Month: October 2009

Mobile WP Blogging

/ Cole Camplese / Leave a comment

I just downloaded the WordPress 2.0 iPhone app and am writing this post on it while I sit and watch the Penn State game. A couple of quick thoughts:

  • The first thing I notice is that it seems like it is less about blogging and more about managing things. Comment modertion seems to be the big feature. They’ve added gravatar support to help identify people. They may have done this because blogging in long form on this might be tough.
  • The other thing I am noticing is that they don’t seem to want you to add pictures after you start writing. I can’t for the life of me find a button to add a photo once I start a new post. That is less than ideal. As a matter of fact, I can’t see where to do a photo post at all.

For quick posts it seems strong but the lack of photo integration seems odd. I must be missing something.

The Long and Short of It

/ Cole Camplese / 1 Comment

I’ve had a really hard time deciding how to use this space lately. I’ve not had the energy for much long form blogging the last few months. Long Form Blogging is the stuff I’ve almost always done here in this space — I’ve used it to explore my own ideas and to invite conversations about the things I am thinking about. I’ve still been posting content, it just seems to be happening in other places. For the past month or so I have been posting quite a bit into the Stuff multi-author space we’ve been playing with in ETS. It has been sort of liberating just posting things I am seeing/reading into a place where I am not the single voice. This Short Form Blogging has lots of potential and it does seem to get me posting more, but I’m struggling with if it is right for this space.

I’m always thinking about where my content should go … I’ve always been a strong supporter of the idea that my text should live right here. For some reason I think I’ve let my own notions of what this space is about limit my use of it. That’s crazy. With my new obsession with the One Button Web, I can’t seem to get enough of finding interesting things and quickly sharing them.

Now that Twitter and Facebook have come of age in terms of adoption, I can publish Short Form items right here and have the headlines pushed into the various networks using simple plugins to amplify what I am writing. At the same time the content is starting here … it allows me to preserve and manage my content long term while still letting it hit the networks as if I were publishing it there. So I think after all that I am going to try and use this space much like I have been using the Stuff space. I am going to use the post bookmarklet a heck of a lot more and share more of my content into this space on a much more regular basis.

It would be nice if this were a little more customizable.

It would be nice if this were a little more customizable.

An awfully long form post to say I’ll be posting a hell of a lot more short form stuff. Now if I could only figure out how to customize the quick post interface a bit.

A Little Google Help

/ Cole Camplese / 3 Comments

A call for a little help from those out there in the World who have moved to the Google Apps for Education in the higher education space.

I read stories all the time about people moving to Google Apps with the focus on email or in K-12 environments, but what I am really interested in are stories about how people have promoted the notion of collaborative authoring across the Google Apps suite of tools (Docs, Presentations, Spreadsheets, Sites, etc) and have focused primarily on the pedagogical side of the adoption. I’d be curious in hearing any stories related to how these tools may or may not have changed what one can and can’t do from a teaching and learning perspective beyond what I can read at the Google run community. Here at Penn State we have a handful of faculty really taking advantage of these tools, but are doing it without us having any official relationship with Google — that means no real identity tied to their use and a less than clear idea of policy. I think these tools can be part of a huge shift in teaching and learning and I could really use some help by hearing some real world stories. Comments, emails, and Twitter responses are all welcomed and much appreciated.

Wave as LMS? I’ll not Say Never, but …

/ Cole Camplese / 10 Comments

Today I saw a post on the Chronicle’s blog about Google Wave as the next LMS and its pushed me to revisit that line of thinking. BTW, the money quote from the post was,

“Just from the initial look I think it will have all the features (and then some) for an all-in-one software platform for the classroom and beyond,” wrote Steve Bragaw, a professor of American politics at Sweet Briar College, on his blog last week. Mr. Bragaw admits he hasn’t used Google Wave himself …

Does the Wave have “all the features (and then some) for an all-in-one software platform for the classroom and beyond” as Steve Bragaw says? Well … in a lot of ways it does contain most of what many of us dream of needing — a way to really easily connect with students. What it lacks are the tools that lots of our faculty rely on … Dropboxes, Quizzes, Roster Management, and Teams come to mind instantly. Wave won’t do the classroom management piece. As far as I can tell.

I’ve been lucky enough to have a developer account (although my real invite is still not active) and have spent time writing about my thoughts and reactions to what Google Wave might mean for us. This afternoon after getting another pointer to that Chronicle post I thought I’d go back and revisit my own early thoughts. This quote is what jumped out at me from something I wrote in June:

The big talk across the edublog space is that it could mean the end of the LMS. I’ll just say it, that’s crazy talk. What it probably means is that we might get a better footing in the LMS contract world and that we’ll have new opportunities to innovate. This platform can do quite a bit for us in the teaching and learning space, but as far as I can tell it probably will not be suited for testing on a real scale and it probably cannot replace the basics of the LMS definition — learner management. We need the LMS to do lots of things, but we also need new tools to support pedagogy that works to engage students. I think Wave will begin to even the playing field so that we have easy to use teaching and learning platforms alongside our real need to manage assessment, participation, and the like. Wave represents a new opportunity.

I still stand by that assessment and I am not ready to jump into the Wave as LMS conversation quite yet. I am also not willing to dismiss it quite yet either. As a member of our Institutional committee reviewing CMS/LMS futures I am aware of the challenges ahead for teaching and learning with technology — especially as they relate to centrally managed mega-systems like our course management environment. I know they cannot live up to the hope and hype that emergent technologies can. I know they can’t do real time collaboration like google docs (or Wave for that matter) and I know they don’t offer the open publishing space that our blog platform does. They just can’t and won’t ever be as sexy as the things that matter to us the most in this moment. The One Button Web is taking over in every single web interaction I have except perhaps in the CMS space. We can argue that that is a good or bad thing until the end of the Internet, but at the end of the day it really doesn’t matter.

Do we like the functionality of the “old systems?” Not really. Are we enamored by the emergence of what is happening outside the walls of EDU? Absolutely. Our job is to find elegant ways to bring the learner management stuff together with the agile stuff so we can suit the needs of most of our constituents. As more of us get our hands on Wave we’ll start to unravel the real potential here. BTW, if I were Google I’d make sure instructional technologists at as many Universities as possible had accounts so the real work could start … we can’t even do a Hot Team here to kick the tires. So with all that I am still hanging out over by the fence waiting to see how well Wave does empower new pedagogies. Because when we add it all up, the emergent tools we work so hard to understand need to usher in new classroom practices. The Wave will be no different — another tool that challenges and then changes pedagogical practice.

Keynote: 11/13/2009: Youth Connect

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I have been invited to keynote the Youth Connect Summit in Pittsburgh, PA.  An audience like this will present a new challenge to me and one that I am very much looking forward to.  Youth Connect is a community run organization that was begun as a result of grass roots efforts to help young people avoid risky behavior.  It has become a community-wide effort that involves adults and students from our local and private schools, churches, and other community organizations.  I've been asked to provide a baseline of education related to teens use of technology and to help parents and community leaders be better prepared to have conversations related to their use of social networks.

Keynote: 11/03/2009: Maryland Distance Learning Association

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I have been invited to give the keynote talk at the MDLA fall conference.  I plan to spend time following their theme — Social Mania — by focusing energy on the social web and its impact on teaching and learning.  I am going to spend time talking about social environments, user created content, and the emergence of the One Button Web.  I am looking forward to making new connections and meeting some new friends.

Keynote: 10/29/2009: Pennsylvania Association of Colleges and Teacher Educators Conference

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I have been invited to keynote the annual Pennsylvania Association of Colleges and Teacher Educators conference, which is the state organizational affitliates of ATE and AACTE.  It is also the state convening for PERA, the state affiliate of AERA.  I will be speaking to representatives from all 93 institutions of higher education in PA who prepare teachers.  I've been asked to speak about where students spend their times as it relates to social computing.  I'll touch on social networks, user generated content, and the one button web.