Fortnightly Mailing

Precautionary registration of domains. Derek Morrison highlights the importance of YouTube "channel ownership"

In 2001 when I worked for The Sheffield College - http://www.sheffcol.ac.uk/ - I initiated a complaint to Nominet concerning an abusive registration of the domain http://www.sheffcol.co.uk/. The result of this [50 kB PDF]  was the compulsory transfer to The Sheffield College of http://www.sheffcol.co.uk/ from its owner. Excerpt:

"In light of the foregoing findings, namely that the Complainant has rights in respect of a name or mark which is identical to the Domain Name and that the Domain name, in the hands of the Respondent, is an Abusive Registration, the Expert decides in favour of the Complainant. The Complainant’s requested remedy is transfer, and accordingly the Expert directs that the Domain Name, sheffcol.co.uk, be transferred to the Complainant."

At that time organisations were in the process of learning the importance of precautionary registration of domains relating to their brand. (Since that time, The Sheffield College seems to have let its ownership of the sheffcol.co.uk domain lapse.... to poor effect.)

This interesting, though long post by Derek Morrison in Auricle "On the video - a reflection on YouTube and friends (part 2)" shows how easy it now is to register "channels" on YouTube, and, by implication, the importance of education providers seeing the registration of such channels as something to manage, rather than treat passively. Derek writes:

"What I find a bit surprising is that many HEIs don’t seem to view ever-growing services like YouTube as an important part of the virtual landscape. When that perception is compounded with a lack of naming convention then there is some risk that others will occupy the space. For example, a visit to http://uk.youtube.com/OxfordUniversity will not illuminate any aspect of the Oxford University’s brand. In that case the University of Cambridge’s, as yet unpopulated, YouTube channel may be a wise move. So what to do? It took me just 5 minutes to register the following YouTube accounts:

• http://uk.youtube.com/UniversityPoppleton
• http://uk.youtube.com/PoppletonUniversity
• http://uk.youtube.com/AuricleDotOrg
• http://uk.youtube.com/AuricleOrg"

Obama and Biden on broadband access and net neutrality

Updated 9/11/2008

Barack Obama and Joe Biden's Technology Policy, on the Office of the President Elect web site, is was (until it ceased to be accessible....) positive on two important issues (emphasis added):

Protect the Openness of the Internet: A key reason the Internet has been such a success is because it is the most open network in history. It needs to stay that way. Barack Obama strongly supports the principle of network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet.

Deploy Next-Generation Broadband: Barack Obama believes that America should lead the world in broadband penetration and Internet access. As a country, we have ensured that every American has access to telephone service and electricity, regardless of economic status, and Obama will do likewise for broadband Internet access. Obama and Biden believe we can get true broadband to every community in America through a combination of reform of the Universal Service Fund, better use of the nation’s wireless spectrum, promotion of next-generation facilities, technologies and applications, and new tax and loan incentives.

and less so on two others:

Protect American Intellectual Property Abroad: The Motion Picture Association of America estimates that in 2005, more than nine of every 10 DVDs sold in China were illegal copies. The U.S. Trade Representative said 80 percent of all counterfeit products seized at U.S. borders still come from China. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will work to ensure intellectual property is protected in foreign markets, and promote greater cooperation on international standards that allow our technologies to compete everywhere.

Protect American Intellectual Property at Home: Intellectual property is to the digital age what physical goods were to the industrial age. Barack Obama believes we need to update and reform our copyright and patent systems to promote civic discourse, innovation and investment while ensuring that intellectual property owners are fairly treated.

Via David Weinberger.

Roy Pea at Becta's 6/11/2008 Research Conference

Source: NSF LIFE Centre

Vanessa Pittard gave a candid and impressive introduction today to this year's Becta Research conference. She and her team at Becta seem really to be getting to grips with building up and funding a long-term and wide-ranging policy-relevant research effort, one important aspect of which is the longitudinal approach that is being taken. The latter is now providing a much clearer understanding of what is happening on the ground in schools and colleges and how this is changing over time. (See Harnessing Technology Review 2008: The Role of technology and its impact on education. Summary; full report.)

Roy Pea from Stanford University gave the main keynote at the conference, focusing on the Report of the NSF Task Force on Cyberlearning¹, which I covered in September, which takes a long term, detailed, cross-sectoral view of what is happening at the intersection between learning and technology, and how this might affect provision in the long term. (Later this month a video of Roy's talk will be available on the Becta web site.)

The NSF report's focus is on learning in the sciences (broadly defined) rather than the humanities, but the implications of the report are not restricted to learning science.

Getting parents to pressurise schools to up their game with ICT

According to Becta:

"Schools that integrate technology well across the curriculum and wider school life have reduced absence rates and achieved a higher percentage of A*-C grades at GCSE level."

Assuming this is true, and the reader's first reaction is to ask "compared to what?", it is quite a big leap of faith to conclude that effective integration of technology across the curriculum is the cause of the reduced absence rates or higher achievement levels. Instead, it might be a product of the schools which integrate technology effectively being well led or well managed or having good teachers. (Becta, elaborates more on this issue in various places, and here is a slightly extended summary of its evidence.)

I'd be interested to know what others make of this new feature on Becta's "next generation learning" web site, which enables you to find out if schools near you have the ICT Mark. (The image above shows the paucity of ICT Mark schools near where I live in Sheffield.) Becta implies that having the ICT Mark provides a proxy for how well a school is integrating technology into the curriculum, and urges parents to pressurise schools to get it:

"As your school is not listed you should ask about their ICT plans and whether they plan to work towards the ICT Mark."

Certainly this is a not a standard approach for a Government Agency to be taking, but given Becta's remit "to ensure the effective and innovative use of technology throughout learning" you can see the rationale for it. 

Research comparing the performance of schools with ICT Mark with those without it would be of interest, if any reader is aware of any.

Delivering Digital Inclusion: An Action Plan for Consultation

Earlier this week the Government launched Delivering Digital Inclusion: An Action Plan for Consultation [80 pages, 1MB PDF], a comprehensive "taking stock" of the extent to which "digital exclusion" blights citizens' life chances. Official abstract, which does not do the Action Plan justice:

"The Action Plan outlines the key issues relating to the use of digital technology and argues why digital exclusion is an increasingly urgent social problem. In summary:   

• Digital technologies pervade every aspect of modern society. However these opportunities are not enjoyed by the whole of the UK population - for example, 17 million people in the UK still do not use computers and the Internet and there is a strong correlation between digital exclusion and social exclusion.
• There are significant and untapped opportunities to use technology better on behalf of citizens and communities. These include improved service planning, design and delivery, particularly to address the needs of disadvantaged groups and individuals."

There is a rather slow-to-load 8 minute explanatory film available, and pages 73-75 of the action plan contain an Appendix "Technology Futures and Digital Inclusion" by Chris Yapp of CapGemini. The closing date for consultation responses is 19 January 2009.

Blackboard vs Desire2Learn: what is the other side to this story?

Desire2Learn tells a convoluted story about a Court Order to permit a Blackboard expert witness to attend Desire2Learn's July "FUSION" conference incognito, and about an only partially successful court ruling that enables Blackboard to investigate - in two US universities - the way in which Desire2Learn's VLE runs when hosted locally. It is not clear whether Desire2Learn is seeking mainly to generate interest in the patent dispute immediately prior to next week's giant EDUCAUSE conference, or to get some till now confidential matters into the public domain; and it is probably a bit of both. It would certainly be interesting to read Blackboard's side of the story, but that is probably not going to be possible given the two companies' understandably different approaches to putting material and commentary into the public domain.

£5.7m in the UK to fund Open Educational Resources pilot projects

According to this 15/10/2008 HEFCE press release:

"Students, academics and higher education institutions are to benefit from the combined experience and knowledge of educators throughout the country. An innovative project announced today will significantly increase access to educational resources across the higher education sector.

HEFCE has announced an initial £5.7 million of funding for pilot projects that will open up existing high-quality education resources from higher education institutions to the world.

The Higher Education Academy and Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) will work in partnership to deliver the 12-month pilot projects. These will run at institutional, subject and individual level along with accompanying support services. The projects will be formally launched in April 2009."

The invitation to tender for this work will be issued in December 2008.

Machine Translation: Google's Franz Josef Och discusses the launch of eleven more languages at translate.google.com

Amended 16/10/2008

Eleven more languages are available* for translation by Google: Catalan, Filipino, Hebrew, Indonesian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese. This increases the number of languages from 23 to 34, and more than doubles the number of language pairs available to well over one thousand. Franz Josef Och Google's Lead Research Scientist in Machine Translation explains.

You may also be interested in this informative, if slightly tense, 28 minute "round table" in which Franz Josef Och and Mike Cohen, Manager - Speech Technology, talk about their work. Expect machine translation to be built into specific products before too long, in particular, email.

* Or are about to be? On 30/9/2008 6/10/2008 from the UK the additional languages are not yet available at Google Language Tools. On 15/10/2008 all the additional languages are available from the UK.

Android: phones are PCs, only smaller and with more stuff on them

Source: Google/Android web site

Updated 22/10/2008

This What is Android? page gives you a feel for the complexity and power of the Android Open Source phone operating system, and shows clearly how minor the "phone" component of a modern phone will be, from a software and capability point of view. Inevitably, the "human computer interface" and usability side of the design of handheld devices will be centre-stage. And Android is a case in point of something "generative" rather than "tethered". For more on this, see The future of the Internet and how to stop it, and John Naughton's Google's Android could smash iPhone's locked gateway.

BBC - Learning and Teaching Scotland reports that use of Brain Training on a Nintendo DS boosts maths scores

The BBC reports on a study just published by Learning and Teaching Scotland that "a daily dose of computer games can boost maths attainment". Here is an extract of a report on the research from the LTS web site (is there an equivalent resource for England?):

"Three Primary 6 classes from schools in Dundee took part in a Consolarium project to show how computer games can impact on and enhance learning in classrooms in a practical, accessible and manageable way."

"The project involved the use of a game for the Nintendo DS called Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training. This is a collection of mini-games such as number bond challenges, reading tests, problem-solving exercises and memory puzzles."

"The main rationale underpinning the game is that the problems and challenges are designed to ‘exercise the brain’ by increasing blood flow to the pre-frontal cortex."

"We felt that Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training had a rationale similar to that of Brain Gym and we were very keen to compare and contrast both approaches to see if any gains could be made, particularly in relation to mental maths and how children perceive themselves as learners (academic self-concept)."

"Our results have shown that a small, cleverly designed handheld game can significantly enhance learner performance in mental maths as well as having a positive impact on other aspects of classroom life. Our research methodology used only four of the 25 available Brain Gym activities, and the children from the Brain Gym group spent less than half the time using the movements than did the children playing the Nintendo game. Despite this lack of parity in both approaches, the limited Brain Gym intervention did significantly improve the children's performance in maths, although not by as much as did the more extensive use of the Nintendo game."