This week I talked to a group at the 2010 HELIX conference, sponsored by MOREnet. MOREnet is one of the high level networking authorities that provides connectivity services for educational entities in Missouri. My presentation discussed Google Wave’s place in the current and future plans of higher education. Below, you can find an outline of the notes and the Prezi used during the talk.

For more reading, I’ve tagged a few articles mentioned in, or related to the presentation:

• http://www.delicious.com/tag/helix10-wave

Important takeaways:

• Wave is a new communications medium, inspired by today’s information sharing.
• Wave is not social networking, not the next Twitter – it’s a tool for getting work done.
• It’s part of a long term game plan that continues for at least the next ten years.
• Buzz was the opposite of wave: it was launched in haste, for the short term, to capitalize on a market trend.
• It’s hard to innovate, even for Google
• The Past
  • Communication used to be very slow, very analog: phones, intercoms, mail.
  • Classrooms have also changed from the old school: lectures, lots of face to face and small groups, libraries.
  • You had to work at communication and education
• Today
  • Today, communication is fast and easy: email, IM, forums, wikis, blogs
  • Education answered this problem with the LMS
    • An imperfect solution to a complex problem
    • Pleases some of the people some of the time, never all of the people all of the time.
    • Frequently under or over utilized
• The Future
  • Communication will be:
    • Multi-vector: Facebook, Twitter (Google Reader)
    • Multi-channel: audio, video, images, text (Skype)
    • Multi-party: Chatroulette (scary)
  • The future of the LMS is not in management, it’s in enhancement and augmentation.
• Right now, wave is an empty tool, it’s not ready for our use yet.
• Relax, be patient, keep your eyes on the news/articles for now.
• The launch of wave threw people off. The timing was strange, and released in a very public manner for a tool that is still very alpha in nature.
• Accessibility is also the elephant in the room, they have a long way to go yet in that area, and we have to wait on that.
• Looking ahead
  • Watch for GMail and wave integration (which will be far better than the GMail/Buzz integration).
  • Ubiquitous wave servers, like email servers (it’s been open sourced!).
  • Applications built on top of the wave protocol: LES, project management, help desk…
  • All with the goal of creating simple, flexible, coherent group communication.
• Use wave to enable people
  • Note taking/playback
  • Distance learning
  • Group work
  • Intercampus collaboration
  • Course planning
• This isn’t coming tomorrow…but you can begin to prepare and learn now.

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