Fortnightly Mailing

Sharp critique of W3C Accessibility Guidelines by Joe Clark

In To Hell with WCAG2 Joe Clark, provides a detailed, fierce, and apparently well-based critique of the nearly finalised version 2 of the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Here is the introductory paragraph.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 were published in 1999 and quickly grew out of date. The proposed new WCAG 2.0 is the result of five long years’ work by a Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) committee that never quite got its act together. In an effort to be all things to all web content, the fundamentals of WCAG 2 are nearly impossible for a working standards-compliant developer to understand. WCAG 2 backtracks on basics of responsible web development that are well accepted by standardistas. WCAG 2 is not enough of an improvement and was not worth the wait.

Some readers of Fortnightly Mailing are accessibility practitioners, and "plain English" comments on whether or not WCAG2 is a step forward will be welcome.

Thanks to Joe Clark for sending me a comment linking to the above definition of "standardista".

Interview - with the inventor of "The Sims" - about user-generated games

Will Wright

Interesting article on the BBC web site by Tayfun King about the current growth of "user-generated" computer games, in which instead of being thrown into an environment created by the game developer, players can grow their own world, inhabited by creatures and objects which they themselves have designed. The article is backed up by a worthwhile ~15 minute video of an interview with Will Wright, the creator of "The Sims" (described as the best-selling game of all time).

Book spending, ICT spending, and literacy

The effect of book stocks per pupil on Key Stage 2 test results

Are low levels of book spending in primary schools jeopardizing the National Literacy Strategy? is an article in the March 2006 issue of the Curriculum Journal, by Steve Hurd, Malcolm Dixon and Joanna Oldham. (Some readers will be able to access the full text of this article through their Athens account.)

The article analyses data to show that there is a positive correlation between spending on books (and a smaller, but positive, correlation between spending on ICT) and the acquisition of literacy by primary school pupils. Citing evidence from secondary schools that there is competition between spending on books and spending on ICT, the article suggests that it is this which explains why book-spending has been falling whilst learning-resource spending has been rising overall. Here is an extract:

Book expenditure per pupil is the most important resource variable accounting for differences in test performances between schools. It has a positive effect which rises directly in line with the level of spending. Every £1 spent on each child on books raises average test results by 0.004. This implies that if we raised average spending on books by £100 per child then average test results would rise by 0.4 points (or by 1.5% per child). The effect of variations in the school book stock is shown in Figure 3. (At the top of this post.) The overall effects on standards are small. However, they suggest that standards can be raised by increasing the number of books to about 63 per child, more than double the current level of 25 books per pupil. ICT expenditure per pupil also has a significantly positive effect on pupil performance. For every £1 spent on ICT per child the average test score rises by 0.002, so increasing spending by £100 per child raises average test scores by 0.2 of a point (a rise of 0.72% per child). It is evident, therefore, that, at current levels of spending, putting more money into books is twice as cost effective in raising Key Stage 2 test scores as a similar amount spent on ICT. Increasing the stock of computer hardware beyond current levels, indicated by pupils per PC, has no significant effect on test scores. In line with previous studies, variations in the teacher-pupil ratios (i.e. class sizes) around the current average levels do not significantly affect pupil test scores. Thus the findings do not support a case for reducing class sizes any further. They argue that, instead, money should be put into improving the provision of learning resources, and of books in particular.

The article mentions in passing that in Norway book spending in schools is seven times higher than in England, and it also highlights that since 2004 data about book spending by schools is no longer collected by DfES, with only the ICT component of learning resource spending separately identified.

September 2005 revised version of the e-GIF 6.2 Technical Standards Catalogue

Last year (or was it the year before?) I represented ALT at some meetings convened by a part of the Cabinet Office which was then called the Office of the e-Envoy. The meetings were about e-learning specifications and their place in e-GIF, the UK Government's Interoperability Framework, which "defines the technical policies and specifications governing information flows across government and the public sector".

The most recent update to the e-GIF Technical Standards Catalogue was published last September, and it still contains a long list of specifications relating to e-learning, none of which have got "Adopted" status. Most are in the long grass, having been given "R" or "U" status, that is: "recommended for consideration by" or "under review by" eGovernment Unit/Department for Education and Skills Working Groups. 

Although at least one reader will say "and long may they remain there", I think the lack of clarity on Government intentions in this area does no good.

Change at the top at Ufi

Ufi has recently restructured its directorate, with five new faces, and three of the "old guard" retiring or moving on. There are brief biographies of all 8 posts on the Ufi web site.

Michael Stevenson (DfES Director of Technology) - an interview which is worth listening to

This recent 10 minute interview by JISC with Michael Stevenson [MP3 file], DfES Director of Technology, is worth listening to closely if you work in or have commercial interests in English public sector education, despite its inevitabe "JISC focus". If you listen, you may find useful the diagrams in the first few slides from this March 2006 presentation by Adrian Hall [PPT file], who reports to Stevenson, as "Programme Director for Personalised Content".  Note (22/7/2006). Michael Stevenson announced his resignation from DfES on 14/7/2006, with effect from the end of August, and the DfES announced that responsibility for the e-Strategy would pass to Becta.

To his credit, Stevenson is hot on the importance of leadership in producing change, and on the need for a simplified, silo-free, cross-sectoral approach that works across the whole of publicly funded education.

But I am more sceptical about the apparent dominance in his thinking of personalised learning, which he describes as "the great issue of the day", with one of the DfES's "early wins" being "the personalised e-learning strategy". Nor do I share his optimism about e-portfolios. The DfES, says Stevenson, is "very close to a way forward on e-portfolios"; but I think that even if the sort of e-portfolio that is envisaged is "only" a transcript of a person's qualifications, there are enormous, uncosted, technical, security, and organisational challenges in getting this to work in an education system that is as decentralised as England's.

Obviously the current £6b plus NHS computerisation project is about much more than a computerised patient record, but nevertheless, if (as is the case with the NHS) a very centralised and costly project is needed to get the patient record in place, why would things be any different to get a computerised learner record (i.e. portfolio system) in place in education?

Meanwhile the political emphasis in educational policy is on decentralisation of decision-making; and the Web and the ICT infrastructure are quickly developing in such a way that educational providers face an "inevitable future" in which they cannot realistically hope to control the access devices, or the connectivity, or the content, or necessarily the e-learning tools and systems, that learners and teachers choose to use in their learning.

", despite its inevitabe JISC focus" added to opening sentence - 28/5/2006.

Using Blogger to get teachers started with e-learning. Guest contribution from Keith Burnett.

Mark Berthelemy sounds a prudent note of caution about using 'free stuff' in his recent guest contribution. I understand the concerns, but I would add that these systems have enabled some colleagues to get started with small practical projects, and these projects have lead to greater use of our College's VLE.

I work in an adult learning context, and many of our students attend college once a week in the evening or weekend. Many students now have access to the Web outside college, and those that don't often make use of the College drop in facilities. Simple class blogs can be used to post summaries of key points, exercises, links to Web pages of value, and to provide a sense of continuity and encourage engagement with the material.

This academic year, I have been suggesting the Blogger system as being easy to set up, flexible to administer with good control over comments, and allowing blogging by e-mail. A one hour training session [ pdf, 1.3 MB ]  has been repeated a couple of times, and colleagues have seen the benefit of spending half an hour a week posting links and summaries. Students appreciate the effort and make use of the pages.

Fiona Williams posts a blog for Chartered Institute of Management Accounting students at the College, and has run training sessions on blogger in her role as an e-guide in the Finance and Accounting curriculum area. Fiona runs this page as a multi-author blog and students from different classes will use the page for hints, tips and links. The manager in the area, Sian Houseago, is building on the success of the blogs by piloting Moodle courses for students on Association Accounting Technicians programmes. I have found that colleagues who have taken ownership of a simple blog page and who have kept that page fresh and relevant are open to using e-learning in a more sophisticated way using some of the tools that Mark describes.

In conclusion, I can't resist linking to a couple of podcasts and my favourite free Web services:

• 5 minutes on Carbonyls by David Cox [ 2 MB, mp3 ] provided for AS Chemistry students to pop on their MP3 players;
• 4 minutes on Blogs in education [ 1.6 MB, mp3 ];
• ScanR - image whiteboards with your phone camera and have the results delivered as a PDF file. This service actually does work rather well. There is no online storage of your work - the transaction is sending and receiving an e-mail.

About the author: Keith Burnett works as a Maths teacher and ILT development co-ordinator at Sutton Coldfield College. He can be contacted at keithb 'AT' bodmas.org.

Getting to grips with Moodle. Guest Contribution from Julia Duggleby.

In spring 2005 the Sheffield College adopted Moodle as its Virtual Learning Environment. Online and blended learning wasn’t a new venture for the College, we’ve been delivering online learning since 1997 using a variety of platforms, including bog-standard webpages, an internally developed content management system (MySheffcol), and various other VLEs.

My main experience of Moodle is in:

• the development of two online courses;
• the delivery of one online course;
• supporting College staff in developing/uploading their own content and activities.

I really feel positive about Moodle. It isn’t perfect – it has some quirks and shortcomings that are annoying, though some of them may be to do with modifications we have made ourselves. For example:

• It doesn’t seem to save Chat transcripts, though it pretends it has and there is a link, which doesn’t work, to transcripts.
• I cannot get the icons to disappear in the Book Module, even when I have “Turn Editing On” turned off. Fortunately they only appear when I am logged on as a tutor, and learners don’t see them.
• Sometimes when creating content I can’t get it to do what I want it to – it is a bit basic. My workaround is to create what I want in Dreamweaver, and copy the html into Moodle.
• I find the top level navigation a bit clunky and would like to have more control over the course hierarchy.

But I feel these are quibbles. Actually I love Moodle because I find it so easy to use. What is it that I love?

• In content creation and editing I have a reasonable degree of control over what it looks like – I can fiddle about with fonts, colour, tables and colour, though it does have limitations (see above).
• It is so easy to move things around. Many happy hours can be wasted shoving elements up and down, and from side to side.
• It has a lovely, and growing, box of tricks that I am gradually learning to use. My particular favourites are Labels, the Book Module, the Wiki, the HTML Block (so simple, so useful).
• The College staff generally takes to it very easily. I find that a couple of hours training and a bit of supported hands-on is all they need to learn enough to at least create and upload some content, and some learner interactivities. The more IT competent/pedagogical imaginative staff then move forward on their own without any further training
• Learners seem to use it with little difficulty. We have had few technical problems with accessing it, and learners quickly get to grips with how it all works.
• It’s free, or cheap anyway because time (money) needs to be spent on it. But it is still the best VLE I’ve used. Moodle is to VLEs as Primark is to fashion (cheap, cheerful, and surprisingly good quality).

About the Author. Julia Duggleby is Online Learning Manager at the Sheffield College. If you wish to contact Julia, please email: julia.duggleby@sheffcol.ac.uk.

Linux - within a whisker of being able to hold its own as a serious nonproprietary desktop solution?

Yes, according to this 2005/2006 Investigation into the viability of Linux as a Business Desktop Operating System by Stephen Fellowes for the UK Society of Information Technology Management. This ~50 page report [650 kB PDF]  compares 5 different linux-based desktop operating systems, against a range of criteria (installation, first boot, devices and peripherals, applications and file types, systems administration, networking), and includes a focus on their use on laptops computers. It finishes with some pragmatic recommendations for corporate users, concluding that:

• versions with a clear link to a major development partner like SUSE or Novell have a "greater potential to provide a fully functional installation", and
• the support of hardware vendors is crucial to the successful deployment of linux-based operating systems on laptop computers.

Citizen Connect - inclusion through technology

Thanks to reader Martine Tommis for this link to the English language version of the Final Report of the Citizen Connect Project [4 MB PDF]. This ~60 page report, available in multiple languages, has been produced at the conclusion of an EU funded project involving cities in the UK (Manchester and Glasgow), Spain (Gijon, Aviles, Valencia), Italy (Bari), Germany (Gera), Netherlands (The Hague), France (Lille, Tourcoing), Finland (Helsinki), Estonia (Tallinn), Poland (Gdansk, Warsaw). The report's 5 recommendations, though they have that "written by committee in such a way as to keep all partners happy" feel, are pretty coherent, and are reproduced in the continuation post below.