Back in the Blogosphere and thoughts on Personal Technology

Original Photo from NASA

I've been out of commission for much of the week between my last meeting with my nonprofit board, a sick child, homework for another class, and now having a bit of a bug myself. So I probably won't say much, but I'd like to point out a trend.

I work in the event-planning/facilitation industry, and one type of events I work with is weddings. In the last two years, I've seen a significant increase in the number of couples who, instead of hiring a band or DJ, choose to bring an iPod or laptop computer loaded with mp3 files to hook into an in-room sound system. (This, of course, can be a problem for locations that don't have an in-room sound system, but luckily we can rent a portable one!) This gives them as much personalized control over their music at the wedding as they have over it when they listen at home.

We are able to personalize our playlists, our podcasts, our GoogleReader, our online shopping experience (I love Kaboodle) and now we are expecting that same sort of personalization in other parts of our lives. While it works for some things, I'm curious how it will play out when that desire for personalization bumps up against some hard-and-fast rules in certain industries.

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As an aside, I used my iPod Touch to listen to a recorded interview posted to a wiki in my other class. This stuff is being used!

GoogleDocs to the Rescue!

 After four years on the board of a local nonprofit, I’m transitioning out of my position in order to focus on school and family until I get my degree. For the last three of those years, I have been the secretary of the board, keeping meeting minutes. I’ve also been the chairperson of the planning committee for our annual book sale.

As I prepared to pass along my knowledge, and my black binder full of minutes, notes, bylaws, etc, I knew I wanted to get the electronic files into the hands of those who “come after.” I’ve been puzzling over it for some time, the last six months actually.  A flash drive could work, but what if the person didn’t have the same version of MS Office I did?

Along comes my class, and my introduction to Googledocs several weeks ago. I’ve just spent the evening uploading all my documents to a new account, connected to our organization’s email account. (Did I mention I'm the one who created the organizations first email account? We've been using email to communicate with each other for years, but not with the outside world. I'm dragging them into the digital age.) Voila! Instant knowledge transfer. Hooray!

ACK!!! Technology wins again.

GRRRRR!!!

Every once in awhile, even someone as relatively computer savvy as I am does something that just makes you want to go GRRR!

Just now, I managed to delete half of the comments people have made to my blog posts. I was trying to clear out something else, and managed to do that instead. SAD! I love all your comments, so please know that it was nothing personal. Sometimes a couple errant mouse clicks puts in you in a tough spot. Which leads me to a minor rant...

How about those times when a MISSED mouse click leaves you in a tough spot. I hate "opt out" check boxes on websites. I was running out of checks for my check book (in spite of doing most of my banking/bill pay online) so I ordered another box of checks. I missed a tiny check box opting me out of some "enhanced protection" for my checks, and ended up paying an additional $15. I tried to get out of it...but the company was unresponsive. It wasn't that much money and I'm not going to make a federal case over it, but I can tell you that I was not a happy camper. My message to the company was pretty pointed.

Have you ever been caught by those darn boxes?

Video Editing

Photo by Holger.Elgaard

Our last weekend of class really focused on digital video editing using Windows Movie Maker. (So how many of you Windows XP users knew that this cool software was even  on your computer?) A pretty basic movie editor, but it gives you what you need to put together a film relatively quickly and easily. (Also see Animoto for super simple photo/video movies.)

I'd done video editing before on my computer using a software I paid for. The thing crashed all the time when using still photos. I experienced some bizarre things when using Movie Maker as well, so I think both programs have their quirks and issues.

Whether you go paid or not, it really is amazingly easy to create simple video to share with friends, family, or coworkers if needed.

The perfectionist in me tends to spend hours syncing up music and video/photos, so I'm going to leave video editing land for a while. (Though I may take advantage of it to create an instructional video for my other class! I'll let you know if that works out.)

Video FAQ

After stumbling through several failed videos where I mangled my sentences or clicked incorrect buttons, or the phone rang in the middle, through superhuman endurance (or at least stubborn determination) I managed to create a new FAQ Page for the Campus Calendar at my organization. Several of the questions have links to videos created with Jing to more directly illustrate the point.

My favorite, though, is this video explaining field mapping. To make it, I first made several screen shots of various screens with Jing, color coded them and saved them to my computer, and then pulled them into the screen during the video as needed.

This was an exciting project, and I expect there will be more questions and videos to come. In fact, I'm going to solicit them! See what I end up with.

(As an aside, the College website on which I made this page is powered by the open source software Drupal. Open source really is everywhere.)

Realistic Expectations of the Net Gen

My daughter - beyond the Net Generation?

I listened to a podcast yesterday while doing some light cleaning around my home (I'm learning, Wendy!) One thing I noticed was that I didn't pay as close of attention as I meant to (partly because I was listening on my computer, not my iPod. I'm learning, but slowly!).

The podcast was from Educause, and the comment that stuck with me was when the interviewer asked about the Millennials, the Net Generation, and their ability to take technology and run with it. Brian Hughes, the interviewee, said that educators need to be thoughtful to recognize that not all member of the Net Gen have been raised with an iPhone in their hands. While there is likely to be a certain level of technological literacy, there is also likely to be a wide array of familiarity with certain websites, applications and social media platforms.

Another post on Twitter caught my eye today as well. One of my ongoing concerns with social media has been one of privacy. I'm not generally an open person, and the idea of having my life out there for people to see - and use! - can be a bit much. The post was on the 3 P's of Privacy on the Web.  While the post wasn't super informative, it did explain that the younger generation is being asked to learn about web privacy on their own instead of with any form of friendly guidance, and maybe it is a discussion we ought to open up about more often.

With any new technology, there is a need to start from scratch, in a sense, in order to really determine where your learners are. Maybe they are ready to jump in with both feet, but perhaps the waters must be tread more carefully.

Super cool, or just too much?

One of the things I've been going over and over in my head with all this technology is the comfort and education levels of the people who use it.

I just finished reading the article with predictions of the future of learning and technology that Sheila linked to and I couldn't help thinking - especially regarding Prediction #1 about augmented reality - that it is just too much! Having that much stuff come at me at once would be overwhelming. A "digital overlay" to my life?

Original Photo by odolphie

If I take a personality assessment, like the Five Factor Model, I always fall just "left of center" closer to introvert than extrovert. I need time to myself. I value silence. Too much stimulation coming at me all at once leaves me drained. I hate televisions in restaurants, and actually carry a TV-Be-Gone in my purse. (I've never used it. Afraid I'll get in trouble.) And as cool as this technology is, and as exciting as I am about it, sometimes I feel like it is all too much noise, like the screen in the restaurant that keeps drawing my attention away from my dining companion. What does it mean for introverted learners? Or is it actually a boon for them because they can do it in their own time in the privacy of their own home or car?

I also wonder about the learning curve, both for trainers and for participants. One of the predictions in the article as that your performance at work, or maybe even at home, would be rated publicly. Imagine public 360 reviews! We've been testing a new performance review/development program at work for the last two years, and one of the biggest hurdles was the technology - getting people to fill out forms in Microsoft Word! We're super excited about a different performance recognition/review tool that lets both the employee and supervisor add information to a shared file throughout the year so the review will basically be done when review time comes. But, that also means that any staff engaged in this process have a new technology to learn.

I've probably mentioned a dozen times on this blog that I love the idea of wikis, of sharing knowledge that way instead of sending them back and forth in emails, having a repository of knowledge. Getting people past the trepidation stage into the development and participation stage seems to be difficult in some organizations.

How much does technology leave learners in the dust? Or does it make learning more accessible? Or does it depend on how it's used? (It seems like that is the answer to everything. "It depends.") I'm not sure I know the answer. What do you think?

Don't be a Twitter Quitter!

So, in my desire to try to figure out what makes people tick with Twitter, I've been reading a bit more about it. Ran across this older post on Mashable that gives some tips to help people find Twitter useful, rather than dull.

To summarize/paraphrase, tips are:

1. Don't only follow people you know.
2. Don't follow celebrities or brands unless they add to your experience.
3. Have conversations with/@ people.
4. Be yourself and say what you'd say in real life. (Think of Robin's advice: use Twitter when you wish you had a neighbor to share something with.)
5. Go mobile. If you only tweet at your computer, you're missing the real action.

My first Jing video

Original photo by horiavarlan

Made a video today with Jing, and sent it on its way to a user via email. Here are a few lessons I learned:

1. You have three options for sharing the video, but may choose only one. Today I decided to save the video to my computer so it would be easy to use later and maybe upload directly to a webpage rather than use it as a link. But then I thought "Wouldn't it be nice to use the link, too, for quick-needs occasions and to avoid sending huge files via email?"  When I went back to my history to see if I could grab a link on Screencast.com,  I could only save the file again. No link. So be thoughtful about how you'd like to use your video. (This is why the video isn't here. It's at work, not on my home laptop.)
2. Turn off your automatic email pop-up. In the middle of a longer video I was making for my project, my email popped up with a message. While the alert sound could have been easily dismissed, the fact that the pop-up was in the video was distracting. So either turn it off, or make sure the frame doesn't include wherever it pops up.
3. Editing would be nice.  I had pretty good videos when I'd flub something or realize that there was a better way to do something. Starting from scratch isn't the easiest. Could definitely see where you'd consider a software you'd have to pay for.

Twitter & Gadgets = So much to learn!

 

I'm on Twitter. I sort of get Twitter. But in reality I really don't yet understand Twitter or how best to utilize it. (I keep going back to the idea that sometimes it takes being connected to really see the value in something, and until you really, really dig in, you aren't connected enough.)

So, since I don't really get it, I thought I'd look up some tips. Found this post about using Twitter effectively. While it didn't give me the type of tips I was looking for, I it did have a huge list of cool tools that I'll be trying to add to the wiki in the coming week.

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On a completely different tangent, my husband bought me the iPod Touch. Still not sure how I feel about it - trying to type on it is awful. It hates my fingernails, and the "keys" are too small. Guess I just prefer buttons. :) But it is synced up with my work calendar, which is something that I've been frustrated with for a while, and he's downloaded a Facebook app, a Twitter app, and an app that teaches you about the stars in the sky.

Adventures!

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So, back to tweeting. Any of you have any tips for using Twitter?

Podcasts and learning

Image by derrickkwa

Just finished listening to Robin's Top 5 podcast about tips for using Google. Was glad I did as the other day I was desperately trying to locate Google's Wonderwheel but couldn't remember what it was called or where to find it. (Kept ending up on the page with all the cool tools, like Google Alerts and Voice, but had forgotten about the search sidebar.)

Listening helped reinforce for me what some of the best uses of the technologies we have been talking about are. They are great Introducers: ways to get a preview of information into the hands of our learners before they get to us. And they are great Reinforcers: ways to quickly and easily remind learners about the learning they have already done in hopes that they will use it. (As Tom is fond of saying, Repetition, Repetition, Repetition!)

Of course, these technologies can be used for the presentation of new knowledge, but depending on the interaction level, may not be as effective as some other methods of facilitation.

Adaptation: Business Models in a Wiki World

Finished chapter 10 in Wikinomics today, and found the topic under scrutiny to be fascinating. In particular, the arguments for an against gatekeepers of content. That, supposedly, editors and television producers are ferreting out the best stuff, and sending it our way, vs. letting us determine what content is best for us.

"Traditional 'elitist' media is being destroyed by digital technologies," says Andrew Keen in his book The Cult of the Amateur, as quoted on page 273 of Wikinomics. I have to ask, is that such a bad thing? I've always had a bit of a natural dislike for anything "elitist", particularly for the sake of saying it is elite. The composer Samuel Barber (maybe it wasn't Barber, but Babbitt. I've been out of undergrad for eight years) always rubbed me the wrong way for saying that music wasn't for amateurs, that only the best and the brightest music students could understand and enjoy his music, that you had to understand music theory and his mathematics to enjoy it. I always said, Baloney (or another less polite word to that effect). Have you heard Barber's own Agnus Dei? One of the most beautiful, poignant arrangements of this sacred text I've ever heard. No, perhaps the non-musician will not be able to appreciate the intricacy of its composition, but does that make them shed any fewer tears when it touches them?

I'll get off my soapbox now, but while I generally agree that democracy is not perfect (what is the story? If two wolves and a sheep vote on what to have for lunch, than you can bet democracy will put fear into the heart of the sheep.) I do believe that there is something to be said for letting the masses vote with their mouse clicks instead of with just their $$$.

Just as radio had to adapt to television, and the telegraph was eclipsed by the telephone, so the music industry and the publishing industry, and hopefully the education industry, will either adapt the the challenges of this ever-changing web 2.0 world and incorporate its potential, or be eclipsed by it.

Old and new: the Dead Sea Scrolls in the Age of the Internet

Took a break from blogging this weekend to visit the Science Museum of Minnesota and its exhibit, The Dead Sea Scrolls: Words that Changed the World. A long drive, but it gave hubby and I two whole days without the little girl, so that was kind of nice.

In light of this class, it seemed ironic that I was looking at a scrap of the world's oldest copies of Genesis and Leviticus while learning about and reading about new content being created at the drop of a few typographical characters and bandwidth every few seconds. These scrolls took days, weeks, and months to create, and the handwriting is tiny.

It also brought back the value of learning in the age of the internet and the printing press. So few people were literate in those days, whereas now very few people can't read. So few people reading also meant that only a few people had the "power" or the "knowledge" to pass along. On the flip side, because so few people could read, they often didn't trust the written word, instead trusting in the oral tradition. Whereas we want something in writing, they wanted something to be "as good as its word."

What is the value of an oral tradition in a world of internet traffic and an abundance of written words?