ISTE 2010: Rumors About Google Apps for Ed?

Got nothing but rumors here, but I've talked to two people here at the convention who claim that Google is going to include Blogger, Picasa, and a 'safety-mode' portal into YouTube in an update of Google Apps for Ed.

Presumably, that would mean that the TOS for kids under 13 would be a moot point as all activity could happen within the school's Google account and schools would of course have services archived/secured through Postini.

Stay tuned.

[UPDATE: @BillCamp shot over this release from Google from last month; it specifically addresses bringing Picasa, Reader, and Blogger into Google Apps for Ed. No specific mention of YouTube, but that would be the game-changer as so many districts currently block YouTube out of content concerns.]

Google Willing to "Shut Down" in China?

This paragraph from today's edition of the official Google blog says more about the recent past (as of yesterday) and coming future (as of... what time is it?) of technology and politics than just about anything you'll have found online in a while:

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered--combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web--have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

Nothing like hearing it from the horse's mouth.

Logo Hampered Ontologies

I'm beat after another long session battering about the pros and cons of the big three Logo Hampered Ontologies.

Yes, 'Logo Hampered Ontologies'.

Ok, so it's an anagram for: 'Moodle, Google, Sharepoint'. But it's apt. And it's been consuming me.

The short of it: me and a few folks at school are thinking about which of the three will best serve the needs of teachers and students in a 21C setting.

Each have strong points. Each have weak points.

Moodle is 'made' for education. But it's definitely a work-in-progress and may have scalability issues. I also feel like it's sort of set up as a digital version of a 20th century classroom (i.e. it does tests and quizzes really well, but how well does it integrate with multimedia and social networking?)

Google Apps for Ed has all the parts for free -- and the sites are housed on the Cloud; but 'Sites' is pretty clunky (even compared to other free site-building services like Weebly and Wix) and there's quite a learning curve (especially with Wave).

Sharepoint is solid in its own way, but its dropboxes and calendars pale in comparison to Web 2.0 alternatives. And I'm just not convinced that its wiki or blog functions can touch dedicated sites like Wikispaces, Blogger, and WordPress. I've also had so much difficulty running 3rd party ware on MS browsers (and long since given up), that I just don't have much faith in the accessibility and flexibility of Sharepoint. But I may just be out-of-touch with what MS has been developing.

I'd really like to know what you all have to say about these Logo Hampered Ontologies.

What have you used? What do you use? What are the pros and cons and if you were the one making the call, which way would you go?

Looking forward to your responses; and please forward this on to folks who can extend the discussion; I really want to get an idea of what people's experiences are with these three monsters.

For the record...

A reader writes:

So I don't get it, are you pro-Google / anti-Google; pro-Twitter / anti-Twitter? I must say that some of your positions on this are confusing to follow.

Being a teacher and not a corporate board member or stakeholder, I could give a darned less about the competition between Google, FB, and Twitter.

Except in how it effects the growth of a free Internet and global access to information.

I've cringed at many of Google's decisions, but think that Google Apps is a great platform. I've cringed at many of FB's decisions, but I think social networking is producing a watershed event in the way societies work and I think perhaps more than anywhere else on the Web, FB may be the source of that watershed (the watershed not being FB itself, but rather the concept of social networking of such a grand scale). I find Twitter to be tricky and cliquey, but I think it's the beginning of a new type of intelligent human network (and talk about potential for 'grand scale').

Most importantly, so long as they exist, and so long as they are useful, and so long as they continue to evolve, I will continue to use, experiment with, and mash up any and all of the resources the Web offers for classroom use and fresh new ways of learning.

Be the disruption. Use technology however you want. The students are the real stakeholders. Change your classroom. Change the world.

A Post-Google Search World (er... Classroom)?

And a wiki of uses for Twitter in the classroom... just for good measure.

Google Apps, "Real-World" Paperlessness, and the Paperless Classroom

Here's a video posted by Google almost exactly a year ago on YouTube. It's an introduction to Google Apps for Education and seems to have been made for education admins.

Its amazing how much happens in a year.

I started experimenting with Google Docs around the time this video came out. And it didn't start in school. Rather, I'm on the board of an organization in Baltimore that runs a weekly performance series and produces a big annual music concert. I started working with them about a year and a half ago. Well, the first thing that struck me about the board meetings was that they were conducted entirely paperless. In fact, the only paper we ever use is for making posters. All meeting minutes are done via Google Docs, all submissions are handled electronically, the majority of promotion occurs via social networking, and it is expected that you show up at each meeting with a laptop to connect to the Wi-Fi.

This "real-world" example of paperlessness made a big impression on me and just fueled my conviction to go totally paperless in the classroom. Google Apps have been a big part of my success, so it's interesting to see just how prescient this admittedly rather boring video of a year ago was -- at least in my case.

I do have a conviction to help other teachers go paperless. It's a great way to save resources, make use of the dynamic and creative potential of Web 2.0, and really connect with the students in a way that reflects the world's evolution into the Digital Age. As I approach 200 posts on this blog, I just want to thank all of the folks who have joined in this discussion and I look forward to a year from now looking back on how far we will have come.

"A kind of new orality"

Dangerously Irrelevant wants to know what you think about Trent Batson's ideas about Google and a 'new orality'.

Having studied oral transmission and transference a bit in terms of ancient poetry, I'd have to say that there is a nuance that Batson might be missing, but which actually may lend even more credence to his idea. Namely, he notes the rapid spread of ideas through hybrid orality. While it is certainly true that oral transmission does and has manifested in the past as a spread of ideas, those ideas are generally spread regionally and over the course of long periods of time. More importantly, in the bardic traditions -- from Iran to Greece to Ireland -- those ideas are generally spread via a professional or semi-professional singer much in the way that trade-skills were handed down from generation to generation.

What Google does is allow immediate hybrid transmission. And it puts the responsibility of authority in the hands of the reader or audience moreso than in the will of the authors.

We Know What You Like

Received this in my inbox this evening. Does this mean I'm going to be inundated by ads for 16th century neo-Latin alchemy texts and Ancient Greek digitization projects? Or will it be counterbalanced by a healthy does of adverts from educational policy-wonk think tanks and ed tech graduate programs?

This is precisely why people get freaked out by technology. For goodness sake, this is a bad idea.

Hi,

We're writing to let you know about the upcoming launch of interest-based advertising, which will require you to review and make any necessary changes to your site's privacy policies. You'll also see some new options on your Account Settings page.

Interest-based advertising will allow advertisers to show ads based on a user's previous interactions with them, such as visits to advertiser website and also to reach users based on their interests (e.g. "sports enthusiast"). To develop interest categories, we will recognize the types of web pages users visit throughout the Google content network. As an example, if they visit a number of sports pages, we will add them to the "sports enthusiast" interest category. To learn more about your associated account settings, please visit the AdSense Help Center at http://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/topic.py?topic=20310.

As a result of this announcement, your privacy policy will now need to reflect the use of interest-based advertising. Please review the information at https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=100557 to ensure that your site's privacy policies are up-to-date, and make any necessary changes by April 8, 2009. Because publisher sites and laws vary across countries, we're unfortunately unable to suggest specific privacy policy language.

For more information about interest-based advertising, you can also visit the Inside AdSense Blog at http://adsense.blogspot.com/2009/03/driving-monetization-with-ads-that.html.

We appreciate your participation and look forward to this upcoming enhancement.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

Email preferences: You have received this mandatory email service announcement to update you about important changes to your AdSense product or account.

Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

Blogging -- Part 1: Gmail and Google IDs

So, the first thing you are going to want to do is set up your own blog.

A blog is basically a subscription-based web journal. You can post messages onto your blog that then are sent out via email or 'feed' to anyone who subscribes to your blog. They then can leave comments on your post.

You probably know this already, since you are in fact reading a blog. But, I'm gonna go slowly here to make sure that we all get up to speed together. For all you smarty-pants: go read about the life of Copernicus on the Latin Wikipedia.

Now, for the rest of us. We're going to split this process up into four parts so that we make sure that you understand how it all works. Let's begin by getting you a Gmail account and a Google User ID. You will use both of these in your blogging.

Gmail is Google's online mail resource. It's basically a place to get your email online. It's also super-safe with great SPAM-filters and it's super-portable: you will be able to access your email from any computer or cell phone.

Now I'm gonna guess you have two questions: 1) Why all this Google stuff? and 2) But, I already have email.

1) I use a lot of Google stuff. It's not because I have stock in the company (I wish), but because it's free and works well.
2) Gmail makes it easy to manage all of your different email accounts from one place. And it works seamlessly with Blogger, the blogging platform we'll be working on. Don't worry, having a Gmail account will make your life easier rather than more complicated. Trust me.

Ok, let's get to it.

To open a Gmail account:

1) Go to www.gmail.com.
2) Click on 'Sign up for Gmail'.
3) Enter your first and last name as well as your desired login name. Your login name will be the first part of your email address. So if your name is Theodor Mommsen, you could set your email addy to be mommsen@gmail.com.
4) Pick a good password and security question.
5) Type in the word verification. This is there to make sure you are a real person and not some weird computer robot.
6) Accept the terms of service and click 'create account'.

Now you have effectively set up a Gmail account and have a Google User ID. Your User ID is your Gmail address (like mommsen@gmail.com).

The last thing you will want to do is set up your Gmail account so that any email sent to this new account will automatically be forwarded to whatever email account you normally use.

To forward your Gmail to your normal mail server at home or at work:

1) Click on 'Settings' in the top right-hand corner.
2) Click on 'Forwarding and POP/IMAP'.
3) Choose 'Forward a copy of incoming mail to' and enter the email address you check most often.
4) Click 'Save Changes'.

Now anytime someone emails you at Gmail, you'll get a copy at your usual email address. The one thing to keep in mind is that you will occasionally have to delete your email cache in Gmail so that you don't use up all your space there. On average, about 500 saved emails is equal to about 20% of your allotted space on Gmail's servers. Later on down the road, we'll look at some advanced features in Gmail. Don't worry about it right now.

Good work. You are now ready to set up a blog. We'll start this next post.

Wikis and Google Docs

A reader writes:

I'd like to suggest that a wiki might be a useful tool for some of the tasks you've recommended. I'd be interested to know when you would use a wiki and when a blog would be better suited to the task.

Wikis are very powerful tools. And yes, I do use them regularly with classes. Now, one way to go about it is to create a new wiki on Wikia. I'll post on how to use Wikia a bit down the road, as it has a number of complex figurations that I don't want to get into just yet. But advanced readers should explore widely. We use Wikia here at school as a way of communicating with alumni and creating a comprehensive collaborative school history.

To make Wikis in class, I use a much simpler option: Google Docs. These are collaborative documents -- typically Word and Excel documents -- stored online and accessible by a 'team' you create through Google. To get started: go to Google, click on Docs, create a new document, and add/invite collaborators. All you need to start working is a Google ID.

Once you have added collaborators, in effect you have created the environment to make a quasi-wiki. The basic difference between a G-Doc and a Wiki is that you can limit the members of the party editing the G-Doc, which makes it ideal for a classroom situation.

Start with a simple project: Create an encyclopedia entry. Say you have twenty students in your English class. Split the group up into pairs, ideally each student on a computer. Choose a topic like, say, English Romanticism. Assign each pair a sub-section like Wordsworth, Byron, Historical Context, etc... Each pair will then research their sub-section online gathering information, images and video, and hyperlinks to sources. The pairs will then enter their findings into the G-Doc. The beauty in this is that all twenty students can be working gathering information and images and entering them into their sections on the SAME doc at the SAME time. That's what makes it collaborative.

Now take it to the next level. Once the basic sub-sections are finished, have each student pair edit the work of another student pair. They should add more images, check the links, and create MLA-format bibliographical entries for each. These will be placed at the bottom of the doc.

Now you have a complete encyclopedia entry with a comprehensive hyperlinked bibliography. Perfect for test/exam review as well as a jumping off point for research work.

On top of all of this is the fact that you are also a member of the G-Doc party. So on your own computer screen, you can see the work of each of the students as they enter information, images, and links into the doc in real-time. Meaning that you no longer have to wait to get a 'final-product' to gauge how students are comprehending the material. Rather than receiving something 'finished' which contains errors that will ultimately prove to confuse the student, you will see errors being put into the doc in real-time which then gives you the opportunity to correct the students or raise questions to the class for purpose of discussion.

And if you really want to up the ante, just consider the fact that none of this actually need be done in the classroom. You could just as well schedule a 7PM wiki-session on a Tuesday night and in 45 minutes of homework time have the students complete a document ready to use the next day in class.