Some experience with a modular electronic text

I have been building and using a modular electronic text (etext) for an IT literacy course this term.

I recently gave a presentation on modular electronic texts and my course. You can see a link to the presentation and comments on it here.

The following is a digest of those comments and some of my reactions to them.

Cost: Several people noted that lower cost was an advantage of etexts. The etext for my course is free, but traditional publishers charge for etexts. While those charges are high today, they will eventually decline to reflect savings in printing and distribution cost.

Environmental concerns: An etext can be read from a screen, which requires power, but no printing. Many students print the module transcripts, but that is not as costly to the environment as printing and distributing a book.

Portability: My course would easily fit in a flash drive; however, there is (at present) no facility for one-click download of a module, subset of modules or the entire course. This is less important to people with Internet-connected portable devices like tablets and smart phones.

Internet connectivity: Several people pointed out that Internet connectivity is needed to access the etext. Without a simple module-download function, that is the case. On the other hand, being connected is valuable even if you have a local copy of the entire etext. If one is online while studying a module, they can search for complementary information, send messages to other students, the professor and the module content creator, follow the module resource links, etc.

Flexibility: Several people pointed out that an etext was more flexible -- new content or a new way of explaining or illustrating a point can easily be added. However, others pointed out that this caused a versioning problem -- the transcript a student printed or the presentation they studied from might not be current. Furthermore, the videos might lag behind the presentations and not reflect all changes. An explicit version history can solve that problem -- I will start recording significant changes to presentations in the topic module comment section.

Campus infrastructure: This etext can be used for self-study, but I use the presentations in a face-to-face classroom. All of today's classrooms do not have Internet-connected computers and projectors, though they are becoming common. In general, infrastructure must become ubiquitous to generate cultural change. (See this post for more on ubiquity in education).

User interface: Several people mentioned the simplicity of the user interface. The fact that each topic module and each assignment has a unique URL makes it easy for the topic modules and assignments to link to each other and for a teacher to include one or many modules in a class. The presentations also follow a uniform format.

Still, the user interface is not as simple and standardized as turning a page in a book or looking up a term in the index. Some people mentioned that an etext user interface might be confusing to a student who was not comfortable with computers. For example, one person pointed out that a newcomer might have trouble differentiating between the links comprising a topic module (on the left side of the screen) and the cloud tag and links to other documents and sites on the right side. I will add that distinction to the "About our electronic text" page.

Focused content: Several people liked the relatively narrow focus of the annotated slide presentation format. The skills and concepts covered were explicitly stated, and the students knew what to study. For enrichment, they could follow the "resource" links at the end of each presentation. Each module is the rough equivalent of a section in a textbook chapter.

Multiple learning modes: Some students prefer the video presentations, others the PowerPoint presentations or the presentation transcripts. Some prefer reading from paper to reading from a screen. The modules are flexible in that a student can go through a presentation online, watch a video or print the transcript with its slide images for offline study.

I could easily provide audio recordings of the video sound tracks for podcast listening. I plan to add audio recordings of classroom presentations next term, which will provide another option -- a more spontaneous presentation plus classroom interaction.

Marginal notes: Marginal notes can be done by printing the transcript and writing on it or by keeping a notepad window open while watching a presentation online. There is definite room for improvement here -- one can imagine writing/drawing/dictating marginal notes while using a computer or tablet. (Dictated notes should be coupled with well integrated speech recognition to convert them to text).

Instructor convenience: One person commented that a modular etext makes it easier for a professor to develop a customized course. That is true, but most faculty do not worry about customization -- they simply select a textbook and build a course around the accompanying PowerPoint slides, test banks, etc.

Professors are used to adopting a textbook and letting it structure their course. The modular etext requires that they become editors and curators, not mere textbook adopters, and that takes time and thought.

Standards: The material for this course is browser based -- no special reading program is required. The material is in widely used formats -- HTML, pptx, docx, and Flash video. But, the electronic text is in its infancy, and I suspect that other standards for file formats, collaboration, and user interfaces will emerge.

Collaboration and community: An etext allows for collaboration among students, professors, and authors of the teaching material. This collaboration is particularly easy and scalable in the case of a modular etext, in which a community can form around a single module in the same way as Wikipedia users can focus on the articles they are interested in.

I had expected that the topic module and assignment comments would be used for this sort of collaboration and interaction, but they were not. Instead, students used an email list server and face-to-face contact in the classroom to give me feedback and to help each other. (We met twice a week). The comments or other collaboration mechanisms would be more important in a distant education or self-study setting.

Student skills at Arizona State University -- create content and collaborate

Arizona State was a pioneer in "cloud computing" by and for students. They were early adopters of Google Apps and cloud computing.

That was four years ago, and they are now graduating their first "cloud class."

They consider the move a success.

Sam DiGangi, ASU's associate vice president of university technology and an associate professor of education says:

I think this is the first generation that will graduate with a foundation not only in knowledge and expertise of a specific content area, but also in tool skills--the ability to collaborate, to edit, to revise one's work, to dynamically incorporate input in writing and in designing.

.

How does Twitter select Trending Topics?

This morning around 6 AM, PST, I noticed that the newly announced Samsung Galaxy tablet was at the top of Twitter's world wide Trending Topics list.  It was also at the top of the United States list and number two in the UK.

But, it was not even listed in the top 10 for Los Angeles.  I figured that was because it was early in the morning, so I checked New York and London.  Nothing.

It turns out that the Samsung tablet was not listed in the top 10 of any of the cities listed by Twitter:  Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Houston, London, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, San Antonio, San Francisco, Seattle, São Paulo and Washington, D.C.

Half an hour later, the Galaxy had replaced Stephen Hawking as number one in the UK, but it was still not in the top 10 for London.

Twitter says they will sell the 11th spot on the Trending Topics list to a term that is in the top 1-200.  Do they also sell spots on the top 10?  If they are selling Trending Topic spots without identifying them as paid, will their credibility be undermined?

Electronic text books

Monterey College of Law is distributing Apple iPads to all students enrolled in a supplemental curriculum program that helps them prepare for the state's bar exam.

The program is motivated by the desire to save time for busy night students who typically work full time and have families, not cost. However, technology improvement coupled with new business models will eventually drive the cost of electronic textbooks well below that of printed textbooks, as shown in this cost breakdown.

Electronic book sales have already passed hard cover sales at Amazon, and the cost of a Kindle reader is down to $139.

In addition to cost and time savings, electronic textbooks will have new features including capability for social or collaborative reading. It is too soon to know what those features will be or how they will work, but check the Institute of the Future of the Book if you are curious about the possibilities.

Would you prefer electronic to printed textbooks?

A novel application -- drone helicopter with streaming cameras merges real and virtual worlds

Parrot, a French company, demonstrated an iPhone-controlled drone helicopter ("quadricopter") at the Consumer Electronics Show.

As you see in this video, the iPhone is used to control the drone and to view streaming video from its on-board cameras.



This is a novel application, using the iPhone to control a physical object and augmenting reality by letting you see what the drone sees -- it blends the real and virtual worlds.

This demo used an iPhone, but Parrot promises to port the application to other phones and tablets -- their goal is to sell the drones.

A few caveats -- Parrot refused to speculate on the price, but my guess is that it will be pretty expensive since it requires a lot of computing and mechanical hardware. The iPhone and the drone use WiFi to communicate, which limits its range. Power requirements will also cap flight length.

Lest those caveats discourage you, recall that the Wright brothers first flight lasted 12 second and covered 120 feet. It only took 66 years to get from that flight to a safe return flight to the moon, and information technology improves faster than aviation technology.

What sorts of devices will you be controlling in five years? What sorts of cameras and censors will be feeding data to your portable device?

Twitter writing style improves quickly

I started a Twitter stream for my class on February 17th, and have posted about 125 tweets.

This graph shows the moving average of the length of the previous ten posts. As you see, the average length has grown over time, approaching the 140 character maximum. The average length of my latest ten posts is 139.2 characters, the shortest is 136 characters, and six of them are 140 characters.

I spend about two minutes rewording each post, and find that I can typically get two or three statements or questions into each.

Long posts are not necessarily better than short ones, but in this case I am summarizing and linking to longer articles or other documents. I can help the reader decide whether to follow the link by saying more in my summary.

An ineffective email conversation

We cover the importance of precise, conversational writing on the Internet.

The following is the start of the transcript of an email conversation about ordering laptop computers that lasted more than nine months. The conversation eventually involved nine people. It was frustrating and ineffective because the people did not heed the basic guidelines we have suggested for Internet conversations -- they did not carefully read messages, did not respond to specific requests, did not meet commitments, and failed to quote previous messages to maintain context.

Many people wasted time in this exchange, and the funds were poorly spent. By the time the laptops arrived, the vendor had introduced a newer model.

The transcript begins as a conversation between me (LP) and the School administration (SA), School purchasing department (SP), and the University purchasing department (UP). It began in mid August 2009, when I informed the SA that my laptop warranty was about to expire, and I needed to replace it. The first reply was positive, but the commitment made in it was subsequently forgotten and ignored.

From: SA
To: LP
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 2009 23:26:44 -0700

I talked to the dean about getting a laptop for you using the grant money. The answers are as follows:
...You should get a new one no later than Oct. 1
...Your laptop should be no more than $2,200 as budgeted

Based on this, I sent a note to UP:

From: LP
To: UP, SA, SP
Date: Tuesday, August 18, 2009 2:21 PM

I would like to purchase a laptop combining funds from my foundation account and the $2,200 allocation from the Dean.
I would like to move ASAP because the warranty on my current laptop expires in a couple of days. Sorry for the rush.

And received this reply:

From: UP
To: LP, SA, SP
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 2009 14:29:52 -0700

1. Send the configuration from the Dell web site. [SP], can you forward a Req with the % that you are paying from the Stateside.
2. Also forward a PO from the Foundation

Then SP took responsibility from UP -- they said they would handle it.

From: SP
To: LP, UP, SA
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2009 15:24:20 -0700

Thanks for the information. Also the grant is not processed via the Procurement Office (you are off the hook), this is a Foundation purchase. We have a Dell rep we work with on these types of purchases.

Also I have not gotten the information on the account being established. Once that is done, I will notify you and send you information on how to contract the rep so you can request an equote. I'd have you do that now but the equote has an expiration date.

I was worried about the warranty expiring, so asked if I could speed the process up by configuring the laptop sooner:

From: LP
To: SP, SA
Date: Wednesday, August 19, 2009 3:34 PM

> Once that is done, I will notify you and send you information
> on how to contract the rep so you can request an equote. I'd
> have you do that now but the equote has an expiration date.

Could I contact him or her now and start the process? I am in a rush because the warranty on my current laptop is going to expire in a few days, and I am *highly* dependent upon it.

I did not get a reply from SP, but did get a reply from SA:

From: SA
To: LP, SP
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2009 19:13:07 -0700

Larry - let me look into the situation and I will handle

SA followed up with:

From: SA
To: LP, SP, UP
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 2009 17:57:08 -0700

On Tuesday I will check and see if there is some money in a grant I have that I could use to purchase a laptop for Larry.

A week later, I followed up with SA, quoting his earlier message:

From: LP
To: SA
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 2009 12:39:19 -0700

>On Tuesday I will check and see if there is some money in a
>grant I have that I could use to purchase a laptop for Larry.

I have a configuration ready to go -- are the funds available now? My current service contract has expired, and that is worrisome.

And received this reply:

From: SA
To: LP
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 2009 14:03:02 -0700

No the funds are not available - we have not yet received the grant approval - I expect to receive any day.

But, nothing happened, and my warranty had expired, so two weeks later, I followed up with SA, again quoting his earlier message:

From: LP
To: SA
Date: Thursday, September 10, 2009 4:16 PM

> No the funds are not available - we have not yet received the grant
> approval - I expect to receive any day.

Has there been further news on this?

And SA replied:

From: SA
To: LP, SP
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 2009 17:38:09 -0700

News on what?

This was just the beginning, eventually nine people were involved in the conversation, which stretched out over nine months. I got the laptop in June, 2010.

The Zen of Internet reading -- a bad example

Much Internet writing is conversational, requiring careful, mindful and often critical reading. This example illustrates hurried, thoughtless reading.

An enthusiastic, but rushed administrator at our university recently sent the following message to the university president and vice presidents, with a copy to our dean and faculty:

Subject: CSUDH Ranking...

Hello All… FYI on this news that CSUDH was ranked #9 by Forbes Magazine as a Best Buy in Online MBA Degree Programs.
You can read more at http://www.forbes.com/feeds/businesswire/2010/05/06/businesswire139265756.html

I followed the link to learn more, and it turned out that Forbes had not ranked us or any other school -- they merely posted a press release from a company called GetEducated.com on their news wire.

GetEducated maintains a database of online degree offerings and their cost. We were listed ninth cheapest among non-AACSB schools. This is indeed an accomplishment, but it is not a #9 ranking by Forbes Magazine.

The person sending the message had not read the Forbes post carefully.

After checking GetEducated, I sent a clarifying message to the same people who had received the initial email.

Subsequent to my message, they sent 19 emails congratulating us on our ranking by Forbes. The people sending those messages had quickly glanced at the initial email, felt good about it, and expressed their feeling. They did not follow the link in the initial message or carefully read my message.

This is an example of the problems that can arise when one is not a critical and mindful reader on the Internet. The problem is exacerbated when the reader uses a phone -- they will be less likely than desktop or laptop users to follow links and carefully read longer posts like the GetEducated press release.

Positive results using Twitter and a wiki in a collaborative writing assignment

Last semester, I used Twitter and a wiki to illustrate collaborative writing and the writing of short documents in a Network News assignment. The student response was positive, so I will repeat the experience.

I started a class Twitter stream for links to current events relevant to our class. I told the students to follow the feed, and posted about 125 items during the semester.

The writing assignment was near the end of the term. Each student selected a particularly interesting post, and summarized it and its relevance to the class in a short document. Once the summary documents were polished, the students added them to a wiki page, creating a collaboratively authored Network News report for the term.

For more detail, see this post on the assignment and survey results.

Should you be buying and selling textbooks at Amazon?

I have long predicted the demise of conventional textbooks, but they are hanging on. For now, the textbook is king.

Faculty like textbooks because they save them time. There are only a few candidate books to choose among for a course, they come with teaching material like PowerPoint slides, review questions and test banks, the publisher maintains a Web site for the book, and the table of contents determines the course syllabus.

As teaching loads increase, faculty are driven to rely more heavily on textbook publishers. (I stopped using textbooks years ago, saving my students a lot of money, but costing me a lot of time).

I still think textbooks will fade away, but while you wait for the demise of the $100 textbook, you can use Amazon's beta-test textbook buyback service to ease the pain. A student with books in good condition can ship them for free to Amazon, and receive Amazon gift card credit as payment. That credit can be used to purchase new or used textbooks for other classes or anything else. Textbook ordering is also simple -- enter the ISBN numbers of the textbooks you need, and a one-click search returns links to all of them.

Amazon also offers many textbooks in electronic form for distribution on their Kindle e-book reader. The current Kindle has significant limitations as a textbook reader, but it also has some advantages, and many companies are working on other devices. (Maybe textbooks will be a killer application for the much rumored Apple tablet or whatever Hewlett Packard is cooking up).

The average US student spends $702 annualy on required course materials, and, as shown below, about 23% of that goes to the bookstore and distribution. Amazon hopes to get a piece of that.


(Click on the picture to enlarge it).

Let us know if you have been buying or selling textbooks online or using an e-book reader like the Kindle.

Microsoft's answer to Google Apps for education

We have seen that universities like Northwestern, Arizona State and Abilene Christian have adopted Google Apps and Mail.

Microsoft's answer to Google is their Live@Edu program, and they have just entered into a long term agreement with the University System of Ohio for "cloud" services.

Zappos and Flickr -- excellent and terrible customer service on the Web

Here is a short excerpt from a talk by Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh, in which he discusses their customer service.

Customer service excellence is a core value at Zappos. They publish their 24/7 toll-free phone number on every Web page. Customer service representatives are expected to give friendly, helpful “above and beyond” service, and Zappos does not time calls or set sales-based performance goals. They view a call as a branding opportunity rather than a necessary expense. Reps even direct customers to other Web sites when appropriate.

Zappos also gives free shipping and return shipping, accepts returns for a year, stocks every item in their own 24/7 warehouse, and often surprises customers with an upgrade to overnight shipping.

(Hsieh's full talk, in which he stresses culture building more than customer service, is here).

Contrast that with my experience with the absurd customer service on the Flickr photo sharing site. On March 13, I submitted a question asking why people could not see photos I had placed in a "public" Flickr group. The next day, I received this response:

Just a quick email from Team Flickr to let you know that we've successfully received your recent Help by Email query and we hope to respond shortly.

We'd also like to take an opportunity to remind you that one query is sufficient and multiple queries regarding the same issue make the Magic Donkey cry.

Lastly, you may not be aware that our FAQs and forums are full of help goodness.

The Flickreenos

They tried to blow me off to their FAQs, warned me not to resend my query, and irritated me with their cutesy language, but, that would be OK if they helped me with the problem. The next day, I received an email saying they had escalated the question to a "senior representative."

But, evidently the senior representative had a five week backlog. On April 24 he got back to me with a non sequitur, boilerplate-laden answer.

Customer service clearly costs Zappos more than it does Flickr, and they are targeting a high-end retail customer, but, no matter what the purpose of your Web site is, you should study Zappos' example and do a lot better than Flickr.

Have you seen other examples of very good or very poor customer service on the Web?

Some neat bookmarklets

Would you like to convert a Web page to a PDF file? One way to do that is to install a browser add-on from Pdfdownload.org. The add-on lets you choose to have the converted page emailed, opened, or saved on your hard drive.

Or, instead of using the add-on, you could use the Pdfdownload.org bookmarklet. The bookmarklet does not require installation, works with most browsers, and will not slow your browser down or consume memory. It can even be stored on the Internet for access from any computer. However, it lacks features of the add-on -- it does not offer the option of emailing or saving the PDF file; it just opens it.

Bookmarklets are similar to add-ons, but they may have fewer features. They are small JavaScripts that execute when you click on their icons in the bookmark toolbar. Here is the code of a simple bookmarklet that re-sizes the browser window to 800 by 1,000 pixels (which would be useful if you were preparing a series of same-size screen shots):

javascript:window.resizeTo(800,1000);window.moveTo(0,0);

The Pdfdownload.org script is a bit longer because it calls the PDF conversion service using their API:

javascript:void(window.open('http://www.pdfdownload.org/web2pdf/Default.aspx?left=0&right=0&top=0&bottom=0&page=0&cURL='+document.location.href));

There are tons of useful bookmarklets, and you can see a list of some of the best at this excellent Digital Inspiration post. If you start using bookmarklets, you will also like this post.

What is your favorite browser add-on? What is your favorite bookmarklet?

Three extremely simple Web services

The first day of class, we ask "what is a network-based application?"

Examples provide a partial answer -- a starting point. We do not want to be bogged down in details, so we want very simple examples. Here are three:

Eggtimer is a simple application where the program is stored on the network and downloaded each time it is used. Go to http://e.ggtimer.com/5 for a five-second timer or go to the home page for other options.

http://drop.io/ demonstrates an application in which the program and data are both on the network. With a couple of clicks, users can upload and share text, recordings, images, etc. Here is an example.

(Drop.io is surprisingly useful for such a simple application).

Aviary screen capture is a third example. You can capture and then edit any page on the Web by simply typing aviary.com/ in front of the http:// in the page URL.

For example, to capture the YouTube home page, you would enter:

aviary.com/http://www.youtube.com

Aviary automatically downloads the captured page image and an image editing program written in Javascript. Since Web clients contain Javascript interpreters, you can edit the page image when it gets to your computer.

Do you know of other network-based applications that are as simple to use and demonstrate as these?

100 YouTube tools and resources

If you make or watch YouTube videos, check out this YouTube toolbox . With over 100 tools and resources, there has to one you like.

If you particularly like one of these (or another that is not listed), let us know.

Berkeley report on obstacles to cloud computing

We discuss the trend toward Internet services as network speed, storage capacity and reliability improve.

While the case for running applications on the Internet -- "cloud computing" -- is improving relative to running them in house, there are also obstacles.

A UC Berkeley research team is studying and trying to overcome cloud computing obstacles. Their initial report is summarized here, and the full report is here.

You can write documents with a program like Microsoft Word on your PC or you can use a service like Google Docs on the Internet. What are the advantages of Word over Google Docs? What are the disadvantages?

Navteq versus Tele Atlas maps

We discuss Google Maps, and the mashups Google has encouraged people to build. Initially, Google used map data from a company called Navteq, but Nokia acquired Navteq, and Google has now switched to Tele Atlas for their maps.

Note that the mapping services are not identical. Microsoft uses Navteq for their Live maps, so we can compare their map of the CSUDH campus dorm area with Google's Tele Atlas map. As you see, Navteq (right hand side) maps and labels Unity Drive and Hillside Court and they show the street addresses on Central Avenue.
This is not to imply that Navteq maps are better everywhere. Both companies have crews constantly driving the routes and updating the maps, and both invite users to submit changes online. Competition between Google and Nokia, which sells 40% of mobile phones, may lead to differentiation in map features and completeness.

Is Navteq or Tele Atlas more accurate in the neighborhood where you live? If you know of a change -- say a street becoming one way -- would you inform either Tele Atlas or Navteq?

(Thanks to Ron Jimenez for suggesting this post).

Mumbai terrorist attack: the 21-hour evolution of a co-authored document.

We discuss writing for the Internet, including co-authroing composite and co-authored documents and collaborative writing by small and very large groups.

The Mumbai terrorist attack provides an illustration of a co-authored document with many authors. The Wikipedia page on the attack was started at 18:20, 26 November 2008 by a user named Kensplanet. The initial posting consisted of two sentences:

The 26 November 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks were a series of attacks by terrorists in Mumbai, India. 25 are injured and 2 killed.

Kensplanet revised his initial post 5 times during the next ten minutes, then others began to contribute. By 15:44, 27 November 2008, the article was 4,780 words long with many links. During this time, there had been 942 edits. Of those, 149 were anonymous (IP address only), 199 people made only one, and 93 authors could not be identified. Two contributors had made over 50 edits. Kensplanet, who started the article, had made 57.

The organization of the article also evolved during this period. While it began as two sentences, 21 hours later it was organized into 6 major sections with 5 sub-sections:

For the story of the evolution of another Wikipedia page, see this most interesting screencast by Jon Udell.

A cool, collaborative drawing tool

Most of you use or will be using Visio to create diagrams. I just came across Dabbleboard, a vector drawing service you might find useful.

It is not as capable and flexible as Visio, but it is very easy to use, extensible -- you can reuse shapes and shape libraries you and others create -- and, of course, it is a networked application.

Several people can work on the same drawing at the same time, and the drawing can be made public or shared within a limited group when it is published. You can create libraries based on your drawings, and there are also public libraries and tool kits.

If it sounds interesting, check this how-to screencast.

Dabbleboard has several features that facilitate and encourage collaborative work. What features would you like to see them add? What do you think the community of Dabbleboard users will add? When would you use Dabbleboard instead of Visio? When would you use Visio?

Synchronizing data for offline work

We defined network applications, as opposed to stand-alone applications, as those in which either the data, programs, or both are stored on the network.

All network applications store data on a server, but some also store copies of the data on the client. That enables a user to work when off line -- perhaps when traveling -- and automatically synchronize the data on the two machines when the client re-connects to the network.

This short video illustrates offline editing while using Zoho's Writer word processing service, and you can read more about it here.

Note that it uses Google Gears, an open source program that must be installed on the client computer.

Google wrote and supports Gears as an open source project -- what is their reason for doing so? Why is Gears strategic for Google?