Nov
28
Filter Bubbles
November 28, 2011 | | Comments Off
Ok Computer…we need to talk. Call me paranoid but tell me why, after googling for “headphones” for that perfect gift, are ads for “headphones” now showing up in my Facebook account? And why does entering “Job Opportunities” in google on my machine and that same phrase on a colleague’s computer an office away lead to different result sets?
Welcome to the brave and slightly insidious new world of “filter bubbles”, a term coined by Eli Pariser, a place where the the web knows way more about you than you dare imagine. Gone are the days of searching in blissful anonymity. As Pariser explains in his book, the world wide web isn’t so wide anymore with only a handful of big companies controlling most everything you search for and the news you get. Don’t expect to learn anything new or potentially uncomfortable in this new space. It’s a wonder, what with the espoused disruptive power of the internet, educators don’t talk about this issue more.
I guess we really did sign up for this when we wanted “relevance”. Now we’re becoming trapped in our own little self-reinforcing worlds that have the potential to be rather dull, like travelling the world and only dining at fast food restaurants.
Mar
24
RSAnimate – Sir Ken Robinson
March 24, 2011 | | Comments Off
Excellent animation of Sir Ken’s presentation on changing educational paradigms.
Mar
6
Unsupported Device – Please Update your Car
March 6, 2011 | | Comments Off
I’ve been getting that error message when I plug an iPhone 4 into the USB in my Honda. With the firmware in your car now requiring software updates to support navigation and entertainment systems, get used to it. My thinking is innovations like the Nissan Leaf or the Chevy Volt (fingers crossed that their sales take off) change just about everything we thought we knew about cars and that’s a good thing as Martha would say. These vehicles will require plenty of IT to support their power management and their navigation systems brought to you by the “range anxiety” (GM copyrighted that term) owners will experience. Get me to the closest charging station – and hurry!
Imagine a world where cars communicated with each other to do real-time traffic management. Just think of how good you’d look when your car updates Twitter with your awesome driving skills. Parking lots will want to tempt you with their awesome deals on their power rates and inductive plates.
You will need to constantly be updating your car’s computer to take it all in. The dilemma car manufacturers will face is that is keeping car tech up-to-date is a lot more impractical to upgrade than your iPad, especially considering the economic life of a car is about 10 years longer than that device.
My modest proposal: take all the propriety tech out of the vehicles and let your smart-phone be the brains. You simply download the car’s app, plug the smart-phone in or have it near the dash using NFC and away you go. Don’t worry, important safety stuff like braking and speed control would be autonomous to the car’s control system, your smart-phone would just augment it. Maybe car manufacturers could create open APIs to allow smart phone devices to talk to the cars control system for navigation and power and climate management. Not to mention entertainment – and imagine getting Groupons displaying on your dash… Just a thought.
Feb
2
Okay a much better view on 2011 trends
February 2, 2011 | | Comments Off
Jan
16
Top 11 for 2011
January 16, 2011 | | Comments Off
Not wanting to feel left out, here are some of the top technologies I think will have an impact on TRU over the next year and beyond.
1. Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
TRU is going big with Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI.) After a number of pilot tests, we plan to equip the new House of Learning with VDI terminals. As I’ve discussed before, this has a number of benefits for students including remote access to applications from just about any device. The benefits to ITS is a simplification and improvement of computers, easier endpoint security and massive energy savings.
2. Virtual Application Delivery
VDI will enable Virtual Application Delivery Infrastructure – VADI I think the acronym is. This will provide the “anywhere access” to bespoke educational applications that once required a single install in a computer lab. Once we figure out the licensing issues, our goal is for students to get the applications they need from any device, on or off campus.
3. Tablet City
The 2011 CES was all about new tablet computers (some 80 iPad Competitors was announced at CES 2011) that are coming fast and furious in a bid to compete with the iPad. I’m really interested in the Playbook by RIM as this machine promises to provide the enterprise integration that is absent in iPad V1. A demo unit will be available in ITS shortly.
4. eBooks
I’m growing comfortable with buying and reading books on the iPad. TRU’s bookstore already offers eBook versions of required textbooks so expect to see more students buying their books electronically. Open Source HTML 5.0 eBook platforms will allow our professors to publish their own works to tablets.
5. ePortfolios
The open-source Mahara ePortfolio system is currently being tested as part of a wider deployment for students and faculty. The ePortfolio takes us a step beyond learning management systems to support competency-based learning models and showcasing learning for sharing with family, friends, employers and instructors. The current understanding is that TRU would host a student’s ePortfolio for as long as they need it.
6. Cloudifying the data centre
2011 may resolve the great debate about whether the concept of “private clouds” will actually be relevant in a world of Amazon EC2 pay-for-use Public Cloud services where customers acquire computing, memory and storage on demand on the spot-market. With the significant server and application consolidation resulting from Project SAGE, opportunities for the Network and Technical Services department to get good at cloud computing abound.
Whether Private or Public Cloud Services prevail, we will need to provide standardized procedures for deploying, configuring and managing virtual machines (VM’s), have automated tools for deploying VM’s and provide user-self service access to these tools. This is a sea-change from the way we have done things.
7. Cloud eMail for Students
Providing official correspondence to TRU students is important. That said, there are organizations like Google and Microsoft who can provide a far superior email package to the luminis portal email currently we currently support. The goal will be to select one of these to vendors to provide TRU’s hosted email service for students, accessible from the myTRU portal.
8. Lecture Capture
A technology of keen interest to test will be the use of lecture capture devices to allow playback of lectures for students. Lecture capture devices will be available in a number of classrooms soon.
9. App Nation
With “Apps” not just for the iPhone and iPad anymore, look for the “App Store” metaphor to be the distribution mechanism for software across all platforms.
10. Solid State Servers
Using Solid State Memory (SSM) for database storage is an exciting opportunity. Besides from massive performance benefits promised (5-100x) from SSM (all data is loaded “in memory”), the energy savings could be significant.
11. Nissan Leaf
Finally, while not an Information Technology, I’m smitten with the concept of the Nissan Leaf electric vehicle. It seems more like a cute laptop on wheels (check out the lithium-ion batteries) than a automobile. If it does hills well, I’m interested in this being my next vehicle. And there is an iPhone App for the Leaf.
Dec
2
Design Thinking for Rethinking IT – updated
December 2, 2010 | Tagged change, design thinking | Comments Off
I cant help thinking about how old, stale and irrelevant some of the “strategic plans” I’ve worked on in the past look on the cusp of 2011. I think one of the problems those good ole MBA approaches to rethinking your business like SWOT analysis and the like is how reflexive and inward looking they are. It seems much easier to talk about ones collective strengths and weaknesses and the way we do things now than it is to envisage what the customer would really want. I think the problem begins when we start out on the planning process by looking at our current reality when we try to think about improving our services to students.
While I’m not up to speed on the approach, I’m really interested in the emerging concept of “Design Thinking”. Well, an emerging concept to me anyway. You see back in 1969, Herbert Simon defined the design thinking process as having seven stages: define, research, ideate, prototype, choose, implement, and learn. From Wikipedia – “Within these seven steps, problems can be framed, the right questions can be asked, more ideas can be created, and the best answers can be chosen. The steps aren’t linear; they can occur simultaneously and can be repeated.”
We really need to spend more time “ideating.” How many programmers does it take to screw in a light bulb? Answer; Why a light bulb?
A nice discussion on RedHat’s use of design thinking is here. From that article, “design” is art that people use. Beautiful design is everywhere, from that well designed Japanese car to the sleek and sexy iPad. I came from a world where design took a back seat to functionality. Programmers worked very much in isolation from designers and the results can be seen in many of our interfaces. This is not a criticism of the work done but an opportunity to learn and rethink how we better design and support systems for students.
If the last century was for the technician this one will belong to the designer. According to Paola Antonelli in the Economist “World in 2036″ - “Designers make disruptive innovations manageable and approachable so the can be embraced and assimilated into life. And they never forget functionality and elegance.” page 113
I’m just learning about the design thinking concept and how to apply it to developing our latest IT plan to support institutional strategy. In the meantime I recommend all IT professionals go out and get to know people in the Arts – while we weren’t looking they probably own the future.
Sep
14
Coming Soon: WolfPack action in HD
September 14, 2010 | | Comments Off
Tech Update: We are just putting the finishing touches on an webcasting solution that allow us to capture WolfPack action in the Tournament Capital Centre in high definition and stream to the web. The system uses three robotic cameras and supports a number of court side inputs like colour commentary, audio, score clock feeds etc. The following diagram shows roughly how this has been configured:
The idea is that a single operator can control the cameras, presets and other inputs for the web stream.
More information on this will be on the WolfPack site shortly.
Behlul Yavasgel - CIS Nations Tournament MVP and TRU IT Services Star
Sep
7
Improving University Websites
September 7, 2010 | | Comments Off
Cheeky, piquant comic from Randall Munroe about University Websites – “Things On The Front Page Of a University Website/Things People Go To The Site Looking For”
The upshot is that university administrators and web designers often don’t actually know what should be on a front page of something as complex as a university. It raises questions about any new website redesign we may contemplate at TRU:
- Does this comic ring true with our current website design?
- Is the requirement for only one-click access to information still important with everyone so comfortable with search?
- Should the website only cater to prospects/students and not the many other constituencies like Alumni and Research?
- Will the website front page cater only to the uninitiated and everyone else (students/faculty/staff/alumni) get all university information via the mytru portal?
An article in Inside Higher Ed explores this topic.
Apr
27
mobile.tru.ca is live
April 27, 2010 | | Comments Off
Just about everyone these days has a smartphone. To support our student’s needs for on-the-go information we recently launched http://m.tru.ca.
Simply enter this url in any smartphone browser to access a number of TRU campus services including TRU News and Events, Food Services Information, Wolf Pack sports updates,computer lab availability and wireless printers, campus maps and Security contacts.
More services to come.
Mar
5
Whether Clouds or?
March 5, 2010 | | 2 Comments
I was keen on using the Ghost service, a “cloud-based” virtual desktop environment I planned to use for my daughter’s school science project. That was until I got this message in my in-box recently -
Dear Ghost User,
We hope you have been enjoying our free Ghost service. Regrettably changes in the marketplace mean that it is no longer economical for us to host the Ghost service and we will be closing down the service on or around March 15. We will instead be focusing on licensing or selling our technology to larger companies.
etc etc
Yikes. So much for a new frontier…
Cloud computing is one of the hot topics on the tech agenda over the last few years but candidly I thought we would be further along. Because of all the issues around security, privacy and switching costs, not to mention the questionable ROI at this time, I’ve had trouble thinking about migrating our infrastructure to the Cloud. In that I would appear to not be alone.
Making money in the Cloud space still appears illusive. According to Silicon Alley Insider, even Microsoft is struggling with it. Check out the performance of Microsoft Online Services Division, of which Infrastructure Services is a part:
While I still have ROI and security concerns surrounding the model I still feel it’s the future. It just seems the future isn’t arriving as fast as I thought it would.