Impressions Scholarcast

I posted earlier in the year about the main Horizon Report from the New Media Consortium and its predictions about technology in education. Now we have the Horizon Report – 2009 Australia and New Zealand edition. Its 36 pages are worth a read. As usual in this report series 6 technologies predicted to have a significant impact on education over varying timeframes are identified. They are:

1. Mobile Internet Devices that include phones, netbooks, personal wireless hubs and e-book readers: one year or less
2. Private Cloud Services: one year or less
3. Open Content – reusing and sharing course materials: 2 to 3 years
4. Virtual, Augmented, and Alternate Realities: 2 to 3 years
5. Location-Based Learning: 4 to 5 years
6. Smart Objects and Devices: 4 to 5 years

I am glad to see netbooks included in technology 1 since mobile phones seem to hold sway in this space. In my experience to date the content quality of the message content sent from mobile phones is not worth the screen real estate it is displayed upon. Mistakes abound primarily because editing and proof reading is so difficult.

Private clouds in this context just refer to general cloud services where the data centres guarantee the data stays within the institution or the country from where the cloud services are accessed. This reduces legal concerns about data jurisdiction. I hearedly concur with this selection as I am a great believer in the benefits of cloud services. However my experience to date suggests private clouds are often far too restrictive in terms of access and prevent the use of a host of useful sharing and analysis tools on the general Internet which of course rely on public access.

Again I fully agree with the move to open content described in the report.

The rising costs of education and the chronic shortage of time felt by most teachers are beginning to open the door to a broader acceptance of open content. Open content for education includes any freely available course materials — everything from worksheets to lectures to study aids to entire courses — offered online for teachers or learners to access, download, use, and in many cases, modify.

My only other comment here is that the 2 to 3 year timeframe is somewhat optimistic judged on the reactions of most of my teaching colleagues.

As things stand with the primitive, processor and bandwidth intensive virtual world clients available like Second Life I can’t see significant educational benefit. The huge cost to produce simulations of use in education will still remain for years to come. I personally completely discount this technology for the next 5 year timeframe.

Location-based learning sounds really appealing but even over the longer timeframe predicted I fail to see the allure. Set against this idea is the current thinking that physical learning spaces, even redesigned for the age of hyper connectedness, are diminishing. Instead various forms of virtual learning spaces (definitely not virtual worlds) will come to the fore. Location-based content is another matter:

There is a considerable amount of work that must be done in this area before it becomes mainstream for teaching and learning, but the potential advantages are great: from basic uses such as guided historical tours to more complex applications for mapping, fieldwork, and immersive activities, location-based learning holds promise for just in-time learning tied to a student’s physical location.

I have some sympathy with the smart objects and sensor technology also referred to as the Internet of Things. RFID chips and QR codes are useful identification technologies. All we need is an educational software infrastructure to build on these technologies – a big ask.

So I would rate this report a 4.5 out of 6 but welcome it wholeheartedly as a vehicle for productive debate about educational technologies.

I remarked in a previous post on the reactions to my Barcamp Gold Coast talk about Working in The Cloud. A very detailed comment was received from David Tangye, and, as he was watching the slidecast, he added a little more structure to the categories of cloud applications in my slides. Following up this good idea I have put together a more permanent home for my approach to working in the cloud. Associated with this is a more detailed and structured list of my recommended cloud applications. I hope to keep this list up to date every few months as new cloud applications appear and existing ones become less useful. So this is the April 2009 edition as a screen dump:

At Barcamp Gold Coast about a month ago I gave a talk entitled ‘Working in The Cloud’ with slides. I subsequently produced a slidecast of a more general version of this talk. My Information Work Online Experiment (InfoWOE) started my down the cloud computing path and is documented in other posts.

In a comment to this slidecast, David Tangye left some very detailed thoughts on the topic that were worthy of a blog post of his own. One of his opening remarks tells of Larry Ellison of Oracle in the 1990s using the term ‘network computing’ which has now become cloud computing.

In my short talk I described my aim to work completely in the cloud and listed the Web 2.0 cloud applications that were making it increasingly possible (I estimate 70-80% of the way there). During the talk and subsequently I asked others to take a short survey to see if they are using the same or similar cloud applications. This survey will remain open and I encourage everyone to complete it whenever they read this.

As I write this 17 responses have been received. The 10 questions on this free SurveyMonkey survey ask about cloud apps for email, calendar, social networking, real-time comms, wikis, blogs, links, document management, specialist tasks including media and software development (the weakest section for cloud apps). I summarise the reactions to date:

It is interesting to see that the tech-savvy Barcamp audience have similar habits and use a remarkably tight set of cloud apps. There were few surprises other than the weight of one cloud app against another. I am hoping more people will take the survey that hopefully will increase the range of cloud apps being used out there.

I commented on my initial efforts to share the Zotero database and storage files across several machines using the Live Mesh sync service. This worked very well with the Zotero files captured in the ‘storage’ folder, as once created these files and their folders did not change across machines. The downside occurred with the zotero.sqlite database file and its extra backup file copy zotero.sqlite.bak which is updated when the last Firefox browser window is closed.

On many occasions I became lazy and left Firefox browser windows open on two or more machines. These machines are left running so the Live Mesh sync service can keep them up to date on the many other folders of documents that I use. It is not surprising that Live Mesh, which starts syncing as soon as a change is detected, can cause file update conflicts when the same Zotero database file is being updated over the same time period on different machines. Later versions of Live Mesh detect this and append the machine name to the file when in conflict. While safe this leads to a plethora of different Zotero database files which have to be managed manually – somewhat of a pain.

At the beginning of February I must have transgressed and installed a virgin copy of Zotero 1.0 with a totally empty ‘storage’ folder. This caused Live Mesh to sync and delete all files in the ‘storage’ folder, about 75 MB of vital PDF files and web page pieces used to create the Zotero page snapshots. Disaster! Fortunately I have a Windows Home Server and was eventually able to recover a consistent copy of the Zotero database and files, having lost about 2 weeks of reference collection – better than nothing, but a new approach was needed.

I turned to the beta of Zotero 1.5 that offers online syncing of the database across different machines. This solves the zotero.sqlite file problem and also keeps a free online backup copy on the Zotero Sync Server. However the ‘storage’ folder requires you to use your own WebDAV file storage server:

Not having easy access to a WebDAV server I thought once again to give Live Mesh a try. This time I only sync the ‘storage’ folder, and after about a month of usage no problems of any kind have been encountered. I thus now offer up this recommendation for others to try, and will be interested in the experience of others.

The registration page for Barcamp Gold Coast meeting 3 gives details of those attendees who chose to include their contact details. We had a range of very interesting talks that were streamed live in a very professional manner by Glenn Goodman.

Thanks must go to Steve Dalton and the organising committee for a most interesting day. Only DW, DM and MR made it to The Grande for a very noisy follow-up drink.

CoverItLive interactive record

Barcamp Gold Coast 3

(03/15/2009)

11:25

Michael Rees:  Kicking off with Warren Toomey talking on Reconstructive Software Archaeology

11:31

mrees:  RT @aussietechhead: streaming live now http://www.live.thesecrethub.com

11:31

bmn:  listening to @doctorwkt talk about ancient software recovery & preservation at #barcampgc

11:31

bmn:  RT @aussietechhead: streaming live now http://www.live.thesecrethub.com #barcampgc

11:36

aussietechhead:  streaming live now http://www.live.thesecrethub.com barcamp 3 gold coast

11:40

mrees:  From my blog: Barcamp Gold Coast Meeting 3 http://tinyurl.com/cew664

11:41

spidie:  at barcamp goldcoast – there be people here! #barcampgc

11:42

aussietechhead:  #barcampgc live on http://www.live.thesecrethub.com

11:47

mrees:  Follow CoverItLive coverage of #barcampgc at http://is.gd/nnXw, @barcampgc

11:55

bmn:  Next presntation about to start with @mrees talking about ‘Working in the Cloud’ #barcampgc

12:08

spidie:  http://twitpic.com/23xyy – Jaron Dalton (3yo) – youngest ever Barcamp presenter? #tuxpaint #barcampgc

12:11

suziecheel:  RT @spidie http://twitpic.com/23xyy – Jaron Dalton (3yo) – youngest ever Barcamp presenter? #tuxpaint #barcampgc

12:48

Michael Rees:  Finished my talk at #barcampgc; talk resources plus CoverItLive coverage at http://dotdolfin.com/talks

12:50

Michael Rees:  Bond graduate Ben Novakovic now talking about Cairo for the Web

1:05	Michael Rees:  Interesting talk by Ben with simple code demo that was impressive.

1:07	Michael Rees:  Now we have Steve @spidie talking about One Laptop Per Child with two OLPC machines for us to try out. Whoa, the UI takes some working out for adults. Steve’s little 3 yo manages to use it without a problem!

1:09	bmn:  Just finished my talk on ‘Cairo on the web’ at #barcampgc

1:17	Michael Rees:  OLPC project objectives and achievements to date hugely impressive

2:19	aussietechhead:  resuming live stream of #barcampgc shortly on http:www.live.thesecrethub.com

2:28	aussietechhead:  streaming live now http://www.live.thesecrethub.com #barcampgc

2:32	deswalsh:  RT @aussietechhead streaming live now http://www.live.thesecrethu… #barcampgc

2:36	Michael Rees:  After good pizza lunch, Lawrence Meckan is speaking about broken web accessibility

2:48	spidie:  not seeing many talks today…. #barcampgc – any stixcamp peeps wanna link up.

2:51	Michael Rees:  Warren Toomey, the Tivo Man, speaking again about the Australian Community-Driven TV Guide

3:18	Michael Rees:  Floodwatch http://floodwatch.hinternet.com.au speaker Steve now in progress

3:23	aussietechhead:  streaming live now Bar Camp Gold Coast 3 http://www.live.thesecrethub.com #barcampgc

3:44	Michael Rees:  Des Walsh now giving a summary of the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum in Sydney recently, http://www.futureexploration.net/e2ef09/

3:48	Michael Rees:  Des extolling the virtues of CoverItLive

3:53	Michael Rees:  Des Walsh coverage of Enterprise 2.0 Forum http://deswalsh.com/2009/03/02/perfect-setting-enterprise-20-executive-forum/

3:55	votech:  About to do a talk on SMS Security/Spoofing at #barcampgc

3:57	bmn:  @votech sorry I’m missing it Had to scoot #barcampgc

3:57	Michael Rees:  Sascha Voevodin @votech starting to speak about SMS security

4:01	Michael Rees:  Article from Sascha online at http://www.votech.com.au/media.htm

4:06	Michael Rees:  Sascha just sent an SMS from Kevin Rudd to himself!

4:15	Michael Rees:  Warren Toomey up again speaking about Comparing Code Trees

4:17	aussietechhead:  still streaming barcamp gold coast 3 live now http://www.live.thesecrethub.com #barcampgc

4:38	mrees:  RT @spidie: Those interested in OLPC and OSDC prep join the osdgc mailing list http://groups.google.com/group/osdgc #barcampgc

4:40	Michael Rees:  James Ottaway now speaking about Dapper.net

4:51	Michael Rees:  Please fill out the Working in The Cloud survey at SurveyMonkey http://is.gd/np80

4:53	mrees:  Please contribute to a very short anonymous survey about your use of online applications and services, http://is.gd/np80

4:55	Michael Rees:  Barcamp Gold Coast 3 now wrapping up; many thanks to Steve Dalton and the other organisers for a very productive and useful day

5:17	jms_:  finished #barcampgc for the day. met some cool people and listened to some fantastic talks. i stole @bjeanes’ dapper talk

5:59	bmn:  About to test GPS+Live Video on google maps http://bmn.name/mygps/video.html – it will start shortly

6:09	bmn:  Should be working now: http://bmn.name/mygps/video.html

6:09	bmn:  should be working now http://bmn.name/mygps/video.html

7:47

I have to admit that I use a ULPC in the guise of an Eee PC on an increasingly frequent basis, both at home and at work. Its portability is paramount. I am also pleased to see this growing laptop segment now being referred to as the netbook class, a much more descriptive and appealing name.

My Eee PC 900 was a great improvement on my 701, although I still keep the latter next to my viewing chair for quick web browsing while watching TV. In its favour the 900 has a useful 9” screen and more friendly XP. The 900’s two great downsides are the small size of the keys and the XP C: drive limited to 4GB. I switched XP to the 8GB SSD but it runs like a dog and my frustration level finally reached maximum.

I did some research at least and discarded netbooks by the likes of Acer, Lenovo, and HP. At first I was taken by the Dell Mini 9 as seen on the web,  and especially being able to handle it at a new Dell kiosk set up in our local mall, Pacific Fair. At $699 it is expensive and has only a 9” screen. The 10” Medion akoya netbook E1210 from Aldi looked promising at $599, especially as a few twitter friends had taken the plunge.

However, in the end it was a student in my class showing off his new Eee PC 1000H that finally decided I would stay loyal to Asus. Following my student’s lead I managed to acquire the 10” 80GB Eee 1000H for $550 from Clive Anthony’s at the Q Super Centre. This is the first post from my new netbook, or InfoWOE 3, as I refer to it for research purposes.

After a couple of days the Eee 1000 is humming along, faster than the 900 because of the Intel Atom and the swift hard drive. The keyboard allows fast touch typing but the half-size right Shift key, making way for the up arrow key, is somewhat of  a pain until you get used to it. Today the Eee 1000 easily achieved 4.5 hours of battery life and looks likely to achieve more will suitable tweaking of the power settings.

I am hoping this netbook will last longer than the 3-4 months average of previous two Eee machines. This new netbook segment is proving to be an exciting ride.