Fortnightly Mailing

Insights about Afghanistan and Iraq - a 2008 talk by (and discussion with) Rory Stewart

I chanced on this 25 minute March 2008 talk at Google by Rory Stewart, who at the time was running the Kabul-based NGO the Turquoise Mountain Foundation (but is now a prospective Tory MP). The focus of the talk is on Stewart's walk from Herat to Kabul, with pictures that will be familiar if you've read The places in between and on the work of the Turquoise Mountain Foundation.

The talk is followed by a very wide-ranging and informative 25 minute discussion, which is relevant in the context of current plans to "talk with the Taliban" and which has many insights, for example on the differences between Iraq and Afghanistan, and on the politics of international aid.

The final section on the theory of state-building and the (absurd) 10 preconditions for state-building (47 minutes into the video) is worth waiting for.

As an aside the piece is also a great illustration of the message-multiplying effect of video: there looked to be less than 20 people present for the talk, but over 7000 people have viewed (or started to view) the video. 

Learning from the Extremes - a CISCO report by Charles Leadbeater and Annika Wong

Here is a link to the executive summary [190 kB PDF] of Learning from the Extremes [621 kB PDF], a thoroughly referenced and visually appealing report about the future of schools by Charles Leadbeater and Annika Wong (link to bio needed) for CISCO, and linked to GETideas.org, an open CISCO-funded "public service site providing community, collaboration, and resources for education leaders worldwide".

The 28 page report takes as its framework this "innovation grid":

                                                   Formal Learning         Informal Learning

Sustaining Innovation     Improve                       Supplement

Disruptive Innovation     Reinvent                      Transform

Key
Improve schools through better facilities, teachers, and leadership.
Supplement schools by working with families and communities.
Reinvent schools to create an education better fit for the times.
Transform learning by making it available in radically new ways.

FriendFeed postings 10 to 23 January 2010

Here are the 10  or so FriendFeed postings I've written over the last two weeks.

Moving to Open Source - tips from 2009 - Guest Contribution by Doug Gowan

Link added 31/1/2010

2009 was the year when I abandoned MS Outlook, adopted OpenOffice for mainstream document production, and switched my laptops and home PCs to Linux. This note may be of use to others who are thinking of going open and need some encouragement and reassurement. How do you stay compatible with all that stuff you've created, and why bother to make the changes anyway? Here are some things I found along the way.

Calendars

For me a key problem to solve was how to keep personal and group calendars in sync across a range of PCs with a variety of operating systems. For years I had kept an MS Outlook calendar going because synchronisation problems with phones and laptops and with group calendars has been painful without it.

White Papers - Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills (ACT21s)

[Post originally written on 11 January 2010, and rewritten on 16 September 2010.]

The CISCO/Intel/Microsoft Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills (ACT21s) initiative published a series of draft Working Group White Papers on 11 January 2010. Each of the white papers deserves to be read. According to the announcement made at the January 2010 Learning and Technology World Forum (attended by ~700 people including over 70 education ministers),  Australia, Finland, Portugal, Singapore, UK, and USA are "signed up" to apply (take account of? actively implement? I do not know) ACT21stCS. The individual white papers are (were?) on 21st Century Skills, Methodological Issues, Technological Issues, Classroom Learning Environments and Formative Evaluations, and Policy Frameworks for New Assessments. They were originally available for download, but now [16/9/2010] need to be requested by email, which seems to be a backward step.

FriendFeed postings 6 December 2009 to 9 January 2010

As an experiment I've put below links to the 20 or so FriendFeed postings I've written over the last few weeks.

9/1/2010. Funding Wikipedia through adverts. A discussion is underway.
http://ff.im/e3GVZ

8/1/2010. Mediactive - some principles for media creator/users by Dan Gilmour.
http://ff.im/e018b

7/1/2010. 2020 visions - Nature has a series of brief essays by leading researchers and policy-makers about where different scientific fields will be in 10 years. http://ff.im/dXEHt

6/1/2010. Massive increase in words consumed - well-informed précis by Donald Clark from “How Much Information? 2009 Report on American Consumers" by Roger Bohn and James Short.
http://ff.im/dUh0T

5/1/2010. Reprieve encourages people to sign the No10 petition for a coroner’s inquest into the circumstances of Akmal Shaikh’s execution in China.
http://ff.im/dPVGr

5/1/2010. The night sky in the World - wonderful Italian site about the light-polluted night sky, and where the pollution is least and most.
http://ff.im/dOPOP

4/1/2010. IPPR’s "Global Dimensions if the Financial Crisis" by Gerry Holtham, Managing Partner, Cadwyn Capital LLP - 8 pages of worthwhile insight.
http://ff.im/dE9eZ

23/12/2009. Rewiring Inclusion: Strategies, Tools and Techniques to promote barrier-free learning. ALT/Techdis event on February 8/9 2010 in Nottingham. With many workshops, and with speakers from Google, Yahoo!, universities and colleges.
http://ff.im/diyiS

21/12/2009. "The Programming Historian" - an Open Access introduction to programming in Python, aimed at working historians and other humanists (sic) with little previous experience".
http://ff.im/dbfrL

19/12/2009. Universal Package Tracking Service, built on the Google App Engine (a cloud based service on which developers can build and deploy systems without faffing about with their own infrastructure). Next: a universal assignment-and-where-it-is-in-the-marking queue tracker?
http://ff.im/d6LWo

16/12/2009. The Digital Divide in Numbers: TVs, PCs, Internet users, Mobile around the world. Fascinating piece by Tomi T Ahonen who understands marketing and digital convergence.
http://ff.im/d0Y9m

14/12/20-9. Long piece by Dick Moore about the impact on learner, learning, and the organisation of learning, of always on networked location-aware hand-held devices.
http://ff.im/cU3E8

13/12/2009. Military use of consumer technology. Interesting piece in the Economist about military use of consumer technology.
http://ff.im/cQbNi

12/12/2009. OpenStreetMap - impressive wiki-based open mapping activity/business/campaign, with 90,000 contributors. The aim? To make a free map of the world.
http://ff.im/cO3c5

9/12/2009. How Google Can Help Newspapers. Alan Patrick writes a tongue-in-cheek (?) parody of a piece by Eric Schmidt's in the Wall Street Journal piece.
http://ff.im/cDZDc

6/12/2009. Credit not Charity the Kiva Way - nice piece by Dick Moore in Tools and Taxonomy about the Kiva model for supporting economic development.
http://ff.im/cwM2P

The mobile Internet will be bigger than most think - giant document (but only a taster) from Morgan Stanley Research

Via Stephen Downes via Gary Woodill here is a 424 page document from Morgan Stanley Research, [48 MB PDF] designed as a giant taster for a $59 publication.

For a taster there is plenty to mull over, including:

• about 10 pages of introductory narrative;
•  a particularly useful 8 page glossary;
• a shorter (92 slide) introduction;
• a long (659 slide) presentation covering 8 themes, each backed by a page or two of narrative.

The themes covered are:

• Wealth Creation / Destruction 
• Mobile Ramping Faster than Desktop Internet
• Apple Leading in Mobile Innovation + Impact
• Game-Changing Communications / Commerce Platforms (Social Networking + Mobile) Emerging
• Growth / Monetization Roadmaps (Japan + Desktop Internet) 
• Massive Data Growth Driving Carrier / Equipment Transitions 
• Compelling Opportunities in Emerging Markets
• Regulatory Impact

The snazzy slides are packed with startling data, for example, that Google has yet to achieve the market value that AOL (who?) had in 1998. Alongside this there is plenty of annoying business-cliché:

"We don't know exactly what Google's up to, and it is facing very tough competition, but we do know that in epic battles like the one that's developing around the mobile Internet...with the best and brightest in the hunt...this is a war game and the smartest players are trying to find the holes and stay / get ahead on the field."

Stephen writes:

The report argues, "we believe more users will likely connect to the Internet via mobile devices than desktop PCs within 5 years." This is probably true, and as the report states, because of the prevalence of existing billing methods, commercialization will occur a lot more quickly (of course, this is why there's such a push for the mobile internet, and away from that horrible mostly free desktop internet).

Morgan Stanley Research has issued reports like this in the past, and before getting carried away with the "truth" of this one's predictions, you'd need to review some from the past for their accuracy. But the overwhelming sense you get is that the mobile internet is unstoppable; and that those who concentrate on providing services for PC and laptop users at the expense of users of mobiles will miss out.

Google Wave - revolutionary tool for computer supported collaborative work, or overestimated hype?

The former, says Johanna Hane in a snazzy 10 page study [32 kB PDF] undertaken as part of a course at Gothenburg University.

[Via Dick Moore and Phil Candy.]

2007 report - How the world's best performing school systems come out on top

A report from McKinsey [10 MB PDF] more or less builds its brief conclusions into the titles of its three main chapters:

1. The quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers - therefore get the right people to become teachers;
2. The only way to improve outcomes is to improve instruction - therefore develop them into effective instructors;
3. Delivery for every child - therefore ensure that the system is able to deliver the best possible instruction for every child.

There is a striking table at the end of the report "Key questions and parameters in system development".

Question	Best in the world
Getting the right people to become teachers
What is the average academic calibre of people who become teachers?	Among the top 10% of each cohort
How is the teaching profession viewed by university students and recent graduates?	One of the top 3 career choices
How rigorous are selection processes into teacher training?	Rigorous checks designed to assess teaching potential: e.g. teaching practice, literacy and numeracy tests
What is the ratio of places on initial teacher education courses to applicants?	1:10
How does starting compensation for teaching compare to other graduate salaries	In line with other graduate salaries
Developing effective instructors
What is the total amount of coaching new teachers receive in schools?	>20 weeks
What proportion of each teacher's time is spend on professional development?	10% of working time is used for professional development
Does each teacher have an exact knowledge of specific weaknesses in their practice?	Yes, as a result of everyday activities occurring in schools
Can teachers observe and understand better teaching practice in a school setting?	Yes, teachers regularly invite each other into each other's classes to observe and coach
Do teachers reflect on and discuss practice?	Yes, through both formal and informal practices in schools
What role do school leaders play in developing effective instructors?	The best coaches and teachers are selected as school leaders
How much focused, systematic research is conducted into effective instruction and then fed back into policy and classroom practice?	Research budget equivalent to $50 per student each year focused on improving instruction
Ensuring every student performs well
What standards exist for what students should know, understand, and be able to do?	Clear standards appropriate to system performance
What system-wide checks exist on the quality of school performance?	All schools are aware of their strengths and weaknesses
What action is taken to tackle under-performance?	Effective mechanisms to support all failing students, minimal performance variation between schools
How is funding and support organised?	Funding and support are focused where it can have most impact

Clayton Wright's vast listing of conferences with a learning technology component

Here is the 22nd edition of Clayton Wright's amazing conference list [1 MB DOC]. There are over 650 events listed, mostly concentrated between January and June 2010, but with some confirmed events running through into 2011.