Broadband is a human right

The 2011 ALT-C Conference is being held at the University of Leeds on a campus that is as convoluted as the maze of arguments and discussions we are enjoying. This year's event is co-chaired by John Cook and Sugata Mitra, and the programme and as always, is packed with far too many choices, you are bound to miss something you would really like to see. Too much choice is not the only problem we have to face. Just trying to navigate your way around the Leeds campus to find the rooms can be difficult, and there is a lot of walking around outside, up and down many steps and slopes.  The intermittent rain showers don't help either, but as they keep telling me - it's grim up north. Finding your choice of sessions then, certainly requires stamina and tenacity. And we will need these in equal measure throughout the conference, because all of the sessions I have attended so far have sought to go beyond the run-of-the-mill conference papers of old, to challenge preconceptions, problematise old knowledge and generally rattle a few cages along the way.... of which more in later posts from ALT-C 2011.

Miguel Brechner's keynote this morning focused on the CEIBAL one-laptop-per-child project in the schools of Uruguay. Uruguay is only a small South American country, about the size of Wales, and with a small population, and in the past it has not been particularly well known for its educational achievements. But today the spotlight was well and truly on Uruguay. In a gently humourous style, and laced with football analogies (he delighted in reminded his audience that Uruguay had once beaten Brazil to win the Soccer World Cup), Miguel Brechner demonstrated how giving a free laptop to each child has liberated them to learn in their own way and in their own time. Children now really want to go to school he said, and are upset if they miss even a day. He showed how the education landscape has been changed in Uruguay, and how social equality is being achieved among the youth of his country. Clearly very passionate about his cause, Brechner argued that not only is access to broadband absolutely essential for education, in today's connected world, it should also be considered a human right. While many of us had heard these mantras before, given that Negroponte's vision has been in existence for well over a decade, we were all nevertheless impressed by the manner in which this project had been implemented, in humility, with a great sense of purpose and with an eye on the future for Uruguay's youth. 


In some ways, OLPC could be said to run counter to the ideals of Sugata Mitra's Hole in the Wall Project. OLPC is very focused on solo learning, where each child uses his laptop in his own way, and is more or less autonomous, against the Hole in the Wall project where learners work together around a social space which involves a single computer. The minimally invasive education of Mitra's work, when measured against the individualised and personalised learning approach of OLPC leaves a lot of questions open. What is the best way for children to learn? With a communal technology that forces social contact, or with individual technologies where social contact is optional? This has indeed been the subject of discussion throughout the day during the breaks. It would be good to get Sugata Mitra (who is here on Thursday) and Miguel Brechner together to debate this, to hear their respective arguments.


Broadband is a human right by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Wild west show

I learn a lot from taking part in international projects, and I am currently involved in several which are occupying my mind. By far the largest project I was involved in though, was a $90 million Star Schools Project in South Dakota - the Digital Dakota Network - in 2001-2003. It all started when I was invited in July 2000, all expenses paid, to make a trip across the pond as a guest of the then Governor of South Dakota, the Hon. Bill Janklow. I arrived in the small sleepy, state capital of Pierre (pronounced peer) and booked into the local Ramada Hotel. Pierre sits straddling the Missouri river, and is therefore in two time zones. When the bars shut east of the river, you walk over the bridge and into a bar on the west of the river, and get an extra hours drinking in (if you like that sort of thing, that is).

I was driven by my hosts to the Capitol building and ushered into the Governor's conclave where I gave a speech to a gathering of around 100 guests, many of whom were either working in the government or were school superintendents. My talk, about the current state of distance education, was well received because the entire Star Schools Project the state was about to embark upon was premised on distance learning. Every school in the state (and their libraries, colleges and universities too) were being cabled up with broadband, and equipped with full motion video conferencing, digital satellite reception - the whole nine yards. I later met up again with Bill Janklow over breakfast in Washington D.C. in April 2001. He was just about to go off to the White House to meet up with President George 'Dubya' Bush, but said he needed a few minutes with me to talk over a proposition. He offered me a job as his 'Digital Network' Ambassador, along with a house, schooling for my 3 kids and a job for my wife, if I would up sticks for two years and join him. It was a tempting offer, but I had to refuse due to a number of intractible issues. We compromised, and I later joined his team as the part-time lead evaluator for the project. Over the next two years I jetted back and forth across the Atlantic, gathering data, meeting and working with my team of researchers (pictured above), conducting interviews, collating data and generally trying to make sense of all that we were learning about this vast, sweeping, state-wide project. At the time the Digital Dakota Network was the largest distance education project of its kind, and we had a great opportunuty to discover how learning would be affected by the new technology. However, it was often the anecdotes rather than the hard data that were the most illuminating...

I heard one story that I would like to share here. It says a lot about the human condition, and a lot more about the impact of teachers on the young mind. In fact it follows on from yesterday's blog post. Janklow was a clever guy, and to cut costs, he enlisted the help of a number of residents of the state penitentiary, who he sent out in supervised road gangs to wire up the schools across the state. In one school, one of the convicts, dressed in the obligatory orange overalls, was up a step ladder, running cables through the ceiling of a classroom. A young lad walked in, saw the prisoner, and asked him. 'Mister, what did you do to be sent to prison?' The convict looked down as the little boy and with a straight face said: 'I didn't listen to my teacher...'

Image source

Wild west show by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 International License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

We have issues

What is the most important issue in e-learning? That was the question I asked this morning when I first logged on to Twitter. There are, it seems quite a lot of issues, judging from the responses I received. The majority seem to be generic and seem to affect most sectors of education. Here's a brief summary of the responses:

There were some technical and design issues: Jedd Bartlett in New Zealand, says that the most important issue is to ensure availability of real broadband in the home. Alex Hardman who is in Liverpool, UK says that integrating e-learning into the mainstream (and perhaps losing the 'e' that distinguishes it) is important, a sentiment echoed by Cath Ellis (Sheffield, UK) and Robin Cox (Edinburgh, UK) who thinks that we should be designing e-learning to be as interactive as f2f learning. Pat Parslow (Reading, UK) had a lot of suggestions including: 'Reliable computer services, high SLAs. Student acceptance. Open standards. Assessment...' but thinks that it is vital to nurture students to develop their personal learning networks. Clive Shepherd (e-learning consultant in Brighton, UK) thinks that the 'important issue in e-learning is how to free itself from its dull CBT heritage.'

Teaching and learning issues were cited by several: Bjarne Slipsager (Berlin, Germany) wants to know how we can get teachers to use new technologies and experiment with them, a comment echoed by Dorothy Burt, (Auckland, New Zealand) who thinks that teacher skills are generally lacking, whilst Meredith James in Sydney, Australia, makes a simple plea: We need clean, concise e-learning materials to make it work. More words on skills from Sarah Stewart who is a health professional in Dunedin, New Zealand. She thinks that we need to address the level of computing/internet skills for all.

Mel Phillips (Leicester, UK) thinks that teachers need to understand the pedagogical changes associated with move from f2f to online, so that they can adjust their methods appropriately. Dave Sugden (Huddersfield, UK) Asher Jacobsberg (London) and Rose Heaney, (London, UK) all agree, pleading for pedagogy over technology. Dave also argues that 'e-Learning isn't necessarily online learning'. He calls for a 'common understanding of terms.' Julian Prior (Swindon, UK) made an incisive comment I'm sure many of us would agree with: We need to wrest control of e-learning from the technocrats and hand the control over to the teachers and learners. Catherine Emmett (Cardiff, UK) thinks we need to ensure that educational technologists and teachers need to work more closely together to ensure that e-learning is more learning focused.

Some general issues were also raised: Thomas Curtis in Essex, UK, thinks the main issue is a fundamental one: He wants to make e-learning relevant, 'not just a box of tricks that is thrown at education with the expectation to solve everything'. The Digital Maverick over in Rickmansworth, UK, sees e-learning changing working practices and wants to see new pay structures. Adam Read (Plymouth, UK) and Pete Whitfield (Manchester, UK) both think that institutions need to better support e-learning initiatives and there is already some discussion on Twitter that the institutional VLE and e-learning are not synonymous, although many universities and colleges work as though they are. Shelly Terrell, in Stuttgart, Germany, underlines this by arguing that e-learning tools need to go beyond simply pushing information to students, and begin to support problem solving and critical thinking. Cristina Costa (Salford, UK) made one of the most searching comments, when she suggested we should promote the idea of learning as an active process, and then ensure that e-learning provides the basis to empower the learner in that process. And Sarah Horrigan (Leicestershire, UK) thinks 'one of the most important issues in e-learning is the gap between innovators & lack of real engagement by the majority'. Sarah is supported by Natalie Lafferty (a medical educator in Iran) who also argues for better staff development to make it happen.

If you have any more comments on what you consider are the key issues in e-learning, please post them below as comments. Many thanks to all who have contributed to this important discussion.

Image source

Living in a post-modem world

Blimey. Talk about digital divides... yesterday the BBC [BBC News 24, 2 January 2007] reported that by the end of this month 13 million households in the UK will be connected to broadband. That's half the households in Britain for Tim's sake. It's all because there are over 200 broadband providers in the UK, all fighting for an ever dwindling population of customers, and all being so competitive that by the end of 2007 half of them will be dead in the water.

Got me thinking... if half of all UK households can now access high speed Internet what can we expect?

• Firstly, more people will be watching video and other megabyte hungry media on their pcs - does this mean the death of terrestrial broadcasting? Will YouTube replace Channel 4?
• Secondly, more people will pay to download music from the Internet and less will be going into town to buy CDs. Is the end of HMV and Virgin Records in sight?
• Thirdly, more people will be shopping on Amazon, E-Bay and other online retailers than before. Get your food delivered direct to your doorstep by Tesco or Sainsbury! (It's a shame we can't get our rubbish collected from our doorstep by the local council. They haven't been around for almost 2 weeks over the Christmas break and the wheelie bins are disgusting).

Yesterday Rupert Goodwins of ZDNet UK was interviewed by BBC News. He remarked that 'the Internet is non-geographical' (as he sat firmly on a seat in the Edinburgh studio). I think I know what he means, but then he went too far with 'everyone is now online'. I don't think so. My Mum and Dad are steadfastly non-Internet and so is my rabbit Charlie (although I am thinking of breaching privacy rules and placing a webcam in his hutch), and I reckon there are one or two others in the UK who are just not interested :-P. So we still have a digital divide and it's not just those who have and don't have broadband. It's also those who couldn't care less about the Web.