"At this point, all the web browsers pretty much work the same way."
That's what I was told in 2008, when I was trying to sell the idea that organizations should have more than just Internet Explorer on their standard desktop image. I didn't bother pushing the point -- my elevator pitch wasn't prepared for beliefs that far from the truth.
Soon after that, Chrome was released and literally revolutionized the web browser landscape. If you haven't ever read it, you seriously need to sit down and go through the entire Google Chrome comicbook, so you can appreciate what a huge change it represented. Almost three years later, Internet Explorer is just beginning to catch up to what Chrome was doing in Fall of 2008!
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What's wrong with Internet Explorer?
IE's web standards support is years behind all other major web browsers. This doesn't just mean that your teachers won't see shadows and design elements (although that's true, too). I'm talking about core, fundamental features of the web that are supported in current versions of Chrome and Firefox that aren't yet supported in IE 9 or even in the current previews of IE 10. (References: charts comparing many browser versions at once, or compare two specific browser versions in detail)
IE is slower than other browsers. If you give teachers the option of a faster browser, you could save money by stretching the life of your hardware. (Reference: typical browser test results) Additionally, because IE loads pages slower, you have to compensate by lowering the quality of those pages, and the quality of the tools you offer to teachers.
If you only have IE, then IE problems are always show-stoppers. Teachers can't easily work around web tool problems that only affect IE because they don't have other browsers installed.
Those are solid reasons on their own, but they're all based on the current version, IE9. If your computers use Windows XP, you can't even install IE9, it only supports Windows 7! These problems, then, are all multiplied because you are literally using a browser (IE8) that was behind the times when it was released over two years ago.
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If you have to decide on one additional web browser (and you don't), you should offer Chrome.
Firefox is more commonly known, but Chrome really is the leader. It is faster and more secure/stable. Chrome already has 20% market share and is on track to have more users than IE or Firefox in less than 2 years. (Reference: Pingdom blogs about Google Chrome)
On a practical note, Chrome also seems to have stronger support for group management than Firefox, although there are some Firefox options out there.
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Should podcasting and Second Life be priorities for schools?
When I come across interesting-sounding videos that are too long to sit and watch, I usually play them in a corner of my screen while I do something else. I can usually glean the main ideas without losing an hour of my day.
I was playing just such a video of a big deal 2011 TCEA Conference Featured Presenter, when I stumbled on a realization about how far education technology culture is from real world technology culture. I tested the thought in Google Trends, and what I saw blew me away. (Google Trends lets you compare the number of Google searches for up to five different phrases, and shows the data in nifty charts.)
First, check out this Google Trends chart for the terms [podcast] and [second life]:
No big surprises. Second Life exploded at the beginning of 2007, and most people quickly lost interest. Podcasting grew organically until Apple officially added it as a feature in iTunes in June 2005 (says wikipedia), and leveled off by the end of that year.
I still hear about podcasts all the time in education technology as a really cool new thing that schools and teachers can really go for. And, in the TCEA video I watched that spawned this whole post, a featured presenter sounded really gung-ho about Second Life. That's at one of the biggest education technology conferences...ever, with thousands of attendees. So keep in mind, these two tools are still being pitched in the world of education technology.
Now, look at what happens when we add [myspace] and [twitter]:
Holy smokes. You can't even see the lines for Second Life and Podcast. They're basically inconsequential in comparison!
(And, if I can digress for a moment, you probably have a good understanding of how big Twitter is right now, right? To put things in perspective, look at this chart and realize that, at it's peak, MySpace was searched for over twice as often as Twitter is now. You can really start to realize why MySpace was such a big deal, and why it freaked out so many adults and educators. It took over a big part of online student culture before anyone knew what had happened.)
(Digression #2: "Podcast" is also a no-show in the Wikipedia article for iPod, which is sad, but indicative of the real world impact of podcasts.)
Now, take a look at all of the above...compared with searches for [facebook]:
Blam.
MySpace is gone. Twitter is hanging in down there. Podcasts and Second Life didn't even show up to the game.
Now, look. I'm not saying podcasts don't have their place. I'm not saying that a skilled teacher couldn't get some mileage out of Second Life. But the big picture is that schools need to think pretty hard about turning their backs on Facebook. When you ignore something as big as Facebook, or advocate strongly for something as inconsequential as Second Life or podcasts, you're mapping out a very challenging road for yourself.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
The end of the school district social media honeymoon
There was a disturbance in the force on Monday.
The Texas school district that has been leading the way in online communication and social media closed all of their Facebook pages. They were the role model for many districts' online presence, and their Facebook page "Rules of Engagement" were copied far and wide. They were among the first and probably the best.
Having an official school district or school Facebook page has always been a strategy with a little extra handful of risk. Anyone can post any comment they want, and the most you can do is check frequently, delete inappropriate comments, and ban users. In this case, it sounds like a persistent few ruined the benefits for everyone. I didn't see the problem posts myself, but I certainly believe it could happen.
But then, I still can't wrap my mind around it. It feels so abrupt. I don't want to believe that my social media superheroes encountered a problem that they couldn't solve, because that forces me to admit that it could happen on the Facebook pages I work on.
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I haven't seen anyone say it yet, but I'm just going to go for it: Facebook is the best way for school districts to communicate with the community en masse. You have an attentive, targeted audience who are addicted to sharing your announcements with everyone they know (most of whom live in your attendance zones). Even better, they are simultaneously giving you detailed feedback that you can use to improve your communication strategy. If you communicate well, you get more fans and interaction, which then trains you on how to communicate well. Everything about Facebook encourages you to be a better communicator. (And it's free!)
We're only taking our first steps, and I can't imagine taking it away. I know in my head that Facebook isn't the center of our communications strategy; it's not even a tent pole or a chair leg. In my gut, though, I feel like if it went away there isn't something else that can take its place.
The Texas school district that has been leading the way in online communication and social media closed all of their Facebook pages. They were the role model for many districts' online presence, and their Facebook page "Rules of Engagement" were copied far and wide. They were among the first and probably the best.
Having an official school district or school Facebook page has always been a strategy with a little extra handful of risk. Anyone can post any comment they want, and the most you can do is check frequently, delete inappropriate comments, and ban users. In this case, it sounds like a persistent few ruined the benefits for everyone. I didn't see the problem posts myself, but I certainly believe it could happen.
But then, I still can't wrap my mind around it. It feels so abrupt. I don't want to believe that my social media superheroes encountered a problem that they couldn't solve, because that forces me to admit that it could happen on the Facebook pages I work on.
---
I haven't seen anyone say it yet, but I'm just going to go for it: Facebook is the best way for school districts to communicate with the community en masse. You have an attentive, targeted audience who are addicted to sharing your announcements with everyone they know (most of whom live in your attendance zones). Even better, they are simultaneously giving you detailed feedback that you can use to improve your communication strategy. If you communicate well, you get more fans and interaction, which then trains you on how to communicate well. Everything about Facebook encourages you to be a better communicator. (And it's free!)
We're only taking our first steps, and I can't imagine taking it away. I know in my head that Facebook isn't the center of our communications strategy; it's not even a tent pole or a chair leg. In my gut, though, I feel like if it went away there isn't something else that can take its place.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Think schools, not district
About once a month, the person in charge of our district's visual identity gets a request for one or more school logos. Sometimes, the PTA wants to use the logo on a newsletter or printed piece. Other times, it's a company looking to make t-shirts or something else they can sell to students. We get enough requests like this that our graphic designer has the process down to a science: figure out if it's reasonable, make sure the principal is aware and approves, then figure out what computer file format will work best.
The thing is, I can't remember a time when someone requested the school district's logo.
That's the norm, though. There are tons of businesses that "adopt" the schools near their brick-and-mortar locations, but many fewer reach out to help the entire district. When we post on Facebook about individual schools, we get excited replies from parents, but district-wide stories just get "likes" and comments that read like form letters.
People don't connect with school districts; they connect with schools. We care about the school we go to, but it's hard to care about the district because it's not familiar and it involves so many unknowns. Parents haven't interacted with the district office (or even those other schools) every day for years, the way they did when their kids went to the neighborhood school. Worse still, bad news travels faster than good, so sometimes that's all that parents have heard about the district.
District-community connections do exist, though, and it's not impossible to strengthen them. We post tons of news from all our schools, for example, so people get the idea that there are always good things happening at every school. The events that logistically have to happen at the district-level help bridge some of the gaps. And, some things are just easier to go ahead and take care of at the district level.
...but don't spend all your time working on the district website. Take a step back from rigid district-wide templates and let schools develop their own styles and personalities. Even better, look at how the schools work with their community now, and help them build their websites around those ideas. Definitely embrace their cultural touchstones; post pictures of beloved long-time staff members and play up their traditions.
If you can redirect resources toward helping schools strengthen their own community connections, you'll get a lot more bang for your buck. When your district needs support, you'll still be able to make that appeal to the community, but you'll do it through the schools. People will line up to help the district when the teachers they've known for years point out that their own neighborhood school will see the benefit.
The thing is, I can't remember a time when someone requested the school district's logo.
That's the norm, though. There are tons of businesses that "adopt" the schools near their brick-and-mortar locations, but many fewer reach out to help the entire district. When we post on Facebook about individual schools, we get excited replies from parents, but district-wide stories just get "likes" and comments that read like form letters.
People don't connect with school districts; they connect with schools. We care about the school we go to, but it's hard to care about the district because it's not familiar and it involves so many unknowns. Parents haven't interacted with the district office (or even those other schools) every day for years, the way they did when their kids went to the neighborhood school. Worse still, bad news travels faster than good, so sometimes that's all that parents have heard about the district.
District-community connections do exist, though, and it's not impossible to strengthen them. We post tons of news from all our schools, for example, so people get the idea that there are always good things happening at every school. The events that logistically have to happen at the district-level help bridge some of the gaps. And, some things are just easier to go ahead and take care of at the district level.
...but don't spend all your time working on the district website. Take a step back from rigid district-wide templates and let schools develop their own styles and personalities. Even better, look at how the schools work with their community now, and help them build their websites around those ideas. Definitely embrace their cultural touchstones; post pictures of beloved long-time staff members and play up their traditions.
If you can redirect resources toward helping schools strengthen their own community connections, you'll get a lot more bang for your buck. When your district needs support, you'll still be able to make that appeal to the community, but you'll do it through the schools. People will line up to help the district when the teachers they've known for years point out that their own neighborhood school will see the benefit.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Take on complexity so teachers don't have to
For the first few years at my job, after I had learned the ropes, I didn't make any major changes to the status quo: Teachers were expected to do all editing on their classroom websites. We could talk them through it on the phone, but we wanted them to do all the actual button-pushing themselves. The idea seemed to be that the teachers would gradually learn how to do all these neat, complex web editing techniques.
I started to notice that some teachers would ask me the same question about once a year. Something like "how do I change the title of one of my web pages?" At first, I thought that maybe they just weren't techno-savvy, but that didn't sit well for long. I didn't like the idea of noticing this pattern of once-a-year calls, calling it an unsolvable problem, and ignoring the situation altogether.
At around the same time, I started to feel really weird about teachers calling me during their conference time to fix little bits of their website. I mean, they could call at any time, but that's the only time they realistically had in their day for talking with me on the phone. I had learned from the Fed Up With Lunch blog that each minute a teacher has with no students in their room is infinitely precious planning, decompressing, eating, and restrooming time.
Eventually, I realized that I could split the changes that teachers made on their website into two categories:
It didn't make sense for teachers to make the changes in the second category. For example, it wasn't vitally important that each and every teacher see how to change the name of their webpages, because most of them only ever do it once. It also felt really, really right to let teachers report the problem, get back to their work, and read my "Problem Solved!" email at their own convenience.
The cost, though, was more effort from me. I had to spend more time thinking about the solutions, looking at teachers' websites, and guessing at the best one. It took more of my time to write the email back, because I also included instructions of what I had done, in case they wanted to know.
Was it worth my extra effort? Gerry McGovern absolutely nailed this topic a few weeks ago:
I started to notice that some teachers would ask me the same question about once a year. Something like "how do I change the title of one of my web pages?" At first, I thought that maybe they just weren't techno-savvy, but that didn't sit well for long. I didn't like the idea of noticing this pattern of once-a-year calls, calling it an unsolvable problem, and ignoring the situation altogether.
At around the same time, I started to feel really weird about teachers calling me during their conference time to fix little bits of their website. I mean, they could call at any time, but that's the only time they realistically had in their day for talking with me on the phone. I had learned from the Fed Up With Lunch blog that each minute a teacher has with no students in their room is infinitely precious planning, decompressing, eating, and restrooming time.
Eventually, I realized that I could split the changes that teachers made on their website into two categories:
- easy changes teachers did often enough to learn
- trickier changes that teachers did not do often enough to learn
And then, I took a really radical step, never before attempted in any school district ever. I lightened the load of teachers. I started to do the second category of changes for them.
It didn't make sense for teachers to make the changes in the second category. For example, it wasn't vitally important that each and every teacher see how to change the name of their webpages, because most of them only ever do it once. It also felt really, really right to let teachers report the problem, get back to their work, and read my "Problem Solved!" email at their own convenience.
The cost, though, was more effort from me. I had to spend more time thinking about the solutions, looking at teachers' websites, and guessing at the best one. It took more of my time to write the email back, because I also included instructions of what I had done, in case they wanted to know.
Was it worth my extra effort? Gerry McGovern absolutely nailed this topic a few weeks ago:
"The Web dictates that you put the customer first. That means taking on more complexity yourself." from The price of doing business on the web (March 14, 2011)
That's the whole point, isn't it? My job is to find the situations where a little extra effort on my part will let teachers do more of the real work: education.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Are you doing technology right? The Ten-Second Test
The school technology people I talk with spend a fair amount of time trying to figure out how to do edutech right. Should we have an official Facebook presence? Twitter? Should we go open source? IWBs? 1:1 devices for students? Since you can make an argument for or against any of these, none of them by themselves can really determine whether you're meeting student and teacher technology needs.
Then one day...
I was talking with a kindergarten teacher, and we came up with something that all schools should do, but that no school seems to make a priority. Something that seemed unquestionably useful and simple to implement, yet was ridiculously rare in practice.
So I present to you, the ultimate ten-second test of whether your school is addressing teachers' and students' technology needs:
That's it. Did you pass?
When my friend and I were talking, she pointed out that she tends to use Comic Sans because it has a single-story "a" (and an article from the BBC last October mentions that Comic Sans might just have a legitimate place in elementary schools) but she said that Comic Sans isn't exactly correct; none of her fonts are.
Then one day...
I was talking with a kindergarten teacher, and we came up with something that all schools should do, but that no school seems to make a priority. Something that seemed unquestionably useful and simple to implement, yet was ridiculously rare in practice.
So I present to you, the ultimate ten-second test of whether your school is addressing teachers' and students' technology needs:
Do your computers have:
- a block letter font that looks exactly how you want kindergartners to write?
- a cursive font that looks exactly how you want students to learn cursive?
- appropriate fonts/support for foreign languages taught in your schools?
That's it. Did you pass?
When my friend and I were talking, she pointed out that she tends to use Comic Sans because it has a single-story "a" (and an article from the BBC last October mentions that Comic Sans might just have a legitimate place in elementary schools) but she said that Comic Sans isn't exactly correct; none of her fonts are.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
The Passion of the Support Staff
We know that teachers have to be passionate. The pay is low, the work load is great, the responsibility is high. Read any honest teacher's blog and you'll find stories of being treated like a second-class citizen. There are people who understand teachers (warning: some profanity), but teachers still have to have passion to survive amongst the people who don't understand.
But teachers aren't the only ones.
I couldn't be the member of a school district's support staff if I didn't have passion. I believe in the power of education. It's not just baby-sitting, and it's not even just society's best chance to break the cycle of poverty; it's a gift that all children deserve every year.
That's why I work hard. I lighten the load on teachers. Your webpage is broken? I'm going to do the legwork to solve that problem, you go teach, and I'll email you when I'm done so you can call me because if I call you it would interrupt your class. I spread the word about every success, so teachers and students can value themselves. Three kids in kindergarten recited the alphabet backwards? There's a 12th grader who always holds the door open? Send me a picture, it's going on the website. I make everyday events into magical experiences. You forgot your camera? Let me take four special pictures of you on stage with your kid and his award and I email the best one to the parents, after I remove the red eye and fix the colors, and in the email I tell them that their kid did great and that they should be proud and that parent involvement makes the difference.
I'm passionate about supporting education, and I want to infuse all my work with that passion.
And sometimes that passion has to carry me. When I'm meeting my friend's friends and they have PhD's or corporate salaries and I say I do web work for a school district....and their eyes say "so not only can you not do, you can't teach either?"
Or when the state cuts the budget and there are going to be layoffs and the only thing that every comment on every online news story seems to agree on is "we have to protect the teachers, and we have to protect my money from taxes, so they should fire all the support staff!" (Even though the reality is that "Texas could fire ... all 329,574 non-teacher jobs - and still not save the $11.6 billion in public education cuts...")
That's when my passion for education has to carry me.
But teachers aren't the only ones.
I couldn't be the member of a school district's support staff if I didn't have passion. I believe in the power of education. It's not just baby-sitting, and it's not even just society's best chance to break the cycle of poverty; it's a gift that all children deserve every year.
That's why I work hard. I lighten the load on teachers. Your webpage is broken? I'm going to do the legwork to solve that problem, you go teach, and I'll email you when I'm done so you can call me because if I call you it would interrupt your class. I spread the word about every success, so teachers and students can value themselves. Three kids in kindergarten recited the alphabet backwards? There's a 12th grader who always holds the door open? Send me a picture, it's going on the website. I make everyday events into magical experiences. You forgot your camera? Let me take four special pictures of you on stage with your kid and his award and I email the best one to the parents, after I remove the red eye and fix the colors, and in the email I tell them that their kid did great and that they should be proud and that parent involvement makes the difference.
I'm passionate about supporting education, and I want to infuse all my work with that passion.
And sometimes that passion has to carry me. When I'm meeting my friend's friends and they have PhD's or corporate salaries and I say I do web work for a school district....and their eyes say "so not only can you not do, you can't teach either?"
Or when the state cuts the budget and there are going to be layoffs and the only thing that every comment on every online news story seems to agree on is "we have to protect the teachers, and we have to protect my money from taxes, so they should fire all the support staff!" (Even though the reality is that "Texas could fire ... all 329,574 non-teacher jobs - and still not save the $11.6 billion in public education cuts...")
That's when my passion for education has to carry me.
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