Why did the Wave crash in Academia?

I didn’t realize that Google Wave was being pushed so heavily in academia.  I found unenlightening this article explaining why the Wave didn’t work out in Universities.  I’m linking to it for the interesting list of folks pushing the Wave, including EduCause.  The explanation for why the Wave crashed?  Took too long to learn, and was too much of a game-changer.  I think we’ve heard those same two explanations for most technologies that don’t take hold in academia.  Guess it’s more interesting (and novel) to explain why some technology works in academia.

The expectations for Wave were as high in academe as anywhere else when it debuted in May 2009. Some higher ed bloggers suggested that professors might use Wave as a foundation for “whole interactive courses.” Citing chatter from enthusiastic early adopters, the education blog ReadWriteWeb suggested that collaborative note-taking on Wave “will lead to smarter, better performing students.” Some even mused that Wave could challenge learning-management systems — if not their information-management features, then perhaps their online classrooms. “Because Wave includes so many modes of communication and inter-operates with other applications, it could significantly enhance the way students collaborate and communicate,” read a primer from Educause, the higher-ed technology group.

via News: Washed Up – Inside Higher Ed.

Off to Denmark and ICER!

I head off Saturday afternoon to ACM SIGCSE’s International Computing Education Research (ICER) Workshop, which starts Monday in Aarhus, Denmark.  The SIGCSE Doctoral Consortium and some preconference workshops are on Sunday. I’m going to be presenting a paper by Brian Dorn (and a little bit me — percentages don’t show up in the byline) on what graphics designers look for in CS Education and why they avoid CS classes.  It’s just part of his dissertation…which he’ll be defending two weeks from yesterday!  (Allison Tew defends two weeks from today!)

I’ll be attending ICER for only the first day, and in Denmark for only 40-some hours.  The timing was a bit of a train wreck.  Barb is going to an AP CS Development Team meeting Sunday through Wednesday, and then attending the Scratch conference.  This is the first week of school for our kids.  And Brian just started his new job at the University of Hartford.  We really wanted the paper presented — this year, ICER has its lowest acceptance rate yet (~30%), which raises the prestige level (which is good for Brian’s just-starting tenure case).  So, I fly out Saturday, arrive Sunday, present Monday, and return by Tuesday afternoon.  I’ll only miss filling out the first day of extra forms and buying more school supplies.

While I’m relating personal stories, I finally got rid of my Blackberry yesterday, the plans I mentioned in an earlier post.  I turned off my Exchange access right away, but Verizon wouldn’t let me turn off all 3G service while I used the Blackberry.  Finally yesterday, we hauled the family to the Verizon store to get new phones.  I got the cheapest phone I could get with a slide-out keyboard: a Samsung, with no email access without an additional fee.  Now I’ve really launched my experiment to do only on the iPad what I used to do on the Blackberry. No more email on my cellphone.  This’ll be different!

Bottomline to all of this: I don’t expect to blog much Saturday to Tuesday (and Wednesday, depending on how bad the jet lag).