Elgg.net

I ran across an interesting site: elgg.net. It bills itself as an "online social network for those interested in education, learning technology and new approaches to teaching and learning". Looks like it could be an interesting site - I've added it to my list of RSS feeds.

Geocaching

One of my hobbies that I have done for a while is geocaching. I mentioned this to some friends the other day, and I was surprised they had never heard of it, so I figured it was a subject worth a post.

Geocaching is basically a high-tech treasure hunt. People all over the world are hiding small waterproof containers and then posting the GPS coordinates on web sites like geocaching.com. You can go to the site, enter your zip code, and get a list of hidden caches near you. You will be amazed how many there are (right now there are 6,540 within a 50 mile radius of my house). Using a GPS receiver (can be purchased for about a 100 bucks) you can follow the coordinates and hunt for the hidden treasure. Most caches contain a log book to sign, and many have little trinkets that you can take - as long as you put something of yours in to replace it.

It was started in May 2000 by Dave Ulmer in Oregon and has spread rapidly - there are currently over 317,000 caches around the world. One of the things I like about it is that it helps me find interesting places that I probably would never have seen. Most caches are placed in a site that has some kind of intrinsic value. It might be a beautiful view, or a hidden stream, or historical interest, but there is usually something worthwhile about the location other than the hidden cache. It's a great combination of mystery, exercise and geekiness.

A lot more information can be found (as always) on the Wikipedia page.

Blackboard Patent

Blackboard was recently awarded a patent covering Learning Management Systems (LMS) and has launched their first lawsuit against Desire2Learn - one of their only existing commercial competitors (since they purchased WebCT last year - their only significant competitor).

I'm no patent lawyer, but this whole thing smells really bad to me. There is a big difference between a copyright which protects your intellectual property (the expression of an idea) and a patent - which can protect the idea itself. The academic community should be very concerned about this action which is obviously intended to stifle competition and will (in my opinion) ultimately stifle innovation.

I have been a Blackboard administrator since 1999. I first saw Blackboard at CAUSE98 in Seattle when they were one of the small startup companies with a very small booth in the back. Overall I have been pleased with their product - I think it does the job well and despite a few bumps along the way I have been satisfied with the service we have received from them. However I have not seen anything groundbreaking or innovative that warrants a patent that would prohibit others from using the same idea. Did they invent a discussion board? Or delivering files through the web? Or online tests?

It's a good product, and virtually everyone I have dealt with at Blackboard has been great, but I think they have made a big mistake with this action. The higher education community is not a typical business market and will not react the same. This looks like a decision made by a lawyer, not a technologist or academic. There was already a movement away from commercial LMS toward open source (Moodle and Sakai) and I think this is just going to accelerate that process.

The academic blogosphere is pretty active about this, and I haven't seen anything positive about it. You can see the latest here. The president of Educause sent out a letter yesterday on this topic - you can read it here.

Dropping Knowledge

I ran across an interesting site today called DroppingKnowledge.com. They are collecting questions from people all over the world and they are going to present the top 100 questions to a group of 112 people sitting around the world's largest table in Berlin on September 9th. I have a couple of reactions to this idea.:

1) The first is what an amazing tool the Internet is for such a project. Imagine attempting a feat like this just a short while ago before the Internet became ubiquitous. Now we can have people all over the world submit questions, edit them, vote on them and begin a global conversation that could become the genesis for a new age of cross cultural cooperation. This humble little effort just might usher in a new era of peaceful co-existence.

2) My second thought is what a total crock this whole thing is. Maybe I'm a bit cynical (you wouldn't be the first person to accuse me of it), but this looks to me like the world's largest committee. Ever been on a committee? Ever see anything worthwhile come out of a committee? I also can't help wonder about the political agenda of the organizers when I see that Cindy Sheehan is a participant. Is she really one of the 112 world's greatest thinkers, or does she represent a political philosophy that they want publicized? Hey - I'm just asking questions!

The group seems very heavily weighted toward writers, poets and artists. I have nothing against those vocations, but wouldn't it have made more sense to get people together who have actually solved problems instead of just asked the questions? I suspect this group would find any corporate executive suspect, but somebody who has actually met a payroll might have some insights into solving poverty. Of course, someone in that line of work might not be able to get the day off to sit around a big table solving the world's problems with DJ Spooky.

Here are a few of my favorite questions posed on the site so far (and no, I'm not making these up - typos were left intact):

• Do fish feel thirst?
• Why the Human Being is so stupid?
• What is the significance of pareidolia?
• Will managers with MBA's suck the soul out of business and society to the point where there is a revolt by worker and consumer?
• why?
• How long will the hype around this service last after the meeting has passed?
• why is it so hard and complicated to mentally handle a broken-up relationship?
• Who cares for growing and CONNECTING the tools and methods of collective intelligence and wisdom into a people-powered ecosystem of solutions, complex enough to match the complexity of our world problematique? (This is NOT a rhetorical question.)
• If trees spoke, would they tell us another history?
• Might the Q/A or Problem/Solution process divert us from seeking unifying synergy within our vast diversity of cognitive/affective competencies? Might we interact as if we have no adequate expertize, but have the potential to gain what we need?
• Do I have to patent myself or my dna genes, that noone takes my dna and clones me?
• how does sewage affect algae growth?

Well I'll overlook the insult of not being asked to sit at the table (the invitation is probably in the mail), but I will contribute my questions:

• Why does one sock always disappear in the laundry? Where are they?
• Why is "pair of pants" plural, but "bra" is singular?
• Why is there air?
• If a mute swears, does his mother wash his hands with soap?
• What's another word for synonym?
• If a man speaks in the forest and there is no woman to hear him, is he still wrong?
• What should you do when you see an endangered animal that is eating an endangered plant?

OK, OK, I didn't make all of them up. I found them on the Internet (most were attributed to George Carlin), but I still want to know the answers!

Oops!

This is one of those situations that is very funny - as long as it happens to someone else. A CNN anchor had her microphone on and was talking to someone in the bathroom. The sound feed was played live on top of a speech from George Bush. Fortunately for her, she said some very nice things about her husband, but unfortunately for family relations, she called her sister-in-law a "control freak". Thanksgiving dinner should be a fun time in that house this year.

You can watch the clip at YouTube.

Google vs. Microsoft Heating Up

Google just announced their first shot at taking on Microsoft Office. They are offering a free service designed for small and medium sized businesses to host email, chat, calendar and web page creation. Word processing and spreadsheets will be rolled in soon. This is going to be very interesting and I think is a harbinger of things to come. Instead of having huge, bloated programs installed on our PCs, I think we'll be consuming software as subscribed services. We'll only pay for the functions we use, and upgrades will be handled by the hosting service. Keep your eyes on this...

More details here.

50 Coolest Websites

Time magazine recently published a list of the 50 coolest web sites. Faithful readers of DigitalEdu (both of you) will be shocked to discover that we were not included in the list. Don't let this inexplicable oversight keep you from enjoying the list. It really is remarkable the level of innovation that is appearing on the web recently. I wish the academic community was at the forefront of it, but that is not the case.

Goggles

I'm a big fan of mapping technology and I think Google Maps is the best mapping web site and Google Earth is most likely the coolest program ever written - particularly for the price. In my in-service presentation last week I talked about mashups and how interesting it is to see people use technology in a way that the original producers never anticipated. Well, my son showed me a pretty cool site that uses the Google technology to create a rudimentary flight simulator. It's called Goggles - check it out!

In-Service Week

It's been a very busy week - I did presentations every day on various topics, and I thoroughly enjoyed (as always) talking to the faculty. There was a lot of interest in my sessions on the latest trends on the Internet. I plugged this blog at every session, so if any of you are reading this as a result, welcome! Please feel free to use the comments area to post any ideas you have about ways we can leverage technology in an academic setting.

User Generated Sites Among Fastest Growing

This isn't earth shattering news to anyone who is following developments on the web, but Nielsen/Net Ratings announced last week that half of the fastest growing web sites on the Internet are ones that are based on user developed content (like MySpace, YouTube and Flickr).

This is in-service week at our colleges and I'm doing a session called "Geek Report" where I'll be talking about the latest trends on the Internet. What I'm really interested in talking about is how we can harness this obvious desire for people (particularly teens) to be active participants on the web. I am going to pose that question to the attendees and I'll post any good ideas here later in the week.

Vacationing in the Digital Age

I'm back from two weeks in the mountains and it was a great experience. One of the weeks was spent in Mammoth - a place I went every year growing up. The picture you see here was taken at Crystal Lake which is a beautiful alpine lake I visited a number of times in the past. I discovered on the hike however that one of two things had happened since the last time I was in Mammoth:

1. The trail became about 40% steeper
2. I became old

Given how volatile the geology is in Mammoth, I'd like to think it's the former, but I suspect the latter is more likely. It's also the first time in a long time that I have hiked into the backcountry and I must say that technology has certainly improved. Having a GPS receiver was wonderful - it was great knowing I could wander off the trail a bit and not worry about finding my way back (a veritable digital trail of bread crumbs). I was surprised to discover I had cell service (shows you just how "back" in the backcountry I was), which came in handy because I had the lake all to myself and spent too much time reveling in the beauty of the place. I was able to call my wife and let her know that I was running late and not to worry.

This wonderful technology has a downside of course, which I discovered as I was packing. My checklist went something like this:

Laptop? Check.
Video games for family installed on laptop? Check.
Broadband wireless card? Check.
Power cord for Laptop? Check.
Cell phone? Check.
Cell phone charger cord? Check.
iPod? Check.
New songs downloaded for the trip? Check.
USB cable for iPod to re-charge from laptop? Check.
Cable to connect iPod to car stereo? Check.
GPS Receiver? Check.
Extra Batteries for GPSr? Check.
Route programmed into GPSr? Check.
Alternate route programmed into GPSr? Check.
Take a virtual tour of route using Google Earth? Check.
Program interesting side trips found using Google Earth into GPSr? Check.

You get the idea - looks like a trip into the land of the perennially Anal Retentive Geeks (imagine what my wife has to deal with). I did manage to avoid checking my work email the entire time however, so I'll consider myself relatively normal (and my family enjoyed the video games).

In Memory of Joan Anderson

On Saturday I went to the memorial service for a dear friend - Joan Anderson. Her husband Matt is one of my best friends and we have been praying for Joan for 9 years as she battled two rounds of breast cancer. She is the one in the white shirt in the picture - even when she was dealing with the horrible side effects of chemo she would often join a group of us who play volleyball on Sunday afternoons.

It was a remarkable service as our church was packed with about 600 people who came to celebrate the life of this extraordinary woman. Matt and their three kids spoke at the service and they were unbelievably eloquent. Matt told us that in the 9 years she fought the cancer, he never once heard her complain - not once. Her son told us that the cancer did not beat his Mom because she never let it stop her from doing the things in life that she wanted to do. One of her daughters spoke movingly of her Mom's amazing optimism and the smile that was constantly on her lips. She encouraged us to "pay it forward" by treating people more kindly, by smiling at people who need to see a smile, by focusing on others instead of ourselves. These were all constant traits of Joan - despite the horrendous struggle she faced every day. They told us of her love of dance and how on her last day she came downstairs while her son was playing the guitar and she somehow managed to do some dance steps even while she was hooked up to oxygen and her life on this earth was fading.

I have known some amazing people in my life, and I am blessed with some remarkable friends, but I have never known anyone quite like Joan. The world is a darker place today because of Joan's absence, but I know heaven is a brighter place as she dances with the Lord she loved so much.

The world needs more people like Joan and I hope that her example will lead many of us at that service to be more like her. A little less self-centered, a little more loving, a little more caring, a little more dedicated to being positive and optimistic. Maybe, just maybe, if enough of us act more like Joan, we can help make up for the void that her absence has created in the lives of all of us who knew her. Maybe...

Design Definition

I was reading Guy Kawasaki's blog yesterday and came across this definition of design from a blog called Design Matters: "Design consists of creating things for clients who may not know what they want, until they see what you've done, then they know exactly what they want, but it's not what you did."

I love the design process and that statement has got to be the most concise and clear definition I have ever heard. It's also very helpful because if we take it to heart, it helps get the designer's ego out of the way. We are going through a user interface redesign right now on a project we have been working on for some time. We went over the interface over a period of months in our design team sessions and we thought we had it nailed - until we actually got it into the hands of the people who were going to use it. Then they told us it was all wrong, even though they were all on the design team that created it! It was tempting to say "too bad" and get them to use it anyway, but instead we are completely redesigning the UI.

It's easy to get frustrated over a situation like this, but this definition of design helps put it in perspective. Most people can't describe what they want, but they know what they don't want - once they see it.

UPDATE: I heard from a member of the design team on the project I reference in this post and he took exception to what I wrote here. He thought I was criticizing the team so let me clarify. Virtually every project I have ever worked on has had the same experience. Software developers do not think like "normal" people. We approach the user interface in a different way so I have found that when we build it in a way that makes sense to us, it often doesn't work for our users. Even when we get the users heavily involved in the design process, until they actually get their hands on it their feedback is not that useful. We had a lot of input on the design of this system, but it was all from demonstrations where I controlled the mouse and I knew exactly where to click (and not to click). As soon as they used it themselves, they told me it was not going to work.

That's why I loved the definition of design that is the subject of this post. It reminded me of why it's so important to not only get lots of feedback during the design, but to get a working prototype into the hands of users as soon as possible. The design team I'm working with on this project is the best I've experienced in 20 years of building software and we are producing an amazing system that is going to be an incredible service to our students.

(OK, I'll stop sucking up now and hopefully I won't get beat up at our next design meeting.)

New Project

This has been a pretty eventful week at work. I've been filling in as the Interim IT Director the last few months (one of the reasons the blogging has been pretty light). My boss was filling in at an interim Vice-Chancellor position but this week it was announced he's coming back down to the Director position and I'll be going back to Associate Director. I've made a conscious decision in my career to only move into positions if I love the work. I don't want to move up for the sake of moving up, or for the money, prestige, etc. I love my job and don't want to get into a position where that is not the case any more. It was a great opportunity to test the waters at the next level up and I hope to have a chance again in the future. I won't miss all the meetings and dealing with budgets, but there are some real satisfying aspects to it as well. I'll still be the Director until the end of July so I'll have a little more time to get in trouble.

Our Board of Trustees approved a contract on Monday with a company called Neudesic. They are going to help us build a new student system. It's not the typical path that colleges take, and I am very excited about it. What excites me most about it is the chance we are going to have to do something truly student-centered. My experience with the packaged systems is they tend to be designed around the back office operations and not around the student. We are going to put the students right in the center of the design and build a system around them. It's going to take us about 4 years to do the whole thing and I can't wait to get started. Details will be posted here as they develop...

Invisible Children

On Saturday my daughter and I and some friends participated in the Global Night Commute (GNC) sponsored by Invisible Children. The purpose of the evening was to draw attention to the horrendous situation that is happening in Uganda where a rebel group called the LRA (Lord's Resistance Army) is kidnapping children to use as soldiers or sex slaves. That's right - young children are stolen from their homes at night and forced to kill and perform horrible acts to avoid being killed - or having their families killed in front of them. I first became aware of this situation by viewing the movie created by three young men who started Invisible Children and who are trying to change the world. It's an amazing story and you should check out their web site to get more information.

Every night, while my kids sleep peacefully in their beds, thousands of children in northern Uganda travel miles to find a safe place to sleep. They call them the "night commuters" and the GNC was designed to mimic their actions and hopefully draw some media attention. We parked at Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa and walked for about 45 minutes to Orange Coast College. We joined about 500 people and slept on a field at the college. Or I should say tried to sleep. I was one of only about 5 people in attendance who had grey hair and it turns out that this large group of young people were far more interested in talking and having fun than sleeping (go figure). Overall it was a great experience, and I tried not to act like a crabby old guy, but by 3:00 AM I was very ready for a little quiet (at least until I started snoring).

I checked the LA Times this morning, expecting that there would be some coverage, but guess what? Not a single story. Nada. Zip. This event took place in cities all around the country, but I haven't seen any stories in the media about it yet. I guess if we had burned some buildings or overturned a few cars, we could have received attention, but evidently young people trying to change the world through peaceful means isn't much of a story.

So what does this have to do with technology? Not a whole lot (but it's my blog so who says I have to stay on topic?). This kind of activity is certainly much easier now that we have technology that lets us be publishers as well as consumers. The Invisible Children movement is one that has been fueled by the Internet. You can buy the DVDs that tell the whole story from their website, and the GNC details were publicized using MySpace. It's a great use of technology for a great purpose. That's a great story - too bad the LA Times doesn't think so.

Unplugged Yet Plugged In

I am back from an amazing six days in Mexico. I joined 24 high school students and 7 other adults from my church on a house-building trip through a group called Amor Ministries. It was a profound week in the lives of everyone - both in our group and the family who has a new home. I wish we had one of those "reality" TV crews following us so they could see the kids in our group and how they worked so hard to improve the life of a family they had never met. We built a home in four days using pretty much nothing but hand tools. That's right - kids from the OC were digging dirt and mixing cement and pounding nails and sawing wood and working long days. And why? Just because they love God and they take seriously his commands to look after the poor.

Of course, they were still teenagers so there was also a lot of cement fights and acting goofy and having a blast around the campfire each night. This group of kids were amazing and I had so much fun just hanging out with them. If you get depressed when you see the narcissistic, selfish, superficial teenagers that are constantly portrayed on television, don't worry - there are some great kids out there also. I was proud to be associated with them.

If you are reading this blog, you are probably a lot like me and are constantly connected to the Internet. One of the aspects of the trip that was so refreshing was to be completely unplugged - no Internet access, no computer, no cell phone service (we were camping so unfortunately there was also no hot water, no showers, and no electricity). I tend to be pretty compulsive about checking my email and using Bloglines to keep up on my favorite blogs. Even going a half-day without checking those services is unusual for me (weekends and vacations included), but it was amazing how quickly all of the things that seem so important suddenly became so irrelevant. Our entire group was focused on helping the family by getting that house done and everything else faded away. It was an awesome experience when we turned the keys over to the family. They went from a 6x12 foot shack with a leaky roof and dirt floor (shown above) to a 22x22 home built with pride and love (see below).

I think it struck everyone in the group how much we have. The home we built would just be a garage by our standards, but to this family it was literally their dream come true. The disparity between our standard of living and the standard just a short drive down the freeway is remarkable. We can argue all day about why it's that way, but the kids in our group wouldn't be interested in that conversation. There is a need, God tells us to meet it, and so they went. And they can hardly wait to go back. And I can hardly wait to unplug again and join them.

Higher Ed Blog Con

Looks like there is a very cool blog conference happening at Higher Ed Blog Con. It bills itself as "a fully web-based event focused on how new online communications technologies and social tools are changing Higher Education". It just started on April 3rd and runs through the end of the month. I haven't had time to check much of it out yet, but at first glance it looks like it will be a fantastic resource to those of us interested in this space.

Web 2.0

There has been a lot of discussion in the technical blogosphere about Web 2.0. Most of the discussion centers around how just about everybody hates the name (but ironically, by talking about it,they just perpetuate the name even more). No one has come out with a new release of the web, but there are some very exciting trends that make the web a far more interactive and compelling place to spend time.

This discussion has now gone mainstream - Newsweek magazine has a cover story about this topic (they call it the "Live Web" which amazingly manages to be an even lamer moniker than "Web 2.0" - was the old web "dead"?). On their web site, they have a quiz entitled How Geeky Are You? Take it and see how you do (I got a 58, which just fell short of the highest level of nerdiness - I'm devastated but determined to get geekier).

Web 2.0 basically involves two emerging trends:

1. New web sites that use technology known as AJAX to create a richer user experience in a web browser
2. New web sites that enable a collaborative community experience

Google Maps was one of the first sites to use AJAX in a very compelling way. The ability to drag a map around the screen, zoom in and out, and flag areas of the map are all examples of what AJAX technology can do for you. Microsoft is releasing technology known as ATLAS that we are starting to use in our MySite 2.0 project and I'm really excited about how it is going to make our services a richer experience for our students. Microsoft is coming out with a new version of their hotmail service that I'm beta-testing that is very cool. It basically gives you the full capabilities of Outlook (including things like drag-and-drop) in a web browser.

The second trend is even more interesting because it doesn't center around the technology (though many of the sites use AJAX), but centers around human interaction. The collaborative side of the Internet is exploding with sites like MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, Digg, and the thousands of blogs that spring up every day. When I used to teach an Introduction to the Internet course, I emphasized how the Internet has always been more about information and communication than technology. The rapid emergence of these kinds of sites just underscores that point.

The question for those of us working in education is: How do we leverage these trends to better serve students?

Update: If you want to keep an eye on new Web 2.0 sites, I highly recommend TechCrunch.
Another Update: I just ran across a site that lists the Web 2.0 awards. Should be a good place to see some examples of what Web 2.0 is supposed to be about.

Tech Ed 06

I did a presentation at Tech Ed 06 in Pasadena today called "Online Services that Truly Serve Students" (ppt slides can be found on the "Recent Presentations" link to the right). My presentation started at 8:00 AM and given the weather today I didn't expect a lot of attendance (I left home at 5:00 AM just to make sure I wasn't late, but then again, I have a punctuality neurosis). As I expected there were only about 8 people when I started, but more and more arrived as I got going, and by the end it was standing room only and there were people in the hallway. (Reality Check #1: OK, so I was in the smallest room in the Pasadena Convention Center) (Reality Check #2: Well, "room" is actually a tad generous - it was more the size of a closet, but once I moved the mops everyone could see the screen).

I heard some great feedback afterwards and several people mentioned how it was nice to see systems that are designed to be student-centric. It's good that people caught that (since it's the theme of virtually all of my presentations), but it's sad that it stands out. Too many people in my field are chasing technology instead of serving students.

I also got to meet Bob Hughes from the North Orange district in person (he commented on my last post). He was a heck of a nice guy - even if he does like the ERPs (don't worry - I'll keep working on him).

If anyone who was at the session is reading this, I need to make sure I didn't leave you with a wrong impression. I closed the presentation with a demonstration of MySite Agent - it's an interactive agent we built that can respond to natural language queries using the AIM instant messaging service. I use it in the demo to show that we don't always get it right. In this case, I think the technology gets in the way of service and students just play with it instead of using it in a productive way. I just flat out said that we failed with that service because of the quantity and quality of the service it was providing. I was talking to a lady later in the day and she thought I was talking about all of the services I demonstrated. She didn't understand why students were not using our portal, online schedule and shopping cart when they looked so cool. So, in case anyone else had that impression, our other services are very popular - it's just the agent that doesn't get much usage.

CACCRAO Conference

I had the great privilege of speaking at the CACCRAO Region 7 and 8 conference on Friday. What is CACCRAO, you ask? It is the California Association of Community College Registrars and Admissions Officers (sheesh, and I thought us geeks like acronyms). I gave my iPod Generation speech and it was probably the best audience so far. I had a great time and the feedback I received was very appreciative (and if any of you that were there are reading my lonely little blog - welcome!).

Those folks really do have a monumental job. This generation of students is so used to having immediate service I can imagine they get pretty impatient when told they need to wait for something. I could tell I struck a nerve when I talked about that. Their jobs are changing - in the old days they simply processed data. They took information from the student and keypunched into a system. As more and more of our systems become self-service for the student, admissions workers need to transition to become information workers. They'll be handling the exceptions that can't be automated, or providing more useful information for students in need. I would think it would be more fulfilling work and I hope they are ready for the transition.