Fortnightly Mailing

THE-QS World University Ranking - a US perspective that takes account of country size: Guest Contribution by Jim Farmer

When the 2009 Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings of the world’s universities were published 8 October, Editor of the THE-QS rankings, Phil Baty wrote: “America's superpower status is slipping as other countries' efforts to join the global elite begin to pay dividends.” And he could have written the U.K. universities continue to improve their rankings.

OLPC laptops - a year of mass use in Uruguay / Android: coming from behind

Two informative pieces in the 3/10/2009 Economist. The first - "Education in Uruguay - Laptops for all" - provides quite an upbeat, though "warts and all" summary of Uruguay's deployment of nearly 400,000 OLPC laptops (nearly all of the country's primary school pupils now have them), pointing out that government's ambition that laptops will improve the overall standard of education "will be tested for the first time later this month when every Uruguayan seven-year-old will take online exams in a range of academic subjects", and that the introduction of laptops should "prompt a shift away from rote learning towards critical analysis".

The second - "The boom in smart-phones" - describes the rise of the Open Source operating system Android, emphasising how Android has enabled "cut-price Chinress firms such as Huawei and ZTE to enter the smart-phone market which they had previously stayed out of for lack of the necessary software". The article suggests that within four years half of handsets sold will be "smart", and that almost all will be so by 2015. (I think these figures relate to worldwide supply, in which case the switch will be quicker in the UK.) The changes this will cause in the role of technology in learning (and, perhaps more importantly, in its organisation and control) will be profound.

Back-links to related pieces:

• 26/9/2009 - The "mobilely accessible" Internet - global overview;
• 20/2/2009 - Using mobile technologies to promote children's learning;
• 2/10/2008 - Android: phones are PCs, only smaller and with more stuff on them;
• 4/8/2007 - Smartphones "are the PCs of the developing world";
• 28/7/2007 - Point-to-point wi-fi brings internet access to all;
• 1/6/2007 - Test the mobile-readiness of a web site;
• 27/1/2007 - Mobile phones in Africa: a "simple sort of eBay for agricultural products;
• 14/12/2006 - Wireless Ghana;
• 17/10/2006 - What would you install on One Laptop Per Child;
• 22/9/2006 - 80% of the population is covered by a mobile network.

E-Learning "debate" 2009: Stephen Downes hits the nail on the head

I passed through Oxford between Bristol and London yesterday and attended a slightly pretentious debate organised by the elearning company Epic in the Oxford Union, a debating club run by the students of Oxford University that has has been graced in its time by world leaders and, more recently, by fascists and Nazi-holocaust deniers. (I make it sound as if I'd not have gone if I'd not been passing through: curiosity and the need to fly the ALT flag would have got the better of me.) The event served as a (probably effective) marketing and PR exercise for Epic - nothing wrong with that - but I do not think that it did much to advance participants' understanding; and the quality of some of the four pre-invited speeches on each side of the slightly silly, and heavily defeated, "This house believes that the e-learning of today is essential for the important skills of tomorrow" - was very variable, with Ufi's Kirstie Donnelly giving a particularly good account of herself.  Given his distance from the event, Stephen Downes makes some prescient observations.

The mobilely accessible Internet - global overview from the Economist

Source: Economist special report on telecoms in emerging markets

Finishing the job is a useful overview of mobile phone uptake and Internet access world-wide and how these are expected to change. It also contains an OLPC-oriented discussion about whether it will ultimately be phones or "netbooks" that become the dominant means by which users access the Internet. (Phones are in the ascendency, it seems, though the boundary between them is getting increasingly blurred.) Excerpt:

"On the face of it, those in the mobile camp seem to have won. Mobile phones are now seen as a vital tool of development, whereas Mr Negroponte’s laptop project has failed to meet its ambitious goals. But although his engineers have so far only managed to get the cost of their elegant laptop down to about $150, they have shown what is possible with a low-cost design, and helped create today’s vibrant netbook market. If netbooks do indeed become the preferred devices to access the internet in the developing world, Mr Negroponte will have had the last laugh. But if those netbooks turn out to be, in effect, large mobile phones with keyboards that access the internet via mobile networks, as also seems likely, Mr Quadir and his camp can claim to have won the day. Technological progress in devices and networks seems to have rendered the debate moot: the important thing is that internet access will be on its way to becoming as widespread as mobile phones."

Paul Krugman - How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?

“When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done.” - John Maynard Keynes

Via Peter Norvig, here is a beautifully written piece from the 6 September 2009 New York Times by Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman. There are shades of the Ragged Trousered Philanthropist's description of capitalism in this excerpt:

"I like to explain the essence of Keynesian economics with a true story that also serves as a parable, a small-scale version of the messes that can afflict entire economies. Consider the travails of the Capitol Hill Baby-Sitting Co-op.

This co-op, whose problems were recounted in a 1977 article in The Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, was an association of about 150 young couples who agreed to help one another by baby-sitting for one another’s children when parents wanted a night out. To ensure that every couple did its fair share of baby-sitting, the co-op introduced a form of scrip: coupons made out of heavy pieces of paper, each entitling the bearer to one half-hour of sitting time. Initially, members received 20 coupons on joining and were required to return the same amount on departing the group.

Unfortunately, it turned out that the co-op’s members, on average, wanted to hold a reserve of more than 20 coupons, perhaps, in case they should want to go out several times in a row. As a result, relatively few people wanted to spend their scrip and go out, while many wanted to baby-sit so they could add to their hoard. But since baby-sitting opportunities arise only when someone goes out for the night, this meant that baby-sitting jobs were hard to find, which made members of the co-op even more reluctant to go out, making baby-sitting jobs even scarcer. . . .

In short, the co-op fell into a recession."

Quest to Learn - a newly opened 12 to 18 school relying 100% on games-based learning

The 5 September 2009 Economist reports on the opening of Quest to Learn, a new publicly funded school in New York. Closing excerpt:

The school plans to admit pupils at the age of 12 and keep them until they are 18, so the first batch will not leave until 2016. If it fails, traditionalists will no doubt scoff at the idea that teaching through playing games was ever seriously entertained. If it succeeds, though, it will provide a model that could make chalk and talk redundant. And it will have shown that in education, as in other fields of activity, it is not enough just to apply new technologies to existing processes—for maximum effect you have to apply them in new and imaginative ways.

There is plenty else of interest and value on the Institute of Play's web site, including this list of references relating to game-based learning.

Internet connections sacrosanct in France? "The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious rights of man."

[Updated24/10/2009 - despite the decision below, the French Government has introduced a "cut-off" provision, albeit, only on the say-so of a judge.]

Excerpt from article in the Independent:

"Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand said the members of a watchdog to oversee application of the digital clampdown would be named in November and the first warnings would go out "from the start of 2010."

The law sets up an agency that will send out an email warning to people found to be illegally downloading films or music.

A written warning is sent if a second offence is registered in six months and after a third, a judge will be able to order a one-year Internet rights suspension or a fine."

Here is an English translation of the 10 June 2009 decision of the French Constitutional Council [90 kB PDF]. As I understand it, the decision had the effect of overturning French Government plans to allow ISPs to cut off copyright infringers from the Internet. The decision is interesting because it makes such a clear connection between Internet access and a French citizen's right (enshrined in 1789) freely to communicate ideas and opinions. In effect, the ruling asserts that even if a citizen's use of the Internet may involve copyright infringement, that should not of itself entitle an ISP to cut off the citizen's connection. Excerpt:

"12. Article 11 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen of 1789 proclaims : "The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious rights of man. Every citizen may thus speak, write and publish freely, except when such freedom is misused in cases determined by Law". In the current state of the means of communication and given the generalized development of public online communication services and the importance of the latter for the participation in democracy and the expression of ideas and opinions, this right implies freedom to access such services."

The French approach contrasts with the 25 August UK Government announcement [50 kB PDF] that in respect of "subscribers alleged by rights holders to be infringing copyright" it is now "considering the case for adding into the list of technical measures [to be at the disposal of ISPs] the power, as a last resort, to suspend a subscriber's account". The Digital Britain team strive in the Government's Digital Britain Forum to keep discussion of these issues civilised and open - 25 August 2009 and 27 August 2009 - but reaction is mainly hostile.

A new strategic direction for the OU - OUeU?

The Open University has revised its strategic direction, with a decision taken to operate in five business areas. One of these "OU Supported Open Learning" is where most of the OU's current activity takes place. The plan is to grow the other four, and you get the feeling that the OU is aiming to be, as a monolithic entity, the heavyweight "eUniversity" that UKEU spectacularly (and predictably?) failed to become.

Here are all five in full:

1. OU Supported Open Learning — UK awards offered by the OU to students in the UK and other parts of the world (principally in Europe) through supported, blended open learning. This constitutes the traditional business of the OU.
2. OU Online — UK awards offered wholly online by the OU to students in the UK and throughout the world. Provision will initially be at postgraduate level.
3. OU Plus — UK or local awards and courses offered to students through or with partners who substantially augment and enhance the OU contribution. These will include organisations and companies drawn from the private as well as the public sector, operating internationally as well as within the UK. In the UK, they will include employers who will be engaged with the OU in the development of re-versioned and co-funded provision.
4. OU Freemium — new businesses deriving income from open educational resources (OER) and associated services. This business area was previously called OU for Free and has been re-titled to stress the need to monetise OER in order to create a sustainable business model. It includes OpenLearn, SocialLearn, iTunesU and Open Research Online.
5. OU Services — the sale of OU educational and research products and services throughout the world, usually on a for-profit basis. These are products and services created through the disaggregation of elements of the foregoing business areas and include not only OU course materials but also, and increasingly, stand-alone services, such as educational and careers guidance, credit rating and accreditation (where it is appropriate and profitable to do so), and academic consultancy and the licensing of intellectual property.

Digital Britain Implementation Plan

13/8/2009, updated 29/8/2009

Here is the August 2009 Digital Britain Implementation Plan [214 kB PDF]. It describes 18 projects, with varying degrees of sketchiness, and with occasional references to amounts of funding attached to different measures. The sketchiness stems in part from the fact that the different projects consist of actions from the June Digital Britain report, which were not organised into projects. The 18 project areas are as follows, and I've made bold those that I think will be of interest to readers of Fortnightly Mailing (you may also want to run your eye over Donald Clark's 29/8/2009 shot-from-the-hip comments on each):

1. Digital Economy Bill
2. Digital Inclusion/Participation
3. Digital Skills
4. Current and Next Generation Broadband
5. Spectrum Modernisation
6. Digital Radio Upgrade
7. Video Games
8. Illegal File Sharing
9. Contestable Funding
10. Public Service Content
11. Independently Funded News Consortia
12. BBC/Independent Production in the Nations
13. Digital Security
14. Personal Digital Safety
15. Online Consumer Protection
16. Digital Government (including establishment of "G-Cloud")
17. Digital Delivery Agency
18. Other Relevant Activity

Help mySociety choose its next projects - call for proposals closes on 15 September 200

mySociety is running a public competition for ideas for mySociety's next services. Excerpt:

"We need your help to decide what mySociety builds next. Our previous calls for proposals have led to WhatDoTheyKnow.com, WriteToThem.com and Pledgebank.com. What big new services should we build? What features should we add to our existing sites? What bright ideas do you have to promote mySociety to the world?"

Here is the full Call For Proposals.In mySociety style, submitted ideas are immediately visible on the site.