In Memoriam: Google Reader -- Why This Matters to Digital Citizenship

Note: The top half of this will be about Google Reader -- the best product that few people new about. Feel free to ignore it. The bottom half will tie this product and the philosophy behind it to Digital Citizenship and Information Literacy. If you are a non-tech Educator, skip to the picture of the three girls.

So Long and Thx for all the Well-Organized, Pre-Selected Push News

If you were reading any blogs about...well almost anything or on social media...just about any of them. You probably heard that, as part of its Spring Cleaning Project, Google was putting the nail in the coffin of a service called Google Reader.

The reason that the cry was so loud, in part, is because so many of the non-traditional news sources (blogs, website reporters, active tweeters, etc.) used Google Reader on a daily (and in some cases hourly) basis. The sunsetting of this product will change the way that many of us (myself included) operate as we maneuver through the techno-informatic complex called the modern world.

What is Google Reader?
Google Reader was/is a news aggregator that uses a back end technology called RSS. Many websites, blogs, news agencies have the RSS symbol (seen in the picture) on their site. If you click that button, you will be given the opportunity to "subscribe" to the information on that site. This subscription is collected and available to you in an RSS Reader which can be found on the web or on phones, etc.

The reason the reader was so popular was because it did what it was designed to do very well. It delivered subscriptions in a clean format that could be sorted by subscription or by recency. It synced between online and mobile. It did not inundate the reader with too many advertisements, nor did it get overly complicated with graphics or flashy (or HTML5-y) formatting tricks.

Why Shut It Down?
Google reader (and RSS in general) is a quirky entity on the internet. For those people who use it, it becomes essential. It is a way to quickly filter information because you, as a user, have pre-determined that the content has some value.

This NSFW (language) post went up hours
after the announcement. May be worth a Google.

From a Social Studies teacher: What am I supposed to do? That is how I read all of my blogs. It is how I get new ideas for the class, news to share, commentary. This is miserable. What is next?

From Hitler: What? I am supposed to rely on getting my news from what Stalin retweets? (see photo)

 Conversation with my wife:
+Elizabeth Ferries-Rowe (@wishbabydoc): I don't know what that is
Me: When you wake up in the morning what is the first thing you look at?
+Elizabeth Ferries-Rowe: Facebook.
Me: For me, it is reader. It tells me what happened that was worth knowing overnight.

...and that is ultimately the issue. Google's spring cleaning focuses on eliminating products that don't fit its core mission components -- Search, Social, and ...something else that I am drawing a blank on. Now, it could be argued (and has been on a lot of blogs) that when Google refocused the "Sharing" from a broad choice down to Google+ that their insular vision caused a lot of people to drop the service. It could be argued (and also has been) that this is yet another example of Google backing away from its promise to "not be evil". Some see it as a problem with the Google-as-Free model, offering to pay money toward the service so many rely upon.

I signed the petition, but I don't think it will do much good. Google made its choice. Here is why I think it is the wrong one:

InfoWhelm, #DigCit, and the Need for New Methods of Information Acquisition

The next gen of Digital Learners will need to Find & Filter info

When Brebeuf Jesuit revamped its curriculum from Computer Applications to Digital Citizenship (a move now being adopted, at least in name, by the rest of the State of Indiana #nocredit), one of the areas that was important to consider was research. As we delved deeper into this topic, talking to teachers, interview students, looking at research in our curriculum and expectations of colleges, we realized that this was going to be a significant focus of the new curriculum. As with most of our units, there are a lot of goals that branch to a number of areas, but today I want to focus on three issues we uncovered:

1. Data, Data, Everywhere - In 2010, Eric Schmidt, then CEO of Google told an audience at Techonomy that there is more data generated in two days than was produced from the dawn of human history to 2003. IBM notes that 90% of all data available has been created in the last two years alone.

2. Inability for Traditional Filter Mechanisms to Address - Traditionally, people relied on large organizations to filter through the data for reliability, veracity, accuracy, etc. These institutions included the government, academic settings with their peer-review system, and even publishers and editors. But most data is now user generated. Whether it is pictures shared on instagram, tweets of the snark or share variety, or blogs like this one, we publish with no filter.

3. Need for Intelligent Filtering - But at the point that so much data is produced, human beings still have to find a mechanism for sorting through that deluge of information. We need to setup systems and processes that will help us filter that information based on a number of factors, including:

• Usefulness - does the data help me in my daily life or in achieving long term goals?
• Accuracy - does the data match my real world experience? Can it be independently verified?
• Timeliness - is the data relevant now or has the digital ship already sailed?
• Variety - are there enough different sources of data to avoid falling into traps of confirmation bias or silo thinking?

From a post about setting up RSS filters

These filters are not a part of the natural make-up of a human being. In fact, we are biologically/psychologically programmed to have the opposite reaction to some of this information (we tend to ignore information that does not already fit within our pre-existing belief system; we discount information that goes against immediate bio-feedback).

At the point where we do not have a natural ability to sift through information and the social structures in place are inadequate to the job, we must design new systems. RSS Feeds are one of the most powerful tools for this information-filtering, if the people subscribing do so with deliberation and thought -- and Google Reader was one of the best.

Practically applied -- Teaching Infowhelm and Data Management
It is insanity to expect a student to run through a full cross-referenced search process every time they want to read about a controversial issue or topic of interest to them as an individual or to society at large. But in the age of bias-journalism, government/corporations limiting curriculum to easily testable/gradable items, and infowhelm, students need something to combat the deluge of bad data. Click SUBSCRIBE

As we teach our students the skills of finding accurate, relevant, and useful information, we should also be teaching them a method to collect that data on a regular basis. Once a source has been confirmed useful, it is a source that has a good chance of being useful in the future. Click SUBSCRIBE.

As we teach students to find items that present different viewpoints on the world (by finding sources that go against our natural inclinations, discovering writers and reporters from outside our geographic/cultural bubbles, or by finding snarky bloggers who make our blood boil), we should make those viewpoints part of our daily intake of information, if for no other reason than to know the perspective of those who disagree with us. Click SUBSCRIBE.

Why not Social Media?

Social Media Aggregators serve a different function

In class, we work with our students to have them identify their primary sources of information. A growing number of teenagers cite social media as their number one source of news. But relying on your social media circle has two negative #digcit impacts.

• First, it adds a layer of choice between the user and the information that is outside the user's control. You are not receiving information because has been pre-screened as reliable or relevant or useful (at least not be you). You are receiving information because it meant some criteria that was relevant to whoever decided to share it. Not good.
• Second, it is almost guaranteed to lack any form of counter viewpoint since we are not likely to follow/friend those with whom we fundamentally disagree. While we can intellectually view material with which we disagree and evaluate it for truth and accuracy, we don't necessarily want that in our social feed, so we avoid it.
• Finally, our social feeds are SOCIAL. Although I am a huge advocate for social media for its connective and professional development potential, the use of it as a news aggregator gets diluted by the barrage of snark, hashtags, LOLcats, and Hitler-throwing-a-fit videos.

I am sad to see Google Reader go. I have begun to search for alternatives and have been disappointed in the bells and whistles that have been added, usually in the name of "making it more social" or "adding visual appeal". 

But I am also sad because I think of Google as a partner in the #digcit world. Through gmail, google docs, and drive, they have done a lot to empower the individual and close the gap that the Digital Divide throws at our students (granted at the cost of a little/lot of privacy). When they made this decision, they decided to remove an effective tool against information glut and overload. They decided to separate the core functionality of SEARCH from the parallel human need to SORT. Rather than close down the service, I would have hoped they would have made its use a key part of their educational drive.

So, Thank you, Google Reader. My mornings, mid mornings, early afternoons, just-before-leaving-for-work, standing in line, and late nights won't be the same without you.

(You have a few months left. Go ahead. Click SUBSCRIBE).

Google I/O -- Tablets, Drives, and Skydiving Surprise

The summer month's of each year are filled with conferences, trade shows, and announcements. While I was at #iste12 last week the Google Developer's conference was taking place. Since a few teachers have been asking me for reactions, I spent a few putting my initial thoughts down. I will post more of a full review after I have played with some toys and features.

Nexus 7

The Nexus 7 is a Google branded 7"tablet built by their partners at Asus. Asus is a great tablet maker (my goto tablet is currently a Transformer Prime from them) and thd throw up a few quick thoughts. Don't consider these reviews...I have a Nexus 7 ordered and will probably be picking up a chromebox and a new chromebook but don't have them e tablet will be the first using the Jellybean version of the operating system which is getting excellent reviews.

It has that great portable size of 7" (remember, I carried a 7" tablet most of last year before switching to a galaxy note. It seems to have most of the sensors necessary to run apps (accelerometer, gyroscope, etc.). Combined with the newly announced offline Maps feature, the GPS is functional even without 3g. Bluetooth functionality makes it work with headsets (skype, hangouts) and keyboards.


The combining of Google's media delivery systems under the PLAY store (Books, Movies, Music, Apps) gives a one stop shop similar to Apple's iTunes and the Amazon's offerings on the Fire. I have never had a much reason to get into Google Play media, but with the announcement of  movies and TV shows and movies, the Nexus tablet is going directly at the Kindle Fire market. It's even priced the same.


I think there is a market for 7" tablets and the affordability is going to make this device competitive. I have often said that the Kindle Fire is secondary/consumption device. Even the interface puts all the media front and center and the apps are a backscreen afterthought (no widgets!). I want to play with the interface before I pass judgement, but this seems to place the media as a widget within the Jellybean interface. The fact that you can attach a bluetooth keyboard or switch to swype or swiftkey also ups the productivity factor (although part of JellyBean is a swiftkey-like predictor).


Full review when I mine arrives in mid-july :)

Chrome for iOS and Android

The Chrome browser is out for the iPad. This includes the tabs-from-other-browsers feature and bookmark sync. On the downside, it cannot be the default (that's Safari and you will say "thank you") and the fruit-company forces browsers to use apple's web rendering engine -- I am getting some feedback that it is significantly slower than Chrome on Android (c'mon Apple. Open yourself up to a little competition. It could be fun!)

Offline Google Docs Editiing

This one is wonderful and at this point pretty much seamless. When your connection drops while you are in a doc, you can just keep working. When the connection is re-established, it syncs. This feature currently works for word processing and should be showing up for presentations and spreadsheets soon.

Google Drive Integration

There were a lot of drive and doc integration announcements that will be bearing fruit in the next few months. My favorite (written about on my Google Drive review) is the integration of the drive as a part of the chromebook file manager (not kidding, a little giddy about this -- it will save 10-15 clicks on blogposts).  With the opening of a new API, we should start to see more "save to drive" features on Apps as well.


A Gdrive App was released for iOS, but it appears to be more of a dropbox competitor, without full-on docs editing (although you can open a doc in safari and edit there). I have a suspicion that we are seeing the surface of a deeper back-and-forth between Google and Apple on this one - with the Google acquisition of QuickOffice, I expect to see some movement on an improved Gdrive app for iOS soon.

Other Quick Hits:

• The new Samsung Chromebook got some decent airtime (new processor - Celeron, three times faster), better trackpad, Network Jack -- slightly less battery. Chromeboxes are out and tiny (chrome in a box. Thinking of a few for the library).
• Google released a media streamer with social sharing called the Nexus Q. Love the idea of sharing the playlist/dj duties at a party. Skeptical that I need to spend $300 dollars for something that is not as robust as my Roku, but I haven't played with one yet.
• Lots of Google+ announcements including a bit of a PR stumble with the new Events feature (Calendar Spam, but already fixed) 
• On the back end, Goole is launching a web data service (Compute Engine) that could compete with Amazon Web Services. Amazon, to help out the bigG a little, crashed Friday night leaving some people without Pinterest, Instagram, or Netflix -- No deaths were reported, yet.
• Day one of the show was stolen with Google Glass, the eyeglass wearable interface with lots of early potential (photo, video, sharing, data on your glasses. The skydivers were a nice touch :). This is in very early development -- in fact, the play-around-with-it version for developers onsite was $1500 and that is the only way you could get one.
• The 3D imagery on Google Earth is pretty trippy. If you haven't looked for awhile, get the update and got to a major city.
• Jellybean features (since many of you won't see these for awhile): Voice transcription on the device (no more need to be on a network - poor Siri); Google Now - This could be cool. Cards that show you your day, check on traffic, work out your appt travel schedule, etc.; Interactions with notifications (send an I'm running late text without opening messaging)

So that's two days of developer goodness. My take? 

• I am excited about some things and see a lot of potential in others. 
• Google needed to integrate the media services to compete with Apple and Amazon on that front and I am glad it happened, but teachers have had decent access to media for awhile.
• There is a new FIRE coming out and it will be directly and harshly compared with the Nexus 7. Hope that Amazon is up to the task. I am really excited to get this one in my hands and give it a work out. The OG Galaxy Tab is still my middle daughters favorite toy.
• I think that Drive and Docs may end up being the key for educators. The faster we can have a full cross-platform productivity suite, the better. Keep it simple so that teachers can concentrate on the classroom and the students. Keep it ubiquitous so that students can swtich from class-to-class and school-to-school without re-learning.

Most of this was off the top of my head. If I missed anything major or you really want my opinion on adding heat-symbols to Google Maps, please post a comment or Tweet me. Feel free to share -- would love to close out the month with 10,000 views :)

Fan-droid out.

The Jen and JD Show: Episode 1 - Snarkfest

Taking our education and geeky wisdom to a new level (not to mention our hubris and love of parenthetical cartoon bubbles), Jen and JD have decided to do a video podcast!

After a TON of playing around with hotspots and various broadcasting platforms. The @40ishoracle and I are proud to present the first episode of the Jen and JD show, brought to you on the screencast.com platform (mainly because YouTube doesn't allow links to outside sources. What is up with that?)

So please, sit back...no, on second thought...
Read the links.
Post comments.
Retweet, share, subscribe....

Do that interactive PLN thing that you do SO well.

Episode 1: The Snarkfest o' Educational Stuff.

To the Clouds! - An Educator's Guide to the New G-drive and Associated Apps

Normally, I am not a person to do product reviews, but enough buzz was being generated and enough people have been asking about how we are looking at it, that I decided it was time to lock myself away for a few days and play with the new Google Drive...

To be fair, it was also an excuse to geek out and avoid thinking about a "long range plan for technology" which in my world is the equivalent of tossing a 20-sided die into a cup full of tea leaves and hoping that the result looks plausible.

The Google Drive:

What is it?

How does it compare?

Why use it?

What it is:

The Google Drive is the long-rumored (it was in secret beta a few years ago and caused quite a bit of excitement) cloud-based storage provided by Google. For the last few months, we have known that it would be similar to other cloud based systems -- a certain amount of storage for free, additional storage available for more money. We assumed (correctly) that it would have some way to easily move any type of file from a traditional desktop to the cloud and back. We assumed (also correct) that it would be linked to Google Docs, the cloud based productivity software (word processing, spreadsheets, etc).

The details are these: it is 5 GB of free space that can be tied to you gmail account. If you are an Apps-for-Education partner, your administrator has to flip a switch (for now) to allow the service to activate, although this should become part of the regular service as the drive is phased in.

Gdocs meets Gdrive

It is a replacement for Google Docs, in that all of your "Docs" are now stored in the Drive which looks very similar. There is more of a traditional drive feel to it with folders at the top (when sorted by Title), and the traditional "Create" and "Upload" buttons to the left, along with a folder tree, some quicksorts and the "DOWNLOAD GOOGLE DRIVE" Button.

The Google Drive download puts a file folder on your Mac or PC that allows you to treat your G-Drive in the same way that you do with traditional file folders. It becomes a quick way to save in the file system and docs that you click on from the traditional folder open in native applications or their Gdoc-in-the-browser window. Syncing happens in the background and is relatively seamless. (note: if you are a Google Cloud Connect user, documents that are synced using THAT product are ignored by G-Drive syncing. I actually uninstalled the cloud connect so that G-Drive could take over completely). There is also an app for Android (it is the replacement of the Gdocs app if you have it installed already and one is in the works for iOS, giving you syncing in all the ways you would need except one (more later).

(comparisons and google apps after the break)

Teaching the (non)Controversy Part I: A Marketplace, Corrupted

In celebration of passing 5,000 page views on my blog (THANK YOU SO MUCH), I thought I would change things up a little by mixing the typical rant up with a problem that I don't necessarily have an answer for yet.

(Please note, I will be writing about "controversy" in this blog. Please take the content of my claim into consideration even if you disagree with the examples)

But first, check out my Pin (Pinterest Board)!:

(ok, in all honesty, I am also trying to figure out a use-case for Pinterest in education as well. According to some of my students I won't get it, because I am a not a girl...ha!)

Interlude 1:

One of our numerous resources

The debate topic a few years ago in Lincoln-Douglas was over mandatory vaccinations. As we clarified issues such as individual autonomy and social responsibility, the topic of Autism kept coming up. As all good coaches and competitors do, we went to the research, eventually focusing on two sources: Autism's False Prophets and The Vaccine Book. One of the fascinating things we learned through these sources, peer reviewed journals, discussion with physicians, etc. was the "controversy" of the link between Autism and Vaccination was non-existent -- there wasn't a link.

Despite other books
Despite celebrity spokes people
Despite air time on evening news programs and screen time on websites

The scientific community had put this "controversy" to rest through the process of epidemiological study, scientific method, and peer review. But if you google this topic, the controversy appears to be live and well.
In fact, the third link (when I looked it up for this blog) refers to a March 2011 study published in a peer-reviewed journal that "sheds new light" -- It actually appears to affirm a number of the issues with the original Autism-Vaccine link claims but studies other areas that could be open for investigation.
[End Interlude]

Thus, the full understanding of this issue (which I do NOT claim to have) would require a careful study of published literature, a grasp of the process of Peer Review and its relationship to the scientific method in assessing the validity (or invalidity) of various hypothesis, and an ability to carefully and closely read information beyond the first few paragraphs and analyze carefully the implications of a statement.

Sounds like 21st Century skills to me.

Teaching the (non)Controversy - What went wrong?

I think there are a  lot of issues that are at play here, not the least of which include strongly held religious beliefs that may come into sharp contrast with commonly accepted scientific theories (see how I just went there with evolution without making it the focus of my essay? #savethedinosaurs). I am not going to focus on that one, but instead want to look at  how the information age has influenced this issue.

First, Back in the pre-PC days, it was difficult to get writing (any writing) in front of a large number of readers. Most academic publishing was controlled by universities and, because of the practice of Peer Review and the necessity to maintain an academic reputation, it was difficult for theories to be published without strong scientific grounding. Thus, if you were researching information in a library, it had likely gone through an editorial process or a full-bore system of Peer Review.

Second, there was a lot less news in those days: fewer channels, no Internet, and no 24/7 news cycle. Additionally, the news was not in intense competition for nielson ratings and page views as a primary driver. With less competition, news agencies could afford to be less sensational.

Third, if you did have an extreme minority opinion and you did want to exercise your 1st amendment right to throw that idea out there, your method of transmission was severely curtailed. The paper flyer you hand out on a street corner lends some opinion on the validity of the thought in most people's minds.

Fast-forward to 2012. There is more information created in a single day than a human being could ingest in his or her entire life. Much of this information is unvetted through either a publisher's editorial department or the formal peer review of academia. The Internet has become the great publishing equalizer, allowing people's opinions to appear as fact and ideas without evidence to exist with the same amount of shiny and pretty (and sometime even more) as venerated news agencies, academic publications, and scholarly research.

In this environment, news agencies are fighting for every precious eyeball. While we like to pretend that we each want more feel-good stories, ratings go up when there is human drama and the best way to initiate this on a news show is to have two or more people yelling at eachother over their heartfelt beliefs. Thus, the creation of "equal time" policies serve the dual purpose of showing "all sides" of an issue while creating a system most likely to create entertaining television. The flaw in this system, of course, is that careful consideration must be made to determine just how big that other side of the issue actually may be.

Abandoning the One Ring -- Breaking out of the Ultimate Platform Mentality

Apologies to Tolkien, but i write what pops into my head...

One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor  Schools where the Shadows lie.
One Ring Learning Management System to rule them* all, One  Ring Learning Management System to find them,
One  Ring Learning Management System to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of   Mordor Schools  where the Shadows lie.

*Them = Teachers, Students, undersea Sponges, etc.

5 minutes long but oh so nice for GenX memories

Searching for the Miracle

As Brebeuf Jesuit has been moving to its 1:1 BYOT model, part of the internal preparation for classroom teachers has been meeting with individual departments to begin discussing what the classroom could look like next year. There have been many positive implementations during this pilot year and it has been exciting to be able to share what some of these implementations look like (see http://40ishoraclereflections.blogspot.com) for some examples.


The two concerns that have been brought up most commonly for teachers who have not already embraced BYOT are twofold: 1. how are we going to be assessed as educators for proper implementation (have i mentioned the assessment culture that is killing me recently? great post from the Educational Technology Guy on this) and 2. what is the TOOL that will make BYOT work beautifully.


I am going to defer to @40ishoracle for assessment. she has dug up some awesome resources that we are adapting. I want to deal with the second issue in today's blog.


What is the TOOL that ties all of the BYOT sparkle into one pretty package?
THERE ISN'T ONE.

Letting it Go

Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of a one-stop shop that does all of the educational things that I want my students to experience and is aware enough that it continuously improves as technology and users evolve. I have heard promises from Blackboard (cross platform! lots of options! but the gradebook doesn't take attendance), EdLine (now a part of Blackboard...good on the basics, slow to innovate), Google (I am a fan)...I even remember sitting at ISTE over a decade ago and watching Steve Jobs keynote about the Apple School. I get excited each time. I get disappointed each time.

and then I stopped.

I stopped expecting one company to have all the answers.

I stopped looking for the company that would integrate new methodology into their behemoth

I just stopped.

and when i stopped looking for the universal solution, I realized that I was now on very comfortable ground. 

As a teacher and a technician, I am used to asking the question: "how do i best do X?" and searching and asking and experimenting until I find the answer. This is not just a good practice, this is an essential behavioral skill that should be developed in our students. Unless we want our children and students to be at the mercy of 1-3 major technology companies decisions' about what is good for them, they need to know how to:

1.  Identify their learning need
2. Assess tools that could fill that need
3. Use the tools appropriately.

This might fall into one of those "If you learn nothing else, learn this" categories.

Need storage space? use dropbox or box.net or google docs or...

Need to create a presentation? keynote or powerpoint or google docs or...

Need to collaborate on a paper?

Need to change a video codec?

Need to...

The Flip Side

A complaint that we have had, and I think it is legitimate takes two forms:

From students: Depending on the teacher, I have assignments in multiple places and they expect me to keep track of it all...

From administrators: how can we keep up with the teachers (track progress, view content, gather data) when there are so many different tools being used?

I think for the benefit of school personnel, teachers, and students, there should be one central jumping-off point. The "if I forget everything else, I can go here". This is our Learning Management System: 

• Each class has a page. 
• Each page has Grade updates, and places for  links, news items, notes, etc. 
• But from there teachers can link to an educational blog (teacher or student maintained), a plagiarism monitoring system, a collaborative document creation site, a site for my dream #flipclass software (still hasn't been made...but progress!) 

Develop in students the ability to comfortably adapt to different technologies. Develop in teachers the ability to articulately explain the advantages of one system over another (this demonstration of critical choice is part of the student learning process).

If it is necessary for administrators to track the data through various tools to create charts and graphs, then that is the next field for educational technology development. Do not force teachers and students to use inadequate tools because INSERT-EDUCATION-COMPANY-HERE has not figured out how to write a decent API yet.

In short, let's give up on the ONE RING and put it back into fantasy where it belongs.

How Larry Page Changed Meetings At Google After Taking Over Last Spring (GOOG)

Crosspost with my G+ account. thx to @eecastro for the link

Imagine applying #flipclass principles to meetings as a whole. Most meetings, even decent ones (ha!) are a series of isolated info.dump with hesitant discussion as feelings are spared and people aren't really sure how others will react.

After the meeting, there is a flurry of one on one discussion, negotiation, opinion polling and ultimately a decision is made. In the worst of environments, this is made official at another meeting (in the absolute worst environments, the decision is "arrived at" during the second meeting -- nudge, wink.

#flipclass theory would seem to argue that the info.dump and initial position setting could be done asynchronously and that the negotiation, argumentation, and decision making would be better placed in-meeting.

How Larry Page Changed Meetings At Google After Taking Over Last Spring (GOOG):

'via Blog this'

A cart full of chrome...

Just finished loading brebeuf jesuit's newest cart:  chromebooks! Total setup time? About two minutes per machine. We have these ready to go faster than we get MAC addresses for windows imaging! #geeklove