Month: July 2007

Keep On Keeping On

/ Cole Camplese / 4 Comments

I just noticed the Learning and Innovation Blog just turned three … my first post to L&I was way back on July 28, 2004. It wasn’t my first blog post, but it was certainly the first that was trying to focus energy into the space I spend my time in — teaching and learning with technology. Before L&I I had been playing with all sorts of tools — from Frontier and Radio to Movable Type … I just couldn’t make it all happen. It was still too much work, until 7/28/2004 …

That’s the day I decided to skip the nasty installs and just try to publish … The answer at the time was Blogger. I can vividly remember being blown away by the ease of use with the tool. I recall going to work the next day and gathering up members of the Solutions Institute and falling all over myself with excitement as I showed them just how easy it was to get an account and publish online. I recall something like a 3 step process to make it all happen. It fundamentally changed my appreciation for working the web — and I was a webmaster back in the day! The instant publishing opportunity it created was a major turning point for me.

That excitement is still at the root of so much of what I try to do every day. I still have slides in presentations I do that talk about the old web publishing model compared to the blog model of type and publish. The ease of use convinced me that if I could find ways to take technology out of the way I could influence not only my own writing frequency, but the frequency of writing by my students and my peers. It opened my eyes to how powerful creating content can and should be. It has changed how I use the web in my classrooms, in my work, and in my life.

I feel like so much of the last three years worth of thinking started with that Blogger account. And so it is, as I post my 529th post here at L&I I am struck by how this whole experience has changed the way I think, create, and share. It is astonishing to me how many real and virtual connections writing has provided me with over the last few years … I can’t thank all of you enough who spend a little time reading what it is I have to say and leave comments (nearly 1600 of them!) … all of it has proven to be a very important part of my personal and professional life. Thank you!

Now, time to start working on some decent content!

Thinking out Loud

/ Cole Camplese / 6 Comments

I’ve been MIA for a couple of weeks here on the Internets … trying to buckle down and finish about a half dozen or so things in my real life. Throw in a wedding (my sister got married!) and you have a recipe for a lack of coherent internal dialogue. I am still rising from that funk to try and muster some items of interest … it hasn’t been easy. What I can do is point out that things are moving faster than I can ever remember — and I am talking about all things … my life, the life of my children, technology, projects, opportunities, work, and everything in between.

The speed isn’t the daunting part as much as the rapid change that it promotes. This fall, my daughter starts Kindergarten, my son will turn 1, and I will reach my 10th year at Penn State. Lots of things moving at the speed of light. I am not complaining, just searching for a way to slow it down a bit perhaps?

I know work has a tremendous amount to do with the feeling …

We are in the midst of the Digital Commons project. We talked about it last week on ETS Talk 28 and D’Arcy Norman actually took the time to write up his thoughts on the podcast. I won’t use this space to respond to D’Arcy, I’ll either drop him some comments or we’ll discuss on this week’s show. In this context, the Digital Commons has moved faster than most (if not all) of the projects I’ve been involved with at PSU. This thing has gone from idea to implementation in a span of weeks.

We’ve drawn a line in the sand and said we are going to spend more time investigating games for education. We are in the midst of designing a roadmap that will help guide our new Serious Games project right now … we are bringing new people on board to help us go down this path in a big way. I am not convinced that environments like SecondLife are where it is at, but I am happy to learn more and to understand more about why it has so many people excited.

And then there is administration and meetings. They pile up and you just have to wade through them. Some are very good and great things come out of them, so I don’t want to give the impression that it is all bad. Lots of people think going to meetings is a bad thing — honestly, in most cases good things happen at them. At all levels of the organization people are thinking big and trying new things … that makes it much more interesting.

We are also trying to “load the pipeline” on the next round of interesting things we are thinking about — all I can say is that a focus on creating collaborative opportunities on campus is at the center of it all. When I say that I am thinking about things from space design to new tools to support faculty and student collaborative opportunities. Much more on that in the coming weeks. I am in the midst of writing up several new project descriptions … there are some exciting things on the horizon!

So, not much of an inspired post, but it is something. I have to get my head back into the idea that I am doing this for me … this is really a place for me to track my own activities. The other thing I have to remember is that writing will not make time go faster of slower … the summer will end either way, the little lady will walk into Kindergarten by herself in the fall, and my little man will turn 1. I’d be nuts not to be thrilled to enjoy it all (even the meetings).

WP iPhone Plugin

/ Cole Camplese / 2 Comments

Through the magic of del.icio.us I was handed a link by my friend D’Arcy Norman to allow WordPress blogs to auto detect the iPhone and simplify the intrface for use on Safari. I know it doesn’t help us here in the Blogs at PSU, but if you are running WordPress the iWPhone plugin may be worth a try. My personal site, Learning & Innovation, is a WordPress powered blog and I have the plugin working over there. Take a peek with your iPhone and see the difference.

In general browsing the web on the iPhone is a good experience, but I am noticing how much better it is as more and more people start deploying iPhone friendly versions of their sites.

FUD: Web 2.0 in the Enterprise

/ Cole Camplese / 9 Comments

I am sure regular readers of this (and my other blogs) won’t be surprised by the fact that I embrace Web 2.0 technologies and approaches. I am all for openness and sharing and I deplore hoarding of knowledge that can enrich a community if exposed. I am also very interested in both using Web 2.0 tools to help shape an organization and adopting web 2.0 philosophies to overcome traditional support challenges. One of my colleagues, Jason Heffner, dropped a link in my del.icio.us network recently that made me think harder about the way my organization has attempted to adopt both tools and philosophies born out of the Web 2.0 space. The article Jason sent me is a little light on depth, but does scratch the surface of something serious … that many existing people have an inherent fear associated with these tenants … that openness is not encouraged and sometimes ignored. The article, Facing Web 2.0 Fear in the Enterprise paints a picture that we all need to understand what is happening in this space and we really ought to embrace it because it is critical to communicate, collaboration is key and our future colleagues are growing up with it.

I feel lucky in that most of the people I work with or for find this sense of openness as important as I do. We focus a lot of energy on our Intranet, for example, trying to make it a place where staff can spend time collaborating and communicating in a quasi-open sense. I say quasi only because as an Intranet it is closed to our group. This has proven to be a solid practice ground for writing and sharing knowledge as many of the staff within ETS are now writing in public blogs. The content that is being shared certainly doesn’t appeal to all people at all times, but it is a move towards tearing down the walls around a knowledge-based group and exposing the intelligence that is contained within.

To me it is a very interesting swing … just as interesting to me is how my RSS reading has radically changed along with this move. Three or four months ago I was an avid NetNewsWire Pro user with hundreds of feeds coming in from all over the world. I had a decidedly global view on the content I was consuming — I am now a Google Reader user with only a hundred or so feeds, with close to half of the them being local. In other words, I am now spending my RSS time consuming content that is much closer to my community and guess what … I am better informed about what is happening down the hall, across campus, and in my communities (State College, University Park, an PSU all qualify).

These shifts are also accompanied by other thoughts … one is that email my be a part of the modern communication channel after all. I know that sounds crazy, but there are lots of people lamenting the state of email — too much email, too much spam, too little clarity, too many back and forth, etc … I am finding as my community gets more localized and better informed I can use email more efficiently to help point people to interesting activities happening within these communities. When I read something at a colleague’s blog, I can send a quick note to my team pointing them in that direction. I also tend now to post it in the Intranet and drop the links into those who are in my del.icio.us network. I guess what I am saying is that all of our modes of communication add up to the Web 2.0 philosophy of openness and sharing. Its not all tools.

Back to the article … in my view, Web 2.0 isn’t to be feared as a radical approach to communication. It is nothing more than an opportunity to engage in communication appropriately. Trust me, it is scary to make the jump from being a knowledge hoarding person to a knowledge sharing organization. It takes practice and it takes administrative patience. But if you can get enough people on the bus and you give them a safe place to practice eventually the walls around an organization will begin to come down. When that happens fear turns into opportunities that are much more easily capitalized on.

Was this a rambling train wreck? If you have thoughts on it, share them — it is the right thing to do.

iPhone and Podcasts

/ Cole Camplese / 3 Comments

My colleague, Wendy Mahan, describes her attempt to use the iPhone to access podcasts via the browser … short story is it works. When I read the title of her post in my Google Reader, I was thinking something to the effect of, “of course the iPhone does podcasts …” But then when I actually clicked over and read her post I was interested to see that she was actually not talking about following th path of download to iTunes and sync to the iPhone over the cable. She was instead talking about going to the Podcasts at Penn State site live via Safari and listening over the air.

I tried it and bounced over to take a peek at ETS Talk and sure enough, the iPhone sees the entry and places a big “Q” (for QuickTime content) on the page with a play button on it. It then rotates the screen as if it wants to play a video and the podcast begins. I didn’t get any album art, but I now have a way to listen to new content directly on the device over the air. I have to test this with a site like IT Conversations. This opens up some new and interesting opportunities — stuff I should have, but didn’t, think of. My only fear is the slow speeds on the EDGE network, but under wifi, you could load up some good stuff in multiple browser windows and play them as you walk across campus, drive in the car, or commute on the train. While traveling, a quick stop at a McDonald’s to leach the free wifi could refill your iPhone for the remainder of a trip. All very cool to me. More testing is needed — I have no idea yet if enhanced podcasts produce a slide show, but I’ll take a peek later today.

Now, if I could only record a podcast live on the iPhone and upload it directly to iTunes U or Podcasts at Penn State we’d be in business. Something for version 2.0?

7/12/2007: Presentation: Platforms for Digital Expression PSU College of Agricultural Sciences

/ Cole Camplese / Leave a comment

I will be presenting on Web 2.0 and PSU's Platform for Digital Expression to faculty from the College of Ag Sciences here at Penn State this week. This came out of the talk I did for the College of Education a couple of months back on a similar topic. This session will be broadcast across the State to faculty and extension agents via Adobe Connect. I also believe they will be recording the session. Having a chance to talk with faculty at the College level is always an important opportunity — these are the kinds of sessions that lead to increased visibility for the work we are doing and helps foster new relationships. I am looking forward to it and I will post slides after the fact.

Nothing about the iPhone

/ Cole Camplese / 1 Comment

I thought I would check in just to say that this post has nothing to do with the iPhone. I just wanted to point out that we will try to do an ETS Talk this week … Summer is a crazy time and it makes it hard to keep things moving as consistently as the other times of the year. I’ve actually been getting more feedback about the podcast while it has been “off the air” the last three weeks … lots of people asking when the next one would come. I even had one listener ask me to stop saying only 8 people are listening. She said it made her feel like one of a handful of pathetic people — sorry about that! At any rate, we will try to drop an ETS Talk this week, so stay tuned!

Ta-Da List

/ Cole Camplese / 1 Comment

I blogged about Ta-Da List last week … it was one of the first web apps I had found that had been optimized for the iPhone browser. Next week I am going to try to use it as my calendar replacement. The syncing of Oracle Calendar and iCal is just too time consuming and the one directional syncing isn’t going to cut it.

I’ll report back, but so far I am digging the way the whole thing works. Safari on the iPhone keeps sites open even when you are not using the Internet so I can keep it open at all times. It gives me very quick access to a combination of meeting dates, times, and locations as well as standard to-do list items. The browser only needs to connect to fetch updates or when I mark an item complete. The interface moves completed items to the bottom of the list with a “strike” through them. I will be reporting on how this model works for me.

It has me thinking about a web view of Oracle Calendar that is optimized for the iPhone. Any smart developers out there up for that challenge?