Finally!

Whew! It took me years, but at last I finally found it.

Google Earth for Educators

There is a nice post on the Google Earth Blog regarding the use of this amazing software in education. I can't imagine teaching a class without it - I look for excuses to use it when I'm teaching the youth group at my church.

Student Collaboration

I went to a very interesting session today from the University of Pennsylvania. They created a social bookmarking system that allows students, faculty and librarians to tag, create and share content. It was modeled after del.icio.us and it was a great example of the use of Web 2.0 technology in education.

There are some other interesting sites emerging that enable student collaboration outside of the classroom. One is stu.dicio.us which allows students to post their class notes online, and uses a tagging mechanism to link notes from the same class. Another example is NoteMesh which uses a wiki to create a collaborative work space for students to share.

Educause Day 2

Today started with a fascinating keynote from Ray Kurzweil. This is one very smart fella. He started off by reciting the past predictions he has made that came true. It sounded a lot like ego to me, so I started to check out mentally, but I realized later that he was doing it to set the stage for some remarkable predictions he made later in the presentation. He spent considerable time going through a series of slides showing the exponential growth in computing power and a similar trend downward in cost. His basic premise is that we can predict the future because the trends are exponential and predictable. Here are a few of his predictions:

• Artificial red blood cells that will oxygenate your tissue so much more efficiently that you will be able to sit on the bottom of your pool for 4 hours
• Images will be sent directly to our retinas from eyeglasses and will provide a full virtual reality. Eventually neural implants will provide all of our senses with input, making the virtual world indistinguishable from the physical world.
• Computers will disappear as they are integrated into our clothing or eye glasses
• Full reverse engineering of the human brain
• Computers passing the Turing Test.
• Non biological intelligence
• Human life expectancy will accelerate rapidly in our lifetime - adding a year to the average life for each year of development after they completely decipher the human genome
• The Olympics will be cancelled because advances in biological sciences will make human bodies perform in ways we cannot even imagine now

He demonstrated a prototype of a phone that automatically translated spoken words from English to French and back. Two people speaking dissimilar languages could communicate over the phone with ease. He predicted this capability would become part of our cell phones within 10 years.

It was pretty amazing stuff and if he hadn't shown how good his track record is, I might dismiss it as science fiction. Very exciting stuff!

I went to a couple of other sessions on student-centered design and open source alternatives. Another good day, but it will be good to head home tomorrow.

Educause Day 1

I'm at the Educause conference and had a good day today. Here are the highlights:

Vinton Cerf gave the keynote speech and it was pretty interesting. His basic premise is that the term "computer science" is a misnomer because virtually none of the principles of science apply to software development. We can't predict how many bugs will be in software, how bad they will be, or how to effectively eliminate them from future code. He had a really good point, but didn't really offer a solution to it. He used the term "iPod Generation" which I have been using for a couple of years in various presentations. I thought about suing him for copyright infringement, but seeing that he invented the Internet, I thought I would cut him a little slack.

I went to a fascinating session on using gaming as an educational mechanism. The University of North Carolina at Greensboro created an economics course that is presented as a video game. The quality was amazing - it was exciting to see people in higher education doing something so innovative and responsive to this generation of students. This is something that Marc Prensky has been talking about for some time now.

I did a presentation on our new system - My Academic Plan (MAP). I had a good audience and had some very positive feedback. (And yes, I once again made a shameless plug for this blog, so if you are reading this as a result - welcome.)

The last session was a very thought provoking discussion of a growing movement in higher ed to create a next generation community source Student Services System (SSS). I loved their emphasis on service and the need to create a robust, extensible framework to offer high quality services to students. It gave me a lot to think about.

This was the best day I've had at a conference in a long time. Looking forward to tomorrow...

Mexico the Sequel

Back in April I posted about a trip to Mexico I took with the youth group from my church. Our students formed a real bond with Julio and Laura and their kids and our kids wanted to do even more for them. I figured over time the memory would fade and our students would move on to other ideas. I was wrong.

They raised $465 from the youth group and wanted to go back down to Mexico to buy the family a bed and anything else they needed. So on Saturday we headed south again and, once again, it was a wonderful experience. It turned out to be Julio's birthday so it was a great surprise for them to see us (we had no way to get hold of them ahead of time so just had to hope they would be home). We were able to buy them a bunk bed for the kids, a dresser for the whole family and bags of food. Laura and Julio cooked us a delicious meal and we got to sit in the house that we built - and that they turned into a home. It felt like a big family - American and Mexican.

I had a busy week last week and another one ahead of me so frankly I really didn't want to spend the whole day on the road, but I was so glad I did. It's such a great experience seeing a group of teenagers doing something so completely selfless. It did my heart good.

And, I got to be geeky also! When we go down to build houses, the logistics are handled by the people at Amor Ministries. This time we were on our own and had to find their house which is on a dirt road somewhere between Tecate and Tijuana. Fortunately I had marked the location of the house in my GPSr and used Google Earth to figure out which roads to take to get there. Then I found a great little program called GEtrax which allowed me to track our position in real time in Google Earth on my laptop (it used cached images since I had no Internet connection). It was great technology used for a great cause.

Emerging Technologies

I ran across an interesting article today on one of the tech sites. It is an interview with Jason Pontin from MIT on some of the emerging technologies that are not IT related. There is a lot of fascinating stuff going on out there - check it out.

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.)