Fortnightly Mailing

The Future of Higher Education: Beyond the Campus - a joint JISC, SURF, EDUCAUSE, and CAUDIT report

Via Phil Candy, here is the recently released The Future of Higher Education: Beyond the Campus [20 pages, 100 kB PDF]. Described as a "collaborative visioning of the future of higher education to explore issues common to our countries and memberships", it has been produced jointly by:

• the Council of Australian University Directors of Information Technology, CAUDIT;
• EDUCAUSE (the association for information technology in higher education, based in North America);
• the UK’s Joint Information Systems Committee, JISC;
• the SURFfoundation in the Netherlands.

The report is organised under three broad headings Drivers of Change, Enablers of the Future, and Emerging Themes, and it includes a six-page Underlying Technologies appendix covering: cloud computing; open educational resources; identity management; analytics; mobile devices; collaboration tools. Abstract:

Higher education’s purpose is to equip students for success in life — in the workplace, in communities, and in their personal lives. While this purpose may have remained constant for centuries, the world around colleges and universities is undergoing significant change. Higher education is under pressure to meet greater expectations, whether for student numbers, educational preparation, workforce needs, or economic development. Meanwhile, the resources available are likely to decline. New models, an intense focus on the student experience, and a drive for innovation and entrepreneurism [sic] will ensure that higher education continues to meet society’s needs. Information technology supports virtually every aspect of higher education, including finances, learning, research, security, and sustainability, and IT professionals need to understand the range of problems their institutions face so they apply IT where it brings greatest value. Creating this future will require collaboration across organizational and national boundaries, bringing together the collective intelligence of people from backgrounds including education, corporations, and government.

Insights about Afghanistan and Iraq - a 2008 talk by (and discussion with) Rory Stewart

I chanced on this 25 minute March 2008 talk at Google by Rory Stewart, who at the time was running the Kabul-based NGO the Turquoise Mountain Foundation (but is now a prospective Tory MP). The focus of the talk is on Stewart's walk from Herat to Kabul, with pictures that will be familiar if you've read The places in between and on the work of the Turquoise Mountain Foundation.

The talk is followed by a very wide-ranging and informative 25 minute discussion, which is relevant in the context of current plans to "talk with the Taliban" and which has many insights, for example on the differences between Iraq and Afghanistan, and on the politics of international aid.

The final section on the theory of state-building and the (absurd) 10 preconditions for state-building (47 minutes into the video) is worth waiting for.

As an aside the piece is also a great illustration of the message-multiplying effect of video: there looked to be less than 20 people present for the talk, but over 7000 people have viewed (or started to view) the video. 

OLPC X03 vs Apple iPad

Updated 28 January 2010

">BBC, December 2009

Apple iPad. Source: BBC, January 2010

Meanwhile the arguments, such as Thomas Gideon's, that iThings are crippled, tethered devices over which the user lacks the necessary control are strong. See also this oldish post about The future of the Internet and how to stop it.

If ever you need a really comprehensive "title" drop-down

Just in case you need a really comprehensive (and bizarre)  list of titles for a drop-down menu, or if you want an insight into social class, here is the coding behind a form I had to fill in recently:

<option value="1">Mr</option>
<option value="2">Mrs</option>
<option value="3">Miss</option>
<option value="4">Ms</option>
<option value="5">Dr</option>
<option value="6">Professor</option>
<option value="7">The Rt Revd Dr</option>
<option value="8">The Most Revd</option>
<option value="9">The Rt Revd</option>
<option value="10">The Revd Canon</option>
<option value="11">The Revd</option>
<option value="12">The Rt Revd Professor</option>
<option value="13">The Ven</option>
<option value="14">The Most Revd Dr</option>
<option value="16">Rabbi</option>
<option value="17">Canon</option>
<option value="18">Dame</option>
<option value="19">Chief</option>
<option value="20">Sister</option>
<option value="21">Reverend</option>
<option value="22">Major</option>
<option value="23">Other</option>
<option value="24">Cllr</option>
<option value="25">Sir</option>
<option value="26">Rt Hon Lord</option>
<option value="27">Rt Hon</option>
<option value="28">The Lord </option>
<option value="29">Viscount</option>
<option value="30">Viscountess</option>
<option value="31">Baroness</option>
<option value="32">Captain</option>
<option value="33">Master</option>
<option value="34">Very Revd</option>
<option value="35">Lady</option>
<option value="38">MP</option>

Learning from the Extremes - a CISCO report by Charles Leadbeater and Annika Wong

Here is a link to the executive summary [190 kB PDF] of Learning from the Extremes [621 kB PDF], a thoroughly referenced and visually appealing report about the future of schools by Charles Leadbeater and Annika Wong (link to bio needed) for CISCO, and linked to GETideas.org, an open CISCO-funded "public service site providing community, collaboration, and resources for education leaders worldwide".

The 28 page report takes as its framework this "innovation grid":

                                                   Formal Learning         Informal Learning

Sustaining Innovation     Improve                       Supplement

Disruptive Innovation     Reinvent                      Transform

Key
Improve schools through better facilities, teachers, and leadership.
Supplement schools by working with families and communities.
Reinvent schools to create an education better fit for the times.
Transform learning by making it available in radically new ways.

FriendFeed postings 10 to 23 January 2010

Here are the 10  or so FriendFeed postings I've written over the last two weeks.

Moving to Open Source - tips from 2009 - Guest Contribution by Doug Gowan

Link added 31/1/2010

2009 was the year when I abandoned MS Outlook, adopted OpenOffice for mainstream document production, and switched my laptops and home PCs to Linux. This note may be of use to others who are thinking of going open and need some encouragement and reassurement. How do you stay compatible with all that stuff you've created, and why bother to make the changes anyway? Here are some things I found along the way.

Calendars

For me a key problem to solve was how to keep personal and group calendars in sync across a range of PCs with a variety of operating systems. For years I had kept an MS Outlook calendar going because synchronisation problems with phones and laptops and with group calendars has been painful without it.

White Papers - Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills (ACT21s)

The CISCO/Intel/Microsoft Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills (ACT21s) initiative today published draft Working Group White Papers today, covering the five areas below. A good place to start is this unusually well-illustrated media release [1 MB PDF].

Each of the white papers looks like it deserves reading. According to an announcement at today's Learning and Technology World Forum (attended by ~700 people including over 70 education ministers),  Australia, Finland, Portugal, Singapore, UK, and USA are "signed up" to apply (take account of? actively implement? i do not know) ACT21stCS.

The Combined White Papers can be accessed as a single 9MB PDF file.

Individual Working Group White Papers are as follows:

• 21st Century Skills [2 MB PDF];
• Methodological Issues [2 MB PDF];
• Technological Issues [2 MB PDF];
• Classroom Learning Environments and Formative Evaluations [1 MB PDF];
• Policy Frameworks for New Assessments [1 MB PDF].

FriendFeed postings 6 December 2009 to 9 January 2010

As an experiment I've put below links to the 20 or so FriendFeed postings I've written over the last few weeks.

9/1/2010. Funding Wikipedia through adverts. A discussion is underway.
http://ff.im/e3GVZ

8/1/2010. Mediactive - some principles for media creator/users by Dan Gilmour.
http://ff.im/e018b

7/1/2010. 2020 visions - Nature has a series of brief essays by leading researchers and policy-makers about where different scientific fields will be in 10 years. http://ff.im/dXEHt

6/1/2010. Massive increase in words consumed - well-informed précis by Donald Clark from “How Much Information? 2009 Report on American Consumers" by Roger Bohn and James Short.
http://ff.im/dUh0T

5/1/2010. Reprieve encourages people to sign the No10 petition for a coroner’s inquest into the circumstances of Akmal Shaikh’s execution in China.
http://ff.im/dPVGr

5/1/2010. The night sky in the World - wonderful Italian site about the light-polluted night sky, and where the pollution is least and most.
http://ff.im/dOPOP

4/1/2010. IPPR’s "Global Dimensions if the Financial Crisis" by Gerry Holtham, Managing Partner, Cadwyn Capital LLP - 8 pages of worthwhile insight.
http://ff.im/dE9eZ

23/12/2009. Rewiring Inclusion: Strategies, Tools and Techniques to promote barrier-free learning. ALT/Techdis event on February 8/9 2010 in Nottingham. With many workshops, and with speakers from Google, Yahoo!, universities and colleges.
http://ff.im/diyiS

21/12/2009. "The Programming Historian" - an Open Access introduction to programming in Python, aimed at working historians and other humanists (sic) with little previous experience".
http://ff.im/dbfrL

19/12/2009. Universal Package Tracking Service, built on the Google App Engine (a cloud based service on which developers can build and deploy systems without faffing about with their own infrastructure). Next: a universal assignment-and-where-it-is-in-the-marking queue tracker?
http://ff.im/d6LWo

16/12/2009. The Digital Divide in Numbers: TVs, PCs, Internet users, Mobile around the world. Fascinating piece by Tomi T Ahonen who understands marketing and digital convergence.
http://ff.im/d0Y9m

14/12/20-9. Long piece by Dick Moore about the impact on learner, learning, and the organisation of learning, of always on networked location-aware hand-held devices.
http://ff.im/cU3E8

13/12/2009. Military use of consumer technology. Interesting piece in the Economist about military use of consumer technology.
http://ff.im/cQbNi

12/12/2009. OpenStreetMap - impressive wiki-based open mapping activity/business/campaign, with 90,000 contributors. The aim? To make a free map of the world.
http://ff.im/cO3c5

9/12/2009. How Google Can Help Newspapers. Alan Patrick writes a tongue-in-cheek (?) parody of a piece by Eric Schmidt's in the Wall Street Journal piece.
http://ff.im/cDZDc

6/12/2009. Credit not Charity the Kiva Way - nice piece by Dick Moore in Tools and Taxonomy about the Kiva model for supporting economic development.
http://ff.im/cwM2P

The mobile Internet will be bigger than most think - giant document (but only a taster) from Morgan Stanley Research

Via Stephen Downes via Gary Woodill here is a 424 page document from Morgan Stanley Research, [48 MB PDF] designed as a giant taster for a $59 publication.

For a taster there is plenty to mull over, including:

• about 10 pages of introductory narrative;
•  a particularly useful 8 page glossary;
• a shorter (92 slide) introduction;
• a long (659 slide) presentation covering 8 themes, each backed by a page or two of narrative.

The themes covered are:

• Wealth Creation / Destruction 
• Mobile Ramping Faster than Desktop Internet
• Apple Leading in Mobile Innovation + Impact
• Game-Changing Communications / Commerce Platforms (Social Networking + Mobile) Emerging
• Growth / Monetization Roadmaps (Japan + Desktop Internet) 
• Massive Data Growth Driving Carrier / Equipment Transitions 
• Compelling Opportunities in Emerging Markets
• Regulatory Impact

The snazzy slides are packed with startling data, for example, that Google has yet to achieve the market value that AOL (who?) had in 1998. Alongside this there is plenty of annoying business-cliché:

"We don't know exactly what Google's up to, and it is facing very tough competition, but we do know that in epic battles like the one that's developing around the mobile Internet...with the best and brightest in the hunt...this is a war game and the smartest players are trying to find the holes and stay / get ahead on the field."

Stephen writes:

The report argues, "we believe more users will likely connect to the Internet via mobile devices than desktop PCs within 5 years." This is probably true, and as the report states, because of the prevalence of existing billing methods, commercialization will occur a lot more quickly (of course, this is why there's such a push for the mobile internet, and away from that horrible mostly free desktop internet).

Morgan Stanley Research has issued reports like this in the past, and before getting carried away with the "truth" of this one's predictions, you'd need to review some from the past for their accuracy. But the overwhelming sense you get is that the mobile internet is unstoppable; and that those who concentrate on providing services for PC and laptop users at the expense of users of mobiles will miss out.

1984 - when diskettes were big and floppy

Having a customary New Year clear out I came across this eight inch floppy diskette from the state-of-the-art IBM word-processor that lived round the corner from my workroom in Granville College. I think it had a capacity of 128 (or possibly 256) kB. Diskettes like this had been in use since 1971.

Is all now calm in the VLE world?

Pearson LearningStudio is the product/service that has emerged from the "big beast" of publishing's purchase of Fronter and eCollege. This leaves the public education VLE world - bar future acquisitions - split between three commercial products (Pearson, Blackboard, and Desire2Learn) and two Open Source (Moodle and Sakai).

Pearson dwarfs Blackboard and Desire2Learn. It has a large catalogue of text books, some of which already give their owners access to an array of online learning content. It is an educational publisher with an international marketing infrastructure. It owns awarding bodies such as Edexel. 

Alongside this, both Fronter and eCollege have concentrated from the start on running hosted services rather than on selling software for learning providers to run themselves. (Sure, both Blackboard and Desire2Learn offer hosted services too.)

A supplier of hosted services gains a mass of data about learner behaviour. Google and Amazon are not the only companies that have learned how to extract meaning from such data. So my current "intuitive tip for the next ten years" is that the next phase of VLE development will involve the provision of automated and semi-automated tools that draw on the mass of data about user behaviour and about user performance that hosted VLEs hold (or can access), combining it with data about the individual learner. 

Such tools could provide help and guidance for learners, teachers and others involved in the support of learning (parents, e.g.). Perhaps they could also shape the content, activities etc., that the VLE provides the learner, based on the learner's characteristics, and on factors like the learner's previous behaviour in the system.

The selling point for VLEs that use data in this (dystopian?) way will be improvements in effectiveness and efficiency - nothing wrong with either; but the approach described also raises many issues, some concerned with privacy and data-ownership (it would certainly be interesting to see what the privacy policies of hosted VLEs say about the use to which user data can be put), and others with the continued transfer of "knowledge mediation" from the public to the private sphere. And the technical challenges are formidable. The amount of data is much smaller than is held by really mass systems like Google, and it is more nuanced and multi-dimensional. As my friend David Jennings pointed out when commenting on a draft of this post:

"One reason I can think that your predictive hunch might not come to pass is that VLEs are a different context from Amazon, Google or (for the most part) libraries. In the latter, the data collected is person <--> resource. In VLEs it's person <--> mediator (tutor, peers, group dynamics) <--> activity <--> resource, with lots of scope for unpredictable interactions between these to create 'noise' that drowns out clear statistical associations. In other words, the numbers are a hell of a lot harder to crunch."

Last July the US National Academy of Engineering identified "advance personalised learning" (along with "provide energy from fusion") as a grand engineering challenge for the next decade.  Google now influences what you find. Will hosted VLEs, applying automated statistical analysis to data about users and user behaviour, start to shape what and how students on formal courses learn?

This piece was influenced by David Jennings's 30/1/2009 Web 2.0-style resource discovery comes to libraries - the TILE project.

Desire2Learn and Blackboard settle their patent dispute

[Updated 19 December]

Blackboard and Desire2Learn have settled their patent dispute, with details of the settlement undisclosed. Two anodyne quotes from John Baker and Michael Chasen are included in the media release that appears on both Desire2Learn's and Blackboard's web sites:

Chasen: "We are pleased to have resolved our differences with Desire2Learn. Bringing this matter to resolution is in the best interests of both of our organizations, our respective clients and the broader education community."

Baker: "We're pleased to enter this agreement, and believe it is in the best interests of the educational community. We will continue to focus our attention on our clients, as well as the development of our products and services."

There is more from John Baker on Desire2Learn's blog, and [19/12/2009 update] this 15 December 2009 piece in Campus Technology by Dave Nagel has a reasonably clear potted history. Meanwhile Ray Henderson, ex boss of Angel Learning (acquired by Blackboard earlier this year), and now a senior Blackboard executive, writes a long and carefully crafted post that gives some insights into what looks to have been Blackboard's welcome decision to change its stance somewhat. Excerpt:

"The LMS software category is the result of many things, including plenty of community collaboration over a period of many years. Blackboard both contributed to and benefited from this history just as every other commercial software company or commercial open source services firm does today. While many others had patented specific innovations, the first case played out in public was bound to precipitate a great deal of concern both about the specific patent and the controversial area of software patents generally. 

I’ve now had the benefit of reviewing the overall IP portfolio. To my eyes there are unique contributions in what I’ve seen. And so we face an important question: what business conduct best balances our various obligations and aligns with the values of the client community we serve?

Pondering the balance in this case, I came to the view that it was best for us to bring the matter with Desire2Learn to a close. This dialog has distracted attention from the many positive contributions to the industry that Blackboard has made and can continue to make."

Note. Here is a not very systematic list of other posts related to the Blackboard patent:

• 6 May 2009 - More rationalisation amongst e-learning businesses;
• 23 October 2008 - Blackboard vs Desire2Learn: what is the other side of the story?
• 31 May 2008 - Lucid summary of Blackboard's defence of its patent;
• 25 March 2008 - US Patent and Trademark Office merges re-examinations of Blackboard Inc.'s Patent Number 6988138;
• 7 March 2008 - Follow-up links relating to Blackboard's successful patent infringment claim against Desire2Learn (updated 7 March);
• 27 February 2008 - Riina Vuorikari - Patents and e-learning do not make a good match - what’s “Blackboard Inc. vs. Desire2Learn” gotta do with the EU?;
• 9 February 2008 - Blackboard v Desire2Learn: Joint Final Pre-trial Order;
• 3 August 2007 - Blackboard Inc. v Desire2Learn - court issues order construing claim terms;
• 20 June 2007 - Blackboard v Desire2Learn - claim construction briefs filed;
• 1 February 2007 - Blackboard issues "Patent Pledge";
• 25 January 2007 - United States Patent & Trademark Office orders re-examination of Blackboard Patent;
• 9 December 2006 - Two contrasting views about software patents. A debate between Eben Moglen and Blackboard's Matt Small;
• 2 December 2006 - Blackboard: two separate re-examination
  requests to the US Patent and Trade Mark Office; and an application to the Court from Desire2Learn for a stay in proceedings;
• 27 October 2006 - EDUCAUSE on Blackboard: "patenting a community creation is anathema to our culture";
• 16 October 2006 -  John Mayer interviews various lawyers with patent knowhow;
• 10 September 2006 - The new "post-patent" environment for e-learning: a perspective. Guest contribution by Jim Farmer;
• 9 September 2006 - Blackboard's work for IMS;
• 8 August 2006 - Did the US Department of Justice know about the patent when it cleared Blackboard's acquisition of Web CT?;
• 26 July 2006 - Blackboard's US Patent 6988138.

Note. Here is a not very systematic list of other posts related to the Blackboard patent:

• 6 May 2009 - More rationalisation amongst e-learning businesses;
• 23 October 2008 - Blackboard vs Desire2Learn: what is the other side of the story?
• 31 May 2008 - Lucid summary of Blackboard's defence of its patent;
• 25 March 2008 - US Patent and Trademark Office merges re-examinations of Blackboard Inc.'s Patent Number 6988138;
• 7 March 2008 - Follow-up links relating to Blackboard's successful patent infringment claim against Desire2Learn (updated 7 March);
• 27 February 2008 - Riina Vuorikari - Patents and e-learning do not make a good match - what’s “Blackboard Inc. vs. Desire2Learn” gotta do with the EU?;
• 9 February 2008 - Blackboard v Desire2Learn: Joint Final Pre-trial Order;
• 3 August 2007 - Blackboard Inc. v Desire2Learn - court issues order construing claim terms;
• 20 June 2007 - Blackboard v Desire2Learn - claim construction briefs filed;
• 1 February 2007 - Blackboard issues "Patent Pledge";
• 25 January 2007 - United States Patent & Trademark Office orders re-examination of Blackboard Patent;
• 9 December 2006 - Two contrasting views about software patents. A debate between Eben Moglen and Blackboard's Matt Small;
• 2 December 2006 - Blackboard: two separate re-examination
  requests to the US Patent and Trade Mark Office; and an application to the Court from Desire2Learn for a stay in proceedings;
• 27 October 2006 - EDUCAUSE on Blackboard: "patenting a community creation is anathema to our culture";
• 16 October 2006 -  John Mayer interviews various lawyers with patent knowhow;
• 10 September 2006 - The new "post-patent" environment for e-learning: a perspective. Guest contribution by Jim Farmer;
• 9 September 2006 - Blackboard's work for IMS;
• 8 August 2006 - Did the US Department of Justice know about the patent when it cleared Blackboard's acquisition of Web CT?;
• 26 July 2006 - Blackboard's US Patent 6988138.

The Digital Economy Bill's "copyright infringement provisions" - analysis by Frances Davey for the Open Rights Group

"The Bill's proposal goes far beyond what we have seen attempted in other countries such as France and New Zealand."

Via Martyn Bailey I found that the Open Rights Group has published a
fairly detailed assessment of the copyright infringement provisions of the Digital Economy Bill, by Frances Davey, a barrister who specialises in technology and media law.

Here is the "summary of the problems" from the piece:

• "The key question of who will be disconnected from the internet and for what reason is subject to no democratic control and requires no consultation to be made.

• Although the codes must be objectively justifiable, non-discriminatory, proportionate and transparent this most important question will be decided by order of the Secretary of State who is not required to be adhere to any principles of proportionality etc.

• Some decisions (such as whether there has been a copyright infringement) that affect individuals will not be subject to appeal; those that are may not have an adequate route of appeal.

• Many of the important details are left to codes of practice which will not be subject to sufficient parliamentary scrutiny - in some cases there need be no scrutiny at all.

• The Bill has an inflexible and stereotyped view of the way in which access to the internet is provided which ignores many useful and important business models: many business from Weatherspoons and McDondalds to the British Library and local community access projects will be affected and may have to cease to provide internet access."

Economist special report on climate change

Image from Economist 5/12/2009

This week's Economist has a 26 page (14 if you ignore the adverts) special report about climate change, to coincide with the Copenhagen summit, and from which the chart above is taken. Here is the report's introduction. You can also download a personal copy of the whole report as a PDF from the Economist's web site. (Here is a Gapminder animation of similar data to that contained in the chart.)