I’ve been messing around with Google’s AppInventor following the invite I got last week.

Here’s my first app, it’s fairly simple and uses the TinyDB and the OrientationSensor objects which were fun to play with.

Ever had an argument about which direction North is? You haven’t? Just me? Well, if you had, you could have solved it on the spot with “Where’s North?!?”. Two players try to point the phone North. The closest player wins…

You can’t upload AppInventor apps to the market yet so you’ll need to download here or scan the barcode below. Make sure you have Settings->Applications->Unknown Sources ticked otherwise you won’t be able to install it.

Moodle 1.9: E-Learning Course Development (William H. Rice IV)
PACKT Publishing (www.packtpub.com)
ISBN 978-1-847193-53-7

This book is a comprehensive guide to Moodle 1.9, covering everything from installing Moodle and creating courses through to in-depth explanations of how Moodle works under the surface. One thing I enjoyed about this book is that it’s not just a collection of step-by-step guides, but it gives detailed information so you understand why you are doing it.

Latest issue of the free online magazine BlenderArt is out…

ISSUE 28: Blender 2.5
The Blender 2.5 series has been out for a while now, and while it still is under going a lot of changes and refinement, it is stable enough for some serious testing and playing. So let’s get everyone ‘Up to Speed’ with Blender 2.5 and how to best take advantage of all the wonderful new toys and options available.
Download here

I’m currently in Sousse, Tunisia attending and presenting at the IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT 2010).

I’m presenting a talk on “Reusing Adaptation Strategies in Adaptive Educational Hypermedia Systems” later this morning and the slides are available from here.

You can download the slides from my presentation at the WPCCS 2010 today from here.

I’ve been working recently on a mobile device presentation module for ADE and wanted to display it live in a talk next Friday using my HTC Desire.

I spent quite a while trying to get ADB setup using the Android SDK but it refused to recognise the adb drivers as compatible with the device. Unfortunately there’s not that much out there in the way of step by step Android Screencasts for Dummies, but, after much googling and hair pulling I managed to tease a solution from the internet (I’m using Windows XP for this, not my usual Ubuntu).

Hopefully you should be able to see a window displaying your phone monitor (see screenshot). Yay!

Thanks to everybody who helped me out with the usability test for AHA! and ADE. The results and feedback were very helpful and have been included in a paper I submitted last week to EC-TEL’10. I was very busy last couple of weeks with this, so apologies if I’ve been a little late on email replies etc!

I recently had a full conference paper, titled “Reusing Adaptation Strategies in Adaptive Educational Hypermedia Systems” accepted for ICALT’10 in July and I am now getting back to research after my Easter “break”! I’ve updated my papers page with the abstract.

Happy Easter Everyone!

Latest issue of the free online magazine BlenderArt is out…
ISSUE 26: Blender & Gaming
This issue we not only take a look at how Blender is used in various game production pipelines, but we see two very creative uses for Blender’s internal game engine and how those uses have helped children.
Download here

The first events of the year that I organised for Notts/Derby BCS group went well and I’m hoping that this continues with the events over the next couple of months.

They are all held at the Long Eaton Novotel and are free to non-BCS members. If you want to come along please register first on our website so we have an idea of numbers. The next few meetings are:

• 15th March: Safe Disposal of IT equipment
• 19th April: Speed Networking!
• 17th May: Game-based learning
• 21st June: The Art of Productive Laziness

All meetings start at 18:30 and are at: Novotel, Bostock Lane, Long Eaton, NOTTINGHAM NG10 4EP (map)