A Pebble in a Pond… further thoughts on Google Wave

Google Wave has now become a part of my daily toolset. The newness and giddy experimental phase has passed and now the "is it good-enough" functionality assessment is settling in.

Those who know me well have experienced my dance through applications and utilities… at any given time there can be hundreds apps on my laptop and another thousand or so on the towers…. and I prune them regularly when they fail to live up to my demanding expectations.

This number has been shrinking as I find robust enough web/cloud apps that enable collaborative work with online colleagues. Google Wave seemed to bring the promise of meeting that need… but was it good enough to join the elite stable of keepers? It needed to be put to the test.

Moving the Wave into my daily routine

Once we got the development team into Wave, we brought it in to our dev routine to see how it could enhance the workflow. It quickly became the tracking tool and communication hub… it was the bulletin board to leave messages, the daily reminder for "what to tackle next", the wish list for new feature ideas we wanted to pursue…

Some of the easily integrated extensions in Wave added functionality:

• we added embedded live site views to demonstrate problems and fixes,
• dropped in screen shots to demonstrate differences,
  
• added polls to vote on changes,
• embedded a Google calendar to track milestone dates

Side problems that grew lives of their own and future release ideas were easily split into their own waves for ongoing discussion.

Along the way I set up several "idea" and "how-to" waves for further exploration of the tips and tricks I'd learned… like how to embed the i-frames correctly, the steps to place a google calendar, and testing of a code snippet editor that maintained syntax coloration. These were shared more broadly, with folk beyond the dev team.


Are We There Yet?

I think so… Wave is still Preview Beta, and still by invitation only (though we were able to get all our team invited)… but it is already proving to be a useful tool within the workflow.
All the team are on the same page… outstanding items get tracked within the threaded flow, and the blips get flagged as done or detailed with future considerations. The embedded examples of site page and code add a richness and visual clarity to the discussion.
Yup... it's a keeper.

Good going, Wave team!

Access Copyright Decision - the impact, and the possibilities for change

Ontario school boards have been recently informed that they face huge retroactive copyright bills following Access Copyright Board's decision. (read the news coverage of this story )
This average 6-figure $$ charge per board covers the retroactive copyright charges for photocopying texts in schools...

While this comes at a time that many boards are struggling to balance budgets, it should come as no surprise... the boards have been challenging the payment of copyright fees in education and have known a ruling was coming for over a year now. .... so that's a can of worms I'm not going into...

The silver lining... an opportunity for change

What I *do* want to comment on is the opportunity, or silver-lining for education in this ruling. The paper-bound era of the photocopied classroom needs to be rethought.
This ruling makes a solid case toward using online / digital resources in the classroom; resources which add currency and relevancy, are primary-sourced, and cover broader scoop. They are much friendlier to environment too!
... And there are MANY solid digital and online resources provided for educational use:

• The excellent online journals and databases provided to the entire province through Resources Ontario are just one prime example - they cover resources from EBSCO, Gale, Cedrom, etc.

• The amazing "primary-source" digitized originals included in the OurOntario.ca discovery portal add a richness to the study of social sciences, civics and heritage that make a photocopied page pale in comparison.

Using these, and similar resources, students' assignment work can be expressed in full digital, multimedia formats... boosting student interest and engagement.

Surely it's time to step away from the binder of photocopied handouts as student notebook!

Seeing the *bigger* picture

Why is it that *really* good ideas and concepts come into my sphere of possible actions when I am already more than busy enough with other projects?

Is it a test to see if the new idea is truly that good? ... worthy even, of bumping something else apparently not quite worthwhile enough out of my priority list?

I think so - either that, or my mind is simply too prone to scope creep as new possibilities cross my horizon line. ( ...which is a possible failing I must confess to on some occasions)
The synergy that can marry two different projects into one bigger picture should always be worth pursuing, even if the available hours left in the day for sleep take a hit.

(...sigh)

An agent of change?

Had a fun day today in a future-thinking, strategic planning exercise held in a beautiful space with clerestory windows and internal glass half-walls that flooded a totally internal 2nd story conference room with glorious sunlight!

The day was an open, flexible, unstructured approach with points of thoughtful discussion, reinforcement and confirmation of previous planning, and threads & new strands worth following and exploring...

Some concepts that resonated with me and were a nice addition to my consciousness were:

1) When building for the future there are 2 different ( and sometimes opposing!) spaces you need to stay/play in...

• the current operational space (the day-to-day bricks and mortar place of keeping the daily operations functional and running)
• the visionary space of where you want to get to... (what should it look like in 5 years)

2) You will never achieve the changes to move the vision into the operational reality if you don't dream the vision FIRST..

3) You already HAVE the resources today to bring that vision to life... there is no magical pot of money, no staffing saviour.... it is a matter of having a vision with enough attractiveness the there is the broad buy-in to see it come to fruition... the emerging group-mindset to follow down the road toward achieving a vision everyone has personalized and bought into...

The current resources you have on-hand (with all the current limitations) can be;

• changed
• adapted
• re-purposed

... into the strategies needed to move toward the vision of what should be within the next 3 -5 years.

4) The strategic plan is just the first step... the beginning point. Next come the practical steps to implement, the intuitive leaps of faith to keep the process moving forward, and the willingness to learn the lessons along the way that dictate flexible changes in the vision goals, given changes in reality and advances in technology.

_____________________________________________________

Words and concepts gleamed from today's think-tank session to add to my mind space?

• CROWD-SOURCING - as in... a real strength of web 2.0 is the ability to use "crowd-sourcing"... the power of tapping into the collective knowledge base of the crowd as a broad demographic source of expertise and information in a J-I-T delivery system!
• LOCKSS - an nifty acronym for "lots of copies keep stuff safe" .. a nice archiving approach! (also the brilliant branding of an international community initiative based at based at Stanford University Libraries that plays in this space)