I'm in love with the browser. By Daniel Rezac
Jun
21
Written by:
6/21/2010 3:45 PM
The
browser is such a beautiful thing.
I'm struck by how
much of a browser fanatic I am. Links, productivity, files- everything
is just so much easier to find just by typing into that wonderful little
address/search bar. Why can't everything just live in there? Can it
store my car keys? Well, the darned thing can remotely turn on my
Squeezebox Internet Radio from anywhere in the country, so it probably
can.
So, today, it occurred to me that Google may yet
solve all of the world's problems. Okay, maybe not all of them, but
maybe just this one- the one most technology directors and facilitators
struggle with every year- user logins.
Last week, a
colleague of mine was laboring with having all of these different user
names and passwords for all of the different Web services like Edmodo,
Wikispaces, Google Docs, Glogster- the list goes on for like 8 more
tools. He wanted a tool that could merge them all into one login key. I've heard folks use
Moodle, but this doesn't solve a problem like Edmodo, which doesn't
allow you to have your own unique URL, among some other ed sites.
After
using Ubuntu for the past few weeks on my netbook, I checked out an
education version of Ubuntu via Jim Klein, and it was
very clear that the problem with all of these login problems I and other
tech admins have had over the years isn''t truly with the Web-
it is with the operating systems that we use at our schools. Mac, PC,
even Linux- there's no perfect solution for multiple logins. Log into
the OS, then some of the services, then the rest, depending on the
teacher- it's never truly prefect. This is partly why I went toward
Google Apps for Education- many good services- under one secure login
(SSL- but that's another story). Like the local food movement, every
local school has a unique appetite for technology- different OS needs and different students. The OS and the
district should tailor itself to those specific needs. It should grow
its own OS based on the technology appetite at its own district.
I've
heard of folks using Moodle as a front door, which is fine- that's open
source as well, but my guess is that soon, many of these problems are
going to be solved by a new product that uses the Web as the OS.
And I'm talking about Google Chrome OS. And with Google cozying up
with OAuth, I think that we are starting to see the light at the end
of the security tunnel. I'd be interested is seeing how that could be
integrated into an Education Version of Google Chrome OS, let's call it Google
Chrome OS for Education Remix.
Logging into Apps for Ed? Solved! Logging into Voicethread?
Done! Wikispaces or Glogster? Done and done! One click!
Ubuntu
is a great solution right now, and I would recommend any district save
itself $50,000 and dump all those extra software licenses and, you know, hire a
teacher.
This post was cross-posted at http://drezac.com