The Freedom of Lockdown

Lastpass promises to be "the last password you need to remember".

I joined a few years ago but it was only a few weeks ago that I started to use it seriously.
And it's only since then that I've reaped the rewards...

• yes - far fewer passwords to remember....  and also
• improved passwords - all now random (and different for every account)
• faster logins - saving me a great deal of time logging in
• increased security with two-factor authentication
• simplicity with multiple identities for my different roles
• easy access across multiple mobile devices

While this may sound like an advert for Lastpass it really just advertises my naivety in having so many 'clever' passwords that I couldn't really manage. I got a 'Very Poor' security rating across some important services and gateways.

As our organisation moves to make informed use of a wide range of externally provided online services it's important to remember basic security principles to protect identity and information.

Feeding a Tablet

Presenting Department news, photos, videos as a dynamic glossy online magazine turned out to be easy.

This has been one of the advantages of integrating the new DoE website with selected social media channels that can be displayed through free apps such as Flipboard on tablet computers.

For this to work the end user with a tablet computer needs either the URLs of these channels or to have subscribed to (or 'liked') them. We currently use the following services:

• Blogger for:
• Ministerial Media Releases
• Department of Education Media Releases
• Department of Education News
• YouTube for:
• Department of Education videos
• Partner or student videos
• FlickR for:
• Department of Education photos
• Project photos
• Twitter for
• News feeds

They look great on Flipboard as an interactive one-stop-shop e-zine.

Facing Up to New Possibilities

The Tasmanian Department of Education has created a Facebook page.

Why?

Marketing Services have been approached by a number of staff over the last few months asking about using Facebook for community projects, collaboration with partners, schools and classrooms. In many cases good news stories and useful resources were being shared in vibrant online Facebook communities without any formal involvement of DoE staff.

Marketing and Communication Services were missing out on opportunities to promote great stories of engaged learning, active citizenship and global connections. So a Facebook Page has been set up that will link to ('like') existing Facebook pages related to learning and hopefully build an audience to share these stories both online and through traditional media.

We believe the creation of a DoE Facebook page will also

• Provide a strategic DoE presence and official voice in Facebook
• Model and promote good use of social media
• Facilitate the sourcing of good news stories from school communities
• Engage students and parents with their school communities
• Connect the DoE with its numerous partners and supporters who use Facebook
• Make the DoE visible to schools, colleges and business units with Facebook pages
• Build organisational capacity in the effective use of social media to achieve desired goals
• Encourage schools to engage with social media according to DoE policy and guidelines
• Promote participation through online polls and advertising events
• Provide opportunities to promote staff expertise

Our planning and implementation has been informed by a number of pilot projects in the use of social media in education and other government agencies as well as the work done in other states. eg the NSW Education & Training Social Media Guidelines. Initially posts will be hidden by default and only published after moderation using response processes such as those in this EDINA flowchart. We hope this delay will not frustrate frequent users of social media who expect reasonably quick responses. Comments will be monitored and hidden if deemed inappropriate. 

Through an Online Safety link we have provided users with easy access to quality national information and support on the use of online media and online spaces. 

Internet-Intranet Project Updates

We are now about 6 weeks away from launching the new Internet. The staff Intranet will go live at the end of the year. I've narrated some presentation slides that were used in project updates this week.

The first video (4 mins) summarises the history and thinking behind the project while the second (2mins) introduces some new features being developed such as eForms and a live sync of documents to a tablet computer.

Policy Delivered on Tablets

The rapid uptake and use of tablet computers, particularly the iPad, across schools and in the wider community has prompted an investigation into how they might be used with the new Internet. Initial testing has indicated that Internet browser access on the iPad should work well. But tablet (iPad/iOS and Android) computers offer other interesting possibilities.

New documents being access through the Bookshelves App.

Reading for the Vision Impaired: On the iPad any PDF link in a browser can be opened in the iBooks App. The advantage of this is that the iPad's VoiceOver accessibility option will read the document very clearly.

Live Sync with DropBox: The Bookshelves App will synchronise with a number of online services including DropBox. When new or updated documents are placed in the linked DropBox folder they will automatically appear in the Bookshelves App when the iPad next goes online through wireless or 3G.

PDF Reader Functionality: A number of PDF reader apps are available that provide a number of functions in addition to those available in iBooks or Bookshelves. For example the Adobe Reader App allows:

• document annotation
• completion of eForms
• navigation through PDF bookmarks
• electronic ink signature

There are some exciting opportunities here that warrant further exploration.

In Good Form

One of the document types being considered are forms. Both staff and the public now have an expectation of being able to complete a from online or print it. Current forms vary in quality and functionality so I've been learning how to design eforms.

An eForm being completed on an iPad

I've discovered that Adobe Acrobat Pro X has a form wizard - and it's magic! It will

• create a form from an existing Word document
• fields can be customised
• simple calculations can be automated
• a signature can be added

The resultant form can be completed on an iPad (or other tablet) using the Adobe Reader app - and then submitted via email or printed.

I've also discovered that several form management options are available in Acrobat Pro X and at Adobe Form Central. Something to consider in strategic planning down the track.

A recent delay of a few weeks in the launch of the new DoE Internet caused by the need to upgrade server performance to meet anticipated user demand will allow some additional time for this to be further investigated.

In the meantime a 'light' eform solution that provides forms that can be completed fully or partly online looks like a possible option.

What's in a Name?

Spaces? Dashes? Underscores? Caps? Who would have-thought-that-naming_a_document_would%20be%20SuchAnIssue.pdf?

The DoE already has a document naming convention but it wasn't designed for today's systems or devices. Over the years document names have lengthened in order to be more meaningful and also to distinguish them from other similar documents. Our current content management system is not accessible through the Internet and so it allows spaces. The new Document Centre for the new Internet website will show document names in a URL and spaces will be replaced by %20 which is messy.

It's common to replace the spaces with a dash (hyphen) or an underscore - although opinions are mixed as to which is the better option.

SharePoint 2010 allows for each document to have a title which can be displayed in web parts making them easy to read. SharePoint also has provision for customisable document IDs which means

• the URL has no spaces
• a document can be searched for using its ID
• the ID doesn't change if the document name, version, title or location changes
• the ID can appear on printed documents making it easier to check for updates online

This might be a neat solution allowing us to use spaces in the document name.

The advantage of this is that when documents (which are mostly PDFs) are viewed in Explorer or on tablet computers their names look nice. Most applications handle spaces in file names very well.

So... do we need to convert spaces to dashes or underscores? Perhaps it depends on how often the end-user sees the URL.

SharePoint Document IDs are worth a closer look.

Document IDs could be included in the footer

They could be included in the document footer making it easy to locate the online version. Although the IDs are 11 characters some test searching showed that documents can often be located by searching for just the last 3 or 4 characters.