Mullett's Corner

Before I go into the actual event and what went on, I thought I'd take a moment to say how wonderful what little of York I saw was. Stepping off the train into Eboracum, walking past ancient Roman settlements and towering parapets was truly a sight to behold, often in stark contrast to the modern architecture that now sits quite comfortably next to the old. The still very grandeur Roman structures still had a place in the bustling city of York, very much like the scene I witnessed on the train up there; two young lads both reading next to each other, one with a kindle, one with a paper book. A common theme I picked up on during the Google Apps for Education European User Group 2014 (GEUG14) ... and breathe... event. The old and the new. GEUG14 took place in The Ron Cooke Hub in the Heslington East Campus of University of York. The Ron Cooke Hub - University of York Pretty impressive place! I met a rather enthused  +Tom Smith  to whom I had to apologise ...

So, the rationale for building this system came from a need for our institution to be able to issue Open Badges , an initiative backed by the Mozilla foundation for standardising the issuing of badges for 'verifying learning'. All the systems that allow you to issue badges to users are all tied in to big and bulky VLEs such as BlackBoard. So what happens when it's a face to face session? How can we issue a badge to a user when they aren't in the ecosphere of the VLE or institution for that matter? We didn't want to have to worry about usernames, registrations, training on another system etc So I had a scout around to see what was about. I came across work by  +Martin Hawksey  where he used Google Sites to wrap up Mozilla's Open Badges Issuer api and a Google Form to serve this api with the correct badge details.  Fab, this is 'sort of' exactly what we wanted. I mean 'sort of' in the greatest respect to Martin's work, simply put, I...

It's been a few months now, my Chromebook still goes with me to every single meeting at work. From keeping notes on & offline using Google Keep, to collaborating (Google Docs of course) on a discussion paper while sitting in the local Coffice with a colleague  +Aaron Burrell . My use of Google Apps has exploded and I now use a plethora of Googles tools and extensions to optimise and make my work effective and efficient. I guess there's almost a slight smugness about it. Mainly because all the things I worried about before no longer exist and everything I do use in my Google suite is so incredibly easy, it's almost laughable. But somethings wrong, I feel rather alone with it all, yes other members of my team BOTH (yes three people in the team) use Google Apps effectively, but that's it. It frustrates me, knowing that the rest the institution I work for still work using, certainly in my eyes, archaic technologies in their everyday work. Slow machines running ...

I thought I'd write a little post about my ever so slightly weird transition moving from using an iPhone for the last few years to an HTC One. It all started when I moved house.. Basically without going into massive details, I didn't get any signal, like absolutely nothing. It was almost like there was a forcefield around the house, I could walk up to my door and everything would be fine. Step into my house and I would see 'No Signal' on the phone :( I checked all the networks coverage maps and low and behold, there is a gap in the map, just the right size to fit right above my house... Look.. That grey square in the middle, that's where my house is, and it says 'Outdoors only'. Anyway, all of the networks showed similar. The story goes like this, I sent my phone back and cancelled out of my contract. I decided to go with the same network as my partner as she somehow gets full signal. However I didn't see the point in getting an iPhone again...

I did think about using 'Kologarn' in the title of this blog but very few people would understand the metaphor. Again, I digress.. I'm about to rant about the one thing I've evangelised and advocated about for so long.. Google. Yes, Google. I love Google, I really do.. it's given me the ability to not worry about CRC Errors or having multiple devices 'Sync'd'. All I have to do is log-in to Google, where ever I may be to access all of my work/personal stuff. My Chromebook, no matter how visually appealing and wondrous it is (CBHP11 of course), is simply redundant. If it breaks, I get a replacement, log-in and it's back to normal, no panic, no fret. For instance, 'the' aim for my work now is to advocate Google Apps for Education (GAFE) enough that it gets rolled out and I get to teach everyone how to use it, I'll end that sentence there before I start to daydream. Which is why it pains me to raise a few faults with Goo...

Sarah Scicluna -  http://flic.kr/p/5EWQf9 Well, here we are, yet another blogging platform I've had to clamber on. All thanks to another fantastic platform falling foul of lack of investors. Jux for all its worth has been the latest victim, Posterous is another fallen comrade and I can't bring myself to utter the words of previous platforms now nothing more than a name of a url which gets redirected to a bigger company which swallowed it whole. I guess this is the cost of being curious of new platforms and being one of the early adopters. I always thought Jux would have been different though, it strayed from the very linear (e.g this page) look commonly associated with blogs and flipped it on its head, with a massive focus on media. Now this wasn't supposed to be up against flickr etc it still held on to the fact is was a blogging platform but it made it such a nicer place to be, people write blogs and people have to be on those pages while they read them, so why not...