I’ve only just run across this news, but in reading several different tech publications today, most notably the Official Google Blog, I see that Google has announced it is decommissioning its Buzz service.

I can’t seem to locate a specific date when the shutdown is going to take place, other than a reference to “in a few weeks.”

Google indicates, though, that Buzz content will not cease to exist, but rather be visible on user’s Google Profile or downloaded using Google Takeout.

Now having said that, I’m deeply troubled by this news – and indeed this trend.  Allow me to elaborate.

I can respect Google’s willingness to recognise when things haven’t lived up to expectations – even been utter failures – and make decisions to refocus their attention and resources elsewhere.  I can also respect the fact that being on the cutting edge frequently means you are making up the rules as you go, and frequently having to move the goal posts in pursuit of a new idea or experiment.

That’s a large part of the R&D process.  Formulate an idea; design and implement it; observe what happens; make changes to try and improve it; observe the results.  It’s inevitable that some ideas end up better on paper than in practice.

At the same time, though, Google is dangerously close to becoming stigmatized as an unreliable service provider for non-early adopters; and let’s face it, that’s the bulk of the market.

In my view this is a critical distinction that needs to be recognised.  At some point a company like Google needs to shore up its reputation as a service provider.  This doesn’t mean stop innovating – I love what they do.  However the more R&D projects like Buzz get cancelled, the worse Google’s track record becomes, and the less likely people are to consider your ideas.

At some point, only the bleeding edge will remain – and that’s not a sustainable long term business model.

Non-early adopters have distinctly different needs and expectations of an online service than the far smaller bleeding edge segment does.  Early adopters are far more willing to give things a go, and just see how they pan out.  They’re also a very fickle bunch, so there are in some ways fewer long term risks with early adopters than those later in the long tail.

The only real issue for early adopters is for a company to stop innovating.

The risks are far greater with those later in the adoption curve.  If you alienate them, or become seen as a company with lots of big ideas but few that you can rely upon to be there in the long term, you’re in big trouble.  It’s hard to regain the trust of a disenfranchised average user.

With my bleeding edge hat on, I find Google really exciting to watch.  They’ve got fascinating mobility and flexibility for such a large company.

Yet with my other hats on, I’m beginning to see a company that’s good for search, but one that I’m far less willing to rely upon to house any of my data; and when it comes to making recommendations to staff in my Faculty, I have to be pragmatic and somewhat conservative in my recommendations.

Google is becoming a company I’m not so sure I can recommend to the average user.

This post is not intended to be a whinge session, or a critical indictment of the sector I work in, or indeed the university I work at.  It’s meant to be a thinking exercise for me to try and find a way around a stalemate, and answer the question posed by a colleague recently:  ”Why have you stopped blogging, Mike?!”

A Moral Dilemma

“Moral Dilemma” is the phrase I used to describe the stalemate.  I work more or less at the coal face, interacting with academics and courses who use – or perhaps more accurately don’t use – educational technology.  This has allowed for some really interesting insight into the realities of what it’s like to be a course convener, and has presented some stark realities for one whose job it is to encourage technological innovation in learning and teaching practice.

The more I see, the more gobsmacked I am about the demands they face.  Ever increasing teaching loads, initiatives for “smarter assessment,” and yet constant pressure for quality research output.  And despite all the statements from Senior Executives to suggest that teaching is seen as a core activity of the university – on par with research – when it comes to career advancement and recognition, it’s clear that one activity trumps the other.

One early career teacher I know was advised “If you have to choose between getting a publication in on time, or being prepared for your lecture, you get the publication in on time,” while another deemed research into learning and teaching to be “career suicide.”

Such is the view of learning and teaching versus research that I am seeing time and time again.

I know at least a few innovative teachers who have been deemed “research inactive” – an academic scarlet letter if ever there was one – by virtue of the amounts of time they have invested exploring meaningful use of educational technology.

Conflicts of Interest

So where does that leave the educational technologist, tasked with the responsibility of encouraging and empowering academics to be innovative in their practice; to push the boundaries of what has been done traditionally, and explore new territories – perhaps even disrupt the system.

It presents them with a moral dilemma.  Propose new ideas, and risk jeopardizing the career prospects of your colleagues and friends; or instead facilitate traditional approaches to technology in education – eAdmin over eLearning – knowing full well that technology could be use more effectively to support learning and teaching.  Or perhaps suggest new ideas, knowing full well that you will see no interest in them whatsoever; understanding all too well why there is no interest.

It is important to note here, I think, to recognise I’ve made no mention of the needs or wants of students – this is another critical component in this discussion, and a topic that I’ve never completely resolved.  Namely: what is the relationship between educational technologist and student.  The best answer I’ve come up with so far is they help the students by helping the teachers, though I must admit I don’t find it entirely satisfactory.

Bureaucracy

Complicating the issues further are the traditional layers of bureaucracy you see in large institutions.  To even start to explore a new “supported” system you frequently need to apply for the chance – formally submit an Expression of Interest – and agree to additional responsibilities that really don’t benefit you.

In effect, the people who are willing to take the chance – the ones we really need to support as early adopters – are being forced to jump through hoops and make a case for why they should be given the opportunity.

Or, on the other hand, you can circumvent formally supported systems and adopt technologies on the open web, meaning you must also act as technical support for students as well as convener, and researcher.  Needless to say, few ever go down that road.

I’ve always approached my work with a service oriented view – and this is becoming ever more the case recently.  I’ll happily talk with people about the amazing opportunities that exist, but those opportunities are few and far between.

More commonly I battle with questions about why Blackboard doesn’t work, or why it’s so difficult to navigate the web of bureaucracy wrought by central units.

I see I’ve done little to internally resolve this conundrum, instead turning this post into the whinge session I’d so hoped to avoid.  You can see why I’m not blogging much anymore…

I was going to begin this post with an enthusiastic “Greetings Pedagogues!”  However from what my dictionary tells me, a pedagogue is “a teacher, esp. a strict or pedantic one.”   So rather than accuse you all of being pedantic and dull, how about I say “greetings fellow online learners” instead.

By way of an introduction, my name is Mike Bogle and I am one of the mentors for the Program for Online Teaching (POT).  I’d like to thank Lisa Lane for asking me to participate in the course.  I’m really looking forward to the 24 weeks ahead.

In terms of my background, I am Educational Technologist for the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of New South Wales (my staff profile here).  My primary role at UNSW is to assist staff with the exploration of learning technologies, as well as help staff effectively integrate their use into the curriculum.

By “learning technologies” I mean just about any tool or system that can enhance or benefit the learning and teaching process.  This can range from local systems such as large scale learning management systems like Blackboard and Moodle, to digital media, to collaborative tools like wiki’s, to personal learning environments such as blogs, Twitter, social media, virtual environments and the like.

There is enormous potential in this area, and yet many questions as well.  My job is to help make sense of the technical landscape, and then having done that, help people put it to good use.  So this is what I’m hoping to bring to the POT as well.

In terms of my various online hangouts, there are a few notable spaces to mention:

• Diigo: http://www.diigo.com/profile/mbogle
• Twitter: http://twitter.com/mike_bogle
• YouTube: http://youtube.com/mikebogle

So without further ado, let the fun begin.

This video tutorial was created by request and demonstrates the basic processes for recording a talking-head piece to camera.  It uses QuickTime for the initial capture of the video, and then iMovie for the editing and export.

Apologies for the black spots, despite using Screenflow dozens of times over the years to produce tutorials I managed to stuff up the timeline for the first time ever.  If there’s sufficient demand for a better version I’m happy to re-record it.  Just leave a comment if that’s of interest.

Either I’m developing a basic sense of decorum, or I’m losing my mojo. Either way for one of the first times ever, I wrote a response to a blog comment elsewhere and didn’t click submit.

The initial post discussed a different approach to meetings, and how important it is to rediscover the idea of fun in communication. The example provided was somewhat avante garde, to be sure. Yet I felt the post was well articulated, and made some very good points. Yet it was summarily dismissed by a commenter as the musings of an early career staff member who seems to have too much time on their hands.

My impulse was to blast them, but I decided not to. For one thing I don’t think it would have changed their minds, but I also don’t want to get pulled into personal arguments when the discussion desperately needs to be a higher level one, that seeks a productive outcome.

Yet the need to say something – to make my views known – persists, so I wanted to post my comment here instead. My hope in doing so is to distance myself from the original post enough that my commentary becomes a general statement rather than a pointed attack.

I’m happy to be known as fiercely opinionated; I don’t ever want to become known as an arse.

My 2 cents

“You are showing your youth here.”

How can I put this. I’m gobsmacked you left a comment like that. Since when has innovative thinking been a bad thing? At least someone is willing to do it.

Attitudes like that that – myopic obsessions about preservation of tradition and “the way things have always been” – are a key reason why universities can be such a soul-sucking experience sometimes.

Reliance on traditional approaches does not guarantee things run smoothly; that people will communicate better with one another, or that meetings will accomplish what they set out to do. The people involved determine that.

Education as a sector is at the tail end of the long tail because of conservative, narrow-minded views on how things should be done – with the exception of the few islands of innovation who decide they want to do things differently.

The pathetic thing is that these people – the fresh blood with the creative ideas – are frequently dismissed, as the commenter has so clearly demonstrated.

Most institutions claim they are on the cutting edge of innovation in learning and teaching. Very few actually are. The rest are just old formats wrapped in new packaging. This does not make them innovative, or engaging.

I don’t perceive this post as proposing we abandon the notion of meeting with one another, merely that we try to improve the meetings we do have – make them better, and more engaging. So we’re more likely to accomplish what we set out to do.

Educational formats have lasted as long as they have for a reason, and yet scoffing and dismissing a new idea because of someone’s age is just poor form. Period.

It’s the message that matters, not the messenger.

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This is too funny not to share. True story from this morning:

We’ve got a mouse issue in our kitchen that I’ve been trying to resolve for days now, and after a lot of eco-friendly, animal-friendly attempts to capture the perpetrator failed, we’ve finally resorted to something more …permanent.

When I awoke this morning I went downstairs to check on the mousetraps like I do every morning, and like every morning there isn’t any mouse in them. So I was going to set them off so no one is accidentally caught in them.

What I didn’t realise is Ubu, our cat, was inside last night, so he came down to see me before I could set them off. This wasn’t a big deal, but I wanted to do it before he went looking for mice and got himself caught.

So I grabbed an orange rind from the counter and crouched down to aim at the trap. Ubu, wanting to know what I was doing, crouched down beside me – so our heads are both well under the counter.

At this point what we didn’t know is the mouse was RIGHT next to us, just being quiet. So when we set off the trap he was right next to it when it went SNAP!

Clearly this scared the living shit out of the mouse, because he LEPT out from behind the dishwasher and hit Ubu right between the eyes. Ubu was caught completely off guard and just sat there dazed while the mouse scampered away, then looked up at me as if to say “What in the HELL was that!”

I responded “That’s what we’re after,” and he immediately went into stalk mode.

This is starting to feel like Caddy Shack…

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