Introduction to the Survey Results

In addition to the technology questions we’ve been asking UVic Law students over the past nine years, we decided for the second year in a row to ask some extra questions about the mobile technology that students are arriving at Law School equipped with. This survey was completed by 139 incoming and transferring law students, which is a strong 90% plus response rate.

Executive Summary:

• 84% of incoming law students own “Smart Phones” that can browse the internet (up dramatically from 50% last year), with 42% of the total being iPhones, 13% Android and 27% Blackberry’s.
• 19% of students own tablet devices or ebook readers.
• 98% of students own laptops, and 16% own both a laptop and a desktop computer.
• 50% of student laptops are Mac’s, up from 44% last year.
• The average laptop price stayed basically the same as last year at $1,186, which is down from $1400 in 2007, and from $2,100 in 2004.
• The students’ average typing speed was was 60 wpm.
• 72% of all students bring their laptops to school almost every day.
• 55% of students use Gmail as their primary email account (up from 49% last year), 9% use UVic email and 22% Hotmail.
• 60% of students identified MS Word as their favorite tool for collaborative document editing (down from 67%).  30% favor Google Docs (up from 27%) and 2% OpenOffice.
• 58% of students report backing up their primary computer on a regular basis. 60% of those backing up do so to an external hard drive and 25% to a cloud storage solution.
• 97% of students use Facebook (up from 91%) and 92% (up from 80%) would like to see law school events and activities published on Facebook as well as through the online faculty calendar. 25% use Twitter, 21% use linked in, and 16% use Google+.

Smart Phone / Cell Phone Ownership

84% of students own “Smart Phones” or phones with built in web browsers that allow them to surf the internet on their cell phones.  That is up dramatically from 50% of smart phone owners last year.On the other end of the spectrum, 2% of students do not own a cell phone at all. This is significantly lower than the 11% of our sample of all law students who reported no cell phone in the spring of 2010. Just as laptop owner ship has been close to 100% since 2007, cell phone is now almost 100% as well.I suspect that over the next two or three years close to 100% of students will either own a smart phone, an iPod Touch, an iPad or Android tablet device.From the library’s perspective this is an important area to watch, as there are a number of interesting new technologies (like QR Codes) that could potentially enhance the library’s services that depend on library patrons having access to the internet on their cell phones along with a camera.

Tablet Device or Ebook Reader Ownership

For the first time we asked students about their tablet device and/or eBook reader ownership and found that most students do not have dedicated eBook readers. It will be interesting to see if a shift to digital reading of textbooks and other materials happens over time.  If text book makers lower the cost of digital books relative to paper books, we could see a rapid adoption of eBook readers.

Laptop Ownership

Laptop ownership has plateaued in the high ninty percent over the past five years (this year at 98%). Currently only three 1st year students arrived without a laptop this September. 50% of all incoming laptops are Mac’s (up from 39% last year), 1% are Linux, and the remaining 49% are running Windows (7% XP).The average price paid for student laptops has leveled out over the past two years at just under $1,200. In 2007 the average was $1400 and in 2004 $2,100. The increase in the number of higher priced Mac laptops is the probable cause of the leveling out of the purchase price of student laptops.Desktop computer ownership stands at 28%., down from last year.  All students have had access to high speed internet in their homes for two years now.

How often do students bring their laptops to school

One only has to look in Law Faculty class in session to realize that at least 72% of students bring their laptops to school almost every day.  Does this open up pedagogical opportunities, or is it just a thorn in the side of faculty members?Interestingly, 3% of laptop owners never bring their laptops to school with them. That combined with the 2% that do not own laptops, reinforces the need to maintain a certain number of public access computers and loaner laptops available in the building, especially for exam writing.

Typing Speed

Of the 73% of students who were able to tell us how many words per minute (wpm) they could type, the average was 60 wpm.

MP3 Player Ownership (besides smart phones)

95% of students own an MP3 Player or smart phone of some kind.  Of those students owning MP3 players, 96% own Apple products (up from 93% last year). For any instructors wishing to do podcasts of their lectures, there is no need to hold back any longer as the 5% of students with out PM3 players can review class lecture podcasts on their laptops.  Campus Systems is considering setting up a UVic iTunes site (like other universiteshave done) which would make distributing the mp3′s of class lectures very simple to do.

Primary Email Account

Currently only 9% of students use their UVic email account as their primary email account. The rest – 91% – forward their UVic email to a 3rd party email provider.  55% use Gmail as their primary account, and 21% use Hotmail, and 9% use their previous university’s email.

Favorite Collaborative Document Editing Software

Microsoft Word continues to be the most popular tool for collaborative document editing at 61% (down from 67% last year).  Interestingly, Google Docs is preferred by 30% of students (up from 27%).

1. When collaborating with classmates on a group project, do you get tired of trying to figure out which of the versions that have been emailed to you is the most current?
2. Do you get discouraged when you are faced with the task of merging edits from 2 or more students into a single document near the end of the group project?
3. Do some of your edits get lost in the group collaboration email shuffle?

If you’ve said yes to any one of the questions above, then you should take a serious look at using either Google Docs or Microsoft Word Web App for your next group project.  That said, here are a few things to keep in mind as you being to collaboratively create and edit documents on the web:

• While the look and feel of Microsoft Word Web App is very similar to the desktop version of Word, you cannot add or edit footnotes, end notes, or tables of contents in the online version of Word. You can connect to the file from your desktop version of Word to add and edit those elements in your group document however (on a Mac you’ll need Mac Office 2011 to do this).
• Google Docs supports foot notes, end notes and tables of contents in the web browser, but the editing interface is not as rich as the desktop version of Word.  For some people this is not a problem. For others it is a show stopper.  You can decide for yourself.

How to sync and edit documents from my desktop computer on my iPad is a question that I’ve had ever since I purchased my iPad in April of 2010.  The good new is that I finally have a good answer, and  ironically the apps that facilitate the editing and syncing are ones that I’ve used for years now, one of which has just recently come to the iPad and iPhone… or at least recently came to my attention.  Here’s the equation:

Dropbox + Documents To Go = iPad Document Nirvana!

Here is what you need to turn your iPad into a document editing & syncing machine:

Step 1: If you don’t have a free Dropbox account already, then now is your excuse to finally download and install it on your desktop computer(s).  Dropbox is a cloud service that synchronizes files between your computers, and keeps them up to date. It runs on Mac’s, Windows & Linux. For example, I have dropbox running on my Mac laptop and Windows desktop computer. So when I save a file to my Dropbox folder on my desktop computer, that file gets save to my account on the dropbox server on the internet. The next time I turn on my laptop, it checks to see if any files have changed, and then if they have, download the changed files to my laptop.  It is a wonderful service if you use more than one computer (or computer & iPad/iPhone).  The use of Dropbox is free for up to 2GB of data, and then $10 per month (for $99 per year) for 50GB of data.  I personally subscribe to the 50GB plan because I store all my family photos there along with all my documents, but I digress.

Step 2: Install the free Dropbox app on your iPad (or iPhone, or Blackberry, or Android phone if you have one) via the Apple App store. Enter the same user name and password that you setup your Dro

pbox account with on your desktop computer.

Step 3: Again via the Apple App store, and install Documents To Go Premium – Office Suite. Make sure you get the “Premium” version for $16.99, as the basic version does not sync files with Dropbox (or Google Docs). Once you’ve installed the app, press the “Online” button on the bottom nav bar, and then the app will ask you what type of account you want to synchronize with. Select Dropbox, enter your account information, and you set.

That’s it!  You’ve now turned your iPad into a legitimate business machine so that you can word process & spreadsheet on the go, and sync everything back to your desktop computer.  Enjoy!

Do YouTube and Facebook distract students?  Of course they do!  On the other hand, can YouTube and Facebook help students with their school work?  Until recently I wasn’t sure, but after my partner’s experience with a professor who wasn’t a good teacher, and seeing how YouTube and Facebook saved her and her classmates from poor grades, I’m convinced that these “digital distractions” can be, if used intelligently, excellent Learning Tools.

Being the father of two teenagers, the husband of a partner that has recently gone back to college, and Systems Administrator at a University Law Library, I have a front row seat  on how technology is used and abused in the service of homework, research and education in general.  When my partner found herself in a college class teaching challenged professor, I was amazed at how she, along with her classmates, used technology to compensate for the poor classroom instruction. Her learning process for each class was as follows:

• She would read the chapter(s) in preparation for class, and usually understand some, but not all of the concepts that she read.
• She and her classmates would go to class and listen to the professor read his power point slides, leaving the chapter’s concepts no clearer than the text book reading.
• Later that evening, my partner would check the facebook group for her class to see if anyone had figured out the main points of the lecture yet.  If no one had yet, she would start doing YouTube searches for the key topics in her readings, and would usually find one or more videos that visually explained the topics much more clearly than either the text book or her professor could.  For example, check out this explanation of Mitosis on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlN7K1-9QB0
• After finding a clear explanation, she would post a link to the video on her classes Facebook group.  At the same time she would typically find links to other topics from the reading and lecture that classmates had posted.
• She would watch all the videos and make notes from them for later review before exams.

This is how the whole semester went.  In the end, in spite of her ineffective teacher, she received an A- grade in the course.  Then again, maybe it is because of her teacher’s poor instruction that she and her classmates were forced to spend extra time to find quality materials on-line to explain and learn the concepts they needed to master. To sum up, there seem to be two important tools and trends that were very helpful to my partner and her class:

1. The availability of high quality learning resources on YouTube and other websites for college and high school students.
2. Facebook’s collaboration capabilities make it very easy for groups to share information (links to YouTube), and then discuss the quality and merits of each of the videos among themselves. All the students are Facebook users, so it is a natural virtual space for them to collaborate in while they work on homework from home or library.

Serious Tools

• Evernote – Cost: Free or $5 / month – An excellent tool for capturing, syncing data between your desktop and cell phone. I love the ability it gives me to take a picture of a white board, and then later do a key word search on the text that Evernote has OCR’ed for me. – http://evernote.com
• Google Mobile App – Free – The app’s easy-to-use voice or image search feature locates what you are looking for without typing. Try an image search with Book or DVD covers, bar codes or house hold items. Google Goggles is a useful and fun tool. – http://www.google.com/mobile/google-mobile-app/
• Dragon Dictation – Free – Speech to text app that allows you to easily speak and instantly see your text content for everything from email messages, SMS, Facebook or blog posts – http://www.dragonmobileapps.com/
• Read it Later – Cost: Free – Allows you to bookmark interesting news stories on your desktop computer and then read those articles on your iPhone when you have a spare minute or two. It re-formats pages to make them easier to read on a small screen. – http://readitlaterlist.com
• myHomework – Free – Allows you to keep track of you homework, classes, projects and tests. If you need help staying organized this may be a useful tool for you. A great way to get your mom to stop nagging you about your homework. – http://myhomework.rigoneri.com/
• Wunderlist – Free – To Do list for iPhone, iPod Touch, Mac & Windows. An excellent generic GTD or Getting Things Done tool. iPhone/iPod Touch, Mac & Windows applications. – http://www.6wunderkinder.com/wunderlist/
• Mind Maps – Cost: Free or $7 – Turns your iPhone into a brainstorming, idea collection and thought structuring device – http://simpleapps.eu/simplemind
• iBooks – Free – a free ebook reader from Apple that allows you to read PDF files, and free ePub files from the internet. You can also purchase popular copyrighted books from Apple. – http://www.apple.com/ipad/features/ibooks.html
• YouTube – Free – Your teacher can’t explain something to you so that you can understand?  Try searching for the topic on YouTube and see if there is someone who can give you a good explanation. More often that not, you’ll find a master teacher that has taken the time to record a video for you. – http://youtube.com
• Google Docs – Free – Google Docshas real time collaboration capabilities, with built in version control, and all you need is a web browser.  If I was back in school, this would be the only tool I’d use for group projects. – http://docs.google.com

Fun & Useful Tools: They won’t necessarily help you with your school work, but they are cool none the less.

• StarWalk – Cost: $3 – Tilt your iPhone towards the sky to and the image on your screen will correspond to the area of the sky you are pointing your phone towards. A very cool app. – http://vitotechnology.com/star-walk.html
• Urban Spoon – Cost: Free – One of the funnest ways to find restaurants in your home town or on the road. Check out the “scope” to see how we might be finding our way around unfamiliar locations: visiting a new city or unfamiliar shopping mall – http://urbanspoon.com
• Run keeper – Cost: Free or $10 – A great tool that maps your runs for you via GPS. The integration between the mobile app and their website is outstanding. – http://runkeeper.com

Enjoy this 1.5 minute video!

That said, here are my primary and secondary recommendations for collaborative tools, along with some rational for my selections:

1. For Audio, Video Conferencing, along with Computer Desktop Sharing, my first recommendation would be Skype.  In my experience, Skype works well in low bandwidth situations, and it’s desktop sharing feature can be very handy if you need to see what is happening on a colleague’s desktop (talking through last minute document edits for example). My second choice would be Google Talk. It supports built in Video and Audio conferencing, and integrates into Google Docs which can be handy if you’ve setup a custom Google Apps instance for your research project.
2. For collaborative document editing my first choice would be Google Docs (see this post about Google Docs for collaborative book writing). Google Docs has built in tools for version control (which is invaluable when collaboratively editing documents), and has footnoting capabilities that Office Live is currently lacking.  My second choice would be Office Live (office.live.com), because of it’s lack of footnoting.  SharePoint is another tool that is used for collaboration in larger organizations, but at least where I work (the University of Victoria), it is difficult to add people outside of our organization to a SharePoint group, and documents cannot be edited by to people at the same time.
3. If Google Doc’s or Office Live are too big a technological stretch for those involved in the project, I then suggest using Drop Box for synchronizing files between all the participants.  This will sync the word documents automatically between participants, but you aren’t able to have two people editing the same document at the same time like you can with Google Docs, or Office Live.
4. If threaded discussions are part of the project, Google Apps for Domains has a built in tool for doing this.  SharePoint also allows for threaded discussion to be easily setup.
5. As for Email, I think most like to use their current account rather than check multiple inboxes, and the same can be said for calendaring.  If a participant needs an email address & calendaring solution, I typically recommend Gmail, or Google Apps for Domains.

The products in this space are rapidly evolving, so what is top of the class today, could be different six months from now.  Let me know what the “ideal” tool set for your group would look like.

Not only does collaborative highlighting show you where you classmates are working, but it will also show you when they highlight blocks of text, so you can watch to see if the text get deleted or moved.  I wish I’d been able to use Google Docs when I was a Bachelor of Commerce student continually working on group projects!

Some of the other features that college students will appreciate are:

• Footnotes and Endnotes
• Table of Contents tool
• Inline Thesaurus and Dictionary lookups
• Add new words to a Custom Dictionary
• Auto save every few seconds

Enjoy!

• The move from the morning paper to reviewing the news on the iPad, make breakfast a much more pleasant experience, because of the smaller and more easily managed iPad form factor.  I actually do a lot of my “newspaper” reading in bed now.
• When used in meetings, it gives you the ability to take electronic notes and consult the web for meeting related material, with out “barricading yourself behind a screen.”  For me this has made a huge difference, especially now that the novelty of the iPad is wearing off and more people have them in meetings.
• When traveling, it’s 10 hour battery life makes long flights more endurable as I can watch movies I really want to watch, or play games while in the air.
• The 10 hour battery life means that I don’t need to recharge it during the day, and often I go 3 or 4 days between charging.
• Reading using the Kindle reader is a joy. I especially appreciate being able to go back and forth between my iPad and iPod and the Kindle app knowing where I left off on the other device (this work across all Kindle apps and devices).

What I’m hoping gets fixed in version 4 of the iPad OS:

• One of the main drawbacks is it’s limited ability to multi-task that we’ve become accustomed to on laptops.  Copy and pasting text or an image from a web page just takes a lot longer.
• One other drawback is the iPad’s current inability to sync files from your desktop computer, or from some cloud based system.  If I could have 2 way syncing of some of my DropBox floders I would be a very happy man.
• This is not a big issue, but I’d love to be able to output the contents of the screen via the Apple VGA dongle, from every application, not just Keynote.

That’s it for know… You should really read Anne’s article for all the interesting details she includes.

Here are my thoughts on Microsoft Word Web App (live.office.com). Before you test drive it yourself, you’ll need an active hotmail.com or live.com account.

Word Web App Pros:

• The look and feel of the Word Web App is very similar to Word 2007.  Similar, but not as many features, which is to be expected at this point in it’s product development. If you use Word 2007 you have a very small learning curve.
• Sharing a document with others is easy to do.  Having the document on the internet makes collaboration simple… no more worrying about whether or not you have the most recent version in your email inbox or not.
• The built in version control looks solid.  It is now a trivial task to revert the document back to an earlier version if necessary, or see what was deleted by accident.
• 25GB of file storage is excellent. I’m not sure what the limit is in Google Docs to be honest.
• You can edit documents in any web browser, not just Internet Explorer.  I’ve been working in Google Chrome on a Mac, and the experience has been good.

Word Web App Cons:

• No footnotes, endnotes or Tables of Contents. For students this is a problem.  You can add footnotes, endnotes and Tables of Contents in the desktop version of Word, but you can’t edit them or even see them in the online version.  Hopefully this will change soon, as this is a big problem for students who need to cite their references.  Google Docs started out without footnotes, but added them in October of 2008.
• While you can edit documents just fine in any web browser, if you want to edit the file in your desktop version of Word you need to be on a Windows computer in Internet Explorer.  Not a huge deal, unless you need to add footnotes, or are on a Mac.

Whether you end up using Microsoft Office Web Apps, or Google Docs, we’re all going to benefit from Microsoft getting into this market.  Overall this is a good first effort from Microsoft.  Hopefully they’ll quickly add footnotes to their otherwise excellent product.

Here’s a short Google Apps video that shows how useful real time collaboration on a document can be… no more emailing a document back and forth between collaborators:

I think we all “fake it” on a fairly regular basis.  Not only that, but we’re taught do so from an early age.  Just think of when a parent “encourages” their child to apologize to their sibling or play mate.  Do we really think that the apologizing child feels sorry for what they’ve done?  Most of the time they don’t, but they are being taught how to get along, and perform socially acceptable acts that help make up the civilized portion of our society.  Most people would agree that this sort of “faking it” is a good thing in that it reduces tension in groups, and helps them function more smoothly.

There are other kinds of faking it of course.  John Edwards (the american politician) faked it at the end of the US presidencial campaign, pretending that things were going well in his life and marriage, until it came out that the woman he was having an affair with was close to giving birth to their child. I think that is the kind of faking it that most people cringe at.

Faking it goes on in religion as well.  One example of this is in the Mormon religion I was raised in. As a teenager I was taught that if I told others that I “knew” certain religious “truths” were true, even when I didn’t actually know they were true or false, that I would come to know for myself that they were true. This could be described as the “fake it until you make it” method of learning.  While this may be a useful tool for learning to do certain tasks, I don’t believe that it is effective in determining truth.

So the next time my wife asks me how I like the new dress she bought, should I “fake it” or be completely honest no matter what the consequences?

We should be concerned about how Facebook is handling information that we assumed would be private when we signed up.  The problem isn’t so much that some of the information we put on Facebook is available to the public, it is that Facebook has repeatedly changed the default rules on what it makes public.  When I signed up on Facebook 2 or 3 years ago, virtually all the information I posted there was private by default.  That was one of the big selling points of the site: Connect with friends and share information in a private fourm.

If I signed up today, virtually all the information I post would be public by default.  Not only that, but if I clicked “OK” on the different “information dialog boxes” that appeared over the past year telling me how the Facebook’s default privacy setting were changing, virtually all my information would be public now as well.  That is very concerning.

To find out what you’re exposing to the public internet, go to: http://www.reclaimprivacy.org/

Skype makes my life easier once again, and does it for free!  Most people know that it is a great tool for making free voice and video call from computer to computer, and that it allow people to make very inexpensive calls to land lines and cell phone around the world.  What most people don’t know, and what I didn’t know until recently, is that Skype will also allow you to share the desktop of your computer with other people.  So why is this so great?  Let me explain.

As someone who ends up helping co-workers, family and friends with computer problems, there are few things more frustrating than trying to talk someone through a series of clicks and windows on a computer that you cannot see.   Not only that, but I am also typically relying on rather sketchy description of a problem that more often than not is hazy at best.  That is where Skype comes in.  The person I am helping shares their desktop with me, and I can see what they are doing that triggers the problem.  At that point I can tell the person exactly what to do to fix the problem, and then correct them if they make any mistakes.  A win-win and time saver for everyone.

Here are some other potential uses for Skype Screen Sharing:

• Demonstrating Software.
• Collaborative Editing of Documents (especially if you insist on using Microsoft Word instead of Google Docs).
• Desktop computer support (as we already discussed).

Enjoy!

At the time of my diagnosis I was inundated with suggestions from friends about different supplements that I should try that would hopefully help my condition.  I’m happy to say that I’m still here to write this blog post!  I’m also here to tell you that I didn’t follow any of the suggestions.  It would have taken me a year or more to throughly research the dozens of “suggestions” I received (some of them plausible, and some outright crazy sounding – “wheat grass cures most cancers”?).  A visualization of supplements with an indication of the quality of the science backing up their claims, would have been an invaluable tool in helping to quickly sort out quackery from the truly helpful.

I am even more skeptical now than I was back then, so I would not accept this as the final word on any of the supplements they list, but would use it as a good starting point for doing some research if a particular supplement looked helpful.  One thing I really like is that they included a link to the underlying data was used to generate the visualization, including links to the studies they relied on, so you can do your own analysis if you wish.

Have fun researching!

In addition to the technology questions we’ve been asking UVic law students over the past seven years, we decided to ask some extra questions about the increasing important mobile technology that students are arriving at Law School equipped with.  One major change to the methodology of this survey compared to past years is that we sent the survey to all students at the law school, not just first year students.  The response rate was 25% this year rather than close to 100% in previous years.

[Note: if you have problems seeing any graphs on this page, please look at the underlying Google Doc's page for this blog post]

Executive Summary:

• 30% of students own “Smart Phones” that can browse the internet.
• 97% of students own laptops, and over 60% own both a laptop and a desktop computer.
• 39% of student laptops are Mac’s.
• The average laptop price dropped to $1,200 from $1400 in 2007, and from $2,100 in 2004.
• All students now report having high speed internet in their homes.
• 82% of students bring their laptops to school almost every day.
• 86% of students own MP3 players capable of listening to recorded lectures.
• 54% of students use Gmail as their primary email account, 18% use UVic email and 15% Hotmail.
• 58% of students identified MS Word as their favorite tool for collaborative document editing.  27% chose Google Docs, 5% OpenOffice Writer & 10% “Other”.
• 100% of students now have access to high speed internet at their homes.
• 86% of students use Facebook and 65% of those students would like to see law school events and activities published on Facebook as well as through the online faculty calendar of events.

Smart Phone / Cell Phone Ownership

4. I do not own a cell phone  - 11%
3. Regular cell phone  -  59%
2. Smart phone - iPhone –  9%
1. Smart phone - Blackberry –  16%
0. Smart phone – Other  -  5%

30% of students own “Smart Phones” or phones with built in web browsers that allow them to surf the internet on their cell phones.

From the library’s perspective this will be an important area to watch, as there are a number of interesting new technologies (like QR Codes) that could potentially enhance the library’s services that depend on library patrons having access to the internet on their cell phones.

On the other end of the spectrum, surprisingly 11% of students do not own a cell phone at all.  Given how ubiquitous cell phones are becoming, I suspect that this number will drop over time. The high cost of cell phone plans in Canada relative to other countries probably contributes to the number of students with out cell phones.

Laptop Ownership

For the first time, all respondents to the survey report having either a laptop, a desktop computer, or both.

Laptop ownership has plateaued at 97% after years of steady increases. Currently 39% of all laptops are Mac’s, 3% are Linux, and the remaining 58% are running Windows.

The average price paid for student laptops has dropped again to just over $1,200 this year from $1400 in 2007, and $2,100 in 2004.

Desktop computer ownership has been increasing over the past two surveys, with over 60% of students owning both a laptop and a desktop computer.  All students now have access to high speed internet in their homes.

How often do students bring their laptops to school

Almost every day  -  82%
More than once a week  -  10%
Occasionally  -  8%
Never  -  0%

One only has to look in Law Faculty class in session to realize that at least 82% of students bring their laptops to school almost every day.  Does this open up pedagogical opportunities, or is it just a thorn in the side of faculty members?

MP3 Player Ownership

4. No  -  14%
3. iPod (audio only)  -  61%
2. iPod Touch  -  21%
1. iPhone  -  8%
0. Other  -  10%

86% of students own an MP3 Player of some kind.  Of those students, 88% own Apple products. For any instructors wishing to do podcasts of their lectures, there is no need to hold back any longer as the 14% of students with out PM3 players can review class lecture podcasts on their laptops.  Campus Systems is considering setting up a UVic iTunes site (like other universites have done) which would make distributing the mp3′s of class lectures very simple to do.

Primary Email Account

7. UVic  -  18%
6. Previous University  -  3%
5. Hotmail  -  15%
4. Gmail  -  54%
3. Yahoo  -  4%
2. Shaw  -  6%
1. Telus  -  0%
0. Other  -  1%

Currently only 18% of students use their UVic email account as their primary email account.  The rest – 82% – forward their UVic email to a 3rd party email provider.  52% use Gmail as their primary account, and 15% use Hotmail.

Favorite Collaborative Document Editing Software

Microsoft Word  -  58%
WordPerfect  -  0%
OpenOffice Writer  -  5%
Google Docs  -  27%
Other  -  10%

Microsoft Word is currently the most popular tools for collaborative document editing at 58%.  Interestingly, Google Docs is preferred by 27% of students. The strong showing of Google Docs is probably due to it’s real time collaboration features that allow multiple authors to work on a document at the same time with built in version control.

High Speed Internet

This is probably the last year that we will mention this question in the survey summary, because after coming close to 100% in previous years, this year, 100% of students responded that they now have access to high speed internet at their homes.

Facekook Usage

Currently 86% of students use Facebook. This is up marginally from 79% two years ago.  Of the Facebook users, 69% connected with other incoming students via Facebook, and another 3% did not, but would have liked to.

65% of Facebook users would like to see Law School events and activities published on Facebook as well as in the online Faculty calendar.

Some students voiced strong reservations about mixing their “business” and “personal” lives on Facebook.  It was also mentioned that many Law School and LSS events are already on Facebook via “organic” groups.  What might be interesting to pursue is to ask the LSS to post all Law Faculty events on their group, so that those who use Facebook can have the option of subscribing to a complete list of Law Faculty and LSS events with out Law Faculty or Staff being involved on Facebook. This would address the primary privacy concern of students.  We would also continue to provide our in house Calendar for those who do not use Facebook, or who do not want to use Facebook in this manner.

Student Comments:

• Beyond the issue of direct interactions with staff and professors, I have concerns about the encroachment of other law school activities into the Facebook world. How long will it be until law firms begin using the law school networks to interact with students? This would raise serious issues of personal information being revealed to a prospective employer which, by law, may not be released to them (marital status, sexual orientation, age, religion and other personal attributes are often easily ascertained when viewing a person’s profile).
• Many of the law school events are already published to facebook – i.e. LSS events, guest speakers brought in by clubs, etc. However, it would be helpful to have all events on Facebook, for example the LCO events.
• There is already a great deal of law school activity on facebook. I’m not sure if it would be worth it for the faculty to consider implimenting facebook into social networking as there is already a very organic and active network there. almost every student or club-organized.  event is already on facebook.  Don’t get too excited about it.
• Ban it from classrooms. just one thing i notice missing from the survey: lots of students have a powerful laptop that they keep at home for the most part, except maybe for exam writing at school. then they also have a netbook which they keep at school for note taking, web, email etc. this is a growing trend I think.
• Personally, I don’t like to receive multiple notifications of the same event via different media. Since everybody doesn’t have facebook, it probably wouldn’t make sense to use it as the primary communciation tool. However, having a calendar or other pages available to access as desired could potentially be helpful.
• Very invasive.
• Facebook is a social tool, not a professional one. For many people, embarrassing and awkward situations have arisen due to forgetting this distinction. I intentionally segregate my personal Facebook from my professional activities and formal acquaintances.
• For better or for worse, the Faculty of Law at UVic is a formal, professional acquaintance for students in the program.
• Let the Business students across Ring Road “network” and self-promote. As future lawyers, we have an obligation to professional and respectful dealings with each other. Please help maintain and perpetuate this atmosphere rather than moving law school activities onto Facebook and contributing to a downward slide into informality and familiarity.
  This is the second time the law school has asked this about facebook.
• I know you guys are old but please… use your head. Facebook = social tool. Law school = career tool. NEVER THE TWAIN SHALL MEET.
• Would the law school phone me at home to invite me to a social event? No. If they did I would be annoyed. Similarly, I don’t want Facebook invites from the law school inviting me to social events.
• I already get MEGA SPAMMED by the law school by email. This is irritating. I do not want Facebook spam too. If nobody comes to the events it’s not because nobody knows about them, it’s probably because they are boring.
• Sorry, but someone’s gotta say it.  Facebook is a social tool and is not professional enough to be used as a tool for official university messages. I have considered deleting my Facebook account because of concerns about future employers looking at personal social information out of context. There may be other social networking tools that the school could appropriately use, but I strongly believe that Facebook is not one of them.
  Facebook should not be used in relation to law school, especially in publishing law school events.
• set up a facebook block in the classrooms so students cannot access f/b during classes.
  I would like to see events made available via a general RSS feed. I would like those events to include student events.
• I dislike Facebook but joined because I found it was a necessary tool for staying in contact with other law students re study groups, etc.
• I hesitate to encourage widespread Facebook use. Many career-related CBA speakers have told us that in fact social networking can be detrimental to both privacy and career. It is also–from what I can see around me in class every day–a huge time-waster and almost an addiction.
• The more things that are put on facebook, the more it becomes close to compulsory in use, even to those of us who are consciously eschewing its use for good reasons.
• Facebook can be alienating for certain demographics. Using it is kinda like mandating gym class or sororities: i.e. it’s great for athletes and rich kids; less so for others.
• Facebook is a massive waste of time. It is also a huge distraction in class where classmates are constantly “facebooking” in front/beside us.
• Rarely use it, and not for organizing my schedule.
• I would prefer not to have law school events on facebook, but it just seems to be the only forum that connects most law students in a way that is efficient for informing students and promoting events for clubs. I sincerely hope that the faculty and administration doesn’t start using facebook…

Drop Box synchronizes files between computers across the room or across the internet.  The service is free if you have 2GB of data or less.  For $10 a month you get 50GB of data storage.  I’ve used DropBox for several months now, and have to say that it works great.  It makes it much easier for me to quickly share documents between my Laptop (mac), my Work Computer (windows), and my Home Computer (mac).

Not only does it facilitate file sharing, but it also serves as an excellent backup system. While more expensive than Mozy’s $5 a month backup service, you do get a lot of extra functionality that Mozy does not give you.  DropBox works great on Mac, Windows and Linux computers, which means that it can be used on virtually any computer you own or can currently buy, including one of those cute little Net Books.

Another feature that some might find useful, is the ability to share sub folders with other people for collaboration purposes. As files are modified, previous version are kept so that if necessary you can revert back to a previous version of the document.  Files that are accidentally deleted can also be recovered, unless you manually purge deleted files.

I highly recommend DropBox for people who use multiple computers and need to share files between them.  Good luck!

Just in case you’re not familiar with Zotero or Endnote, here a description that I lifted from the Zotero website that describes both products: “Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a software tool to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources.”   It is also very helpful in building bibliographies, because when your cite books via online journals, or your library’s website, Zotero captures all the bibliographic data available on the page.  Zotero started out as a Firefox plugin, but is now developing a web interfaces that can be used by the iPhone web browser.   At this point the Zotero Web interface is view only, and is not specially formatted for small form factor devices, but on the iPhone at least you can go in and browser your library of citations.

Access Citation information away from your computer: You are talking to a colleague at a conference, and while your discussing the importance of Vannevar Bush’s concept of the “Memex” machine, you remember a book that you recently cited in a paper you wrote. You pull out your iPhone, click on your short cut to your Zotero library on line, and quickly browse to the citation.

A very nice feature in the latest beta version of Zotero is the ability to sync your database of citations to a Zotero server, so that you can access all your citation information on any computer with a Firefox web browser.  For people who move between computers regularly (like between a desktop and laptop computer for example), this feature in invaluable. Hopefully Zotero will offer more a more smart phone accessible in the near future.

Before this week I suggested that students working on group projects, use Google documents for collaborating on creating and editing, and then once the majority of the collaboration work was done, export the document to Word or OpenOffice and add footnotes there.  Now the footnoting can be done as the document is created.  Google Docs is capable of editing a University level paper, end to end.  For groups especially I will be recommending Google Docs at the editing tool of choice.

Here is a list of other features that have recently been added to Google Docs.

Hairy Cell Leukemia (HCL) is very treatable, but because so few people contract it, individual doctors and oncologists don’t see it often or at all during the course of their careers. I have a wonderful medical team behind me, but I suspect that I am only one of two people that they have treated with this disease. They are busy people with limited time during the day for research into my disease of interest.

The internet allows me to connect with communities of people who are also fighting the disease, and with other medical professionals who specialize in it’s treatment. For HCL in particular I’ve found a great online bulletin board, called Rob’s User Friendly HCL Site and Chat Room. The support there is wonderful. When my blood test numbers recently starting trending downwards, I of course consulted with my doctor, but I also shared with the HCL board. I received support from the board, and also some advice from a Doctor who is a regular on the board (a GP who is himself is a HCL survivor). I also received private messaged pointing me to journal articles that related to what I’m going through at this point in time. I now have two or three thing to consult with my doctor about, including an article from the Journal of Clinical Oncology that talks about different chemotherapy strategies that have been tried over the years with HCL.

Without the internet, and the communities that it enables, I would know much less about the disease I’m battling, and would be not nearly as well equipped to discuss different treatment options with my doctor. So after not visiting Rob’s User Friendly HCL board for a couple of years now (since my last round of chemotherapy), it looks like I’ll become more of a regular now that my old friend is back with me. By the end of next week when my bone marrow biopsy results are back I’ll have a better idea of what treatments, if any, I have to look forward to.

For now I’m feeling great. This past week, I’ve played soccer twice, gone mountain biking with my sons, and played a little touch rugby. Life is good. I have much to be grateful for. I better get going though, my ride to the hospital for my bone marrow biopsy at 10:30am is about to leave.

• The opening plenary session was by Paul Maharg, who talked about the importance of learning by doing. In particular he spoke about how students typically learn best through performance of authentic transactions involving doing what they are supposed to be learning, and then reflection on what they’ve done. Much like the “case” method that the UVic Business School has used for many years (since I was there in fact). Here are his slides.
• The rest of the day I spent at a Drupal seminar … very good law school community building up around Drupal for law school and law library websites, with custom modules being created, and good person to person support in the community (IRC.Freenode.net #Tecknoids). Build new Law Centre and Law Library websites using the Drupal framework.
• Hiring a Contractor for your Website CMS Implementation – Boone, Nann, Yale Law School.
  • Lesson 1: Choose your CMS first, don’t let your contractor sell you on “their CMS”
  • Lesson 2: Choose your contractor second.
  • Lesson 3: Make the contractor Accountable for Delays (include penalties for the missing of milestones in the development process).
  • Lesson 4: Require Detailed Documentation for end users.
  • Lesson 5: Be an active participant – find out how things work, and let them know how you work.
• Fun with Digital Signage – Dewald, University of Utah School of Law. THIS IS WHAT WE SHOULD USE IN THE LAW LIBRARY AND LAW SCHOOL. Uses for digital signs: General Info, Events, maps, traffic, news (rss feeds, videos), room schedules, emergency info. Some things to consider before making the plunge:
  • Why are we using them? Do we have a clear purpose?
  • What content are we going to display? Who’s going to be in charge?
  • Have you identified strategic display locations? (lobby, near 158/159, library entrance??).
  • DAN – display & alert network. All you need is an internet connected old computer.
    • Cost $69USD per month, per display site (e.g. 5 displays displaying the same thing is $69 per month).
    • Completely web based utility to update and manage the displays.
    • Can develop a web application to display on the web page.
    • Can make templates for different resolution Monitors… Could use What ever sized monitor do you need.
    • Broadcast Converter over CAT5 w/ a VGA converter… or hook up to a PC in the cealing.
    • Reporting software built in so you can tell if a monitor is down.
    • http://www.akaditech.com/
  • This looks like this is the way to go… much less expensive than other systems I’ve seen.
  • Drawbacks, need to have a computer hooked up to every screen.
  • Have a 30 day trial for testing purposes.dewalda@law.utah.edu for a demo.
  • This solution is much, much less expensive than other solutions, but literally thousands of dollars. Their monthly cost, is less than the support costs of other systems.
• Social networking for Law Schools – Ginsberg
  • We Need to teach students how to present themselves professionally on social networks.
  • Facebook – libraries and law schools can join… have a special application form. Resist the urge to install a ton of apps on your page. 22% of law libraries have facebook pages (at least of those in attendace at the session. Some times public communications officers will maintain the facebook presence. Networks on Facebook are going away… being replaced by Groups… drag stuff in via RSS feeds (photos, events, podcasts).
  • Privacy concerns on all all social networks. Where is the boundry between personal & professional. some people have 2 accounts… one for professional and one for personal.
  • Who are you talking to? What is important to them? Who will administer the site? How much time and money are reasonable? What features re available? Exit plan if you want to get out, or the site is not kept up to date?
  • Social Network are potentally a place for people to complain about the law school – need to have someone “living” there to check on things and counter any unwarranted negative information.
• RSS & Widgets How to put your law school on My Yahoo, iGoogle, Facebook and My Space – Len Davidson, Catholic University Law School. It would be interesting to experment with this at the Law Library. Sounds very easy to do a test using something like widgetbox.com. Maybe to a Mac widget first, as it sounds like Mac users, use widgets more than other users. We should at least create a “Chat with librarian” widget for google chat.

It may be a case of more style over substance, but for people switching from Microsoft Office to Google Docs, the change to the editing tool bar will help smooth the transition. No major new features have been added in the update (at least none that I’ve noticed), but the new tool bar does feel more comfortable, and brings the task of editing text in Google Documents closer to what I’m used to when editing blog posts, and posting on modern bulletin boards.

This follows an update last week that allows you to crate a form to fill out to enter data into a spread sheet rather than entering it in field by field. Google has a long way to go to match the feature set that Microsoft Office offers, but they are slowly adding the features that most people use. It won’t belong before average people will be able to move to Google Docs and not miss much of anything… and gain collaboration features that you don’t get with Office, unless you have an enterprise IT department behind you.

All users need to do is go to the Google Apps “Team Edition” page, and sign up with their corporate email address. A confirmation email is then sent back to the person’s email address and then they are on the system. Once registered you can see who else from the organization has signed up, and you can begin collaborating right away (apparently I am the first UVic.ca individual to sign up). It looks like Google is hoping that pressure from users will encourage organizations to adopt Google Apps officially, and from Google’s perspective, hopefully adopt the premium paid version.

This Google screen cast gives a few more details.

• Collaborative Document Editing, including concurrent editing of a single document, and basic version control
• Capturing, organizing and searching digital documents. And doing this collaboratively with other research partners.
• Easily track the progress and changes to documents of your collaborators via RSS feeds in an online reader.
• Publish quickly and easily via blog software that is integrated with their document editing / collaboration infrastructure.

Where to Start?

All you need to give it a try, is to get a Google account (if you don’t already have one). If you have a Gmail account, then you have all you need to try it out. If you don’t have a Gmail account, then you can go to the following page to sign up for a free account (and you can use your current e-mail address as your account name if you wish). Go to the google home page and click on the "Sign in" link on the top right of the page. From there, click on the "Create an account now" link on the right side of the page. After signing up you’re now ready to go.

Reviewing the Tools

• Create Documents (show them the Google for Students document)
• Collaborative Editing. 45 seconds to 1 minute for changes made by someone else to be reflected in the document (or when you navigate to "insert" for example.
• Revisions & Basic Version Control.
• RSS feed to revisions (under "Collaborate" tab. Must be Published to the public to be viewable)
• Currently no footnotes. End notes are done manually by creating the end note first, inserting a bookmark, and then linking to the bookmark from the reference.
• Can put in links to other web resources.
• Can ad comments to the document that are only viewable in the edit mode.
• Can post directly to your BLOG if you’d like.
• Can tag documents (rather than put into sub-folders – much better way of organizing).

• Great general news reader that you can access from anywhere…
• Wonderful in that it allows you to monitor changes made to the document you are collaborating on.

• Allows you to grab Internet text, and keep citation information, to organize your research.
• Can share notebooks with others so you can collaborate on the research you’re doing! (see KM & Collaboration as an example).
• Browser extension makes it very nice to use (both IE and FireFox).
• No current ability to have RSS feeds for Notebooks… Lots of people asking for it though.
• No current tagging functionality. Lots of people asking for this though.

• Some overlap with Google Notebook.
• Notable differences are: Has RSS feeds for tags. Just keeps link, does not grab and store text on server (i.e. if link dies, you info is lost).

• Allows you to chat and "Talk" (if you’re on a windows machine).
• No real extra functionality beyond what others offer.

• Very nice to use… Chat capability built in.
• Automatically groups and threads your e-mail.
• Spam filter is excellent.

• Everything can be accessed via the blog & or RSS feeds.
• Free, and easy to use.

Conclusions

While not full featured, the Google tool set is powerful becuase of its easy to use on-line interface. All you need is a web browser and an internet connection

The increasing volume of digital information with which researchers’ work is making the task of finding, capturing, organizing and eventually collaborating with digital data more difficult.  Electronic information in multiple formats sitting in multiple silos of data present a challenge to researchers who have difficulty finding a specific piece of information in a timely fashion.

The two major benefits that come from effective knowledge management and knowledge sharing are an increase in the speed and quality of the research being performed. Less time is spent looking for information that has already been identified or created, so that more time can be spent in analyzing and associating disparate pieces of information. Modern electronic tools make possible collaboration between colleagues that in the past would have been difficult, expensive, or impossible.  Voice and video conferencing over high speed research networks can facilitate real time collaboration at a fraction of the cost in time and money of flying members of a research team to a central location. On line collaboration tools can greatly facilitate group document creation and editing, and when it comes time to polish the final product, real time document editing makes it possible for groups scattered around the world to review a document together and make edits together.

Once researchers have the appropriate software to manage their data and help them collaborate, they need to make sure that they also have the appropriate hardware and infrastructure to take full advantage of the benefits the new software will give them. Access to high speed research networks is a must for video and voice conferencing, as well as real time document editing. An average desktop computer with two monitors, instead of the traditional single monitor, will give researchers a 10% + boost in productivity. Finally a web camera and good quality head phone/microphone rounds out a well equipped research workstation.

Whether they realize it or not, most researchers are struggling with the mountains of digital data that they have accumulated during their careers. If shown the tools available to them to find, capture and collaborate,  many, if not most, will start to use some of these knowledge management tools to increase their productivity and effectively manage and collaborate with their data.