Educational Media Event – The Digital Campus
Matthew White of Dirk+Weiss will be co-presenting with Environmental Science professor Scott Benjamin at the ‘13th Annual Massachusetts Community College Conference on Teaching, Learning and Student Development‘. This conference is being held this year at Bunker Hill Community College, in Charlestown, MA.
The project to be presented is a digital lab, used in professor Scott Benjamin’s science classes at BHCC. The lab’s subject matter is understanding Evolution by Natural Selection. Matthew worked directly with Scott to translate a previously analog lab, comprised of seeds, paperclips and bits of paper, to a Flash driven, interactive experience.
The process of creating this lab involved collaborating with Scott on every step, from graphic design to Flash Actionscripting.
The results of translating the lab to digital media, has proven to be quite successful. Scott has collected statistical data from his students, including pre and post lab usage. Based on his testing, Scott sees a definite increase in concept retainment after students have used the software. Matt and Scott will split the presentation between the design and development process (Matt), and the statistical data and impact of this digital lab in the classroom (Scott).
The 13th Annual Massachusetts Community College Conference on Teaching, Learning and Student Development happens on April 9th, 2010 at Bunker Hill Community College.
IE6 Must Die – More than a trending Twitter topic – 5 Facts to upgrade now!
A sentiment that we have shared for some time now, was a trending topic on Twitter for a while. Millions of tweets labeld ‘IE6 Must Die’ had flooded the Twitter network, in hopes that many site owners will concur, and Windows users will upgrade their browsers finally. First, a little Internet Explorer facts:
- Internet Explorer 6 was released and bundled with Windows XP in August of 2001, eight years ago. At this point, it made up almost 80% of browser usage.
- Internet Explorer 7, the next generation to replace IE6, was released in October 2006, three years ago, and made up 30-40% of web browser market share.
- Internet Explorer 8, was released May 2009.
W3Schools, the leading source of web standards, has detailed statistics about browser usage over the last five years or so. According to W3Schools, who by the way will not be supporting IE6 on their next website launch.
A fact about a modern browsers: Currently, modern browsers like Firefox 3.0 and other open source browsers are seeing almost 50% of browser market share.
Now, on to the top five reasons why you need to upgrade your browser to a more modern browser:
- Designers and web developers must spend lots of extra hours programming for your antiquated browser, thus costing their clients more cash and over expended resources.
- Major websites like YouTube and Digg have announced the end of IE6 support. So many other small and large sites will immediately follow suit.
- Technology, media, and content management have change dramatically in the last 9 years. As more features become available, the more older browsers become less compatible, because of their antiquated architecture.
- Important security holes have been patched in more recent browsers. Keep your data and browsing experience safe.
- Rich media drives the user experience on the web; Java, Flash and other web media services will be faster, and more compatible with a more modern browser.
Upgrade your browser now! Here are the links to upgrade:
Chrome (PC):
http://www.google.com/chrome/
Internet Explorer 8 (PC):
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/default.aspx
Safari (Mac/PC):
http://www.apple.com/safari/
FireFox (Mac/PC):
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/firefox.html
