EDUCAUSE | Microsoft

Major Shift

ghsmith76 — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 00:03:04 -0500

Many people are aware that Apple is doing well and many attribute this success to the iPod. That would be true, but this success may actually be based on a major shift in the way we compute. I switched to Apple over the last year after using Microsoft since Win 3.0 days. And guess what, it was the right move. The Unix based OS X Apple computer today is a superior computing device. The bottom line is that using a fast; safe and multimedia rich computer is what we are looking for today and that is the Apple computer. Oh yes, 70% of our freshman chose for us to give them an Apple this year. The major shift I mentioned is the movement away from client based computing to entirely web based computing. This parallels the shift from software application based revenue to Internet advertising based revenue. Which side of this shift do you think Microsoft is on?

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Podcast: The Disruptive Nature of Technology - Jon Udell

gbayne — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 14:48:40 -0500

This hour and five minute long podcast features a session from the Seminars on Academic Computing Conference by Jon Udell, Evangelist of Microsoft Corporation. Mr. Udell is an author, information architect, software developer, and new media innovator. His 1999 book, Practical Internet Groupware, helped lay the foundation for what we now call social software. This session is entitled, "The Disruptive Nature of Technology".

Web 2.0 and other emerging technologies invite exploration, innovation, and building with “small pieces loosely joined.” Yet those opportunities can disrupt traditional academic processes that undervalue amateur participation, discourage faculty from venturing outside their realm of primary expertise, and look to “enterprise solutions” for administrative convenience. Can the academy include “half-baked ideas” in its core mission and processes? This session addresses these issues from the perspective of an IT professional outside the academy.

Podcast: Outsourcing and Partnering for Student Collaborative Services - An Interview with O'Neal Smitherman

gbayne — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 15:47:48 -0500

In this 14 minute podcast, we feature an interview with O'Neal Smitherman, Vice President for Information Technology at Ball State University, from the 2007 Seminars On Academic Computing conference. Ball State University has partnered with Microsoft to bring a number of services and upgrades to their computing services. Mr. Smitherman discusses how Ball State approached this succesful partnership, some of the challenges a university faces in partnering with a vendor, and how to assess if a partnership is right for your institution.

O'Neal Smitherman was part of a collaborative session at the 2007 Seminars On Academic Computing entitled, "Outsourcing for Student Collaborative Services".

iPhone - 3 Features That Will Impact Education from Edutechie.com

jeffvand — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 14:49:20 -0500

The hype building up to the June 29th release of the iPhone is just staggering. Steve Jobs predicted that the iPhone will revolutionize and/or reinvent the phone in his Mac World Expo keynote speech. With educators already using cell phones and iPod's in the classroom, how will this new device impact education? What new 'revolutionary' features does it introduce and how will those be important to students and teachers?

If you check out Mac's 'Introducing the iPhone' webage you will see that it is a typical smart phone with e-mail, calendar, SMS, photo, music, and internet support. That in itself isn't too exciting. Most smart phones come with that now a days. What people are really raging about is the interface, but I mostly just chalk that up to eye-candy. What can the iPhone REALLY do for educators? Here are three features that I believe will impact education.

1. Multi-Touch Display

By far the most promising technology is the multi-touch display. In this case, it is the technology that will make the difference, especially in the long run. Multi-touch displays are not a new technology. (Apple's explanation of how it works.) I heard somewhere that people have been working on this since the 80's and recently Microsoft announced their similar "Surface" computer. What is unique here is the mass production of a multi-touch device. The iPhone will be the first multi-touch device in the hands of millions of people.

When I first came across this technology it was in a TED presentation by Jeff Han. At the very beginning of his presentation he said he was excited. He went on to explain why:

I really, really think this is going to change the way we interact with machines from now on.

He was absolutely right. This new interface will allow people to interact with the computer in a much easier and more human-like manner. This is going to be the jumping off point for a whole new generation of computing. As more and more data becomes available on computers this will be the first technology that will help us to better manage that information.

From a mobile perspective, it has always been a hassle to use a mobile device. Perhaps the multi-touch display will be the missing link for actually using a mobile device in the classroom.

If you have not seen the "This is How" commercial for the iPhone, take a look, it will give you an idea as to the interface.

2. Widgets

Most computer users are already familiar with the wonderful world of widgets. Widgets are most easily categorized as mini-applications. They can be anything and everything from simply displaying the weather and RSS feeds, to fully functional translation devices. There are literally thousands, if not tens of thousands of widgets out there. In the Information and Reference categories for Macs alone there are over 300 widgets... not a bad start.

Educators, and others, will begin to use the widgets and build others that can easily be added to the iPhone thus capitalizing on the mobility factor.

3. iPhone Applications and a Fully Functional/Easily Browsable Internet

Several weeks ago Steve Jobs alluded to the iPhone being open to third party applications. Today Webware mentions that that is going to be possible with the fully-functional browser.

Athough I normally have quite a bit of vision, I admit I only know at this point that this is going to be important and that this is going to open the flood gates of creativity. Imagine harnessing the power of a multi-touch display in a test. Allowing students to more naturally interact and manipulate the test and then send it back to you over the air, anywhere.

A fully-functional browser, and most importantly, easily-browsable internet will finally allow rich multimedia, and navigation that has been impossible before. Up till now, browsing the internet on a mobile device was terrible. And if the page wasn't formatted in mobile format, forget it. Now students and teachers can really interact with the internet, and best of all manipulate it.

Yeah, but...
As it stands right now, there is no high speed internet over the cell signal (G3), but there is built in WiFi. All I have to say to that is... don't worry, this isn't the final product. We all know things are going to be added on and prices are going to drop.

That brings me to my second point, and perhaps most relevant to education. Price. Right now it costs $499 for a 4GB model and $599 for an 8GB model. That is awfully pricey for an educational tool, and it certainly going to be a long time before most of us educators get our hands on one, let alone enough students to design lesson plans around having one. But I would like to point out that the new Microsoft "Surface" devices are going to cost around $10,000. Even if you could only afford one per school or organization, you would have a multi-touch display that could be shared among a lot of people.

Other Thoughts:

So what am I missing Apple enthusiasts? How could you use the iPhone in education? Maybe we could start a contest to see who could come up with the most creative way to use iPhones and see if Apple won't supply a bunch for a class. :-) Do you think it is going to live up to the hype?

(Original Article: http://www.edutechie.com/2007/06/iphone-3-features-that-will-impact-education/)

Manipulate Digital Objects with Hands

jeffvand — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 09:08:38 -0500

On the back end of Haptic devices and Multi-touch displays I ran across this article and video this morning that demonstrates another possible way to manipulate computers with your hands.

As more and more possibilities present themselves for physically manipulating data on a computer, the more and more it will become mainstream. I really like this option because, as it says in the video, all you would need would be a USB camera device and software. This is potentially much more affordable than Haptic devices (although they are getting super cheap too) and certainly more affordable than a multi-touch display.

(Original Article: http://www.edutechie.com/2007/04/manipulate-digital-objects-with-hands/)

5 Good Developments for Education in Window's Vista

jeffvand — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 14:56:38 -0600

This afternoon I went to a meeting of the techie minds here on campus to discuss the implementation of Vista. There were quite a few people that acted like the implementation of Vista was a terrible, but necessary evil. A lot of the discussion focused around the new Office 2007 suite. From a support standpoint I can see how this upgrade could be a nightmare. The changes in Office navigation are quite significant, especially for long time users of the suite, with little apparent added functionality.

On the other hand, I have been using Vista and the Office Suite for several months as my primary machine and have not had any significant problems. I left the meeting trying to reconcile my experience with what I had just witnessed. I decided I was going to look for what was different/good about the upgrade.

All I.T. people tell you Vista is more secure, and it does have a multitude of security features that make it more safe, but an every day educator cares more about it working and functioning that how safe it is. I decided to look at specifically at how the upgrade to Vista helps us out as educators? What specific traits does it have that would be make it advantageous for us to upgrade to Vista? What added functionality will help me educate better? Here is my list:

Organization

There is no question that the biggest reason to upgrade has to be the added search capabilities. Since installing Vista on my machine I no longer use the cumbersome start menu to get to programs. I just click start and type in the program I want.

Microsoft (taking a lesson from Google Desktop) has now created an indexed catalog of your computer so you have instant search results that include inside of documents. Great for finding that paper you wrote 5 years ago.

Instant Information

Vista has a built in Gadget and Sidebar Engine that let's you add little modules to your desktop with real-time updating information about ANYTHING. Time, Stocks, Calendar's, anything! Yahoo and Google both have these already, but they take up a lot of resources and slow down your machine.
In an awesome move Vista has added native RSS feed capabilities to Outlook and their integrated Gadget's. As I discussed in an earlier post, this added feature is a must have for any educator who needs to keep up on current events and happenings!

Collaboration

Collaboration is a must have as a good educator. As educators we often need to share files with students or colleagues as we work on programs. If we are not comfortable using an online program like Google Docs then Vista gives us the added capability of sharing a folder in public space.
Vista has a new 'Meeting Space' feature that allows users to create a space for up to 10 users to meet and collaborate in real time. I have not been able to test it out yet, but a software like this would be great for meeting with your class or between students working on a project.

Backup

There are added protections to help you not lose data. You can read about them all here in detail, but my favorite is the windows backup and previous versions of documents that are available should you accidentally change something you didn't mean to.

Multimedia

Vista has added functionality to the photo manager, media player, movie maker and media center. As video becomes more and more prevalent in education, users will need ways to edit those easily.

This is just a short list of some of the improvements Microsoft has made to their windows platform. You can read a whole lot more on their Vista website if you have interest.

Disclaimer:
I realize that most of these additions are already available on through second hand software or on the Mac. (There has even been discussion about Microsoft just copying Mac's.) That being said, there is something to be said about integrated technology. 90% of our campus used Windows, so it is going to happen.

Homework:
What other added functionality do you see as benefiting the academic community?

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Original Article: (http://www.edutechie.com/2007/01/5-good-developments-for-education-in-windows-vista/)
Technorati Tags: microsoft vista, office 2007, microsoft education

Microsoft Grava?

mpasiewicz — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 07:57:21 -0600

Has anyone hear about Microsoft Grava? I hadn't heard of it before and just stumbled upon it.
“Grava” is the codename to a new set of tools from Microsoft’s Education Product Group that will allow the education community to create and assemble materials that will increase discovery and allow learners to go at their own pace and learning style. Grava tools are slated for release in the Fall of 2007.You can find out more at:
https://connect.microsoft.com/Grava

An Interview with Gary Schwartz

mpasiewicz — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 10:11:47 -0600

In this 17 minute recording, RPI's Gary Schwartz shares some thoughts about the Bedework open source calendaring project.

See also:
http://www.calconnect.org

This interview is provided courtesy of CNI and was recorded at their 2006 Fall Task Force Meeting. The Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) is an organization dedicated to supporting the transformative promise of networked information technology for the advancement of scholarly communication and the enrichment of intellectual productivity. You can learn more about CNI at their web site, http://www.cni.org

An Interview with Joel Greenberg

mpasiewicz — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 09:46:32 -0600

In the attached 16 minute recording, we'll hear from Open University's Director of Strategic Development, Joel Greenberg. Listen in as he discusses a range of topics including, among other things, Open University's interest in Moodle.

This interview is provided courtesy of CNI and was recorded at their 2006 Fall Task Force Meeting. The Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) is an organization dedicated to supporting the transformative promise of networked information technology for the advancement of scholarly communication and the enrichment of intellectual productivity. You can learn more about CNI at their web site, http://www.cni.org

Linux and Microsoft in Indiana

StuartYeates — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 05:26:10 -0600

CRN has a series of stories on the increasing use of Linux in Indiana, under a program called Affordable Classroom Computers for Every Secondary Student (ACCESS).

"The amazing part of this is, with everything we're doing in the classroom, teachers don't bring up Linux," he said. "They don't bring up open source. They bring up curriculum. You don't want the focus to be on Linux or open source."

As usual there Microsoft are trying to spin this, but it's very hard to spin curriculum-based arguments.