Not a fan of spam

All you ever needed to know about spam, but were afraid to ask is on the BBC news site today. It's 15 years since Joel Furr first applied the old Monty Python sketch term to unsolicited e-mails. It's one of those things we all seem to put up with, and no one seems to complain about anymore. Anti-spam software doesn't seem to work. If you reply, they know they have a 'live one'.

When I used to receive junk mail from insurance or credit card companies, my response was to simply bundle up the contents, stuff them all into the pre-paid return envelope and send it back. The junk mailer then had to pay twice for the privilege of discovering that I wasn't interested. The junk mail soon stopped coming.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could do the same thing to spammers as I do when I received junk mail? Send it staright back to them with interest (say 1000 copies) and clog up their freakin' mailbox??? Patricia Wallace - in her book 'The Psychology of the Internet' says that getting rid of spam is the psychological equivalent of 'weeding the garden'. Well, I have to 'weed my garden' every day. If anyone has a solution I think we should all be told....

Meme: Passion Quilt

Right. It's an interesting challenge and looks a little like a chain letter, but here goes. Mike Hasley, of TechWarrior Blog, has laid down a challenge for me and 4 others to add to a collection of photos that represent our passion in teaching/learning. I have to tag it 'Meme: Passion Quilt' and post it on a blog, Flickr, FaceBook or some other social networking tool with a brief commentary of why it is a passion for me. I suppose it's quite appropriate for me to be taking part in something with the tag of 'passion' on Good Friday of all days.

So, above is my picture taken from a tour of South African township schools in 2004. I came out of the school and was instantly surrounded by dozens of school kids, all eager to talk to me. They were such great kids, full of energy and all desperate to learn something new. I showed them my digital camera and took some shots of them. They were probably still talking about it for weeks afterwards. The title of my photo is: 'A Passion to Show'.

Now I have to tag five other friends to see if the meme spreads... Helen Keegan, James Clay, Graham Attwell, Josie Fraser, and Andy Pullman.

Clarke's legacy

So farewell to Sir Arthur C. Clarke, who has died at the age of 90. Born in Somerset, and the son of a postal worker, he was probably best known for his work as a science fiction writer, with books such as 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968 - pictured) and Rendevous with Rama (1972). I enjoyed reading his books as a lad, and still recall the abstract beauty and surreality of the Stanley Kubrick film that was made based on his novel. I particularly recall the psychopathic supercomputer HAL, which reminds me a little of someone else...

But Arthur C. Clarke leaves a legacy of a different kind. Not everyone has read his books or seen the films, but everyone in the Western Industrialised world, and many more in the emerging nations make use of one of his ideas every day. Geosynchronous satellites. It was his idea originally - that's why communication satellites are now placed above the equator at around 23,000 miles high, in the 'Clarke Belt'.

We have a lot to thank him for, and I still keep a link to a facsimile of his 1945 Wireless World article about 'rocket ships' and 'extra terrestrial relays' on the satellite technology pages of my e-learning website. Take a read. It's well worth it just to see how far we have come, and to acknowledge the great man's prescience....

Web 2.0 again

I'm sat in the Web 2.0 workshop which is being run by James Clay (Gloucestershire College), and we are exploring a range of social software tools. James is asking us all to report back at the end of the session using a variety of tools, including blogs, podcasts and YouTube videos. He has set up a blog called Molenet which everyone is posting their responses into. Everyone is asking the right questions, and everyone is realising that there are probably more questions than answers.

Earlier Graham Russell, Mark Pannell and I presented a session on the iHub project (see the post from earlier today) and had a heavy duty discussion about privacy, anonymity, control and institutional policies. It was interesting, and very helpful to hear views from the audience (who are mainly very tech-savvy people working in learning technology) and to be able to make mental notes about possible research and development directions for the future of e-learning provision.

I'm shy, therefore iHub

I'm speaking at the JISC Regional Support Centre conference in Taunton later today. (streuth - it's 1.30 am already - better get some kip in a moment....) It's an event especially laid on for learning technologists and 'webmasters' (are there any of those still around?) and looks so interesting I may stay for the whole day.... I'm accompanied by my colleague Graham Russell who is a health psychologist here at the University of Plymouth, and a marauding band of learning technologists who are doing wonderful things with ...erm... learning technology at the moment. We will be presenting an update about our project - the development and testing of the iHub - a web service for students who suffer from social anxiety (shyness).

Other presentations are from Mel Roberts (JISC RSC), Janet Harvel (Bridgewater College) and a fellow edublogger ... James Clay (Gloucestershire College). Remember Hood 2.0? That was him, that was....

Taking shape

The new book is taking shape and I have been working on it all week since I returned from the Emerald Isle. Glad I wasn't flying back in yesterday's storms though - no barf bag is large enough.... etc.

The book is now entitled 'Connected Minds, Emerging Cultures' and was accepted for publication late last year by Information Age Publishers in the gool ol' USA. It will (probably) feature 17-20 chapters, if all the authors who have been invited actually submit their chapters, but it's a bit like herding cats at the moment. Most have coughed up, but there are still one or two dragging their feet, and another couple who have had disasterous injuries, illnesses etc and haven't been able to complete their drafts on time. Some of the featured chapters include work by the likes of Steven Furnell (Cybercrime), Palitha Edirisingha (Podcasting), Hugh Miller and Jill Arnold (Digital identities) and Graham Attwell (Personal Learning Environments). All the chapters follow the theme of digital cultures and emerging practices in online learning. One of my own chapters examines the notion of Digital tribes and virtual clans, and explores how technologies are changing the profile of society.

Oh, and the introduction is by Howard Rheingold. It's been a pleasure to work with these very respected academics, but I'm looking forward to putting this book to bed soon, so that everyone can enjoy what I hope will turn out to be a thought provoking and challenging volume.

Locked out

It's been a week of lockouts. I spent most of last week over in County Kerry, on the extreme west coast of Ireland. It's beautiful countryside over there in and around Tralee, but it was bitter cold at times. (opposite is a picture I took of the Ardfert Friary ruins, northeast of Tralee). While I was there I shared a flat with three colleagues, one of whom is a professor at the University of Applied Sciences in Darmstadt, Germany. Poor man got locked out. Not from his room, but from his ensuite bathroom, inside the room. He spent the first 24 hours of his stay unable to access his shaving kit, shower, toilet etc. Eventually, he was relieved when the local repair man turned up and fixed the lock. Actually, we were all relieved.

Later in the week, I got locked out of the flat when I went over to the shop and realised I had forgotten my pass key. Our flat was two floors up, and no amount of shouting or heaving bricks at windows helped. It was very cold. Eventually, a passing student let me in and I began to defrost.

The worst lockout is four days and counting. My e-learning website is down along with just about everything else on the WWW2 server. I have spoken to the computing services who assure me all is being done to restore it. It's very frustrating, because some of my students want to access materials and documents, and of course, all they are met with is a message saying the site is being fixed. Perhaps I should call the Irish repair man in again. At least he only took 24 hours....