"They don't think I know a butt load about the gospel, but I do" -- Jack Black in Nacho Libre
February 2007 Archives
Back in early December 2006 I presented the strategic plan to the staff in ETS. I have linked the slides of this presentation here for those of you interested. Without the words that go with them it is a little less insightful, but I hope you find them interesting and helpful. I link them as a PDF ... go on and download the file.
The whole Google for Your Domain thing just got very interesting ... they are now throwing in the Google Docs piece to the puzzle. Take a peek at this little read from Tech Crunch titled, It’s G-Day: Google Launches Apps Premier.
At the risk of looking like someone who bounces from thing to thing I thought I'd share just a few thoughts on what a wiki service might be all about at a University ... I think one of the fundamental issues around wiki spaces is that people want to feel ownership. In other words, they want to "own" their space. In most higher education models, we (the IT people) bring a wiki online and say to people, "it is there, go ahead and add pages." That is met with less enthusiasm as one would expect at first blush.
If you think about the model, it is a lot like simply installing a version of WordPress and telling people to start blogging. Sure they can blog, but their content is mixed in with the rest of the people blogging on that one space. In my opinion, the answer is to create a service that allows people a very easy way to create a wiki space that is their own.
With the Blogs at Penn State project we are letting people start with a centrally hosted blog publishing platform that they visit ... but when it is time to publish their content shows up in their personal webspace. That gives people a little more ownership in the whole process. If you look at what a service like PB WIki provides you can see the right model. I think others agree given I just read that PBWiki Raised $2m to grow its service.
So I am right back to square one with the whole build/buy/partner question that seems to be around every turn these days. Here's a question for those of who have implemented a wiki service at your Universities ... do you have one big wiki that people just add to, or do you provide a true wiki service where any user can create a separate instance that is their own?
I have a feeling this whole "texting" thing is going to be big. I just ran across Beijingers send 400m text messages on Lunar New Year's eve while clicking the special Google logo for the Lunar New Year. I wonder if anyone else is on to it?
This past Novemeber when I went to do my voting here in town I was stunned at how bad the voting machines were. To tell you the truth it wasn't just the machines that were terrible, it was the whole experience. From being sent to the wrong voting center, the slightly less than together volunteers manning the lines, to the utterly confusing user interface on the machines, it was bad. I remember at the time how much I wanted to buy one of the voting machines to rip apart and attempt to redesign the UI ... they laughed at me when I offered. That's why when I saw the article, $82 Buys E-Voting Secrets at wired.com I was stunned. Worth a read and a head scratch.
Last week I spent some time with Robin Anderson, Senior Director in ITS for Markerting and Communications. I met with her and members of a small team we have assembled to help think about what our new ITS Intranet should look like ... it was a great conversation and Robin followed it up the post, Where to draw the line? Or should we? ... I linked the post into the TLT Intranet and asked folks to take a look and help us think out loud a bit.
I have to be honest about how much I like seeing this much conversation go on outside of the walled gardens. I am really happy to see a number of my staff really helping this along and adding some great thinking to this quesiton. I think there is a theme in the comment stream that really shows a willingness for openness that is new to the larger organzation. Very cool to see. Take a look for yourself and leave a comment if you'd like.
As I was browsing through the Podcasts at Penn State analytics data for the week I noticed a huge jump in the number of visits (about 2,000 for the week). When I jumped over to the specific page that was getting all the hits I was surprised to see the "Honey Bees in Crisis" podcast being done by Carla Zimbal-Saul and her students. Really well done and pulling in some major attention and traffic. It is well worth a visit! BTW, here is the Geo Map of where visitors are coming from to the Podcasts at Penn State site from last week.
I feel like all I do at the end of every week is post news of the latest ETS Talk all over my available websites. I post it to the Podcasts at Penn State site, PSU on iTunes U, the ETS Blog, and at my personal blog. It begs the question of where is the best place to link this stuff? I get good stats from Apple on what is being downloaded out of iTunes U but it is increasingly difficult to know where people are getting the ETS Talk Podcast from. At the end of the day I may have too many places sitting out there on the Internets.
At any rate, the ETS Talk Gang welcomes Jeff Swain this week to talk about building online communities. Jeff manages the ANGEL Community Hub for us here at ETS and has done a wonderful job getting it off the ground and growing it. For some reason we end up calling Jeff and the podcast, "the total package" ... not really sure why. We also get a chance to listen to and respond to a phone message by Chris Long about blogging in the classroom. At the end of the show we spend a little time talking about how long the University should maintain content for students and what we should be thinking about to help preserve online content over the long haul.
Hi everyone .... lots of people here today. I just finished showing off the Blogs at Penn State project and discussed how blogs can be used across the University to empower all sorts of opportunities. I think people got it ... when you compare the process of publishing traditional web pages to blog publishing people pay attention. At any rate it was fun.
Tomorrow I'll be presenting at the Open Minds series about Web 2.0 in the Higher Education Enterprise. This is a two hour session for people in PSU Outreach -- I originally expected an hour and an audience of about 25 ... we're now around 50 and the time has obviously grown. The presentation is a mash-up of a bunch of stuff I've done in the past with a little twist to the delivery. I want to be able to make the point that PSU is now in the middle of the Web 2.0 space and delivering quality services to our populations.
If you want to take a peek at the presentation, here is a 19 MB Flash version, and here it as a downloadable PDF.
Questions and comments can be left right here at the blog.
When I arrived home yesterday afternoon my long awaited Wii was sitting by the door. After a 15 minute set up I was creating Mii characters for the whole family. I couldn't get the WiFi working, but will today. The real test of the system happened last night when my sister and her boyfriend came over ... the three of us were joined by my wife in a 3 and half hour Wii playing session. Amazing! Too much fun.
Innovation is a strange thing in that most think it has to come in the form of new processors and millions of pixels. This thing's innovative features are that it sucks you in with its personality and engages users with its novel controls. The game of the year? Bowling -- who would have thought it!
Again, let me just say I love Mac OSX ... this is great ...BBC NEWS | Technology | Vista has speech recognition hole.
