pheWork

Too involved to take notes, but sat in on a good session from
InCommon. It looks like our InCommon license is going to get more
expensive ($3000/year) but will become very strategic. InCommon is
looking at expanding into providing "all-you-can-eat" certificates
(including personal certificates) for member institutions. Also
expanding their corporate partnerships (iTunes U being one current
partner we may want to look at in the short term). Also looking at
managing smaller federations and other interesting options.

Check http://www.educause.edu/E09+Hybrid/EDUCAUSE2009FacetoFaceConferen/FederatedIdentityandInCommonMa/178106
for session details.

Educause President, Diana Oblinger, mentioned that not all of the issues with cloud computing are IT. This is a really great point. As technology becomes more ubiquitous the lines between the business rules, legal, and practical aspects of the institution will continue to blur. It will be interesting to see if and how conferences like Educause will evolve to reflect these changes.

Speaker, Jim Collins:
If all a nation has is great corporations & businesses, all they will have is a prosperous nation. To have a truly great nation, there must be great social organizations, education, art, history, etc.

Study the transition of average organizations as they become great (or don't). Why do some schools in poor or difficult communities overperform while others can not? If circumstances are held constant and some become great and others do not, greatness is not brought  about by circumstance - it must be conscious choice, inspiration, dedication, etc. Conversely what makes the great fall?

Stages of decline:

1. hubris born of success
2. undisciplined pursuit of more
3. denial of risk and peril
4. grasping for salvation
5. capitulation to irrelevance or death

Scary thing is that they don't visibly fall until they pass stage 3. Decline or rise is generally self-inflicted and, until stage 5, decline is reversable.

Must reject the idea that the path to greatness for a university or social organization is to become more like business. Most businesses are average (at best) anyway. The critical difference is not the difference between business and social, it's the difference between average and great. Culture of discipline, built by individuals, is the common factor among great organizations.

Primary path to decline among business is a failure to execute the fundamentals. Speaker loves the definition that "Hubris is outrageous arrogance that inflicts misery upon the innocent." Talking about a company that has a corporate culture of humility. Leadership is often an "easy answer" or a scapegoat for the transition from mediocrity to greatness (or the opposite). It's not leadership, but it's the type of leadership that is a determining factor. Found that humility is a common characteristic of truly great (level 5) leaders.

Levels of leadership:

1. highly capable individual
2. contributing team member
3. competent manager
4. effective leader
5. level 5 executive

What is the motivation of level 5 leaders? Great corporate leadership is more of an anomaly because power is so concentrated. There is another type of level 5 leadership, legislative level 5. The exercise of power is not really leadership. It is much more difficult, and probably better example of leadership, when you have inspirational leadership that exists when everyone has a choice of whether to be led. It is much more difficult.

It's not that great leaders create a great vision and inspire people to follow along. Great leaders surround themselves with the right people and then decide where to go. It is important to recognize what must  be confronted and then confront it. Denial is destructive and poisonous. Never confuse optimism with an unbreakable faith that we will prevail.

Grapsing for salvation never works when falling, only a return to basic discipline and the basic elements that an organization is passionate about is the only way to turn around a decline. Venn diagram with 3 circles: "passionate about," "can be best in the world," & "economic denominator." Critical to shed those things that we should not be doing.

There must be a reason to survive and to work and to turn things around. What is the organization really about? Where is the passion? Find a balance between preservation of the core values and the core purpose and change of cultural and operating practices & of specific goals and strategies. A balance between core values and ambitious goals. The signature of mediocrity is not an unwillingness to change, but chronic inconsistency.

Observations from Q&A:
To make some of these ideas approachable, it is importance to be rigorous not ruthless. When dealing with the people issue, leaders have found that 50% of their time was going to the "who" issue as opposed to "core values" or "big hairy aggressive goals" or whatever. Recognize that if someone is not a good fit for a role or an organization it's not any more healthy for the person to be in the wrong role than it is for the organization to have them there.

Most of the great leaders did not come from outside, they were humble people who grew from within the organization. At every step of the way, they were determined to build their own little pockets of greatness at whatever level they operated at in the organization. They allowed their actions and results to speak for them.

To do:

1. diagnose your team for your pocket of greatness
2. how many key seats do we have and how many of them are filled with
   the right people
3. build a personal board of directors of people you admire
4. take advantage and cultivate young talent
5. turn off your gadgets from time to time and create pockets of time
   for disciplined and creative thoughts
6. what is your questions to statements ratio and can you double it?
7. start your "stop doing" list
8. suspend titles and have people articulate their responsibilities
9. discover your waterline risks and address them (what could sink the
   ship)
10. set a big hairy ambitious goal

While this is, in no way, endorsed by my employer - I've been using Gmail as my primary email client for some time now because it works well for me.  Using email rules on the server, I redirect all of my @unl.edu and @notes.unl.edu to Gmail (as well as all of my personal mail like @me.com).  It's a great system that, recently, got even better.  For as long as I have been using Gmail, by going to "Settings" and "Accounts and Import," you can add external email accounts to send from, but Gmail has always done strange things with email headers - sending messages "on behalf of" your external corporate address, from your personal @gmail address.  Not a huge deal because a lot of people never notice... but it can be really disturbing to others.  I've also had it cause problems with loops in mailing lists, and making me more likely to get filtered as junk mail.

Anyhow, when Google first (finally) released the functionality to use your local (in my case, smtp.unl.edu) email-out server, I couldn't get it to work.  As I've finally found some settings to make it work, I figured I should try to save others a little frustration.

I'm still not sure what's being blocked or where things are failing, but I've found that if I use my full "jdoe3@unl.edu" email address (Google seems to really depend on using a full email address as a username for their stuff) and My.UNL password, turn off SSL encryption, and specify port number 25 (see the attached graphic), it will work.  I've found it to work with my @mac.com and other email systems that I couldn't get to work before, too.

Now I don't have the problem with weird headers, or exposing my personal email address on business messages.

Blackboard's new relationship with Acxiom has me thinking about whether it would be possible to bolt Acxiom's student verification technology into a Sun Identity Manager implementation to replace the 'security' question functionality (which I, personally, hate). So, in essence, if you forget your password for a UNL system you would be presented with 3 questions about your past, based on public records data (like many banks or credit institutions do) instead of a question about who you said your favorite elementary school teacher was.

Security questions are a pain for a lot of reasons. First, the identity provider has to come up with good questions that wouldn't be easy for someone else to answer just by visiting the person's Facebook profile or getting to know them a little. Then they have to get the person to actually set answers for those questions. The person, on the other hand, has to try to remember what they answered for this obscure question at the time they answered it, or even if they just answered "stupid" for every question because they were really annoyed with the whole process.

Acxiom has established an API that they are using for their Blackboard relationship, but from conversations I've had with the vendor it sounds like it's all new enough (and they're new enough to this market) to where they've never looked at integrating to something like a Sun IdM instance before. We also just have to hope that Acxiom has learned a lot of valuable lessons from their past security problems and would take better care of institutional data.

Michael Chasen: Project NG strives to be user & community-driven. Session will have extensive notes, rebroadcast, and conversation threads via Twitter, facebook, Bb website, Ray Henderson blog, etc

long-term goals - from government and clients they're hearing that universal access to education is critical to future. True sharing of courses or entire programs. Ability to measure long-term growth or learning outcomes. Need to be able to justify investments and rationalize new investment in education. Look at what is happening and find better ways.

Student market is driving the look at mobile technologies. Need to highly customize and personalize learning.

Product demo. Nice integrations of YouTube and NBC video content. No HTML or cut/paste needed. Vanderbilt university iTunesU integration.

New relationship with Echo360 that includes 25 licenses (computer or podium) for Echo360 product for all Bb clients. New tool to select any content in a Bb course and send it to their Amazon Kindle. Also relationship with Wimba to provide instant messenger functionality built specifically for education that is course specific (pre-populated user lists). Built in wiki technology that will be tracked by course statistics.

K-12 feature - parent dashboard (enhanced observer role) and new lesson-plan functionality. Wizard driven to set objectives and then assign tasks. Providing administrator functionality to look at standards being used and how those standards have changed from year to year.

Talking about learning modules as a way to make content valuable over time. Frustrating that there is still no talk yet about making Bb actually understand semesters, different sections of the same course, etc. Fundamental miss in terms of making Bb useful long-term and provide more value to the institution.

Admin function to look at required texts (based on higher-ed act) to audit the books to look at total cost of course. New partnership with Acxiom to use public data (same mechanism as financial institutions) to verify that the person taking an exam is actually the person they say they are. License included for clients.

Ray Henderson: 58 days with Bb so far. Has spent most of life in or around education. Support response times have improved greatly. Great emphasis on striving to overcommunicate and provide as much transparency as possible. Philosophy is that if Bb doesn't speak about what's important to them or problems they've had, then others will fill those in for them. Bb needs to move from participation in openness to leadership. Taking first steps to opening up the database in NG . Product innovation, recognizing that this industry and process is still very young. Hopefully this still (along with the openness and integration) reflects the importance of building blocks and developer community.

Plea to community to engage and communicate around obstacles and challenges.

Bb NG schema is now openly published and available to developers.

Michael Chasen: announcing an acquisition of a company of a group of students from Stanford; MobilEdu. Huge new committment to mobile development for Bb. Create product that aggregates and optimizes (for mobile) university maps, course environment, course catalog, peoplesoft enrollment, people directories, bill payment, sports schedules, iTunesU, YouTube, etc. Also, with new iPhone 3.0 API, can use push notification to communicate info from Bb to iPhone devices.

• Rodney J. Petersen, Government Relations Officer and Security Task Force Coordinator, EDUCAUSE

Educause has a focus area on Policy Analysis and Advocacy. Interest in trying to interpret federal and state directions and to advocate for appropriate changes at the institutional level, as well as providing feedback into the legal process.  See "negotiated rule-making" as an example of where policy analysis and advocacy apply.

Examples of making sense of policy

• RIAA notifies you of peer-to-peer filesharing
• economic stimulus bill requires notification for breahes of health information
• the Red Flags Rule requires identity theft programs by 1 May, 2009
• emergency communication systems are deemed useful for emergency situations
• the government wants to limit the private sector's use of Social Security Numbers

Below, are some of the issues that Educause is keeping an eye on in what they're calling the "discussion and debate" stage:

• competition and innovation
• Internet regulation and taxation
• national broadband policy
• network neutrality
• patent reform
• privacy framework
• strategy to secure cyberspace

Educause has taken direct political action in:

• hearings on campus safety and security
• President's report on Virginia Tech incident
• Government Accountability Office studies
• peer to peer filesharing
• security breaches and identity theft
• national cybersecurity strategy
  
• President's identity theft task force
• AG's initiative to prevent child exploitation

So far, it seems like the session is more about how Educause is working with the federal government to provide advocacy and analysis with regard to emerging policy and in response to incidents (which is good).  Some of the legislative proposals that Educause is currently tracking:

• Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today's Youth (SAFETY) Act
• mentioned that the act tries to follow precedent set by European Union, forcing providers to keep all logs for a minimum of 2 years
• informed P2P user act
• the Social Security Number Protection act
• the Securely Protect Yourself Against Cyber Trespass Act (or SPY Act)
• the Data Accountability and Trust Act (or DATA)

At the local or campus level, it is very important to know your campus academic experts.  They can help keep you informed, and are generally already involved in the political process, providing testimony and expertise to the policy-making process. You should also make time to understand your institution's approach to government relations, it is generally unwise to approach the process directly.  You can have much stronger and more constructive influence by providing insight and expertise and informing a larger advocacy effort as an institution, where as an individual you may actually be working in a way that is counterproductive to a larger effort.

There has been a lot of talk about the use of Twitter here at the conference.  The #mwrc09 hash-tag has been very well-promoted by the conference staff, and it sounds like there has been a significant amount of traffic... even beating out SXSW.  You can take a look at the activity that has been properly tagged at Twemes.

Personally, I see the value in the Twitter facet of the conference as entirely social.  It makes it possible for conference participants to meet and connect with one another, but it's not really plausible to discuss most of these topics in non-threaded bursts of 140 characters (not to mention the obligatory hash-tag[s] and any @replies cut down on the number of characters).

• Ken Graetz, Director of E-Learning, Winona State University
• Kenneth D. Janz, Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs and Chief Information Officer, Winona State University

Looks like "mobile computing" is focused on laptop-based, not mobile phone, etc - they have programs to provide laptop for students.  They are starting to consider Apple mobile devices in design.  Very much a moving target... devices are constantly changing, the resources & media they use are changing, and the pedagogy is changing.

I like this quote "It's becoming less about stuff, and more about what you're doing to do in that classroom."  Getting faculty involved in the classroom design process has been absolutely invaluable.  IT Governance has also been very important.

Have made a strong effort to get away from a laptop focus, and really moving more toward digitizing and making resources available.  Have also used enhanced the wireless infrastructure (using multiple funding sources).

Out of the things that are working, some of the most important are standardization, rotation schedule for hardware, and ongoing funding.  Virtual meeting tools are also working out very well (they are using Adobe Connect).  For this session, they are using Breeze as a back-channel during the session so that participants can interact.

Demonstrating Adobe Connect, DimDim, Dino and another particpant has brought up Poll Everywhere as a viable alternative to clickers in the classroom - using mobile phones (texting) instead.

Efforts to put power outlets at every seat have not worked. It's been too expensive and the power is never in the right place.  They're also having no luck getting instructors to go to training on how to use technology-enhanced classrooms.  Clickers are not working (partly because they didn't have a single, standardized clicker for the campus).

Some other resources that they recommend include:

• Tidebreak TeamSpot
• Social Media Classroom project
• University of Minnesota Active Learning General Purpose Classroom Initiative
• TechSmith Relay

• Rahul Doshi, Lead Analyst / Programmer, Indiana University
• Timothy D. Newcomb, Network Analyst, Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC)
• Marko Stojkovic, Information Technology Specialist, Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC)

Federated identity allows collaboration between schools in the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) via a Microsoft Sharepoint instance.  Started process in spring of 2008, all CIC member institutions joined InCommon (UNL is a member of InCommon).  Migrated their Sharepoint instance to authenticate against Shibboleth by February.  Used ASP.NET Shibboleth forms authentication - refers back to an SQL membership database that contains users and roles. They use a "lazy session" in Shibboleth, use eduPersonPrincipalName as username, which is their most important factor.  They still use direct authentication for non-federated users.

Shibboleth was chosen over upcoming standards like Microsoft's Geneva because it already exists, and many of their schools were already members of InCommon. As things evolve, there could possibly be changes if it makes sense.

From the user side, they hit the service, choose their institution, authenticate, and then the system checks to see if they have authorization.  If they authenticate and don't yet have a role, they do get to see a form and request access.  They have a role management interface that seems to be manual.  They have groups of roles which makes it easier to manage blocks of users and permissions.

Next steps are to facilitate the development of a CIC-wide attribute release standardization.  Also looking at federating more CIC-wide applications.

• Christopher Brooks, Research Fellow, University of Minnesota
• JD Walker, Manager, Research and Evaluation Services, University of Minnesota

Overall research question, to what extent, if any, do formal and informal learning environments shape the way that students interact with the learning material, with each other, etc?

Pilot research, 2007-2008 - one of the interesting outcomes was that round tables were much more effective than theater-style seating.  Encouraged collaboration and interaction.  Also (from pictures they showed) better suited to laptop-use.  A photo of a bio-science course showed 4 or 5 large round tables (looked like they sat 9 comfortably) with power and data ports.  Lighting, color, external noise, etc were considered as factors.

Their course research teams included faculty member, a research professional, and an undergraduate student.  Controls included time, approach to instruction, material covered, assignments, and characteristics of students.

Really need to check the slide deck for this one... too many graphics and too much data that I'm just not able to capture while still absorbing what they're saying. Observed that there were more laptops that were brought in to the enhanced classroom environments - because they were more conducive to technology and collaboration.  People don't really like to keep laptops on their laps.

Their research should help to provide empirical justification for changes and for funding.

• David Seidl, Information Security Professional, University of Notre Dame

In 2005 the University of Notre Dame suffered a serious incident that brought information security into the campus spotlight. In response, they partnered with a Big Four consulting firm to conduct a comprehensive IT risk assessment. Three years later, they're almost done with a four-year risk management program.

Small department consisted of 5 FTE by 2006.  PCI credit card account compliance was a driver for security - but then breach that exposed donor information changed the game.  Spent about 6 months recovering from that, then were awarded a budget.  Not an ideal way to get funded.  University leadership requested a capus wide IT risk assessment which came to be called CITRA, or Campus IT Risk Assessment.  Partnered with big-4 consulting firm (Ernst & Young).  Network assessment, interviews, really dug in to everything.  Was very helpful to have consultants helping.

The result was 68 findings covering 10 key areas.

Planning workshop consisted of cross-functional team.  Analyzed CIRTA results and created project specifications designed to remediate findings rated medium or higher.  Discussed objectives with resource managers.  Working with resource managers has helped him to not go over budget in several years.

Outcome is projects sequenced to prioritize high-risk findings and balance resource consumption.  Overall costs $4.6 million over 4 years.

Objectives: Information Security typically looks at confidentiality, integrity of data, and availability.  Establish and implement controls to fill critical gaps (determined by risk tolerance).  Awareness of security and proper data handling practices.  Establish and communicate security-related procedures and standards to regular users.

Added two new FTE (Operations & Engineering and Networking positions).  Additional contract staff added in project management.  Some load absorbed internally (5 FTE total).  They have a 4-year rolling plan now (living document).  Dedicated project management software has been a huge help so that projects and details don't get lost in email.  Project reports periodically to senior management.

Student awareness in an important factor, especially in terms of preventing the import of virii.  Incoming students are shown a video, and progress is happening incrementally.  Data stewards (one owner for a particular data set) is critical.

Web development has been a problem because code is often thrown together with an eye on functionality (not security).  They are also frustrated because they have not found instructors for OSX security.

Awareness metrics look at users who saw security training materials at least 2 times per year, and actually remember seeing them.

Using "Tripwire" tool to detect changes on servers.  Lots of political struggles around getting individual server admins to update (per unfunded mandate).  Zoned network and wireless security, segmenting faculty/staff, from student, from servers.  Much more locked down.  Recurring security reviews.

Seems to be less of a balance between usability and security, and heavily tilted toward security.  Probably a result of the power given to security by the compromise event.  Lots of accountability metrics available now.  From what he's seen, there has been no loss in functionality among end-users either, so he's comfortable with a 0 net gain.

• Nancy Zimpher, President, University of Cincinnati:

Interesting that she seems to have chosen not to use a slide stack... I like this because it removes distraction - and provides a bit of a contrast as she talks about 21st century teaching & learning.  Hopefully the addiction to Powerpoint just for the sake of Powerpoint will start to die off as we move forward. :)  It does make it more difficult to take notes.

Talking about how the community has become so heavily oriented toward using email as a feedback channel - directly to the President.  One of her dreams, developed by the NSF task force on higher learning, talking about mobile nature of accessing data, using online media to collaborate with peers, and how the instructor can track the progress of the student, and be proactive in making sure that students's don't fall through the cracks.  This is already in place for some, but not for everyone.  Looking at systemic approach to adapting to the needs & communication style of current students.

Educational system, in many places, is lagging behind by about 100 years in method.

Instead of focusing on the teacher, the education of the future must focus on the student.  Instead of lecturing, the instructor will act as a guide and collaborator, etc.  In many large school districts, high school graduation is only achieved by about 5 out of 10 students, and in some it's worse than that.  Those learners who fall through the cracks generally wind up poor, alone, and without adequate resources to even stay healthy.  This has massive societal implications.  1 in 4 freshmen at 4 year colleges, and 1 in 2 in 2-year colleges don't make it through the first freshman year.  Business leaders complain that the schools do not adequately prepare workers.  Teacher retention is also awful - dropout rate as bad as 50% of all new teachers don't continue as teachers.  Over $86 million/year is said to be lost in teacher turnover just in Chicago alone.

It's fine that she's outlining the doom, gloom, and challenges... because it's helpful to put some metrics behind what we know is going on, but I hope she gets to the vision soon.

In her community, they have launched a campaign to attain 100% graduation rate in high school and college.  Many schools all over US have joined this initiative.  One approach of this initiative is to reach out beyond the university and to engage the community - early childhood through workforce development.

Ok, so this is lame, she does have one slide of a timeline, but it's on paper - sheets being passed out among attendees, but doesn't seem to be enough for everyone.  People are now reading and talking together instead of paying attention to her.

I do appreciate that this approach is societal and not technological.  It is far too often that people try to throw technology at a problem as an easy fix, instead of trying to (finally) address the societal issues that really contribute to the problems.  The means by which a community communicates and works has changed, but the structure of society as a whole hasn't begun to adapt to these new changes.  The University of Cincinatti CIO has approached local K-12 schools in an attempt to give them access to Blackboard.  She notes that there is currently no continuity in the flow from primary school through higher-education, everything from teaching methods, access to modern media, funding methods, etc.

Her thesis is that we belong to an educational system that, at every juncture, is disconnected.  The need is to knit this disconnected, somewhat dysfunctional confederation into a somewhat contiguous whole.  It lies upon us, as the experts, to reach out to our community.  She hopes that the current US administration will no longer isolate the different segments of US education, and try to address things wholistically.

One tool they are looking at in Cincinatti is something they are calling a "virtual backpack"(Fordham Institution) that contains complete educational records for each students... kind of like tracking on steroids, that can be share with parents, school systems that they transfer to, etc.  Seems to me like this will have to be an overwhelmingly massive undertaking to try to make this kind of data universal and relevant to so many discontiguous entities.  There is already a gap between levels of education, let alone regional differences (or even differences between individual schools in the same system in some cases).

Advocating for partnerships with local corporate partners like GE (whom they're working with in Cincinatti) to take advantage of their expertise.  GE is a heavy user of the Six Sigma methodology which has proved very useful to the effort in making decisions based on concrete evidence.  Based on the fact that they've used such transparent and data-based methods, they can now prove that they have gotten better than 80% retention between the freshman and sophomore years.

One need (infrastructure-wise) for the "backpack" idea to work is a replacement for SSN, and a way to track individual learners and determine factors like whether they've had access early childhood development, in-home assessments, etc.  Need for information and tracking also leads to "exchanging ignorace" with regard to 3rd party institutions that are rushing in to help students, but who have no access to the educational background and history of the learner.  At the very least, so much assessment and background information has to be re-collected and recreated every time a new group touches the student, and that is highly inefficient.

She is less concerned about privacy issues than she is about students falling through the cracks and getting lost.

As far as tools, she mentions everything from Blackboard to social media tools like Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook, as well as specifically mentioning Starfish for advising and retention.

More than 1/3 of the world's population is under 20.  Without major changes, it will be impossible for Universities to meet the needs of this community to provide advanced training to all of them.  Centers of learning must be life-affirming organizations for learners, their families, and their communities.  Learners must be prepared so that they can give back and contribute to their communities to meet the economic, environmental, societal, and political challenges facing the world today.

Question: Who should be the drivers of this initiative?
Answer: We've tried it other ways, but it really needs to be driven by the communities.  Starting small, and having a local success that leads by example and shares with other communities is probably the best method.

Question: How much data should go in to virtual backpack?
Answer: Just about everything, but like all systems it should be focused and applicable.  She hopes that teacher comments (and student comments) can be included.  Should probably be backpacks for teachers as well.

Amazon has just released a Kindle application for Apple's mobile platform (iPhones and iPod Touch devices).  I've been working with the original Kindle for quite a while now, and I really like it.  Battery life is fantastic, the display is wonderful, and the Amazon Kindle Store has gotten me to read books that I never would have otherwise.  Overall, it's been a great experience.  Once you've forked out the initial capital to buy the Kindle device, the books are generally much cheaper than dead-tree books (like, $9.99 instead of $25.95).

The biggest drawback to the Kindle device (other than the up-front cost) is the fact that it's definitely a version 1.0 device (even the new Kindle seems to be about a version 1.5, and not really a major update).  It's rarely crashed, but the device is slow, the network connection is slow... it's even slow to mount as a USB volume when you connect it to your computer.  The speed is mostly forgivable because, 90% of the time, all you're doing is turning pages - it doesn't need to be speedy, but it takes some of the shine off.

Another problem is that the Kindle is really set up for reading things sequentially and it doesn't really perform well if you want to use it to read reference material.  This is especially compounded if you take a Word document or a .PDF and convert it (using Amazon's service... they may be better tools I haven't discovered yet) to Kindle format.  While regular books purchased from the Kindle store have adequate chaptering and navigation, the conversion process for documents strips out any chaptering or navigation in the file, and you're left with a 7,000 page novel on administering a server.  Not helpful in any way.

The Kindle application for the iPhone is good so far, but I doubt I'll use it much.  Apple's mobile devices are just too small to read lots of content comfortably and the backlit LCD display is nowhere near as comfortable to read as the digital ink display on the Kindle.  I also know that I'm eating up precious battery life eating away at me while I read on the iPhone. The interface is decent; you swipe your finger across the screen to turn the page and there is no scrolling up and down, but they've taken out the annotation functionality (which I used very rarely) - and even though I am able to adjust the type size, I can't find a size that doesn't feel awkward. I do like having access to the same books that I've already purchased on the Kindle now on my iPhone, too.  I always have my iPhone with me, and I don't usually carry the Kindle around with me, so that's very cool - I can see myself whipping out some Christopher Moore to pass the time.  If I get my choice though, I strongly prefer to read on the Kindle device.

It's funny that this was waiting for me in my inbox, because we were just talking about how badly Blackboard needs to have an integration to Google Apps to supplement the Blackboard Content System.  While the Content System does a excellent job of sharing content between courses and publishing content externally - and the portfolios are pretty useful; the Bb Content System can't touch Google Docs for usability in terms of collaboration and overall ease of use.

To its credit, the Content System can create workflow and collaboration around a greater range of filetypes (really, anything in a digital format); but when it comes to collaboration around word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations - there is really no comparison.  We have instructors who go through hours of training to use the Bb Content System and still not feel comfortable, but spend 10 minutes with Google Docs and "figure it out."

Google Collaborates on Moodle Integration -- Campus Technology:

"Through the integration, users loaded into Moodle will be automatically loaded into Google Apps Education Edition, 'providing users with Web-based e-mail, document authoring, spreadsheets, presentations and sites, all integrated with their online learning platform,' explained Moodlerooms' West Coast Managing Director Michael Penney. 'This greatly simplifies the task of implementing a collaborative suite, as well as enables institutions to leverage the work they've already done integrating their platforms with their other systems. From a teacher's perspective, this provides an easy way to assign students to collaborative tasks without having to worry about the students having different operating systems or incompatible software or being unable to access an online system. From an IT staffer or CIO's perspective, this provides an integration tested with large-scale data loads and built on industry standard SAML 2.0 and OAuth protocols for secure single sign on and information transfer.'"

While the linked article is geared more toward conferences or seminars, it is very applicable to teaching - especially in higher-ed. One of the issues not addressed by the article below is that the backchatter is not all via Twitter. At the very least, there is Facebook and IM chatter going on as well. Do any of you have any stories or advice for recognizing or taking advantage online chatter during class time?

How to Present While People are Twittering | Pistachio:

"So the next time you present at a conference, instead of being confronted by a sea of faces looking at you, you may be phased by a sea of heads looking down at their laptops. The challenge is how to adapt to presenting with the back-channel."

I'm in a meeting with extended education and one of the heavy themes at the moment is collaboration between colleges in order to fill in holes in programs in order to be able to offer them online.

It strikes me that it would probably be healthy for an institution to look at programs of study and their components from time to time to look at the overall makeup of the institution. It seems like threads like public policy, law, technology and business are underlying and sometimes foundational themes that are interwoven into nearly any course of study. Would it be better to replace a generic program of study in business with a strong core of competence in pervasive issues like business, public policy, planning, or technology for any and all degrees?

It seems that, to be competitive, an institution needs to have a great MBA program because labels like those allow you (and potential students) to compare institutions based on pre-set criteria. On the other hand, a broad, abstracted study of business may be less pragmatic than the intricacies inherent in the needs of a particular industry. On the other hand, that level of abstraction is valuable to help a student prepare for work in any industry, without regard to where they initially hope to focus. Interesting, anyhow.

I just noticed that Google Docs - iPhone version has a great viewer for slide presentations. Very slick and convenient. Simple forward and back buttons that fade out quickly when not in use. I'm impressed. If only they would add an edit mode or a standalone app for Google Docs, it would be even better.

I'm impressed.

Streaming video is nothing new, neither is social networking, text chat, or anything along those lines.  What is new, however, is the critical mass that online media has reached in society.  Like many others, I watched the US Presidential Inauguration via a live internet video stream.  I tried several, but settled on the stream from CNN (http://cnn.com/live) because it featured a Facebook integration, and seemed to hold up a bit better for me than some of the others (hulu.com, for one, was really bad when I tried it).

The CNN/Facebook integration was great - it tied together CNN's video stream (well, for a lot of the time, it was a good audio stream, punctuated by random still photos and spurts of video) with some of their news text, and most importantly, the ability to see (and comment on) what your friends are saying - as everyone is watching the same thing.

Via the Facebook integration's live updates, I was able to see the status (and comments) of friends who were watching the inauguration in person, from the mall in Washington, DC, on TV in their living rooms, or watching the same stream as I was from anywhere in the world.  Facebook managed to bridge multiple media (including being live, in person, at the event via a mobile) and make the experience much richer than it ever could have been in the past - focusing on the people, and just assuming that everyone could see and hear pretty much the same thing.

Physically, I was alone in my office, but in reality I was able to experience a truly historic event together with my family and friends - transcending physical boundaries.  I will be very interested to see information on how the campus network (and the intertubes in general) held up under the strain.

Update: "On Tuesday (presidential inauguration) there was a 62.5% increase on inbound traffic at UNL. The peak inbound rate was 1.3GB. Commercial Internet was running at full capacity from 8-5p.m while I2 with commodity peering was running at 440MB with 1GB available."

Over the years I've gotten many questions (and given several presentations) about "what is RSS?" Basically, "RSS" (Really Simple Syndication) is a version of a website that separates the content of articles from all of the graphical layout and design of the site... and gives you just the good stuff - all time-stamped and searchable. Most websites that update content frequently automatically create RSS versions of their site. If you regularly check a number of websites, it is in your best interest to aggregate the RSS versions of those websites using an RSS-reader service. This brings all of your regular websites to you in one place, and lets you skim them very quickly, reading only what interests you. As you read articles you can also, very easily, share the ones you see as valuable (with your comments) with your class or colleagues.

I'm not endorsing it as the only or the best RSS reader out there (there's always something better if you look around), but the one that I've used for years is Google Reader, and it has worked out very well for me. The Google Reader team has just released a quick introductory video for anyone interested in getting started with an RSS reader, so I'm including it in case any of you might find it valuable.

I saw that a few of my friends had already signed up to attend an event on Facebook called Obama's Inauguration.  When I looked at the event, though, the copy for the event didn't sound like the same voice that has been used for everything else in the campaign... it wasn't very well written.  It sounded more like an email chain letter than something written by a PR professional:

"PLEASE INVITE -- PLEASE take a moment to INVITE your friends!!! ----------->

Say "Attending" if you're looking forward to it, say "Not Attending" If you're not looking forward to it, and "Maybe Attending" if you don't care. No matter what you actually RSVP, you aren't obligated to show up anywhere or do anything.

**Organize road-trips with Facebook's Carpool for Change application:
http://apps.facebook.com/carpool/index.php?ref=OBAMA

INVITE your friends!!! ---------------------->

SHOW YOUR CONTINUED SUPPORT FOR BARACK:
1,000 supporters (11/4 complete)
10,000 supporters (11/5 complete)
100,000 supporters (11/6 complete)
1,000,000 supporters
10,000,000 supporters
100,000,000 - lets show the world how much we care!

INVITE NOW! ----------------------------->

**Join the Carpool for Change movement with Facebook's first useful application:
BUILD A NEW FORM OF AFFORDABLE & SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORTATION FROM THE BOTTOM UP!
http://apps.facebook.com/carpool/index.php?ref=OBAMA

Be careful of ticket scams. Try speaking with your local representative."

The person who created the event is John Zimmer, owner of a Silicon Valley startup, Zimride... which is subtly promoted in the event as a way to share rides to get to the inauguration.  While Zimmer's intentions may have been noble, stuff like this really bothers me.  He disingenuously appropriated images from the Obama campaign (a graphic from the email sent out after the election, saying "Thank You"), and while the "creator" still links to Zimmer's profile, the short form of the event shows it as having been created by "OBAMA."

In my eyes, this event is a very calculating and misleading ad that is capitalizing on the politics of the moment - to promote a Silicon Valley startup.  Zimmer gets access to send messages to a huge number of people, and will probably get a good number of people to try the Zimride service.  Be cautious when giving it your information.

Since so many .edu institutions have begun to rely on SMS texting for (at least) emergency notification, we will have to see how this latest move by Verizon plays out. Verizon has noted that non-profit institutions are exempt from the 3-cent fee per SMS message to its customers plays out. If they assess the fee on the commercial subcontractor that .edu institutions use to actually deliver the messages, then it will cripple the service. If they look at the .edu client that is actually sending the message via the service, then it's better for us. Either way, it seems like a really shady move and I hope it blows up in Verizon's face.

Gougings: Verizon Charging $0.3 to Text Its Customers, Could Murder SMS-Based Services:

"Now that the userbase of (and companies' dependence on) such services is pretty huge, mobile terminated texting is kind of inevitable. In other words, all the SMS-dependent companies can't live without reaching Verizon's customers, so Verizon is in a position to pretty much charge whatever they want. And that's exactly what they're doing, because they're very classy."

I just ran a Google Analytics report matching up the first week of the term last year to this year & did a comparison.  Nothing earth-shattering, but still some pretty interesting stats... it's showing an overall increase of about 16% more visits to our system.

Dial-up is even more dead than ever (of course). It looks like Windows may have actually taken a loss in marketshare among our users over the last year.  Also, in the last year, Apple mobile devices are now a (very very small) factor - they're the #4 most popular platform after Linux.  PS3 and Wii also make a tiny appearance (though I've already talked about these last 3 back in January).

Bear in mind that the tracker that Analytics is using is only in the top frameset, so these metrics are blind to everything that actually happens in terms of usage down in the content frame.

You can check out a broad-overview copy of the report here.

Ok, so it's neither technology, advertising, or education-related... but some times it's good to step away from all of the geekiness and get a breath of fresh air.  Today I'm just going to share my favorite tree on campus (while secretly demonstrating how online tools can illustrate what you're talking about).

On the south side of the physics building here at UNL, there is an apple tree.  It blends in with all of the other great landscaping on campus, but if you creep under the branches nearest the building, you will see a plaque that explains why the tree is special.

The plaque reads:

"Newton's Apple Tree

In 1991 this scion from Sir Isaac Newton's famous apple tree at his birthplace in Woolsthorp Manor, Lincolnshire, England, was presented to the University of Nebraska–Lincoln by Dr. Richard G.W. Keesing of the Physics Department of the University of York, England. This tree is of the ancient cultivar, Flower of Kent."

So Newton's apple tree is alive and well in Nebraska... and feeding the squirrels with its apples. :)  If you're on campus, walk over and take a look.  I've embedded a map below:


View Larger Map

SHEEO - Hans P. L'Orange: Vice President for Research and Information Resources, and Director of the SHEEO/NCES Network

Moving away from a sorting and selecting model of higher education, where "best and brightest" go to ivy league. Six-year higher-ed graduation norm.

Demographically, the biggest projected shift in the US is toward Latino and other groups that are less likely to make it through high school. Strategically, this puts the US at a disadvantage because if current trends in higher-ed graduation rates continue, we will have a large percentage of our population in which the younger generation will be less well-educated than the older generations, and could cause economic problems.  A great opportunity to do better.

Data are needed to facilitate discussion around success, the flow of students through our educational process, retention, etc. Integration and/or alignment of separate systems make the entire enterprise more successful and productive. Business as usual will no longer work.

Nebraska currently has no functional process to match student records between K-12 and postsecondary (22 states currently do - only 11 have systems that are actually linked), which puts us at a serious disadvantage for collecting longitudinal data and better understanding issues like student performance, retention, etc.

Needs include unique identifiers for students, e-transcripts, data feedback reports. Also, coordination and support from a P-16/20 council, statewide groups to consider issues and implement intelligently, and collaboration. Louisiana and Kentucky are current examples of success stories. Data about students flowing back from higher-ed to high school to suggest changes based on actual performance. Some of their challenges include so much data that they're having a hard time knowing what to do with it. Trying to collaborate with university researchers to try to make better sense of the data and what to do with it. California is using county-based consortium groups of K-12, community college, and universities to help educators understand performance and transitions. They're able to align together and make joint recommendations from the educator-level based on real, current student data. Take a look at "State Student Unit Record Systems."

Characteristics of an ideal state postsecondary data system include full longitudinal data... from pre-K all the way to workforce data. Unique (private) ID. Doesn't have to be SSN, but that makes it easier to capture workforce data information. Common enrollment, completion, and demographic data. Financial aid data - states should collect family financial data for those students who don't get financial aid. With the data we currently have, it would be difficult to make any hard argument for expanding state financial aid. Transfer data to track students as they move around within the state (let alone inter-state). Persistence and graduation data. At the course level, access to remediation data is important. Privacy protection, a link to K-12, and linkage to workforce development. Includes independent and for-profit institutions to be truly comprehensive. Single system for all public institutions. Data audits for quality, validity and reliability. Finally, alignment with state goals, and demonstrating usability and sustainability.

Not a technology problem, it's a people and a culture problem... really about being proactive instead of reactive, or having something forced on us.

Only a handful, maybe 10 or 11 states have been able to involve independents and for-profits. Usually in those cases there has been some kind of a hook like a statewide coordination of educational standards or of financial aid already in place.

First step for Nebraska, this time, is to decide what the first steps are... chosen for either strong benefits to the collective body, or for easy attainability. Perhaps biggest Nebraska challenge right now is college participation and lack of continuing education or degree completion for individuals who nearly finished degree. Looking at data on students who stopped an associates degree a few hours short of completion, and sending data about those students to local colleges made a huge difference in Houston. A similar effort was very successful for Central Community College in Nebraska when they just looked at their own data. Graduation rates went through the roof.