Scribd

Posted on April 17, 2008 by Alvin Trusty

Here is something I stumbled across today. I was looking for a way to dump a lot of files into an online location so that those files would be easy to access from other sites. My files are Word docs, Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations. I found Scribd. The service is free and you can upload as many files as you like.

Take a look at the file below.  It’s Alice in Wonderland (a document in the public domain) formatted in Word.  I added some pictures and all the formatting found in a normal Word document: page numbers, chapter headings, etc.

Read this doc on Scribd: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Here are a couple of really cool things about the way Scribd handles files.

1 – The files are displayed in a browser.  The original application (Word, Excel, etc) does not have to be installed on a machine to see the formatted documents.

2 – I can make my files available to the public or keep them private.

3 – If I choose to make my files public, I can control the format that is downloaded by public users.  I can permit the original file to be downloaded in the original format.  Other options include text only and PDF.  Because one of the download options is PDF, I now have a free web-based file converter.

4 – All the Creative Commons licensing options are included in the publishing area.

I have uploaded my private document library to the private area.  I haven’t tried PowerPoint files.  I’ll upload my eTech presentation as the acid test.  If it can handle all 327 slides, I will be impressed.

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Tyranny of Filtering

Posted on April 13, 2008 by Alvin Trusty

I managed to squeeze in an extra podcast this week.  Teachers Teaching Teachers #95 dives into filtering first hand with the people that run the filters in an assortment of districts.  The panelists ranged from a New York City department of education system engineer to a tech administrator from Alaska.

The federal government requires filtering in any district that receives E-Rate funding.  Even though the federal government’s contribution to the bottom line of the local district is somewhat small compared to state and local funds, most schools comply with federal filtering requirements.

Specifically, districts must have several policies in place.

These include: measures to block or filter pictures that (a) are obscene, (b) contain child pornography, or (c) when computers with Internet access are used by minors, harmful to minors. (CIPA)

At every conference I attend where vendors of filtering software are on the show floor, I always ask the same question.  “Do you guarantee your filtering solution will block 100% of those items required by CIPA.”  So far not a single filtering vendor has been willing to guarantee anything like that.  The Internet grows too fast to make this claim.

Filtering by definition cannot be perfect, but the government still requires it.

This podcast quickly gets beyond the CIPA mandates and into how filtering at the district level really works.  I was glad to hear about one aspect of filtering that most teachers and students don’t think about: bandwidth.  Many schools block streaming media because the district doesn’t have the bandwidth to handle it.  In these cases, blocking streaming media has little to do with the content of that media.

The most important point in this podcast was that teachers need to find out how the filtering rules are modified in a district.  All of the panelists said that most requests to unblock sites are granted, but a teacher has to know how to make her voice heard.

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Google Docs

Posted on April 11, 2008 by Alvin Trusty

Google Docs is another one of those applications that everyone is clammering about as a Word replacement.  It is a free web-based word processor that has incredible “sharing” features.  Without installing software, you can create a document and then share that document with one or more people.  Anyone in the group can edit the document and everyone can see all the edits.

You can’t do that in Word.

Unfortunately, this is where the Word/Google Docs comparison ends.  Although Google Docs does wonderful things for free, with nothing more than a browser, it hardly has the basic requirements of a modern word processor.

I tried to complete a simple project using Google Docs and here is what I found.

1 – You can type and format text in basic ways.  After selecting some text, the font, color and size can be changed.  You’re ok as long as 8, 10, 12, 14, 18, 24 or 36 point fonts are all you want.  There is also no way to format paragraphs or line spacing.  It’s all single spacing with no adjustments between paragraphs.

2 – There is no Find command, but you can use your browser’s built-in find utility.  The Find and Replace has no undo.  Be careful with that.

3 – Forget about page numbers.  If you print something, you can format your browser so that print job add page numbers.  There is no way to tell how many pages you’ll print ahead of time because Google Docs doesn’t tell you more than the word count.

4 – You can insert a picture from a file.  After that, the picture tools fall apart.  You can’t crop a picture.  If you resize a graphic, there is no way to control the aspect ratio.  There are no tools that permit fine adjustments.  If you need a picture to be three inches wide, you’ll need to print it, measure it on the paper using a ruler and adjust accordingly.

5 – A header is something that appears at the top of the first page and a footer is something that appears at the bottom of the last page.  In between no pages have either.

6 – There is no style control.

7 – There is no tab control.  I think a tab is half an inch, but the lack of a ruler leaves me guessing.

8 – There is no margin control.

9 – Ctrl-B, Ctrl-U, Ctrl-I… that’s the end of the keyboard shortcuts that aren’t built into the browser.

10 – There is no way to fully justify a paragraph (margins straight on both sides of the pages).

11 – There is no “reveal codes” that can show formatting marks.  It goes without saying that formatting cannot be adjusted in bulk using Find and Replace.

12 – The only way to get multiple columns is to insert a table and paste your text into it.  I crashed my browser trying to get a long document into two columns.

If you want a full featured word processor for free, get Open Office.  Although the sharing features of Google Doc can be incredibly powerful, it’s not much of a word processor.

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Lecture Copyright

Posted on April 4, 2008 by Alvin Trusty

Here’s a gem from Techdirt about a professor that is suing someone for selling notes of his lecture.  He is claiming he has a copyright on what he says in class and someone else can’t take his ideas, write them down in outline form and sell them for profit.

Apparently this is an actual business in large campus communities.  Einstein Notes seems to be all over Florida.  They show up in lectures, take notes and then sell those notes to students who cannot make it to class.

The lecturer claims what he says is protected by copyright.  I don’t know if that is factual.  Nothing is protected by copyright law unless it is fixed.  Unless the professor is reading his lecture word for word from a piece of paper, I doubt his lecture meets the minimal requirement of what it takes to protect a work.

Let’s suppose he has written down his lecture and is reading it word for word during class.  Facts, ideas, systems and methods of operation are not protected by copyright.  I have to believe most of the lecture will contain elements of this type and not the instructor’s personal poetry or musical works.

How many times have you witnessed someone using a personal recording device to record a lecture?  If writing notes constitutes copyright infringement, recording that same lecture is certainly against the law.

Maybe we should all transfer to MIT.

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/courses/av/

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News

Posted on April 1, 2008 by Alvin Trusty

I’m from Google and my wife is from Yahoo.  Yet we both get the same headlines every day.  Actually she has Yahoo as her start page while I use Protopage as mine.  Her news is right there in Yahoo.  Mine comes from RSS feeds at places like Slashdot, Digg, Newsvine and assorted blogs.

Yet we both get the same headlines every day.

I don’t watch the news on television, so I don’t know for sure they are running the same stories.  My guess is, they are.  Apparently there are only twenty headline-worthy stories in the world each day, and everyone picks them up.

The same is true of the blogs I read.  If anything comes out in educational technology, someone picks it up in Twitter (which I’m still having a hard time grasping).  Then a few people blog about what they saw in Twitter.  Before the end of the day there are fifty versions of basically the same “you’ve got to try this” new edtech thing.

I think that’s the main problem.  Too many people are dipping their toes into so many new technologies that no one is taking the time to really understand how most of them can change what we are already doing.  I’m going to do like John has done.  I’m going to take control of my own professional development and plunge into something for a while.  Maybe some of the technologies I’ve sampled can make a real difference for me.  I feel another series coming on.

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