It's all about edU : Web 2.0

Thinking about the Learning Continuum with disrupters like H1N1

rgode@microsoft.com — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 01:41:01 GMT

Snow days, carpool conflicts, broken bones, learning disabilities, the flu, excessive heat, hurricanes, weapon threats, cyber-bullying, failed levies, family vacation… Any of these factors, and many others, could mean unintended missed school days and a disruption in the learning continuum, at a minimum. More importantly, it could mean stunted flow of federal dollars for attendance and instruction.

With the on-going threat of the pandemic-like H1N1 virus, schools are regularly grappling with attempting to keep some semblance of order and learning while minimizing learning downtime caused by recommendations to isolate potentially sick students.

Meanwhile, Web 2.0 advances have allowed schools to explore the potential of anywhere, anytime learning tools to enhance the learning environment well beyond the physical bounds of the school property and beyond the time bounds of school sessions. Communication, collaboration, alerts and content is becoming increasingly digital and ubiquitously accessible as 1-1 computing and home computer access spreads.

Microsoft is right there in the mix with solutions for schools. Most customers probably traditionally associate us with on-premise, central-IT sponsored projects involving SharePoint, Office Communications Server and Office – clearly our legacy and area of expertise. What many customers don’t realize is that we’re also in the business of Web 2.0-style immediacy – with free web tools directly relevant to educational needs.

Office Live Workspace fits the LEARNING CONTINUUM bill

Forget the branding, for a second and just think of this as a Classroom workspace – an accessible from any browser tool to store, share and collaborate on homework, handouts, presentations and projects. No – they don’t have to be Office documents – they can be of ANY file time; and no – you don’t have to be a Live@edu customer. Any teacher, student or administrator can setup and invite other peers, students or parents to participate and – POW – instant learning continuum tool! Check out the details here: http://www.microsoft.com/education/classworkspace/default.aspx

Don’t overlook our myriad other tools

More free web tools abound – all with high relevance for your classrooms.

1. Need to record a lecture or lesson for students who miss it? Check out Community Clips.

2. Need great multi-media software for assembling projects? Check out the new Windows Live Movie Maker.

3. Want to share documents and screen views with peers or students? Check out Shared View.

Who knew Microsoft is your quick and simple source for relevant classroom tools? Enjoy!

S+S=SaaS?

rgode@microsoft.com — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 21:22:59 GMT

Microsoft’s vision of cloud computing is called, and being marketed as Software + Services. The original, more broadly accepted term, as you are likely aware, is Software as a Service. What’s the difference, if any? Should you care? Or is Microsoft just trying to re-invent or re-define the genre for our purposes – marketing, awareness or otherwise? Not only is this a key question in general, but it is almost more important for us as educators, administrators, students and those of us in the IT vendor world that serve those constituents. My goal of this blog post is to start opening the door on understanding – I can’t ask or expect much more given how the definition of this space is changing weekly, if not daily.

Software as a Service (SaaS) is defined quite well on Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_as_a_Service. Note the keys here are “hosted” and “no local installation” which has clear and distinct benefits from a desktop management perspective – not only from a versioning and update perspective, but from a cross-platform support perspective as well (assuming web standards are utilized/optimized). You could go on and argue that costs are more manageable and predictable – a pay as you consume concept – and that much of the overhead of internal IT services, including helpdesk and support, can be alleviated. The risks, as also stated in the article, relate primarily to sustainability and redundancy, but also data protection and general security.

To be sure, Microsoft understands and embraces the concept of SaaS, as evidenced by our foray into all of our “Live” branded products – both for the consumer (http://get.live.com/) as well as for business (http://www.microsoft.com/softwareplusservices/). Where we augment the basic definition is around those areas above that are known or hypothesized weaknesses of SaaS. It may or may not surprise you that S+S is actually defined quite well on Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%2BS – but to summarize in my own words: Software + Services takes the concept and power of cloud computing (Services) and magnifies its effect with the smart use of client side computing (Software).

Let’s take some examples:

1. Unified Communications: in the SaaS world, this could imply email, web conferencing, instant messaging and perhaps IP telephony all of which can be done via browser-based applications and consistent connectivity. When you add S+S to the UC workload, however, you start to add programs like Outlook, Office Communicator, Live Meeting and Windows Mobile, all of which are medium-to-heavy client applications that add (in my opinion) significant value to my daily routine, including the ability to work offline, work quickly with local data; operate, sort, filter, view and process email, media and documents on my mobile phone when I have a poor (or no) cell signal. Schools and campuses are approaching or already have 100% wireless and cellular coverage, which negates at least some of the basic advantages of the “Software” side of this equation, so then we need to look one step further at both the richness and flexibility of client-side software, for example the ability to manage calls, conferences and messages in an integrated fashion between my email and communicator client.

2. Classroom or Administrative Productivity: this category includes those applications that we think of as core – word processing, spreadsheets, presentation and perhaps note taking and graphics/desktop publishing/drawing. Open Office, Google and others have free or inexpensive options available in the SaaS world. Depending on needs, such options may be sufficient, especially if the ad-funded model of software development and support works for you. OneNote is a great example of very-education-relevant software that takes advantage of web interaction (synchronizing notebooks across the web) that has no match as a cloud-based service.

3. Companion Applications: where the Microsoft S+S message really starts to gel is the area of what I will call companion applications – all of which are free, btw. Some of these you may have heard of, some you may not have, but they start to connect the dots between our new and traditional worlds, specifically around Productivity Applications, but largely applicable to all areas.

Office Live Workspaces (http://workspace.office.live.com/): share, store, track and comment on documents online
Shared View (https://connect.microsoft.com/site/sitehome.aspx?SiteID=94&wa=wsignin1.0): instant screen and application collaboration over the internet
Community Clips (http://communityclips.officelabs.com/): record and share screen activity, presentations, audio and webcam video

Our cloud computing will continue to evolve – no doubt – as we push the envelope on S+S, both with traditional, for-fee software, as well as new-model free ad-funded or low cost companion or utility computing applications. Either way, you can trust that our experience in both enterprise computing as well as end-user application innovation will yield some pretty cool, pretty useful applications for education. Stay tuned to the PDC in late October 2008 for some exciting new announcements in this area!

Software + Services for Academia?

rgode@microsoft.com — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 07:33:00 GMT

So much hullabalu is afoot in the press these days regarding Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud Computing and Web 2.0 that our own internal news service had to create a new RSS feed category just to optimally classify and keep tabs on the trends, stories and technologies claiming to be a part of the push. No doubt, many education organizations and companies are starting to evaluate the merits of hosted services, especially those considered "commodity", to offload the burden of management, maintenance, support and upgrades required by on-premise software. To go one step further, some customers have already ventured down that path, having deployed student email using Live@edu, utilizing Office Live Workspaces for project or team collaboration or Live Skydrive for sharing presentations, projects and files.

Perhaps one of the most compelling rationale for investigting and migrating certain "life and work functions" to the cloud is that in many cases they are free - including all the Live technologies cited above, as well as some of the more consumer-oriented social networking sites like Facebook and Live Spaces. "Free" tends to be looked at fromd different angles, depending on your lense and perspective, however; as an end user, you don't pay for a packaged piece of software or download, but you do have to endure the utilization of your web services as an advertising platform. Most tend to agree this is worth it, given the benefits and value of the experience, and advertisers are all to happy to supplement the large cost of raised floor, fat pipe, massive disk arrays, server management, personnel overhead and energy by providing you with the latest and greates mortgage refinancying deal, for example. While this might be acceptable for end users as consumers, the justification becomes a little muddled when students as organization users come in to play, especially minors and especially when advertising may present a conflict of interest for a university or school district. Further, enterprise services don't have an advertisement-subsidy option, so the subscription cost of cloud services must be weighed against traditional on-premise IT management - not necessarily an easily aligned ROI or TCO equation.

I'll take this thread one step further by posing this question: is it feasible to follow this hype cycle through to completion such that *all* desktop and on-premise functions could eventually and theoretically be hosted (and free?) That may eventually be a possibility, but step back for a moment and think about what you do on your PC everyday - connected or not. Think about the spreadsheets, documents and applications your run locally that could benefit from a more lively interface with cloud services - a Word document session that allows collaboration with a student that just has a browser; an interactive history simulation session running on your teach PC that allows realtime assessment inputs from student cell phones; a homework folder that simultaneous updates your instructor PC, your browser at home and your cell phone when assignments are posted. These scenarios, and many others like it that are more business and consumer oriented, are what embody the definition of what Microsoft calls Software + Services (link to interative web site explaining the premise in detail). The crux of the idea is that we believe in, and are massively investing in cloud services for both consumer and business alike, and see great value and productivity in a world where those services are optimized with the rich applications we use everyday on our increasingly powerful desktops. Not just a redefinition of SaaS, S+S takes the cloud services vision to completion - read more on the above web site and let me know what you think.

Learning 2.0 meets Web 2.0

rgode@microsoft.com — Wed, 21 May 2008 10:08:00 GMT

My favorite educationally relevant and intellectual article of this calendar year (and arguably for the past 12 months or more) is one that appeared in Educause Magazine in their Jan/Feb 2008 issue entitled Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0: access it directly here.

I recently presented to a customer audience during which I expanded on the many facets of the general concepts there-in and how I think the web and its myriad offerings as a search engine, platform and learning community tool are very relevant to where we (as educators and IT vendors) need to take next generation learning. In this post, I'll touch on a couple key facets of that talk.

The Long Tail

Chris Anderson, the editor in chief for WIRED Magazine, gained notoriety in Oct 2004 for his article, The Long Tail, which eventually became a published and well-respected Web 2.0 business book. The original research and article was designed to address the phenomenon of niche product sales and positioning on the web as compared with Brick & Mortar, but it has been extrapolated and studied extensively since then as a generally sound theory for explaining the rapidly expanding and successful niches - both commerce and social - that are abundant on the web.

This concept applies equally as well to both of the concepts of traditional teacher and traditional school as being limited in being able to address the rapidly growing interest in niche topics or communities that students may be interested in, or, more importantly, unique learning needs (read "individualized learning") that is required as classrooms grow larger and more diverse. "Long Tail" learning implies that students can utilize the power, breadth and depth of the Internet to supplement traditional learning, even discover highly specialized topics and communities that would otherwise not be available at all.

Dissecting Web 2.0 Components

After reading or skimming the EDUCAUSE article, you'll get a sense of the three areas of influence that the Internet has on learning. I attempt to break those areas down graphically below, such that we can start assigning web 2.0-type experiences somewhere in the continuum of interaction. While not exhaustive, this graphic and experiences helps provide educators and IT personnel a framework for what tools might impact specific needs for learning or web interaction.

For example, I place Search square in the center of the Venn, recognizing that traditional and new search (images, people, blogs, etc) provide a basis for any of the functions for which you may be attempting to utilize the Internet. Wikis, blogs and podcasts can be used equally as well for acquiring knowledge as a consumer, posting knowledge as an expert or aspiring learner, or socializing concepts and hypotheses as a virtual learner in a community.

Although not as categorically well-defined as some better-established Web 2.0 functions, the Internet as a Platform concept, in my mind, is one of the most exciting areas for broadening the scope of learning experiences. From terrestrial mapping and visualization experiences, to the exploration of molecules via scanning electron microscopes, to the exploration of the far reaches of space - the Internet is providing experiences once available only through field trips, movies or experts, but now well within reach of anyone with browser navigation skills. Expand this further to the growing popularity of virtual worlds, and you start to collide all three areas of function.

Microsoft Relevance?

But of course! Some of the most innovative experiences and tools available today are from the bitstreams of Microsoft coders - hard at work in Microsoft Research, or in our Office or Live Labs bunkers. If you have an afternoon to kill and want to explore some highly relevant tools that are just downright cool, try exploring the following:

Photosynth: http://labs.live.com/photosynth/
WorldWide Telescope: http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/
Tafiti: http://tafiti.mslivelabs.com/
PopFly: http://www.popfly.com

Not only does each tool have education relevance, but more importantly, they're FREE. And when you look further across the spectrum of products - both cloud based and on premise - Microsoft actually does a pretty good job of connecting local software to Internet Service for a cohesive collaboration and learning solution. While I can't say it will be entirely evident to you just by reading this post, I can say that you should challenge your Microsoft sales representative to explain it to you - or just ping me directly... Inevitably I'll be recording the full presentation for broader consumption. Either way, I look forward to your feedback.