Get it in glass

What is the best way to merge web with world? Let me put it another way - how can I integrate my online experiences using social media platforms, with what I do out in the real world? For a while, Augmented Reality (AR) has been promised as the next big thing in enhanced technological living.

Many of us have seen the MIT Sixth Sense wearable projection AR demonstration by Pranav Mistry and Patti Maes, and marvelled. Some of us may even have theorised on the potential impact such systems might have on learning.

What about the aesthetics? Wouldn't it be great to 'wear' your computer, and have it project your content over the top of real world objects? And what about the pragmatics? Wouldn't it be wonderful to have access to as much information you want about any object or person you encounter, at anytime, and in anyplace? Those fantasizing about the prospect of owning an AR wearable may soon experience it for real, in an affordable, mass produced version. Google's Project Glass aims to develop a wearable glasses version of an AR system that links your vision and voice directly to all your social media and web based activities, in real time, and against your real world. Below is a video that demonstrates some of the proposed capabilities for users.



Project Glass will do this by projecting visual information over the top of your normal vision, in a see-through heads up display using a glass visor. This is something the military have been able to do for some time, as a means of enhancing information for helicopter and jet aircraft pilots. The military can afford these expensive AR tools. Up until now, the general public have been unable to gain access due to cost.

That all looks like it is about to change if Google can release a version of its Project Glass AR system that is a) affordable b) aesthetically pleasing so that enough people will invest in a set and c) reliable enough to work in the most challenging conditions (e.g. adverse weather conditions and proofed against idiots). There will be plenty of objections from those who want to keep their online lives distinctly separate from their real lives. Health and safety gnomes will also no doubt warn of the dangers of walking in front of a bus while focusing on your heads up display. There will probably be caveats about eye strain and damage from the non-ionising radiation the AR glasses might be suspected of emitting. Regardless of the objections and warnings such a system might provoke, once Google releases its AR glasses to the public, it may signal the slow but inevitable demise of handheld devices such as the mobile phone, and perhaps even the iPad and other handheld computing.

Image source


Get it in glass by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Content as curriculum?

I think it's about time we reconsidered the way curricula in schools are presented. The tired, just in case model of curriculum just doesn't make sense anymore. Content is still very much king in schools, because 'content as curriculum' is easy and cost effective to deliver, and that is what most governments require and impose. But most teachers will tell you it's not the best approach. When I went to school I was required to attend classes in mathematics, English language and literature, science (physics, biology, chemistry), history, geography, music, art, Religious Education, craft and design, home economics, German and French - all just in case I might need them later in life. With the exception of a few subjects, my schooling didn't make that much sense to me.

Occasionally I hear someone saying "I'm glad I took Latin at school", and then arguing that it helped them to discover the name of a fish they caught whilst out angling on holiday. Well, knowing that thalassoma bifasciatum is a blue-headed wrasse may be wonderful for one's self esteem. It may impress your friends during a pub quiz, but it won't get you a job.... and was it really worth all those hours learning how to conjugate amo, amas, amat simply to be able to one day identify a strange fish, when all you need to do in the digital mobile age is Google it?

The question is, how much do children now need to learn in school that is knowledge based? Do children really need to know what a phrasal verb is, or that William Shakespeare died in 1616 when what they really need to be able to do is write a coherent and convincing job application or construct a relevant CV? We call this type of learning declarative knowledge, because it is 'knowing that' - in other words, the learning of facts. Yet, in a post-modernist world where all knowledge has become increasingly mutable and open to challenge, facts go quickly out of date. I was taught in school that there are nine planets orbiting the sun. Today it appears that Pluto is no longer a planet (but for me he will always be a cartoon dog). Is it Myanmar or Burma? I was told by my geography teacher it was Burma. Then she was right, now she is wrong. Just when did Mao Tse-tung change his name to Mao Zedong? And is the atom still the smallest object known to humankind? No. Now we have something called quantum foam. Apparently it's great for holding the universe together but pretty useless in a wet shave. You see, facts are changing all the time, and very little appears to remain concrete. So why are teachers wasting their own time, and that of the kids, teaching them facts which in a few years time may be utterly out of date? Should we not instead be maximising school contact time by teaching skills, competencies, literacies? After all, it is the ability to work in a team, problem solve on the fly, and apply creative solutions that will be the common currency in the world of future work. Being able to think critically and create a professional network will be the core competencies of the 21st Century knowledge worker. Knowing how - or procedural knowledge - will be a greater asset for most young people. You see, the world of work is in constant change, and that change is accelerating.

My 16 year old son has just embarked on training to become a games designer. If, when I was his age I had told my careers teacher that I wanted to be a games designer, he would have asked me whether I wanted to make cricket bats or footballs. Jobs are appearing that didn't exist even a year or two ago. Other jobs that people expected to be in for life are disappearing or gone forever. Ask the gas mantel fitters or VHS repair technicians. Ask the tin miners, the lamplighters or the typewriter repair people. Er, sorry you can't ask them. They don't exist anymore.

Why do some teachers still provide children with answers when all the answers are out there on the Web? Contemporary pedagogy is only effective if there is a clear understanding of the power and efficacy of the tools that are available. Shakespeare may well have died in 1616, but surely anyone can look this up on Wikipedia if and when they need to find out for themselves? Inquiry based learning is gradually taking hold in schools, but not quickly enough. Give the kids questions from which more questions will arise. Send them out confused and wanting more. Get them using the digital tools they are familiar with to go find the knowledge they are unfamiliar with. After all, these are the tools they carry around with them all the time, and these are the tools they will be using when they enter the world of work. And these are the tools that will mould them into independent learners in preparation for challenging times ahead.

We need to move with the times, and many schools are still lagging woefully behind the current needs of society. Why do we compartmentalise our subjects in silos? When will we begin to realise that all subjects have overlaps and commonalities, and children need to understand these overlaps to obtain a clear and full picture of their world. Without holistic forms of education, no-one is going to make the link between science and maths, or understand how art or music have influenced history. Some schools such as Albany Senior High School in Auckland are already breaking down the silos and supporting learning spaces where students can switch quickly between 'subjects' across the curriculum. Other schools are beginning to realise that ICT is not a subject and shouldn't be taught, but is best placed as embedded across the entire curriculum.

It's about time we all woke up and realised that the world around us is changing, and schools need to change too. After all, the school still remains the first and most important place to train and prepare young people for work. If we don't get it right in school, we are storing up huge problems for the future. Education is not life and death. It's much more important than that.

Next time: Conversation as curriculum


Content as curriculum? by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

In the clouds again

Tonight I'm travelling up to Loughborough University to speak at tomorrow's Google Apps for Education User Group meeting. Together with the University of Portsmouth's Manish Malik I will be presenting a paper on our latest thinking around Cloud Learning Environments. Other speakers include Tony Hirst and Niall Sclater (both at the Open University), Nick Skelton (University of Bristol) and presided over by Martin Hamilton (Loughborough University). You can follow the entire day's proceedings by checking the Twitter hashtag #guug11. Here's our abstract:

Manish Malik (Faculty Learning and Teaching Coordinator at the University of Portsmouth) and Steve Wheeler (Associate Professor of Learning Technology at the University of Plymouth) discuss the recent developments and the patterns emerging within the CMS/LMS/VLE product sector. From BB & Moodle 1.0 to BBoogle & Moodle 2.0/Google to Sakai 3.0/Canvas to a GApps based learning environment. Also they highlight and demo an application that shows the potential that Google Apps and other loosely coupled Web 2.0 services have in creating an open Virtual Learning Environment that is cloud based or a "Cloud Learning Environment."

Image source by Marcos Papapopolus


In the clouds again by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Digital literacy 4: Watch your back!

I'm always asking myself the question - what do my students need to know to be able to use the web effectively? One of the important skills I identified in a previous post on digital literacies is how people manage and protect their privacy. This is aligned to e-safety, which is about protecting people online. Indeed, each of us is vulnerable because there is a huge potential for our privacy to be breached in any online environment. You would certainly be very angry if someone came snooping around your house and rifled through your personal belongings, wouldn't you? And yet many of us can be careless about the way we handle our personal data when we go online. And the extent to which many of us are now electronically connected to others is astounding.

This begs the question - can any of us protect our privacy on the web? Social media seem increasingly pervasive, and many millions of people put up details of their private lives every day - contact details, personal photographs, dates of birth etc - details they would never dream of giving to a stranger. Oh look, there's someone I haven't met before. Hellooo. I'm going to go up to them and give them my phone number and address, some photos of me on holiday in my swimwear, a list of my best friends and my date of birth! Oh, and they can have my credit card details too while I'm at it! Would anyone do that, even if they were very extremely attracted? It would be bizarre behaviour. And yet people do exactly that every day online. I'm amazed at the photos some students put up on social network sites. It's not just pictures of them falling out of a pub at 3 o'clock in the morning, it may also be pics of their friends too. With their permission or not? I wonder if they will still be happy about those photos in a few year's time when they apply for a job, and their potential employer Googles them to see who they are.

For me it's all a matter of choice. How many of your personal details you make available on the web is really up to you. Your privacy settings may help you to protect stuff. but even if you know how to choose the correct settings (and many students don't) how can you be really certain that your content is fully protected from prying eyes? Posting up your home address and telephone number, and then posting in your timeline that you are going on holiday next week, might be asking for trouble. How do you know who has access to your timeline? How do you know how many people read your Twitter feed or your updates?

You also leave a trail behind you wherever you go on the Internet. Google and other search engines maintain a record of all the sites you visit during your time online. Many sites send cookies to your pc when you enter them. Some of these can be malicious, allowing other people to gain access to your pc memory, and if spyware has been used, to also record your keystrokes when you pay for something on Amazon using your credit card. Although it's still quite rare for this to happen, this kind of criminal activity is on the increase, and without appropriate Internet Security software, you run the risk of being one of the victims. Have you thought about the amount of personal detail you hold about yourself and your friends on your mobile phone? If you use public wifi networks or open your mobile to bluetooth connectivity, you may also be opening up the entire content of your mobile for intruders to capture and use. This useful report from the BBC Click team reveals that although malware for mobile phones is on the increase, it is still simple user naivety that is responsible for the majority of problems of this kind.

For me, raising the awareness of students and other web users to the dangers of the Internet will always include the problem of maintaining privacy. The golden rules are: Be careful what sites you visit (your security software should alert you to any unsafe sites), be careful what you post up online that may have personal information in it (this is just common sense) and watch your back - protect your identity, because you never know who may be looking over your shoulder. On Monday: Managing digital identities.

Watch your back by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Open educational practices

I made a video recording for Core Ed while I was at the Ulearn conference in New Zealand last month. They sat me in front of two cameras, and asked me to talk off the cuff, no script, about something that I was passionate about. It didn't take me long to think up what I wanted to say and I'm pleased that I did it in one take (Core Ed were pleased too, because minimal studio time and editing were needed!). I spoke about Open Educational Practices, (including Open Educational Resources and Open Scholarship) a subject which I am learning more about all the time as the movement grows and gains traction. You see, the idea behind open practices is that anyone can gain access for free, at any time and in any place - courses, software, ideas, knowledge, people... OEP requires everything to be open - for access, scrutiny and repurposing. So whether it's licensing agreements such as Copyleft or Creative Commons, or open access journals, or even massively online open courses, the open educational practices are gaining ground and influence in the academic world.



It's not going to be easy to change a model where knowledge has become a commodity though. Too many powerful people and organisations stand to lose a lot if everything becomes 'free' and open. But things are changing slowly. The publishing houses who once had a strangle hold on academic journals are beginning to lose their grip. Some are having to change their business models. Google Reader and Google Books for example, are giving us all more than a glimpse of the pages of just about every book that has ever been published. And open access journals are opening up knowledge for all without payment. So when a student comes up against a paywall - what will they do? They will go elsewhere of course - to the free versions that are out there on the web. I know many colleagues who now refuse to publish their research in traditional journals - only open access will do for them. Traditional journals can be slow to publish, there is often a backlog of journals articles and too few issues to put them in, and citation frequency from open access journals can be more rewarding. These refusnik colleagues are growing in numbers too, and so are the open access journals to accommodate them. Is this the start of the end for traditional academic publishing? Watch the video and then tell me whether you think I'm on the right track about OEP, or whether I'm barking up the wrong tree. After all, that's exactly what open scholarship is all about....


Open educational practices by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Bad behaviour

I have seen a lot of bad behaviour this week, and it's not been from our politicians. I was in Germany most of last week, working on a project in Erlangen, near to the Bavarian city of Nuremburg. While I was there I was taken by my hosts to sample the atmosphere (and the amber nectar) of the local Erlangen Beer Festival. It was quite a sight, with hundreds of metres of benches and trestle tables stretching out across a large hillside area, with live stages and all kinds of music from thrash metal to oompah bands, to satisfy the musical tastes of just about everyone. The beer flowed freely and was consumed from large steins. Most people enjoyed the event, but quite a few also overindulged to such an extent that they were eventually dancing on the tables in hordes. I guess that's what beer festivals are about. Before we knew it we were engulfed by the heaving mass and I managed to extricate myself. Now I know why it was called the Munich Putsch - people kept putsching and tschoving me, and schtepping on my feet. People began falling off the tables, and so did the steins, many breaking explosively beneath the stomping feet of the drunken ones. We got out of the way pretty quickly, and smiled at the antics, but I still managed to get stomped on a few times, and my jacket now smells strangely of a variety of Bavarian brews. I'm glad I didn't wear my new white Reeboks to the event - they would have been absolutely ruined. I know it can happen anywhere, not just in Germany, but it was kind of fun, end of story.

Er.... not quite. Yesterday, waiting for my train to Nuremburg, I encountered more drunken hordes at Erlangen Railway Station, all trying to get home after a full night out on the town. And this time it wasn't so funny. Some were so worse for wear they had to be helped along the platform. Others amused themselves by smashing full beer bottles, and the platform soon resembled a scene from the movie Die Hard. I can only guess they didn't think the beer was that good. The worst was to come though, when several drunken young guys turned on others in the throng and there ensued a thumping match and more breaking of glass. Several passengers, myself included, had to move sharply out of the way. The Station Master shouted across the he was raufing die Polizei, and they shouted back, please do, we'll fight them as well. Ach du lieber Gott. In the distance the sirens began to wail, and before long, half a dozen tooled up Polizei had descended to 'sort things out'. It was at that point my train arrived and I gratefully got the hell out of there.

The other bad behaviour of note this week was less violent, but is supposedly bad enough for Google to start shutting down blogs. BBC Click this week featured one notable incident where videoblogger had his account taken down because he had posted footage of the build up to the Jimmy Carr comedy show (audience arriving etc, but none of the actual show). The blog was spotted by the said comic's management team (who ironically seem to have no sense of humour) who then complained to Google. Google removed the entire account. The blogger then had to fight for several months to get his blog restored. Apparently he had fallen foul of Google's "3 strikes and your out" rule, having previously transgressed by inadvertently posting up copyrighted material on his YouTube account. The blogger makes the point that a) It's a draconian measure to take down an entire blog just for a few minor breaches, especially after he said he would delete the offending posts the moment he was informed he had potentially breached copyright, and b) Google doesn't really fully explain what is involved in this rule, so how can people comply if they don't know? I wonder what other bloggers out there think about this? Is the blogger just whinging, or had he got a point? Is the way Google manage this rule fair or are they being too heavy handed? And who is behaving badly here, the videoblogger.... or Google?

This work by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License

Can we talk?

The World Wide Web may have connected many people together and made the world a smaller place in the short time it has existed, but it also has the potential to cause division and social upheaval. The web wars are hotting up. At a macro level, we have a nation state taking on one of the giants of the Internet. In the red corner, the People's Republic of China, and in the multicoloured corner, Google. When one of the largest icons of free speech clashes headlong with the largest single totalitarian force on the planet, there is going to be collateral damage. Google says it is pulling out of operations in China, because of its attempts to suppress free speech. So is Google big enough to take on the world's largest nation state?

Daniel Lyons, writing in this week's Newsweek says 'the Internet is bigger than any one country - even a country as big as China. Calling out China as someone who "doesn't get it" is a way of putting the rest of the world on notice. The Chinese people are finding their own ways around the 'Great Firewall of China', sidestepping filters, using proxy servers to gain access to the sites and ideas its government is trying to suppress. China may be big, and its economy one of the most successful worldwide, but it won't win this war.

At the personal level the web war is also causing casualties. In this week's Spectator, Rod Liddle recounts the story of yet another victim of social network indiscretion. This time it's the hapless Paul Chambers who, frustrated with a decision by his local airport to shut down due to the recent snow, made a seemingly innocuous remark on Twitter that he was going to 'blow the airport sky high' if they didn't get their act together. Someone reported it as a terrorist threat. The Police were called in. Chambers was arrested, his laptop, iPhone and home computer confiscated. He has subsequently been banned from flying from any UK airport, and has even been suspended from his job. In his commentary, Liddle asks reasonably whether there is any genuine terrorist who would actually announce his plans over a public channel like Twitter. Liddle condemns the British authorities for over-reacting, for grotesque officiousness, self-righteous posturing and a 'complete and utter lack of common sense and natural justice'. He'll probably be suspended from his job now for stating his opinion. One wonders how far away the UK is from becoming just a little bit like China in its suppression of free speech?

Image source

Noughties ... but nice

The first decade of the 21st Century was highly significant for personal learning. Such a vast array of new personal devices and web applications was introduced that have become so deeply ingrained in our everyday lives, many of us would probably feel at a loss if we were suddenly transported back to 1999. If we time jumped from then to 2009, the way we now communicate, learn, search for information, share content and consume entertainment would be unrecognisable. The concept of personal learning environments was also introduced, as a counterpoint to the notion of the VLE. Here are just a few of the personal technological innovations (good or bad) that emerged in the noughties:

Mobile ringtones: OK.... perhaps we could do without ringtones. Those irritating little tunes you hear on the train, in the supermarket queue and even interrupting performances in the theatre have actually grossed over £112 million in sales in the UK alone, and they ain't finished yet. As the next generation of mobile users comes of age, they too will demand that their favourite tunes be made into ringtones. The music industry must be rubbing its hands with glee.

iPods and Podcasts: The Touch, the Nano, the Shuffle, the Classic, you name it, versions of the iPod popped up and grabbed our attention in the noughties. First appearing in 2001, the iPod series is now the most successful digital audio player in history with over 220 million worldwide sales at the time of writing.

The Nintendo DS (Dual Screen) appeared in 2004 and was one of the first handheld games consoles with a built in microphone and wireless connectivity. The dual screen technology was not as smart as we first thought, but never the less, it's a great little device to amuse yourself with for a few hours whilst waiting for a train, on the bus, or in the dentist's chair (eew).

The iPhone: Apple strikes again. For most people who have them they are the best thing since sliced bread. But there are those who absolutely hate this smart, touch surface mobile phone. Battery life sucks, the camera on the first series was naff and they are expensive when you are locked into an O2 contract. But they have revolutionised mobile phones with their pinch gesturing and responsive multi-touch screens, and with several copycat devices available, there really is no going back now.

Social networking sites: Facebook (2006), Myspace (2003), Bebo (2005), LinkedIn (2003) and other sites together have changed the face of social networking for ever. For good or bad, millions of users worldwide flock every day to their favourite social networking sites for their daily fix of pokes, foodfights, online games status updates and live chat. Friends and friends of friends - the race is on to see who can collect the most links to people they will never ever meet. Seriously, social networking has blurred the boundaries between public and private, business and leisure, even good and bad taste. The way you manage your on-line identity is more important than ever. Nothing it seems, is 'yours' anymore - once you have posted personal information or photos to Facebook, they are no longer simply 'your property'. They are there forever, and burying the past may prove to be a problem for many...

YouTube: Freaking out, spoofing, parodies, pirated music videos and plenty of dross - that's YouTube for you. Before Youtube it was very difficult to upload your video clips to the Internet. Youtube made it easy for millions. If you want to know a fact you Google it, but if you want to see a clip, you YouTube it.

Nintendo Wii: This small object of desire appeared in November 2006. If we were cynical, we could surmise that Nintendo worked out if all their games playing customers continued to sit on their backsides, they would get fat and die of heart attacks. So they invented an active sports style handset to get games players up and moving about, thus keeping them alive longer so they could earn more money and spend it on Nintendo games and Wii technology. Clever.

Wikipedia: Created by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger in 2001, Wikipedia has grown rapidly to become one of the largest reference web sites, attracting approximately 65 million visitors each month. It's the first stop students make when they need to know something, and also the most vilified reference source for many scholars and academics. Where else would most of us go though, for quick information.

Google apps: Streetview, Scholar, Google Earth, Docs, etc - all of these applications appeared in the last decade, and have revolutionised the way we learn, work together, look up information and generally play out our online lives. Augmented reality was introduced as a result of the combination of a number of smart device apps including mashups, global positioning and touch screen technologies. The coming decade will see smart devices, augmented reality and haptic semantic applications coming of age. We will then see how these can be applied to enhance and extend the personal learning environment.

...and of course.... there was Twitter: Forget all the celebrity rubbish and media hype. Twitter is one of the best stripped down social networking tools available to humankind. Don't be deceived by it's simplistic appearance though. It's a powerful tool with plenty of filtering capability and its amplification and connection potential is yet to be fully tapped. Twitter and its third party bolt-on tools will be one to watch in the next few years.

So what are we to make of this truly technological ten years? We have seen radical shifts in our views of identity, relationships, copyright, communication and learning. These are deep changes that will not be recinded, and as we move into an ever more connected society, the changes will increase in their pace and intensity. Personalised learning has never been so easy to establish, and never more contentious. No-one can quite agree on what a personal learning environment is, but that is predictable, because for each of us, it is something different. And what of the future? We don't know what the next decade will hold, but we do know this - it will be increasingly connected. It will also be different - probably more different than we can begin to imagine.

Image source

Zip it, Block it, Flag it

80% of children in the UK have encountered unsuitable or harmful content on the Internet (Byron, 2009 - see report link below) and it has usually been down to parents to educate their children about keeping safe on the web - that is until now.

'Zip it, Block it, Flag it' is the tag line for a new campaign introduced by the UK government, which will show primary school children (ages 5-11) how to avoid nasty content and risky conversations on social networking sites. Zip it - keep your personal stuff private and think about what you say and do online. Block it - Block people who send nasty messages and don't open unknown links and attachments. Flag it - Flag up with someone you trust if anything upsets you or if someone asks to meet you offline. The campaign is being supported by all the major players, including Facebook, Microsoft, Google and Myspace. CEOP - the UK Government's child protection agency who are also involved, recently criticised the social networking services for what it perceived as their lack of action over cyberbullying and other forms of internet risk. They may be slightly uncomfortable partners.

Although e-safety will not be delivered in formal online safety classes, the key messages will be integrated into all other subjects across the curriculum. This means that primary school teachers will now have to become more expert in their knowledge of social networking, instant messaging and other new technologies and will need to be a little more savvy about how kids use them. Whether teachers will have the time or the space to squeeze more content into an already overburdened National Curriculum remains to be seen. We shall see whether this campaign is a success over the long term, or whether it goes to the wall like so many other UK Government schemes, but on the surface, this approach should be welcomed by parents and teachers alike. It's just a pity it wasn't introduced sooner.

Related Articles

Online safety push for 5 year-olds (BBC News)

Code for online safety (The Guardian)

Schools to give lessons in internet safety (PC Advisor)

Green Cross Code for the Internet (The Telegraph)

Safer Children in a Digital World (Report by Dr Tanya Byron)

Brown launches Net Code for children (The Register)

Image source

Invasion of the privacy snatchers

There is a lot of press coverage at the moment about invasion of privacy, and much discussion on how it can be protected (privacy, not the invasion of it). We have been told about how Facebook and other social networking tools 'own and use' our personal data. Several news items in the last 24 hours have dealt with reactions to the use of technology to snoop on, record or track ordinary people. First there are the very naughty boys at Google who have upset the normally placid residents of a sleepy English village.

Those living in the quiet village of Broughton were alerted to the presence of the Street View Google car as it trundled into their outskirts with its robot 360 degree camera atop. They stopped the car, challenged the driver, gave him a lecture about their privacy, and politely persuaded him to leave the same way he had come. The press and media of course, got hold of the story - and with their characteristic understatedness have dubbed the incident the 'Battle of Broughton'. Now the village of Broughton and its residents have been invaded by dozens more cameras, lighting rigs, satellite vans, intrepid reporters and film crews, all intent on protecting the privacy of the villagers, by broadcasting their faces and identities to the world.

In another news item reported on the same day, Members of the European Parliament (that hotbed of democracy and decency), have called for organisations that track web use, to themselves be tracked and surveilled. The expression 'who watches the watchers?' begins to take on an entirely new complexion. The news item says that the Euro MPs have called for organisations who transgress to be blacklisted.

These reports 'would name and shame organisations carrying out illegal or disproportionate amounts of surveillance' says the news item. Does that perchance also include the UK government then? After all, the British people are the most observed and surveilled people on the planet. There are per capita more closed circuit TV cameras on the streets of Britain than there are in any other nation. For it's encore, the UK government is considering putting trackers into cars to check how many miles each of us do every month. And they are putting sensors inside wheelie-bins to see how much rubbish we throw away every week. Next they will no doubt want to measure how much toilet paper in inches each of us use. Eeew.

The invasion of the privacy snatchers has started. But it's not those naughty boys from Google we should be worrying about. It's the government that gets in no matter who you vote for...

Image Source (inspired by @MarkPower)

Outage Outrage

So Pakistan is being blamed for the short outage of YouTube yesterday (BBC News online). It's not the first time that the video sharing site has been blocked either. China has had a bash, and so has Iran.

The correspondent writes: "BBC News has learned that the nearly two-hour long blackout was almost certainly connected to Pakistan Telecom and internet service provider PCCW. The country ordered ISPs to block the video-sharing website because of content deemed offensive to Islam ... to block Pakistan's citizens from accessing YouTube it is believed Pakistan Telecom hijacked the web server address of the popular video site. Those details were then passed on to the country's internet service providers so that anyone in Pakistan attempting to go to YouTube was instead re-directed to a different address. "

So it's all about religious sensibility again is it? Just where is the 'fun' in fundamentalism I ask you? Those decent folk at Google (YouTube's owners) are absolutely livid of course, because they don't see why one country's actions in blocking YouTube video content should be able to cause their servers to shut down, on an almost global basis for nearly two hours. How can one censor decide what the entire world is going to watch...? I'm sure they are asking. And Google are right. We must all be free to decide. That is what democracy is all about.

With my last ounce of strength, I will fight to defend the right of millions of users to have as much access as they want to mediocre, jerky content, poor quality grainy footage and endlessly inane comments.

Dinosaur warning!

Is the traditional library in danger of becoming a dinosaur? Well, a new report, issued on 16th January and commissioned by JISC and the British Library, warns it may do if libraries don't change to keep pace with digital trends.

The report challenges the common assumption that the ‘Google Generation’ – young people born or brought up in the Internet age – is the most adept at using the web. The report by the CIBER research team at University College London claims that, although young people demonstrate an ease and familiarity with computers, they rely on the most basic search tools and do not possess the critical and analytical skills to asses the information that they find on the web.

The report ‘Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future’ also shows that research-behaviour traits that are commonly associated with younger users – impatience in search and navigation, and zero tolerance for any delay in satisfying their information needs – are now the norm for all age-groups, from younger pupils and undergraduates through to professors.

The study calls for libraries to respond urgently to the changing needs of researchers and other users and to understand the new means of searching and navigating information. Learning what researchers want and need is crucial if libraries are not to become obsolete, the report warns.

The findings also send a stark message to increasingly lack-lustre Brown government - that young people are dangerously lacking information skills. Well-funded information literacy programmes are needed, it continues, if the UK is to remain as a leading knowledge economy with a strongly-skilled next generation of researchers. Will the government see the dangers and cough up some funds? Do a dog's lips move when it reads?

Dame Lynne Brindley DBE, Chief Executive of the British Library, said of the report findings: “Libraries have to accept that the future is now. At the British Library we have adopted the ‘Wiki’ view and the ‘Beta’ mindset. We have seized many of the opportunities new technology offers to inspire our users to learn, discover and innovate. However, we must do more and welcome the report findings, particularly the need to equip users of all age-groups with wider information and digital literacy skills.”

Dr Malcolm Read, Executive Secretary of JISC, welcomed the publication of the report, saying: “These findings add to our growing understanding of subjects that should concern all who work in further and higher education – the changing needs of our students and researchers and how libraries can meet their needs. We hope that this report will encourage debate around these important questions. We hope it will also serve to remind us all that students and researchers will continue to need the appropriate skills and training to help navigate an increasingly diverse and complex information landscape.”

Ich bin ein Berliner

I love Berlin, and cannot believe it has taken me so long to come back here. It is truly magical at and around Christmas time, with many of the trees in the streets lit up with lights. I am at Online Educa and have just witnessed one of the best keynotes I have ever seen. Let me attempt to encapsulate some of the content from the first session.

The first keynote was presented by Professor Sugata Mitra, seen above left, who is an Indian national who now works at the University of Newcastle. He reported on a 5 year long and ongoing project to place computers in Indian villages. He set up videocameras to record children as they interacted with the computer and each other, in what has been dubbed the Hole in the Wall project. Amazingly, he showed evidence that not only do the children teach themselves to use the computers, they also learned English as a result of their use of browsers such as Google. To cap it all, he amazed the 2000 plus delegates with the question - does language matter... and showed evidence that not only had the children learnt to speak English - they had also learned complex and difficuly concepts such as genetics, and could answer questions when prompted.

More to follow as time and space allow, but for now, goodnight from a very chilly and festive Berlin!

Hard drive home

Well, it's all over for another year, including the shouting. My hard drive is full and now I'm heading off on another hard drive ... home, along with all the other weary but contented delegates. We have just heard the final ALT-C 2007 keynote speech, from Google Head of Research Peter Norvig. It was I think, a fitting end to a very good conference. Peter is a thoroughly nice guy, and totally unassuming, considering his collossal achievements. Yesterday I spent time talking to him as we walked down the hill from the Law and Science building between sessions. He was interested in hearing from me about the state of play of learning technology in the UK. I told him that it wasn't so much a discipline as a field of disparate activities that is still in the process of evolving into a discipline. I suggested to him that events like ALT-C can act as rallying points for technologists, software developer, managers, academics and corporate bods. Without the organisation of ALT we would have no hope of creating a discrete discipline known as 'Learning Technology'. He nodded sagely.

Peter's talk I thought was a little tentative at first, given that he admitted to being less than au fait with the state of British learning technology. Resplendent in his colourful robot motif Hawaiin shirt, Peter used a number of historical illustrations such as the apprentice model of learning, and Gutenburg's printing press as he crafted his story. There was extensive use of the work of that wonderful old fossil Benjamin Bloom which he used as a frequent scratching post. If he had referred to Orlando Bloom he might have got more response. Peter began to warm to his theme though when he reached the point where he could talk about something that was as familiar to him as Silicon Valley. The Google innovations he showed were familiar already to most of the delegates, but he warned us that we could 'outsmart' ourselves if we used the wrong tools.

There is no doubt about it. Although Peter Norvig refers to the dark ages a lot, he is a luminary in the world of computer software engineering. He negotiated a gaggle of tricky questions from a knowledgeable audience with consumate ease, and a liberal dose of dry wit. And we warmed to him too. Was Wikipedia threatening Google's pre-eminence? he was asked. Not at all, he replied - Google sends about one third of all its traffic to Wikipedia, he said. Touche! Peter Norvig's keynote can be viewed in full and on demand, courtesy of Elluminate.

ALT! .... I go there

I’m preparing to travel up to the ALT-C 2007 conference next week – it’s the Association for Learning Technology annual bash, held this year in the East Midlands Conference Centre, at the University of Nottingham. I’m editor of the Research Proceedings again this year, so all my hard work has already been put in – now all I have to do is attend, chair a few sessions, and hold a meeting for delegates in which I and my co-editors will discuss what makes a good conference paper (what does? Send your answers in please!). Oh, and there is of course the small issue of driving for 6 hours to get there - easy. The rest of the time I will be dropping in on the papers, demonstrations, workshops and lurking around the exhibitor stalls, trying to pick up new ideas, interesting tips and free pens. I’ll be meeting up again with old colleagues and friends (I am not prepared here to go into the difference), and also talk to some new colleagues and make new friends. I’m particularly interested in listening to the head of Google Research, Dr Peter Norvig, who will be providing the closing keynote address. I intend to blog from the event to keep apace of what is being said and done.

Me old mate Michelle Selinger will also be giving a keynote on the first day, and I have been asked by the Executive Programme Committee to act as her ‘minder’ for the conference – whatever that involves. Once thing anyone who knows Michelle will tell you, is that the last thing she needs is a ‘minder’. She’s quite capable of taking care of herself, but I guess I at least have to offer to play the role I have been given, until she tells me to sling my hook (probably within about 4.5 seconds). I will report back from the conference as time allows, and probably link into all the other ALT-C blogs that will no doubt pop up….

Quintura eats it up

OK, so you've tried Google, and probably keep going back, or maybe you even made your own iGoogle Home page, yep? Me too. You probably also know about tag clouds and how as you use certain key search words, these get larger and those that don't get used shrink? Ever used a swiki? It's a search engine that acts as a wiki space, so that everyone who uses it can add their own knowledge ... and the swiki learns. Swikis have a useful visual element.

Well, I stumbled across Quintura today, and I must say I am quite impressed. It's totally visual. Go check it out for yourself. It presents you with a general tag cloud to begin with. You click on the word or phrase of your choice and it creates a second tag cloud with your key word in the middle. All the other key words associated with it are in its orbit, near to the centre if they are closely associated, more distant if they are less closely associated with it. There are even hyperlinked icons floating about. Hover over the key word and lo and behold, in the right hand column it coughs up all the hits it can find. Excellent. Best search engine I've seen yet. Google may need to revise its front end search system if it wants to match this service. Let me know what you think...

Alive and clicking

I got bored the other day and Googled myself. It sounds painful but instead turned out to be just a little bit disconcerting. It seems there is more than one of me. OK, my homepage came out as number one on the Google listings, which was gratifying, but there were 39,400 other hits, and not all of them were me (Look, I didn’t go through them all – I wasn’t that bored). So there are other Steve Wheelers in the world, probably hundreds of them, and they have some interesting, and sometimes bizarre occupations….

Some other Steve Wheelers ….

• a student at North Georgia Technical College (Who, where, what, eh?)
• an Associate Professor of Accounting in the Eberhardt School of Business, University of the Pacific, California (I wish)
• the bass guitarist for the JJ Kasner Band (I actually can play the bass but will not lower myself)
• an Environmental Health and Housing Consultant (nope, far too boring)
• an Astro-photographer (sounds like a paparrazi)
• an Ice skating illusionist! (I’m speechless….. but just to prove I’m not making it up there are pictures of him in action at: http://www.genting.com.my/en/live_ent/2000/magiconice/index.htm)
• a Sculptor, Swordsmith and Cutler (nice combination mate)
• a Proctologist (No, seriously, straight up!)

The most famous Steve Wheeler (Number two on the Google listing) is an American abstract painter/artist who was born in 1912 and died in 1992 (Dead? And I had so much to offer….). This is not so funny, because on the electronic library system at the University of Plymouth, I noticed that they had me (the living one) confused with dead Steve. So all my publications were listed as Steve Wheeler 1912-1992. Some of my students, I thought, might be disconcerted to be taught by a deceased person. Maybe that explains why some were not turning up for my lectures.

So I e-mailed the library and explained that I wasn’t dead, it was mistaken identity, 'I’m alive and clicking' I said, and could they resurrect me please. They told me they would dig up somebody who could change the records. It took more than three days. I’m now restored to full corporeal presence on the library records, and my students have one excuse less to miss my lectures. Yahoo!