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  • iPods vs global warming

    I don’t have it in for iPods, or Apple, or Samsung, honest, but something about this news item really brought me up short. Samsung are investing $33Bn in new factories to build memory chips.

    According to these articles (1)(2)(3), those chips are soon to arrive in an iPod near you. Apple, it is said, has pre-bought 40% of Samsung’s entire memory chip production for the iPod. iPods are great little gadgets; thus far I have no problem.

    Where it all starts to unravel for me is reading the sorry history of the next nuclear fusion research reactor, the ITER. Nuclear fusion, remember, is our best chance of solving global warming because it is the only option that doesn’t require some vested interest to make a sacrifice it finds unacceptable. So it’s rather important that we get on and develop working reactors as soon as possible.

    Instead, various alliances of governments have wasted two whole years haggling over where to site the next development reactor. Note the singular. The fate of the planet hangs by a thread and we decide to make just one attempt to rescue it – and that two years late. Why? Because at €10Bn ($12Bn) it is deemed too expensive to build more than one.

    So, here’s the reality. For approximately the same price, we could have three competing fusion projects, each spurring the word’s greatest scientists and engineers to solve our greatest problem in the shortest possible time, or we can secure the iPod supply for the next decade.

    iPods are cool, sure, but wouldn’t you prefer a cool planet?

  • Group projects – anonymity vs registration

    Over at Wikitextbook, Steve is introducing compulsory registration. The idea is to encourage students to fully participate in the wiki as a group project, by assessing their individual contributions. An interesting aspect is that wiki users tend to spontaneously adopt different roles – creator, editor, provocateur and so forth – and by checking the history of each page, Steve can see exactly who has done what and who has adopted which role.

    Steve and I got the idea from Konrad Glogowski, who has done a similar thing using blogs. He quickly found that the real value was the way the students used their blogs to construct public conversations. There are big differences; Konrad is teaching English in Canada; Steve teaches Business Studies in England. Wikis and blogs both count as social software, but they have many differences. So it is a very worthwhile experiment.

    I will be watching with keen interest, and, this being a wiki, you can observe directly too. Don’t rush though; we’re having trouble installing the Permissions module into Wikimedia.

    So just as we’re putting Wikitextbook into lockdown, along comes Russ Beatie to put a spanner in the works with a well-argued case for actively promoting anonymity in social software. Promoting, mark you, not just permitting.

    Russ’s argument is that most bad behaviour online is connected to issues of power. Flame wars, for example, are invariably personal as one person attempts to dominate another. His arguments are impeccable, but in clarifying my understanding they actually reinforce my belief that Steve is doing the right thing with Wikitextbook.

    Teaching in a formal education system is about identity and power. Steve’s ability to educate stems mainly from the position of power (authority if you prefer) vested in him by the system. Without the carrot of assessment, students who are not innately driven by a fascination with the subject being taught simply have no incentive to participate.

    What we have to be clear about is how different this is from voluntary education, which adults participate in largely for love of the subject and a desire to learn. There, there could be a very strong argument for complete anonymity in an otherwise identical project to Wikitextbook.

  • Talking at CHASE

    CHASE is the Cambridge Association of Hi-tech Entrepreneurs and they have invited me to present on Chalkface on Tuesday 4th Oct. Details. The event is open to non-members and of course I would be delighted to see you there.

    That’s our second mention in Cambridge Network this week. Here’s the other. Shame they missed the PR photo. Believe me, persuading a corporate financier to not only come punting during business hours but pay for it as well is a real achievement!
    Click to enlarge

  • Neale-Wade Community College visit

    My thanks to Andrew Field and his Year 7 ICT class at Neale-Wade for some fascinating classroom observation yesterday. Some issues that came out of the visit, in no particular order:

    1. Why are school ICT networks so hard for children to use? At every school I visit, I see some children unable to use some or all of the features they should be using for half the lesson or even more. I suspect many teachers think this problem is unique to their own school, but it’s not. It is damn near universal. I’ve only observed schools with PC networks recently; I wonder if Mac or Linux school networks fare any better?
    2. How can we assess children who work in pairs on an online system? Special joint logins? Could quickly get out of hand. For Yacapaca-type products I honestly do not think there is a good solution, but I have some ideas for an online project service that would actively support multiple authors. Look at the History on any popular Wikipedia topic, and you will see all authoring and editing clearly attributed. I’m sure that could be adapted for the classroom.
    3. Nice to see Neale Wade running Moodle as their VLE, and saving a fortune in proprietary VLE fees at the same time. Andrew is already getting it integrated with his quiz generating software.
    4. Also most cheering to see Yacapaca directly linked from their Moodle installation to facilitate student login.

  • Yacapaca – now worth nicking!

    Yacapaca reached a very significant milestone last night. For the first time, somebody thought it was worthwhile nicking stuff off it.

    Well, not nicking, strictly speaking. Somebody who’d had a free 100-unit subscription and used it up, set up a second free sub via the new self-signup page and moved all her student records across, thus saving a tenner. In fairness we don’t actually publish a rule anywhere (even in the TOS) that says Thou Shalt Not Do That.

    Anyway, the point of this is to celebrate. We have reached the point with Yacapaca where somebody considers it valuable enough that they will bend the rules to get hold of it. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, this must come a pretty close second.