EduGeek Journal

News is starting to spread about the new Google+ Project.  While most people are comparing it to Facebook, I also look at it and see how it is taking on everything from Foursquare to you name the latest niche social network flavor site. It seems like they are going after it all: social networking, location services, conferencing, recommendations, etc.  But two important features will make it something to watch for educators: the focus on creating small groups to share with and a focus on privacy.

If you can create your own “Circles” as they call them, and then share what you want with them and even do video chats – you pretty much have the beginnings of a Learning Management System.  If they integrate Circles with other services (like Blogspot) – that would make it even more interesting. You could make a blog private and then with one click allow access to one circle (course).

Like Google Wave, invitations are limited (and will probably be highly sought after for a while). But will the failure of Google Wave make people too cautious to try this? And when was the last time Google had a big hit idea on their hands? Who will want to start using this and then have it canceled in a year or two?

Okay… I do want to give it a shot. And you probably do to. But Google Wave (and Lively and…) all showed us that major interest from the educational world is not enough to keep a Google project going. Which is one reason why I tend to doubt we will ever see a Google LMS.

I have been using RockMelt as my main browser for a few months now. Not sure why I switched over from straight up Chrome – I guess I wanted to see how Rockmelt would change my usage of Facebook and/or Twitter. Not a whole lot, but I do like the integration of different websites into a seamless experience. Now I am wondering if the future LMS or PLE should really be a website or not. Maybe it should just be a set of browser plug-ins and mobile apps? I have pondered that before, but now I am becoming more convinced that this is a better route to go.

Breaking down the walled garden will still leave us contained in the garden if that is still where the “learning” is supposed to happen. Many LMS providers make it easier to import content from services like WordPress and YouTube – so in many ways the walls are gone or at least have more openings. Or maybe it is more accurate to call them one-way passages – you can bring more content in (or at least easier than it used to be). But you can’t as easily get that learning out into the wild for others (your PLN) to join with you in exploring and expanding it.

A recent article on ExtremeTech made a case for Firefox to create their own OS. Reading that article makes me realize how radically different the online world will be in just a few years. Will the LMS/PLE/VLE/etc be there in this strange new world, or will it be sitting along side MySpace as a nostalgic relic of a bygone era?

By now, most educators have probably at least glanced at the New Media Consortium’s Horizon Report on the top 6 emerging technologies in K-12 education. An interesting list, full of technologies that I would love to see take hold in education.

But some things are still on the list from 2010 – like cloud computing. How many years will they let cloud computing be listed as emerging in one year or less? As others have noted, the word “cloud” is becoming an overused cliche (like “social” and “___2.0″ before it) – so we may not even be able to tell if or when this one actually emerges. After all, some people still debate whether Web2.0 is old news or still around the corner.

In many ways, K-12 kind of serves as a litmus test for whether trends have substance or not. I used to be a junior high teacher, and I found that most teachers don’t get overly excited about new technology just for the heck of it. Those of us that do (like me) tend to go into different lines of work.  The rest just want to know “will this work?” If you can’t prove that it will help students learn better/faster/easier/etc, they won’t touch it. Sometimes this suspicion keeps grade schools lagging behind, and other times it saves them from wasting time on pointless hype.

But it also means that if anything catches on, it probably has some merit. K-12 teachers usually don’t have the time to experiment on their students like (some) college professors do.

So some of these predictions I see as wishful thinking. Yes, I too wish they would emerge – but I don’t see it happening in five years or less.  Mobile devices and educational games? I love them myself, but too many educators are still suspicious of them… and they still cost money (money that many states don’t have for the next few years at least).  Open content? Love the idea, but content still rakes in big money for some companies – so expect push back against that one. Learning analytics? Sounds too much like administrative-ese to many, so expect a hard road on that one. Cloud computing? I do a lot of it myself, but how many IT Directors do you know that love releasing that much control.? Anyone? Anyone? Yep.

The problem with most of these emerging technologies is that so many of them rely on administrative decisions – districts have to decide to allow cellphones, or to switch to cloud computing, or to fork over money for games, etc.  The main one that actual teachers have the most control over is the Personal Learning Environment – assuming they can choose tools that their school fire wall allows that is.  But even with restrictive firewalls, you can always use them after hours from home to extend student learning. If the idea catches on, then we will possibly see this one emerge.

Don’t get me wrong – I want to see all of these emerge as soon as possible (used properly, that is). But we need to be aware of the obstacles for their emergence as much as we are of their existence.

Although this has been up for a bit, I finally got a chance to read Tedd Curran’s guide to creating your own personal learning network.  This is a great guide for beginners – I highly recommend it if you are new to PLNs or are just not sure if you are doing everything you need to cultivate yours. I was reminded to set-up Google Reader folders by reading this – something I always mean to do but keep forgetting.

Hopefully in the near future, we will see more classes that have a guide like this for a huge chunk of the syllabus. Maybe there will be a few required items, blogs, etc to add to each student’s PLN, but a large part of it will be left up to them to find their own.  Class discussions and assignments could then be based on dynamic content online rather every student trying to figure out how to re-write the same information over and over again without plagiarizing what has been said a million times already.

Someday we may even see entire departments or schools that would have a PLN guide like this for their orientation.  Just like we now make all new students go through and set-up a school email account, some day they might also set-up a PLN.  Each course they enroll in would then have a set of resources to add as a folder to their PLN (or maybe it will be added for them).

The missing link that I see is the software – there needs to be something that makes it easy for instructors to share relevant parts of their PLN with students, as well as students to share good resources with each other. Well, something a bit more advanced than emailing links to everyone. Maybe Google Reader already does this and I need to explore it more?

One of the coolest uses I have seen for Twitter is as a conference back channel.  Twitter has grown enough so that there are usually enough people to keep it interesting even if you aren’t there. The only problem comes in organizing the Tweets so that they are easy to find. After all – what is the point in tweeting if no one sees it?

Usually, the conference tweets are easy – just use the organizational acronym and that is it.  There are a few issues, but more on that in a bit.  The real problem comes when tweeting about specific sessions.  You don’t want to have to explain in every tweet what session you are at – right?  The solution is usually to start numbering sessions and adding that to the conference tag.

Last year, I worked with the Texas Distance Learning Association on this issue.  We had 150 or sessions, so just add a number to the end of the tag and you are done: #txdla101, #txdla102, etc.  The problem is, we ran into a huge problem with searching for tweets.  If you want to just find #txdla101 – no problem. But then what if you want to see #txdla102? That is a separate search.  Multiply that by 150 sessions and then the conference tag (which won’t show up when you search for #txdla101) and you have a tiresome problem that would hinder the back channel due to search exhaustion.

I tried wild cards, but the results were spotty at best. And I was shocked to see how many random link generators that spammers use ended up containing “txdla” in them.  So we came up with a simple solution.

Just put a dash in the tags (like #txdla-101) and your problems are over.  A search for “txdla” will show every session tag AND the general conferences tags – all in one search.  Easy.  Or, if you do want to see a specific session, then search for it (like “txdla-101″) and your search is easily narrowed.

Once we figured that out, we had to discuss the general conference tag a bit more.

The discussion that we had was whether to use the year in the general conference tag – #txdla vs #txdla2010.  Ultimately you would need the dash in there to help with searches.  But we also ended up with confusion over whether to use #txdla-2010 or just #txdla-10.

Most conference only happen once per year, so I say the year is unnecessary.  Twitter searches in 2011 are not going to find anything from a year ago. They just don’t go that far back.  But, if someone does somehow find an old tweet and wants to know the year, they can just look at the time stamp and quickly find out what year the conference happened.  Overall, I would say that it is unnecessary to identify the current date in any Tweet – they are all time stamped.

Another controversy I have read online is over whether conferences should officially announce Twitter tags or allow them to be used by presenters.  Some say that this would keep some back-channelers from being totally honest if they knew that it would be seen by the person up front.

To this, I say “hogwash.” (guess my Southern roots are coming out).

Look, Twitter is a public forum.  If you have a problem with what you are about to say being read by the person up front, then maybe you should consider whether it should be Tweeted at all.  But even if that is not enough, then I still have to come back to Twitter being public. If you don’t want everyone to read it, then make your feed private, or go to a different method of back-channeling.  But don’t claim that a public forum is going to shut down honesty and openness because it is being, well – public.

Now, if your conference or event has less sessions or happens more than once a year, you might have to come with a different set of guidelines. But these are the ones I found work best with year conferences with large numbers of sessions.

There seems to be a lot of attention given recently to transparent displays – basically, monitors that you can (some what) see-through.  Despite what CSI:Miami would have use believe, they aren’t here yet – but close.  Seems that LG is in the lead with 47″ 1080 HD touch screens that you can see through.  The prediction is that these screens will take augmented reality to a new level.  This quote from an article on ExtremeTech.com caught my eye:

In ten years, we may no longer have cell phones in our pockets, they will be built into our glasses and perhaps even contact lenses.

Sounds familiar to me :) But it looks like we are going to see augmented reality sooner rather than later – so I am going to start saving up for the iPhone 10 now….

Much has been written about virtual worlds here at EGJ. And much has been predicted: avatars created from personal pictures, 3-D immersive environments, avatars that move based on your body movement and not keystrokes, etc. Now it seems that these predictions are becoming reality.

The New York Times recently ran an article about a book by Jim Blascovich and Jeremy Bailenson called Infinite Reality. Blascovich and Bailenson take a look at how 3-D conferences and classrooms with avatars are just about ready to become a reality.  Several technologies are already here to accomplish this new level of virtual reality – and according to the article:

With these technologies — and a few tricks that have already been done in the lab — you can sit at a virtual conference table and exchange glances with the avatars of the other participants. Unlike the two-dimensional avatars that are already convening on Second Life and World of Warcraft, your avatar would appear to be three-dimensional, and you’d feel immersed in the scene as you looked around at the other participants from the eyes of your avatar.

Interesting ideas.  But why do we need this instead of video conferencing?

“People don’t like video conferences today because it’s more like watching ‘Hollywood Squares’ than being in a meeting,” Dr. Blascovich says. “You want the feeling of sitting at the table and having a full view looking around, seeing the side conversations and gazes that people are giving each other. In our lab, we can already give you that feeling by putting your avatar in a virtual conference room.”

I am glad someone is finally stating the obvious – that people in general just don’t like video conferencing. I am not a huge fan of it myself and I think the quote above pretty much sums up my feelings.

Now let’s just hope that this new level of virtual reality can take off before virtual worlds die out altogether.  Let’s face it – they are on life support now and need some new life.

An interesting new website called Zapd has popped up recently.  The idea is for you to create mini-websites on the go based around specific ideas or topics that are maybe too small or focused for creating a full-blown website or blog. I am not sure if there has been much buzz on this one or not – I actually found it while killing time in the iPhone app store.

The basic idea is that you get some content (probably some pictures on your phone), pick a theme in Zapd, add your content, and then save it all as a mini-site. You then share the link with just the people that you wish to share it with – you can post it to Facebook or just send it to a few colleagues.  The website mentions everything from travel pictures to small businesses to  portfolios. The only thing I don’t see is a way to keep your link out of the showcase on the front page on the Zapd website.

And about that website – you can’t sign up or do anything other than look at created sites on their main website.  Many websites let you sign up and do everything from their app, but this is one of those that has to be set-up completely through the app.  An interesting concept.

This could be a simple tool for educators to use.  Send your students out around town or school to take pictures for a project and have them create their portfolio on the spot.  Art, history, politics, social studies, music, science, and whole host of other subjects could use something like this to make it easier to apply the concepts from class to the world around the students, all the while giving students an easy way to share their learning.

I created a quick zap here: http://mgk.zapd.co/ (yep – seems like all links look like they are straight from some URL-shortener). I can go back in and edit or even add text entries under the pictures for more details. But it was pretty quick and easy. It also would have let me take a picture on the spot and use it – they didn’t have to already exist.

It would be nice to see videos added (like a YouTube embedder). Maybe even some mash-ups with Google Maps for location based sharing.  But it is still new and I am sure there will be other features added soon.

GigIn seems to be a new website that is part social network and part “web conference tweaked for musicians.” The basic idea promoted by the site is that you can connect with up to six people anywhere in the world to jam or practice.  Then you can take what emerges there and hold an online concert of some kind.  I’m still exploring it a bit, but can’t really give it a full tour until I join a band (and Bono refuses to return my emails for an audition).

Obviously, this is designed for musicians – but educators are used to re-purposing things anyways, right? I’m thinking that this can be used for anything that requires creative collaboration and practice.  Music majors could get together and practice, of course – even when they live far apart. Or they could meet with faculty mentors online to practice. I’m also thinking this could possibly be used to take speech and debate courses online. Even some plays could be practiced this way – depending on how you reformat them.  Language learning in also a possibility. Also, I’m thinking that smaller online advanced art courses – ones where you work on specific projects with an instructors feedback – could use something like this to go online.

After signing up, I see that there is a mixer program built in – something that gives GigIn an edge over most web conferencing tools (if it works right).  The lack of a good mixer is why you can’t really use many web conferencing solutions for band practice.  If the lead guitarist is using an inferior hardware set-up to everyone else, they might come out quieter in the mix (or way too loud, or distorted, etc). The ability to broadcast your sessions is also another feature that sets this apart from many others.  And then there seems to be the social aspect.

There is also mention of attending online festivals – which could also translate into online teaching sessions and online conferences for educators.  Of course, whether you would use this rather than any other web conferencing software will really come down to how well it works and how flexible it is.  But I like that the idea with GigIn is to connect, create, collaborate, and broadcast online. If they can figure out how to make all that work smoothly and give veryone the features they need – then this tool could have a bright future.

Chegg.com definitely has a rocky history with the EduGeeks.  At least they got a Chief Executive after those questionable acts – so maybe that will turn the companies reputation around?

Or maybe not.  Read this article on new features that Chegg.com has added.  Let me draw your attention to one of the last lines – a quote from Dan Rosensweig, the current chief executive:

“Education is one of the areas where technology has not had a chance to work its magic”

Really? Thank you for insulting everyone that has been working in the Ed Tech field for the past 50-100 years. Yes, there is much more that technology can do in education that has not been tapped yet. We have a long way to go. But we have also come a long way, too. There are thousands of examples where technology has had a chance to “work its magic” on education.

I guess at least they are not as bad as the Borg, thinking that they invented all of the magic that is happening.  They just want to ignore all the magic that has already happened.