Black Chat

There is an excellent article by Cameron Chapman ‘The History of the Internet in a Nutshell’  http://sixrevisions.com/res  Had me reflecting on my own experience. I’m so old I remember filling in cards with a HB pencil then waiting anxiously overnight to see if my PL1 or FORTRAN IV scratchings were correct. One mistake and it was back to the pencil again!

 I then recall my late wife talking about how she was corresponding with colleagues back in the US of A using her university computer. Didnt think much of it at the time. I then had the pleasure of using an IBM intranet system that required programming skills and which gave real meaning to the work ‘cluncky’   Many managers would wait anxiously by their machine each morning to receive the daily prognostications from the big boss. Ho hum.

I still recall running a rather large education department when, in 1995, I still had no reason to have a computer on my desk or so the IT manager said. At the time we were struggling with setting up an executive information system. I think they are still looking for one! In the good ol nineties we used our Commodores, a phone and sometimes a fax to deliver distance education. Worked pretty well I thought at the time. In that era I was a board member of the now defunct Open Learning Technology Corporation, the forerunner of education.au limited. At the OLTC we had long discussions about ‘connecting up’ education systems across the country. Yet 15 years later its still not possible due to firewalls!!

In 1996 I did some consulting for the UK government and bumped into a group of education people at Cambridge who showed me this email thing. I found the whole experience both intimidating and exciting at the same time.

In 1999 I had my first internet system paralleling an old intranet. Thank heavens for Y2K!

In 2002 I had, sadly, to sack someone for inappropriate use of the internet. In 2007 we hosted an Australian workshop series by Jimmy Wales the inventor of Wikipedia. I rate Wikipedia and search engines like Google as some of the most extraordinary, and important world events of my lifetime. Last year I met Tim Berners-Lee whose vision for the world wide web remains both exciting and undiminished. If only governments would free up their data and get out of the way!

Now one of my biggest challenges is controlling my email and my propensity to look at it all the time. I think its an addiction.

What’s next? Bring on artificial intelligence, we need someone or something to do the HB pencil stuff and read all those emails, postings, twits……..

I participated in the Open Edge conference in Sydney last week, a schools’ focussed event.  We use many open source platforms at education.au including Java, Drupal, Moodle, Solr and so on. Whilst I have been following the open source movement for many years I hadn’t fully appreciated the depth and breadth of activity in the open source community. An excellent resource has been compiled by The National Centre for Open Source and Education (USA) and our own Open Source Victoria entitled ‘Free Software for Schools.’ Its available from yudu.com and this publication gives a great overview of the open source software now available.

The conference included showcases by schools on how they have applied open source generating substantial cost savings and flexibility in applications.  Also notable was the extent to which open source has been taken up in developing countries - necessity being the engine of invention.

There is a link on the OpenEdge site to both the Prezi (above) and the video taken on the day.

Social networking sites like bebo facebook myspace and so on have such power and appeal that I cant see them being a passing fad. In the Australian media over the past week we have seen a case reported of staff potentially libelling management on facebook whilst there have been several reports on the predatory behaviour of paedophiles using social networking sites to lure young people.

These cases are reminders of the urgent need to educate site users, and young people in particular, of the importance of safe use of social networking sites and the internet generally. There are some excellent resources available like the Australian Communications and Media Authorities cybersmart site 

http://www.cybersmart.gov.au/

My greatest concern is the tendency of many schools to simply ban the use of social networking sites and parents to assume that what their kids are doing is appropriate. I know that schools are pressed to do so many things these days but the importance of the internet in our daily lives is such that safe use issues cant be ignored. The Commonwealth government is providing resources to schools to deal with cybersafety. There are some great models out there like Superclubs Plus. Please stop banning and start educating!

Parents are a vital part of the equation. Engage with your child in their net life. Talk about safety and privacy. Help them see the benefits and how to avoid the dangers.

Sometimes you have to do it before you really get it!

We have all heard of the huge potential power of the web and collaborative processes like the wikipedia phenomenon and so on. But recently I have had first hand experience and it blew me away!

With colleague and collaborative tools guru Kerrie Smith I had the task of developing a strategic research and policy paper on the complex and vexed question of pre-service teacher education. There was little money and even less time to complete the paper.

So we web 2.0ed it. We started with some traditional desk top research some web 0.0 phone calls to mates across the world then it all happened. Kerrie tapped into existing on-line groups with an interest in the area, established some on-line chatter, ran a series of on-line surveys of teacher academics, teacher mentors and pre-service teachers, created some case studies and in a trice we had high quality opinion and in depth commentary from over 500 people with a direct interest.

Naturally this didn’t follow scientific research method. But the data obtained resonated strongly with previous research by education.au and others and gave us a wealth of insights which we have turned into policy proposals that are radical and very exciting. 

Welcome to web 2.0 a different world.