Hold Off on the iPhone 3G?

An article by Ben Patterson on Yahoo! Tech has case some buzz on the Web lately. It’s title: “5 Reasons to Hold Off on the iPhone 3G”.

While I agree with him on some points and disagree on others (I love freedom of speech), I feel like I need to respond to his article:

1. Shortages are unlikely

I agree on this one, if there reason you are camping outside an Apple store to get your new iPhone 3G, forget it. Unless you want to be known as “that guy” on the local news, there is no need to hurry…

2. Chaos on Day One

Totally agree that the new activation method (over the counter and not iTunes) might be a little bit of a stressful change, especially for the Apple stores, which are not used to processing phone contracts. Patterson is right: it might be a bit chaotic that first week.

3. 32GB iPhone 3G on the horizon

I disagree on this one. Why is a bigger storage number going to keep you from getting a gadget these days? They are always going up on storage, email, hard drives, video game consoles, SD cards, even the brain size… You are going to have to have an outdated gadget in a few months no matter what. Also, why do you need more than 8GB for a PHONE?

4. Best new iPhone features are coming to the original iPhone

Agree and disagree. While I don’t want to miss a call because I am looking at the GPS on my iPhone, I do think that the faster internet will be a big deal here. But the price in the long run is worse for this service package… IT might be good to keep the old iPhone for some reasons but bad for others…

5. The HTC Touch Diamond

I agree we shouldn’t get all excited about the iPhone being the ultimate phone and turn a blind eye to new technologies out there. But I do think that the iPhone, for many reasons and for different audiences might be the best one out there today…

The biggest reasons to hold off on the new iPhone to me really are:

1. the price of the new service package with the faster 3G connection

2. I forgot which one was number 2

Do Games for Learning Really Work?

There are many articles we could link to here that tackle this question that can hardly be answered by the lack of research in the field that really “proves” something.

Dr. Blunt just assembled the results from three recent studies that try to express the effectiveness of game-based learning or serious games.

You can download the word processor version here. Or view the HTML version clicking here.

He finishes his article presenting several ideas for future serious games research topics:

1. Several studies of other participants using other games.
2. Studies of COTS games that could easily be adapted to teaching.
3. Studies into why there is a positive relationship between learning and video games.
4. Studies into the costs of using COTS video games versus custom content video games.
5. Studies into the presentation of different learning styles in learning video games.
6. Studies into the parental acceptance of game-based learning.
7. Studies of business models (learning industry v gaming industry) to fully integrate game-based learning and pc-based simulations into e-learning companies.
8. Studies on what impact using game-based learning will have on academic programs focusing on Instructional Systems Design (ISD) majors such as how curriculum will have to change.
9. Studies to explore the relationship between attrition and video game-based learning.