Googling while logged in…

In Professor Shulman’s October 10, 2007 CourseCast, he commented, “When I’m Googling logged in, it’s very different than when I’m not logged in. They are two very different experiences. I don’t know how I feel Googling when I’m logged in…pretty bad, actually, now that I think of it. This is part of the paradigm that’s shifting so fast we can barely grab it.”

This caught my attention, in light of a post that Fred Stutzman made in his blog, Unit Structures, about the presence of Google Toolbar on university computers.

Noting that some university computers have installed Google Toolbar, Stutzman writes that “Once one of the ‘advanced’ features is enabled, the Google Toolbar sends all sorts of information to Google, including ‘the log information and additional information, such as the URLs you visit or the text on the page.”

He continues, “Would a university export its user’s server logs to third parties in any other circumstance? Not without a subpoena.”

It’s getting difficult for people with average levels of digital literacy to understand privacy issues, much less for late-adopters.

My husband, an attorney for the UNC system with expertise in intellectual property, copyright and information technology, says “I have no expectation of privacy on a public computer.” But he also says that he hasn’t looked at the issue, other than to recognize that academics are concerned about it.

As Professor Shulman noted, the paradigm really is shifting fast. Interesting to think that people on the disadvantaged side of the digital divide could be on the advantaged side of the privacy divide.

Semantic Web: High-Speed Chase and the Digital Divide

I read articles like this one in Read/Write Web, and think about my class of students learning Microsoft Word. Do they read articles about the Semantic Web? If they do, does it give them heart palpitations?

In the article, writer Richard MacManus discusses a shiny new Web application called Twine, which founder Nova Spivack refers to as a knowledge networking application.

MacManus writes, “It has aspects of social networking, wikis, blogging, knowledge management systems – but its defining feature is that it’s built with Semantic Web technologies. Spivack told me that Twine aims to bring a usable and scalable interface to the long-promised dream of the Semantic Web.”

I think about the information tools I’ve either learned or improved over the past year: Second Life, wikis, blogs, Movie Maker, screencasting, Blackboard, Facebook, UNIX, Excel, Access, news readers, Powerpoint, not to mention my adventures into the university databases. I keep thinking about these tools in relation to the students in the Community Workshop Series, and I’m impressed that they took the step to sign up. It could be so easy to feel overwhelmed. So when I read about knowledge networking, I think about people learning Word for the first time, maybe even holding their first computer mouse.

Each time some venture capitalist gets together with a bright team of researchers, the digital divide gets deeper, wider and weirder.

Early thoughts on service learning

I went back Friday morning to float through another class. Again, Grant did a great job. He showed people that there were four ways to cut, copy and paste and then walked them through all the different ways. Redundancy was the word of the day, although you could also look at it as preferences.

We spent the rest of the time talking about the auto functions, and how Microsoft has helped and hindered people with the second-guessing tools like spell check, grammar check and other functions built into the program. You can really see, when working with beginners, that the auto complete functions are completely mysterious. Grant showed them how to troubleshoot by looking inside the tool bar options, just in case they want to disable an auto function. He also had some good teaching moments when he couldn’t answer a question and had to troubleshoot, something the class did along with him, offering suggestions.

One woman needed a lot of help and encouragement, but she was a gem — clapping her hands and smiling when she was able to get the computer to do something. I know the feeling.

Grant asked if I would be interested in taking over as coordinator when he graduates in May, so I’m looking at this project with different eyes now. I imagine it will be tough to find volunteers over the summer, so I would have to anticipate teaching many of the classes. I may end up doing it as a field experience so I can stay on schedule with my own graduation. Will have to see what happens by fall of ‘08 as far as workload goes.

One of the things I realized during this class is that I never thought of Word as a skill. I’ve had to hire people before, and whenever they wrote Word as a skill on their resume, I perceived them to have virtually no computer literacy. As far as the job market I’m familiar with, it’s just expected that people can get around in Word and it’s not even necessary to put it on your resume.

But watching people get the hang of Word in this class, it’s clear that mastering the program is a skill. Not just knowing what you can do with the program, but being able to circumvent things when it looks like nothing is happening, or figuring out how to solve something on your own when something unexpected pops up. Over time, skilled users get used to the quirks of Word, and treat it with some annoyance. Beginners tend to be annoyed with themselves.

First day of service learning

My service-learning feet are officially wet.

I met with Grant, the coordinator of the Community Workshop Series at Chapel Hill Public Library this morning, and we stood at the door to welcome workshop participants. At 8:27am, three people had shown up, and by 8:40am we had 13 sitting at their computers.

Again, Grant mentioned the struggle they have with no-shows. Apparently, 50 percent attendance is considered good, but he would like to see 80 percent. The classes are free, so there is nothing to lose if people sign up but fail to show.

Grant is a natural teacher, very dynamic and did a terrific job leading the class. It was the second day of a three-day session on Word I, and people were learning to edit, cut, paste, center, align left, change font, color, and apply bold and underline. I floated, responding to people as needed and will go back tomorrow to do the same.

According to Grant, it was a pretty animated class and the participants were engaged. About five people would ask for one-on-one help, and the others seemed to be following along without too much trouble. I did some lurking and over-the-shoulder peering, but unless they specifically asked for help, I left them alone.

I wasn’t surprised at how basic the class was, but for the first time, I thought about how to describe very basic skills to a beginner. Again, Grant did a terrific job breaking things down into understandable components. One of the biggest challenges, particularly for the older people, was highlighting text with their cursors. Highlighting, clicking, and picking things from a menu — those are very specific fine-motor skills that take practice. I have patience for this, especially because they feel so good when they get it.

Grant had a knack for knowing when to address the class and interpret the way a computer “thinks” and what to expect from it. Computers can be intimidating to beginners, and I liked the way he put the computer in its place. He pointed out how obedient computers are; when we give it a command, it generally won’t move on from that command until we give it the next command. That’s probably what I saw the most this morning, “I can’t get it to align left” or “it keeps underlining the next sentence and I don’t want it to.” You have to point out that they’ve just told the computer to center some text, and it won’t know to align left until they instruct it to do so.

I’ll float again tomorrow, and then next week as well during the Excel session. I probably won’t do my own class until the next 7-week session begins late October.