Posts tagged google
I *wish* Google Chrome had . . .
Jan 5th
Integrated Web Search. The one feature I wish Google Chrome – or an extension for it – offered is Integrated Web Search. Or at least, that’s the term Firefox uses for the feature. At this point, I have not found an extension that provides the same feature; if you happen to know of one, please let me know. Why is it all that important or useful, you ask? More >
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Loading ...Interesting Google Labs Projects
Dec 21st
It’s been a long while since I’ve flipped through Google Labs, and honestly, I can’t remember doing that recently in any depth or with much curiosity. Not sure why. I just happened across Google Labs tonight; perhaps it was a twitter mention of Google Shared Spaces – a sort of new/re- incarnation of Google Wave – that led me there. Giving it a little more time, I noticed several Labs projects that definitely deserve more attention from educators’ – if they’re not already getting that attention: Shared Spaces, Breadcrumb, News Timeline, and Fast Flip. I’m sure there’s more in Labs I need to find/explore. Let me know what you find that’s particularly interesting. More >
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Twitter Acquisition Matters to Education
Apr 10th
A possible acquisition of Twitter by one of the larger competitors for the online search and social markets has been bandied about since last November when talks between Twitter and Facebook broke down. More recently, Microsoft and Google have been rumored to be discussing a possible acquisition with Twitter’s owners. While most analysts are interested in the acquisition of Twitter given the impact it would have on the technology landscape – social platforms and search revenues – I believe educators should also have interest in the acquisition as well. In my opinion, it’s in the best interest of educators already using Twitter and the education community at large if Google successfully acquires Twitter rather than Microsoft or Facebook.
First, Twitter may likely remain more open and usable if acquired by Google. More >
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Google Friend Connect @ Edtechatouille
Dec 5th
Google Friend Connect entered open beta today. I’ve been waiting and watching for this tool to become more generally available. As of this posting (12/4/08), Google Friend Connect is installed in this space to experiment with the features etc. The members gadget is at the top of the right sidebar, if you’d like to try it out. I may be adding other available gadgets as well. When the closed beta for Friend Connect was originally announced, More >
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Great Image Library for Educators? Or Not?
Nov 19th
I noticed via a post at Lifehacker today that Google is hosting the entire LIFE magazine photography archive. As Google’s announcement indicates, this doesn’t include just published images; it includes any and all images which can be digitized; currently, they have about 20% of the 10 million image library scanned and online:
Only a very small percentage of these images have ever been published. The rest have been sitting in dusty archives in the form of negatives, slides, glass plates, etchings, and prints. We’re digitizing them so that everyone can easily experience these fascinating moments in time. Today about 20 percent of the collection is online; during the next few months, we will be adding the entire LIFE archive — about 10 million photos.
Whether browsing from the LIFE Photo Archive Hosted by Google start page or doing a search from Google by adding “source:LIFE” to the search, it’s an amazing resource and collection with only 20% currently available. I’m not sure where else we might find images like this one. What baffles me about the announcement and the resource home page is that there’s absolutely zero mention of copyright or license or permissions to use the content. Given that there’s nothing posted, the assumption is that the entire library is (C) All Rights Reserved, and of course, that doesn’t mean that the content can’t be used in the classroom. But, I’m surprised that there’s not at least some explicit indication of the license of the images. And, it’s discouraging that such a collectoin isn’t being made available via a more lenient and usable Creative Commons license: attribution-noncommercial-noderivative, perhaps? Maybe that’s an educator’s perspective, and just maybe, I’m asking and expecting too much. Oh well.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Classroom Clicker via Google Forms
Sep 4th
I’m teaching a section of Microcomputer Applications – an introductory level computer course. An early topic in the semester, for me, is security and ethics. Of course, I prefer discussion to lecture, and as I prepped this semester, I was wishing I had a classroom clicker – aka audience response system or aka polling – system to help engage the class – to solicit their input beyond a simple show of hands. After having just used Google Forms to collect introductory information about students, I figured I could try using Google Forms as a makeshift classroom polling system. All it requires to be functional is a teaching station with PC & projector and learners having individual access to the internet (a computer lab environment). It worked perfectly, and I definitely got more feedback and learner participation than I’ve gotten in the past. Here’s what I did.
First, I used Google Forms to create a survey for each question that I wanted to ask and use to facilitate the discussion. One example is this question about virus protection software:
I actually created ten surveys since there were various questions that I wanted to poll learners about throughout the discussion. It required more work and prep that way, but I think it helped break up the discussion a little as I stopped to ask a question and poll them. The alternative would be to have all questions in a single survey and have learners respond to all learners in one fell swoop; that definitely would take less prep time.
Second, I added to the learning module within my LMS the list of questions with links to the surveys and the results. There’s also additional links for learners related to the question or concept.
Third, during class, the process was relatively simple. As the discussion progressed, I stopped and asked the class to click on the current survey link and complete the survey.
After students had 30-45 seconds to start responding, I accessed the results page and continued to refresh until I had a number of responses matching the number of students in the class. The results, particularly given the chart and percentage summaries, provided a number of opportunities to personalize the issues and discuss the implications. This example shows that 12 of 21 in the class were/are not sure what phishing is.
With the preparation in advance and the links readily available to learners, Google Forms provided an excellent, makeshift polling system. Several side notes. First, it is anonymous since there’s no way to pass learner ID from the LMS to Google Forms; of course, I could have had learners enter their identity, but I chose not to since they would have had to do that on each and every form/question/survey. Second, it’s not good for impromptu polling; it takes relatively thorough preparation for the discussion. The process of creating the form, making the link available and accessing the results via the Google Forms interface takes some time. Finally, students couldn’t access the results on their own; Google Docs doesn’t currently have a way that I’m aware of to publish results. Clicking on the results link required logging into Google with my identity, but having the link available with the course materials allowed me to quickly and easily access the results.
Certainly, hardware solutions and proprietary software solutions provide more bells, whistles and features, but for the value/cost ratio I got from this, it was a great solution ;-)
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...The Importance of Computer & Information Literacy
Jul 25th
The Official Google Blog commented “We Knew the Web was Big“:
we found even more than 1 trillion individual links, but not all of them lead to unique web pages. Many pages have multiple URLs with exactly the same content or URLs that are auto-generated copies of each other. Even after removing those exact duplicates, we saw a trillion unique URLs, and the number of individual web pages out there is growing by several billion pages per day.
Of course, 1 trillion links will always sound like a lot, but to visualize it a little differently, exactly how many different hyperlinks is that?
So multiple times every day, we do the computational equivalent of fully exploring every intersection of every road in the United States. Except it’d be a map about 50,000 times as big as the U.S., with 50,000 times as many roads and intersections.
Is there any other argument for the importance of information literacy in our schools, colleges and universities? If our learners now do not leave our institutions prepared to “recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information,” what impact will that have on them? our workplaces?
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Your thoughts? Scene vs. Business vs. Content
Jul 13th
I recently wrote about Project Wonderland vs Second Life (July 4) and suggested that virtual worlds appear to be falling into different classes of virtual environments: business class vs. content class. With the recent launch of Google’s Lively and Vivaty, there may be a third class of virtual environments beginning to emerge: to borrow from Vivaty’s self-description of their service – a virtual “scene.”
I’m interested in the community’s thoughts regarding these descriptions of different types of virtual environments:
- Content Class virtual worlds are those which focus more on the content and visual imagery within the virtual world than specific business or communication processes. Content Class virtual worlds attract users because of what can be designed, created, or built within the space; I believe Second Life, Active Worlds and There are examples of content class virtual worlds.
- Business Class virtual worlds are those which focus more on supporting business and communication processes than the content and visual appeal. Business Class virtual worlds are more attractive to institutions or businesses interested in the platform as a means of supporting virtual meetings, communications and workspaces. At the moment, I believe Project Wonderland, Qwaq and Croquet are examples of business class virtual worlds.
- Scene Class virtual environments are not virtual worlds in the sense that the various virtual spaces are not spatially contiguous; instead, each virtual scene is independent and typically user oriented; however, it is possible for avatars to “jump” from one scene to another. The emphasis and allure of virtual scenes is the addition of a 3D element to social networks and communication. Although I need to investigate more closely, I believe Google Lively and Vivaty are examples of virtual scenes.
Your thoughts?
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Lively by Google – A Virtual "Experience"
Jul 10th
I noticed, perhaps a little later than I’d like, Google launched Lively – as described by the LA Times:
a “virtual experience,” allows users to create virtual representations of themselves, then decorate their own virtual rooms, invite friends to that room
I checked the substantial number of SLED related blogs I have in my reader and noticed there’s not yet been much written on it. Of course, Fleep Tuque (RL: Chris Collins) has already shared a few thoughts.
I’ll be looking into it more, but after a quick glance, my first impression that a “virtual experience” is drastically different from a “virtual world.” Once I have an opportunity to explore more closely, I’ll share more thoughts.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Discussion: A Google Virtual World?
Apr 1st
** Correction** I originally posted this as an “Educause Discussion” when in fact it was merely advertised through an Educause listserv. To more correctly attribute the time and resources spent to facilitate the event for the education community, this event was hosted by Montclair State CHSS Island and facilitated by AJ Brooks
This afternoon, I dropped in on a well attended (26 avatars at the high point) in-world //Educause VW// group discussion focused on reports that Google is developing a virtual world to compete with Second Life. Generally, the story goes that the combination of various Google resources – Earth, Maps with street view, Sketchup – may be combined with other personalization tools to create a virtual environment (more links). More exactly, Google potentially has a development project based at Arizona State.
While I’m waiting on the full transcript of the discussion (which I’ll link to when it’s available), I have a few thoughts; some of which were mentioned by other participants as well.
First, assuming the Google virtual world – supposedly labeled My World - utilizes existing Google “stuff” to generate a virtual replica of the physical world, would it really be attractive to current MUVE users? For me, one of the key affordances of virtual environments is to not be like the physical world – to create new spaces and ideas. From that perspective, a Google apps generated virtual replica of the real world doesn’t seem particularly attractive. The one aspect of it that is appealing is virtual tourism and/or historically relevant locations, but doesn’t a world like Second Life already offer that opportunity through historical recreations? And, if the physical world is the initial genesis for Google’s My World, how are the interior spaces of existing structures going to be developed?
Second, with the big brand backlash against Second Life being what it has been, is Google waiting for renewed interest in virtual worlds? The news and hype surrounding the possibility of My World dates back to December 2006, and the Arizona State reports indicated it was going to be released by the end of 2007. Has the hype curve for Second Life impacted Google’s initial timeline for release?
Third, although I really like Google and the array of tools it offers (I’m a non-compensated Google evangelist), I’m not particularly interested in another standalone virtual world. I’d rather see Google continue working in collaboration with others to develop interoperability between existing virtual environments. I desperately do not want to see virtual environments go the direction of Web 2.0 and social networks – with a new flavor of the month popping up every other half minute when truly valuable additions to the landscape only occur once every six months or so. As an educator, interoperability is key. We need standard protocols that allow for users to roam freely from one world to another with their avatar changing automagically as they cross from one world into the next: i.e. Topher morphs into my WOW avatar as I cross from Second Life into WOW. We need interoperability among different platforms or versions of a virtual grid: being able to move from a private OpenSim grid onto the main public grid.
Further, certainly Google must participate in the evolving online world, and virtual worlds may be the next iteration of that evolution. However, I’ve always read that Google’s mission is to make everything searchable, to make it possible to find anything via Google tools. Is a virtual world within the scope of that mission?
Finally, as an educator, I’d prefer Google invest in Second Life and continue to develop other tools that may be more useful to education – particularly since there aren’t as many “players” in that market as there are in the general virtual world market. To what am I referring? I would rather see Google Sites to be more tightly and logically integrated with all of the other Google tools – gmail, reader, calendar, groups/discussions, picasaweb, blogger, documents, scholar/books, iGoogle, news, notebook, video/YouTube, talk, orkut, gdrive, and translate – and fitted with an assessment engine. All of that will create more personal and social learning spaces that sit neatly within the online lives of learners and teachers, in contrast to current LMS products which struggle to incorporate tools comparable to what Google already makes available.
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