Wolfgang Greller :: Blog

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New figures from search engine analysts show that we use the search engine increasingly and overwhelmingly for navigational queries: for finding, not for finding-out.

My bookmarks, for example, whether in any of the multiple browsers or in Web services like del.icio.us have become so disorganised that I cannot find things anymore. Rather than revisiting them and cleaning out tags, dead links and the now inadequate folder structure, it is more efficient to vaguely remember what the site was about and google it. It is no coincidence that Google Chrome merged the search box and the address bar.

Navigational queries can take different shapes: you might type in ‘apple’ and expect to get swiftly directed to ‘www.apple.com’. Or, you might search more semantically like ‘geotagging photo site’ or ‘online video editing’.

So what does it tell about us, learners and users of technology? Have we become dependent on Google because we failed to learn? - failed to learn to organise our information properly, failed to remember what apparently had enough relevance for us to revisit? Did the convenience of the search power of these tools make us complacent and lazy to train our memories to learn and remember?

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People born between 1950 and 1980 may be the lucky generation who came closest to what we call freedom (remember 1968 and Woodstock?). Unlike to what politicians associate with the word, freedom to me is the freedom to choose your own destiny, i.e. the freedom of self-determination.

A rather gloomy vision of the technology-enhanced future is already emerging. School children in Japan are apparently being tagged with RFID devices to prevent them from playing truant. Omnipresent nano-technology is being heralded as the next revolution in ubiquitous computing. So-called “Smart Dust” will make it possible to produce computational networks that are not noticable to the human senses.

Of course, scientists always create technologies to make life better for human kind, n’est-ce pas? Still, it makes you wonder, why the military is advancing such developments to detect snipers in urban warfare. And why, a hygiene company has created an RFID soap dispenser, so workers can be checked to have washed their hands after they’ve been to the toilet…

“AUSOl :382143.1 badges (e.g., RFID devices) or using biometrics that allow recording mechanism 61 to differentiate the actions of different persons using the soap dispenser. In another embodiment (not expressly shown), signal mechanism 51 and/or recording mechanism 61 may be located remotely from the marking mechanism. This configuration may be desirable where a person monitoring hand washing (e.g., restaurant manager or parent of a young child) desires to have the signal and/or recorded information presented at a location other than where the soap dispenser is placed.” (Patent description here)

Is this what we can expect from education in the next generation? Puppet drill, where you are monitored not to step out of line? Do these Japanese school children and the hygiene workers comply?

The government will surely protect our freedom to choose, our self-determination, and our privacy, no? Protection, my hole, have you ever thought of where the protection is that comes with the Data Protection Act and privacy laws?

O.k. we might life longer, but will we be free to choose how?

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Designing learning opportunities for mobile devices is becoming fashionable, and slowly but surely takes off to be taken serious. New mobile devices like the iPhone or the N95 have much improved browser capabilities and therefore provide a platform for a good student experience. Additionally, connectivity beyond WAP has enriched the presentation and communication possibilities.

Mobile devices, however, are different to desktop and laptop. This does not only refer to limited screen estate. Designers need to take a whole new approach - not just redesign web content for smaller screens. It is best to take mobile devices as a totally new medium of delivery. Built in technologies like cameras, WiFi, text and mic can support contextual interactivity and networked learning. Designers of mobile learning, therefore, should see-hear with their users’ eyes and ears.

Rather than resizing your content to fit and work on mobiles, it is best to take advantage of what mobile technologies really stand for: contextualisation, personalisation, localisation.

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I was invited to a workshop for this interesting project, in short called VCSE. I struggled a little with the terminology and the scope in the beginning, having difficulties understanding what was meant by Virtual Campus and by Sustainable Europe. More accurately it reflects a subject network of university departments involved in Sustainable Development studies.

Sustainability is a big issue all over Europe and concerns virtually every part of our lives and our environment. Their short explanation of sustainable development went like this:

“Only creating development would mean that we could now live a good life, but already know that our children will suffer for it - natural resources such as fossile fuels will have been exhausted. On the other hand sustainability without development is not enough either as this means everything remains as is - and it can’t!”

VCSE establishes a network of university departments as nodes for local and regional networks, each of them with their own speciality, e.g. water management or energy. These hubs are then interconnected Europe-wide and offer students remote study options.

There is nothing particularly new about it, but it is good to see that university studies link up and share expertise across borders for the benefit of students and professionals.

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HEFCE has announced GBP 5.7m of funding for projects opening up quality resources for teaching and learning in Higher Education. I cannot help feeling the irony of yet another junk of money being thrown at something that has yet to prove that there is demand.

After the Hewlett foundation funded MIT and the OU with substantial multimillion grants for their respective Open Course Ware initiatives, this looks like another attempt to stimulate free sharing of educational resources and courses. But, why should it be any more successful and sustainable than previous versions?

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Firstly, it needs to be mentioned that I enjoy the convenience of storing passwords in the browser, and that I use different browsers at different times (IE, FF and now Chrome). These browsers do cash files, site history, cookies, passwords, etc. in various parts of your computer, and it is simply impossible to clean up everything everytime you shut down your computer. Deleting the history and private data still leaves them on your harddisk - so this is not really secure.

To contain browser activities I now use the free tool Sandiebox. This creates an isolated container and everything the browser writes is kept apart from anything else on my computer. That in itself is pretty smart but it does not encrypt the data so I run the Sandiebox browser within an encrypted disk. For this I use Dekart Private Disk (free) which mounts an encrypted file automatically at system startup (password required) as a new drive.

So now the sandboxed browser runs on this encrypted drive, and when I shut down, the drive is disconnected and encrypted until the next time I boot. Easy and convenient and hopefully safe.

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Interesting how Zoho integrated Google authentication despite their competition in the online office tool market. Or maybe it is because of it, to create an inroad to Google Docs users to use Zoho without registering with them.

It got me interested in the workings of Google Accounts. The login box simply shows a Google/Yahoo icon at the bottom where from you are redirected to a page on Google Accounts with a rather confusing Access Request:

I wasn’t sure whether this delivers my entire contacts list to Zoho with maybe the effect that everyone in my address book gets a Zoho invitation. Seems that this was not the case and simply got me access to my Zoho account and documents.

Logging out is equally simple with a dialogue asking whether you want to log out completely or want to stay signed on for other Google services.

All in all a very smart way of single sign-on and OpenID, and yet another way of having more Google windows open than Microsoft applications on your desktop. With this, Google rapidly becomes the key to accessing your entire portfolio of productivity tools.

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Today Google released its new browser named Chrome. My first impression is rather positive as the interface is slick as with all Google tools, minimizing impact on the screen estate. So small is the footprint on the screen, it’s even been called the “invisible browser”. It starts up fast and provides search directly from the address bar.

Import from IE Favorites and FF bookmarks is pretty straight forward and I even managed to change the interface language in the options.

So far, no exceptional new functionality has come to my attention, but there are a few advantages, mainly the integration with Google Gears and the online tools such as iGoogle. One of the nicer things is creating application shortcuts on your desktop to make e.g. Gmail or GReader available offline.

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It may sound far fetched, but Moodle already contains most of the components of a Learning Design editor. A course in Moodle can become a Unit of Learning (UOL) in LD speak. It’s topic or week structure can be interpreted as Acts and at the same time act as Environment where Resources and Services are made available to the learner. Acts are sequential in that the entire cohort (Roles) needs to complete the tasks within (Activities) before proceeding. Activities within individual Acts can be set as HTML text instructions (e.g. read the following piece of text).

I haven’t tried this but think that Roles can be assigned to individual activities, resources or services. This all leaves Moodle at the least within grasp of IMS LD Level A, but Level B & C may not be too far off.

There is, of course, a difference in terminology and what Moodle calls a resource and activity isn’t the same in IMS LD, but this isn’t critical for the user frontend and can be translated in a LD-compliant backend, or when exporting to LD xml.

The advantage is, that Moodle is a design editor, that’s close to teachers’ workflows and thinking (one major reason why it has been so successful). Resources and activities can be created straight away, and a runtime exists as soon as real learners are filled into the roles provided. Courses are portable and shareable, and you can apply changes in runtime (e.g. add a new activity).

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I finally managed to upload my files to an online provider. When I say managed it does not so much refer to the technical challenge, but to the hesitation that you have when sending your content to an external host with all the potential risks that involves (all mentioned in previous posts here on this blog).

The reasons for doing so were twofold:

(1) My blended working environment increasingly required synchronisation. I concurrently use online and offline productivity tools to edit documents in Word, Zoho, and Google Docs and it was hard to keep them in sync.

(2) Ubiquitous access became slowly but surely a requirement and I just hate our VPN setup.

Syncplicity is the tool I’ve given preference to because of it’s promiss of free 2GB storage and the ease of synchronisation in the background wherever I edit a document. You don’t even notice it does it.

Syncplicity screenshot

The best feature is that is also synchronizes with your Google Docs and integrates with Zoho and Facebook (for photos). Should make blended working much easier.