Adobe recently acquired Macromedia for a stock swap of $3.4 billion. The Macromedia suite will continue to be developed as an independent package, and marketed as such.
Macromedia is popular with Web developers, with Macromedia Flash in particular making a massive impact on the web. The other main applications are Dreamweaver (web site design) and Fireworks (web graphics).
Dreamweaver is one of the premier professional web design suites, providing the facility to develop, inter alia, cascading style sheets.
Fireworks is designed specifically for developing web images. The default format is a portable network graphic (PNG) which can be exported as gifs, transparant gifs and jpegs for use on the web. The image (left) was created using Fireworks.
This refers to the method by which we achieve the task. This website provides further detail on multimedia authoring systems and applications.
Questions are being raised about the future of the web, including the nature of future web browsers. Tim Berners-Lee originally saw web browsers as both reading and writing tools. Allan Jardine looks at the web-browser paradigm on this blog. and at next generation web-browsers here.
Computer Mediated Communications is now quite a wide field, covering a host of asynchronous and synchronous communication tools and practices.
Broadly speaking, it covers any on-line communication technology, including web pages, blogs and wikis and even social networking sites like Facebook, Bebo and MySpace. Micro-blogging is growing in popularity, providing a useful ‘quick fire’ medium of communication for communities of practice as well as for casual chat. Messenging and SMS can be used with applications like Twitter and Twitterpics. Other micro-blogging applications include Plurk, which provides a structure which supports conversational threads.
More narrowly, it covers e-mail, forums and discussion boards, video conferencing, instant messaging and texting. It is an area which has attracted a fair amount of interest and research.
I have attempted to provide a cross section of this in the links below. Some are old, but will serve to provide you with a notion of where we have come from in an industry which is developing at a very rapid rate.
It is not always possible to know the extent to which different participants have looked at this area, so I have started with some very general links and gone on to more specific ones. From my own point of view as a social constructivist, communication is extremely important aspect of the learning process.
Early on-line ‘distance’ learning environments tended simply to provide electronic copies of paper based resources used in face-to-face teaching environments, providing a somewhat impoverished medium incapable of providing the all-important aspect of discussion. VLE’s today have inbuilt communication tools, but the general consensus is that these often fail to provide a level of discussion to facilitate effective learning, for a variety of reasons, including personal ones. Van Alst (2006) highlights both the quantitative and qualitative problems of asynchronous learning networks (ALNs) and calls for the development of ALNs as collaborative communal learning resources.
There seems to be a growing body of evidence indicating that where students do communicate with the course coordinator and one another, learning is enhanced.
Hassini (2006) suggests that e-mail lists can provide a valuable student-instructor communication channel, with ’strategic’ use of e-mail leading to a richer learning experience both as a medium for communication and as a ‘feedback database’ which can be used to improve courses.
Schellens and Valke (2006) looked at the issue of using asynchronous discussion groups as a means of fostering knowledge construction in university students. They found that students involved in discussion groups were task orientated, showing significant increases in cognitive interaction, task orientation and higher phase knowledge construction. An important variable identified was group size, with discussion in smaller groups reflecting larger proportions of of higher level knowledge construction.
Finally, a study by Simpson (2006) using asynchronous video access to a lecture course found that it had specific advantages for English second language speakers, providing them with more control over the lecture without the distractions characteristic of live lecture sessions.
Does texting destroy the English language? – discussion.
Texting using mobile phones has created a language of its own – CUL8R, etc. Many teachers have suggested that this is the beginning of the end language as we know it. This interesting article sees a positive side. C also this rtikl.
2br not 2b? Proferssor David Crystal on texting. 5/7/08
It is interesting to reflect back on the developments in computing over the past thirty or so years at a time when the prevailing technologies seems to be taking another major turn, this time in the direction of ‘real’ mobile computing and user friendly surface interfaces. This post provides a brief history of the development of computing, before considering the kinds of changes which look likely over the immediate future and the impact that these developments are likely to have on our both personal and educational practice.
The past…..
This picture appeared in a 1954 copy of Popular Mechanics. The original, dreamed up by scientists from the Rand Corporation, was forwarded as a ‘home computer’ for the year 2004. It would have a teletype interface and would use the Fortran as a language.
(Any idea why is has a steering wheel?)
Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (Eniac).
Designed and built to calculate artillery firing tables, ENIAC (1946) was able to solve a wide range of computing problems.
Real personal computing came of age in the late 70’s and early 80’s.
My first computer – Acorn BBC model B. £399.00 (ouch!) I later added a “Torch” floppy disk unit, which had two 5.25 floppy disk drives and a Z80 co-processor which allowed the BBC to use CP/M software. Perfect Writer, Perfect Calc and a database came bundled with the Z80.
This software was also available for the first IBM PCs which became available at about the same time.
The first Apple. Garage model.
In spite of this somewhat scruffy beginning, Apple Computer (now Apple) went on to become a a major consumer electronics manufacturer, successfully branching into the mobile music and mobile phone markets, where they lead the field for well designed and finished ‘cool’ gadgets.
There was a steady development of both hardware and software through the 1980s. 5.5 inch floppy discs were replaced by smaller 3.25 inch discs, which were more robust and held more data (1.44 mb). Hard drives became more affordable. The key to development depended largely on the development of better microprocessors.
The power of microprocessors has doubled every 18 months or so, as engineers found ways to pack more and more transistors onto chips. The first person to write about this trend was Moore – hence Moore’s Law.
Moore’s law has played a big part in the development of computer chips and processors. Recent articles have questioned whether the rate at which processors double their speed can continue. Others point the way to new technologies which will allow us to continue developing more and more powerful computers.
The essential trend in the development of computers has been the appearance of smaller, easier to use and more powerful machines at a steady rate. More powerful microprocessors have enabled software developers to design better software. Another important aspect is the rapid fall in ‘real’ price, with computers becoming more affordable – hence the ubiquitousness of the technology today.
While looking at the development of computing and the kinds of computers and software prevalent in the seventies and eighties, a number of commonalities emerge. These were personal computers, not only in name but in character too. They were used in an isolated fashion for a variety of tasks, at a time when the idea of a fully networked world was understood by very few.
The 90’s – Colour, multimedia and the world wide web.
Computers would begin to change in the early 1990s as the internet developed. The launch of multimedia computing would also change the way we understood and began to used computers, especially as educational tools. Resources like Microsoft Encarta providing a rich multimedia environment which revolutionised the way we explored information, allowing us to look at data in totally different ways. The development of the web launched the world into the Information Age.
Breaking News
Tim Berners-Lee to head web research project.
The influence the internet has had on the way we socialise and live our lives is to become a focus of a new field of study under the leadership of the inventor of the world wide web, Tim Berners-Lee.
The joint research programme in web science is being launched by the University of Southampton and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US.
The new research area will look not only at computer science, but will also cover emerging research into social networks and how people behave while using the internet.
Prof Berners-Lee, a professor at both Southampton and MIT, who invented the world wide web’s basic software was knighted in 2004, said: “The web isn’t about what you can do with computers. It’s people, and , yes, they are connected by computers. But computer science, as a study of what happens in a computer, doesn’t tell you about what happens on the web.” Education Guardian, 2/11/2006.
Smaller computers, and powerful internet ready mobile phones. A Jan 08 report from ZDNet provides evidence that iPhones are used to a far greater extent for accessing the web than other internet ready phones. This suggests that we are heading in the right direction with respect to the development of easy-to-use interfaces. A growing number of applications for both the iPhone and the new iPod suggest that ‘usable’ hand-held computers are likely to be available sooner rather than later. The recent launch (October 08) of Google’s Android powered phone, updated iPhones, new Blackberry’s and the new Palm Pre (Oct 09) have raised the stakes in this market.
Collaboration and The Cloud
Perhaps the most important change in recent times has been the way we use the internet. While we once simply looked up information (the read web) we now use it largely as a communication and collaborative tool (read-write web). Web2.0 is largely about talking and sharing, where we use the web as a platform for what we do. This contrasts to old style computing, where the software we used was purchased and installed on the computer itself. Efficient hand-held devices now allow us to interact with the web while we are on the move – in buses, trains and while sitting having coffee – enabling us to be more productive.
Other developments include user friendly surfaces, which provide new ways of buying and paying for things and of interfacing with one another and information. While these are still expensive, it it likely that they will become more affordable in the future. Microsoft’s surfaces is demonstrated here.
Augmented Reality and social networking. Some thoughts from web innovator Matthew Buckland.
Questions are being asked about the future of the web. Can we assume that the free access to resources and social networking we enjoy will continue? Or will the web ultimately be commodified? The end of the internet?
What path will we take with respect to using the web as a tool for learning? The future of institutions. Some thoughts by Graham Attwell of Pontydysgu.
Resonant Energy Transfer – WiTricity – will be a useful invention when it is fully developed.
Fireworks is designed specifically for developing web images. The default format is a portable network graphic (PNG) which can be exported as gifs, transparant gifs and jpegs for use on the web. The image (left) was created using Fireworks.
