Tame The Web

I am working with Franklin Consulting and authors from all over the world on this project. Please take the survey and pass it on! I was honored to be asked to contribute part of the report on the use of social technologies in higher education. I think the results will be fascinating!

From the survey intro:

This survey is being undertaken on behalf of the Committee of Inquiry into the Changing Learner Experience for all the UK funding agencies. The survey’s specific remit is to report on the changing use of Web 2.0 technologies for teaching, learning, support and administration purposes in higher education. This survey is being undertaken in five countries to help inform an international comparison. The survey has 4 pages and should take about 20 minutes if you have use of Web 2.0 examples to share.

Here is the survey announcement:

Insightful post by Brian Kelly:

As I described in my response “Even If We’re Wrong, We’re Right” Martin’s post gave me a fresh insight into these issues. But what, I wonder, are the implications if we’re right? Perhaps it’s now timely to ask ourselves:

• What if externally-hosted services do turn out to be sustainable?
• What if technologies such as AJAX, coupled with ARIA support, provide usable and accessible services and define the type of user experiences which our users will expect in the services they use?
• What if an’edupunk‘ approach succeeds in implmenting change, leaving behind the more formal approaches to IT development?

Now many of the pragmatic Web 2.0 users and developers are addressing the potential problems they could face with their risk strategies. But are the Web 2.0 sceptics assessing the risks hat they may be wrong? What about the risks that students will abandon institutional services (as, it seems, they are starting to do with email)? What about:

• The risks that graduates will find it difficult to get jobs if they have little experience of popular Web 2.0 technologies, having spent 3 years using elearning tools which aren’t known outside the HE/FE environment?
• The institutions which fail to attract new students, researchers or staff as they aren’t making use of popular social networking services?
• The researchers who continue to work just small groups, using email and accessing papers on institutional repositories but don’t follow discussions which their peers are having in the blogosphere?
• And finally what about the risks that IT development programmes ignore the benefits of lightweight solutions, preferring to develop more sophisticated services which aim to solve every possible contingency - and then nobody uses the service as it’s too complex for most?

The question needs to be asked: what if we’re right?

Serious stuff. I have given up Blackboard completely in my teaching at Dominican. I’d rather my course pages be open and easily accessible. Same with student posts - why hide discussions behind a wall when future librarians should be ready and able to join the global conversation?

I’m taken with the concept of “edupunk” and the mentions of “libpunk” as well. 

Brian links to this definition of Edupunk at Wikipedia: 

Edupunk is an meme referring to teaching and learning practices that result from a do it yourself (DIY) attitude. Many instructional applications can be described as DIY education or Edupunk. It describes inventive teaching and inventive learning.

The term was first used on May 25, 2008 by Jim Groom in his blog, ^[1] and covered less than a week later in the Chronicle of Higher Education^[2]. Stephen Downes, a commentator on the field of online education, asserts that “the concept of Edupunk has totally caught wind, spreading through the blogosphere like wildfire”. ^[3]

Kathryn Greenhill, who so graciously convened an amazing dinner for us in Freemantle and addresses so many incredible things on her blog, had this to say:

LIBPUNK

Does that mean that these actions *might* be an example of what we could, if we wanted to join the hysteria, call “Libpunk” ? Librarians using non-proprietary products and groupings not based on institutional alliances to practice their craft and communicate their practice? Open, collaborative enterprises based on not making money, but often on increasing social capital or extending knowledge?

• Grassroots-organised library unconferences
• Casey Bisson’s Scriblio, which is a library catalogue based on blogging software Wordpress
• John Blyberg’s work on the SOPAC , a social OPAC layer over the top of a proprietary Library Management System
• The “ Five Weeks to a Social Library ” free grassroots course
• Ellyssa Kroski’s use of greenscreen to shoot her own video course material to complement her drupal course site for a course on Web 2.0 technology that she is running for San Jose State University (or is that just edupunk ?)
• The BigWig Social software showcase that uses many different online tools to show new software
• The Library Society of the World
• The work done by Real Life librarian JJ Jacobson as Second Life Librarian avatar JJ Drinkwater .
• Librariesinteract.info or Library Garden, collaborative library blogs run by groups of library bloggers
• Collaborative, anyone-can-phone-in podcast, Uncontrolled Vocabulary
• The proposed Semantic Library Learning Program ?
• Even if the initial development of the LibX toolbar doesn’t count, does the way they have created a tool to allow libraries to build their own count as libpunk?

Don’t miss:

http://librarygarden.blogspot.com..food-for-thought-….html

Janie: Can you tell me about the background behind Food for Thought? In particular: What is your role? How did the idea get started for such a day? What were the original goals of the program for the organizing committee?

Jon: The origins for Food For Thought (FFT) stem from two developments. First, a somewhat similar annual event for faculty has been sponsored for several years. The Faculty Institute on Teaching and Learning had been moving away from application specific training and more toward classroom pedagogy and educational innovation. Our library director had been attending and participating in this annual faculty event since its inception. She noticed that the shift away from technological training at this event created a opportunity to develop a day long event that focused on application training.

Secondly, as part of the Library’s strategic planning process, we identified university staff as a constituency for which additional library services could be developed. We noticed that most of the registrants coming to the library’s long standing series of technology training workshops were university staff. So we decided to leverage this success by creating a full day of learning events. No one had ever (to our knowledge) sponsored a complete day’s agenda of learning sessions directed at staff.

Read the whole post for in depth planning information, guidelines and insights into this program. I hope other university libraries take a serious look at this model for outreach and service.

Nicole writes:

This is an interesting interview:

Via Lorcan Dempsey:

From a news item on the library website at Prince Edward Island University announcing the introduction of the Evergreen library system ….

The only permanent change arising from this transition will be a positive one: a brand-new Library catalogue! We’ll be making lots of improvements to the catalogue search and display over the summer, and your feedback will be critical in this process. We are the first academic library anywhere to adopt the Evergreen/IslandPines system, making UPEI a world leader in innovative, open-source technology, and giving us unprecedented flexibility in making repairs and enhancements to our catalogue and other systems. If you have any suggestions, comments, or concerns, please let us know!
[Evergreen]

Mark Leggott has been tracking progress in his blog - they began the transition on May 31 (a sample entry here).

Frank Haulgren commented here and I just had to make it a post:

Western Washington Univ.s “14 Days To Have Your Say” project was directly inspired by the Starbuck’s campaign.  I had read a newspaper article (quaint, no?) about this project one day while having lunch and immediately thought to myself, “We can do this!  We should do this!”

It was a very, very worth while project!

http://lib206.lib.wwu.edu/14days/frontpage

New WWU Dean of Libraries Chris Cox responds on the site:

I just wanted to say thank you to all of you who have taken the time to offer your ideas and feedback about The Western Libraries. I’ve been eagerly reading these and am looking forward to working with all of you to answer your needs, whether they be quiet in the library, the construction of a cafe, installing a book drop on the south side of campus or investigating the feasability of longer library hours and/or a 24 hour study space. I’m very excited to be coming to a place where the students, faculty and staff care so much about their library.

Gathering feedback for planning from stakeholders in the academic library should be a top priority. Using mechanisms inspired by good ole Starbucks in our 2.0 world is inspired. Well done WWU!

http://cogdogblog.com/2008/06/04/high-school-buddy-on-oldaily/

Adam Levine points to a facsinating presentation and a bit of serendipty with an old chum:

In the midst of my regular daily mix of seeing what new things come into my antennae, I am reading the email update of Stephen’s OLDaily and stop my scan/scrolling– there it is, a familiar name:

How Identity and Access Management Can Help Your Institution Touch Its Toes
Kevin Morooney, EDUCAUSE Connect

This presentation was both fascinating and infuriating. I really liked the style of presentation - page forward through it quickly - and I think the argument is well reasoned. But - it is well reasoned from an institutional perspective. Which make things like fingerprints sound reasonable.

Wait a second! I went to high school with Kevin.. and I know he is currently the CIO at Penn State University. So I browse over to theEDUCAUSE abstract and read:

Successful IT infrastructures and architectures are expected to nimbly provide the context for protecting and sharing information and identities. In today’s world, new legislation, expectations from faculty and students, and managing risk several times a second are all threats to keeping current services relevant and time to market for new services reasonable. Understanding the importance and nature of the intersection created by security, identity, and policy is vital to planning the future of our infrastructures and architectures.

I viewed the PDF of the slides and many of the ideas about changing perspectives on identity, security, etc  struck a chord with me as I grapple with university IT infrastructures and work with other libraries to plan effectively. Some of the stuff went a million miles over my head but I was really taken with the insights. Of course, the slide illustrated above made me say “Ah Ha!” Check it out. Good stuff.

“Opening New Windows of Opportunity: Creating Breakthrough Instructional Experiences” On Thursday, June 5, 2008 at 3 pm. EST.

Brian Mathews will speak on “breakthrough opportunities” as he shares his latest ideas on creating interactive library experiences for students. This session will feature tactics for engaging students in both the classroom as well as in digital environments. Brian will also discuss possibilities for the library and librarians to become a more integrated part of campus and will highlight his ubiquitous “push-out” philosophy.

Guest Speaker Bio:

Brian Mathewsis the User Experience Librarian at Georgia Tech. He frequency writes and speaks on the topics of marketing, assessment, and user interactions. His blog, The Ubiquitous Librarian, frequently describes many of his on-going projects aimed at making the library a more user-centered experience.

Although this event is free, advance registration is required.

Edited to add the link to registration - http://home.learningtimes.net/library?go=1199293

A local example of the move to using Google mail and apps in the university setting:

Notre Dame’s Office of Information Technologies has teamed up with Student Government to provide current students with a new e-mail system though Google Apps.

“We are hoping the system will be up and ready for students to migrate in the middle of the summer, so we can e-mail students and get them to migrate their accounts before they get back this fall,” said Katie Rose, project manager of the OIT’s latest initiative.

“We know that students have not been satisfied with the existing system and have been asking for systems more like Google,” Rose said. “Student Government has been voicing the same concerns.”

More from ArsTechnica:

The transition is happening quickly. Notre Dame announced this last week that it would shift to Google Apps over the summer while maintaining current student e-mail addresses. Other schools like Clemson, Arkansas State, and UNC Greensboro have already made the switch, as have international institutions like Hebrew University, Universidad Panamericana, and Nihon University.

Google’s services, built on its worldwide network of data centers, can scale with little marginal cost, and as such represent a far cheaper alternative to having every school in the world host its own e-mail servers and hire the technical help needed to keep them operating. But, as the University of Washington announcement reminds us, those decisions can have a human cost, just as car-building robots affected the auto industry. Critics also wonder about the possible dangers of outsourcing so much information to one company and about potential liability surrounding education records, but such concerns aren’t in danger of derailing the Google Apps express.

From a student perspective, the move makes sense, at least if campus IT operates with the same sort of “efficiency” and “uptime” that characterized my own school’s in-house efforts. With another collegiate year behind us now, are those of you in campus IT worried about the impact that hosted apps could have on your jobs? Or is this a necessary shift that will simply eliminated IT grunt work and free people up for more interesting work?

Via John Kirriemuir

http://www.silversprite.com/?p=540

Academics who have successfully developed in SL report that their host institution and technical services are largely supportive, though with the latter there are often problems with firewalls, PC capability and enabling voice functionality. Academics report varied reactions to SL from colleagues, ranging from interest and curiosity to suspicion and “hatred”. Unlike their US counterparts, UK academic libraries are not significantly involved in SL activities.

Academics described a very wide range of SL activities spanning teaching, learning, research, performance, construction and demonstration. The key advantage of SL in teaching and learning is that there are many activities in which the student must be more than a passive learner in order to progress. The student has to develop “stuff”, collaborate and participate. Before these can occur, he or she has to master a new and transferable skill set, meaning that, in SL, learning is done more by participating and doing than by listening and absorbing.

Frank Haulgren, Collection Services Manager, ILL & Document Delivery - Media - Microforms for Wilson Library at Western Washington University, writes:

Brian Herzog writes a perfect post on why Firefox could and should be used on public computers (emphasis mine):

http://tinyurl.com/4fzz6b

My library is in the process of re-doing all of our public computers. One major change we’re making is to switch to Firefox for our web browser, instead of the Internet Explorer/Public Web Browser combo we’ve always used.

The reason we’re switching is a simple one - Firefox is just cooler. It lets us have more control over how the browser functions, and lets us offer more tools integrated right into the browser. Better for us, better for patrons.

Here’s a list of the customizations we’re making:

Add-Ons

• Public Fox - this is designed to make Firefox a public web browser, as opposed to being used and customized by a single, private person. We’re using it to lock down add-ons, preference, about:config, and a few other things, as well as control what file types can be downloaded
• Menu Editor - also for the control freak in us, this one lets us remove menus from the tool bar (we’re getting rid of bookmarks, help and history)
• Greasemonkey - one of my favorites, this lets us embed custom coding on webpages, such as a link from Amazon to our catalog, and helpful links on our catalog’s “no search results” page (more info on those on our Tech Tools page)
• Add To Search Bar - this fun one lets us easily add our library catalog right to Firefox’s search bar. The other searches we chose to include are Google, Yahoo, Amazon, the Internet Movie Database, Answers.com, Wikipedia, and Merriam-Webster
• IE Tab - For all of those “Best viewed in Internet Explorer” websites, this one lets you toggle back and forth between the Firefox and IE rendering engines, so IE-only pages and scripts will load in Firefox
• Image Zoom - just like what it sounds, this adds zoom controls to the right-click menu, to make images bigger and smaller. This one is most useful to patrons who get emailed digital photos at 1024 x 768 resolution, which is too big for our screens. This lets them zoom out so they can see all of their grandchild’s face at the same time

Options Settings

• Turn off all automatic updates - we use Deep Freeze, so we do our own updates
• Turn on smooth scrolling
• Turn on check spelling
• Set homepage to our Reference start page
• Always save downloads to My Documents
• Always show tab bar
• Turn off all warnings, except when redirecting from secure to an unsecure page
• Don’t remember anything, delete cookies and clear private data when Firefox closes

Don’t miss:

http://blog.zsr.wfu.edu/pd/2008/05/02/roz-at-loex-teaching-web-20-to-students-15/

Their own Web 2.0 Awareness Survey

74 students

Awarness of Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Blogs, Podcasts, Social tagging, Wikipedia, Other Wikis, RSS

• RSS had not heard of 92%, 0% had ever used
• Social Bookmarking 68% had not heard of
• Other Wikis 45% had not heard of
• Podcasts 51% had heard of but had not used
• 5% had blogs
• 8% had uploaded videos

Audience discussed how their students compare - similar experiences — students are not seeing new technologies as ‘exciting’ the way librarians do….for them it’s like a new feature on a car — or a refrigerator…..

Librarians respond to Web 2.0 — we see it as a way to connect, market, facilitate — but do students want us there?

Read the whole post. Libraries may be extending presence and service via the tools but are we also tapping into how our students are using them?

“We’re seeing more requests outside of creative services to switch to Macs from PCs,” notes David Plavin, operations manager for Mac systems engineering at the U.S. IT division of Publicis Groupe, a global advertising conglomerate. There are so many requests that Plavin now supports 2,500 Macs across the U.S. — nearly a quarter of all Publicis’ U.S. PCs.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/04/21/17FE-macs-in-business_1.html

Dominican now supports faculty requesting either a Mac or PC for their offices. And anecdotally I heard that 40% of our incoming students university wide have Macs.

Once again, McMaster University sets a high bar! Amanda Etches-Johnson announces:

Wee announcement at MPOW today about a new service we’re rolling out called the 2.0 Toolbox. It’s a suite of 2.0 tools we’re hosting for faculty which, at the moment, consists of installed blogs (usingWordPress MU) and wikis (using PmWiki).

As you probably know, WordPress MU is a multi-user blogging environment (hence the “MU”) that allows users to set up their own blogs with a couple of clicks. It’s pretty sweet overall, but we’ve had our fair share of tussles over getting the admin end to work over SSL (thanks to Kevin Gilbertson at Wake Forest and Karen Coombs for putting up with my numerous questions and sharing their code! And to my super-patient colleague, John Fink, for being a troubleshooting superhero). PmWiki, on the other hand, has been nothing but golden, from an administrative perspective. Installation took all of 6 minutes and configuring the installation as a “wiki farm” took another 3 minutes.

Most cool…and as a faculty member, I’d be all over this. Every semester I have 50 or so students get Wordpress.com blogs. Maybe I need a Wordpress MU installation too…

Brian Matthews shares a fascinating conversation:

http://theubiquitouslibrarian.typepad.com/the_ubiquitous_librarian/2008/04/the-anatomy-of.html

The transparent technologies of flickr and twitter offer tremendous assessment possibilities. We hear about students pulling all-nighters, but this is documented evidence.

4:56 PM
paper + pres due in 22 hours. tick tock. group members unite

6:51 PM 
if I have to pull an allnighter to finish this proj I’ll likely have to skip the gatech awards banquet luncheon thing and get my award later

7:55 PM 
I just talked about epistemological connections in this CS paper. Do I get my cookie now or later?

09:23 PM 
trying to explain color wars in this paper as a way of community-driven convention for subgroups. prof is going to think twitter is crazy.

10:17 PM 
GT Parking is heartless.. giving parking tickets to students parked at the library this late. @flashmob needs to do something about it

11:15 PM 
cramped between @jarryd and @hd_phones in the library near the collaborative computing section.

Read the whole thing. How could this influence your planning in the academic library? How might it change services?

Last week, I had the pleasure of visiting and speaking at the new Loyola University Information Commons on the campus of Loyola University just north of Chicago. It was a blustery, rainy cold day along the lake, but the space and the library folk were warm and inviting. Before the visit, I checked out the Web site for the Commons, eager to read about the project. 

Read the rest here:

http://www.techsource.ala.org/blog/2008/04/student-centered-digital-learning-at-loyolas-information-commons.html

NCSU Learning Commons Originally uploaded by mstephens7

There’s just so much good here! Take a look at North Carolina State’s Learning Commons Web presence:

http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/learningcommons/

• Live computer availability
• Web cam of “The Brickyard”
• Flickr photos
• “We want your Ideas” for eboards
• Commenting form
• Borrow laptops, cameras, iPods, GPS units, etc

I’m incorporating this and the Loyola Information Commons into my new talks. 

From “Pleasing Google’s Tech-Savvy Staff”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120578961450043169.html

Unlike many IT departments that try to control the technology their workers use, Mr. Merrill’s group lets Google employees download software on their own, choose between several types of computers and operating systems, and use internal software built by the company’s engineers. Lately, he has also spent time evangelizing to outside clients about Google’s own enterprise-software products — such as Google Apps, an enterprise version of Google’s Web-based services including email, word processing and a calendar.

Later:

 It used to be that you used enterprise technology because you wanted uptime, security and speed. None of those things are as good in enterprise software anymore [as they are in some consumer software]. The biggest thing to ask is, “When consumer software is useful, how can I use it to get costs out of my environment?”

Google Apps is hosted on my infrastructure, and [the Premier Edition] costs roughly $50 a seat. You can go from an average of 50 megabytes of [email] storage to 10 gigabytes and more. There’s better response time, you can reach email from anywhere in the world, and it’s more financially effective.

This reminds me of Arizona State University aligning with Google for apps and email:

http://www.asu.edu/news/stories/200610/20061010_asugmail.htm

Is this a model for other universities? For libraries? 

From the Chronicle February 29, 2008

http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i25/25a01501.htm (I think it’s expired )

As iPhones and other “smart phones” become more popular on campuses, and as computing becomes even more mobile, it seems that some form of Twitter-like service may become part of student and faculty life. But the technology has potential costs in terms of money and privacy. Some observers, essentially arguing that there is such a thing as too much information, say that Twittering will never catch on the way blogs and
e-mail have.

David Parry, an assistant professor of emerging media and communications at the University of Texas at Dallas, says he was reluctant to try the technology. Mr. Parry’s first instinct was that Twittering would encourage students to speak in sound bites and self-obsess. But now he calls it “the single thing that changed the classroom dynamics more than anything I’ve ever done teaching.”

Last semester he required the 20 students in his “Introduction to Computer-Mediated Communication” course to sign up for Twitter and to send a few messages each week as part of a writing assignment. He also invited his students to follow his own Twitter feed, in which he sometimes writes several short thoughts - not necessarily profound ones - each day. One morning, for instance, he sent out a message that read: ”Reading, prepping for grad class, putting off running until it warms up
a bit.” The week before, one of his messages included a link to a Web site he wanted his students to check out.

If you have access to the Chronicle, checkout the full article. I’m intrigued with adding Twitter to one of my courses to see how it goes over. 

Watch the video: http://chronicle.com/media/video/v54/i25/twitter/?utm_source=at&utm_medi

http://www.acu.edu/technology/mobilelearning/index.html

Mobile technology is shaping the way we live, work and learn. Since education can now take place in the classroom or virtually anywhere, ACU is committed to exploring mobile learning technology that makes sense for our students and their future.

ACU leaders have given top priority to researching and developing a “connected” 21st century campus, integrating technology into course curriculum and campus life. Several pilot applications have already been developed for Fall 2008.

There’s a video as well:

A fictional day-in-the-life account highlights some of the potential benefits in a higher education setting when every student, faculty, and staff member is “connected.” The applications portrayed in the film are purely speculative; however they’re based on needs and ideas uncovered by our research - and we’ve already been making strides to transform this vision of mobile learning (mLearning) into reality.

Creating connections via a converged device in a university setting is huge. I applaud the forward thinking and sense of innovation that went into the charge of “researching and developing a “connected” 21st century campus.” The focus on students — they use technology in every aspect of their lives — does my heart good. Can you see your campus connected - students, staff, faculty — and using technology like this to learn and engage? What role might the library play?

This is a model to watch and ponder not only for universities but for university libraries. Again, take a look at the video before you decide to keep the ban on cell phone use at your library.

Oh! And what happens though. when IT hates the iPhone?