TechTicker
educational technology, eLearning & emerging technology

Some neat new features have just been launched on Blogger in Draft:

Blogger in Draft: Polls and enclosures added to Blogger in draft: “Today we’re saving two more features to Blogger in draft: Polls and enclosure links.”

I’ve yet to have a play with this, but both options sound like they’ll offer a great deal of potential to Blogspot users.

The one suggestion I’d make to the folks at Blogger though is I hope that they’ll be including recommendations on hosting service providers for bloggers who want to take full advantage of the enclosures features, which are intended to let people turn their blogs into a podcast channel.

Or perhaps this is a sign of things to come. Rumours of Google’s GDrive have been rife for months now, and with the pending release of a limited Beta of Microsoft Live Folders, which provides online storage with both private and public settings, a native Google file storage and delivery option may be right around the corner.

Today’s SMH has reported that:

“Murdoch mulls Yahoo stake - BizTech - Technology - smh.com.au: “Global media giant News Corp has proposed swapping social networking site MySpace with internet giant Yahoo in return for a 25 per cent stake in the enlarged group, a newspaper reported on Wednesday.”

TechCrunch first reported this yesterday, saying if the deal went through it would value MySpace in the ballpark of $12 Billion.

I say Yahoo has got to be smoking something if they’re even considering forking out that much money…

Today’s Sydney Morning Herald asked “Does Google know too much about you?“:

“Google, the world leader in web search services, is the focus of mounting paranoia over the scope of its powers as it expands into new advertising formats from online video to radio and TV, while creating dozens of new internet services.True, the Silicon Valley company has millions of people telling it daily what’s apparently on their minds via simple Web searches, generating mountains of information about consumer behaviour.”

This is a very interesting question that seems to be coming up more and more frequently these days, particularly during the lawsuit between Google and the US Government, who had been trying to force the internet monolith to open up its search queries.

Suddenly, what had once been seemingly insignificant time wasted online was taking on a life of its own. Your search queries weren’t disappearing in a poof of smoke; they were being stored somewhere - potentially for a long period of time.

Moreover, those who embrace the social software and social networking movements in particular volunteer extraordinary amounts of information that over time combines to present a very holistic picture of who we are - to anybody who cares to look. We write our innermost thoughts in blogs; post pictures of our loved ones, our houses, our friends, and our neighbourhoods in our photo sharing pages; even provide up to the minute updates on the fact we’re drinking coffee in our pj’s on our Twitter pages.

So once again the question arises: Does Google, and indeed the greater web in general, know too much about us? Or perhaps equally importantly: What do you hold back from sharing - or do you?

Today’s Sydney Morning Herald explains that the New South Wales Government plans to introduce electronic whiteboards and web-conferencing to NSW Schools.

“The State Government will install 200 high-tech digital whiteboards in NSW public schools, which it says will “transform the way education is delivered”, over the next year.The interactive whiteboards, along with video-conferencing technology and e-learning tools, will take up $28 million of tomorrow’s 2007-08 state budget.”

From personal experience with web conferencing in education, the “wow factor” these technologies bring is quite effective in engaging students. The key however - and what is indeed the most crucial element - is that use of this technology incorporates a solid pedagogical framework. Without one, a potentially inspiring and thought-provoking educational experience will deteriorate into another mind numbing video game exercise or rambling web-chat.

Reference:

• “Schools to install digital whiteboards“, Sydney Morning Herald, June 18, 2007

Blogger has recently announced the release of a new development environment known as Blogger in Draft, which will provide curious users with access to tools and features that aren’t quite ready for prime time.

The inaugural release is Video Uploading. Just as Blogspot and Blogger users are currently able to upload photos directly to their Picasa Web account via the blog posting page, so can they now to do the same with video - but only from Blogger in Draft. Uploaded videos are submitted automatically to Google Video, where they are associated with the same Google account.

Realistically this tool only streamlines the video embedding process, it does not create an option that wasn’t there before. However previously users would have to go to Google Video, complete the upload form and submit the video, select the code snippet to embed the video, go to Blogger and create a new post and then paste in the snippet. That you will be able to do all this directly from the post page makes things much quicker.

At the same time it does not resolve the more fundamental issue of bandwidth speed that makes work with digital video very time consuming for most people - and impossible for those still on dial-up. The upload process either requires a substantial pipe to push up the video in the first place, or an equally substantial amount of patience on the part of the user. Until high-speed internet is more widespread, and high speed infrastructures are more prevalent, I suspect the uploading of video will remain isolated to relatively small pockets of users.

The enhancement of global high-speed internet infrastructures will be a natural progression I suspect - and in Australia is becoming a political issue that the pollies want to look proactive about - however it is also a cost-intensive one that is more than likely still a ways off on the horizon. Nonetheless the inclusion of a video upload feature in Blogger makes a whole lot of sense and is good to see on the table.

It also represents a wonderful opportunity for the folks at Google to increase the usage of Google Video, given it has been all but eclipsed by the likes of YouTube.

For more information on Blogger in Draft or video uploads, please visit the official Blogger in Draft blog.

Reference:

• “Updates About Video Upload“, Blogger in Draft, 20 June 2006

This entry still in draft form, so pay no attention to the dust.

From the folks who created the wildly successful and extraordinarily accessible RSS in Plain English comes Wikis in Plain English.

What is a Wiki?
A wiki is a type of website geared specifically towards collaboration and the pooling of information. Wiki engines feature a suite of tools that enable fast and easy content creation and editing by multiple authors. Integration of WYSIWYG interfaces eliminates the need for technical and/or coding backgrounds and drastically reduces barriers to use.

For the purposes of this post we will be using Wikipedia as the example. There are two main reasons for this:

1. Wikipedia is a collaborative success story: Wikipedia is a knowledge base whose massive success is built upon the efforts of an extremely active user community. It therefore provides a real-world example of effective implementation.
2. Its underlying engine is open source: MediaWiki is the technical foundation for Wikipedia. It is a freely available and time-tested set of tools currently in use by thousands of people daily. The English-version of Wikipedia alone has 1.2 million pages and supports thousands of content changes daily.

Locating Content
Indexed entries coupled with basic search functionality ensures easy access to existing pages.

Editing Content

Existing content is amended via edit links at the page level or section level. The process utilises a WYSIWYG editor whose toolbar is very similar to many word processing programs. Once changes have been made and submitted the new version of the page is immediately available to others.

Version Control

Version control mechanisms are available via a history page associated with each entry. The page contains a comprehensive list of what changes were made, by whom, and features a comparison tool for evaluating the differences between versions. Unwanted changes can be removed by reverting to previous versions.

Creating New Content
New content can be created in several different ways:

No Search Results
If no results are returned for your search criteria you are given the option of creating the page yourself. “Create this article” loads the WYSIWYG editor.

Requested Articles
A second option is to respond to an article request. Requested articles are submitted from the search results page and are listed within browseable sections. Navigate down through the listings to a specific page and then click the heading to load the WYSIWYG editor.

Create from Scratch
Finally you can go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creating_new_pages, give the page a name and proceed directly to the WYSIWYG editor.

Other Features

• Discussion: plan pages or resolve issues/disputes of the page itself.
• Upload Files: Upload images and/or other files for use in pages.
• Community Portal: “Learn what tasks need to be done, what groups can be joined, and get or post news about recent events or current activities.”
• External links: enable web information about existing relevant projects to be brought together