tech-ed collisions

on insidious design

An interesting article appeared last week on the First Monday blog. Written by Lisa M Lane and entitled Insidious pedagogy: How course management systems impact teaching, it examines some of the ways in which the systems (in this case course management systems) educators use influence the way that they teach. Many CMS's, at least those that have been around for a while, it is argued, are based on instructivist principles rather than constructivist ones. Of course these offerings all now come with a plethora of collaborative features enabling, in principle at least, the ability to implement more constructivist design into the way courses are run. Some other factors also seem to come in to play which also ultimately probably lead to sub-optimal use of these systems. For example, many educators, while being expert in their own subject areas, are not so proficient in their use of ICT. An expert 'instructor' may not understand the differences between the Web and say, their previous 'offline' experiences and so not be able to appreciate the different approaches that can be taken 'online'. Novice users are less likely to explore in detail what is available to them and may simply 'transfer' offline processes that they understand into the online environment. In a sense, the technology they are using is now used in a transferable manner rather than a transformative one. Lane also discusses the 'fault of the defaults'. Since novice users are unlikely to experiment and investigate to any great depth, the CMS is likely to be used along the lines of its default configuration, rather than optimised to better support specific requirements. Many implementations will thus inherit this 'default design'. It strikes me that this is not simply a characteristic of course management systems, but of many if not all (potentially) complex systems. There will always be those who push boundaries to their maximum and experiment and innovate but these people are generally speaking, in a relatively small minority. I am trying to relate this problem to the application area of e-portfolios and it occurs to me that the design of this class of application is critical to its effectiveness. Having seen a number of educators struggle with the process of e-portfolio I cannot help but wonder how effectively they will be used in classrooms. Simplicity of use is a key feature but along with it the design really needs to guide users through areas such as collecting, selecting, reflecting and publishing, with minimal assistance. Reflection to me is particularly problematic as it seems to be quite challenging for some. How flexible is the design of your systems or if you are a user of these types of services, have you been unduly influenced by inherent characteristics of them?

Filed under  //   design  

(online) learning spaces

This week I started Stephen Downes and George Siemen's 'Connectivism and Connected Knowledge CCK09' course. What I found particularly exciting about it (apart from the opportunity to learn something that will hopefully turn out to be really interesting for me and also to interact with many other people via the Web) is their approach to the learning space for the course. While there is a Moodle environment in place there is an expectation that participants in the course will use their own personal learning environments (PLE's) and the course conveners are reaching out to those environments rather than impose their own upon the participants. I find this really refreshing. Already the number of blog posts, tweets etc that are proliferating is staggering. I guess this is also a great way for them to test their theories in some way on connectivism (although I don't profess to really understand what it all means). To date I have started my own blog quite separate from other online presences that I have as I particularly don't wish to muddy this blog with my naive reflections on connectivism and it will be interesting to see how I go learning in a potentially quite public (at least to those who follow the course tags closely) way. In discussions that I have had this week with education systems there is an increasing desire to move to more user-centric than system-centric desgin for learning spaces but there still seems to be some very stringent conditions upon these environments. We still seem to be a long way off truly 'personal' PLEs so it is great to participate in something like CCK09 to see what can be achieved.

Filed under  //   general  

We need more pidgeons

A great little story on Reuters about a pidgeon transferring data quicker than the country's leading telecommunications provider in South Africa. I think it would be interesting to do some similar comparisons in parts of our own country at the moment. How good is your broadband connection?

Filed under  //   Internet   general  

on Snow Leopard

So I have had a week or so now with Snow Leopard and thought I might write some thoughts down on my experience with it so far. Firstly, the install was an absolute breeze - it just worked (but how many times do you hear that phrase anyway from Mac users). After reading about the integration with Exchange 2007 I was really looking forward to seeing Mail work with our office infrastructure and getting rid of Entourage. The installation process couldn't have been simpler in that regard. Since I was connected to our work network it just went off and found the mail server. Using Mail and iCal is great but.... Well actually it is quite good - seems much more efficient from an end user experience than Entourage but Mail and iCal are separate applications unlike Outlook or Entourage so I do have to have two apps open to work efficiently. A few things aren't quite there yet. In Outlook/Entourage we have a 'junk e-mail' folder that Exhange puts junk mail into. As it turns out, quite a lot of my junk mail is in fact real email that I need to respond to so I have to check this folder regularly but I can't see it any more. So for now I find myself having to get back into Entourage or an Outlook client to process some email that I can't otherwise see. On iCal I can't open other users calendars from our work environment which I can do (very quickly in Outlook and very, very slowly in Entourage). Setting privacy settings for meetings/appointments is problematic if I have multiple calendars open - just can't do it. Still... using Mail and iCal is generally much, much better than using Entourage. Another big plus is the new QuickTime Player. It's great to be able to create screen, audio and video recordings from it (especially screen recordings). One other thing that I was really looking forwards to is the use of the new trackpad gestures. Unfortunately it seems my Macbook Pro is too old for that and they are not supported. It has been really hard to (and I still can't) find any official information from Apple on exactly what models do support this feature. When you see the video of this feature it just seems made for a tablet Mac. The way the dock behaves now seems to be a bit nicer too. Anyway, that's it so far.

Filed under  //   Apple  

a little bit of domain name history from techcrunch

Interesting story from techcrunch today on the first domain name to be registered has changed hands. It's a nice article on an interesting piece of history for those interested in Internet/www history and especially for those of us in the Registrar area. Maybe I am just in a melancholy mood at the moment but I can't help but agreeing with the sentiment expressed by the author of the post in the end of the article.

To quote Samwise Gamgee in Lord Of The Rings: “I don’t know why, but it makes me sad.”

Filed under  //   Internet  

Tweet

I almost hesitate to write a blog post about Twitter, after all, its been talked to death almost every week on the popular technology podcasts that I listen to and its hit main stream television (heard it mentioned on the Ashes cricket broadcasts, discussed in the drivel that's served up as current affairs and even in bland television programs striving desperately to remain relevant in an era when broadcast television is battling against the rising tide of the Web and all that it offers). By now lots of us have heard of it, many of us have dipped our toes in the water and some of us have really taken the plunge. There are thousands of blog posts on it so why write another one? Well I have just come across the following link on Twitter's home page - 'Twitter 101 - a special guide'. Sometimes it pays to visit the Twitter site instead of always using one of the many Twitter clients! Anyway, Twitter 101 is a nice little introduction from the Twitter people on how to use Twitter in your business. There are a few examples of successes, some hints and tips, and a number of links to some quite useful stuff if you are new to Twitter or haven't perhaps had the experience you were hoping for with it. If you're in education, as a learner or an educator, perhaps substitute the word 'customer' for learner, trainer, etc whenever it appears and see if the suggestions make sense. It's all about connecting better with your 'customers' getting closer and more responsive to them and making your services more relevant and immediate for them. Perhaps you are a private RTO (Registered Training Organisation) and your customers are in workplaces quite remote from you most of the time. Twitter just may offer a useful channel for communications between the two of you (that can of course be expanded to bring in many others - people and ideas). Nothing that I am saying here is new but its nice to see how Twitter have summed it all up and think how we can apply it in our contexts. Cheers.

Filed under  //   Twitter  
Posted July 29, 2009

The Google Chrome OS Bombshell - the fallout extends beyond Microsoft and Apple

Sometimes big things happen on the other side of the world while we peacefully sleep through our night. Of course at that time it is daytime in the busiest and most influential parts of the world so it is with interest that we open up our newsreaders bleary eyed first thing in the morning while reaching for a coffee or tea to start the day. So when I powered up my computer this morning and it slowly booted and I eventually managed to connect to my network then start up a browser, a steady feed of posts about the Google Chrome OS started to fill up my screen. Intrigued, I just thought I'd go straight to the Google blog and see what they had to say. Sure enough, there it was - must be a big week at Google after all Gmail came out of Beta after five years just the day before! Anyway, back to the announcement - is this really going to be a big thing? After all I was less than impressed with Chrome as it wouldn't run on my Mac when it first came out and I had to find a PC to test it (still waiting for that email from Google about a Mac version eight months on). Well perhaps it is if you look at some of the commentary. The obvious target for speculation is Microsoft and Windows 7. The ZDNet blog has an interesting analysis on how Google is going after Windows with the launch of this Web OS. They note the push from Google on the promotion of cloud computing:

Google, which has long been singing the praises of cloud-based applications, is stepping up its game to bring the cloud to the mainstream.
Some interesting views over at TechCrunch. From MG Seigler:
..But let’s be clear on what this really is. This is Google dropping the mother of bombs on its chief rival, Microsoft. It even says as much in the first paragraph of its post, “However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web.” Yeah, who do you think they mean by that? And it’s a genius play. So many people are buying netbooks right now, but are running WIndows XP on them. Windows XP is 8 years old. It was built to run on Pentium IIIs and Pentium 4s. Google Chrome OS is built to run on both x86 architecture chips and ARM chips, like the ones increasingly found in netbooks. It is also working with multiple OEMs to get the new OS up and running next year. Obviously, this Chrome OS will be lightweight and fast just like the browser itself. But also just like the browser, it will be open-sourced....
For a different view by John Biggs at CrunchGear:
ChromeOS is a specialized version of Linux designed for netbooks. It is more like Android than anything else and, as Fake Steve notes, no one will use it. Oh, manufacturers will pay lip service to it and maybe someone will install it on a few million machines but it will be a drop in the bucket compared to the powerful web OSes called Windows 7 and OS X. ChromeOS, like Android, is a bargaining chip. OEMs can wave ChromeOS in Microsoft’s face and reduce they price they have to pay per PC for installing Windows. It won’t work, but they’ll try. Die-hard Linux users will stick with Linux and the average consumer, when presented with Chrome, will ask where the Start menu went.
And then MG Siegler also has a look on the impact for Apple. It seems that Apple operates in slightly different markets and is less likely to feel the impact. So, given these thoughts from prominent blog(ger)s, I thought it more appropriate for me to speculate in a narrower area, that of education. Netbooks seem to be grabbing the attention of education departments at the moment. They are great entry level devices and pricewise probably represent the best alternatives for getting ICT into the classroom and to each student. Most probably run XP (I am guessing but that seems to make sense), an operating system that was designed for a different time if you read some of the blogs that I have linked to above. Many are locked down and Internet access is very tightly controlled and filtered. In this way departments aim to exercise their duty of care and at the same time educate their students in an ICT enabled environment. What does this mean for the Web OS? Everything is in the cloud - applications, services, content, collaborators, friends and anything else worthwhile you can think of are pulled from the cloud. Does the Web OS have a place in education and if so what will that environment look like? Will departments need to reconsider the way they deploy their SOEs and if so what will they look like? Is the Web Os compatible with long established thinking on deploying ICT into the classroom. We have been talking about cloud services for a while now but what does this next step in the evolution of computing mean for education? I don't have the answers but it would have been nice to just power on my computer this morning and not wait an interminably long time for it to boot and then gradually start the programs that I needed to commence working. That promise of instant access sounds good, at least for a couple of minutes as I wait for my trusty Mac to get going - but then, when would I have chance to go and get my coffee?

Filed under  //   Google  
Posted July 9, 2009

Can our workforce compete in an increasingly digital world?

Australia prides itself on being an advanced society with a sophisticated information economy but how true is that and how well equipped are our citizens to excel in a 21st century characterised by rapidly changing technologies? The Digital Education Revolution (DER) is an unprecedented program aimed at improving access to information and communications technologies (ICT) in schools across the country to help raise digital literacy in our school children. This is seen as essential for our future. Children however aren’t the only members of our society to be impacted by these rapid changes and there are other initiatives in place to support learners in VET and Higher Education. But what about the rest of us? We are all lifelong learners, all striving to survive and hopefully succeed in what are turning out to be extremely challenging times. Being ‘digitally literate’ is essential to that survival. Those who understand and can exploit technologies will do far better than those who do not. Having a ‘digital presence’ that you can manage and exploit will no doubt be very helpful. It is hard to conceive of an advanced society in just a few years time where its citizens do not have a digital presence of their own. Eportfolios will play an important role in establishing such a presence. Many institutions offer eportfolio services for their students that assist them throughout their time with the institution and transitioning out to further education or employment. However, over a lifetime we make many such transitions and very few eportfolios readily support this lifelong process. Globally, this challenge and also the opportunities that it presents are starting to be recognised. In parts of the USA, Europe and the United Kingdom we are starting to see an increase in regional eportfolios (to support lifelong learners/workers) and also industry specific eportfolios to support professions such as nursing, architecture etc. Given the changing nature of work, industry specific eportfolios might not really be considered lifelong as many people will work in a number of vocations/professions over their lifetime. We may change the regions that we live in too but generally we still retain citizenship of a given country. What is Australia doing to support lifelong learners, those already in the workforce/trying to re-enter the workforce, and those who are not part of formal learning environments, in developing and managing their own ‘digital presence’ so that they can plan and work towards their aspirations and make meaningful contributions towards society as we transform into a (largely) digital world?

Filed under  //   eportfolio  
Posted July 8, 2009

Accessibility - can we do better than the Tube Map?

The London Tube Map is an iconic work of design. Every day of the year it probably helps many thousands of visitors to London and some locals as well navigate their way around this incredible and essential piece of transport infrastructure. The map itself has an interesting history - for an overview see wikipedia (yes, wikipedia - sorry to anyone who snubs it but its a formidable place on the 21st century Web infrastructure). It's not a geographical map but a schematic one that 'displays stations etc in relation to each other. Having visited London a few times over the years I, like many infrequent visitors have come to rely on this map for getting me around the city. However the other day I received a very powerful lesson that this iconic map (fantastic as it is and probably appreciated by millions around the world) is not as helpful as it could be to many people. I walked into a station with an idea of where I needed to go but no idea which lines to take to get there so I went over to the nearest map on the station wall. At the map there was a young guy obviously having difficulty trying to find the station that he needed to get to and he was tracing his finger along a number of lines seeking a particular station. A few people behind him were starting to become impatient and were huffing and puffing and making their irritation known. The young guy was visibly starting to get uncomfortable and just wanted to find his station and get out of there as quickly as possible (its a busy place and it wouldn't be long before more people would be milling around the map). He was getting nowhere and in the end turned around past the people who were venting their frustrations and asked someone 'can you tell me what colour this line is, I am colour blind and cannot work out the name of the line. Well, at that the indignant group behind him fell very silent indeed. Someone kindly told him it was red and within two seconds he had located his station and rapldly moved away. The only way of telling the lines from each other on the map are by their colour but two of the lines on the tube map are red and green, which apparently are difficult colours for many colour blind people to discern. The only way of finding Central line is to look up the index where you will see 'Central' next to a red line. Once the guy in the station knew which line was 'Central' he was immediately on his way. Over the years the tube map has changed a bit and it wasn't always just colours that helped identify the lines so there has been some willingness to change it. On the website for 'Transport for London (TfL) there is a black and white version available but we don't always carry a laptop or netbook around with us which we can just open up and browse the Web with at any station. Smaller devices have their own accessibility problems. TfL however does have a commitment to accessibility on their website and has a number of different variations of the map. I guess if you are forewarned the black and white version is there for you and you could print a version off but it is not the same as having nice big maps on the wall in every station that you can just walk up to and browse as you need. Apparently about 7% to 10% of males suffer from some form of red-green colour blindness so I guess every day hundreds (at least) of Underground users are confused by the map. I downloaded a copy of the tube map and modified it in my photo imaging software rendering it in sepia colours. What a difference that made. Instead of seeing colours easily recognisable now most lines were just brown. Looking at the index and then the map made no sense at all. Now I guess I was experiencing a loose approximation of what it might be like not to be able to discern colours. Red and green both looked brown. I was going to post this image on the blog but from what I understand there are some pretty tight controls on making images of it. Anyway, its easy enough for anyone to do for themselves but I can tell you, it makes a big difference. At a presentation on accessibility I once attended the presenter contended that all of us (able bodied, normally sighted etc) suffer from some disability at some point but for most this may only be temporary (eg unable to walk while recovering from a sport injury, age taking its toll on eyesight etc). Seeing someone inconvenienced and embarrassed by an incident such as the one I saw, minor as it may seem in the scheme of things, is an important reminder of the responsibility service providers must have when developing their services, Web, education or otherwise. Being vigilant, we can all learn how to improve our services.

Filed under  //   accessibility  
Posted June 30, 2009

Reflection - is eportfolio's biggest asset also its biggest problem?

ePortfolio 2009 has run its course and participants from all over the world will start heading home hopefully filled with ideas and enthusiasm for moving the eportfolio agenda forward. During the conference Dr. Helen Barrett mentioned that reflection was at the heart and soul of eportfolios and this was a recurring theme throughout the various workshops and presentations that I attended. Reflection is a core process in many types of eportfolios and it is through this process that we come to learn much about ourselves, what we have achieved, what we are capable of, what our hopes and aspirations are. Another recurring theme during the conference was the personalisation of learning and there was much debate on that. As one keynote speaker noted, 'learning always has been and always will be a personal experience...it is the organisation of education that is impersonal. The impediment has been economic scalability. Technology is making personalisation achievable at scale.' Many at the conference also noted the problem of definition for eportfolios 'ask ten people and you will get ten different answers'. It was interesting to see in the presentation from the University of London's Computer Centre that they actually offer two eportfolios in the online environment that they provide to their students. One is for assessment and the other is for their learning experience - it is through this one that students are able to reflect. Speaking of reflection, the closing session offered an opportunity to reflect on the conference, on eportfolios in general and to ponder the future for eportfolios. While there are many outstanding implementations of eportfolios in educational institutions of all sorts around the world and an increasing number of regional or industry specific eportfolios emerging, eportfolio as a concept remains a difficult sell for many. In the business of education, they are often not seen as essential as say a student record system, LMS or accounting system for example. What value do they offer? Those at the conference obviously have a keen interest in eportfolios and understand the profound impact that reflection can have in learning but is this view more widely supported? Do eportfolios really make such a difference and if so, why aren't they more widely adopted or appreciated? Eportfolios seem to have gained quite some ground in Europe, the USA, New Zealand and arguably Australia but what about the rest of the world? There would seem to be many more very technologically advanced economies and societies that don't seem to be pushing the eportfolio agenda much at all when compared with these regions. Is it that reflection is not valued as highly in areas where eportfolios have not been adopted with the same vigor? In regional or industry specific eportfolios, is the takeup and continued use of eportfolios as high as their providers originally envisioned? If not, what are the reasons preventing such use? What value do users see in them? If they see no significant benefits they are hardly likely to use them. Even in institutional eportfolios strong motivations need to be provided. Do users understand or value reflection? Given a blank page on which to reflect how and where do you start? Are your thoughts/reflections going to remain private once they are in the system and does this matter to you? So... is the very thing that makes eportfolios potentially so beneficial also a real barrier to their widespread adoption (something to reflect upon)?

Filed under  //   eportfolio  
Posted June 26, 2009