SteveYuen.org

Google Drive

Dr. Steve Yuen — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 13:54:30 +0000

We have a new kid on the block. Besides Box, Cloud Drive, Dropbox, iDrive, and Skydrive, Google is now offering its cloud storage service. Google Drive is freemium service, which replaces Google Docs, allows you to store files and access them anywhere from your computer, laptop, tablet, or smart phone.

Google Drive offers you 5GB of free storage space, but any documents you create with Google Docs do not count against your storage. In other words, you could have more than 5GB free storage space. Also, one of the unique features of Google Drive is that Google Drive viewer helps you preview over 16 different file types:

Microsoft Word (.DOC and .DOCX)
Microsoft Excel (.XLS and .XLSX)
Microsoft PowerPoint (.PPT and .PPTX)
Adobe Portable Document Format (.PDF)
Apple Pages (.PAGES)
Adobe Illustrator (.AI)
Adobe Photoshop (.PSD)
Tagged Image File Format (.TIFF)
Autodesk AutoCad (.DXF)
Scalable Vector Graphics (.SVG)
PostScript (.EPS, .PS)
TrueType (.TTF)
XML Paper Specification (.XPS)
Archive file types (.ZIP and .RAR)
Text files (.TXT)
Markup/Code (.CSS, .HTML, .PHP, .C, .CPP, .H, .HPP, .JS)

So, you can upload a movie to your Google Drive and play it back within your browser, no matter where you are. Furthermore, just like your Google Docs, you can share files, folders, or even your entire drive with anyone.

Google’s service is available for Macintosh, Windows and Android devices. An iOS version is coming soon. If you have a Google account, you can logon and enable the Google Drive service. Once you have access to your Drive, you’re ready to get started by uploading or downloading your files.

I have tested the Google Drive since it launched last week. So far, it lives up to my expectations. Google Drive is quite fast and is also very easy to use. With Google Docs and Google Drive, teachers and students can create, collaborate, share, and keep all of their files to the cloud. They can upload, access, and search all of their files, including videos, photos, music, Google Docs, and PDFs.

The History of Learning Tools

Dr. Steve Yuen — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 10:56:00 +0000

This is a great infographic created by CTU and shared by Jeff Dunn at Edudemic. The infographic gives an overview of the history of learning tools used by teachers and students over the years. A pdf version of the infographic is also available.

[Via: Colorado Technical University online learning]

Free Plagiarism Tools for Teachers

Dr. Steve Yuen — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 12:12:39 +0000

With the emergence of the digital revolution, students can easily plagiarize and cheat. Information can be found on nearly any topic, and students can copy and paste the information into their papers and assignments using Internet search engines, DVD-based reference works, online journals, Web-based news, article databases, and other electronic sources. Plagiarism is a greater temptation with the increasing number of online term-paper mills. Students can now buy term papers online. Also, they can search research papers online and copy and paste blocks of text right into their word processors. Online plagiarism has increased due to access to papers online. However, teachers can easily detect plagiarism because papers are submitted electronically in most online courses. Teachers can run student submitted papers through plagiarism-detecting Web sites When a document is uploaded, the document’s “fingerprint” is cross-referenced against the local database containing hundreds of thousands of papers.

Below is an excellent guide written recently by Kharbach Mohamed. The guide gives an overview of plagiarism and offers 15 free tools for detecting plagiarized work.

Free TPlagiarism Detection Tools

80 Educational Alternatives to YouTube

Dr. Steve Yuen — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 08:43:18 +0000

Since many schools and school districts block the use of YouTube in the classroom, I think this document is helpful for teachers who want to media resources for their students when YouTube is not available. This document is created by Med Kharbach. You are free to share, download and use it as you like provided you keep the credit and not charge people for it.

eighty Alternatives to YouTube

Instant America [Infographic]

Dr. Steve Yuen — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 14:26:16 +0000

According to the infographic “Instant America” created by OnlineGraduatePrograms.com, 1 in 4 people abandon a web page that takes more than 4 seconds to load. Also, 50% of mobile users abandon a page if it does not load within 10 seconds and 3 out of 5 will not return back to that page. It seems that a desire for speedy information has made Americans impatient for just about everything.

Created by: Online Graduate Programs

Wikipedia: Redefining Research

Dr. Steve Yuen — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 14:12:55 +0000

Over the past decade, Wikipedia has grown to become the largest and most popular general reference work on the Internet, ranking sixth globally among all websites on Alexa and having an estimated 365 million readers worldwide. According to Wikipedia, it currently contains 21 million articles (over 3.9 million in English alone) that are written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. As of January 2012, there are editions of Wikipedia in 283 languages. Undoubtedly, Wikipedia has become one of the most successful wiki and the most visited encyclopedia online.

Also, Wikipedia has grown to be the number one source for students. Students use Wikipedia more than libraries. Thanks to Jen Rhee who shared with me this outstanding infographic about how Wikipedia. This infographic highlights how Wikipedia has revolutionized research and how it has become a reliable fountain of knowledge.

Via: Open-Site.org

How College Students Use their Mobile Phones?

Dr. Steve Yuen — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 12:38:30 +0000

I recently browsed through numerous infographics and found an interesting infographic “Generation Mobile” created by HackCollege. This infographic was based on a survey administered to a selection of college students over Facebook. It contains some useful information about the use of mobile phones by college students.

Created by: HackCollege

2012 NMC Horizon Report

Dr. Steve Yuen — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 06:45:04 +0000

The New Media Consortium (NMC) and EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) recently released the NMC Horizon Report: 2012 Higher Education Edition. Like previous NMC Horizon Reports, six emerging technologies are identified across three adoption horizons over the next one to five years, as well as key trends and challenges expected to continue over the same period, giving campus leaders and practitioners a valuable guide for strategic technology planning.

The areas of emerging technology and the time to adoption reported in 2012 NMC Horizon Report are:

Mobile Apps (One Year or Less)
Tablet Computing (One Year or Less)
Game-based Learning (Two to Three Years)
Learning Analytics (Two to Three Years)
Gesture-based Computing (Four to Five Years)
Internet of Things (Four to Five Years)

For a complete 2012 NMC Horizon Report, please download your free copy at http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/HR2012.pdf
Also, you can view the YouTube video summarizing the 2012 NMC Horizon Report here.

The State of Mobile Computing in America

Dr. Steve Yuen — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 06:03:35 +0000

A presentation “The State of Mobile America” was recently released by Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. In this presentation, Lee Rainie at PEW Research Center offers the results of the most recent survey conducted by the Pew Internet Project on mobile computing and the use of handheld devices.

The State of Mobile America

View more presentations from Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project

How Has the Internet Changed Education?

Dr. Steve Yuen — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 02:26:35 +0000

For the past two decades, the Internet and social media has significantly changed the landscape of education. According to SEO.com, about 90 percent of faculty uses social media in the courses they’re teaching, and 8 in 10 have used online video in class. In addition, colleges and universities are reaching out to students in a way they never could before—85 percent of admissions offices use some sort of social media, from video blogging to social networking. Demonstrating this, SEO.com created the following infographic.