From the Desk of Mr Daniel

The upcoming Firefox 4, to be released in Oct 2010, took a few cue from Chrome and Opera. The interface has been simplified and greatly influenced by Chrome and Opera. Once again, Google is leading in web technologies

Something UI designers have known for a long time is that the simpler an interface looks, the faster it will seem. The less the user has to take in with their eye, the quicker they can process it and the quicker the entire application will seem. So we’re actually looking at making our interface faster by changing the way it looks.

~ Mike Beltzner, Firefox Director

Take a look and compare:

Part 1
Join Russell Brown as he shows you how to use Content Aware Fill, just one of the great new Photoshop features in Adobe Photoshop CS5.


Part 2
Join Russell Brown as he continues to talk about the benefits of Adobe Photoshop CS5's new Content Aware Fill feature and how to get the best results from it.

Even tighter integration between Indesign CS5, Dreamweaver CS5 and Flash CS5. Dreamweaver now supports Wordpress Theme development and Flash now allows creation of iPhone Apps.

Microsoft is wrapped up development work on the next version of the Office family, including Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, Visio 2010, and Project 2010. The products were release to computer manufacturers and Microsoft is holding a launch event on May 12 in New York. will Microsoft Office 2010 will hit store shelves in June. PC makers are also allowed to load a slimmed down Office Starter that users will get for free on new computers.

Among the biggest changes in the new version of Office is the fact that Microsoft will release separate browser-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. Businesses will be able to host the Office Web Apps on a SharePoint server, while consumers will be able to get free access as part of Windows Live.

On the desktop side, Microsoft is adding the first 64-bit version of Office as well as other changes including video editing in PowerPoint, photo editing in Word, and an improved "paste preview" function.

As reported on CNet Beyond Binary

One of the biggest requests we get of Photoshop is to make adding, removing, moving or repairing items faster and more seamless. One feature of Photoshop CS4 makes retouching photo painless.

Introduction

Social media websites like Facebook and micro-blogging services like Twitter have become apart of our daily online activities which some of us cannot do without. It gives us an opportunity to communicate with our friends and contacts either real-time or offline. These Web 2.0 tools have offered another alternative to communication and entertainment.

Most, in fact, all students, have a Facebook account. Since they are spending a bulk of their online time on Facebook, it makes sense to leverage on these Web 2.0 tools in teaching and learning. As the main purpose of Facebook and Twitter is to allow its users to communicate, it can be used in education by:

• Understanding your students, their thoughts and ideas.
• Release announcements related to lessons.
• Giving instructions.
• Connect with Alumni
• School marketing / corporate communications needs.

Using Facebook & Twitter for Educational Activities

Here are two ways Facebook can be use in education:

1. Student-Teacher connection – accounts of students and teachers can be connected together when they add each other as friends. They will be able to see each other’s wall posting. This is useful for disseminating announcements or instructions.
    
   By connecting to each other, teachers will be able to have an alternative communication channel with students. Students will also see another side of teachers and be able to understand each other better.
    
2. Facebook Groups or Facebook Pages – Create a online study group using Facebook Groups to build a community of students for a particular subject/CCA/Interest.
   
   Facebook Pages can be used as a public profile to connect to all students & alumni to generate awareness.
   
   More information: Facebook Page vs Group
    

Twitter can be use in education in the following ways:

1. Student-Teacher connection – accounts of students and teachers can be connected together when they follow each other’s accounts. They will be able to see each others’ tweets on their Twitter timeline. This is useful for disseminating announcements or instructions.
    
   Like Facebook, Twitter can be use as an alternative communication channel between teachers and students.
    
2. Educational Twitter accounts - Twitter accounts like Dictionary.com, National Geographic Channel, Discovery Channel, Channel News Asia offers information feeds on various topics like languages, geography, history and current affairs. These will be useful for students in their independent learning.  
    
3. Subject specific discussion – Twitter accounts can be created for a specific subject for student. Such twitter account can be used by students to post their notes, findings and discussion when they are outside school on a fieldtrip. As students are restricted to a character limitation of 140 – 250 characters, they have to be precise and concise. This is perfect for mobile learning and independent learning activities.

Information posted will be quickly visible to your students once they login to their Facebook or Twitter account. As contents posted on these social media website are able to be shared by the users, your announcements and instructions can be easily reached out to your students when they re-shared or re-tweet the information to their peers.

Leveraging on the power of Facebook and Twitter

Both Facebook and Twitter have their strengths.

1. You can combine their usage together for convenience and ease of use – You only need to tweet to Twitter and the post can be reflected on Facebook Wall. See this post for more information. (Includes Blogger integration)
     
2. You can use Seesmic Desktop client to manage your Facebook and multiple Twitter accounts.
   
   

Conclusion

By embracing Facebook and Twitter to teaching and learning, we have an alternative mode of communication with our students. However, it is to note that Facebook and Twitter can be distracting and may rob student’s social, interpersonal and interaction skills. Hence, it can be use as one of the tools in education but not a sole learning platform.

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This post is created using Windows Live Writer