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The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 were published in 1999 and quickly grew out of date.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.

Martin Dougiamas speaking in Sheffield on 27/7/2006

The South Yorkshire E-learning Special Interest Group has arranged for Martin Dougiamas (the man behind Moodle), and Jason Cole (Product Development Manager from the Moodle-using Open University) to present their plans for the future development of Moodle in front of an audience and expert panel (Adam Cooper, Tribal Education, Ian Dolphin, University of Hull, Stuart Sim, Sun Microsystems) at a free afternoon seminar at Sheffield's Royal Victoria Hotel. Probably worth travelling for.  27/7/2006 - full report from the meeting.

Link to report from meeting added 31/7/2006.

Free on-line training for pension fund trustees

Not sure who these sinister looking people are, but the UK Pension Regulator's decision to publish a freely available online course for pension fund trustees is an ambitious and interesting one which you could imagine being extended to, for example, charity trustees or company directors.

The first of its kind, the Trustee toolkit is a free, practical and interactive online training programme designed to improve trustees’ knowledge and understanding, and help them meet statutory requirements.

The course, implemented in Flash, and, from the look of it, pretty big and complicated, has been developed by Epic plc, and when you enrol on it you can opt to be sent a completion certificate signed by the Pensions Regulator.

Press release from the Pensions Regulator. Login page for the Trustee toolkit.

Google's China problem (and China's Google problem)

Thorough and informative 23/4/2006 article in the New York Times by Clive Thompson about Google and its role and development in China. The introductory paragraph reads:

For many young people in China, Kai-Fu Lee is a celebrity. Not quite on the level of a movie star like Edison Chen or the singers in the boy band F4, but for a 44-year-old computer scientist who invariably appears in a somber dark suit, he can really draw a crowd. When Lee, the new head of operations for Google in China, gave a lecture at one Chinese university about how young Chinese should compete with the rest of the world, scalpers sold tickets for $60 apiece. At another, an audience of 8,000 showed up; students sprawled out on the ground, fixed on every word. It is not hard to see why Lee has become a cult figure for China's high-tech youth. He grew up in Taiwan, went to Columbia and Carnegie-Mellon and is fluent in both English and Mandarin. Before joining Google last year, he worked for Apple in California and then for Microsoft in China; he set up Microsoft Research Asia, the company's research-and-development lab in Beijing.

Here is a printer-friendly rendering of the article, which, depending on your printer and browser set-up, will fill about 12 pages if as I did you decide to print it before you read it. In a related vein, you may also be interested in The party, the people and the power of cyber-talk, from the 27/4/2006 edition of the Economist.

Disabled people and ICT: Draft Charter

Disabled people and ICT is a UK project funded by the Alliance for Digital Inclusion, an industry body of members (including Microsoft, BT, AOL, and CISCO) "committed to the Digital Inclusion agenda". Part of the project is to create a charter, to be presented to Government and industry, that outlines a strategy for inclusion, with recommendations for action. The charter, on which comments are sought, will be launched on 15 May 2006 at a Parliamentary reception.

Disabled people and ICT will be providing an online list of experts that understand the challenges faced by disabled people and wants to hear from professionals working on issues relevant to disabled people and ICT.