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Head in the Cloud

Over the past few days, it’s been very hard to contain my excitement over Google’s recent moves to add all the applications from standard Google accounts to Google Apps for Education. While the core suite of applications – Mail, Docs and Calendar – are extremely useful and have put my school on the Web 2.0 map, I’ve been so disappointed that other Google apps like Reader, Picasa and Blogger have been off-limits for so long.

Sure, students can create their own Google accounts, you say? Having worked with frustrated teachers and students who all-too-easily forget usernames and passwords, I’ve really come to appreciate the ability to control accounts as the school administrator and have kids quickly online and using the tools they need to get ahead.

Now when all of my students log in, they get immediate access to an incredibly powerful set of Web 2.0 applications without the need to enter a single name or additional password! Exploring these is going to take some time, but it’s great to know they’re there for anyone to use.

Some of the new applications I’ll be running PD on are:

1. Google Reader

Call it the nerd factor in me, but I have to say that hands down, Google Reader is the most remarkably simple yet sophisticated piece of the Web 2.0 pie. While many educators have consigned RSS feeding into the too-hard basket of technology education (installing feed readers, locating RSS feeds, keeping up to date, etc.), Google Reader makes RSS reading fun, social and very easy to get started. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a valuable teaching doorway into the vast world of internet content. I’m really looking forward to sharing feeds/articles and helping my students getting started with organising their reading on the web.

2. Picasa Web Albums

Google’s extremely generous web storage allocation (I know it’s now in the several gigabytes but have lost count) is incredibly good news for Google Apps Education students making use of this photo management gem. However, it’s Picasa’s easy integration with other Web 2.0 services like Blogger, Reader and Docs along with mobile integration and a very powerful photo management application for Windows and Mac that wins hands down.

3. Blogger

While not my blogging tool of choice (sorry Google, WordPress has the edge for now), Blogger makes blogging very easy and hassle-free. It’s great to know that my kids can get started without the need for another username or password, and I’ll be incredibly keen to explore this as a platform for electronic learning portfolios.

Pieces in a Web 2.0 Puzzle

It’s easy to see that already, Google is bringing to the web the same kind of integration that Apple brings through suites of applications like iLife and iWork that easily “talk to” one another  without the need to transcode data or switch out of one app and into another (just think about the “Blog this” buttons in Picasa and Reader  or the Picasa Web functionality  in Blogger). As a technology expert/administrator, I see this as a level playing field for all teachers and students. While not all of the tools will be used all of the time, making them available is the first step to transforming the curriculum and the way we teach with technology.

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Integrating School Data with Student Email Addresses

Very few tech-related experiences come close to the nerdy thrill of cracking that spreadsheet formula that’s been puzzling you all week. On Thursday afternoon, I managed a small feat that will streamline communications in my school: synchronising school data with student email addresses to create shared contact groups using Mac Numbers, Google Apps Education Edition, Moodle and Shared Contacts (an app from a German company by the name of Floreysoft).

For some years now, it’s been puzzling me that while students have email addresses and schools have plenty of student data, never the twain have been able to automatically meet. How convenient would it be for teachers if the classes that are created in schools’ databases could then translate into shared contact groups to enable teachers to easily subscribe to their own student class lists! Ah, but the simple things in life so often elude us, do they not?

What’s made this all-too-difficult in the past has been our school system’s use of antiquated email software by a company named Editure, which did not allow for a shared directory, searchable addresses, let alone groups that could be created. The result of this was that while students did use their email addresses to contact their immediate friends, staff were unable to find an address easily, much less create a list of addresses.

Companies like Google have – for at least the last eight years – brought sophisticated ways of searching email archives and directories. With the flexibility of importing and exporting CSVs, all that is required is a spreadsheet program that can create the lists required.

Enter Mac Numbers and a few simple steps.

  1. From my school’s student management system (a horribly clunky and much out-dated MS Access-based program with the misleading title of ‘General Access’) I manage to export a student list with core classes and homerooms, which becomes the ‘General Access’ sheet like so:
  2. From Moodle, I manage to export a list of student names and Google Apps email addresses – let’s call it the ‘Moodle and Email Addresses’ sheet:
  3. Using the CONCATENATE formula, I string first and last names together on both sheets, to make unique search strings.
  4. I then create a third sheet – call it ‘The Works.’ It reads the names, classes and homerooms directly from the General Access sheet and will do the work of cross-referencing these against the Moodle data, to give us a list with all the fields we want – in this case, names, classes, homerooms and email addresses. I also CONCATENATE names on this sheet in a separate column.
  5. The LOOKUP formula then searches both the Moodle and General Access sheets to match the concatenated names and produce the Google-style CSV for creating the shared contacts groups.
  6. Having made a sheet with all the data, the ‘Reorganise’ tool in Mac Numbers lets us display only the email addresses for, say, the 8.3 class or the Mackillop homeroom. Hiding lets us display whichever rows and columns we need for whichever purpose. Hooray!

At this point I feel about as nerdy as a guy in a lab coat pouring fluorescent green liquid into a test tube. Well, not quite – but close.

If anyone is interested in this mock-up copy of the Mac Numbers spreadsheet, drop me an email or comment and I’ll pass it on.  After all, who wouldn’t give their right arm for Celine Dion’s class, homeroom AND email address?!

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Google Apps: On Scalable Web 2.0

Colleagues often tell me that what makes me a credible and helpful technology mentor is the sheer number of hours I spend in the classroom. Although teachers can be a cynical lot, I tend to agree that when corporate technology experts step into schools to trial something new, they often miss the mark simply because they fail to understand what it is like teaching a six-period day. Teachers can and will baulk at new technology because it means extra work. The challenge is in convincing them that the work will pay off, both for them professionally and for their students’ learning. My relative success is in making sure of this payoff for myself before I suggest something to colleagues.

Web 2.0 is a classic case-in-point. There are incredible gains to be made when incorporating some – or a full range – of web-based tools, services and applications into the curriculum. As a teacher, I cope with this well. I find it easy to set up a class list of Wikispaces accounts, manage threaded discussions, share media and facilitate collaborative reading and writing.

The problem is that what one teacher does in one classroom is all-too-often difficult to replicate and scale up across other classes, year groups or whole schools. Keeping track of user names and passwords for Blogger pages or Gliffy accounts is time-consuming – even the most able technology-minded teacher tears hair out when students lose (or can’t/won’t remember) basic details. Other teachers who struggle with the technology may simply avoid it altogether or pay lip service.

My reflection on Web 2.0 is that it needs to be taken in slow, measurable and scalable steps. Scalability is the main reason why I’ve decided to go with Google Apps Education Edition – which gives administrative control to domain owners to create email and apps accounts for an entire education institution. This gives us a starting point for all students in the school to be able to log in and access some of the best Web 2.0 collaborative tools available. Most importantly, we create and control the accounts – which provides security and a consistent experience. When teachers are ready to try online collaboration, the accounts are ready and students know how to use them.

For anyone who doesn’t know about Google Apps Education Edition, you might find the following video of interest:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRYRbPCHTck]

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Moodle and Google – on Libre and Gratis

A couple of weeks ago I was asked by my executive to give a “State of the Union” address to teachers on the successes of my Moodle/Apps@CCC project – the integration of Moodle courseware with Google Apps Education Edition. I was asked particularly to focus on where we were at as a school engaging in e-learning and what some of the future possibilities and potential might be.

It’s no real secret that some of our teachers are doing a fine job of adopting this new technology in a relatively short amount of time and on their own steam. I run afternoon sessions and sessions during school time on everything ranging from the basics of setting up a course page to moving towards co-constructivist learning with a broad range of modes and learning opportunities. Session after session, I see dedicated teachers wanting to know more and do more with technology, to build an online learning community of over a thousand switched-on critical thinkers and learners.

At the same time, many teachers struggle with the concept of e-learning – perhaps understandably so. For them, it simply involves uploading a bunch of Word documents to an online repository somewhere and leaving it at that. Problem is, while it’s a decent first step, the jury’s out on whether that’s really going to make a real difference in the long term. For some, this is the only step – and teachers here need to be challenged to think outside the square.

Seizing my opportunity, I prepared a talk on the nature of open/closed, libre/gratis (check out the Wikipedia page on this) and free vs free. On the one hand, one can appreciate Moodle – a fully open-source, free (as in libre, or speech) and grass-roots initiative. On the other hand, it’s also possible to appreciate Google Apps Education Edition – a relatively closed service, but nonetheless powerful and free (as in gratis, or beer). While the distinction to some might be academic, I really argue that we should always recognise where the Web 2.0 tools we use stand in relation to the questions – some of them ethical, others organisational – posed by the open/closed and libre/gratis paradigms.

Perhaps I’m dealing with two issues here – after all, what’s possibility and potential in relation to open and closed, and what does free beer have to do with it?! In the end, the way I see it is this: we’ve managed to source and use two of the best pieces of scalable software for e-learning-based education, both of which don’t cost us a cent. The possibilities and potential are endless – but that doesn’t change the fact that we need to think critically about how we approach them. After all, who really needs another bunch of Word documents?

Here’s the keynote of the presentation (check it out at slideshare.net to see accompanying notes):

[slideshare id=3382612&doc=presentation-100309205836-phpapp01]