Inbox Zero
A little presentation by Merlin Mann, as part of Google's Tech Talk series, on maintaining a manageable email inbox. Very interesting, and humbling.
OpenID advocate and Django Project co-founder, Simon Willison, gives a presentation on OpenID to a group of Google employees. This is a great overview and discussion of the most promising solution to the problem of "too many accounts" online that I've seen. When I migrate my blog to my new Djano-based backend, I'm definitely going to implement a consumer.
Well, after months of delay and consideration, my technology improvement resolution finally came back before SGA this past Tuesday. In many ways, it was a mere shadow of the original, lacking the strong language and firm recommendations that I believed were essential for the future success of any plan born from it. It was also, now, two resolutions, not just one. What did manage to survive committee negotiations, though in an arguably weaker form, was the provision for implementing a 1:1 technology plan. At least I could feel positive about that, right? Wrong.
When the resolutions came up on Tuesday night (for debate, I might add, a contingency for which I was not adequately prepared, having not fully decided to support the resolutions as they existed), the ill-founded concerns over the 1:1 provision once again reared their ugly heads. Some claimed that by requiring students to own their own computer, we would alienate a significant population of potential students, while others asked why we needed to implement such a plan if the current system of common computer labs was meeting students' needs. Rob (Martin) and I did our best to assuage these concerns, pointing specifically to the weak language of the resolution that asked the University to implement such a plan only when trends in student computer usage and ownership made such a plan the most prudent course. In the end, though, we failed, and a motion to amend the resolution to remove the 1:1 provision passed. To say I was disappointed would be an understatement. This was almost nine months of my life down the drain, my proverbial blood sweat, and tears. If there was one thing I wanted to accomplish in SGA this year, this was it. The question now is, where do we go from here?
Well, first, I want to offer the justification for the 1:1 initiative that I should have offered on Tuesday night, had I been aware we would actually be debating and voting on the resolutions that night. The following comes from the blog of Adrian Sannier, the University Technology Officer of Arizona State University, discussing a proposed 1:1 technoogy initiative at ASU, which has raised similar objections to those presented by some here at Missouri State:
If we leave things the way they are the digital divide doesn't narrow. It doesn't even stay the same width. It grows. Every term.
If we stick with the common computing model, then it's only those of limited means that are going to be left out. If present tech trends continue, it's only going to be a year or two before nearly any student that wants one will have a laptop, leaving only the most financially struggling students as the ones forced to stand in line for a taste of tech.
Those with means will be on the sunny side of the digital divide, free to bypass the lines at the Commons and use their personal machines at a coffee shop instead. It will only be those without means who will have no alternative but to wait their turn for a crack at a common device.
No requirement, no aid. No aid, no personal computing for people of limited means. No personal computing, no experience of how tech works in the working world, among the technically literate -- because out in that world waiting in line to use a common computer has kinda gone out of style, unless you are really up against it. Which is not what we hope for our graduates.
1:1 is a way to bridge the digital divide not widen it. It's a strategy designed to bring all of us into the future instead of trapping the least fortunate of us in the past.
The future is coming, and that future is ubiquitous computing. We can either recognize current trends and what they mean for the future of education in America and the competitive position of our University, or we can sit quietly and watch the world pass us by. If we do, schools like ASU that took the intitiative and made the effort will be the ones who attract the top students, faculty, staff, and outside financial contributions, and Missouri State will remain a third-rate, regional institution.
I'm not sure how many of you have heard of the new web service called Newsvine, but I'm sure you will soon. Newsvine is a service that seeks to aggregate, categorize and present the latest and greatest in both mainstream and citizen journalism, all my attempting to make the latter much, much easier (both to create and to access). All this, and they plan to pay those who contribute content as well based on the amount of traffic that your pages on their site generate. Right now, the project is in private beta (you have to be invited by a current member). I heard about it on both Twit and Inside the Net. I highly suggest you listen to this past week's episode of Inside the Net to learn more about Newsvine. It's a really exciting development in the world of web-based news services. Not only does it provide great access to content and allow you to rank it (much in the mode of Digg.com), but it also provides a great interface in which to view it. I have a limited number of invites left, but I'm reserving them for either people I know personally, or by reputation, to be promising citizen journalists/commentators. If you think you fall into either of those categories, drop me a line, and we'll see if we can't get you hooked up with an invite. That's all for now.
Those of you who have been with me since my .Mac days should be somewhat aware that I have a very deep interest in the field of instructional technology. For the past three-plus years, I have worked for the Educational Technology Center at Missouri State University, and in that time I have become acutely aware that the institutional technology/technology support policy at the University is severely lacking. First, it fails to consider and take advantage of recent trends in technology, such as ubiquitous ownership of computing by students. Second, it seriously cripples those students by providing a large system of open access computer labs that serve as a crutch, abrogating the need for them to learn to perform basic maintenance on their own computers, something they will most definitely have to do when they leave school. Of course, if every student had a Mac, then this wouldn't bee as big a deal, but I'm not about to push that issue. All I want is for students to have free choice in the platform they choose to use, whether it's Mac OS X, Linux, or Windows. The only problem is that right now, Missouri State is just beginning to truly support a multi-platform environment, and only halfheartedly at that.
Well, this week, I took steps to, hopefully, remedy the above problems by, for lack of a better phrase, giving the administration a kick in the pants. At this week's SGA meeting, I introduced a resolution entitled the Student and University Technology Improvement Initiative. It calls for the university to begin implementing a 1:1 computing plan within three years, and to develop the appropriate institutional environment to support such a plan, including a redefinition and restructuring of Central User Support to be more academic centered. First order of business will have to be placing responsibility for developing and implementing institutional technology policy under the office of the provost. This will help to ensure the preeminence of academic (read students and faculty) interests in that process. Right now, administrative interests clearly dominate. I'm not trying to say that there aren't certain areas that belong under administration, MIS for instance, since they handle the records side of things, but there clearly needs to be a shift, and a big one. We have to shake them out of their apathy, and that's what my resolution aims to do. If you'd like to take a look at it, and feel free to comment on it either here or via e-mail, you can find a PDF copy here. We'll be discussing and possibly debating the issue further at next Tuesday's meeting, so if you're a student at Missouri State and you're interested in this topic and care about the future of the University, then please come to the meeting. We need all the support we can get.
