The TWAIN blog

I thought I would take some time to post about interesting things I am seeing around the web lately and in print. I feel pretty “plugged-in” to resources about technology, pop culture, and learning. I visit my regular daily sites and StumbleUpon others to meet an exploratory urge.

I read an article in T.H.E. Journal tonight about an online tool called Saywire.com that proposes an interesting idea of creating a safe social networking tool for teachers and students. A district in Hillburn, NY is already using this tool to reach out to elementary students, as the article describes in T.H.E. Journal (see link above). The district uses the environment to teach students about the safe use of online social networking. I really like this quote: “[James] Yap (the director of instructional technology and data management for the Ramapo Central School District) began rolling the tool out to 500 Ramapo teachers and students in grades 3, 4, 5, 7, and 9. By focusing on younger students, the district can use the system’s controlled environment to teach proper use and behavior in web-based communities.”

Learning by immersion?!!? Also, interesting to read that this district is in its third year of a Second Life initiative for its middle school. I recommend you read the article this month in T.H.E. Journal magazine or go online.

Pico Projection from Syndiant Technology. And great news from Governor Rick Perry’s office here in Texas about this company and the development of micro-projection devices.

iCloud gives me chills in good and bad ways. I think the idea of a web-OS belongs to the heavy hitters. I wonder who will buy out iCloud first? I also wonder if you can have more than three different apps or windows open at the same time on this iCloud? I read today that the new Microsoft OS Standard edition will only allow 3 windows open at once. I guess they didn’t copy Apple’s “Spaces” concept in this new OS.

SkyTone released specs on a $100 netbook that runs the Google Android OS. It seems everyone has an operating system these days. How about I just make my own?

And finally, this little gem deserves posting here as well. I posted it on my Facebook wall today. It is footage from a Sprint HD slow motion camera that films 1,000 frames per second. Stunning visuals! I wonder how long until this technology makes it to Sprint phone?

One last share item – A Tumblr page I love to check out. This Szymon person posts the most amazing visual advertisements and sculpture ads on his Tumblr. Very interesting visual images used in international advertising.

I thought I was done but I have one last ramble. This site lists the 100 Most Iconic Viral Videos and I really think a re-imagining of them with TCEA members could be a fun idea for the conference for this year. I think a viral-video campaign for TCEA could be a good promotional tool. I watch that video of Susan Boyle singing on stage and wonder how easy would it be to recreate with a recognized TCEA (male) face spliced into it and getting Simon’s reaction??

Could be fun….. anyone? anyone?

Today, I took part in a webinar on Microsoft Live@EDU and their new Exchange Online services for school districts and I was blown away. I was given a preview to a system that changes how we manage information in our districts. The squeaky wheel lost to a cloud today.

If anything – watch their interactive website which includes animated films designed by students. Link is embedded or find here: http://my.liveatedu.com/

Here is what Microsoft says they will provide FOR EACH USER:
25GB of space on SkyDrive (their own individual home folder)
5GB of space in email
Ability to send 20MB per message
Instant messenger (which can be open for staff and not students)
Microsoft Sharepoint services – collaborative documents shared online
A website that includes blogging, calendars, document sharing, etc.
Microsoft Office Live access (Word, Power Point, Excel) online (no installers)
Microsoft Live Search

In other words, a teacher could upload their files to this system and then open rights up to students to view/edit. Teacher and administrators could create folders to share documents and files. The shared folders on our file server migrate up to this system and then we assign rights to the specific folders.

Microsoft Office Live is the web version of Office – Word, Power Point, Excel. Students and staff would have WEB access to these tools without having to install on their own computers.

Total cost for this: $0.00 for hosting. No advertisements on ANY student access service but staff may have Microsoft advertisements (only in top banner of screen). The advertisements aren’t commercials but a banner about a particular Microsoft service.

Positives:
Hosted off-site (no need for a second NOC….or a first NOC for that matter).
Free – and that is free forever (no fee later)
Web access means all materials are online all the time. No second upload for teachers wanting to post documents on their websites. They simply assign rights to their documents in their folders to who they want to view or edit the docs.
Microsoft availability online means kids and staff access Microsoft Office on any computer with Internet connectivity. Same version for everyone.
Built-in Spam and Virus scanner
Leave-ability: Graduates from district take email and info with them. Account goes from district address to @hotmail.com if they want it. All documents and files go with them and out of our control and management
Lots of space gives 30GB of space per user but may be up to 50GB once we get into the Office/Web apps
Private and secure
Collaborative work environments online
Instant Chat
Student websites – Students could make portfolios for classes and be able to share them with future employers/colleges.
Teacher websites – Teachers can generate websites with blogging, calendars, documents, document sharing, etc.
Syncs with our current Active Directory and setup (all current and archived emails with Folders migrate over)
Mobile phone access is built-in via the web
Low maintenance
Low migration issues
Offers ShareView which includes ability to link 15 users for screencasting

Negatives:
Hosted off-site so if the site is down or Internet is down, we are down.
Advertising on some areas (but it is for Microsoft products only)
25GB of space gives freedom to put music, games, etc. in the system. It will be hard to monitor it but we will look into that and how our network access control can help.
Microsoft – most viruses and hacks are targeted at them but in this day and age, we are all targets
Some migration issues. I think if we are to do this, we pay for the advanced migration tools and maybe hire an engineer to come help us migrate it all over. This could be our only cost.

My district uses Active Directory and Microsoft for everything so the migration will be simplified. The presenter in the webinar shared how universities migrate over 30,000 users in a week. We have 710 staff and have not opened up student accounts beyond the high school.

All this said, does the cloud beat the wheel? Do we migrate completely online? This changes cost dramatically but then the money for our own hosting goes to bandwidth. We open the pipeline!

I want to know from others out there who are experiencing this what their thoughts are. Districts, universities, businesses going Web 2.0 cloud – what do you think? Is it worth $0.00 for this??

Today I had the honor and privilege to present some ideas to the Hill Country Computer Club here in Kerrville. I was given information before the presentation that the audience was mostly senior citizens and that I should prepare to share about resources on our district website. Having the recent transition to our new website, I was thrilled to not only show them the new site but also explain the concept of “cloud” computing and Web 2.0.

I shared with them my vision for migrating resources to the web and the justification for why. I explained the differences of office tools, operating systems, and the push for online assessments. I also shared various resources found in social bookmarking and sharing collaborative spaces in Google documents. I kept my eyes on them to make sure I wasn’t going overboard or extending beyond what they were understanding; but they were all on board. I went for 90 minutes and even answered questions.

I left that group today with some great responses! They want to learn more and that is the best response!

They also would like to get more youthful representation in the HCCC. I may get together with my computer teachers at the middle through high school to see if there is some shared interest.

And they would like to help with a project I have in mind to get older computers out to the community. We have a huge recycling problem in this world when it comes to our computers. Instead of thrusting them out to third world dumping grounds, we could strip them down and put Ubuntu on them for Internet access in our community. The HCCC is interested in helping with this project and I welcome their help!

Anyway, it was a great time today to share with another group in this great community. I feel so blessed to be able to go out and share within our community about our ideas and to hear feedback on what we can do to improve our vision. I don’t know of many technology directors who are so willing to go out and connect to their community resources! I wish more of my colleagues would do this. Step out of your offices and into the community that may or may not be your “target” audience. Share. Collaborate. Learn.

And HCCC – I already have some ideas for your new website! Let’s keep talking!

So tonight I visited my local bookstore to pick up a book I was wanting to read and I found a treasure!! In the computer magazines, there was a full size UK mag with “Google Special” as the header. Without even flipping through it, I decided to pony up the $16 for it and take it home.

I haven’t even made it past the Table of Contents yet because it is bursting with so many goodies on just the back cover. A giant cartoon cloud on white with the word “Cloud” in it and a new logo that simply says “g OS”. And this website – http://www.thinkgos.com as its message.

The magazine is actually Linux Pro (direct link to the Special Edition on Google Tools) and it has a boot-able CD in the front jacket that allows me to run the Google Toolset without installing the entire OS on my computer. The instructions say that this new OS is “based on Ubuntu Linux 8.04″.

So is Google releasing an operating system??

Why not?! Well, I don’t think it is an operating system like what most would consider an OS. An operating system in its purest sense is one that allows the user to interact with the operations on the computer. But for Google, their operating system is housed online! The cloud is the OS! So the device doesn’t matter.

We saw this coming when they released their own browser! Chrome was the first generation of their own operating system. They extended their resources beyond a web page to the frontier of the browser itself. Now they supply the tools needed to access resources online without the limitation of the hard drive.

And yet we keep buying machines with keyboards, mice, and monitors….

The rest of the magazine contains articles on all the great Google tools out there: Documents, Calendar, Groups, Reader, Chart, Earth, Sky, Sketchup, Picasa, Purchasing, Sites, Blogger, Maps, and some of their desktop gadgets as well. It is BURSTING with resources for Cloud computing!

I highly recommend it. I don’t think this Google-thing is going away any time soon! And while the rain clouds in Kerrville turned out to be false hopes today, the Cloud remains a possibility for many applications we use day to day.

Check out the magazine. Darn! That book I purchased is now under a pile of magazine must-reads.

*Note: After reading the info on the G-OS website, I discovered that it isn’t a Google OS nor is it created by Google. The G stands for “Good” and it is a Linux-based OS that uses Google tools. Still….it is pretty cool to think about.

I have been playing with a really neat tool I found online called EverNote. One of my info-sources (Fluther.com) had a posted question about tools college students are using. An answer was the use of the tool called EverNote. Again, this is a cloud tool for posting those notes you need to find later.

http://evernote.com/

What I enjoy about this tool is that I can take snapshot photos and post those at notes. Often, I just need a visual cue to be my note. I could be in a store and want information on a product to see if I can order as a gift for someone else. With my phone, I can snapshot with the camera and post the note to access when I get home.

I can also record a voice note either on the site itself or through my phone. Being an iPhone user, I have a camera and voice recorder in one and they even offer a free app for Evernote. Within 2 clicks, I can post a new note that is accessible from my phone or from the web on any computer. Ever Note!

Great tool!