Tom Franklin - Ed Tech

2011-09-15T07:47:00.004+01:00

Interesting post at Inside Higher Ed entitled "What I Believe - And Why Apple Make Me Wrong" which argues that much of what Apple does goes against current management thinking and concludes "I would never want to run a company (or a university) the way Apple has been run. Apple's management culture, at least from the outside, goes totally against my (academic) values. Yet, it is hard to argue with the results."

Will anyone come to your course?

2011-08-24T17:06:00.002+01:00

Playing about on the UCAS web site I was looking at the links from pages to the course details that are contained for each course at each university. Some of these work very well, but some of them are extremely off-putting and could reduce the number of students choosing that course. After all, why struggle to find the details for a particular course when you could just look at the course at another university. Note that I am not making any comment on the information that is provided if and when you get there, but it is hugely variable in quantity and quality.

Anyhow, here are just some of the problems that I found. I will not name the universities as I am sure that there are others that are equally bad as I only looked at a small sample from a small number of universities. NB in some cases I have emailed the university to let them know.

404: The link is to a page that does not exist. In some cases this is because the web site has been restructured and so the page does exist, but in another directory. Quick solutions would include correcting the URLs and re-sending to UCAS, restructuring the web site to match the URLs in the UCAS website or using redirects
link to a log in page. Yup at least two universities the course details take you to a log in page without any way of registering, and in once case not even a link to the University's home page. As the link id looks as though it is specific to the course it looks like the security settings are wrong.
Generic link either to the university home page or to the prospectus or a course search page. This is just lazy. The link should be direct to the information on that course. Typically it takes around 5 links to find the information from there, so you could lose an awful lot of people who decide it is easier to look elsewhere
Failure to provide any information. Yup, some universities don't even bother to provide any information on course details at all, or any way of finding them. the prospective student would have to choose to go to the web site from a generic information page about the university and then find the course.
Null information. Whether internally on the UCAS site or linking to the university site there is no point in linking to a page with no information. One university there are a set of links under the heading "studying x at Y university" with sub-headings like year 1, year 2 etc. Click on any of them and you get to a page with a set of matching headings and no information there at all.
Links to pdf versions of prospectus. not very friendly really.
Out of date information. on one site it said: [course] (4 years) - 2009 Entry. This is for the 2012 entry (and the link to the page says that too). Doesn't look very professional does it?

So, I suggest that every admissions office (or marketing department) check their UCAS entries and what they link to. I would also suggest that you look at what other universities have done as there are few that could not be easily improved.

Worlds smallest computer?

2011-05-06T15:02:00.004+01:00

now that is a lightweight computer. and they say it will be £10-£15... So, I want one of those.

Purpose of education

2011-02-19T17:18:00.001Z

I have been giving this some thought, and the discussion so far while very interesting has been between people who believe in education for its own sake (as do I). However, I believe that for most people education is instrumental – parents (and teachers) who tell children that if they don’t work hard at school / university then they won’t get a decent job etc.

I told my children that learning is an adventure and that if they found it boring then there was something wrong with the school and they should play truant. They didn’t and they do love learning. I will admit that close to exams I encouraged a certain amount of study. But then even adventures / exploration do have spells that are tedious slogs.

To push the metaphor a bit further, learning is like exploring where people have been before, it can still be an exciting adventure for those doing it, but the leaders have been there before and know the best routes; while researchers are exploring virgin (intellectual) territory.

So what then might be the purposes of education? Well, I don’t think that we can get away from the instrumental one that it leads on to other things that many people want including many learners, parents, teachers, politicians and the general public.

But for me the purpose of education goes beyond that to include much of what other people have already said to include both induction into society and personal fulfilment. Much of the discussion so far as focused on personal development and personal fulfilment, and this is of value. As Socrates said “The unexamined life is not worth living”, and part of education’s role is then to make life worth living, though this has been expressed in many different ways in the discussion including self-empowerment, self-development, fulfil ones potential. Others have talked of enabling people to follow their passion.

For me there is a third purpose around becoming part of society. While humans are social animals this has to be developed if people are to be positive members of society able to both contribute to and draw on the society around them. It doesn’t just happen, so it must be part of the role of education to help people to engage fruitfully with those around them in a manner that benefits all.

So, education should have three intertwined purposes: functional / economic, social and personal, and I think part of the work of purpose/ed could be to look at more appropriately balancing these three purposes to meet the needs of the learner and the wider society, rather than the too narrow focus on the functional / economic purposes that we see at the moment.

All this begs the question of how we might get closer to where we want to be, but if we cannot identify the target then it really doesn’t matter much in which direction we go.

Foundations for a New Science of Learning

2010-11-11T17:51:00.002Z

Interesting article that brings together a number of different areas that relate to learning. It particularly looks at very early stages of learning (ie in babies) and the importance of the social aspects of this. eg Babies do not learn phonemes from machines or television as they do from other people.

Unfortunately, the place I was most interested in - formal learning the paper gets very weak.

Learning styles

2010-09-22T16:33:00.004+01:00

Nice article looking at the literature on learning styles and concluding " no clear evidence supporting any of the many theories about learning styles. They fault weak methodology and the commercial nature of much of the research"

Why so many theories of education?

2010-09-22T11:32:00.003+01:00

Stephen Downes asked "why education has so many different theories, as opposed to pretty much any discipline that is not fiction, which has just one main theory. "

I don't think multiple competing theories is restricted to education, but affects the whole of the humanities and social sciences. I think that there are a number of reasons for this (some better than others).

Firstly, we bring a huge amount of baggage with us - political beliefs, religious beliefs, the society we live in etc. Thus we can have Marxist, capitalist, Christian, Muslim etc theories of society and of education.

Secondly, but related to the first, there is no agreement on what education is about (or for). Is it to enable us to be good workers (wage slaves?)? or is it to develop the whole person in an Enlightenment way? Or is it to make us good believers? (Well we have faith schools in the UK) Or, what is the balance between these competing demands on education.

Thirdly, there is no agreement on whether learning is social or individual (for lack of a better word). Clearly, at some level learning is what occurs inside the learners head, but equally clearly it has social aspects too.

Fourthly, measurement is extremely inaccurate for a number of reasons. Marking is an art not a science (however hard exam boards try). Get two people to mark the same script and the marks can vary enormously (hence double marking and double peer review). Also, we examine (ie look at) what we (easily) can rather than what we may want to. We use proxies to the real learning. Thus, it is very hard to know what has been learned.

Fifthly, Learning theories seem to have problems with the disconnects between:- formal and informal learning- what the student wants and what the teacher / system want- learning and using that learning (there are plenty of stories - and some research - into students being able to answer exam questions on eg physics questions, but not being able to apply that to the real world.

In conclusion, I would suggest that the social sciences (and I would lump education in there) are not comparable to the physical sciences as they start from ones political perspective and therefore there will be competing incommensurate theories. The nearest I can think of the sciences is evolution and so called intelligent design. Because they start from different premises (evidence and faith respectively) they cannot actually be compared.

Is homeworking better for the environment

2010-09-22T11:28:00.002+01:00

According to a new study: Rebound: unintended consequences of transport policy and technology innovations working from home saves at best 0.4% of the energy used compared to going to work. They also suggest that home shopping does not save energy except in very limited circumstances. It seems to me that this must depend on how you do it. They suggest that heating homes, for instance, uses a lot of the energy and that people travel more for social reasons.

It seems to me that it must depend on what you do. I hardly ever put the heating on, and only turn the printer on when printing (maybe once a week). Admittedly I would probably cycle to work in which case their would be little energy used getting to work. However they say

"It does however require energy to heat or cool the home office. lt may also
lead to people moving further from the workplace, which could stretch urban
cities further apart (this is often referred to as sprawl). Aebischer and Huser
(2000) reported that there would be a 30% increase in household energy use if
one person in a household was working from home. lt was also found that the
number of non-commuting trips increases slightly with telecommuting"

As for online shopping, if it is being delivered by the postman - who goes past the house every day - what is the extra energy? Their evidence is based on a 2001 report which claims:

"Matthew and Hendrickson (2001)demonstrated that roughly the same amount of
energy is used to distribute 1 million dollars worth of bestseller books inU.S.
metropolitan areas by traditional retails (28-33 TJ of energy) as by online
shopping (30 TJ of energy). A similar study inJapan concluded that traditional
retail has a lower environmental impact in dense urban areas (Williams and
Tagami, 2001)."

I would have thought that this would have changed significantly in the last few years. Local shops have closed so people may have to travel further to shop and there has been a vast increase in online shopping so that there may be significant volume savings.

However, a large part of their argument seems to be based on the "Rebound effect" whereby if we make savings in one place then it is ok to use more elsewhere (I don't commute so I can go further for my holiday).

That bus just OVERtook me

2010-08-04T18:00:00.005+01:00

Well, we have had problems with bendy buses, but here is an idea which looks even more scary for the average cyclist....

Yup, the idea is that it rides over two lanes of traffic. But I have a number of questions:

How do you stop cyclists getting stuck in the rails?
What happens if there is a lorry in the bus lane?
What happens to cars changing lane?
How does it go round corners?
What happens to the cars at the junctions.

Still, it looks like a nice idea. When I was young I envisaged a car with legs so it could overtake a traffic jam. could come to a town near china one day?

http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/02/china-to-build-ginormous-buses-that-cars-can-drive-under-video/

Can students evaluate lecturers effectively?

2010-06-11T12:03:00.002+01:00

An interesting summary of an article (which unfortunately is not (yet?) freely available in an IR on student assessment of their lecturers. Suggesting that they prefer lecturers who "teach to the test" rather than foster deep learning. They study made possible because the USAF teach the same course to different groups of students, and marking is done by question not by cohort.

What are the implications of this for the NSS?

http://micromath.wordpress.com/2010/06/11/study-seasoned-profs-prepare-students-for-advanced-learning/

the REF according to Dilbert

2010-05-29T20:41:00.002+01:00

So, some people seem to understand the REF

The Cloud

2010-04-13T07:54:00.003+01:00

I have been thinking about "The Cloud" for some time now, and trying to understand what is new about it.

When I started in computing in 1980 I worked for a company called Hoskyns, which was a leader in what was called "facilities management". This meant that they would run your computers (mainframes) for you - so that you could concentrate on the core business of the company. Sometimes it worked well for both parties and sometimes not. It tended to work well (as I remember) because Hoskyns could take over the entire computing for the company and were often providing much of the software anyhow.

In the 1990s there was much interest in outsourcing which was driven by the idea that businesses should concentrate on their core business and all other services should be handled by specialists brought in to provide that service. This was especially true of cleaning and catering, but many other services were outsourced, including computing. Whereas cleaning and catering has worked (in the sense that companies have stuck with it on the whole - though often to the detriment of the working condition of those actually doing the work) the picture in IT has been much more mixed with some notable disasters. There are many reasons for this, but I would suggest that amongst them are:

The lack of flexibility that most outsourcing contracts offer so that changes can become prohibitively expensive.
Parts of the computing are effectively providing core services to the company so that close control is needed.
Lack of understanding of all the issues by the company that is contracting the service (the outsourcing provider is a specialist doing it all the time, the company outsourcing its services does it once and does not fully understand the issues.
Loss of control of things like when upgrades happen causing additional costs.

No doubt there are others, but there have been expensive fiascoes - especially in the public sector.

Now, these tended to involve moving control of existing services to a third party. However, with the cloud we seem to be wanting to change our systems at the same time. This worries me hugely - the costs of implementing a new system are large. The staff development costs are usually the largest single cost (though often hidden in higher education as the loss of staff productivity through time out for training, lower efficiency while systems are learnt as they are expected to be absorbed).

So I think that the cloud needs to be approached with caution, with the following being areas where it may make sense:

Where new systems are being adopted anyhow
Systems that do not fully belong within the institution. I am thinking here especially of VLEs and e-portfolios where continued access from graduates of the institution makes sense.

In short I think that there are some opportunities that the could offers, but it is nothing like as great as many of its advocates seem to suggest.

Research impact

2010-01-05T09:30:00.002Z

Perhaps Dilbert has caught what many people feel about the research impact of the REF:

Perhaps Dilbert has caught what many people feel about the research impact of the ref

1984

2009-07-23T11:54:00.002+01:00

In a case of reality matching art Amazon has been removing copies of 1984 from users' Kindles. see http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=49607 which says many of the obvious comments about the deletion of history etc, so I won't bother

Which university should top the league tables?

2009-06-17T22:23:00.003+01:00

NB for reasons I dont understand there is a lot of white space before the tables.

I was playing about with the data from the university league table in the independent, and it seemed to me that it was looking at the wrong thing from a student's perspective, which ought to be the value added by going there.
So, I have produced two tables which show the value add calculated in different ways.
Table 1: I scaled the percentage of students getting a good degree by dividing them by 90.1, the percentage getting a good degree at Oxford and scaled the entry points to be out of 100 (ie I divided them by 530, the entry points of students entering Cambridge). Subtracting the scaled entry points from the scaled percentage getting a good degree yields the following table:

Rank	Institution	adjusted percentage getting a good degree	adjusted entry points	value add
1	Bolton	58.4	37.6	20.8
2	Bath Spa	71.8	51.3	20.6
3	London South Bank	53.8	34.9	18.9
4	Northampton	61.3	42.8	18.5
5	Coventry	67.1	49.0	18.1
6	Bradford	67.2	50.7	16.5
7	Exeter	88.6	72.6	16.1
8	University of Wales, Newport	56.2	40.4	15.8
9	Roehampton	57.8	42.3	15.5
10	Middlesex	52.5	37.4	15.2
11	Plymouth	66.9	51.9	15.0
12	Reading	79.6	64.7	14.9
13	Thames Valley	53.8	38.9	14.9
14	Sussex	88.3	73.5	14.8
15	Goldsmiths College	72.0	57.6	14.4
16	Stirling	75.4	61.1	14.3
17	Sheffield Hallam	64.5	50.3	14.2
18	Ulster	66.7	52.6	14.1
19	Winchester	63.7	50.5	13.2
20	Salford	60.1	46.9	13.2
21	West of England	62.1	49.1	13.0
22	Birmingham City	62.8	49.9	12.9
23	Napier	67.6	54.7	12.9
24	Gloucestershire	60.9	48.4	12.5
25	Nottingham Trent	62.6	50.1	12.5
26	Glamorgan	57.5	45.1	12.4
27	Bedfordshire	52.2	39.9	12.3
28	Aberystwyth	68.6	56.6	12.0
29	Buckinghamshire New	49.6	37.8	11.8
30	Keele	71.1	59.4	11.7
31	Huddersfield	59.1	47.4	11.7
32	Staffordshire	58.3	46.6	11.7
33	Brunel	70.7	59.1	11.7
34	SOAS	81.5	69.9	11.5
35	Brighton	65.3	53.8	11.5
36	Anglia Ruskin	58.1	46.6	11.5
37	Kingston	55.5	44.1	11.4
38	East London	45.1	34.1	11.0
39	Lampeter	62.3	51.4	10.9
40	City	70.7	60.3	10.4
41	Leeds Metropolitan	59.5	49.2	10.4
42	Bournemouth	63.3	53.6	9.7
43	Queen's, Belfast	78.0	68.5	9.5
44	Lincoln	58.7	49.6	9.2
45	Southampton	83.0	73.9	9.1
46	Westminster	55.1	46.0	9.1
47	Oxford Brookes	65.6	56.5	9.1
48	Bangor	61.8	52.8	8.9
49	Teesside	55.8	46.9	8.9
50	UWIC, Cardiff	54.0	45.1	8.9
51	Chester	60.3	51.4	8.9
52	Wolverhampton	45.7	36.8	8.8
53	Essex	67.1	58.4	8.7
54	Glasgow Caledonian	72.9	64.3	8.6
55	Kent	66.3	57.9	8.4
56	Leicester	76.6	68.3	8.3
57	Greenwich	47.1	38.8	8.3
58	De Montfort	54.4	46.5	7.9
59	Hull	62.6	55.2	7.4
60	Nottingham	84.0	77.0	7.0
61	East Anglia	75.0	68.1	6.9
62	Leeds	79.7	73.0	6.7
63	Aston	73.0	66.4	6.7
64	Manchester Metropolitan	56.9	50.4	6.6
65	Loughborough	74.8	68.3	6.5
66	Hertfordshire	52.9	46.9	6.0
67	Central Lancashire	56.5	50.5	6.0
68	Canterbury Christ Church	52.2	46.4	5.9
69	Sunderland	52.9	47.0	5.9
70	Worcester	50.7	45.0	5.7
71	Southampton Solent	47.9	42.4	5.4
72	Lancaster	76.4	71.2	5.2
73	Royal Holloway	73.8	68.7	5.1
74	Bristol	87.0	82.0	5.0
75	Queen Margaret	65.0	60.3	4.7
76	Bath	85.8	81.1	4.7
77	Robert Gordon	65.3	60.7	4.6
78	Surrey	68.7	64.2	4.5
79	St Andrews	93.1	88.9	4.3
80	Derby	53.0	49.0	4.0
81	Newcastle	79.0	75.1	3.9
82	Portsmouth	54.8	51.3	3.5
83	Liverpool John Moores	50.1	46.8	3.3
84	Sheffield	79.8	76.6	3.3
85	Liverpool	75.0	71.8	3.2
86	York St John	56.3	53.1	3.2
87	Queen Mary	67.5	64.4	3.1
88	Oxford	100.0	96.9	3.1
89	King's College London	80.1	77.0	3.1
90	Durham	87.5	84.5	3.0
91	Warwick	88.1	85.3	2.9
92	Chichester	51.8	49.0	2.8
93	Edge Hill	49.3	46.7	2.6
94	Cardiff	75.0	72.8	2.3
95	Aberdeen	77.4	75.3	2.1
96	York	82.9	80.9	2.0
97	Cumbria	52.7	50.8	1.9
98	Edinburgh	88.7	87.9	0.8
99	Birmingham	75.9	75.3	0.6
100	Northumbria	55.4	54.9	0.5
101	University College London	83.4	82.9	0.4
102	Manchester	78.3	78.1	0.2
103	Swansea	55.4	55.8	-0.3
104	Glasgow	76.0	81.1	-5.1
105	Cambridge	94.8	100.0	-5.2
106	London School of Economics	83.4	89.3	-5.8
107	West of Scotland *	51.2	59.2	-8.1
108	University of the Arts, London	65.3	73.7	-8.4
109	Heriot-Watt	61.1	71.0	-9.9
110	Strathclyde	82.8	93.3	-10.5
111	Imperial College	76.7	89.3	-12.6
112	Abertay Dundee	52.8	66.0	-13.2
113	Dundee	73.6	89.0	-15.4

However, it could be argued that completion rate is also important, and that students who drop out artificially raise the percentage completing with a good degree. If one adjusts for this then the table changes somewhat. The entry points is adjusted in the same way, and the good degrees is calculated as percentage getting a good degree times percentage completing, adjusting so that Oxford gets 100 (ie all figures are divided by .88). The resulting table then looks like:

Rank	Institution	Score completing and getting a good degree	adjusted entry	value add	Rank ignoring completion
1	Exeter	85.2	72.6	12.7	7
2	Bath Spa	62.4	51.3	11.2	2
3	Reading	74.1	64.7	9.5	12
4	Stirling	68.7	61.1	7.6	16
5	Northampton	49.6	42.8	6.9	4
6	Nottingham Trent	56.6	50.1	6.4	25
7	Aberystwyth	62.5	56.6	5.9	28
8	Sussex	79.0	73.5	5.6	14
9	Bradford	56.1	50.7	5.3	6
10	Sheffield Hallam	55.6	50.3	5.3	17
11	Nottingham	82.1	77.0	5.1	60
12	London South Bank	39.3	34.9	4.4	3
13	Roehampton	46.6	42.3	4.3	9
14	Winchester	54.6	50.5	4.1	19
15	Leicester	72.2	68.3	4.0	56
16	Buckinghamshire New	41.2	37.8	3.5	29
17	Plymouth	55.1	51.9	3.2	11
18	Oxford	100.0	96.9	3.1	88
19	Loughborough	71.3	68.3	3.0	65
20	Bristol	84.6	82.0	2.7	74
21	Southampton	76.4	73.9	2.5	45
22	Goldsmiths College	60.0	57.6	2.4	15
23	University of Wales, Newport	42.7	40.4	2.3	8
24	Brunel	61.3	59.1	2.2	33
25	Bath	82.8	81.1	1.7	76
26	West of England	50.7	49.1	1.6	21
27	UWIC, Cardiff	46.6	45.1	1.6	50
28	Keele	60.8	59.4	1.4	30
29	Gloucestershire	49.8	48.4	1.4	24
30	Leeds	74.4	73.0	1.4	62
31	East Anglia	69.3	68.1	1.2	61
32	Warwick	86.5	85.3	1.2	91
33	Brighton	55.0	53.8	1.1	35
34	Coventry	50.1	49.0	1.1	5
35	Bournemouth	54.7	53.6	1.1	42
36	Durham	85.6	84.5	1.1	90
37	Middlesex	38.3	37.4	0.9	10
38	Leeds Metropolitan	50.0	49.2	0.8	41
39	City	61.0	60.3	0.6	40
40	Kent	58.5	57.9	0.6	55
41	Staffordshire	47.2	46.6	0.6	32
42	St Andrews	89.4	88.9	0.6	79
43	Lancaster	71.7	71.2	0.5	72
44	Lincoln	50.0	49.6	0.4	44
45	Kingston	44.2	44.1	0.1	37
46	Bedfordshire	39.9	39.9	0.0	27
47	Oxford Brookes	56.5	56.5	0.0	47
48	Queen's, Belfast	68.4	68.5	-0.1	43
49	Bolton	37.5	37.6	-0.1	1
50	Huddersfield	47.3	47.4	-0.1	31
51	SOAS	69.8	69.9	-0.2	34
52	Ulster	52.1	52.6	-0.6	18
53	Birmingham City	49.2	49.9	-0.7	22
54	Greenwich	38.0	38.8	-0.7	57
55	York	80.1	80.9	-0.9	96
56	Aston	65.5	66.4	-0.9	63
57	Westminster	45.0	46.0	-1.0	46
58	Thames Valley	37.9	38.9	-1.0	13
59	Newcastle	73.9	75.1	-1.1	81
60	King's College London	75.8	77.0	-1.2	89
61	Essex	56.7	58.4	-1.6	53
62	Sheffield	74.8	76.6	-1.7	84
63	Hull	53.2	55.2	-2.0	59
64	De Montfort	44.4	46.5	-2.0	58
65	Canterbury Christ Church	44.2	46.4	-2.2	68
66	Salford	44.6	46.9	-2.3	20
67	Wolverhampton	34.2	36.8	-2.6	52
68	Royal Holloway	66.0	68.7	-2.7	73
69	Chichester	46.2	49.0	-2.8	92
70	East London	31.3	34.1	-2.8	38
71	Lampeter	48.6	51.4	-2.8	39
72	University College London	79.8	82.9	-3.2	101
73	Liverpool	68.4	71.8	-3.4	85
74	Worcester	41.5	45.0	-3.4	70
75	Surrey	60.5	64.2	-3.7	78
76	Queen Mary	60.6	64.4	-3.7	87
77	Birmingham	71.2	75.3	-4.1	99
78	Cardiff	68.6	72.8	-4.2	94
79	York St John	48.7	53.1	-4.3	86
80	Napier	50.3	54.7	-4.4	23
81	Southampton Solent	38.0	42.4	-4.5	71
82	Bangor	48.2	52.8	-4.6	48
83	Glamorgan	40.4	45.1	-4.7	26
84	Manchester	73.4	78.1	-4.7	102
85	Teesside	42.1	46.9	-4.8	49
86	Chester	46.5	51.4	-4.9	51
87	Edinburgh	82.9	87.9	-5.0	98
88	Sunderland	41.3	47.0	-5.8	69
89	Cambridge	94.1	100.0	-5.9	105
90	Portsmouth	45.2	51.3	-6.0	82
91	Hertfordshire	40.8	46.9	-6.1	66
92	Swansea	49.7	55.8	-6.1	103
93	Central Lancashire	44.1	50.5	-6.4	67
94	Manchester Metropolitan	43.4	50.4	-6.9	64
95	London School of Economics	82.0	89.3	-7.2	106
96	Edge Hill	39.1	46.7	-7.6	93
97	Derby	41.4	49.0	-7.6	80
98	Liverpool John Moores	39.1	46.8	-7.6	83
99	Anglia Ruskin	38.2	46.6	-8.4	36
100	Robert Gordon	52.0	60.7	-8.7	77
101	Glasgow Caledonian	55.3	64.3	-8.9	54
102	Queen Margaret	51.2	60.3	-9.1	75
103	Northumbria	45.3	54.9	-9.6	100
104	Cumbria	40.8	50.8	-10.0	97
105	Aberdeen	61.9	75.3	-13.4	95
106	Imperial College	74.7	89.3	-14.6	111
107	Glasgow	65.9	81.1	-15.2	104
108	University of the Arts, London	57.7	73.7	-16.0	108
109	Heriot-Watt	51.0	71.0	-20.0	109
110	West of Scotland	35.6	59.2	-23.6	107
111	Strathclyde	68.7	93.3	-24.6	110
112	Abertay Dundee	34.3	66.0	-31.7	112
113	Dundee	51.3	89.0	-37.7	113

Hello again - and Kindle

2009-06-16T13:35:00.003+01:00

An interesting article on the use of Kindle - the e-book reader from Amazon in. Inside Higher Education. see http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/06/15/crowell while it focuses on the economics it makes some claims for their ability to enhance pedagogy.

I noticed that in making the economic case the capital cost of the Kindle (the Sony equivalent is over £200), with savings of about 30% on the printed books one needs to spend £600 on books to save money, and there is no second hand market. What is more they cannot easily be shared between people (other than passing the reader around and thus ones whole library).

However, the point about access to journal articles etc being easy and convenient and therefore changing pedagogy is likely to have an impact on the way in which these are accessed.

However, I suspect that the e-bookreader and then laptop will converge with very high quality screens and lower weight as laptops loose any motorised parts (discs, CD/DVDs etc).

But that is another matter.

A good use for ASBOs?

2008-05-13T14:36:00.002+01:00

Perhaps there is a use for ASBOs after all, certainly some people think so, and it could improve train travel.http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/05/13/asbo_mobile_phone_survey/

Universities - Education or training

2008-04-14T19:54:00.004+01:00

Our beloved government wants to change the rules for universities again; see http://tinyurl.com/47kyez

There seem to me to be several problems with what they are proposing.

They have just got rid of funding for "equivalent or lower degrees" ie second degrees for people who already have a qualification - however out of date or irrelevant to their change of career their original degree was. So that excludes many of the older people who might want to go to university.

Then, even if there are six million people who have "A" levels who have not been to university, many of them will have no desire to - they will be working and not want to take time out to go to university. Even if they do want to go to university, if they have not done serious study for a number of years then they will need to go to some form of pre-university course to get back into the habit of studying - but there is no mention of that, who might provide it, or how it might be funded.

Even if we get over all of that, is there a queue of businesses wanting to fund these courses? There has been only limited take up by industry of foundation degrees, and they don't have to pay for these. It looks very like the city academy idea in schools, where to drum up support they have widened the definition of who can do it and waived the funding requirements with the result that there are some very dubious (ie religious fundamentalist) people running some of our state funded schools.

And finally, we come to the change in the academic year so that we have short intense courses running alongside the more relaxed (well long holidays at least) three year courses. He appears to forget that many of the people who would be doing these degrees actually use the long holidays to earn some money to carry them through the rest of the year. However, maybe there will be decent grants / loans. Though that seems unlikely.

When though will academics have a chance to have a decent go at their research - there are very few these days who take long holidays, most use the summer as a time when they can do some research with fewer admin and teaching interruptions.

This looks like an attempt to firstly divide universities between teaching and research universities - bringing back the binary divide by the back door perhaps? and secondly to move universities further away from education to training.

After all, what the government appears to want is a submissive productive (trained) workforce that doesn't think too much (educated).

Perhaps we need to campaign on this.

Flowers are loosing their smell so bees loose their way

2008-04-13T16:54:00.002+01:00

Apparently pollution means that the scent of flowers doesn't travel as far as it used to - but surely there is less pollution than there used to be with the reduction of coal burning? or is it all from cars now?

Anyhow, apparently this is affecting bee numbers. See http://www.livescience.com/environment/080411-pollution-flowers.html

Big Brother wants to watch even more

2008-03-16T18:51:00.002Z

According to Slashdot MI5 wants access to all the Oyster Card travel records. http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/16/1612203&from=rss For those who dont know it is cheaper to travel on London Transport using an Oyster Card (about 50% cheaper), but it records everywhere you join or leave the tube and everywhere you get on a bus.

MI5 want access to 17 million people's travel data - they must think terrorists are very stupid. If you dont want to leave a record you can get Oyster Cards which have no personal information and they can be topped up with cash. Equally, one can just pay cash.

So, what are they really looking for?

I find this very worrying.

Video tours of houses

2007-08-22T18:10:00.000+01:00

Here is an idea I had when working for TSB in the 1980s, that to sell houses you could put the information on computers, and allow people to search by various attributes (size, price, location etc) and then see videos of the house as an aid to finding the one they wanted.

I then went on to suggest one could use virtual reality to re-decorate the house, plan a new kitchen etc. All this could then be sold to the customer along with the house and mortgage.

The world is only now catching up with me.

http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2007/08/craigslist-and-.html

Shocking news

2007-08-08T17:45:00.000+01:00

The Internet is good for education! A new study has just found this, and appears to have surveyed my son as well (the only person to have met someone they encountered on the internet without telling their parents first). http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2007/08/07/schoolboards-net-dangers-over-rated-bring-social-networks-to-school/

The counterblast begins (I hope)

2007-06-10T10:17:00.000+01:00

At last there seems to be the beginnings of a counterblast to this test, test, test of children that started under Major and expanded enormously under Blair.

While testing (in the sense of formative and diagnostic testing in class) is (and always has been) an essential part of education (though these days usually under the name assessment). Summative testing is stressful for all parties, and as the article suggests damaging to education.

Unfortunately, I don't think that this will move anything like fast enough, and many more children will have their education damaged through over (summative) testing. Damaging because it narrows the curriculum to focus on the tests, damaging because it ensures that focus is primarily on those who can be bumbed up a grade (the borderline cases) to the detriment of those who are mid grade, excelling or doing poorly. Damaging because it makes education boring. Damaging because the focus moves from learning to testing. Damaging because it is stressful for all involved.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2099635,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront

Thinking and how education can harm it

2007-06-02T09:43:00.000+01:00

A nice post here http://wanderingink.wordpress.com/2007/05/23/how-to-prevent-another-leonardo-da-vinci/ on how to turn people off learning.

Visualising the web

2007-05-24T23:03:00.000+01:00

I have just come across Walk2Web, a tool for visualising web sites. I haven't yet worked out exactly what it does, but I think that the way that it offers a view of surrounding sites (that link back), and a history of ones exploration are very interesting. http://walk2web.com/

One Laptop Per Child

2007-04-15T09:52:00.000+01:00

The first One Lap Top Per Child school has received its computers, and I am sure that the teachers and children and community are very pleased with them. You can see more pictures at http://news.com.com/2300-1041_3-6175025-2.html?tag=ne.gall.pg
including children smiling with their shiny new computers.

While there is something to be said for Negreponte's One Laptop Per Child programme, and the computers cost $100 each and are wind up I do wonder if this is the most useful use of resources in a country that has huge class sizes, considerable poverty and easily curable diseases.

It seems to me to be part of the furore over the "digital divide" from a few years ago, which wasn't a digital divide at all, it was, and is, a wealth divide. Poor people have less access to technology because they are poor. The solution is not to give them bits of technology but to address the underlying causes. But that is more expensive, more difficult and if really done would affect the life styles of the rich:

Nigeria has something like 80 million children, so perhaps 50-60 million school age children, so the cost of simply buying the laptops is $8 billion. On top of this each school will require a satellite dish to connect to the internet - and that will need powering, so will require a generator and then there will be whatever the connection (usage) costs might be.

Then there is staff training if the computers are to be used effectively in school the pedagogy needs to change from one which is based on lack of resources - including text books - with the result that it is highly didactic to one which is based more on participation and sharing. This will be a huge culture shift for the whole of society. It may well be a good thing, but without such a change the project is likely to end up as little more than a way of downloading electronic text books. (Plus any personal use that the children may make of the computers).

If I am right about this then the cost of the computers will be a small fraction of the total cost of implementing a meaningful One Laptop Per Child programme. - running the systems, developing resources, staff training, IT support etc.

The Shock of the Old

2007-01-31T22:41:00.000Z

The Shock of the Old
David Edgerton
Profile Books

Published by my brother, and I met the author at one of his parties last year.

The thesis of the book is that most books which discuss technology focus on innovation and invention rather than use, and thus paint a false picture of technology and what it means. He argues that there is a relentless focus on the new, and that this results in the same story being told over and over again for each new technology. Thus, he cites the idea that various technologies have been offered up as making war unthinkable - aeroplanes and the atomic bomb being two of them. His point being that each of these technologies is repeating exactly the same ideas as the previous and that they will not have the supposed effect.

His more important and profound point though is that it is use not novelty that is important, so that new technologies actually only have a small impact and those that do have an impact will continue to for a long time, particularly when you take a world rather than a western view of the technologies. Examples he gives include that Hitler used more horses to invade the Soviet Union in World War II than Napoleon did during his invasion; and that more people were (and still are) killed by personal weapons (guns, pistols etc.) than by newer weapons, providing convincing figures. Or, he argues that printing, or radio have greater impact than the newer internet because in many countries the penetration of the older technologies is so much higher, and China and India alone account for half the worlds population, so what they are doing is important.

I have a lot of sympathy for his argument, though find the style very polemical and sometimes off putting, and I think that there are (some) counter examples. For instance, mobile phones are available in places which have never been wired for old fashioned telephony.

I do think that it is a useful antidote though for all the techno-enthusiasts who chase one new technology after another thinking that it is the solution to all problems as we have seen with learning objects, VLEs, Web 2.0 / education 2.0, PLEs, eportfolios etc. etc. Each of these has been offered as the solution (sometimes even by the same people) precisely because they lack both the historical and the usage model that he cites.

Anyone who is looking at new technology should read this.

Successful prosecution under Disability Discrimination Act

2007-01-25T12:36:00.000Z

The Project Management Institute has been prosecuted under the DDA for discrimination in the provision of an exam to a blind student. They failed to provide an adequate version of the course materials, and refused to make necessary adjustments in the examination.

details available at: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/25/computer_based_exam_discriminated_against_blind_candidate/

safer cycling for hairy ones

2006-09-13T15:42:00.000+01:00

As a keen cyclist I came across this interesting article which suggests that if you want to be safe on the roads you should wear a long wig..... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/09/11/ucyclists.xml

get geeky!

2006-09-13T15:38:00.000+01:00

Sometimes one sees things that are seriously geeky that just make you smile, and one I have just come across is USB Geek.com at http://www.usbgeek.com/

They offer a wide variety of things including USB powered gloves (that would stop you wandering away from your computer), USB powered shredder (for business cards only as far as I can see) and USB powered pencil sharpners. Is there no end to the futility of man?

hijacking technology

2006-06-26T12:32:00.000+01:00

Apparently children are using the noise that was designed to be audible to them, but not to adults, as ring tones. The noise was created to discourage children from congregating in places like shopping centres. However children have now started using it as a ring tone on their mobile phones. That way teachers (or at least most teachers) will be unable to hear it, whilst they can.

Besides showing the ingeniousness of children it also is a wonderful demonstration of the law of unintended consequences.

Wikis and blogs

2006-06-18T12:21:00.000+01:00

I have been thinking about wikis and blogs - and other parts of Web 2.0 - lately, and thinking that perhaps the ideas are not so new after all. The illustration here is taken from the talmud, which is around 1500 years old. It is somewhere between a blog (additive with an original posting and then a series of comments) and a wiki (postings updated and altered as time goes on, but possible to see the history).

Starting with a small piece of the Mishna there are a whole series of commentries on, written over hundreds of years and many places. Commentaries are continuing to be written on it, so that the discussion continues. An interesting article showing some the parts and a translation of a page (though with embedded Hebrew in the translation) can be found at http://www.templesanjose.org/JudaismInfo/Torah/Talmud.htm

Personal learning environments

2006-06-02T11:46:00.000+01:00

Like Graham Attwell I too have been asked to produce a paper for the PLE workshop next week. My thoughts are below, and comments are most welcome.

Why Personal Learning Environments?

This paper looks at some of the drivers behind Personal Learning Environments (PLE), and what their implications are. This is followed by a brief discussion of the learning environment as it currently stands and how I believe that it will change over the next 5 or so years. The conclusion that I arrive at is that PLEs are at best a temporary phenomenon as what we are aiming at is a personal environment covering work, leisure and learning and that there is a need to be able to integrate all these better. Within this environment there will be some specifically educational tools.

Drivers

Drivers for PLEs fall into two categories: social / political / educational and technical and it is worth looking at each of these and their implications for PLEs

Social / Political / Educational Environment

There are a number of important changes in the social and political environments that will have an impact on PLEs and their adoption; some will encourage their use whilst others may act as barriers and it is important to be able to use the former and be aware of the latter and if necessary attempt to circumvent them.

Assessment is a huge barrier to change in education, and never more so than now, with more and more assessment (SATS, GCSE, AS, A2, modules and degrees). Assessment drives the curriculum as schools, colleges and universities encourage students to do well at their examinations rather than concentrating on education. Many assessment agencies are terrified of cheating in general and plagiarism in particular. This may affect their views of PLEs, and they need to be actively sold to assessment and QA agencies.

E-Portfolios are currently being pushed heavily by the government, and hence by government backed agencies. Currently there is little clarity as to the function of portfolios as they can be used for any of three purposes which are difficult to reconcile and require different forms of control and ownership.

Reflection - Here students are expected to keep work, including work in progress, and to reflect upon it. It means that much of the content of the portfolio will be private, or semi-private and will include things that have not worked as well as things that have worked. This has been widely used in the art and design community for over 100 years.

Assessment - The portfolio will contain that which the student wishes the assessor (tutor) to see. It may include intermediate stages if that is required, but will be intended to gain good marks rather than as a resource to learn from. It may (but need not) contain the assessments, transcripts etc.

Publication - For use as a CV it would contain the best pieces of work (not all work that needs to be assessed) and transcripts, grades, awards etc.

Life-long learning implies that learners will be moving between schools, colleges and universities and building up their skills and knowledge base to meet their own personal goals (work and leisure related) and here may be one of the main drivers for PLEs. However, it needs to be noted that life-long learning has dropped down the government's agenda (at least in England) with the priority being learners under 30 at the moment.

Personal choice is another big buzz phrase at the moment, however as has been frequently pointed out it often conflicts with efficiency (a choice of schools implies empty places for instance).

Personalised learning (also referred to as child centred learning and student centred learning) is seen to be of growing importance, with a recognition that each learner is coming from a different understanding and has different learning goals. However, this is contradicted by the National Curriculum.

National Curriculum defines what, and increasingly how, children should learn with the literacy and numeracy hours dictating teaching at the micro level and the new requirement to teach reading with synthetic phonics. There are also effectively national curricula at higher levels defined by GCSE and "A" level curricula and on many university courses by validating bodies (such as the general medical council).

Technical environment

There are a number of developments in the technical landscape that will have a significant impact on education and these are not all pointing in the same way.

Portals offer an integrated environment that provides access to a wide variety of tools and information sources through a single (web) front-end and increasingly integrated back-end in order to provide value-added services. However, portals belong to institutions and primarily provide access to their resources and working methods. While portals can offer significant amounts of personalisation this is within limits set by the system owner.

Web services allow applications to be broken down into smaller units with standard interfaces so that applications can be built from a variety of sources and allow institutions or users to assemble a set of services that meet their specific needs. It is not clear (to me at least) how big an impact web services will have on the way that applications are developed and more importantly on users.

Application services that host applications for clients are becoming increasingly important form of outsourcing, and are likely to be particularly important for schools and smaller colleges who may not be able to retain all the expertise that is needed to manage all their applications for themselves. This can be done by commercial organisations, clusters of schools or by a university or college for the schools in its area.

Web 2.0 which is moving the web from being transmissive and concerned with information to being concerned with community building, collaboration and sharing.

Ubiquity and mobility means that people are now working with varied types of device (desktop and laptop computers, PDAs and smartphones for instance).

Ownership and control

One of the key tensions that will become more apparent over the next few years is ownership, and there are several aspects to this: ownership of the information and ownership of the assessment / validation processes and consequently ownership of learning.

Ownership of information

There are three types of information that are relevant here, and they have very different legal, social and educational implications.

Learning information - including learning objects are created and owned by individuals, publishers and institutions. The rights that students have to use these vary enormously from those published under a creative commons license to those under very restrictive licenses. However, once a student has imported the information into their PLE they are going to want to be able to access it whenever they review the content of that unit. If they are sharing information with others, because they are discussing their learning at work for instance, they will want to be able to share all relevant content. There is thus a huge issue of property rights that needs resolving.

Student created information Students create considerable amounts of information in their learning including notes, essays, project reports, portfolios and so forth. In schools there are often limits on who they can share that information with; many schools have blogs that are only visible within the school. Again, with a PLE the student has far more control over what they can do, and this will cause conflicts between those that want to control what students may do and the students themselves.

Assessment information It is logical for students to want to be able to keep all their learning information together, including grades and awards. However, clearly they cannot be allowed to edit that information. It could be that students only hold a copy or that the information is digitally signed, but a solution will be needed to this.

Ownership of assessment / validation process

Assessment (especially summative assessment) are highly controlled and fiercely guarded; indeed the awarding of degrees is universities' unique selling point. Only they (plus now the Law Society) are allowed to award them. Through their oligopoly this gives universities huge power over their students. The same can be said of students in compulsory education.

Assessment bodies and their agents (schools) have huge power where education (and especially the resulting qualifications) are instrumental. This has effectively meant that what the university or school says goes. If you don't like it then you don't get your qualification! This, for instance, has allowed universities to continue with attendance based qualifications rather than competence based ones, and why the selection of VLE is often made for the way it will work with the student record system rather than for its educational benefits; although to be fair these are poorly understood at the moment.

Development issues

The question then is what type of environment do students want, and conversely what type of environment are they going to get and in particular where will control lie? I cannot pretend to have the answer to these questions, but here are some pointers which I think will determine the shape of environments for the next few years. Institutions will not be willing to let go their control, so PLEs will have to adapt to the environment that is being used by institutions (whether that is a VLE, portal or e-portfolio). This has huge implications for the way in which PLEs are designed and implemented.

They will need to work with content elsewhere; and especially that which is accessed through institutional portals and VLEs

They will have to offer considerable benefits beyond those offered by institutional systems if they are to gain currency.

They will have to be extremely simple to install, configure, maintain and backup as without that most students will not be willing to take the time and effort to use them instead of a system provided up and running by their institution. This has the further implication that most students are likely to run a fairly "vanilla" installation unless it is extremely easy to use alternative and additional tools and these interoperate seamlessly with tools that peers and teachers are using.

They will need to interface seamlessly with a wide variety of PLEs (including both commercial and open source ones) - so that they can retrieve and post information to them. This implies not so much being standards based as supporting whatever APIs other systems support.

There is an important corollary of the last two points, that there is a grave danger of PLEs, and their tools, only being able to offer the highest common factor and thereby stifling innovation and preventing users from doing what they want. If one party is using a collaborative tool which offers a series of additional features these will be unusable unless the other party is using a tool which offers the same functionality. However, when new tools come out few will be using them and the need to work with others may delay the use of these features.

VLEs, PLEs and PEs

The other problem that I have with PLEs is that they are addressing part of the problem and therefore not solving it. The answer must be to create a personal environment that supports work, leisure and learning and integrates them in a holistic manner so that it is easy to move between them and to organise all ones information, communication and collaboration in a way that suits the users working methods.

PLEs are a step in this direction, but need to bear in mind that they must be extensible to include the areas of life. In effect becoming the users portal on the world. This leads me to a number of design conclusions that will help create a workable model for PLEs.

Conclusion

From the above I would suggest that PLEs need to have the following characteristics if they are too succeed

The architecture needs to be very open in order to support the widest possible number of tools - both educational and other; including tools like MSN, yahoo and aim, search tools etc. etc.

It must be easy to install and configure and as it will grow with the user easy to adapt as needs and experience change and new tools become available.

Information should be held on a server (possibly with local caches) as the user may want to use it on a number of devices (home, work, education - PC, PDA, smartphone), and this will also provide back-up and security. Note that I am not suggesting who should own the server (ISP, educational institution, LEA, employer or government or some other agency).

The PLE will be holding a considerable volume of data requiring a complex organisation and good tools for understanding it. There are a few such tools about, for instance TheBrain (http://www.thebrain.com/) and many potential ways that might be helpful in representing and presenting data are shown at Visual Complexity (http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/index.cfm).

It must be possible to move all information from one PE to another, as we will not get it right first time and users will not wish to be tied to one supplier (however friendly they are this year). Also, the tools that suit a primary or high school child may not be the best for a postgraduate or for CPD.

It should be capable of being incorporated within institutional portals (both at work and at education).

It needs to naturally support a variety of different pedagogic approaches and learning styles and working methods and different ways of learning.

it needs to work with multiple data / information / document sources including personal ones, college ones and work ones.

It needs to support the user in keeping confidential information confidential (eg. work related information going into public areas).

It needs to enable users to publish in numerous different ways information that they want to, including as each of the three types of portfolio discussed above.

Finally, and most importantly of all, there is a need to engage with stakeholders that really drive the educational processes: funders, examination boards, educational institutions, publishers, LEAs. Without that PLEs will be a glorious failure.

An alternative to wind up computers, or are they taking the piss

2006-05-08T20:38:00.000+01:00

I have for a long time wanted a computer (and mobile phone etc) that did not require constant re-charging as the battery got flat. Given that perpetual motion seems to be off the cards (I blame the second law of thermodynamics personally) there is a need for an alternative. Solar energy is a problem with PCs, as when they are in use most of the visible area is either screen or keyboard. Windup computers are quite hard work, so this may be the solution.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/health/HealthRepublish_1438430.htm

Portales en la educación superior: conceptos y modelos

2006-05-03T22:47:00.000+01:00

My first paper in a foreign language. The paper I wrote for the Observatory on Borderless Higher Education: Portals in higher education: concepts & models available at http://www.obhe.ac.uk/products/reports/publicaccesspdf/February2004.pdf has now been translated into Spanish (and the abstract into Catalan as well). It available from http://www.uoc.edu/rusc/3/1/dt/esp/franklin.html I am not able to comment on the translation.

web 2.0 and personal learning experience

2006-04-21T21:56:00.000+01:00

An interesting blog posting from Scott Wilson on web 2.0 and personal learning experience.
http://www.cetis.ac.uk/members/scott/blogview?entry=20060408223522

However, I think that it is too focused on the technology, and it assumes that everyone will behave like the techno-adventurers who have adopted web 2.0 technology (blogs, wikis, shared bookmarking etc.). As the powerpoint was given as part of a presentation which I did not attend I am missing some of the context.

First, a couple of general points. I think that much of what he has to say is about more mature, motivated and well resourced students. I think that little of what he says is relevant to, for instance, infants, or disaffected learners or to those who are re-entering learning (that is a large swathe of further education students, who may lack many of the basic skills - including both literacy and information literacy). However, I presume that it is intended to apply from somewhere in primary or early secondary through higher education and on into work-based learning, CPD etc.

Of particular interest are his predictions for 2010, which are worth looking at in some detail, so here goes - in the spirit of friendly discussion, I hope.

Prediction 1: By 2010 at the latest, all learners accessing education will already possess a portable network device with substantial storage capacity, wireless/mobile internet access, processing capacity, and context adaptability. They will expect ubiquitous wireless/mobile access.

If we ignore the groups above that I have suggested that the whole talk does not apply to, then I think that this is largely true. However, it masks a huge range in both the nature of the equipment from a smartphone with only a telephone keypad through PDAs / smartphones with touch screens and or keyboards to laptops and tablet PCs. As well as the range of equipment that is implied by this there will also be a range in what people want to use their devices for, from primarily as a mobile phone through to meeting the majority of their computing needs. It also masks a huge range in sophistication of use of these devices from those who are comfortable and happy using computers for a wide range of activities and make use of Web 2.0 type technologies to those who are unsure of computers and would never post on a blog. This range will still be there in 2010, and the nature of education in schools (at least in the UK) does little to help with this, given the concentration on individual examined work and the inability to share course work at all for fear of being done for cheating.

Prediction 2: Learners will expect education services and resources to be capable of being timeshifted to suit their schedules, rather than the other way around. They will expect the ability to mix, re-arrange, and otherwise adapt educational offerings to suit their needs.

This is already true for much of the learning in universities and colleges, where lectures, tutorials, and laboratory work make up a minority of the learning, with discussions in the coffee room, working in the library, writing essays or reports at home etc. etc. occupying much of the study time and mostly done at times to suit the student. I am not sure that there will be an enormous shift here, as much of the time that is constrained by the university is either social working (tutorials) or constrained by access to resources (laboratories). If the former is to be dynamic (synchronous) then it has to be timetabled and thus it may not be able to suit the convenience of all the members of the group. Similarly, laboratories have limited resources and experiments have to be set up and timetabled. The main activity which it may be possible to timeshift is lectures - a notoriously poor form of teaching, but let that go. Even then, it is not clear that a podcast is as good as a lecture, and many people use them to go over rather than replace a lecture. Similarly, if we are to have cohorts (and most pedagogists argue that learning from other members of the group is amongst the most powerful forms of learning) then there needs to be some form of timetable to help keep people working approximately in step with each other. Therefore, there are strong pedagogic arguments for keeping both an overall timetable for the group and for some activities.

Prediction 3: Learners will be increasingly media-aware, and will be immersed in participatory culture through TV, radio, and the internet. They will be more experienced communicators in a range of media, and will expect a high degree of participation. They will already have their own publishing channels.

I think that this is a generalisation from the behaviour of the current enthusiasts. I am yet to be convinced that most people are naturally participatory. Of the huge many blogs that have been registered how many have ever had more than three postings? I suspect only a small percentage (including at least two I remember registering and then forgetting about). Similarly, most people will continue to be essentially passive consumers of media, restricting their active participation to voting for big brother and similar shows. We live and work in a milieu where these things are taken as the norm.

My suspicion is that a large number of people will use things like MySpace.com socially, but will not use similar things for learning. I can remember a few years ago there was a suggestion that as students were all using mobile phones and txt we should use txt wrt in teaching. However, I argued then, that people are moded - and know that what is suitable for personal or leisure use is not necessarily appropriate or useful for learning. The same may be true here.

I think that this will be helped by "walled gardens" where students can share only with people they want to (their peers), and don’t have to worry about looking a fool to the whole world. I also suspect that the situation is very different in the USA because of the different culture - where "show and tell" encourages students to be more open with their ideas.

Prediction 4a: Learners won’t expect to pay for technology, if anything they’ll expect to be paid for using it.

I am not sure what is meant by this one, while at the moment we are getting our mobile phones included in the contract, and many online services are free I think that we will continue to pay for, and expect to pay for, much of our technology. Open source will not have won by 2010, Microsoft will still be the dominant desktop operating system and office suite, and probably also on PDAs and smartphones.

Perhaps, people will begin to understand that there is no such thing as a free lunch, and that the costs are simply diverted elsewhere - whether into the mobile phone contract or the price paid for goods and services that are paying for these services through advertising. Though, somehow I suspect that most people will not have wised-up by then.

Prediction 4b: Educational services will be expected to integrate with leisure and work services, just like everything else does.

Again, I am not sure what this means - having not been at the talk, but either this relates to prediction 2 about timeshifting, or as that has already been discussed this is about a deeper level of integration. A lot of this is happening already with work based learning, accreditation of prior experience etc. I would be interested to see models of how this will be taken further in the next four years, and I suspect that one of the things that will do most to hold it back is the extraordinarily conservative nature of assessment in this country (with "A" levels seen as a "gold standard" and many banging on about back to basics, drop in standards, not like it was when I was a child / student etc.).

Prediction 4c: Learners will already be part of several online communities when they enter education, and will continue to operate in these networks, and rely upon them for peer recommendations and reputation.

Yes, undoubtedly, but they will also want to build new ones around their study and the shared interest there. Both will be both online and face-to-face as well.

Visual Complexity

2006-04-21T16:07:00.000+01:00

Visual Complexity - http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/index.cfm - is one of the best sites I know exploring the issues around representing complex data. This is a huge problem for all of us, whether we are considering information on the internet, or understanding an area of research or teaching or learning. There are a wide variety of tools that can help, from mind mapping and concept mapping tools to a huge variety of other methods for exploring complexity.

It currently presents nearly 320 different ways of presenting complex data, many of them dynamic allowing the exploration and understanding of the data and underlying models.

Among my favourite are a travel time London Underground map, which shows the journey time from your selected station to the rest of the network. http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/project_details.cfm?id=260&index=18&domain=Transportation%20Networks
and Dreamlines http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/project_details.cfm?id=296&index=14&domain=Art simply because it is very relaxing.

The origins of evaluation

2006-04-10T21:55:00.000+01:00

"If the problem of fitting the New World into the scheme of history as outlined in the scriptures was the most intractable of matters, explorers and missionaries alike found that, if evangelisation were to proceed, some understanding of the customs and traditions of the native people was required. Thus began their often-elaborate inquiries into Indian history, land tenure and inheritance laws, in a sense the beginning of applied anthropology. The early missionaries, fortified by a naive belief in the natural goodness of man, assumed that native minds were "simple, meek, vulnerable and virtuous" or, in the words of Bartolome de las Casas, tablas rasas, blank slates "on which the true faith could easily be inscribed". The missionaries were to be disappointed. In his History of the Indies of the New Spain (1581), the Dominican fray Diego Duran argued that the Indian mind could not be changed or corrected "unless we are informed about all the kinds of religion which they practiced ... And therefore a great mistake was made by those who, with much zeal but little prudence, burnt and destroyed at the beginning all their ancient pictures. This left us so much in the dark that they can practice idolatry before our very eyes". Such a view became a justification for the detailed surveys of pre-conquest history, religion and society undertaken by clerics in the later sixteenth century. The Spanish Crown was intimately involved and in the process introduced the questionnaire, bombarding their officials in the Indies with this new tool of government. (my emphasis)

Ideas: A history from fire to Freud, Watson p444 (half a paragraph)

So evaluation was invented as a means to be able to persecute the American Indians better! And so often it has barely moved from there, and evaluation is used to control rather than to liberate,

This has to do with power relationships. Where evaluation is imposed from the outside then there is resistance to cooperation and to the conclusions. But worst of all it can be seen as an imperialistic activity about imposing enforced conversion to a new religion, or at least new working practices.

And how often does an evaluation have the luxury of the time to fully explore what the alternatives are, what the users want, and what the implications of any proposed action (or lack of action) really are?