.

Just trying to make sense of what I have read and discussed here! :)

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