Tech-Ed Collisions

content rating system for Aussie websites

jleeson — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 01:29:28 +0000

From the Ars Technica site is the article ‘Australian websites to get ratings for content, age‘. I am not sure what to make of this one. It seems that the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has approved a ‘Content Services Code’. The code was developed by the Internet Industry of Australia (IIA). It looks like it will align content ratings with that which we are used to for film (MA15+ etc).
From the article:

As part of the code, service providers must use access controls in order to host content rated MA15+ or R18+ (content for those over 18)

This is to apply to content originating in Australia. In adopting this there would seem to be some interesting challenges for a number of different types of sites. Many education related sites cater to ages that span the different age rating systems. The article also states that:

According to the ACMA, any content that is likely to be rated MA15+ (for mature audiences over the age of 15) must be assessed and classified by “trained content assessors.” The purpose of this is, of course, to assist parents and children to decide what is appropriate for them

Where does this leave educators and the education system? I am not sure who these trained assessors are but will they be familiar with different State’s and school systems curriculums etc? While much content for school systems is sourced from within the system’s own networks it is clear that students also have access to content on the wider Web.
I started to look further into this and had a browse around the IIA website looking for this code. There is a great deal of stuff there and I am currently looking at the Internet Industry Codes of Practice (2005). There is a link to what looks like a really interesting document called ‘Guide for Internet Users: Information about online content‘. Good luck accessing that one - unfortunately it seems you need to be an Industry member to access it yet the title suggests it should be available to all users. It might still be a ‘work in progress’ but it clearly looks like it will be useful to parents, teachers etc. Hopefully I can find a link to it elsewhere.

The Ars Technica article goes on to highlight some difficulties this initiative may face. Most Internet content originates outside Australia so the rating system, while useful, can only apply to a small amount of content. I like the idea of general ratings systems - they give me a rough idea of what to expect when watching a television program or a film but I think they are much easier to apply to those types of static content. Internet content is dynamic and changes (in some cases, very) rapidly so accurate ratings will be more difficult to apply. To be accurate, they will need to be applied at a very granular level however I expect the overheads on that will mean that ratings will be applied at a less granular level. I look forward to hearing more news and commentary about this one.

on iPhones, iTouch and lousy business models

jleeson — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 23:11:23 +0000

Here’s the obligatory post on the iPhone. At last its here and already there are a few around the office. It seems a few people from work joined the queues on Friday and bought themselves the ultimate in cool gadgets for the masses. Unfortunately I wasn’t one of them but I have seen a couple of great impromptu demos! I have an iPod Touch so just cannot justify forking out for a new phone for a while so that will have to wait.
Anyway, the other night when I got home and turned the TV on there was a story on one of the current affairs programs telling us how the iPhone is going to revolutionise education. While I love gadgets and can see plenty of potential I am not sure how practical this is just yet in the primary school classroom (where I think this story was pitched - I missed quite a bit of the story). Even with the DER it is hard to conceive how an iPhone could be given to every student in the class, and it would have to be every student! There just seems to be so many logistical and other issues to solve. What sort of plans would they be on, who pays for the phones, the plans etc, you would need chargers everywhere, what happens as the phones get lost/stolen/taken from kids (which they would) etc. What sort of training would be required and so on.
Don’t get me wrong - I would love to see technology such as this being used in classrooms around the country but doing so requires so much more thought than exploiting the hype around a new gadget.
On to the iTouch and the business models employed by Apple. They make some cool technology but really irritate me when it comes to some of their approaches to business. Like many, I was an ‘early adopter’ for the iTouch. Our reward for that - pay up some extra cash to get the upgrade (which did have a few nice applications) to the software back at the beginning of this year. Now with the release of the 3G iPhone, there was another upgrade for the iTouch. There is a whole new raft of applications available now so I went to the Apple site to have a look, downloaded a few and then found out that they cannot run on my iTouch (should really read the fine print). So I paid for the software upgrade to enable them which, on the website had some great images of cool new applications - none of which actually come with the upgrade. The upgrade, at a glance, mostly seems to install an application that lets you install applications! Why Apple insists on charging these fees for minor upgrades that just annoy their most loyal fans I just don’t know (I do really - PROFIT). So this time I am going to hold back for a while and not become an early adopter for the 3G iPhone, I might just wait for a few upgrades.

on buying with confidence

jleeson — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:08:33 +0000

From ZDNet comes the article “Microsoft on Vista - the time of worry is over“. I must say I stopped worrying about Vista a long time ago, in fact I don’t think I ever did worry. I just went out and invested in the most expensive piece of technology I have ever bought - a shiny new HP laptop running Vista. Since that time I have experienced a raft of emotions, frustration and anger being the most common. I still can’t get wireless networking working reliably and I have spent a huge amount of time trying. Anyway, I did have a bit of a laugh at this latest article which reports on the Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference. There is a link to a new site called the Vista Compatibility Center. As reported in the ZDNet article:

During his keynote, Brooks took the wraps off a new portal site, the Windows Vista Compatibility Center, that is designed to provide users with a single place to check whether specific hardware and software is compatible with Vista. The site currently lists 9,000 devices and software products (3,500 apps and 5,500 devices) — a number that Microsoft is planning to expand via customer and partner feedback. The site will be all about helping to “bust the myth” that Windows Vista is not compatible with many apps and devices, Brooks said.

When you go to the site you get a page with the headline “The Windows Vista Compatibility Center will be launching soon, please check back.” With my odd way of looking at things I immediately thought perhaps there are no compatible devices yet!

Anyway - I applaud the initiative, there should be more of these. I wish there was a site like this available when I made my purchase. I will certainly be looking for similar sites when I make future purchases, it could save a lot of frustration and dissatisfaction. Over the last number of months I have been frustrated at hardware, software, security vendors and pretty much anything else that was bundled on this laptop that had the potential to be interfering with wireless networking. Most of those companies probably had nothing to do with the networking fault but it has still tarnished my opinion of them. I can’t wait to see if I have one of the compatible devices!

Interoperability standards for virtual worlds

jleeson — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 23:21:37 +0000

Virtual worlds are getting quite a bit of attention at work at the moment and for good reason. Clearly there is a huge potential for their use in education and momentum in this area is really building. Like many I have experimented a bit with platforms like Second Life but am now wanting to do more. Second Life, while being great for some uses may not meet all requirements for everyone. I am particularly interested in installing my own virtual world and there are a number of options. Once installed, the first thing I need to do is start building or populating my virtual worlds and so far this is not easy for a novice. A lot of effort seems to be required to start creating appealing and useful artefacts for these worlds. What I’d really like to do once I have created something is to be able to transport it into another virtual world so that I can get some re-use out of it. Some sort of standards and mechanisms for such transportation would be great here. Interoperability specs here we come!
So it was with interest I read this post on the readwriteweb blog.
‘Teleporting’ sounds a lot more interesting than ‘harvesting’ (metadata). Sharing and re-using assets from virtual worlds is going to be very important and I look forward to hearing more about work in this area (perhaps we will see an OpenSocial for virtual worlds).

Cheers,
Jerry.

technorati tags: interoperability, virtual worlds,standards

followup on 20% time

jleeson — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 22:36:23 +0000

A while ago I blogged about companies providing time to their employees to innovate. Google do it, Atlassian are trialling it and being public about it. Here are some updates from the Atlassian blog on the trial so far.

Cheers.

the Panopticon gets that little bit closer

jleeson — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 03:05:16 +0000

Telstra’s Whereis Everyone service is bound to raise a few eyebrows. It’s great if you want to locate a few friends and they are happy for you to be able to locate where they are at anytime but….. what about any privacy concerns? Are you happy to be located anywhere anytime? The press and commentators, as usual, is going to town on some of the more alarmist uses.
We have very little privacy left in our lives - some would argue that it disappeared some time ago. Anyway, here’s another example of technology with the potential for intruding further into our lives. Telstra has some great sales pitches - its certainly nice to be able to know your kids are on their way home or how you can find your misplaced phone (is it really that accurate?) but are we becoming immune or blase to these invasions of privacy? If we know we are being monitored so closely will that affect our behaviour in any way (as in Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon) or are we simply past caring?

Wikipedia also has an interesting modern definition of the Panopticon. I had a rant about this previously after reading “John Twelve Hawk’s” “The Traveller” (must have a look to see if the sequel is out yet). Anyway, if you are interested in this type of technology from legal/policy/social perspectives, you might like to go along to UNSW’s free one day seminar ‘You are where you’ve been - technological threats to your location privacy‘ on 23rd July. Just don’t forget to turn your (Telstra) phone off before you go .

Domain name big bang solving lack of addresses?

jleeson — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:26:27 +0000

Over the last few days I have seen this reported in newspapers and online (here’s a couple of online ones - ABC, ZDNet). The articles generally say that ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is set to remove restrictions on domain name suffixes. Currently we are restricted to suffixes that denote countries (eg .au) and a some generic types (.com, .net etc). The new regulations will open this up to allow suffixes such as .pepsi, .paris etc which certainly allows a massive increase in the numbers of useful names that could be created.

These articles then go on to imply that this will solve the problem that we have with domain addresses set to run out in 2011 or thereabouts.
It’s my understanding that this is not the case. Domain names are not Internet addresses. Internet addresses are the numbers we often see in our browsers such as 123.456.789.098. It is these numbers which are set to run out. These numbers use an addressing system called TCP/IPv4. IPv4 is running out of available numbers. Numbers are released in blocks to regions around the world and available blocks of numbers are becoming a scarce commodity. Many of these numbers that have been allocated are not in use and it would be useful if there was some way of recovering these unused ones.

Many organisations and governments are working on a numbering system called TCP/IPv6 which dramatically increases the number of available Internet addresses. It is the implementation of IPv6 that will solve the problem of lack of Internet addresses - Domain names are simply aliases for these numbers. These aliases make it easier for us to navigate around the Web as they are meant to be easier for us to remember than the numbered addresses.

Cheers,
Jerry.

mashing up virtual worlds and interactive whiteboards

jleeson — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 23:10:50 +0000

Every now and then you come across something that really inspires or impresses you. That’s what happened to me when I came across Edusim3d, an open source virtual world designed for use with classroom interactive whiteboards.
The best way to describe Edusim3d is simply to link to the video on their website and let it speak for itself.

Cheers.
Jerry

technorati tags: Edusim, interactive whiteboards,virtual worlds

open source virtual world

jleeson — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 23:15:23 +0000

At the VET eStandards Expert Group meeting yesterday there was an update on the four projects selected for the emerging technology trials. The one that I was really interested in is the trial Canberra Institute of Technology is doing on Virtual Worlds. The platform they have selected is Croquet, an open source development environment really worth looking into if you have any sort of interest in virtual worlds.

Have a look at the Croquet website, the people behind it (such as Alan Kay) and you will get a feel for why this platform is worth some serious consideration if you are considering your own virtual worlds project.

technorati tags: Croquet, Virtual Worlds

ePortfolios - supporting lifelong learning

jleeson — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 22:52:35 +0000

I had an opportunity to present at our ePortfolio Symposium the other day and gave a brief presentation on what form ePortfolios could take if we were to support them from a lifelong learning perspective. I think one of the challenges for many ePortfolio implementations is that they are bound to individual organisations rather than learners. While some (many?) may offer access of some form after learners have left the organisation - does that access really benefit the learner in the best way possible?
To be successful from a lifelong perspective, ePortfolios must be ‘learner owned and learner controlled’. Implementing this has its own set of challenges. The presentation seeks to identify what some of those challenges may be such as policy, trust, who can or should provide such services, access, ownership, the short lifespan of many of the technologies we are using (much shorter than the length of our careers), standards and interoperability etc.

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To illustrate some of these points I look at a few services on the Web that are being used by learners to enable some form of eportfolio related services then have a look at a services model for ePortfolios based around a model originally put forward by the JISC in the UK.

technorati tags: ePortfolio