1-to-1 Lashback

Alan November recently posted on the Edustat Blog about laptop program lashback. It's an interesting article (with many comments that follow). Among several interesting points, he argues that labeling a program a "laptop program" dooms it to inevitable failure, because it puts the focus on the technology instead of the learning. The article includes a list of institutional changes that must occur in order to build "capacity" for technology-infused programs to succeed.

MS Office 2007 Converter for Mac

Microsoft has released a beta version of a conversion utility program to convert Office Open XML files created with Office 2007 (for Windows) to files that MS Office 2004 or Office X on a Macintosh can read. It seems there are many shortcomings. For examples, charts and graphs are converted to graphics, and tables background colors, etc., don't seem to translate. But, hey, this might come in handy for us distance education instructors who may start receiving assignments in Office 2007 format soon.