Fortnightly Mailing

The Economist distinguishes between "Wireless Communications" and "Information Technology"

Source: Economist Special Report on Telecommunications

The 28/4/2007 edition of the The Economist has a special report on telecommunications. You need to be (or know!) a subscriber to read on line all but the introductory article, which provides a clear overview of how influential the Wireless Communications revolution (as distinct from plain old Information Technology) will be over the next few years. Central to the changes are the two-way technologies that are under development (see the table at the start of this post) , and  the:

• increasing efficiency with with the wireless spectrum can be used;
• falling costs of wireless systems;
• rising capacity of the chips that process the signals.

The charts below show how all are governed by "Moore's Law" logarithmic relationships.

Source: Economist Special Report on Telecommunications

Google buys Swedish technology originally developed for distance learning

In March 2006, writing about Google's acquisition of Upstartle, the company behind Writely (which is now Google Docs), I speculated whether Google would buy iRows (a web based spreadsheet). In November Google recruited the  founders of iRows, at which time I guessed:

"If I had to predict what's next, I would say that Google will acquire a web-based audio and/or video-conferencing service."

On 22/4/2007 the northern Swedish firm Marratech AB announced that Google had acquired Marratech's video conferencing software, software that originated in research that began in 1995 at the Centre for Distance-Spanning Technology (CDT) at Luleå University of Technology, in Sweden. (Colleagues in the Italian Trade Union Confederation CISL were very positive about the effectiveness of Marratech when they showed me it in use last year.)  Press reports, which have been countered on the Official Google Blog, imply that it is not just the software that has been bought, but the company as a whole.

Marratech's technology requires the user to download an application that you need to run locally as a discrete application, unlike most of Google's services (Search, Gmail, Calendar, Reader, Docs etc). However, plenty of other Google services, for example Earth, Talk, and Desktop Search, involve users in downloading and installing software. It remains to be seen whether the acquisition will result in Google offering audio or video conferencing as one of its free or paid-for services, or whether Google will instead be using Marratech technology for internal purposes. Certainly for people who use Google Docs or Jotspot as collaboration tools, provision of a synchronous communication environment would be of great value.

Motorola's use of wikis and blogs

Informative post by Mark Oehlert (whose e-Clippings web site is worth browsing) about Motorola's internal use of wikis and blogs, based on an interview by Dan Bricklin with Motorola's Toby Redshaw.

JISC online conference - Innovating e-Learning. Guest contribution from Geoff Minshull.

The second Innovating e-Learning on-line conference from the JISC takes place from 11 - 14 June 2007.  The conference focuses on the potential of e-learning in transforming practice within institutions and in supporting lifelong learning. The keynote presenters will offer a rich variety of perspectives on these themes:

• Theme 1: Institutional transformation Day 1: Terry Mayes, Emeritus Professor, Glasgow Caledonian University, and Day 2: Dr John Guy, Principal, and Dr Mike Docker, Director, ICLT, the Sixth Form College, Farnborough;
• Theme 2: Supporting Lifelong Learning, introduced by Robin Mason, Professor of Educational Technology at The Institute of Educational Technology, The Open University.

The concluding presentation will be given by

Al Essa's "Software patents. Why should we care?"

The vast  Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system, where Al Essa is Associate Vice Chancellor and Deputy CIO, has more than 0.3 million students.  Al's article - Software patents. Why should we care? - in the March/April 2007 Educause Review is worth reading. After a stirring quote from Thomas Jefferson, starts:

"Imagine a world in which Socrates not only originated the dialogue form of inquiry but also filed a patent claiming 'intellectual property' rights for his invention and then vigorously enforced his patent against the Sophists to ensure the 'purity' of his learning method. Imagine an Oxford scholar travelling to the University of Bologna in the thirteenth century, observing the 'lecture' style of teaching, adapting it for use at Oxford, and then filing for patent protection. A cross-licensing agreement permits Bologna faculty to use the lecture format, but Cambridge University faculty are locked out."

Having highlighted what he describes as a gold-rush to "carve out and 'own' the basic building blocks of ideas that enable all educational technology", Al covers, lucidly, the software development process, the way in which (in the US and several other jurisdictions) the ideas behind software have become patentable, and why this is harmful. He concludes with a proposal for a (US-oriented) three-stage solution, that, he contends would "work" in the current context in which the ideas behind software are patentable:

• "Level 1: Basic Disclosure. The company publishes a list and a description of its educationally relevant software patents, both those it currently holds and those it has applied for.
• Level 2: Peer Review. As proposed recently by IBM, the company puts its patent filing on-line for public comment, review, and scrutiny for prior art. The company also allows for a legally non-binding peer review of its education software patent claim by domain experts. The review process could be mediated by an entity such as EDUCAUSE.
• Level 3: Pledge. The company declares that its intention in holding the patent is strictly defensive. It will not file for patent infringement or expect royalties from any party unless it has been threatened by that party."

Al is looking for feedback on his article. You can provide this directly to the Educause Review (where you need an account), or to Al's blog (where you do not).

One laptop per child and the Commonwealth of Learning

OLPC wireless mesh demo image from OLPC web site

I subscribe to OLPC's informative Community News, which consists of a weekly (or fortnightly?) plain-text summary of progress on One Laptop Per Child, written in a chatty but rigorous way by Walter Bender, with a nice "give credit when credit is due" tone. Most of the news relates to technical and operational developments. Today's also had this paragraph about work being done by the Commonwealth of Learning relating to wikis.

"The Commonwealth of Learning (COL) hosted an annual conference about collaborative production of learning materials in Vancouver, Wednesday through Friday. Attendees included Merrick Schaefer of UNICEF, Murugan Pal of CK12, Erik Moeller of Wikimedia and Open Progress, and Joel Thierstein of Connexions; who are all working towards a global collection of CC-BY and locally-developed works. We set immediate goals for sharing materials across these projects; and identifying collections. COL offered broad support across their network of teachers and volunteers, especially in Nigeria. Erik and Brion Vibber from Wikimedia discussed how MediaWiki is planning to support asynchronous and offline editing; and 'live' off-line snapshots that people can edit. The Wikipedia 0.5 static snapshot was released last week; it can be downloaded via torrent. A child-friendly selection of topics is being developed; but still written at a high language level. A proper kid's-encyclopedia is still in the future."

Find out more about the Commonwealth of Learning.

Google explains its "mobile user experience strategy"

Via Clive Shepherd and someone who commented on Clive's recent post about Mobile Learning, I came across this informative piece by Stephen Wellman - "an upfront look at how Google designs its mobile applications" - reporting from an event addressed by Google's Leland Rechis in New York on 10 April 2007. The three categories - 'repetitive now', 'bored now', and 'urgent now' - that Google breaks mobile users into when designing services are certainly striking:

• "The 'repetitive now' user is someone checking for the same piece of information over and over again, like checking the same stock quotes or weather. Google uses cookies to help cater to mobile users who check and recheck the same data points.
• The 'bored now' are users who have time on their hands. People on trains or waiting in airports or sitting in cafes. Mobile users in this behaviour group look a lot more like casual Web surfers, but mobile phones don't offer the robust user input of a desktop, so the applications have to be tailored.
• The 'urgent now' is (sic) a request to find something specific fast, like the location of a bakery or directions to the airport. Since a lot of these questions are location-aware, Google tries to build location into the mobile versions of these queries."

Michael Feldstein's "Better networked learning"

Michael Feldstein, who last year initiated the Wikipedia entry on the History of Virtual Learning Environments, is now Principal Product Manager for the Oracle Corporation's Academic Enterprise Initiative. His just-published article in the ALT Newsletter, Better networked learning, is worth reading if you are interested in the design of systems to support learning. Here is an excerpt:

".... despite explosive growth in both practical knowledge about teaching online on the one hand and cognition and learning research on the other, we see relatively little cross-fertilization. Teachers are getting little benefit from the theoretical advances in cognitive psychology and related fields, while theoretical research is likewise seldom informed by the growing knowledge base of the networked learning community. Interestingly, there is a very similar communication gap between practitioners of networked learning and developers of virtual learning environments (VLEs). "

Elgg - an Open Source social networking platform designed for use in education

Elgg describes itself as follows:

"An open source social networking platform based around choice, flexibility and openness: a system that firmly places individuals at the centre of their activities. Your users have the freedom to incorporate all their favourite tools within one environment and showcase their content with as many or as few people as they choose, all within a social networking site that you control."

Use of Elgg by UK educational institutions is probably increasing, and it is the platform supporting the JISC-funded EMERGE project in which ALT (for which I work part time) is a partner. Picking up on recent coverage of Elgg in Wired, Donald Clark writes:

"Some excellent folks at Brighton University (my home town) were given a glowing write up in Wired this week on the use of Myspace, blogging and other webby stuff in schools and higher education."

...

"It's free, downloadable and has Blogging, Social networking, File repositories for individuals and communities, Podcast support, Full access controls, Supports tagging, User profiles, Full RSS support, RSS aggregator, Create communities, Collaborative community blogs, Create 'friends' networks, Import content, Publish to blog, Multilingual with Branding/customisation."

Read the rest of Donald's piece.

How do mouse-pointers actually work?

You will like this slow loading explanation of what actually powers your mouse-pointer. Thanks to Julia Duggleby for sending the link to me.