Friday, September 23, 2005
Technology Barriers
When I sang the praises yesterday of Writely, the main reason I did so was that it was so absolutely simple to use. There was really nothing cumbersome about it at all.
What I've found this semester especially is there are so many walls in the way of getting things to work. The web has been around for a long time now and computers even longer. I am of the mind that things should just work. If someone says, I want to do x, you should be able to say, okay, here's how. Far too often, I find myself saying, nope, won't work. Or, find that the solution is really, really complicated.
Two cases in point. First, I've been working with David Karen in Sociology to use the Tablet PC with Blackboard to comment on papers. I thought that the Tablet PC would be the biggest stumbling block, but it turned out to be Blackboard. David wanted a simple way to collect the papers via Blackboard, scribble on them with the tablet and then send them back. We found a way to collect papers, but resubmitting them turned out to be a one-by-one process. Our ideal solution would have been to open the paper within Blackboard (or some other system), mark them up, click "Send back" or something and be done with it. And it took us a while to walk through the one-by-one process. It wasn't an intuitive process at all. It should be. Tasks like this (collecting papers) which professors do all the time should be obvious. So while I was happy we came up with a process for David to work with, it's not seamless in any way. I'm open to suggestion.
Second case also involves the tablet. Another professor wants to be able to mark up web sites in class. He likes to visit sites and then write on them, circle things, etc. One possible solution is to pull the site into Acrobat and write on it from there. But that seems silly. Shouldn't you just have the equivalent of a transparency? So I have no good, simple, seamless solution. I did find some interesting ideas and plugins, but nothing that fit my needs.
These little things frustrate me. And sometimes what frustrates me more is that we often don't have the foresight to think of the importance of the seamless integration of various tools. As a power user, I can piece together something that might work, but an average user isn't going to even think to do that. We need to make this easier.
educational technology, tablet pc, blackboard
What I've found this semester especially is there are so many walls in the way of getting things to work. The web has been around for a long time now and computers even longer. I am of the mind that things should just work. If someone says, I want to do x, you should be able to say, okay, here's how. Far too often, I find myself saying, nope, won't work. Or, find that the solution is really, really complicated.
Two cases in point. First, I've been working with David Karen in Sociology to use the Tablet PC with Blackboard to comment on papers. I thought that the Tablet PC would be the biggest stumbling block, but it turned out to be Blackboard. David wanted a simple way to collect the papers via Blackboard, scribble on them with the tablet and then send them back. We found a way to collect papers, but resubmitting them turned out to be a one-by-one process. Our ideal solution would have been to open the paper within Blackboard (or some other system), mark them up, click "Send back" or something and be done with it. And it took us a while to walk through the one-by-one process. It wasn't an intuitive process at all. It should be. Tasks like this (collecting papers) which professors do all the time should be obvious. So while I was happy we came up with a process for David to work with, it's not seamless in any way. I'm open to suggestion.
Second case also involves the tablet. Another professor wants to be able to mark up web sites in class. He likes to visit sites and then write on them, circle things, etc. One possible solution is to pull the site into Acrobat and write on it from there. But that seems silly. Shouldn't you just have the equivalent of a transparency? So I have no good, simple, seamless solution. I did find some interesting ideas and plugins, but nothing that fit my needs.
These little things frustrate me. And sometimes what frustrates me more is that we often don't have the foresight to think of the importance of the seamless integration of various tools. As a power user, I can piece together something that might work, but an average user isn't going to even think to do that. We need to make this easier.
educational technology, tablet pc, blackboard
