Monday, March 9, 2015
Some thoughts from day 1 of Agile2010
I started the day with Mary Poppendiecks talk "Leaders Workshop: Making Change Happen and Making it Stick" which was based on the following book: Switch: How to Change things when change is hard. The talk was split into 3 parts. First you need to Motivate the Elephant, then you need to Direct the Rider, and finally you need to Shape the Path.
Mary suggested that in order to Motivate people, you need to treat them like volunteers. You need to treat them like they could leave at any time. A quote from Peter Drucker: "They need, above all, challenge. They need to know the organizations mission; believe in it, they need to see the results". As our table discussed this concept, we were able to easily relate to our own stories of leading youth at church or in boyscouts. I think this would be a great way to be treated and I can see how it would translate into energized and passionate employees. A volunteer team has to be engaged or they will disappear.
The purpose of Directing the Rider is to provide clear direction. One of the ways to do this when change is difficult is to find the bright spot. When you are having trouble implementing a change, look for some small success and then duplicate it. She gave a great example about post-it notes. When 3M first made the post-it notes, they could not sell them. They test marketed them in several locations and they only sold them in one ("the bright spot"). It turns out that the sales rep in Richmond Virginia decided to give them away and once he did everyone wanted one. 3M then followed this model in other locations and now post-it notes are a household item (and a valuable agile tool!). So, to direct the rider in difficult situations, find instances of success and clone it. A book that she references is: Positive Deviance: Influence: The Power to Change Anything"
Finally, she suggests Shaping the Path by looking at the long term and allowing local decision making. You also need to find ways to make the desired change the path of least resistance. "Change will only stick when the path of least resistance is the path of change." IBMs move towards agile was used as an example. Instead of forcing agile, they allowed it to succeed in smaller teams and then sold and promoted those successes. Soon, everyone wanted to do it.
In summary, to encourage change in a team when it is difficult a) treat your team as volunteers b) find the bright spot and clone it and finally c) make the desired change the path of least resistance.
In the afternoon I went to Hacker Chick and Dawn Cannans hands on presentation "Better Story Testing through Programmer-Tester Pairing". We had fun doing developer/tester pairing of acceptance tests in FitNesse and Java. I learned a few new FitNesse tricks and also that I havent lost all my dev skills. I played the dev role and our team was the first to complete the assigned task, beating some notable names in the room <cough>Brian Marick</cough>. The session also re-inforced ATDD and gave me some ideas Id like to incorporate into a future presentation.
Also, I missed Janet Gregorys talk this morning on the Dance of QA in agile, but I managed to talk to her this evening at the mixer. She gave a quick summary of her talk and how she related it to dance. Agile team members need to be like contestants on "So You Think You Can Dance". On the show, hip-hop dancers learn other dance styles like ballet and vice versa. Similarly, agile team members (including QA) need to improve their skills in all of the disciplines in a project team. An interesting thought.
Thanks to everyone - a great first day.
In other news, Bob Payne is now following me. #Stalker.
Read more »
Mary suggested that in order to Motivate people, you need to treat them like volunteers. You need to treat them like they could leave at any time. A quote from Peter Drucker: "They need, above all, challenge. They need to know the organizations mission; believe in it, they need to see the results". As our table discussed this concept, we were able to easily relate to our own stories of leading youth at church or in boyscouts. I think this would be a great way to be treated and I can see how it would translate into energized and passionate employees. A volunteer team has to be engaged or they will disappear.
The purpose of Directing the Rider is to provide clear direction. One of the ways to do this when change is difficult is to find the bright spot. When you are having trouble implementing a change, look for some small success and then duplicate it. She gave a great example about post-it notes. When 3M first made the post-it notes, they could not sell them. They test marketed them in several locations and they only sold them in one ("the bright spot"). It turns out that the sales rep in Richmond Virginia decided to give them away and once he did everyone wanted one. 3M then followed this model in other locations and now post-it notes are a household item (and a valuable agile tool!). So, to direct the rider in difficult situations, find instances of success and clone it. A book that she references is: Positive Deviance: Influence: The Power to Change Anything"
Finally, she suggests Shaping the Path by looking at the long term and allowing local decision making. You also need to find ways to make the desired change the path of least resistance. "Change will only stick when the path of least resistance is the path of change." IBMs move towards agile was used as an example. Instead of forcing agile, they allowed it to succeed in smaller teams and then sold and promoted those successes. Soon, everyone wanted to do it.
In summary, to encourage change in a team when it is difficult a) treat your team as volunteers b) find the bright spot and clone it and finally c) make the desired change the path of least resistance.
In the afternoon I went to Hacker Chick and Dawn Cannans hands on presentation "Better Story Testing through Programmer-Tester Pairing". We had fun doing developer/tester pairing of acceptance tests in FitNesse and Java. I learned a few new FitNesse tricks and also that I havent lost all my dev skills. I played the dev role and our team was the first to complete the assigned task, beating some notable names in the room <cough>Brian Marick</cough>. The session also re-inforced ATDD and gave me some ideas Id like to incorporate into a future presentation.
Also, I missed Janet Gregorys talk this morning on the Dance of QA in agile, but I managed to talk to her this evening at the mixer. She gave a quick summary of her talk and how she related it to dance. Agile team members need to be like contestants on "So You Think You Can Dance". On the show, hip-hop dancers learn other dance styles like ballet and vice versa. Similarly, agile team members (including QA) need to improve their skills in all of the disciplines in a project team. An interesting thought.
Thanks to everyone - a great first day.
In other news, Bob Payne is now following me. #Stalker.
Announcing Gmail contextual gadgets
Back in March, we launched the Google Apps Marketplace and turned Google Apps into a platform for your apps using Google’s Data APIs, OpenID-based identity management, and universal navigation. We also gave you a sneak preview of Gmail contextual gadgets, an extension mechanism that allows developers to intelligently trigger their application within Gmail. Gmail contextual gadgets bring your app directly into the inbox where users spend most of their day, giving your app powerful new functionality and enabling greater user engagement.
We are excited to announce that the Gmail contextual gadgets API is available to all Google Apps Marketplace developers today. You will be able to use our predefined email context extractors to contextually trigger your gadgets within Gmail. In the future, you will also be able to write custom context extractors; sign up here to take a peek.
The contextual gadgets that you write can be bundled into manifests and listed on the Apps Marketplace. Google Apps domain administrators can deploy your gadgets to their users with a few clicks. As with all new APIs, we will keep this one in Labs as we enhance these gadgets.
Several apps featuring Gmail contextual gadgets are launching on the Marketplace today, with more on the way. To check out their integrations and read our full announcement, visit our post on the Google Enterprise Blog. To get started with building these contextual gadgets, visit the developers guide.
We are hard at work adding even more extension points to Google Apps to enable a richer integration experience for developers and a more seamless user experience for Google Apps customers. Stay tuned!
Update: Docs are now live!
Read more »
We are excited to announce that the Gmail contextual gadgets API is available to all Google Apps Marketplace developers today. You will be able to use our predefined email context extractors to contextually trigger your gadgets within Gmail. In the future, you will also be able to write custom context extractors; sign up here to take a peek.
The contextual gadgets that you write can be bundled into manifests and listed on the Apps Marketplace. Google Apps domain administrators can deploy your gadgets to their users with a few clicks. As with all new APIs, we will keep this one in Labs as we enhance these gadgets.
Several apps featuring Gmail contextual gadgets are launching on the Marketplace today, with more on the way. To check out their integrations and read our full announcement, visit our post on the Google Enterprise Blog. To get started with building these contextual gadgets, visit the developers guide.
We are hard at work adding even more extension points to Google Apps to enable a richer integration experience for developers and a more seamless user experience for Google Apps customers. Stay tuned!
Update: Docs are now live!
Sunday, March 8, 2015
Cleaning up the root collection in Google Docs
We are currently rolling out a change to the organization of existing resources in collections in Google Docs. This change is completely transparent to users of the Google Docs web user interface, but it is technically visible when using the Google Documents List API to make requests with the showroot=true query parameter or specifically querying the contents of the root collection. In order to understand this change, first read how Google Docs organizes resources.
The change involves Google removing those resources from a user’s root collection that already exist within another collection accessible to the given user. That is, if “My Presentation” is currently in root and in the “My Talks” collection, after this change it will only exist in the “My Talks” collection.
We are making this change in order to make the organization of resources less confusing for API developers. This change allows clients to know that a resource either exists in root or in some collection under root. Clients can still retrieve all resources, regardless of which collections they’re in, using the resources feed.
The change is rolling out gradually to all Google Docs users over the next few months.
Developers with further questions about this change should post in the Google Documents List API forum.
 | Russ Jorgensen LinkedIn Russ Jorgensen joined Google in 2010 and is responsible for supporting and enhancing APIs which third-party applications can use to access and manage users collections of Google Docs. Prior to working at Google, Russ was an embedded software engineer for 22 years at Bell Labs building telecommunications products such as PBXs and wireless communication systems. |
Wednesday, March 4, 2015
Martin Luther King Jr Interactive E Book for the Smartboard
My students are just loving the interactive e-books that Ive been making lately! The interactive elements really help to keep them engaged with the non-fiction text. And of course, they love reading the books on the smartboard - the large pictures are so much easier to see!
The book has great information text about MLK Jr., as well as questions to test for comprehension. When they get the question correct, it cheers for them! They just love it! Click the picture above to check out the book on Teachers Pay Teachers. Or... be one of the first two people to comment and Ill email it to you for free!
Read more »
The book has great information text about MLK Jr., as well as questions to test for comprehension. When they get the question correct, it cheers for them! They just love it! Click the picture above to check out the book on Teachers Pay Teachers. Or... be one of the first two people to comment and Ill email it to you for free!
MAKNAZ The Saudi Repository for Learning Objects
"The Maknaz project provides a complete solution for the implementation, customisation, maintenance and support of a reliable and effective online learning environment, including all the required hardware for sustaining a highly sophisticated environment supporting 22 leading national universities."
- Abdullah Al Mogheerah (NCELs Manager for Planning & PMO)
Bob Little ranked Abdullah Al Mogheerah as the 4th most influential person in the corporate e-learning world in 2011 (on Jan 4, 2011)
CLICK HERE TO EXPLORE MAKNAZ
MAKNAZ (or Treasure Chest)?
"The National Center of E-learning and Distance Learning (NCEL) guides the various efforts of Saudi higher education institutions to develop digital content, enrich the curricula and facilitate learning to achieve excellence in the educational process as a whole...As a result, an electronic national repository has been built to facilitate the process of developing, archiving, retrieving, reusing and sharing of learning objects. The national repository will support the efforts of Saudi universities and serve as a basis for building digital curricula with higher quality and less cost..." - Source
In developing and implementing Maknaz, NCEL has been working closely with eXact learning solutions, and they have fused "eXact LCMS and Harvestroad Hive DR infrastructures to provide a nationwide digital marketplace within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia...Academics and students use the HarvestRoad Hive DR to share and access a wide array of educational materials. The eXact LCMS and other collaboration tools are used to facilitate the production and management of online learning contents." - Source
Maknaz is "integrated with all NCELs internal repositories, including Qanatech and the Saudi Digital Library (SDL) as well as with a network of over 36 international repositories, making it possible for Maknaz users to search for contents across all these repositories." - Source
THE BIG CHALLENGE
The problem with many Learning Object Repositories (LOR) in the past was populating the repository quickly (too costly and too few people willing to share), and attracting people to use it. In general, people will only visit the LOR, and continue to use it if they can easily find content relevant to their areas of interest.
Interestingly, Maknaz empowers users to search for (and filter) contents across more than 36 international repositories, including ARIADNE, NSDL, University of Cambridge, MIT (OpenCourseware), IDEALS @ Illinois, JorumOpen, Delft University of Technology, Johns Hopkins University (MUSE Project) and Hong Kong University. By doing so, users have access from one search box more than one million learning resources (objects/items), which makes it immediately attractive to find potential learning resource gems.
So, while Maknaz is being populated with local content from Universities around Saudi Arabia, Maknaz has already an immediate attraction with its federated search across multiple learning repositories around the world.
To go beyond just focusing on developing and sharing content, Maknaz has areas for communities, forums and blogs to bloom, which is great to spark connections and facilitate collaborations among users.
The big challenge with such massive projects is getting buy-in by stake holders (Universities, academics, students, etc.), changing peoples learning and sharing mindset from copyright to copyleft (or Creative Commons), and creating an environment where honest discussions and constructive criticism can flow without disruption and fear.
Having now been to Saudi Arabia twice for educational purposes (Nov 2008: 2 E-Learning workshops and Jan 2010: E-Learning Audit of Universities), I am still amazed how fast they are moving ahead with e-learning and investing in the infrastructure to make it happen.
What is even more encouraging and exciting was meeting several young upcoming academics during the process, who have brilliant ideas, and are very passionate about innovating the way they learn, and empower students to learn. I remember even one E-Learning Dean, who told me that he woke up at night having dreams about e-learning. I am passionate about learning and e-learning, but I have yet to have any dreams to testify that.
Finally, having a passionate and strategically driven NCEL push forward with so many innovative projects, hosting conferences, and providing tons of training programs (for both men and women) to support the development of the learning nation, and topping that with a growing group of academics hungry to learn and innovate, it will certainly be interesting to see how the transformation of Saudi Higher Education unfolds in the future :)
Interestingly, Maknaz empowers users to search for (and filter) contents across more than 36 international repositories, including ARIADNE, NSDL, University of Cambridge, MIT (OpenCourseware), IDEALS @ Illinois, JorumOpen, Delft University of Technology, Johns Hopkins University (MUSE Project) and Hong Kong University. By doing so, users have access from one search box more than one million learning resources (objects/items), which makes it immediately attractive to find potential learning resource gems.
So, while Maknaz is being populated with local content from Universities around Saudi Arabia, Maknaz has already an immediate attraction with its federated search across multiple learning repositories around the world.
To go beyond just focusing on developing and sharing content, Maknaz has areas for communities, forums and blogs to bloom, which is great to spark connections and facilitate collaborations among users.
The big challenge with such massive projects is getting buy-in by stake holders (Universities, academics, students, etc.), changing peoples learning and sharing mindset from copyright to copyleft (or Creative Commons), and creating an environment where honest discussions and constructive criticism can flow without disruption and fear.
Having now been to Saudi Arabia twice for educational purposes (Nov 2008: 2 E-Learning workshops and Jan 2010: E-Learning Audit of Universities), I am still amazed how fast they are moving ahead with e-learning and investing in the infrastructure to make it happen.
What is even more encouraging and exciting was meeting several young upcoming academics during the process, who have brilliant ideas, and are very passionate about innovating the way they learn, and empower students to learn. I remember even one E-Learning Dean, who told me that he woke up at night having dreams about e-learning. I am passionate about learning and e-learning, but I have yet to have any dreams to testify that.
Finally, having a passionate and strategically driven NCEL push forward with so many innovative projects, hosting conferences, and providing tons of training programs (for both men and women) to support the development of the learning nation, and topping that with a growing group of academics hungry to learn and innovate, it will certainly be interesting to see how the transformation of Saudi Higher Education unfolds in the future :)
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