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educational technology, eLearning & emerging technology

Following on my last post about my issues with the Windows Vista operating system on my short-lived new machine, after far too many late nights and even more restores, rebuilds and exponential amounts of frustration, I discovered only one sure-fire way to resolve the difficulties I was having with the OS: return the machine.

Let it never be said that I took the easy way out. Being the good IT professional and researcher I am, I devoted no less than 30 hours this week in total to resolving the problems I’ve been having with the operating system - researching drivers, reading articles, scouring discussion boards, and even just experimenting. Unfortunately none of them worked.

Just as unfortunate, when I contacted tech support for the computer manufacturer (who shall remain nameless), I was told that their policy is that all new machines will carry Vista - no if’s, and’s, or buts - and they do not have versions of XP available with the necessary drivers. I was free to try and get another OS on there; but if I did it was no longer under warranty.

My parting comment to them was something to the effect of “That’s really unfortunate because it means I can’t keep this machine. The machine is great, Vista is crap.” I wish I were exaggerating, but I’m not.

From the look of things I’m not the only one who feels that way either, because when I tried to locate a comparable PC with XP installed I discovered they were as rare as hen’s teeth. So much in fact that one of the customer service reps at a local department store said “We just can’t keep XP machines in stock. As soon as we get a shipment, they sell immediately.”

My comment to him was “That doesn’t say much for Vista, now does it.” He didn’t find it too funny though. He proceeded to explain how people come in and say Vista sucks, but that it’s based on hearsay and that’s not true at all. I wasn’t going to argue, but unfortunately I’ve had firsthand experience with the realities of the OS, and was not impressed at all.

Ultimately I wound up back at the same store that sold me the first machine and found a fantastic machine running on XP that was an even better spec at only $100 more. I don’t mind telling you it was Dick Smith Electronic PowerHouse in Penrith on Mulgoa, because their customer service rep was fantastic despite me bringing back a machine I’d only purchased one week before. That’s the way you keep me coming back guys: courteous customer service reps. Nice job on that.

I guess the message to computer manufacturers is pay attention to the demands of your customers. Dell has. They were carrying Vista exclusively and then realised that a fairly large number of people hated it and wanted XP back as an option - and they listened. The only reason I didn’t buy a Dell this time is that there wasn’t one in stock and they’re typically more expensive than I could afford. But it’s still an admirable move on their part.

At a Snails Pace
Originally uploaded by maverickapollo.

I recently purchased a new home computer after my last one gave up the ghost, and reluctantly agreed to the most recent Windows offering as the operating system. Having spent the last several days getting used to things I have to say that Windows Vista has proven a very interesting place, but I wouldn’t want to live there - at least not yet.

Possibly because it’s such a new operating system with some kinks to work out, or that the minimum spec is so ridiculously high - more likely both - my experiences with the OS the last few days have not been stellar.

Despite featuring a 3.7 GHz CPU and 512 RAM, the machine has had noticeable difficulties keeping up with the Vista’s hoggish demands. Sure RAM isn’t expensive these days, but I’m unwilling to accept a spec that carries with it a 1 Gig of RAM MINIMUM on principle alone.

Unfortunately the result of the RAM shortage has been that programs take longer to load, but also more importantly my capacity to meet via web conference has been virtually eliminated. Were this purely for fun it would be bad enough, but this has inhibited my ability to do my job - and that is no bueno.

I’ve been looking after the pilot of a web conferencing program at my uni for the last year and a half or so, and by nature you deal with people in different time zones. Just tonight for example I had to test the connection of someone in the UK. Unfortunately with a 13-hour time difference between the UK and Sydney there’s no convenient way to schedule things. You just do it from home in the evenings.

Unfortunately Vista the RAM gobbler rendered my audio virtually unusable because it couldn’t keep up with the audio processing tasks while feeding The Beast (gave up on video virtually immediately), so I had to switch to another computer entirely. Not happy, Bill.

I had really wanted to give Vista the benefit of the doubt, but this just isn’t going to work. It’s unrealistic to expect people to fork out several hundred dollars for the OS and then turn around and tell them they’ve got to upgrade their entire machine to use it. It may well turn into a great OS in time when their spec becomes more commonplace, but until then I’ll be using it as a test environment and not my primary one.

This decision was borne more out of necessity than desire I’m afraid. My machine came with Vista pre-installed and I’ve since realised I can’t replace it with the copy of XP Pro I have. Needless to say I was very irritated with that ephiphany, but you know what they say: When life gives you lemons you make lemonade.

Courtesy of a tutorial on APCMag.com (”How to dual boot Vista and XP“) I’m in the process of dual-booting the machine. XP will become my primary OS with Vista relegated to a test environment and playground.

Sorry Vista, you’re just too high maintenance. I think we’d better see other people…

I must admit that my attendance of and participation in the SANTEC web seminar was dreadful the last few days of the event. From the sound of things I wasn’t alone in this respect either. According to their most recent blog post:

“What happened in this seminar when the comments on this blog slowed down and stopped? Was it the mistaken message on the SANTEC list that the seminar was over? Was it simply that the workshop and seminar genres don’t mix? Or that a workshop that works well with live face to face interaction in a lab would transfer online better with some form of synchronous interaction?”

From my own personal experiences the asynchronous, web based nature of the event was initially an extremely facilitating factor, however after a few days it became the means that begot neglect.

This was due to several factors I think, not the least of which being the absence of a more pronounced human component (the synchronous interaction that was mentioned in the post), coupled the ability of the familiar to distract from the at times isolating feeling of asynchronous textual discussion.

With face to face seminars you leave your office and go to a different location. Even if it’s on the same campus you’re away from your office and the familiar environment, so there are not the typical distractions and ever-present nagging demands that must be done during the day. Significantly too is the presence of people and real-time interaction and collaboration. In this environment it’s that much easier to focus on the task at hand, because it’s right in front of you and talking to you.

The structure of the SANTEC seminar on the other hand, while giving each participant the enormous ability to consider, reconsider, edit and respond in their own time left them within the realm of the physically familiar. So when an alternative and unrelated task presented itself in the flesh, it became that much easier to “come back to that blog post later”.

That’s not to say that web-based seminars are doomed to failure, merely that their structure will need to incorporate activities, aims and objectives that account for the human component that is so integral in face-to-face seminars.

As a few examples, I offer the following activities or elements for consideration and/or discussion:

• Integration and introduction of some form of group work with a deliverable and pre-defined objective
• The necessity to interact not just textually, but via audio and even video chat tools
• An educational or explanatory component at the beginning to establish a base knowledge level
• A means of linking and/or summarising multiple concurrent discussions inherent to the relatively scattered and organic nature of the technology
• More thoughts to come…

With this said, I firmly believe that the seminar’s structure has merit, however I believe equally firmly that future participants will need to prepare themselves for a much different seminar environment than they may be used to in the past. Distraction and procrastination are Public Enemy Number One in the online realm, and I definitely fell prey to them both.

More thoughts on SANTEC as time permits…

Google recently announced an increase in the maximum file attachment size from 10 megabytes to 20, saying:

“Now you can start sharing more of those home videos, large presentations and files you just can’t seem to get smaller. We have doubled the allowable attachment size to 20 MB to make your Gmail space even more useful.”

With most email providers filtering out messages that are 10 megs and over with caps on incoming file sizes the relative benefit of this increase is likely to be minor unless both parties are Gmail users.

…or perhaps that’s the aim.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g]
“The Machine is Us/ing Us (Final Version)” provided by: mwesch

One of the strengths of social software which can’t be emphasised enough is its depth and capacity to serve learning and teaching via a variety of different mediums including text, video and images. Furthermore the speed with which you can develop and disseminate information means minimal time investment is required to technically develop the content as compared to traditional websites.

In the case of the latter, in the past, static web content could only be made available after coding up pages in HTML, locating a hosting provider, paying for a hosting deal and then beginning the process of content development and uploading to the site. With social software the barriers to use have been drastically reduced.

The emergence of powerful search engines such as Google, as well as collaborative technologies such as wikis extend this capacity by establishing existing sources of reference material that can augment original content.

As a case in point, I am an amateur guitar player in my free time and have taken to sharing my performances on YouTube. Initially this was the end-all and be all. I’d capture a song on a web camera or digital video camera, upload it to YouTube, perhaps add a brief description and that would be it. However over time I realised the video clips were themselves learning objects that could be put to a greater purpose.

Furthermore YouTube offers the capacity to link to - and more importantly EMBED - videos in external sites, meaning the video can be viewed on a third party site such as a blog. The YouTube video clip at the beginning of this post, “The Machine is Us/ing Us (Final Version)”, is an example of an embedded video clip. It is posted and hosted on a different application entirely, however the availability of a code snippet enables me to reuse the content in a different context.

Making this connection, it becomes clear that YouTube clips, as well as many other digital media hosting provider in general (Flickr, PicasaWeb, Photobucket, and Google Video to name a few), can be used to graphically illustrate and more easily convey the information being presented in text - thereby re-inforcing the message.

In the example of my guitar video, I’ve included my version of Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” as an embedded video in a blog post that outlines a tutorial on how to play it. This provides beginning guitar players with not just a textual tutorial, but a video one as well.

Further depth is added to this tutorial through linking to reference sites such as Wikipedia’s entry on Travis Picking, as well as a tablature site featuring the chord progression to “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas.

What this ultimately presents is a cohesive and indeed complete lesson plan that includes text, video and reference material for further study. And the most time intensive part of the process was the creation of the text. The posting of the content took only minutes using Blogger’s WYSIWYG creation tool. (WYSIWYG = “What You See Is What You Get”).

Furthermore, the collaborative nature of social software facilitates interaction and two-way communication. This provides readers of the content with an opportunity to not just view it, but discuss it and even synthesize it on their own blogs it as well.

This is not your father’s Internet, this is something much more.

Reference:
Analysis of Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright

Apple IIe
Originally uploaded by Hanan Cohen.

I came to the conclusion tonight that “Geek in Training” is not exactly the correct title for me anymore - I’ve graduated to something bigger and better.

My illustrious father-in-law gifted unto us a brand-new cutting edge server last weekend to house all of our important data - see Computer Disaster Number Two for the reason. This thing is seriously sweet: 2 GHz CPU, 2 Gig of RAM, 2 x 320 GB mirrored HDD (Raid), AND we’ve even gone open source with the operating system with Ubuntu to keep her humming along. It’s a server to be proud of - there’s no doubt about that.

I have since taken over the former “file server” as my home machine now, as you’re not meant to use a server as a primary machine. Note here that I’ve used quotes when I say server, because it was ultimately just a storage location for files. A “server” in the true sense of the word it certainly was not.

Anyway after rebuilding the file server from the ground up (now officially named Morpheus) so I start with a fresh slate (as you do), I’ve come to a shocking realisation: It’s only got 224 MB of RAM! Shock, horror that a budding geek such as myself should subject himself to such arcane hardware as this! For shame!

Something must be done about this!

I shall rectify the situation immediately by procuring 1 Gig of RAM to salvage my pride. My budding Geek honour demands no less.

Now if I can only keep from frying the machine like I did last time I tried to install RAM. There was smoke, crackling noises, the stench of melting plastic - the whole nine yards. Good thing my visiting mate from California is a hardware God. I am your humble junior, teach me all that you know…

Reflecting on the comments across the last several posts on the SANTEC blog, this year’s “Blogs for quality learning in developing contexts” is turning into an excellent introduction to the technology for new users.

Many of the participants so far have come from regions/institutions where the concept of blogging is extremely new. As a result, much of the discussion and interest so far has been on the fundamentals. Topics covered so far have included reasons for blogging, barriers or reluctances to use, and usage fundamentals.

A great graphical representation of the scale of possibilities with blogging technology has been provided by Tony Carr, who is facilitating the seminar over the next few days (Image shared under a Creative Commons License).

It kind of reminds me of a mantra one of my instructors drummed into our heads at uni “Once you know what to think, you’ll know how to act.”

Planned activities fall into three parts:

Part 1: We will introduce ourselves and learn about the history, nature and types of blogs. We will then start our own blogs on the SANTEC website. (16th - 18th May)Part 2: Time to blog (18th - 21st May)

Part 3: Learn about some of the advanced practices of effective blogging. (21st - 23rd May) If you’ve been blogging for a while why not join us and share your experience?

Today was the first day of SANTEC’s “Blogs for quality learning in developing contexts” online seminar. SANTEC, which stands for The Society and Network for Technology in Education through Collaboration

“is an enabling network of educational technology practitioners with an interest in educational technology in developing environments. The aim of SANTEC is to be a community of practice that facilitates and supports collaborative ventures and effects synergies amongst members.”

Due presumably to the timezone issues that arise from SANTEC being international and web-based, the seminar is asynchronous in nature. Discussion takes place via a threaded forum as well as blog posts and commenting. So if you missed the first day like I did don’t worry, you can review what was discussed via the forum and blog entries.

Admittedly I’ve only just learned of SANTEC’s existence within the last month, however I’m hopeful that I’ll come out of this experience with some additional insight into what other’s are doing to further the cause of blogs and social software in learning and teaching. I’ll try to write up a synopsis of the events when the flame has been extinguished on the 23rd.

In the meantime if you’d like to swing by for the fun, please refer to the following:

Dear colleagues,We’re pleased to invite you to join us for our next SANTEC online seminar on “Blogs for quality learning in developing contexts” which I will lead from 16th - 23rd May. The seminar will be chaired by Philip Uys. Please feel encouraged to post this invitation on your website and to circulate it to colleagues who may be interested.

This event takes the form of an online workshop which introduces the use of blogs for research, teaching and for personal web presence. We will learn about the history, nature and types of blogs and start our own blogs. There will be an opportunity to learn and apply some of practices of effective blogging and to share experiences of blogging for teaching and research.

To join the seminar you can just login to the SANTEC site at http://santec.uwc.ac.za on 16th May and follow the link to our seminar blog. If you haven’t been there before registration is easy and quick.

Kind Regards

Tony

Tony Carr
Staff Development Co-ordinator
Centre for Educational Technology
University of Cape Town
phone: +27216505033
e-mail: tony.carr@uct.ac.za

I have to admit I remain quite a sceptic about the usefulness of Twitter to education, however an objective research ethic dictates that I give the application the benefit of the doubt and approach it with an open mind. You’ll notice his hasn’t stopped me from embedding my updates in this blog though.

For those who’ve yet to experience it first-hand, Twitter is a bit of a hybrid - part SMS, part web chat, part mini-blog, all phenomenon.

Upon creating an account you are given your own Twitter page where you can post brief - and I mean brief - updates of no more than 160 or so characters. If you don’t feel like doing the math, that’s no more than one or two short sentences.

Like all Web 2.0 apps - and in fact a large percentage of static sites as well - your updates are made available as RSS feeds, or as a widget that can be embedded in your website or blog (see the “Got Twitter?” section in the right column of this blog). Importantly Twitter can also be used in conjunction with internet chat programs like iChat or MSN, and even your mobile phone in select countries - sorry Australians, this feature was recently deactivated for us. Once configured, you can submit updates via your mobile or a text chat as if you were speaking with a real person - which you are really.

Additionally, the flow of information is not one-directional. If desired you can also set Twitter to submit updates via the above methods as well. Twitter’s capacity to deliver multi-directional synchronous and asynchronous communication and discussion via a host of different mediums makes it quite a powerful tool - but in this power also lay the potential for mass chaos.

The more people you have on your friend’s list (both individuals must list each other as friends), or whom you are following (you list them as a friend), the more notifications you receive. Some of my esteemed colleagues have several hundred people on their respective lists, which means their phones and/or messengers must be ringing off the hook! A moderated and organised discussion this certainly is not.

Nonetheless, it is a rapid way of communicating with a large number of people - even more so than explode-list emails, which limit you to email inboxes almost exclusively.

I’ve only been using Twitter for a few days now, so I shall not cast judgment on the application’s relevance to higher education until I’ve had the opportunity to use it for a while. Its collaborative potential is its strong point to be sure. This area if anything else, is where its usefulness will be.

Old computers
Originally uploaded by eurleif.

This blog is brand-spanking new, hence the reason why there are no posts here yet. I plan on remedying this situation in the very near future. But until then please pay no mind to the dust.

To provide a brief background, I’ve worked in educational technology for 5 years now, and have been an avid blogger and empassioned social software user in my private life for the last 2 years. I gladly experiment with every application I come across and have adapted many to suit my personal needs on an ongoing basis - be they intellectual, socio-political, family-oriented, or purely for entertainment purposes. Up until now my use of technology in each of these two areas was mutually exclusive to a large degree, however to my immense pleasure and joy this division is becoming increasingly blurred. Therefore the time has finally come to distinguish professional from personal and start a second blog.

Given the recent - sometimes controversial - changes in and to higher education in Australia, the exponential growth of innovation in the Internet realm, the tremendous drive towards user-generated content and collaboration, and the seemingly endless demand for new technology by today’s users, it should come as little surprise that Australian universities have finally begun to take note of these new tools and trends - though at times it seems some of them are indoctrinated kicking and screaming all the while.

The Internet we see today is dynamically different to what it was 10 or even 5 years ago. Flow of information has broken from the largely one-directional model created by the duopoly of static web page content and large barriers to dissemination, and has instead evolved into a incredibly diverse, dynamic, and multi-directional ecosystem. New tools and applications are emerging virtually weekly; new terminology and catch phrases developing just as quickly; success stories rising and falling overnight; and new applications taking centre stage for their 15 minutes of fame. It is exceptionally difficult for the average person to keep up with it all.

Indeed for those of us involved in the industry it can be just as difficult - if not more so - to interpret current events, particularly when trying to distinguish a “flash in the pan” from something with legitimate long-term staying power. Nonetheless as a researcher it is my responsibility and indeed passion to stay abridged on what is happening with the Web, analyse trends, evaluate applications and particularly to assess their relevance to learning and teaching.

The latter is the primary underlying theme for this blog as I see it today - to evaluate and document trends in Internet technology and assess how they may be used to benefit and advance learning and teaching. It stands to reason then that a great deal of attention will be devoted to the analysis and presentation of new technologies, as well as the synthesis of emerging research findings. Truthfully I wouldn’t have it otherwise.

Therefore with that said, I officially declare this blog open for business.