Offline with Google Docs

Google announced this week we can now use their "Google Gears" feature to work on Google Docs offline.

This is a big step because it means you no longer have to be connected to the internet to interact with Google. You can now be offline and still be Google and that is a momentous happening that few seem to understand.

Google, by going offline, livens up your entire life instead of just your virtual one. You can use Google as you wish and on your own terms. You don't have to look for an internet connection. You don't need to worry about losing data in a disconnection.

You just write in Google Docs in offline mode and then later, when you go online, Google Docs will reconcile your documents between your computer and its servers and you're good to keep going!

Google Docs Offline sets the mark for Google books you own at home, Google cellphones you hold in your hand, and Google pillows that float you off to rest in that beautiful Google dreamland.

Creating a Semiotic Web Through Enchanted Learning

The "inventor of the Internet," Tim Berners-Lee, argues Google's days ruling the web are numbered by claiming the future is a "semantic web" functional interface:

"Using the semantic web, you can build applications that are much more powerful than anything on the regular web," Mr Berners-Lee said. "Imagine if two completely separate things — your bank statements and your calendar — spoke the same language and could share information with one another. You could drag one on top of the other and a whole bunch of dots would appear showing you when you spent your money.

"If you still weren't sure of where you were when you made a particular transaction, you could then drag your photo album on top of the calendar, and be reminded that you used your credit card at the same time you were taking pictures of your kids at a theme park. So you would know not to claim it as a tax deduction.

"It's about creating a seamless web of all the data in your life."

If we are to move beyond Google hyperlinking and a contextual indexing of our current "semantic web" -- the future is a "semiotic web" and not a "semantic web" because we're already in the midst of the Google text revolution -- we must begin to think in terms of images and ideas instead of characters and phrases.

A semiotic web requires enchanted learning and we get there by encouraging colleges and universities to revalue the Arts and the Humanities are part of their core course of educating minds.

We require writing and math but few schools honor the covenant of inspiration and the need for creating beauty in the world.

Information Literacy and the Google Generation

Here's a recent report that argues "The Google Generation" -- kids born after 1993 -- have no idea of a life without the Internet, and while that gives them great access to information, that doesn't mean they are literate beyond logging onto their computers.

Information Literacy must be earned through hard work and by acute and disbelieving analyses of data that, at times, might conflict with established ideas and even contradict itself in situ.

The Google Generation knows how to find information fast, but they are unable to parse what they discover beyond merely cutting-and-pasting search return results into their research papers.

We must find a way to demystify the Google Generation's technical capacity to wow and then bring them back to the pen and the paper. We need to re-establish the idea of a library card catalog and the requirement to double-check sources and confirm facts from three different angles.

The Google Generation -- while smart and savvy -- are not cunning enough to realize most of what they read on the Internet is not true, or even factually accurate, in a scholarly circumstance.

Google Apps Adds Google Sites

If you are a Google Apps user and a loyal fan of my book -- "Google Apps Administrator Guide" -- I have some good news!

I have uploaded "Bonus Chapter 13: Google Sites" for that seminal book to the Boles Books Writing and Publishing website.

Google Sites is the latest addition to the Google Apps suite of programs.

Using Google Sites, you can now add interactive communication workflows so you may more easily share files, create tasks and set announcements.

I walk you through the Google Apps Dashboard setup and your first template design.

Enjoy!

Google Health in Cleveland

Google wants to manage your health information starting in Cleveland:

The Cleveland Clinic has more than 100,000 patients and many of those are retirees who spend some of the year elsewhere such as Arizona and Florida. And when they go, their medical records don’t follow says Dr. C. Martin Harris, the clinic’s chief information officer.

The Google personal health record Harris says is a solution to that problem, among others. A person can approve the transfer of information on medical conditions, allergies, medications and laboratory results from the clinic’s computers to a Google personal health record.

Is this Google move into personal health from public search a good omen or a harbinger of bad things to come?

Do people understand what it means to give Google access to their health records?

What other unapproved entities will have access to that information beyond a personal care physician and Google itself?

What restrictions are in place to protect people from having their healthcare hacked and used against them in public or in private blackmail?

The Flattening of Learning

Professor Tara Brabazon makes a fantastic argument that students today have no way to discern truth from validity because they have no training when it comes to judging multiple truths.

On the Internet, and in scholarly searches, all returns are provided back to the searcher in a "flat mode" where every return appears as valid as the next.

Instead of challenging that fact, students merely cut-and-paste those flat search returns into their papers without doing any actual reading or critical analyses of the texts:

“Google offers easy answers to difficult questions. But students do not know how to tell if they come from serious, refereed work or are merely composed of shallow ideas, superficial surfing and fleeting commitments.

“Google is filling, but it does not necessarily offer nutritional content,” she said.

Professor Brabazon, who has been teaching in universities for 18 years, said that the heavy reliance on the internet in universities had the effect of “flattening expertise” because every piece of information was given the same credibility by users.

Professor Brabazon’s concerns echo the author Andrew Keen’s criticisms of online amateurism. In his book The Cult of the Amateur, Keen says: “To-day’s media is shattering the world into a billion personalised truths, each seemingly equally valid and worthwhile.”

We are thrilled to see Professor Brabazon's push for more credibility in the classroom.

Providing students with sharper tools for critical analysis that can then be used against what they read is a paramount concern if we ever hope to continue our ingenuity and creativity beyond the flatness of the Internet.

Columbia University Gets Googled

We were displeased to learn Columbia University is tumbling down the Google tube:

Columbia University has partnered with Google, Inc. to digitize select public domain printed volumes in the University Libraries’ collections and make them available online using Google Book Search. The digitization project will provide teachers, students, scholars, and readers around the world with an unprecedented ability to search, locate, and read books from the University's collections. The digital collection resulting from this project significantly advances Columbia’s ability to serve its academic community, as well as readers worldwide.

Why is Columbia giving up their collection to Google?

Why can't Columbia University digitize their own library and make it available online?

Why let Google be the arbiter of scholarship and research and the book depository of choice?

Google is a for-profit entity and their scanning of books in the public domain will be certainly be monetized -- and that inevitability will galvanize the misplaced good intentions of these historic universities that are all too lazy to know better than to toss their libraries away on the internet under the Google banner.

Google and Fair Use

If you buy a book, do you own that book or have you only rented the content in that book?

Under the current Copyright law, you may loan that book and share that book, but you may not copy the book and give those copies to your friends or sell those copies to your enemies.

The current Google project to digitize university libraries is a concern in that many of the works Google are scanning are still in the public domain. This is not only a violation of Copyright, but we believe it is also re-publication of a pre-existing, protected, work.

We are concerned how some university libraries are giving their books to Google to be scanned using the Fair Use doctrine as their excuse for not breaking the book's inherent Copyright.

That thinking stretches much too far the idea of Fair Use -- you can't copy and index and "serve" the contents of an entire book to the world and not infringe upon the original, incorruptible, Copyright.

Writing Four New Boles Books

It is a great honor and pleasure to announce we are writing the following four books for Thomson/Cengage Learning:

Picture Yourself Learning Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard

Picture Yourself Learning Office for Mac 2008

Picture Yourself Learning American Sign Language, Level 1 (includes Bonus DVD!)

Google Apps Administrator Guide

The writing schedule is hectic but we will get it done.

Three of the four books will be published before the end of 2007.

We will keep you updated on the status of our onward progress in bringing these semiotic books to life. We love and honor the power of the image on the page and these full-color books will prove that devotion in spades.

Research with Google Custom Search Business Edition

Searching for information on a blog can be confusing and confounding.

To provide better meaning in our world -- we have purchased a Business Edition Google Custom Search Engine for Boles University so you can quickly do a search for topics that interest you.

You can start using the search engine here or by using the new Search Box in our sidebar:

http://bolesuniversity.com

You can also search Boles Books Writing and Publishing and Urban Semiotic via that same search box.

If you're looking to search Boles Dot Com and Hardcore ASL and Go Inside Magazine instead -- Google Custom Search Business Editions cost $100.00 USD each but they only work by indexing three domains at a time! -- then try out this additional Google Custom Search Engine Business Edition we purchased just for that purpose!

http://boles.com

Let us know if you have any joys or troubles searching your wants with us!

Google Apps in the .EDU Domain

"The Wired Campus" is reporting Google Apps for Your Domain is finding a strong foothold in education:

Trinity College Dublin has switched to Google's e-mail application, Gmail. And universities in Egypt, Kenya, and Rwanda have also made the switch, the BBC reported yesterday. In Dublin, the news service says, "the addresses and domain name still remain the same -- but underneath the bonnet, it's a service provided by Google." Trinity College officials say they made the decision to outsource because it let them maintain a robust e-mail system at no additional cost; Google does all the work. Arizona State University made the same decision late last year to switch to Gmail, which also comes with a calendar and instant messaging, two items that are very attractive to students.

We use Google Apps for Your Domain here at Boles University to manage our email, calendar, documents, blog and our virtual lives!

We like Google Apps so much, we're writing a book about it -- Google Apps for Your Domain Administrator Guide -- for Thomson publishing.

Boles Books Writing and Publishing

It is a great delight for us to tell you about a new book from Boles Books Writing and Publishing -- one of our premier content partners.

Google Apps for Your Domain is a new book in process written by David W. Boles and published by Thomson under their Course PTR imprint.

You may read this blog entry for more information and also visit the official website for the book.

Blog Post Published from Google Docs!

This blog post was written in Google Docs and then "published" right here on the Boles University blog – powered by Blogger -- from Google Docs!

How can that sort of seamless interaction between powerful online document authoring program and strong blog publishing platform be exploited to create the best end user experience on all sides for online learning and education?

If You Had Your Own Online University

If you were going to offer online courses as your own self-accredited university -- what would you offer and would you charge for the classes or not?

How would you meet online to interact with your students using only Google-sponsored stuff?