Hopefully, you are familiar with the videos produced by Dr. Michael Wesch and the Digital Ethnography project at Kansas State; if you haven’t seen A Vision of Students Today or Information R/Evolution, I recommend you take the time to view those and others.

However, Dr. Wesch’s February 27th post is just as valuable a resource, to me, as the videos he and his students have produced. The post describes the mashup of various collaborative tools he and his students are using to conduct their research, and of course, the workspace is publicly available. It’s an incredible opportunity for any faculty member to browse through the work they are doing, and more importantly, how they are accomplishing it.

The most personally revelatory aspect of the research platform is how they are using NetVibes to juxtapose the data collection point (YouTube) and the data entry point (Zoho Creator form on the right) on the same web page. Within that, the use of web-based forms isn’t new, but I’ve not looked closely enough at the Zoho tools in the past to consider how the forms and spreadsheets could be used to collect the data in that manner. Of course, this time around, a better personal familiarity with that concept following Google’s release of the same feature - forms attached to Google Spreadsheets - made the idea sink in a bit more. Seeing it in action certainly helps.

Anyone working with or working to promote the use of collaborative documents and tools should take the time to browse through the research platform created by the Digital Ethnography working group at Kansas State.

I like Google.

I would very much like to see a Google learning management system application and have wondered outloud to many colleagues about how long it’s going to take before Google decides to enter the LMS market. This past week, they inched one step closer, in my opinion.

Google finally launched the Google Sites; an application built on the JotSpot platform which Google acquired last June. One of the demo sites for the application is a classroom site. There are several individuals already writing reviews of the product and comparing it to other available wiki tools, so I won’t rehash that here. I have three thoughts regarding Google Sites.

First, I am disappointed that Google Sites is only available via Google Apps. What used to be a tool available via the web for any user - JotSpot - is now only available to those with control over a domain for which they can set up Google Apps. I assumed or hoped the tool would likely be rolled out to general users as a tool within Google Documents.

Second, the fact that it is available via Google Apps makes that suite of tools more attractive to educational institutions. Now, rolled in with mail, calendar, and other Google tools, Google Sites is a valued addition to the Google Applications for educational institutions. I also think it highlights the struggle Microsoft faces in keeping up with Google regarding the educationally relevant applications made available online.

Finally, there’s on a few items left before I see as being necessary to make Google Applications a viable solution as an enterprise level learning management system. Other Google tools need to be incorporated into applications like Google Documents has been; that makes it possible to create classroom private collections of discussion groups, blogs, etc. An assessment or quizzing tool needs to be possible, and a gradebook function is necessary. Of course, both of those can potentially be accomplished via a database template designed for that purpose; how long before Google makes a database application available via Google Documents?