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I’m not Stephen Fry. Nor Ashton Kutcher.

What I mean is that I don’t have enough followers on Twitter for each of them to realise that I can’t keep up with them all. At the time of writing this post, I’ve 3,615 Twitter followers – 3,465 more than Dunbar’s number. In other words, people expect me to be able to remember my conversations with them when I can’t even remember who they are.

This is potentially embarrassing within the increasingly business-focused world I’m operating. I need a quick way to find out if I’ve spoken/tweeted/emailed/shared a doc with someone very quickly.

Enter Greplin. When I read about it on TechCrunch yesterday, it was a bit of a eureka moment:

It’s a personal search engine for all that data you keep locked away in the cloud. If you’ve used desktop search like spotlight, you’ll get Greplin right away. It’s like spotlight for your cloud data.

After you use it for the first time you’ll understand that you’ll never not use it again. And there are nice touches like showing real time results as you type. And Greplin only uses OAuth and other APIs for authorization, so they never see your third party site credentials.

I’ve signed up and added the services (GMail, Twitter, Dropbox, LinkedIn, Google Calendar, Google Docs) that I want Greplin to index. If it’s as good as it look in the video below, I may just drop the $45/year required to ‘go Pro’ and unlock indexing of Evernote and email attachments…

In terms of user outcomes, this is awesome. It provides ‘just-in-time’ data to allow you to make decisions, have meaningful conversations, and (perhaps most importantly) prevent social awkwardness.

Posted: September 2nd, 2010
Categories: Productivity, Technology
Tags: data, Greplin, organization, Productivity, search, social networking, user outcomes
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Introduction

Before entering the realm with JISC infoNet, I really didn’t understand why there were so many conferences in Further and Higher Education . Now I understand:

• The whole academic system is predicated upon papers, which need to be presented somewhere.
• Lots of (usually JISC-funded) projects have to disseminate their outputs.
• Some subject disciplines/specialisms can be narrow. People need to meet to discuss things.

Hence, conferences.

The Problem

There’s many conferences that may be useful to your research interests and specialism(s) but you may not hear about them until it’s too late. That’s particularly true if, like me, you’re given a brief in a topic to which you’re fairly new.

Up to now, I’ve been following influential people on Twitter, reading blogs and generally scouting around for a place I can find information about relevant conferences.

It’s far from ideal.

The Solution

I was delighted, therefore, when James Clay alerted me to a website that is focused on solving exactly the above problem. Lanyrd describes itself as ‘the social conference directory’ and works very well.

The idea is simple:

1. You sign in using Twitter’s OAuth mechanism (so you can revoke access at any time)
2. It finds out which conferences your friends are attending (you can indicate that other people are attending or speaking, you see…)
3. You add yourself to conferences you’re attending or speaking at. There’s also the option to ‘track’ a conference.
4. The (conference) world becomes a better place.

The thing about it is that, like Academia.edu, it’s a great idea that needs to gain traction through use. So please do have a look at it!

Feel free to check out my profile and follow me:

Posted: September 2nd, 2010
Categories: Education, Technology
Tags: conferences, Education, James Clay, JISC infoNet, Lanyrd, learning
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Last week I wrote a post entitled What’s this? which included the following diagram:

Answers from the comments:

• DEPTh
• A planned presentation
• Apple
• Nirvana
• A 21st century educator
• The future
• dougbelshaw.com/blog
• Trust
• Innovation

Good answers all.

My answer? The user experience. User outcomes*

Think about it.

It’s what designers, teachers, productivity gurus and technology enthusiasts all strive to improve. And it’s what Kathy Sierra used to blog about. I think it’s time to take up that mantle.

*Thanks to Neil Adam for the pointer!

Posted: August 27th, 2010
Categories: Education, Productivity, Technology, design
Tags: design, Education, Kathy Sierra, Productivity, Technology
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I use a MacBook Pro. Which I like. A lot.

Increasingly, however, it’s a very powerful thin client. A ‘fat’ client, as it were. Pretty much everything I use now syncs with a cloud-based service:

• Documents, presentations, etc. are saved to a well-ordered Dropbox folder (automatically syncs with my Windows machine at work and my iPhone). I’ve gone with the 50GB for $9.99/month option.
• Spotify provides all of my music. This is £9.99/month and, to my mind, worth every penny. I sync offline playlists to my iPhone via wifi but can access almost anything I want over 3G.
• As Evernote recognises text in images and allows you to search through notes, I’m now using it to ‘take notes’ in books I read for my thesis and pleasure. I currently doing ‘pay as you go’ to upgrade storage as and when I need it through the iPhone app (£2.99/month). At the moment that seems to be most months!

The system works so well that I recently sold our Apple Time Capsule. I’ve got a 1TB external hard disk, but to be honest very rarely use or need it.

Posted: August 27th, 2010
Categories: Technology
Tags: cloud, documents, dropbox, Evernote, Spotify, sync, Technology
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Sometimes a simple idea strikes you whilst planning a presentation. This time it was:

Why can’t I embed a live Twitter search in my slides?

Although I never used the functionality, it turns out it was entirely possible to do this in versions of Keynote before Keynote 09 using ‘Web View’.

Gah.

Typical.

Undeterred, I came across this post which provides a Keynote 08 file consisting of a single Web View-enabled slide which, happily, works in Keynote 09.

This means that during my ALT-C 2010 presentation for JISC Advance I can show tweets using the hashtags #altc10 #ja in order to get some live feedback. Note that you if you embed a search from the Twitter homepage you’ll have to replace the %23 with # and %20 with a space in the URL that’s pasted into the Keynote Inspector box.

Here’s the result:

Questions? Ask away in the comments below!

Posted: August 26th, 2010
Categories: Technology
Tags: ALTC10, guide, howto, Keynote, live, presentation, Twitter
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I’m a big fan of Futurelab‘s work. I’ve used their resources, been part of their Teachers as Innovators project, and even helped Dan Sutch (legend that he is) run a Futurelab seminar at BETT.

When they launched Education Eye I didn’t really get it. Now I do. RSS feeds pulled in from blogs and news outlets (including, yes, this one) and presented in a very visual fashion. I love the way that the dots are colour-coded according to ‘inspiration’, ‘Policy’, ‘Practice’ and so-on, with certain posts starred as Futurelab staff favourites. Awesome.

I mentioned on Twitter to Dan that this would make an amazing screensaver (like the Digg ones). Turns out they’re already working on it! And not only that, but they’re working on an Event Eye, ’an indexed, searchable, content aggregator that pulls together the best content from the web about a particular conference or event.’ Double awesome.

Logging in gives you extra features. Check it out and share it with someone today!

PS Dan had a bit of a disaster with his Twitter account! Help him rebuild his network by following him: @dansutch

Posted: August 19th, 2010
Categories: Education, Technology
Tags: Dan Sutch, design, Education, feed, Futurelab, RSS, visualization
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What’s wrong with this image?

Part of the problem with technology adoption in education comes from perceived parental pressure and expectation. This is fuelled by a rather reactionary media who use outdated metaphors and reference points in their discussion of education.

Want to represent education? Here you go:

The trouble is, I can’t remember the last time I saw a teacher in a mortarboard, a child giving an apple to a teacher, or a blackboard in a classroom. These are outdated metaphors.

Come to think of it, why should the following represent ‘accessibility’?

I’ve been reading about Universal Design for Learning recently, which makes ‘accessibility’ an issue to consider for every student and individual. It’s not just about people with disabilities.

We need new metaphors. The way we communicate things is hugely important and imagery is especially important given the human brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text.* We need metaphors that help to explain education as it should be in the 21st century, not the 19th.

How can we represent learning and education more generally in a more forward-thinking way?

* I can’t seem to find a source for this scientific study although it’s often mentioned.

If you’re still wondering what’s wrong with the introductory image (which I took at a service station recently) it uses a green RSS icon instead of the recognised wifi logo. It’s not the end of the world, but they should know better.

Posted: August 12th, 2010
Categories: Education, Technology, design
Tags: accessibility, design, Education, icon, metaphor, representation, symbolism
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I’m currently sorting out Google Apps Education Edition for internal communication and collaboration at work. Things have changed a bit since I set it up at the Academy last year: there’s a new admin interface and (most importantly) Google Apps Marketplace, amongst other things.

Google Apps Marketplace allows third-parties to integrate their products and services – usually by single sign-on – with Google Apps. Some are paid-for, some free and all have separate terms and conditions to the core Google Apps offering.

I’ve been through all of the third-party products and services currently available (August 2010) and created a Google Doc of those that meet the following criteria:

1. Free (not just free trial)
2. Education or productivity-focused

The document (embedded below) is editable by anyone with the link. Please do have a look and make any additions/alterations if you can!

Posted: August 10th, 2010
Categories: Education, Productivity, Technology
Tags: collaboration, Education, Google Apps, marketplace, Productivity
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I don’t like paying for software.

I don’t like using other people’s methods for doing stuff.

I don’t like storing files offline.

But I’ve made an exception. I’ve just bought Scrivener after using it for less than 24 hours. And that’s despite it having a 30 (non-consecutive) day trial. It’s going to revolutionise my writing of longer texts – like that Ed.D. thesis I’m almost half-way through…

So give it a try. But make sure you watch the introductory video first so you can do it some justice.

Posted: August 7th, 2010
Categories: Productivity, Technology
Tags: Ed.D., Productivity, Scrivener, Thesis, writing
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This post springs from 3 things:

• My experiences as Director of E-Learning
• Discussions I’ve had with James Michie and Nick Dennis about #edjournal
• A conversation I’ve just had with colleague Steve Bailey about ‘cloud’ apps from a records management perspective

The further down the rabbit-hole I go, the more reports I read, and as I talk to increasing numbers of educational technology leaders, I’m realising how problematic my actions as a standard classroom teacher actually were. Why? Well as a ‘maverick’ my actions on a small scale could potentially have undermined the larger-scale roll-out of technology in that institution. I acted in a somewhat cavalier manner to legal issues and could potentially have affected cultural acceptance of educational technology writ large.

I’m going to propose a 10-stage ‘freeze-thaw model’ of technology integration. It goes something like this:

1. Draw up a list of minimum specifications.
2. Explore the app/service/solution that has most traction.
3. Talk to people who can do ‘due diligence’ regarding the legal side of things (especially terms & conditions, service level agreements)
4. Do some small-scale testing with a pilot group.
5. Agree upon how the technology is going to be used.
6. ‘Freeze’ it – i.e. no more new features for a given amount of time (e.g. a term or academic year)
7. Discuss new features and have pilot groups.
8. ‘Thaw’ it – let people play about with a sandbox and go through due diligence again.
9. ‘Re-freeze’ – i.e. add features and then freeze for a given amount of time.
10. Repeat.

I’m aware that this goes against almost everything I’ve done before. For example, at the Academy I just opened up all of the tools available with Google Apps Education Edition to see what people did with them. I was pleasantly surprised. But, leaving after a year I didn’t have to deal with the data security, workflow or sustainability aspects of this.

Any type of project that is successful is sustainable in some way. I see the freeze-thaw model as a way of encouraging responsible experimentation.

Image CC BY jenny downing

Posted: August 4th, 2010
Categories: Education, Technology
Tags: edte.ch, educational technology, freeze-thaw, integration, Technology
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