I am a pretty big fan of Google. They produce some great online products and deliver the majority of them and no cost to the end user! An announcement in the Official Google blog (Oct. 16) talks about another way Google is pushing technology – this time it has nothing to do with the Internet! Google is going solar!

Soon we plan to begin installation of 1.6 megawatts of solar photovoltaic panels at our Mountain View campus. This project will be the largest solar installation on any corporate campus in the U.S., and we think it’s one of the largest on any corporate site in the world. The panels will cover the roofs of the four main buildings of the Googleplex, and also those of two additional buildings across the street. There will also be a portion of this installation on new solar panel support structures in a few parking lots. The amount of electricity that will be generated is equivalent to powering about 1,000 average California homes. We’ll use that electricity to power several of our Mountain View office facilities, offsetting approximately 30% of our peak electricity consumption at those buildings.

Read more about this project here.

Hey maybe soon they will invest in a bunch of Feel-Good-Cars for the Google campus! With Zero Emissions and No Noise ZENN will be the new buzz word in Mountain View.

I recently read this article which I think may be of some interest to the educators here at Tyndale. Now I am not faculty and I am not going to pretend I am – I have however worked in youth ministry for over 15 years and I think I have a good idea where the students are at.

The article is called “Technology Spices Up Learning for Net Generation� which caught my eye – yes because of the word technology. We in the ITS department love technology – but not (always) for technology sake. Here is a quick snip from our department mission statement.

“ITS …provides information technology tools and services to encourage and enable effective learning…â€?

We desire to use technology to encourage and enable effective learning. This article discusses different ways we can use technology to better meets the needs of the “Net Generation�

Read the article then come back here to my blog and post a comment–

Do you think technology can make a difference in effective learning?
What technologies do you think we need to embrace at Tyndale?

Are you looking to buy, sell or trade textbooks?

Tyndale can help you with this at our classifieds web site. Just jump over to http://www.tyndale.ca/classifieds have a look – If you want to sell you will have to register for an account – if you just want to buy you will not need one. There is no cost involved in selling using this service!

Can’t find what you need there? Try here:
http://www.acollegetrades.com/auctions

We are currently experiencing some issues with our site search which is hosted by Google. Google runs a program called public service search to support universities and non-profit organizations by offering ad-free search capabilities for their sites. We have been using this for a number of years and it has worked great.

Google learned of a security issue with the Public Service Search service and disabled login functionality temporarily to protect the Public Service Search users while we were working to fix the problem.

For more information please read this post.

The search will still work however our custom look and feel has been stripped from the results page. Google hopes to have everything back to normal soon.

Philip Kay mentioned an online seminar that we had taken as an ITS team in his blog. The presentation was hosted by the CCCU and presented by Paul Dupree of Asbury College. It focused on a scale they used to help measure the quality of the IT Department. The presentation was very informative and we hope to implement this scale for us here at Tyndale.

As I was reviewing the presentation and thinking about how I can quickly measure where I/we are in this scale I decided I needed a 1 page graphical representation of this scale – I am quite a visual person/learner myself and this would be a great tool for me to stay on top of this information.

So I decided to pull out Cmap Tools and draw out the concept – now Cmap tools would be a post unto itself but very quickly it is a great free tool to help you build concept maps real easy. Poke around the web site to see for yourself.

If you are interested in what makes up this scale then feel free to download the 1 sheet wonder (PDF) or go grab the presentation from the NetCCCU web site

Do you work at Tyndale? Where would you put the ITS department on this scale – leave a comment!

I have mentioned Stewart Mader in the past – he writes a blog on using wikis in education. He posted an artile today on using a wiki to work collaborative group projects. Here is a quote from his post;

Often groups collaborate on a document by “pushingâ€? it out to each member – emailing a file that each person edits on his or her computer, and some attempt is made to coordinate the edits so everyone’s work is equally represented. But what happens when two people think of the same idea and include it in different ways in their respective copies of the file, or when one group member misses an agreed upon time to finish their changes and pass on the file to the next member? Who decides what to do? Using a wiki “pullsâ€? the group members together to build and edit the document on a wiki page, which strengthens the community within the group, allows group members with overlapping or similar ideas to see and collaboratively build on each other’s work. It also allows all group members immediate, equal access to the most recent version of the document.

Well that all sounds fine and dandy Andy but I don’t have a wiki! So what do I do?

There are some great free services on the web that can help you here. Let’s look at one…

http://pbwiki.com/

At pbwiki you can create your own wiki in seconds – really… Just add your site name (example: tyndaletry) and tell them your email address – done – well they do want you to confirm your email address. Once you confirm you are asked to supply a password (only those who know the password can edit the site), whether or not the wiki should be publicly viewable (or only with password) and then to agree to their terms of service. After you answer these 3 questions you are done!

Here is a tip – in the drop down box labeled “what is this wiki for?” choose education. They will then give you 3 templates to work from – one being “Create a Group Project”

At this point you can create new pages and start working on your project! Editing your wiki is really quite easy and there is a full tutorial online for you to look at.

Just want to play? Well I have actually added the wiki we used as an example above. You can go to:

http://tyndaletry.pbwiki.com/

and poke around… If you want to edit anything or setup a new page feel free! The password is “tyndale”

Last week I bought a MAC – just a used G4 but a MAC non-the-less. I have always wanted to have one for testing and playing purposes and when I found a good deal on this used one it was hard to resist. I set it up over the weekend and began my adventure. I have played a bit on MACs before but not a whole lot and not much on OS X. I found it to be quite the treat.

Yesterday was the first day of school and our two kids were now going to two different schools. I stayed home in the morning to help get my oldest to her new school. I got up early and worked for about an hour before having to leave. I realized that everything I needed to do – including some development – could be done with what I have installed on the MAC. So I worked in the morning on the G4. I came in soon after and started working in my typical – proven way – on a Windows PC. I wasn’t doing much different then in the morning and all worked well. I then decided I needed to do some work on out online courses and strolled over to the linux thin client computer I have in my office. Most of this was online but the application could handle working without Internet Explorer just fine (which I never really use on the PC any ways)

So yesterday I was able to work with all of the big boys – MAC – Windows – and Linux using cross platform tools and web based applications. It seems it doesn’t really matter what you use as long as you choose smart cross platform tools