Monthly Archives: June 2011

Jun 15 2011

Incident to Teachable Moment

It’s very difficult to avoid the Anthony Weiner incident.  All that you have to do is turn on television news or late night comedy and the story is up front.  You just haven’t been able to get away from it for the past couple of weeks.  It’s sad to see someone’s personal and professional life blow up on primetime.  But, the incident most definitely could be used as inspiration to guarding your personal digital footprint.  It’s also a prime example of how social media can be so pervasive, responding quickly to issues of the day.

If students are old enough to fully understand, I could see the following line of questioning.

  • How many of you have a cell phone with a camera?
  • What do you know about House of Representatives member Anthony Weiner?
  • Does Anthony Weiner have a Wikipedia page?  When was it created?  How actively has it been edited in recent days?
  • Can you find Anthony Weiner on Google?  How about Bing?  How about Yahoo!?  How many hits can you find?
  • How many hits does Google estimate are there for him? 
  • How many hits does Google record on him in the past 24 hours?
  • How many pictures does Google return when you do a search?
  • Now that the incident has happened, posted to the internet, and now indexed by the major search engines, can this content be removed?  How?
  • What did President Obama say about the incident and Mr. Weiner’s future?
  • If Mr. Weiner goes looking for another job, how does he explain the incident to a perspective employer?
  • If this or a similar situation happened with you, how would you explain it to your family and your friends?
  • How could the whole situation be avoided?
  • Does this incident change your thinking about posting pictures or other use of social media?

Whether we like it or not, students are daily creating and adding to their digital footprint.  It’s one thing to talk about these things but certainly another when you see the negative effects that unfortunate choices can have.  Can you turn this incident into a personal eye-opener for your students?

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Jun 15 2011

OTR Links for 06/15/2011

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Jun 14 2011

It’s Been Done

So, I’m driving north on Howard Avenue into Windsor to visit with my buddy @sadone yesterday, watching the road and the clouds ahead of me and I see this.

As I look at it, I get this idea for the next big thing.  I pull over to the side of the road (yes, I did – notice the gravel) and take this picture so that I don’t forget.

Then, I realize – it’s been idone.

http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/icloud-sues-apple-965005

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Jun 14 2011

What if it’s you?

One of my favourite reads is Tech Republic.  It regularly addresses topics and conversations dealing with the professional edge of information technology.  It’s not an educational publication but it’s pretty difficult not to see the information technology structure in education as just much of a business function.

Recently, there was an article called IT Managers:  Stop making excuses for the jerks on your team.  It was one of those articles that, when you read the title, figure that it’s written by someone just recently done wrong and has a big axe to grind.  The article, short as it is, just boils down to regular common sense and use of manners.  Things that, unfortunately, you don’t see universally appreciated these days.

I would encourage you to read the article and picture it within your organization, whatever that might be.  Don’t just read the original posting – take the time to read the comments.  With any good thought provoking message, there are some first person thoughts from the field.

Let’s face it though…those of us who work with technology and excel can be an odd lot at times.  Frequently, you get so engaged or puzzled by the problem at hand that you can be oblivious to the world around you.  The behaviour, at times, might even be described as eccentric.  Those elements probably go right to the top of your department.

As I’ve told my own kids, when it looks like everyone around you is a jerk, maybe it’s time to step back and look at yourself.  Maybe it’s you that is wrong this time around.  So, what if it is you?

In the article, the author makes reference to a restaurant.  Very clearly there are workers who serve the clientelle.  We all know the restaurant model.  Are we ready to accept the same model in an information technology department?  Should members exist to serve the clients?  Or, are members supposed to be tucked away in their cubicle doing their tasks.  I sure hope that your model is the former.  But, for every call to the help desk, or every plea for help, or every seemingly silly question, do you ever take the time to find out how you did today?  For every department meeting, does the leader get some feedback to find out how it went?  Do the current intiatives make sense both in functionality and the ability to serve your clientele?

So, what if it’s you?  Are you prepared to be professional enough and confident enough to recognize and adjust when someone comes to you and lets you know that you were a little out of line today?  It’s easy to send out edicts when you’re at the top of the organization.  In fact, you probably got there because of your leadership skills.  But, are you always right?  Are you always on your game?  Are you big enough and professional enough to take the advice when someone lets you know "It was you…"

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Jun 14 2011

OTR Links for 06/14/2011

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Jun 13 2011

Wiki Excited – Yes and No

What did you do yesterday?  I watched the Canadian Grand Prix – two hour rain delay and all.  As I was watching the rain drops and listening to the commentators try to fill the two hours with their knowledge, my fingers began to wander.  I stumbled upon a web application entitled Wikihood.  Wikihood is a mashup of content from Wikipedia and Google Maps.  Interesting concept, I thought — I wonder what it knows about the race.

The Canadian Grand Prix is hosted on beautiful Ile Notre Dame in Montreal.  It’s held on the island that was build for Expo 67.  The track itself is named in honour of Gille Villeneuve.  As I type this, I realize what a fountain of useless trivia I can be at times.  I wonder what insights Wikihood would give me.    So, I fire up the website to check it out.

I found it surprising that the map loaded first but that’s ok.  It actually zoomed in too far to see the entire track and so I backed out a bit so that I could see the entire island and the track.  That appeared in the right panel.  In the left panel, information had finally appeared.  A summary of the Circuit and the races that are held there appears and that was about it.  There were three tabs that just provided a bit more information.  It was then that I noticed the three little icons at the top of the pane that really dug into the content and provided all kinds of information including a link right to the Wikipedia page.  I was impressed.

Now, I noticed that when I was at the original Wikihood page that they had a copy of the product for the iPod and iPad.  This, I could see as a terrific portable reference so I downloaded the iPad version.

This is where the no part to the excitement kicked in.  I thought that the portable version would have been build on the same framework as the web version.  It turns out that it wasn’t but that’s OK.  Often developers offer funky swiping features when something goes to the iPad.  In this case, there were two tabs at the top of the screen.  One tab was for Location and the other for the Map.  So, I do the same search for Circuit Gille Villeneuve expecting to get the same results.  I was surprised when I got different results.  I ended up with choices of Silverstone, Spa-Francorchamps, Catalunya, and then a bunch of circuits in France and a number of references to Villeneuve.  When I switched to the map tab, the application crashes every time.  I was quite disappointed.  I’ll leave the application on my iPad for a little while and perhaps there will be some updates.

For the time being, I’m going to continue to play around with the web version.  I think this has the potential to be an interesting application, particularly because it can sense your present location and help you with information about that.  The web version works nicely; just keeping my eye on the iPad version.

Jun 13 2011

OTR Links for 06/13/2011

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Jun 12 2011

How Anyone’s Voice Can Change The World

I had the opportunity to meet this wonderful lady, Angela Maiers, at last year’s ISTE conference.  It was only for a brief moment as she was rushing off to somewhere else but I had a sense that she had a marvelous message to share with others.  Consequently, I gave her a call and invited her to be the luncheon keynote speaker at the Western RCAC Symposium last December.

Inviting her to Symposium and actually getting her there were two entirely different things.  Snow was one thing, customs another, flights grounded another but these were solvable from my hotel room in London.  I called a friend who called a friend who had a fax machine and made part of it right and my memory of a Detroit to London Shuttle Service made another part of it right.  Picking her up in snowy London with her fancy shoes was quite another!  But, to her credit, she hung in there and had faith that together, we could turn an unfortunate series of events into positive ones.  Eventually, we did and she got to share her message with the Symposium.

Angela had an opportunity to speak at one of Jeff Pulver’s 140confs.  Her talk surrounded a similar set of events as the London one only this time the setting was Chicago, Illinois.  Many of us lived it vicariously through Twitter at the time.  It was the type of story that could generate nightmares.

Instead, she turned it into a success and further to a wonderful story to be shared in 10 minutes on the stage.  She changed her original topic to one of “How Anyone’s Voice Can Change The World”.  The talk appears below.  Please take the time to enjoy it.

It’s an important message that she delivers.  You can see yourself in her shoes when the sense of panic and the world closing in on you as a deadline approaches.  And yet, it’s the faith in people that saves the day.  It’s an inspirational keeper.

It really is a good story and it did happen.  So did Angela missing her flight out of London to take her back home but she had equally as helpful friends working through it with her too!  I’m convinced that she’s just one of those people who makes good things happen wherever she goes, counting on good people.

There’s a lesson that we can all learn from this.  Angela has a great resources site at:  http://www.angelamaiers.com/

Jun 12 2011

OTR Links for 06/12/2011

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Jun 11 2011

Are You Current?

I really enjoyed Shannon in Ottawa’s recent post entitled The Millennials Are Googling Us.

In the posting, she did a great deal of research about the internet presence that her school has, how they’re using it, and how perspective teachers are using it to do a little research before applying to be part of the school staff.  The message is pretty much what you would expect – people are reading their web presence whether it be applicants or parents and they are enjoying and using what they read.

I suspect, though, that this school may well be in the minority when it comes to having an updated web presence.  I spent some time today just wandering around looking at other schools sites and noticed the following…

  • School sites that don’t have the current principals name on them;
  • Sites that have the “last updated” date on them (a good idea) but it was over two years since the last update;
  • Some of the most bizarre colours and formatting;
  • Sites that are just a collection of PDF files generate by word processor;
  • Things that are spinning and making noise to distract the viewer.

It’s a shame but I suspect that some of the following might have taken place.

  • was created by a teacher who has left the staff with nobody willing to pick up the slack;
  • was created by students who did a great job but then graduated;
  • was created by a teacher who had some time allocated to the task but no longer does;
  • someone took it on with enthusiasm but life got in the road.

There could be millions of other reasons as well.  So, what is the solution?  After all, particularly in Ontario, you have access to some of the best products available for web creation in the Ministry of Education licensed Adobe Creative Suite.  Well, maybe we’ll buy some other product that will provide easier design like FirstClass or Drupal or Moodle.  There may well be some initial enthusiasm but it takes a great deal to maintain a contemporary website.  Let’s make it so that you’re in a templated world then.  Our site will be red and your site will be blue.  Repeat after me “we are all creative and independent thinkers”.  Just fill in the blanks with your own PDF files.

It seems to me that the when you get to the bottom of all of this, the answer is time.  Time devoted to learning how to create and post content, time devoted to collecting content, and a recognition of time allotted to do the task.

The reality is that it requires a school based interest to have a workable digital footprint.  It may well be that you use WordPress or Moodle or whatever but it need to be a collective desire of the staff to put its best digital foot forward.  The one thing that often goes missing in all this is that it takes a great deal of time and devotion to keep this all together.  As I take a look at W. Erskine Johnston, they’ve made a commitment with an installation of WordPress and their own domain name.  The principal appears as a regular contributor and there are lots of pictures celebrating the school.  It was a pleasure to view the site.  Will they be able to sustain this over the years?  I hope so.

I had a colleague once who was a school webmaster.  Because of “security issues”, he was the only person who was allowed to post content to the website.  He did a great job and took great pride in doing so.  But, after a while, he tired of always being the go-to person for web content.  Right about that time, we were doing a lot of work with wikis and he came up with an idea that was genius.  He moved the website to a wikisite and gave every teacher in the school their own login, password, and responsibility for maintaining their own presence.  I think the idea was genius.  The solution wasn’t about working harder, it wasn’t about spending all kinds of money on yet another tool, it was about everyone working and pulling together.  The result – a website that always has fresh content with everyone pitching in.  Isn’t that what collaboration all about?

How are you maintaining an online presence that you’re proud of?

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