Fortnightly Mailing

Michael Wesch talks about the future of education

You'll possibly have seen some of cultural anthropologist Mike Wesch's widely viewed pieces: as Information R/evolution, Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us, and A Vision of Students Today. Here, via Matt Jukes, is a long and gripping talk by Wesch at a University of Manitoba conference on 17/6/2008, in which Wesch manages successfully to trash the ghastly "digital natives/digital immigrants" dichotomy that currently plagues discourse about technology in learning.

Summary, from the conference web site:

During his presentation, the Kansas State University professor breaks down his attempts to integrate Facebook, Netvibes, Diigo, Google Apps, Jott, Twitter, and other emerging technologies to create an education portal of the future.

Digital Ethnography course portal at Kansas State University. Thorough review of the Wesch's University of Manitoba talk by Matt Lingard from LSE.

E-learning strategy for England - 2008 to 2014

Becta has just published Harnessing Technology: Next Generation Learning 2008-14, an overall cradle-to-grave e-learning strategy for English education. There are some depressing charts on page 27,  which contrast how children say they prefer to learn:

with what they say happens most frequently in classrooms.

(The second chart looks to have a poorly edited title.)

Dylan Wiliam on formative e-assessment

[Updated 14/7/2008]

I've focused on formative assessment in previous posts. I'm a member of the steering group for a short JISC-funded project about formative e-assessment run by the Institute of Education. The aim of the project is to "scope a vision for formative e-assessment". Here is a link to the PowerPoint slides of an introductory talk given by Dylan Wiliam [1.2 MB PPT] at the project's first "practical enquiry" day. (An MP3 file for the talk would be useful, and will be available soon.)  Wiliam's introduction sets the tone:

"Much of the debate about the improvement of systems of educational assessment focus on binaries. Is reliability more important than validity? Are constructed-response items better than multiple-choice items? Is teacher assessment better than externally-set tests and examinations? Is continuous assessment through coursework better than terminal examinations? In this talk, I will argue that as long as the debate is conducted in terms of such either/or issues, then progress will be slow, if not entirely absent. Rather, progress is to be made by mapping out the shades of grey between these extremes, understanding how each end of the spectrum is useful in helping us understand the spectrum, and the tensions we have to reconcile, but lethal as a goal in itself."

and these statements about formative feedback make you think:

• "Frequent feedback is not necessarily formative
  
• Feedback that causes improvement is not necessarily formative
  
• Assessment is formative only if the information fed back to the learner is used by the learner in making improvements
  
• To be formative, assessment must include a recipe for future action"

The project is looking for a spectrum of case studies of "formative e-assessment in action". Further details about the project.

Debunking the "Net Generation" myth

Iain Doherty, Mark Bullen and two less identifiable individuals are contributing to Net Gen Nonsense a blog "dedicated to debunking the myth of the net generation, particularly as it relates to learning, teaching and the use of technology".

Microsoft after Bill Gates - a briefing in the Economist

This three-page briefing in the Economist coincides with the imminent departure of Microsoft's founder Bill Gates. It provides a clear indication of the state of play in Microsoft: over 80,000 employees, net annual income of over $16bn, a market capitalisation of around $300bn (half as much as in 1999), with plenty of questions being asked about the quality of the Vista operating system. Whatever your role, the briefing is worth scan-reading for the summary it provides of Microsoft's direction of travel: towards products that support collaboration and interconnectedness over the Internet. Bear in mind that on Gates's departure, the boss of Microsoft will be Ray Ozzie, who was an early pioneer of online collaboration. Ozzie more or less invented Lotus Notes, and then went on to found online collaboration software company Groove Networks. Microsoft bought Groove in 2005, bringing Ozzie with it.

Dr Ray Mercer's evidence for Desire2Learn about prior art

The US Patent Office is currently re-examining the e-learning patent it awarded Blackboard early in 2006, following Desire2Learn's and the Software Freedom Law Centre's successful inter partes and ex parte re-examination requests. Dr Ray Mercer's 26 June 2008 evidence for Desire2Learn [450 kB PDF]  - part of the supporting material to Desire2Learn's Comments by third party requester to patent owner's response in inter partes reexamination [570 kB PDF] - is not for the feint hearted. Ideally it needs to be read in parallel with Dr Mark Jones's evidence for Blackboard [320 kB PDF], to which it is, in effect, a response.

Step by step, Mercer sets out the extent to which, in his opinion, Patent Number 6,988,138 was anticipated by prior art, and thus should never have been granted by the US Patent Office. Mercer concentrates in his evidence on several different sources of prior art, including Serf, Top Class 2.0 and Virtual Campus (early on-line learning systems).

Most interesting to me was his consideration of the EDUCOM/NLII Instructional Management Systems Specifications Document Version 0.5 (April 29, 1998), which I wrote about at the end of August 2006. The feeling I get from reading Mercer's evidence is that Desire2Learn might have benefited from it during Blackboard's infringement case earlier this year (which Desire2Learn lost, comprehensively); and I'm puzzled as to why it was not obtained earlier in the process. (My eye has been rather off the Blackboard/Desire2Learn ball in recent months, and it is entirely possible that I missed an earlier Mercer document.)

Elegant word or tag-cloud creator

 

Jonathan Feinberg's Wordle (via Kristian Still) is an elegant and flexible tool to create clouds from text. Wordle gives you a lot of control over fonts, font colours, and font positions. The one above uses the Executive Summary of the DIUS Higher Education at Work consultation document. The one below is from Lucy Kellaway's piece on the brainlessly upbeat language of business.

Epic escapes from Huveaux

Updated 24/7/2008

In September 2005 I wrote this:

"Epic plc to be taken over by the Huveaux plc. Epic plc is a major and successful UK e-learning company. I've occasionally reviewed Epic's often useful e-learning White Papers in Fortnightly Mailing, and some readers may have read an online interview with me which appeared in Epic's July Newsletter. Over the past few months Epic has had a friendly "suitor". At the end of July the boards of Huveaux and Epic announced the terms of a recommended share and cash offer [68 kB PDF - link now dead] for Huveaux, to acquire Epic, with approval to be sought for the deal from Huveaux's shareholders at an Extraordinary General Meeting, on 7 September. (Huveaux was formed in 2001 with the objective of "building a substantial publishing and media business focused on the creation and delivery of "must have" information across both the public and private sectors".) On 12 August, Futuremedia plc, another UK-based e-learning company, just round the corner in Brighton from Epic, also announced its interest in buying Epic, but by 18 August, Huveaux had gained control of Epic, rendering Futuremedia's interest irrelevant. Donald Clark, Epic's Chief Executive, will stand down from this role, and become a consultant to Huveaux."

I believe Huveaux paid over £20m for Epic. The offer valued the entire issued share capital of Epic at approximately £22.7 million.

33 months years later Huveaux has now sold Epic to successful entrepreneur Andrew Brode, for less than it originally paid (~£5m? ... which would imply an average loss of value since the original sale of over £1m per quarter). Jonathan Satchell, brought in by Huveaux in December 2007 to find a buyer, will continue as Epic's CEO. My guess is that away from Huveaux's largely print-based stable, Epic will thrive once more. Update - 24/7/2008. This 24/7/2008 post by Epic's founder, Donald Clark, has more.

Bologna: are European entrepreneurs now leading the US on the development of Higher Education student record software? Guest Contribution by Jim Farmer.

On Wednesday 21 May the Institute of Higher Education Policy released a report “The Bologna Club: What U.S. Higher Education Can Learn from a Decade of European Reconstruction.” One week later, 28 May 2008, two young European entrepreneurs, Manuel Dietz and Stéphane Velay, of the German company unisolution GmbH, described the collaborative work of 13 European software and service providers to automate administrative services supporting the emerging Bologna Process.

The report's author Clifford Adelman wrote:

What has transpired since 1999 cannot be but lightly acknowledged in the United States. While still a work in progress, parts of the Bologna Process have already been imitated in Latin America, North Africa, and Australia. The core features of the Bologna Process have sufficient momentum to become the dominant global higher education model [emphasis added] within the next two decades. We had better listen up.

Lucy Kellaway's diatribe against "brainlessly upbeat" business language

Financial Times journalist Lucy Kellaway's "Point of View" this morning on BBC Radio 4 was a terrific diatribe against several aspects of business language. Not least the growing use of terms like "reaching out", "going forward", "warm(est) regards", "passion", and "heads up" (gulp.... that's one I've used...).

For a while you can listen to the piece as a 10 minute broadcast. Otherwise you'll need to read it. (And you will enjoy this word-cloud based on it.) Excerpt:

"Yet what no list of words can get at is the new business insincerity: a phoney upping of the emotional ante. Last week I got an e-mail from someone I had never met that began by saying "I'm reaching out to you" and ended "warmest personal regards". As her regards had no business to be either warm or personal, the overall effect was somewhat chilling.

But this incontinent gush is nothing compared to an e-mail sent by an extremely powerful person at JP Morgan encouraging his investment banking team to be more human. In it he said: "Take the time today to call a client and tell them you love them. They won't forget you made the call." Indeed. I'm sure the client would remember such a call for a very long time.

If love has no place in the language of business, neither does passion. Passion, says the dictionary, means a strong sexual desire or the suffering of Christ at the crucifixion. In other words it doesn't really have an awful lot to do with a typical day in the office - unless things have gone very wrong indeed. And yet passion is something that every employee must attest to in order to get through any selection process. Every one of the candidates in the final rounds of interview on the Apprentice solemnly declared that they were passionate about being Sir Alan's Apprentice."