Time to Invest in Video Distribution
Video distribution is high on my priority list. We have made the most of iTunesU, our own Darwin streaming server, You-Tube, Vimeo and even Moodle. But the effort does not justify the means any more. Dealing with copyright issues is becoming more strategic and of course the overall amount of media objects being distributed has been exploding for a number of years now. We tried to conquer the OpenCast Matterhorn project, but it is not hard to figure out that open source projects either have momentum or they fade away. Plus most of the solutions that have been pitched have more of a focus on the ingestion of video for processing help. Distribution is a by-product that is typically not fully developed.
Lecture capture has been the commercial money maker with value coming from the ease of capture and production. But why would we want to capture lectures when the reason for all of this extra video is to supplement the trend toward blended learning. We have a fair investment in Camtasia so we are interested in video distribution of these Camtasia video vignettes so maybe Camtasia Relay makes sense. But I think we are really looking at a solution like Kaltura, ShareStream, MediaCast or Ensemble. And I lean toward a hosted solution since my network is not optimized for streaming nor should it be. The solution must focus on the flexibility of access control so that we can comply with copyright. A little help with video ingestion formatting would be nice but our media students are very good with that support. Option to integrate with our Moodle LMS is important. And it does not hurt for the solution to help manage other content streams like podcasts or other commercial video repositories. I will let you know what we select.
Google Drive is Good
Google Drive has been out for a week so those who had been waiting for it should have it running by now. If you did not grab it early then you typically waited at least a day to be provisioned to load it. We have intentionally kept the announcement quite at our university so that we could evaluate and formulate a plan for how we might transition our employee/student web storage to Google. So far it is all that I had hoped it would be. If you have jumped on the Google Collaboration bandwagon you are aware of the strategic advantages and that the “Drive” component was the missing link.
We have used Xythos (now Blackboard) web storage solution for 7 years and it provided the web storage flexibility that we desired but it never reached that ease of use level that would have commanded our loyalty. So now it does appear that we will formulate a plan to migrate from Xythos to Google Drive. And for this move I want to be proactive. We allowed our users to adopt Google Apps as they desired and for the most part we are happy with their usage. When we replaced our university email with gmail there was a major uptick in the strategic use of the Google Collaboration suite and again we were pleased with the overall usage patterns. This has driven new IT coaching initiatives to promote the most effective ways to utilize Google Docs.
Google Drive is the completion to the overall cloud based solution. With the increasing use of Google Docs, management of those app files was starting to be a problem, especially with all of the sharing relationships. Google Drive’s initial task migrated all of your Google Docs into a folder based organization that returned control to you for of those original Cloud files. Now with the option to move or co-locate our traditional drive based files to G-Drive with collaboration flexibility, and providing access for all of our computing devices (IOS version coming soon), we are happy.
Of course we can’t adopt another Google tool without dealing with the privacy question. Google’s Terms of Service are clear. Google does not own your files. By accepting Google’s Terms, you authorize Google to provide the services you have requested. They may learn more about us from the file names we use, but they are not mining our files for secrets. Doesn’t mean we should have secrets in our files, because the real security issue is still maintaining our own account security.
Now we begin to strategize how best to leverage this completed collaboration tool kit. And what is great is that we have the Summer to prepare for a university rollout. It does not look like we have any concerns about early adopters for our .edu domain accounts. I am optimistic that the pricing model for education will allow us to easily provision additional storage quotas for our power users and management of our domain with Google has never been a problem. So we just focus on the Google Drive features and encourage migration from our Xythos, but we are not looking at any hard transition milestones. Life does get better for Higher Education IT.
So the let the dreams continue. It is encouraging to know that Google already has API’s addressing some of the Web based access options. I’ll be looking for Moodle LMS plugins. Maybe the next gift from Google will be an expanded Video distribution system complete with sharing controls and streaming options.
They are changing the face of education globally
I checked out Coursera’s course offerings and I have to admit they have a great lineup of quality courses. I signed up for “Introduction to Logic” from Stanford which begins soon so I could evaluate the process and quality of delivery, plus I am somewhat interested in logic. Then I signed up for “Introduction to Genome Science” from University of Pennsylvania for a fun refresher to my MS in Bioinformatics where my thesis was “Security of Our Personal Genome”. Purely continuing education but what a huge market that could be. You do realize this is wave 2 of open courseware. Coursera’s quote: We are changing the face of education globally, and we invite you to join us. Let’s assume Coursera is able to competently deliver these courses to any number of students. And let’s assume their student assessment techniques allow them to validate that learning took place. They have the prestigious of elite institutions of higher education. What does this mean?
What if a year from now millions of people are successfully completing courses through Coursera, Udacity and probably other copycat competitors. First Coursera is going to be worth billions and second a benchmark will be established that will define what is a quality online course. What will this benchmark mean? It will eliminate the argument that legitimate For-Profit online providers lack in quality. But more important it will validate the other argument that many of the online courses from traditional non-profit institutions are not worth the bandwidth you are wasting on them. So what does this mean for most of us (higher education)? Our online or blended offerings which we realize we must offer will have to be of similar quality to the free offerings from the Coursera’s of the world. We will have a benchmark. And then we just worry about holding on to our control of accreditation for validating what is a college degree and what is it worth. I am thankful that we will still have the value of the campus experience, but again, what will it be worth.
Universities Moving from Elite to Unique
There must have been a press release by Coursera recently to fuel the many articles today about their new partnership with Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor to join their charter partner Stanford. This is all about elite universities embracing massively open online courses, or MOOCs. I think this signals a major move of the changing strategy of higher education. And I think this is significant enough that all universities need to take notice and evaluate how this might affect their course delivery strategy and the future of higher education.
MIT, Harvard and Stanford have shaken things up by driving these MOOCs and in some courses offering a certificate of completion for those who have successfully participated. This is not a credential that has any official meaning, however, why doesn’t it. It can now be argued that one could present their successful completion of a series of courses from these prestigious institutions as validation that learning took place and should now offer a certain level of qualification similar to a college degree. That is extremely scary to higher education, but why not to these universities that have pioneered this MOOC strategy?
It appears from the articles that faculty at these institutions are highly motivated to participate in offering these courses that are open to students outside of their traditional classes. Maybe they are inspired by how Stanford engineering professors Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng parleyed their efforts into the startup company Coursera funded by $16M of VC money. But why are these universities so supportive? Are they jumping into this just because they can? I don’t think so, I think they understand the transition that higher education is going through and they plan on be at the front end of it. They see that that an online component for a course brings the value of the community. And they have decided to perfect this online component to ensure their leadership in leveraging these communities. Not to grow their online revenue, although that may very well be an outcome, but instead this partnership with Coursera allows them to effectively bring the world to their classrooms. If the paying students who benefit from advantages of F2F also have an opportunity to collaborate with an unlimited number of students from the world, then they win. These institutions will move beyond just “Elite” they become “Unique”.
Remembering Windows 3.1
When I saw this article “Windows 3.1 Twenty Years Later” from PC Magazine today, I asked myself, where was I and how did Windows 3.1 influence my life.
Microsoft Windows 3.1
I was working for Hewlett-Packard and the Windows based PC was our standard computing environment. Yes, we were using it to access UNIX and RTE based systems but we were also developing products that relied on Windows. And the hopes for a more stable Windows were very real for us System Engineers. We had been propping up Windows 2.0 then 3.0 with HP’s NewWave, and that computing life was not stable. We had analytical instrumentation workstation software running on Windows that had strict requirements.
Opening multiple windows gave us the false illusion that we were running multiple programs at the same time. No we were just using the windows as placeholders, but Win 3.1 gave us hope. The Windows Registry was born giving us nerds the power over the general users. Screen savers spawned an industry of gimmicky apps that in some ways rivaled todays app store. Our customers were so excited when we would pass along the latest new screen saver apps that we had pulled off some BBS. I guess Win 3.1 also ushered in the Golden Age of Microsoft. We then got Win 3.11 or Windows for Workgroups. Remember how amazing the concept of sharing files between PCs was. We knew that true multi-tasking was on the horizon.
Oh well, that was fun, just felt like sharing those memories.
Redesigning our Wireless Network for BYOD
I’m giving a presentation next week at a technology conference for higher education technology leaders entitled “Redesigning Wireless Networks for the Proliferation of Multimedia Enabled Mobile Devices”. What will be valuable about my presentation won’t be details about wireless network technology, although some details will be used to seed the conversation. No, the value will be the open discussion about what we are doing with our wireless networks and why we feel we need to do it. A discussion that invariably takes us to how we will deal with the influx of BYOD, Bring Your Own Device, to our campuses.
The BYOD buzz is helpful to the vendors and consultants to generate concern about this proliferation of wireless personal computing devices on our campuses. We may just deal with this as a policy decision of (Not Allowed) hoping to maintain control of our network. But we will eventually need to deal with this. However, our infrastructure may not be ideally designed for the challenge. The solution is now pointing to a new version of Network Access Control, NAC. Not the NAC of virus quarantine days but a NAC for designed for wireless network management.
I believe that our wireless network has become the primary network access. This means we can’t wait to negotiate authentication and provisioning back at the network core, we need to make those decisions at the point of access. There may be wireless devices that we do not want on our network and there is enough information to make that decision before any access is granted. Our user classes are no longer just employees and guests, we need to offer role based policy management. Wireless service is now about seamless handoffs as one moves across campus and bandwidth allocation from multiple access points with multiple antennas. Responding to these wireless networking requirements is not just about a financial investment. The correct strategic decisions are more critical then ever as we try to position ourselves for the next wave of innovation destined for our campuses.
We can do more Good in Cameroon
GeoAid crew in Lomie, Cameroon
People of Lomie
Reason for Learning Analytics
I’m in Austin at the Educause ELI conference. This is an interesting conference, not because I am connecting with my peer CIOs, but instead because I am a CIO minority observing our Higher Education’s world of Tech savvy faculty, Educational Technologists and Instructional Designers. I believe my interest in this area of HE is the reason I was asked to join the ELI Board of Advisors. And I agree, I look at all of this through different eyes, and I believe this community may have to be the change agent that helps Higher Ed deal with the coming disruptional change.
My general observations confirm that Educause’s ELI is putting forth a good effort to support this critical community. The release of NMC’s and ELI’s Horizon Report is a major influence on the conference which is evident from the current trends of Mobility and Pad device utilization. But it is the emergence of Learning Analytics which is moving up the ladder, now expected to be formally adopted within 2-3 years. This topic was also highlighted as the BoA discussed future ELI events. What has caught my attention is that I am seeing a far more varied and complex justification for Learning Analytics then I had previously been aware of. Truth be told, I have avoided Learning Analytics for years. My previous colleague at IUPUI, Ali Jafari, was campaigning for my IT support back in the late 90‘s so that he could develop an E-Portfolio solution. My objection was always that a premiss based on a student’s voluntary submission of coursework would never work. Today we primarily want to mine our LMS data.
I continue to question the justification for investing in Learning Analytics because I still question the validity of the various methods. But I came to this conference with the acceptance that we had to invest in Learning Analytics mostly because of requirements for such data to fulfill various accreditation requirements. I have also noticed that our government appears to be taking a greater interest in some sort of institutional validation that learning is taking place, but I thought that was driven by questions about the quality of the for-profit side of Higher Education.
The ELI conference was kicked off by Adrian Sannier’s talk “If not Now, When?”, Challenges facing American education are formidable and seem to call for change more radical than incremental. Adrian was vintage Adrian with shock and awe. I have heard this talk before but this time I sensed a different undertone of disagreement. Then I took in some sessions focusing on current activity around Learning Analytics and I sensed an elephant in the room. Which was: Learning Analytics was now critical to justify our (Higher Ed) existence. And what was driving that need for justification? I believe it is the emergence of free and massively available access to live open course delivery such as from Stanford, MIT and Harvard. And most importantly the certification that is now available from those courses. If you supplement your education with the Khan Academy and successfully complete some of the advanced courses from these prestigious institutions, you will probably be successful. This can’t really be a concern, can it? It can if you believe that “Disruptive Change” could hit Higher Education and that typically that change comes from where you least expect it. How about the masses of people trying to enter the workforce that are denied an opportunity for a traditional college education?
Higher Education can react to this threat but the first step is admitting that the threat is real.
Spring Conferences
Spring approaches so we prepare for higher education technology conferences that focus on specific disciplines. It makes sense, we start of the year with the more broad university technology conferences highlighted by Educause. And the summers seem to be good for our affiliation conferences that accommodate our regional or institutional peer groups. But the Spring is our time to recap what has worked and what we need to work on. EdTech gatherings are taking place and then come our enterprise user group conferences. We can’t participate in all so we delegate our attendees, but for me EdTech issues in support of teaching and learning justify my attention.
With the release of NMC’s Communiqué from the Horizon Project Retreat that identifies the 10 most significant Meta-Trends shaping educational technology, and now the 2012 Horizon Report, the stage is set for a great, February 13-15 in Austin, TX. Our university has been a strong supporter of ELI as it has offered valuable resources and collaboration that enables us to be innovative with our use of technology in teaching and learning. Whether we are fine tuning our online or hybrid delivery or re-envisioning our smart classrooms ELI is one of the most valuable partners. Our Northwest Academic Computing Consortium, NWACC, also has strong ties to ELI as we promote our own for our EdTech professionals. I am especially looking forward to the gathering since I have recently joined the ELI Advisory Board.
Another good Spring Conference that I am speaking at is the CraigMichaels Technology Summit on April 1-3.
Apple – thanks for the E-Textbook Stimulus
I wrote a post about the recent Apple Educational Event but I decided not to publish it because it was mostly expressing my disappointment. Oh well, I’m glad I spared you the typical uninspiring critique, especially after getting a chance to review the compilation of blog posts put together by the Chronicle, “Campus Reactions to Apple’s Entry Into E-Textbook Market”. Some good points are made by others that give Apple due credit for at least stimulating the E-Textbook market.
I do hold out hope that the iBook Author application might be allowed to be more open with regard to output format. And I do not think Apple needs to require a tether to the iPad for E-Textbooks in the iBookstore but I imagine that for now all the players are holding their cards close. I do believe the overall textbook business model is close to a dramatic shakeup so any E-Textbook stimulus will be beneficial. I can tell you that we are getting ready to play our cards.
“Flipped Classroom” debate reminds us of our real product
The recent discussion created by Stanford student, Ben Rudolph, in his blog post about the Rigor of Stanford’s Free Classes, is a good opportunity for us to step back and critique the larger picture of our digital course delivery strategies. The reality for most of us is that we will deal with an increased adoption of online interaction in higher education teaching and learning. For pure online courses there are best practices, similar rules for blended or hybrid delivery and yes traditional course delivery can benefit from the adoption of online tools. But we have to keep a proper focus on what the product really is. For the traditional college degree which still relies on a Face-2-Face model, that product may be less about the dissemination of information but it will always be about the shaping of knowledge.
Stanford student, Ben, does ask some valid questions about why his course experience may be diluted by a course design that caters to a massive public audience. And it may be that this specific course lost its true compass, but it has caused me to consider where this may be headed. I think most of us have been intrigued by the increased amount of open access to courses at some of our most prestigious institutions. I have written it off mostly as publicity that they can afford. Of course it does offer valuable structured learning material that is sometimes helpful to other educators. And these open courses that Stanford and MIT have offered that connect a form of certification of completion do move toward a new form of a student’s accreditation of learning. This is good for our society, it provides opportunity for all. But let’s make sure we in higher education understand our product. We help a student transform information into knowledge and hope to mold their character so they utilize that knowledge to benefit a greater “Good” for all. Higher Education must deliver a version of that product and our warranties must be true to the expectations of our students.
HTML5 – Most Important Technology for 2012
The most important technology for higher education to watch in 2012 will be the utilization of HTML5. Not because HTML5 offers the most efficient way to handle multimedia, graphic layout or utilization of local resources. No, it is about the adoption of a Web presentation foundation that will stimulate mobile and e-book proliferation to usher in a new era of computing. For mobile it simplifies the playing field and for e-books it allows for the enhancements that have always been expected.
HTML5 has origins back to 2004 and is only now at W3C Candidate Recommendation. The significance of this selection is not specifically about HTML5, instead it is about how HTML5 is influencing the standardization of web development and e-book publishing. HTML5 along with CSS3 and Java have no proprietary agenda and they deliver what this new era of computing requires, access to and presentation of vast amounts of information. We are just now experiencing the explosion of digital content consumption devices. Support of mobile phones to pad type e-readers by IT in higher education is puzzling but will be less complicated thanks to the rallying around the HTML5 standard.
PC World agrees with the 2012 significance of HTML5
Another good article on importance of HTML5 but also on the effort it will take. HTML5 Will Replace Native Apps–But It Will Take Longer Than You Think
