Prompted by this article saying 3D TV is a flop http://is.gd/jp44u (via @Splodge360 on twitter), my thoughts on the future of this tech:
Personally, I'm not impressed with how things look on current 3D TVs, although I have only seen the demos in stores so far. However, I believe this time around, 3D will stick and slowly become the norm.
There are a few key reasons why I think this. First, the TV sets themselves need no special expensive additional hardware and the glasses themselves are relatively simple too (although many carry a high premium yet). This means when it comes to buying a new TV, there will soon be very little premium above buying a non-3D capable set. Thus the barrier to adoption of the tech in the home is removed (for new purchases at least).
Next, with the ever increasing use of CGI in film making, it becomes trivial to render the images in 3D. Related to this, the technology needed to record live action in 3D is hardly more expensive for film makers either. Also, unlike the older 3D red/green or film based polarised systems, the technology is in place to make the whole pipeline from film making to cinema to home movie set up trivial. Thus the barrier to creation of content is removed.
What is currently missing to drive consumer adoption is compelling content; content that really has to be seen in 3D. At present, 3D content is "enhanced" but is equally compelling in 2D (I'm thinking of Avatar in particular in this as I felt it worked as well as needed in 2D on bluray).
So, I believe movie content will be increasingly created "3D ready" even if it is down shifted to 2D because there is little reason for it not to be. I believe there will be a slow trickle down of 3D ready TV sets in the homes as all new model TVs will have the tech included even if it isn't being used.
But, while people have to pay a premium to access those 3D capabilities, it's unlikely to create a storm...except if/when the tech taps into the driving force behind the uptake of many new technologies - sex.
The connection between sex and tech uptake has been widely noted and documented previously. The most common cited case in recent history has been the take off of VHS players when porn started to become available.
I suspect therefore that if/when porn producers and distributors tap into 3D, we'll see it really take off.
Even if that doesn't tip things, I think 2012 with the Olympics might. Although, I have read that rapid motion of sports does not lend itself to active glasses 3D TVs due to the halving of the effective frame refresh rate.
There are a few reasons I think it may 'fail' though.
First, the need for glasses. Need I say more?
Second, the current tech could be a flash in the pan - a precursor to a much better tech just around the corner. There have been proof of concept demos of various other 3D tech already that would not require glasses - true holographic displays with colour for example.
Lastly, the TV is quickly being overtaken by the Internet as the entertainment focus for many families, with the TV demotes to background noise. Thus, the driver for the purchase of new screens generally is shrinking. However, with large cheap 3D capable screens becoming the entry level purchase, this probably won't be enough to prevent it in my view.
So what do you think? Have you seen 3D TVs yourself? Did they impress you enough to want one or just thought M'eh (or worse)? Will 2011/12 be the year 3D TV takes of or flops?
- Posted using BlogPress from my phone
2010/08/11
National Fireworks Championship, Plymouth 2010
As usual, I was out taking firework photos for the National Championships held in Plymouth. I must have thousands of firework photos by now.
Anyhow, friends had decided on Queen Anne's Battery as the spot to be this year, which wasn't going to be my choice for taking photos this year, but it is a great spot to watch them from.
I don't think I managed any really "good" firework photos, but this one is the nearest I got to being happy with one as it includes some context with the fort on the left which is somewhat iconic of Plymouth, although not as much as the lighthouse I included in the pictures last year.
Anyhow, friends had decided on Queen Anne's Battery as the spot to be this year, which wasn't going to be my choice for taking photos this year, but it is a great spot to watch them from.
I don't think I managed any really "good" firework photos, but this one is the nearest I got to being happy with one as it includes some context with the fort on the left which is somewhat iconic of Plymouth, although not as much as the lighthouse I included in the pictures last year.
2010/06/23
Conference in Edinburgh - UCISA : Reducing Costs Through Technology and Infrastructure
Sitting in hotel room before the conference tomorrow and thought I'd make a few notes before attending.
The subject of saving money in HE is a hot topic at the moment obviously wi the cuts expected over the next few years likely to make the "tight budgets" of the last few years seem like we've all been wallowing in money. Figures like 25% cuts in government funding in HE have been banded about, and while government money is not the only source of income for (most?) HEIs, it is a very large part and cuts of that depth will not be possible with minor changes to working practice or even reorganisation/mergers.
From my point of view supporting the use of IT I know there is huge scope for IT to be used more effectively to streamline business processes - although translating such efficiencies to cost savings would be another matter that is much more complicated and not technical.
The keynote starting the day tomorrow is "How to save money - best practice in contract management, asset management and procurement" by Gartner UK Ltd. Since UoP is currently looking to renew it's fleet of leased PCs this should be interesting.
The next session "Smarter, cheaper, Greener" is perhaps a statement of the trinity looked for with IT, where each is follows from the former. Since UoP gained the top spot in the recent People an Planet green league table I clearly think we're doing pretty well on the green front already, but there is still huge scope for improvement (eg we have yet to master the power management of the fleet to allow us to realise the extra power/cost/environmental impact savings we had aimed for - with vPro being a little too new in the fleet we took on and needing a lot of kinks ironing out) and there is certainly much scope for working smarter.
Next is a session looking at outsourcing e-mail. I've seen presentations on this before at JISC/UCISA events over the last few years and I've been sold on it as probably the right solution for at least a year and I'm glad that this has now been approved to move ahead with in UoP recently - again, it should be interesting and timely.
"Printing your own money" looks to be about the savings possible by better printing management - which is another hot topic at UoP, and one that has historically caused much debate. I recently visited Cornwall College to see how they had implemented their lean print strategy (using Canon's Uniflow solution), and in particularly how they had "solved" the resistance from the grass roots to having small local printers removed. Unfortunately, the main answer to that question seemed to be that they started with a very flaky old unreliable fleet of small local devices such that users were generally happy to have larger consolidated devices as they worked! Since we're not in that position at UoP I'm not sure we can translate their experience usefully, but the product itself does look very useful. I look forward to seeing if this session introduces any new approaches we'll be able to learn from.
The final session is "Redefine your technology strategy" - I'm not sure of the details of this right now (I didn't copy the outline to the iPhone to check while writing this on the iPad), but I can see that an IT strategy needs to be focusing on delivering real business efficiencies and cost savings ahead of developments of new services.
Edit: checking the programme, it appears this last session has been dropped and the earlier sessions given more time - with one session less, the cost/benefit of attending this conference so far from Plymouth is looking even less clear! :(
(photo is taken from the hotel window as sun set over the city - "enhanced" using a few apps on the iPad...not very subtly :)
- Posted using BlogPress from mobile device
2010/06/13
iPad apps review - RDP
This is another app I had already on the iPhone which added a "free" improved version for the iPad, RDP is very useful to be able to remotely access my work PC laptop when I need to do something that can only be done on a PC or where I only have the data on the laptop hard disk. As such, this app alone make it much more practical to use the iPad as my sole computing platform (OK, the only one I have to actually carry around with me!)
This app works very well, although I wish it had a way to automatically enable the VPN connection before trying to connect as that little detour into the iPad settings before launching the app is something I'm always forgetting until it fails to connect and then it dawns on me why.
I have also needed to install a little app from no-ip on the laptop to publish it's IP to whenever it changes as for some reason, the DNS entry for my machine on campus fails to work. I suspect this is due to my over zealous firewall on the laptop rather than any short fall of this app :)
What else do I need to say about this app? Oh, it has a bit of an odd way of dealing with keyboard entry and mouse events. The keyboard will work with the external Bluetooth keyboard with the iPad, but delete is always very slow on both the external and virtual keyboard. Normal typing is fine and keeps up, but delete takes almost a second to register and drops rather than buffers the key presses. The mouse foibles are dictated by having a touch screen with no mouse over or right click, so the app provides an icon to toggle the mouse behaviour accordingly. This also includes a "wheel mouse" mode for scrolling, but I've never actually used that to know if it works.
The pro version of this app allows keyboard macros to be set up and connection details for oodles of devices to be added and then chosen from a list. I can't actually remember how many as I've only ever needed 2, but it's a screen full of slots :)
The app only allows a choice of 8bit or 16bit graphics for the connection, and it would be nice to be able to tell windows to fall back to a simpler presentation without wallpaper etc as the RDP client in Windows allows, but with a decent wifi connection, or even 3G, the lag dealing with the better graphics isn't too bad so this isn't essential unless you needed to use GPRS - in which case, you probably need a terminal service instead. :)
If you need to access machines running different OS too, you probably also need to use VNC rather than RDP, in which case it would probably be best to install that on any PCs too, so again, this wouldn't be the app for you.
Summary - does what it says on the tin, but only right if you need what's in the tin :)
- Posted using BlogPress from mobile device
iPad apps review - BlogPress
BlogPress was my preferred app for editing and posting blog posts on the iPhone and is one of those apps that includes the improved features for the iPad in a single app, which means I effectively get the better interface on the iPad "for free". I had expected more of the iPhone apps to work this way, but have been disappointed and now resigned to having to pay for the better versions in most cases.
The editor in BlogPress is very simple, providing very few tools to help composing posts (no bold, italic etc shortcuts) instead relying on the author to include any HTML mark up needed. The only concession it does make it to include a tool to add images which can be scaled to a thumbnail with a link to the original with both thumbnail and original uploaded and the link added.
So what features do I like? Well, mostly it's the number of different blog formats it supports which critically for me includes both Google's blogger and Wordpress. (if anyone knows a tool that works with Sharepoint blogs behind custom HTML authentication then that would allow me to post to my other work blog too).
Is that all it's good for I hear you ask? Well, no. It also allows the images to be uploaded to a whole range of services, uploading video to YouTube, Twitter and Facebook notification integration, local drafts for composing offline and easy access to meta data like tags as well as setting a publish date/time.
There are probably better wysiwyg editors for blog posts, but i haven't spotted another with this range of services supported so it keeps my vote so far.
- Posted using BlogPress from mobile device
iPad apps review - iRepton
I loved Repton back in the 80's on the BBC micro, and the idea of playing it on the iPad appealed to me (see my earlier blog post about which retro games I'd like to see ported) so I was delighted to stumbled across this little gem with a search of
the app store for the word "retro". It's perhaps humbling to realise that ones teenage years are now seen as retro, but any how...
Anyone who's plays rubble trouble or any number of similar games will know the idea behind Repton. Move your character around a 2d map collecting gems with gravity acting on certain object such that they fall down the screen if nothing is supporting them. Repton includes eggs which break to hatch into monsters that chase you and can only be killed by either dropping a rock on them or pushing a rock into them horizontally. It also includes keys which turn safes into gems. Where safes have a flat top and rocks can rest on them, rocks will slide off the top of gems unless soil or something else is in the way. Thus, getting a key can trigger rocks or eggs elsewhere in the map to fall.
The other thing to know is that with a rock on your head, you can do the "Repton shuffle" to quickly step aside and back to allow the rock to fall AND push it to one side - vital for many of the puzzles in the maps.
This implementation of the game can use the same mode 5 graphics of the BBC micro as in the screen shot or updated 'better' graphics. The new graphics add nothing to the game play and defeat the retro object of the game for me so are rather wasted, but I guess might appeal to people for whom this is a new experience.
The game also includes the same old music and sounds or updated versions of these too. The music was good for it's time on a home computer in 1984 ish but even then, it quickly became irritating and thankfully there is the same option to disable it that I always used back then!
The first set of maps are included from the old game (Repton 3 maps I think it is rather than Repton 1, but I can't be sure of my memory on that), but also additional new levels and further additional levels are available as in app purchases.
It doesn't appear to include the level editor which made this game so compelling for my mother and I - creating levels to challenge each other, and I doubt it's likely to see me dreaming in Repton graphics which I often did back then, but it is a welcome addition to the casual games I can pick up and play for a few minutes on the iPad, and for that it's worth the asking price :)
- Posted using BlogPress from mobile device
the app store for the word "retro". It's perhaps humbling to realise that ones teenage years are now seen as retro, but any how...
Anyone who's plays rubble trouble or any number of similar games will know the idea behind Repton. Move your character around a 2d map collecting gems with gravity acting on certain object such that they fall down the screen if nothing is supporting them. Repton includes eggs which break to hatch into monsters that chase you and can only be killed by either dropping a rock on them or pushing a rock into them horizontally. It also includes keys which turn safes into gems. Where safes have a flat top and rocks can rest on them, rocks will slide off the top of gems unless soil or something else is in the way. Thus, getting a key can trigger rocks or eggs elsewhere in the map to fall.
The other thing to know is that with a rock on your head, you can do the "Repton shuffle" to quickly step aside and back to allow the rock to fall AND push it to one side - vital for many of the puzzles in the maps.
This implementation of the game can use the same mode 5 graphics of the BBC micro as in the screen shot or updated 'better' graphics. The new graphics add nothing to the game play and defeat the retro object of the game for me so are rather wasted, but I guess might appeal to people for whom this is a new experience.
The game also includes the same old music and sounds or updated versions of these too. The music was good for it's time on a home computer in 1984 ish but even then, it quickly became irritating and thankfully there is the same option to disable it that I always used back then!
The first set of maps are included from the old game (Repton 3 maps I think it is rather than Repton 1, but I can't be sure of my memory on that), but also additional new levels and further additional levels are available as in app purchases.
It doesn't appear to include the level editor which made this game so compelling for my mother and I - creating levels to challenge each other, and I doubt it's likely to see me dreaming in Repton graphics which I often did back then, but it is a welcome addition to the casual games I can pick up and play for a few minutes on the iPad, and for that it's worth the asking price :)
- Posted using BlogPress from mobile device
iPad apps review - Weather Pro HD
Weather pro was my preferred weather app on the iPhone and the new version for the iPad looked sumptuous from the screen shots so I decided to try it. Quick summary - it's OK but...
The source for the forecasts is vital for a weather app to be useful and MeteoGroup seems fine for this app and has certainly been pretty accurate in my experience. However, the things which made this app for me on the iPhone was simple access to both radar data and satellite images so I can make my own judgement on the forecasts, and this is where this app currently lags slightly behind the iPhone version.
On the iPhone, if you pay a little extra you get additional image frames for both the radar and satellite views and also some 'predicted' frames for the future for the radar. Although the premium account is transferable to the iPad, the app currently doesn't provide these additional features, although it does increase the resolution of the other forecast data (windspeed/temp/rainfall/humidity/sunshine) to be hourly instead of 3 hourly.The interface uses multiple pop over frames in line with most iPad apps compared to separate screens on the iPhone which works nicely (see screen shot).
Summary: nice, accurate, but just slightly disappoints.
- Posted using BlogPress from mobile device
2010/06/04
Retro games I'd like to see on the iPad/iPhone
One of my more random blog posts, but inspired by a tweet from @andytuk:
These are games from the BBC micro, C64 and other retro machines I would like to see either emulated or re-coded into new versions to play on the iPad/iPhone - in no particular order:
C64 versions:
Impossible Mission
TrollyWally - for the music more than the game
Little Computer People
BBC versions:
Thrust
Sentinel
Arkanoid
Llamatron
Hampstead
HHG2TG
The Hobbit
Repton 1, 2, 3
Airlift
Arcadians
Starship commander
Elite (this was the game mentioned that started me thinking)
Exile
Thunderstruck
Citadel
Manic miner
Jet set willy
Castle Quest
Alien 8
Nightlore
Sabre wolf
Uncle Claude
Imogen
Chuckie Egg
Frak!
Cholo
Others:
Speedball
Gobbiins 1, 2
Barbarian
Tempest
I'm very aware (having played many of these recently on emulators) that they would really need sprucing up to stand up today, but they all had that "just one more game" element to their gameplay that many more visually polished modern games lack.
Ah, e by gum an' by 'eck, I remember when all this was fields...or Mode 2 graphics. :)
- Posted using BlogPress from mobile device
These are games from the BBC micro, C64 and other retro machines I would like to see either emulated or re-coded into new versions to play on the iPad/iPhone - in no particular order:
C64 versions:
Impossible Mission
TrollyWally - for the music more than the game
Little Computer People
BBC versions:
Thrust
Sentinel
Arkanoid
Llamatron
Hampstead
HHG2TG
The Hobbit
Repton 1, 2, 3
Airlift
Arcadians
Starship commander
Elite (this was the game mentioned that started me thinking)
Exile
Thunderstruck
Citadel
Manic miner
Jet set willy
Castle Quest
Alien 8
Nightlore
Sabre wolf
Uncle Claude
Imogen
Chuckie Egg
Frak!
Cholo
Others:
Speedball
Gobbiins 1, 2
Barbarian
Tempest
I'm very aware (having played many of these recently on emulators) that they would really need sprucing up to stand up today, but they all had that "just one more game" element to their gameplay that many more visually polished modern games lack.
Ah, e by gum an' by 'eck, I remember when all this was fields...or Mode 2 graphics. :)
- Posted using BlogPress from mobile device
2010/05/31
Thoughts on an iPad - so far
Prompted by a question on twitter from @jamesclay @markpower I thought I'd take a moment to record my feelings about the iPad having used one now for a few days.
First the obvious - it is a big iphone/ipod (could be either depending if you get the 3G or not and if you count the iPhone 'phone' features as relevant). That's fine for me as this was exactly what I was looking for and it's certainly working as a casual web surfing/tweeting/etc platform while watching TV.
Also obvious to anyone who's held one - it's heavy. Thin, well made and satisfying to hold but certainly heavy. Ideally for me it needs to be less than half the weight to allow me to hold it comfortably for long periods of web browsing, but the stand held, as does adopting strange postures resting the weight on different parts of the body.
I had anticipated all the existing iPhone apps I'd invested in (even the free ones requiring an investment of time to get used to) to work, and so far I've not been disappointed. However, the native iPad apps taking advantage of the drastically improved screen space put the iPhone apps to shame and so I've ended up hunting down many native iPad versions/equivalents for the same apps instead. I doubt many people would want to put up with the scaled up graphics of iPhone apps when there are native alternatives as the improvement is dramatic.
Some of the first new apps I invested in were the Apple office productivity apps, Pages, Numbers and Keynote as demonstrated in the keynote launch as I have in mind using the iPad in work - and also to be able to advise colleagues on their utility. I'm pleased to say they seem very useful, although I have yet to really try them in earnest for real work. The key for me will be how easily I can adopt a working practice which will give me access to the docs I need to refer to in meetings and create notes at the same time. I suspect it will remain a compromise compared to a "real computer" at least until OS4 and some semblance of multi-tasking.
The next app I tried was the Apple iBooks as I know a lot of people are interested in the iPad as a new publishing revolution. The apps seems OK as reader apps go, although it doesn't appear to allow annotation of the books which is a major omission for me. The book store seems slick and easy to use - yet again Apple making it very easy to part you from your money - but the book prices are excessive in my view. If e-books are really going to work, they need to offer either a significant saving over the physical versions, or provide valuable additional content/features. The Alice In Wonderland Book app is an example of how the platform can add a whole new level of involvement and 'magic' to books, but unless that is replicated with other books, personally I'd prefer a paperback to reading on the iPad screen and paperbacks are much nicer to hold to read than the too heavy iPad.
Before I reflect on the other apps I've tried, a few notes on the additional peripherals I've got.
The wireless bluetooth keyboard works very well. Its a standard Apple device designed for the Macs primarily and as such, it lacks a few of the dedicated iPad keys which the dock keyboard includes (home button in particular). This is slightly irksome, but not a show stopper. I've not been able to replicate the issue I'd read on the net of losing the onscreen keyboard if you don't "unpair" the wireless keyboard first. Once paired, I've found I can just switch off the keyboard and the iPad makes the onscreen keyboard available again.
The dock - simple but effective. It is a pity you can only dock the iPad in portrait orientation though, particularly as the nice photo frame feature means the majority of the photos are scaled down and only use a fraction of the screen.
The Photo connection kit - I've only tried the SD card reader so far which works OK but has crashed frequently when selecting more than only a few photos to selectively import. I haven't found a pattern to this yet but my guess is a memory leak in the built in app.
I haven't tried the VGA out converter yet but I have previously used the composite video out cable on the iPhone and I'm expecting it to just work. In case anyone didn't realise, this doesn't replicate the whole device onto the external video. It is only certain apps which support it.
I haven't yet configured the SIM I bought to try the 3G network to judge that aspect. I only got the 3G version for the few times I'll be out of wifi signal range so this hasn't been a priority.
Wifi reception seems OK although not quite as strong as the iPhone in my flat. It is much quicker however, boasting approx 80% quicker downloads according to Speedtest.net app.
The Apple default carry case is best described as 'functional', but I suspect I'll be investing in an alternative quite soon.
The built in apps have all be improved over the iPhone versions. Perhaps the most important such app for me is the Mail. This no longer has the modal approach and presents the choice of e-mails/folders alongside the current open e-mail. The spell checker now built into the OS certainly helps too (which the iPhone will have with OS4).
The App store emphasises iPad specific apps much more than I had expected. It's actually quite difficult to just browse iPhone apps now and although they do still show up in search results, they have been depreciated to a bottom separate list. The app store is more irritating to browse than the iPhone version as it's slower to move from page to page in the results and loses it's place in a long list frequently when returning to the list after looking at the details of an app. With long lists that are slow to scroll through, this makes older/less popular apps almost impossible to stumble upon.
iTunes however is a much improved experience. It presents the information more clearly and works quicker.
The calendar app is a joy compared to the iPhone. It's like opening a real diary compared to trying to use one through a keyhole. Its still (currently) limited in the same ways as the iPhone app - only able to connect to one Exchange account, unable to configure which calendar appears in which colour, incorrectly shading whole days for all day events even when the events are flagged to be "free" etc, but it's a big improvement.
Other apps:
RSS reader choice - News Rack. I used and liked MobileRSS on the iPhone, and while this still works on the iPad, it's only in scaled up graphics form so I looked for a native iPad equivalent. I wanted something that would sync with Google reader in particular and settled on News Rack. It offers integration features with InstaPaper, Twitter, Facebook, email etc. can provide downloaded cached reading and offers a simple toggle between RSS and web view. There may be other apps which are better as I haven't tried others, but I did read all the blurb and reviews on all the RSS apps before making my choice. I was tempted by the Star Trek inspired LCARS Rss reader app, and I may go back to have that just as a gimmick as using the iPad does feel very Star Trek :)
Blogging - BlogPress which I already had for the iPhone also provides a native iPad experience and so I'm sticking with it.
Twitter - Twitterific. I prefer SimplyTweet on the iPhone, mostly for giving me an indication of how many unread tweets there are in my stream so I can adjust the depth to which I read or skim according to how much time I wish to give it, but there doesn't appear to be a native iPad version of this so far. The iPhone version works, but the text suffers a lot from the scaling. I've also tried Tweetdeck which works well too but I don't like how that scrolls to the most recent tweets on start up - I prefer starting at the oldest unread tweets and moving forward in time.
Office apps - Office2 HD. This seems a well featured MS Office like tool with reasonable compatibility (some reports of issues with older Office docs). I basically got this as a backup for the Apple apps and because it offers loading/saving to google docs / mobileME and other WebDAV storage options, which could be more convenient than the Apple sync through iTunes approach.
Note taking - Daily Notes. I like the look of this app for keeping reflective journals under different categories which I think will prove useful. Time will tell.
Remote Desktop - RDP. I've used this app for a while on the iPhone to access my Work PC when I really need the software only available on it and I'm delighted with the improvement the same app provides on the iPad. It effectively gives me a full Windows 7 experience in my hand. If only it was able to automatically start the VPN connection needed rather than having to start that manually.
Fun Stuff - I haven't tried many iPad specific games (yet), but here's a list of entertainment type apps I have tried:
WeatherPro HD - I've used the iPhone equivalent to this for a while and I like the radar and satellite views as well as the detailed breakdown of expected weather factors. It's apparently possible for me to transfer the paid for in app purchase of more detailed info I have on the iPhone to the iPad too, but it's not supported directly within the app yet but I will do this eventually.
F1 Timing '10 CP - if you like watching F1, this app makes it much more engaging, but it's not cheap. It only lasts one season and it works out about £1 a race, but the detailed track view with real time tracking of the cars, detailed timing screen and live news feed works well as an accompaniment - particularly on the races with little overtaking when the exact gaps on track for pit stops / traffic etc are all invisible but vital to the result.
IMDB - yes, the web site works but this app makes searching and navigating the info much easier and quicker.
SketchBook Pro - a 'mini-photoshop' complete with layers, blending effects etc. Again, I've used the iPhone equivalent of this for a while and it's drastically better on the larger iPad screen. Anyone who thinks the iPad is just for consuming content should try this app. (they should also note this whole post was created on the iPad :)
Flickr Photos - makes browsing flickr as easy as the local photo albumn
Web Albums - the same for Picasa. What would be great is an app that worked as well as these that also worked with Flickr/Picasa/MobileMe etc albums, but for now I need separate apps.
Wikipanion - obviously a Wikipedia browser that works well.
Plane Finder HD - anyone who looked at the images of the empty skies due to the ash cloud on the web/flash based site will recognise this. Its the same experience but without the flash. I don't really have a use for this except passing interest but it works well and might be useful for frequent flyers.
That's it for now. I've only had a few days with it so my views my change. I'd be interested to hear how others get on :)
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
First the obvious - it is a big iphone/ipod (could be either depending if you get the 3G or not and if you count the iPhone 'phone' features as relevant). That's fine for me as this was exactly what I was looking for and it's certainly working as a casual web surfing/tweeting/etc platform while watching TV.
Also obvious to anyone who's held one - it's heavy. Thin, well made and satisfying to hold but certainly heavy. Ideally for me it needs to be less than half the weight to allow me to hold it comfortably for long periods of web browsing, but the stand held, as does adopting strange postures resting the weight on different parts of the body.
I had anticipated all the existing iPhone apps I'd invested in (even the free ones requiring an investment of time to get used to) to work, and so far I've not been disappointed. However, the native iPad apps taking advantage of the drastically improved screen space put the iPhone apps to shame and so I've ended up hunting down many native iPad versions/equivalents for the same apps instead. I doubt many people would want to put up with the scaled up graphics of iPhone apps when there are native alternatives as the improvement is dramatic.
Some of the first new apps I invested in were the Apple office productivity apps, Pages, Numbers and Keynote as demonstrated in the keynote launch as I have in mind using the iPad in work - and also to be able to advise colleagues on their utility. I'm pleased to say they seem very useful, although I have yet to really try them in earnest for real work. The key for me will be how easily I can adopt a working practice which will give me access to the docs I need to refer to in meetings and create notes at the same time. I suspect it will remain a compromise compared to a "real computer" at least until OS4 and some semblance of multi-tasking.
The next app I tried was the Apple iBooks as I know a lot of people are interested in the iPad as a new publishing revolution. The apps seems OK as reader apps go, although it doesn't appear to allow annotation of the books which is a major omission for me. The book store seems slick and easy to use - yet again Apple making it very easy to part you from your money - but the book prices are excessive in my view. If e-books are really going to work, they need to offer either a significant saving over the physical versions, or provide valuable additional content/features. The Alice In Wonderland Book app is an example of how the platform can add a whole new level of involvement and 'magic' to books, but unless that is replicated with other books, personally I'd prefer a paperback to reading on the iPad screen and paperbacks are much nicer to hold to read than the too heavy iPad.
Before I reflect on the other apps I've tried, a few notes on the additional peripherals I've got.
The wireless bluetooth keyboard works very well. Its a standard Apple device designed for the Macs primarily and as such, it lacks a few of the dedicated iPad keys which the dock keyboard includes (home button in particular). This is slightly irksome, but not a show stopper. I've not been able to replicate the issue I'd read on the net of losing the onscreen keyboard if you don't "unpair" the wireless keyboard first. Once paired, I've found I can just switch off the keyboard and the iPad makes the onscreen keyboard available again.
The dock - simple but effective. It is a pity you can only dock the iPad in portrait orientation though, particularly as the nice photo frame feature means the majority of the photos are scaled down and only use a fraction of the screen.
The Photo connection kit - I've only tried the SD card reader so far which works OK but has crashed frequently when selecting more than only a few photos to selectively import. I haven't found a pattern to this yet but my guess is a memory leak in the built in app.
I haven't tried the VGA out converter yet but I have previously used the composite video out cable on the iPhone and I'm expecting it to just work. In case anyone didn't realise, this doesn't replicate the whole device onto the external video. It is only certain apps which support it.
I haven't yet configured the SIM I bought to try the 3G network to judge that aspect. I only got the 3G version for the few times I'll be out of wifi signal range so this hasn't been a priority.
Wifi reception seems OK although not quite as strong as the iPhone in my flat. It is much quicker however, boasting approx 80% quicker downloads according to Speedtest.net app.
The Apple default carry case is best described as 'functional', but I suspect I'll be investing in an alternative quite soon.
The built in apps have all be improved over the iPhone versions. Perhaps the most important such app for me is the Mail. This no longer has the modal approach and presents the choice of e-mails/folders alongside the current open e-mail. The spell checker now built into the OS certainly helps too (which the iPhone will have with OS4).
The App store emphasises iPad specific apps much more than I had expected. It's actually quite difficult to just browse iPhone apps now and although they do still show up in search results, they have been depreciated to a bottom separate list. The app store is more irritating to browse than the iPhone version as it's slower to move from page to page in the results and loses it's place in a long list frequently when returning to the list after looking at the details of an app. With long lists that are slow to scroll through, this makes older/less popular apps almost impossible to stumble upon.
iTunes however is a much improved experience. It presents the information more clearly and works quicker.
The calendar app is a joy compared to the iPhone. It's like opening a real diary compared to trying to use one through a keyhole. Its still (currently) limited in the same ways as the iPhone app - only able to connect to one Exchange account, unable to configure which calendar appears in which colour, incorrectly shading whole days for all day events even when the events are flagged to be "free" etc, but it's a big improvement.
Other apps:
RSS reader choice - News Rack. I used and liked MobileRSS on the iPhone, and while this still works on the iPad, it's only in scaled up graphics form so I looked for a native iPad equivalent. I wanted something that would sync with Google reader in particular and settled on News Rack. It offers integration features with InstaPaper, Twitter, Facebook, email etc. can provide downloaded cached reading and offers a simple toggle between RSS and web view. There may be other apps which are better as I haven't tried others, but I did read all the blurb and reviews on all the RSS apps before making my choice. I was tempted by the Star Trek inspired LCARS Rss reader app, and I may go back to have that just as a gimmick as using the iPad does feel very Star Trek :)
Blogging - BlogPress which I already had for the iPhone also provides a native iPad experience and so I'm sticking with it.
Twitter - Twitterific. I prefer SimplyTweet on the iPhone, mostly for giving me an indication of how many unread tweets there are in my stream so I can adjust the depth to which I read or skim according to how much time I wish to give it, but there doesn't appear to be a native iPad version of this so far. The iPhone version works, but the text suffers a lot from the scaling. I've also tried Tweetdeck which works well too but I don't like how that scrolls to the most recent tweets on start up - I prefer starting at the oldest unread tweets and moving forward in time.
Office apps - Office2 HD. This seems a well featured MS Office like tool with reasonable compatibility (some reports of issues with older Office docs). I basically got this as a backup for the Apple apps and because it offers loading/saving to google docs / mobileME and other WebDAV storage options, which could be more convenient than the Apple sync through iTunes approach.
Note taking - Daily Notes. I like the look of this app for keeping reflective journals under different categories which I think will prove useful. Time will tell.
Remote Desktop - RDP. I've used this app for a while on the iPhone to access my Work PC when I really need the software only available on it and I'm delighted with the improvement the same app provides on the iPad. It effectively gives me a full Windows 7 experience in my hand. If only it was able to automatically start the VPN connection needed rather than having to start that manually.
Fun Stuff - I haven't tried many iPad specific games (yet), but here's a list of entertainment type apps I have tried:
WeatherPro HD - I've used the iPhone equivalent to this for a while and I like the radar and satellite views as well as the detailed breakdown of expected weather factors. It's apparently possible for me to transfer the paid for in app purchase of more detailed info I have on the iPhone to the iPad too, but it's not supported directly within the app yet but I will do this eventually.
F1 Timing '10 CP - if you like watching F1, this app makes it much more engaging, but it's not cheap. It only lasts one season and it works out about £1 a race, but the detailed track view with real time tracking of the cars, detailed timing screen and live news feed works well as an accompaniment - particularly on the races with little overtaking when the exact gaps on track for pit stops / traffic etc are all invisible but vital to the result.
IMDB - yes, the web site works but this app makes searching and navigating the info much easier and quicker.
SketchBook Pro - a 'mini-photoshop' complete with layers, blending effects etc. Again, I've used the iPhone equivalent of this for a while and it's drastically better on the larger iPad screen. Anyone who thinks the iPad is just for consuming content should try this app. (they should also note this whole post was created on the iPad :)
Flickr Photos - makes browsing flickr as easy as the local photo albumn
Web Albums - the same for Picasa. What would be great is an app that worked as well as these that also worked with Flickr/Picasa/MobileMe etc albums, but for now I need separate apps.
Wikipanion - obviously a Wikipedia browser that works well.
Plane Finder HD - anyone who looked at the images of the empty skies due to the ash cloud on the web/flash based site will recognise this. Its the same experience but without the flash. I don't really have a use for this except passing interest but it works well and might be useful for frequent flyers.
That's it for now. I've only had a few days with it so my views my change. I'd be interested to hear how others get on :)
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
2010/05/20
BSL songs - Imagine
As I mentioned in the previous blog post about why I've started to learn British Sign Languge, I was inspired by watching someone sign along with a choir.
Recently, I've been trying to learn the signs for this song as practice - particularly as it was used in the TV show Glee (yes, I watch it, so what? :) and just found this guy on YouTube who has produced signed versions of many songs. Take a look, see if you agree it actually adds something to the song to see it signed:
Recently, I've been trying to learn the signs for this song as practice - particularly as it was used in the TV show Glee (yes, I watch it, so what? :) and just found this guy on YouTube who has produced signed versions of many songs. Take a look, see if you agree it actually adds something to the song to see it signed:
2010/05/16
British Sign Language - reflections and resources
I've been learning British Sign Language (BSL) for a few weeks now, and I've been collecting online resources to help support my learning along side the weekly 2 hour long traditional face-to-face instructor lead sessions, and I thought it might be useful to reflect on my experience to date and also group together those resources in one place.
Why did I want to learn BSL?
Well, in my youth, I read a book called "Dune" (also a film) which included in it the concept of 'secret hand languages' that the protagonists used to convey secret conversations while overtly talking about completely different subjects, and that started my facination with sign language. I was also inspired when I saw a choir perfrom in America with a sign interpreter who I felt added an additional emotional nuance to the performance in addition to the music and singing. Most recently, a collegue of mine approached me if I could support her learning BSL as a proffesional development to provide an additional string to her customer service skills, which I was glad to be able to do. That was the final nudge I needed to actually get around to start learning BSL myself too.
So, what is it like to learn BSL?
Well, in a word - fun. The instructor I'm sure has a lot to do with that, but so to does the diverse group of people I'm learning it with, and so too does the process of learning a new language in itself.
I've learned (a basic level of) French and German many years ago and I always enjoyed learning those new languages too, and BSL is definately a language in it's own right - recognised as such formally by the British Government in 2003 following on from research into American Sign Language back in the 60's acording to the booklet we're given :-). It's worth noting that contrary to perhaps popular belief, sign language is NOT international with significant variation between countries. In fact, one of the aspects I keep finding most challenging is the amount of variation even within the UK, which is directly akin to dialects in spoken English.
As a result of these regional variations, I find it difficult so far to differentiate between some different signs which are interchangable due to local variations (the sign for red having 3 different signs at least) and others where there is a "correct" sign but where it varies due to context (eg evening - which seems to have 2 distinct signs, one for when something is looking ahead "I'll see you this evening" and another for when its an 'ending' "Good evening"....but I may have the reasons why you use one or the other wrong!)
Initially, the learning process is quite intimidating as you are instructed to "turn off" your voice and that everything - EVERYTHING, should be done in sign right from the start. This is akin to some language learning I have experienced where the entire class is to be conducted "Auf Deutch", but is somehow more intimidating initially as using your voice is so ingrained.
Before starting the classes, I had spent some time learning the alphabet in finger spelling and a few phrased I thought might be useful ("I'm sorry, I missed that, again please" etc), but almost immediately I hit the issue of regional variations as at least 1 of the letters I'd learned from YouTube clips were taught subtly differently (B). However, I was glad that I had done this pre-work as it allowed me to pick up many of the more subtle details right from the start.
The grammar for BSL is different to English, and that's still something I'm getting to grips with. We're told that the structure of phrases always puts the object first - so "Where do you work?" becomes "Work where you?". I'm mostly getting this right now (I think) by just imagine it's Yoda speaking, but some phrases I keep getting wrong yet as it just doesn't feel like it flows correctly to me, but it's getting more natural with practice.
The DVD provided in the matterials in the first class was also quite intimdating initially. The content has no subtitles or audio to help one follow the signing and the participants seem to be signing at 1000mph and way to quick to follow initially, but 5 weeks in now when I watch it all again, it's already becoming "obvious" what they are saying and only feels a little too quick to follow easily.
One interesting thing I've realised is that I'm "hearing" what people are signing now without consiously translating things, and I'm begining to be able to sign things as I think them without consiously thinking about the right sign - but it's very early days for this to be completely unconscious yet.
As with any learning, the secret seems to be practice, practice and more practice. Unfortunately, I don't have someone good at signing I can practice with that regularly, but I do try to watch programmes on TV with a signer and I try to sign along with people as they talk on TV. I also try to sign along with song lyrics as I listen to them. My range of vocabularly is way too small to do this practically and my finger spelling for the words I don't know how to sign is always going to be too slow, but the practice certainly feels like it's helping :)
Anyhow, on to the online resources I've identified so far:
British Deaf Association:
http://www.bda.org.uk/
British Sign Language:
http://www.britishsignlanguage.com/
...includes this useful list of signs:
http://www.britishsignlanguage.com/words/groups.php?id=3
SignStation (perhaps my favorite resouce so far):
http://www.signstation.org/
...which includes this mobile version of a sign dictionary:
http://www.signstation.org/mobile/
Deaf Station
http://www.deafstation.org/
Part of deafstation - a collection of Phrases:
http://www.deafstation.org:8080/phrase_book/pb/English_BSL_Menu.wisdom
...and a mobile version of the same:
http://www.deafstation.org:8080/phrase_book/pb/English_BSL_Menu.wisdom?userAgentEQUALSgprs_xhtml
iPlayer SignZone (useful to practice watching TV with a signer):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/categories/signed/?page=1
Sonia Hollis YouTube content:
http://www.youtube.com/user/soniahollis#p/u/6/IDWaisildX0
An interactive sign dictionary (aimed at children and some quite different to what is taught on the course) - needs Shockwave:
http://www.learnbsl.org/learnbsl.html
Royal Association for Deaf people:
http://www.royaldeaf.org.uk/
Useful book:
The Easy Way Guide to Signing available from http://www.jakbooks.com/
Plymouth School of British Sign Language:
http://www.bsl-plymouth.org/index.html
(I will probably add more to this list as I find them later)
Why did I want to learn BSL?
Well, in my youth, I read a book called "Dune" (also a film) which included in it the concept of 'secret hand languages' that the protagonists used to convey secret conversations while overtly talking about completely different subjects, and that started my facination with sign language. I was also inspired when I saw a choir perfrom in America with a sign interpreter who I felt added an additional emotional nuance to the performance in addition to the music and singing. Most recently, a collegue of mine approached me if I could support her learning BSL as a proffesional development to provide an additional string to her customer service skills, which I was glad to be able to do. That was the final nudge I needed to actually get around to start learning BSL myself too.
So, what is it like to learn BSL?
Well, in a word - fun. The instructor I'm sure has a lot to do with that, but so to does the diverse group of people I'm learning it with, and so too does the process of learning a new language in itself.
I've learned (a basic level of) French and German many years ago and I always enjoyed learning those new languages too, and BSL is definately a language in it's own right - recognised as such formally by the British Government in 2003 following on from research into American Sign Language back in the 60's acording to the booklet we're given :-). It's worth noting that contrary to perhaps popular belief, sign language is NOT international with significant variation between countries. In fact, one of the aspects I keep finding most challenging is the amount of variation even within the UK, which is directly akin to dialects in spoken English.
As a result of these regional variations, I find it difficult so far to differentiate between some different signs which are interchangable due to local variations (the sign for red having 3 different signs at least) and others where there is a "correct" sign but where it varies due to context (eg evening - which seems to have 2 distinct signs, one for when something is looking ahead "I'll see you this evening" and another for when its an 'ending' "Good evening"....but I may have the reasons why you use one or the other wrong!)
Initially, the learning process is quite intimidating as you are instructed to "turn off" your voice and that everything - EVERYTHING, should be done in sign right from the start. This is akin to some language learning I have experienced where the entire class is to be conducted "Auf Deutch", but is somehow more intimidating initially as using your voice is so ingrained.
Before starting the classes, I had spent some time learning the alphabet in finger spelling and a few phrased I thought might be useful ("I'm sorry, I missed that, again please" etc), but almost immediately I hit the issue of regional variations as at least 1 of the letters I'd learned from YouTube clips were taught subtly differently (B). However, I was glad that I had done this pre-work as it allowed me to pick up many of the more subtle details right from the start.
The grammar for BSL is different to English, and that's still something I'm getting to grips with. We're told that the structure of phrases always puts the object first - so "Where do you work?" becomes "Work where you?". I'm mostly getting this right now (I think) by just imagine it's Yoda speaking, but some phrases I keep getting wrong yet as it just doesn't feel like it flows correctly to me, but it's getting more natural with practice.
The DVD provided in the matterials in the first class was also quite intimdating initially. The content has no subtitles or audio to help one follow the signing and the participants seem to be signing at 1000mph and way to quick to follow initially, but 5 weeks in now when I watch it all again, it's already becoming "obvious" what they are saying and only feels a little too quick to follow easily.
One interesting thing I've realised is that I'm "hearing" what people are signing now without consiously translating things, and I'm begining to be able to sign things as I think them without consiously thinking about the right sign - but it's very early days for this to be completely unconscious yet.
As with any learning, the secret seems to be practice, practice and more practice. Unfortunately, I don't have someone good at signing I can practice with that regularly, but I do try to watch programmes on TV with a signer and I try to sign along with people as they talk on TV. I also try to sign along with song lyrics as I listen to them. My range of vocabularly is way too small to do this practically and my finger spelling for the words I don't know how to sign is always going to be too slow, but the practice certainly feels like it's helping :)
Anyhow, on to the online resources I've identified so far:
British Deaf Association:
http://www.bda.org.uk/
British Sign Language:
http://www.britishsignlanguage.com/
...includes this useful list of signs:
http://www.britishsignlanguage.com/words/groups.php?id=3
SignStation (perhaps my favorite resouce so far):
http://www.signstation.org/
...which includes this mobile version of a sign dictionary:
http://www.signstation.org/mobile/
Deaf Station
http://www.deafstation.org/
Part of deafstation - a collection of Phrases:
http://www.deafstation.org:8080/phrase_book/pb/English_BSL_Menu.wisdom
...and a mobile version of the same:
http://www.deafstation.org:8080/phrase_book/pb/English_BSL_Menu.wisdom?userAgentEQUALSgprs_xhtml
iPlayer SignZone (useful to practice watching TV with a signer):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/categories/signed/?page=1
Sonia Hollis YouTube content:
http://www.youtube.com/user/soniahollis#p/u/6/IDWaisildX0
An interactive sign dictionary (aimed at children and some quite different to what is taught on the course) - needs Shockwave:
http://www.learnbsl.org/learnbsl.html
Royal Association for Deaf people:
http://www.royaldeaf.org.uk/
Useful book:
The Easy Way Guide to Signing available from http://www.jakbooks.com/
Plymouth School of British Sign Language:
http://www.bsl-plymouth.org/index.html
(I will probably add more to this list as I find them later)
2010/05/06
IPD vs Innovators or System reliability vs unplanned/untested changes /via @Jamesclay @bobharrisonset
Just read this via @jamesclay:
http://blogs.msdn.com/ukschools/archive/2010/05/06/network-managers-and-teachers-have-a-relationship-problem.aspx
First, I have to agree there is an issue and that the issue is about the relationship rather than either side being at fault. This is the reason use of the phrase "innovation Prevention Department" for such issues irks me as it implies fault.
However, I think the issue can be restated in a way that might inform perception of the fundamental nature of the issue which both sides see differently.
I'll use the terminology of the article and refer to network managers (NMs) and teachers, but in ITIL terms this would be Change Advisory Board (CAB) and Change requestor.
In the overall organisation, it is the role of the NM to provide reliable, effective and efficient IT systems for the organisation to utilize. The enemy of all three of those is change (although change can also be essential to deliver 'effective').
Teachers need IT systems that work when they need them to, they need the IT systems to cost as little as possible to allow the organisation to spend on other things too (like stopping the roof leaking, keeping the lights working etc), and they need the IT systems to provide them with the right tools for them. So they also need reliable, efficient and effective IT systems. But unlike the NMs, they often want change too. They new change to use the latest, most stimulating tools they can. They need change to apply the latest paedagogic practices. They need change to avoid students disengaging with technology that seems dated.
Now, NMs role is to deliver IT systems which meet the needs of the organisation, but those needs include a lot more constraints than just delivering the changes which teachers need. The constraints are at least financial, time/staff levels, architechtural and technical.
Let's put it bluntly, change costs. Change is expensive. Change brings risk.
When a NM's performance is assessed on the bottom line or system availability, or implementing major projects which don't directly address teachers tools (eg deploying a new OS), then that determines the priorities for and other change. The organisation has dictated those priorities in terms of the investment in staffing or other resources available or the choice of KPIs the NM is assessed against.
In ITIL, it is the role of the change advisory board to understand the business needs of the organisation and to ensure that changes are appoved or rejected to reflect those needs. If an organisation priorises innovation (change=risk and cost) over reliability then the CAB should reflect that and authorize changes which have the potential to cripple the systems or bankrupt the organisation (to make an extreme case).
Very few organisations as a whole are happy with risk, even fewer are happy with higher IT costs than they can get away with - and that sets the tone of which changes can be accomodated when requested.
To manage change in that environment means that it's impact needs to be assessed, it requires the transition to be managed (including training etc), it needs the changed to fully documented (so future changes can be assessed meaningfully) and it needs these costs to be factored in along with any product costs.
This all takes time, and resources. The fewer resources available, the more time it takes. It also cost real money as a result - such that even changes which may seem trivial to the person requesting a change may end up costing significant sums which are not justified by the operational advantage the change might bring.
Does this mean that teachers shouldn't seek to innovate? Of course not. Does this mean that NMs are those preventing innovation and worthy of desparaging? Of course not.
The phrase IPD seems to me to be used when innovators are prevented by wider organisational prorities (cost/risk/etc). The people being labeled with the insulting term are no more at fault than those seeking to innovate themselves - who's costs on the organisation through seeking innovation reduce the resources available to deliver someone elses innovative request elsewhere in the organisation.
Sometimes, NMs may resort to bad practice shortcuts to save costs to the organisation incurred by processing a change request by rejecting it out of hand, by inventing reasons to reject something. While this may seem tempting from their perspective, it is ultimately shortsighted.
Teachers too may get frustrated by having their requests rejected and seek ways around due process instead. Again, this is bad practice as it leads to non-compliance (in quality terms) which can lead to significant additional costs to the organisation and reducing the capacity for future change even further.
In the worst cases, both sides adopt these bad practices and lose sight of the common organisational objectives which points to systemic failiure of the continual improvement process management (usually senior mangment responsibility if not actively involved).
The solution? Both sides need to return to the basics and recognise each others roles, and most importantly the organisational priorities.
In any case, this improvement process will _never_ be helped by name calling, and using the phrase IPD falls into that trap.
-- Posted from my phone
http://blogs.msdn.com/ukschools/archive/2010/05/06/network-managers-and-teachers-have-a-relationship-problem.aspx
First, I have to agree there is an issue and that the issue is about the relationship rather than either side being at fault. This is the reason use of the phrase "innovation Prevention Department" for such issues irks me as it implies fault.
However, I think the issue can be restated in a way that might inform perception of the fundamental nature of the issue which both sides see differently.
I'll use the terminology of the article and refer to network managers (NMs) and teachers, but in ITIL terms this would be Change Advisory Board (CAB) and Change requestor.
In the overall organisation, it is the role of the NM to provide reliable, effective and efficient IT systems for the organisation to utilize. The enemy of all three of those is change (although change can also be essential to deliver 'effective').
Teachers need IT systems that work when they need them to, they need the IT systems to cost as little as possible to allow the organisation to spend on other things too (like stopping the roof leaking, keeping the lights working etc), and they need the IT systems to provide them with the right tools for them. So they also need reliable, efficient and effective IT systems. But unlike the NMs, they often want change too. They new change to use the latest, most stimulating tools they can. They need change to apply the latest paedagogic practices. They need change to avoid students disengaging with technology that seems dated.
Now, NMs role is to deliver IT systems which meet the needs of the organisation, but those needs include a lot more constraints than just delivering the changes which teachers need. The constraints are at least financial, time/staff levels, architechtural and technical.
Let's put it bluntly, change costs. Change is expensive. Change brings risk.
When a NM's performance is assessed on the bottom line or system availability, or implementing major projects which don't directly address teachers tools (eg deploying a new OS), then that determines the priorities for and other change. The organisation has dictated those priorities in terms of the investment in staffing or other resources available or the choice of KPIs the NM is assessed against.
In ITIL, it is the role of the change advisory board to understand the business needs of the organisation and to ensure that changes are appoved or rejected to reflect those needs. If an organisation priorises innovation (change=risk and cost) over reliability then the CAB should reflect that and authorize changes which have the potential to cripple the systems or bankrupt the organisation (to make an extreme case).
Very few organisations as a whole are happy with risk, even fewer are happy with higher IT costs than they can get away with - and that sets the tone of which changes can be accomodated when requested.
To manage change in that environment means that it's impact needs to be assessed, it requires the transition to be managed (including training etc), it needs the changed to fully documented (so future changes can be assessed meaningfully) and it needs these costs to be factored in along with any product costs.
This all takes time, and resources. The fewer resources available, the more time it takes. It also cost real money as a result - such that even changes which may seem trivial to the person requesting a change may end up costing significant sums which are not justified by the operational advantage the change might bring.
Does this mean that teachers shouldn't seek to innovate? Of course not. Does this mean that NMs are those preventing innovation and worthy of desparaging? Of course not.
The phrase IPD seems to me to be used when innovators are prevented by wider organisational prorities (cost/risk/etc). The people being labeled with the insulting term are no more at fault than those seeking to innovate themselves - who's costs on the organisation through seeking innovation reduce the resources available to deliver someone elses innovative request elsewhere in the organisation.
Sometimes, NMs may resort to bad practice shortcuts to save costs to the organisation incurred by processing a change request by rejecting it out of hand, by inventing reasons to reject something. While this may seem tempting from their perspective, it is ultimately shortsighted.
Teachers too may get frustrated by having their requests rejected and seek ways around due process instead. Again, this is bad practice as it leads to non-compliance (in quality terms) which can lead to significant additional costs to the organisation and reducing the capacity for future change even further.
In the worst cases, both sides adopt these bad practices and lose sight of the common organisational objectives which points to systemic failiure of the continual improvement process management (usually senior mangment responsibility if not actively involved).
The solution? Both sides need to return to the basics and recognise each others roles, and most importantly the organisational priorities.
In any case, this improvement process will _never_ be helped by name calling, and using the phrase IPD falls into that trap.
-- Posted from my phone
2010/04/24
Response from @lindagilroy re:#debill #deact
I've still not written up my notes from the meeting last weekend with Mrs Gilroy, but I have just received the following email which includes at least taking note of one of the specific issues I raised in that meeting, the problem of benchmarking the success of the act in reducing copyright infringement since the figures used for existing levels are based on poor evidence and are more propaganda than seriously useful.
So, at least one of the issues may get a more specific reply at some stage.
Anyhow, below is the email and we'll have to see what happens on May 6th I suppose to see what happens next:
=======
Thanks for coming to meet with me last Sunday.
Luke kept a note of the concerns we discussed and I have kept this for future reference. Should I continue to be the elector's choice on the 6 May I will keep in touch with you about the processes which flow, or may flow, from this Act.
I have asked the Secretary of State to comment on the point raised by Nick on the base line for measuring progress on reducing illegal copyright infringement. I will contact you when I have his reply.
Do copy me into any representations you make on the consultation about the notification process in reducing copyright infringement.
Best wishes
Linda Gilroy
Labour & Cooperative Candidate for Plymouth Sutton & Devonport
Website:www.lindagilroy.org.uk
Twitter: www.twitter.com/lindagilroy
Facebook: www.facebook.com/lindagilroy
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/LindaGilroyPlymouth
Promoted by J. Furzeman on behalf of Linda Gilroy, both at 21 Durnford Street, Plymouth, PL1 3QF
======
-- Posted from my phone
So, at least one of the issues may get a more specific reply at some stage.
Anyhow, below is the email and we'll have to see what happens on May 6th I suppose to see what happens next:
=======
Thanks for coming to meet with me last Sunday.
Luke kept a note of the concerns we discussed and I have kept this for future reference. Should I continue to be the elector's choice on the 6 May I will keep in touch with you about the processes which flow, or may flow, from this Act.
I have asked the Secretary of State to comment on the point raised by Nick on the base line for measuring progress on reducing illegal copyright infringement. I will contact you when I have his reply.
Do copy me into any representations you make on the consultation about the notification process in reducing copyright infringement.
Best wishes
Linda Gilroy
Labour & Cooperative Candidate for Plymouth Sutton & Devonport
Website:www.lindagilroy.org.uk
Twitter: www.twitter.com/lindagilroy
Facebook: www.facebook.com/lindagilroy
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/LindaGilroyPlymouth
Promoted by J. Furzeman on behalf of Linda Gilroy, both at 21 Durnford Street, Plymouth, PL1 3QF
======
-- Posted from my phone
2010/04/18
Applying the Apple 'Hype Cycle' in HEi IT?
After following the incredibly successful hype cycle of Apple with the iPad (including the 'shortages' delaying the launch in Europe - which may or may not be deliberate), I was struck with the thought of why many IT system changes in HEIs tend to meet resistance rather than being eagerly seized upon.
We don't manage the hype well enough.
Hype is not just about singing a product or services praises. It's not just marketing and press releases or even demos and briefings.
To get the hype cycle right involves subtle psychology, careful timing, attention to detail, leveraging social networks and of course under promising and over delivering. (and probably 1,001 other things)
I could make reference to the 'popularity' of VLEs in HEI, or almost any other product and I'm sure there are (rare?) examples of institutions getting the hype cycle right - sometimes, but we (in IT) need to at least be aware of our roles in the perception of our services and how important that is in the success or otherwise of projects probably even more so than getting the technology itself 100% right.
If the hype cycle is right, and the product isn't fundamentally flawed, people will put up with 'foibles' because they have a relationship with the product, a vested interest in in working because they already wish it to work.
Get it wrong and even the slightest problem will have people giving up and seeking alternatives or complaining.
OK - all obvious stuff to anyone in marketing I know, but I wonder how many of my collegues in all branches of IT really think in such terms, and even if they do, if it's treated with enough importance in project plans and resource allocation?
-- Posted from my phone
We don't manage the hype well enough.
Hype is not just about singing a product or services praises. It's not just marketing and press releases or even demos and briefings.
To get the hype cycle right involves subtle psychology, careful timing, attention to detail, leveraging social networks and of course under promising and over delivering. (and probably 1,001 other things)
I could make reference to the 'popularity' of VLEs in HEI, or almost any other product and I'm sure there are (rare?) examples of institutions getting the hype cycle right - sometimes, but we (in IT) need to at least be aware of our roles in the perception of our services and how important that is in the success or otherwise of projects probably even more so than getting the technology itself 100% right.
If the hype cycle is right, and the product isn't fundamentally flawed, people will put up with 'foibles' because they have a relationship with the product, a vested interest in in working because they already wish it to work.
Get it wrong and even the slightest problem will have people giving up and seeking alternatives or complaining.
OK - all obvious stuff to anyone in marketing I know, but I wonder how many of my collegues in all branches of IT really think in such terms, and even if they do, if it's treated with enough importance in project plans and resource allocation?
-- Posted from my phone
2010/04/14
Reply to invite from @lindagilroy to meet to discuss #debill #deact
I have yet to receive a reply to my open letter to @lindagilroy MP regarding her decision to vote in favour of the Digital Ecconomy bill (now act). I have however recieved the generic email below which I have also responded to. See my reply and the initial email here:
------
I plan to attend on Sunday, although also awaiting an answer to the open letter on the same subject.
I do note that the email below says:
'I know a lot about these other subjects (so my ommision very little about this one) and yet despite that I still felt it appropriate to vote for this bill ignoring the expert advice on its flaws, concerns about the lack of die process and the almost unchallenged views expressed by many other MPs including fellow labour MPs that the bill is fundamentally flawed'
It ignores the fact that the government chose not to give this bill further time for debate despite parliament ending early on many days prior to the calling of the general election.
It also ignores the fact that the Lords also expressed grave concern that such a technical bill required significant further debate and refinement.
The worst kinds of law are those which can not be implemented or which have obvious unwanted side effects and this bill fails on both counts.
It also ignores the fact that the vested interests expressing a need for such a law (lobbying) have demonstrably falsified their case in the limited scrutiny to date and those flawed figures have subsequently continued to be repeated and further exagerated by the government.
So we now have a poorly drafted and worded act, impotent without the further work which should have preceeded agreeing to make it law, based on flawed exagerated justifications lobbied for by an anacronistic industry that pre-dates the digital age and is failing at every opportunity to adapt and benefit from the very digital ecconomy the act purports to try to nurture.
I will look forward to your responses to these points in person on Sunday however.
Sent from my phone, so please forgive brevity and any spelling errors
On 14 Apr 2010, at 15:14, Linda Gilroy wrote:
Thank you for contacting me about Parliamentary scrutiny of the Digital Economy Bill.
I understand your concerns that the bill was rushed through just before the election. The Bill started its way through parliament in the Lords where it did receive extensive scrutiny during its passage and over 700 amendments were debated. Most Bills start in the Commons of course – but highly technical bills are often started in the Lords so that they can be explored through substantial debate before they get to the House of Commons – and with the input of experts who are often present in greater numbers in the Lords. This also happened with the Climate Change Bill and the Marine and Coastal Access Bill. I served with some 16 other MPs on the detailed committee stage of both these Bills where the subject matter is something I am comparatively knowledgeable about.
The debate in the Lords took a lot of the time consuming spade-work out of what we needed to further revise.
The Digital Economy Bill was also considered by a number of Parliamentary Committees before it even got to the Lords.
It has of course now been debated in and passed by the House of Commons. Very strong views were expressed on both sides of the public discussion about unlawful online copyright infringement.
I agree with you that it is undeniable that full Commons scrutiny as well as Lords scrutiny would have been preferable. Unfortunately, the announcement of the General Election meant that all stages of the Commons process were completed during the “wash-up”. This is the process through which the government agrees with the opposition as to how to conclude business before Parliament is dissolved. The “wash up” process requires legislation to be supported by a very broad consensus in the House of Commons. The Commons scrutiny of the Digital Economy Bill concluded in the “wash up” last week with 189 votes in favour of the bill to 47 against.
Votes in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords have reflected a clear view across Parliament that unlawful online copyright infringement is a serious problem affecting our creative industries and individual artists, which the law needs to tackle. This is an issue that businesses in Plymouth, especially in the creative arts, have told me about time and time again over the last ten years. However, Parliament has also recognised the difficulties in tackling unlawful copyright infringements effectively. Much of the debate across both Houses rightly focused upon this.
During the Commons stages of the Bill last week, further amendments were made. As the Act now stands, further regulations will be required before technical measures can be applied in cases of copyright infringements via peer-to-peer file sharing, or before a copyright owner can apply for a court order to block an infringing website. These further amendments tabled in the Commons debates require public consultation and a higher level of parliamentary scrutiny – the so-called super affirmative procedure – before the regulations can be introduced. There will, therefore, be further opportunity for Parliamentary scrutiny (and amendment of the provisions) before any sanctions for these breaches will be agreed or applied. During the Commons debates, Clause 43, which covered orphan licences, was dropped from the Bill.
I absolutely agree with you that the digital economy and the internet play an important and increasing role in the lives and livelihoods of many people in this country, which is why it was important to ensure the passage of the Digital Economy Bill during the ‘wash-up’ procedure. Things are changing so fast that to wait another 6-12 months – if this could be prioritised in a new parliament - just did not seem right.
As you can see from my website (I was one of the first 50 MPs to have one back in 1990s – and use of Facebook and Twitter) I do value this form of communication and try my best to use it!
I am also acutely aware of how important both the Digital Economy and the cultural industries – and how they can come together - are to Plymouth. I work with Alison Seabeck in Devonport to advance the case for Plymouth to get high speed broadband access and a hub connecting to the transatlantic cable together with the siting of a secure centre at Mount Wise. This could really put Plymouth on the Digital economy map of the UK.
Thank you for taking the time and trouble to let me know your concerns on this issue.
Given the importance of this issue I would welcome the chance to talk to you about this. As a number of people have written to me I am holding a special meeting at the T&G offices, New Union House, 2 Harbour Avenue, Sutton Harbour at 2-3pm on Sunday 18 April for people especially concerned about this issue to come and talk to me about this Bill. I hope to meet you in person on Sunday. If you do come please be aware that the nearest parking is at Staples. When you arrive at New Union House you will need to press the bottom buzzer for entrance. It would be helpful if you could give me an indication of whether you plan to attend by emailing votegilroy@hotmail.co.uk
Yours sincerely,
Linda Gilroy
Labour & Cooperative Candidate for Plymouth Sutton & Devonport
Website:www.lindagilroy.org.uk
Twitter: www.twitter.com/lindagilroy
Facebook: www.facebook.com/lindagilroy
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/LindaGilroyPlymouth
Get a new e-mail account with Hotmail – Free. Sign-up now.
------
I plan to attend on Sunday, although also awaiting an answer to the open letter on the same subject.
I do note that the email below says:
'I know a lot about these other subjects (so my ommision very little about this one) and yet despite that I still felt it appropriate to vote for this bill ignoring the expert advice on its flaws, concerns about the lack of die process and the almost unchallenged views expressed by many other MPs including fellow labour MPs that the bill is fundamentally flawed'
It ignores the fact that the government chose not to give this bill further time for debate despite parliament ending early on many days prior to the calling of the general election.
It also ignores the fact that the Lords also expressed grave concern that such a technical bill required significant further debate and refinement.
The worst kinds of law are those which can not be implemented or which have obvious unwanted side effects and this bill fails on both counts.
It also ignores the fact that the vested interests expressing a need for such a law (lobbying) have demonstrably falsified their case in the limited scrutiny to date and those flawed figures have subsequently continued to be repeated and further exagerated by the government.
So we now have a poorly drafted and worded act, impotent without the further work which should have preceeded agreeing to make it law, based on flawed exagerated justifications lobbied for by an anacronistic industry that pre-dates the digital age and is failing at every opportunity to adapt and benefit from the very digital ecconomy the act purports to try to nurture.
I will look forward to your responses to these points in person on Sunday however.
Sent from my phone, so please forgive brevity and any spelling errors
On 14 Apr 2010, at 15:14, Linda Gilroy
Thank you for contacting me about Parliamentary scrutiny of the Digital Economy Bill.
I understand your concerns that the bill was rushed through just before the election. The Bill started its way through parliament in the Lords where it did receive extensive scrutiny during its passage and over 700 amendments were debated. Most Bills start in the Commons of course – but highly technical bills are often started in the Lords so that they can be explored through substantial debate before they get to the House of Commons – and with the input of experts who are often present in greater numbers in the Lords. This also happened with the Climate Change Bill and the Marine and Coastal Access Bill. I served with some 16 other MPs on the detailed committee stage of both these Bills where the subject matter is something I am comparatively knowledgeable about.
The debate in the Lords took a lot of the time consuming spade-work out of what we needed to further revise.
The Digital Economy Bill was also considered by a number of Parliamentary Committees before it even got to the Lords.
It has of course now been debated in and passed by the House of Commons. Very strong views were expressed on both sides of the public discussion about unlawful online copyright infringement.
I agree with you that it is undeniable that full Commons scrutiny as well as Lords scrutiny would have been preferable. Unfortunately, the announcement of the General Election meant that all stages of the Commons process were completed during the “wash-up”. This is the process through which the government agrees with the opposition as to how to conclude business before Parliament is dissolved. The “wash up” process requires legislation to be supported by a very broad consensus in the House of Commons. The Commons scrutiny of the Digital Economy Bill concluded in the “wash up” last week with 189 votes in favour of the bill to 47 against.
Votes in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords have reflected a clear view across Parliament that unlawful online copyright infringement is a serious problem affecting our creative industries and individual artists, which the law needs to tackle. This is an issue that businesses in Plymouth, especially in the creative arts, have told me about time and time again over the last ten years. However, Parliament has also recognised the difficulties in tackling unlawful copyright infringements effectively. Much of the debate across both Houses rightly focused upon this.
During the Commons stages of the Bill last week, further amendments were made. As the Act now stands, further regulations will be required before technical measures can be applied in cases of copyright infringements via peer-to-peer file sharing, or before a copyright owner can apply for a court order to block an infringing website. These further amendments tabled in the Commons debates require public consultation and a higher level of parliamentary scrutiny – the so-called super affirmative procedure – before the regulations can be introduced. There will, therefore, be further opportunity for Parliamentary scrutiny (and amendment of the provisions) before any sanctions for these breaches will be agreed or applied. During the Commons debates, Clause 43, which covered orphan licences, was dropped from the Bill.
I absolutely agree with you that the digital economy and the internet play an important and increasing role in the lives and livelihoods of many people in this country, which is why it was important to ensure the passage of the Digital Economy Bill during the ‘wash-up’ procedure. Things are changing so fast that to wait another 6-12 months – if this could be prioritised in a new parliament - just did not seem right.
As you can see from my website (I was one of the first 50 MPs to have one back in 1990s – and use of Facebook and Twitter) I do value this form of communication and try my best to use it!
I am also acutely aware of how important both the Digital Economy and the cultural industries – and how they can come together - are to Plymouth. I work with Alison Seabeck in Devonport to advance the case for Plymouth to get high speed broadband access and a hub connecting to the transatlantic cable together with the siting of a secure centre at Mount Wise. This could really put Plymouth on the Digital economy map of the UK.
Thank you for taking the time and trouble to let me know your concerns on this issue.
Given the importance of this issue I would welcome the chance to talk to you about this. As a number of people have written to me I am holding a special meeting at the T&G offices, New Union House, 2 Harbour Avenue, Sutton Harbour at 2-3pm on Sunday 18 April for people especially concerned about this issue to come and talk to me about this Bill. I hope to meet you in person on Sunday. If you do come please be aware that the nearest parking is at Staples. When you arrive at New Union House you will need to press the bottom buzzer for entrance. It would be helpful if you could give me an indication of whether you plan to attend by emailing votegilroy@hotmail.co.uk
Yours sincerely,
Linda Gilroy
Labour & Cooperative Candidate for Plymouth Sutton & Devonport
Website:www.lindagilroy.org.uk
Twitter: www.twitter.com/lindagilroy
Facebook: www.facebook.com/lindagilroy
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/LindaGilroyPlymouth
Get a new e-mail account with Hotmail – Free. Sign-up now.
2010/04/12
VLE / PLE / undead presentation
I hadn't realised this video had been put online until yesterday:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiv8FWg7KMc
From the VLE is undead presentation before Christmas as a revisit to the VLE is dead debate from ALT-C 2009.
Reflecting on my presentation, it was clumsy (someone told me my presentation at ALT-C needed more passion so I tried not to over rehearse my arguments and analogies - but it needed more work), and I think I emphasise the analogy too much without explaining how it relates to the topic. It all seemed obvious to me at the time, but watching it again now I wonder if anyone can follow quite what I meant by the different points.
Anyhow, one lives and learns and I think the point that PLE/PTN are not new practices, just mediated and amplified with technology holds, and that the VLE is about efficiency and ecconomy and that there is a valid place for those aspirations in education facing funding pressures and learners who need their educational journey mediating by 'subject experts' to allow them to progress in a timely way.
Not wishing to re-visit the "is it dead" or VLE v PLE artificial division, but thought I'd link to the video at least for historical reference of my thinking at the time :)
-- Posted from my phone
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiv8FWg7KMc
From the VLE is undead presentation before Christmas as a revisit to the VLE is dead debate from ALT-C 2009.
Reflecting on my presentation, it was clumsy (someone told me my presentation at ALT-C needed more passion so I tried not to over rehearse my arguments and analogies - but it needed more work), and I think I emphasise the analogy too much without explaining how it relates to the topic. It all seemed obvious to me at the time, but watching it again now I wonder if anyone can follow quite what I meant by the different points.
Anyhow, one lives and learns and I think the point that PLE/PTN are not new practices, just mediated and amplified with technology holds, and that the VLE is about efficiency and ecconomy and that there is a valid place for those aspirations in education facing funding pressures and learners who need their educational journey mediating by 'subject experts' to allow them to progress in a timely way.
Not wishing to re-visit the "is it dead" or VLE v PLE artificial division, but thought I'd link to the video at least for historical reference of my thinking at the time :)
-- Posted from my phone
2010/04/09
Open letter to @lindagilroy MP re:#debill
I notice from the list of MPs who voted through the fundamentally technically flawed and ill concieved Digital Ecconomy Bill that you saw fit to support this through it's third reading in the house.
Since you did so, as a constituant concidering my vote in the impending election carefully, I would appreciate your answers to a few pertinant questions.
Firstly, since you supported this bill, can you clarify if you did so because you believe it to be a well formed bill worthy of passing into law, befitting of the long tradition of democracy in this country?
Secondly, if you do not feel this bill to be well formed, did you therefore vote for it simply due to pressure of the whip?
I should clarify that in the first instance, if you believe this to be 'good law' having received due process and diligence (despite advice from proffesional bodies such a the British Computing Society to the contrary) I would see this as evidence of either poor judgement or incompetance.
Secondly, if you feel this is a bad law and still voted for it due to the pressure of the whip, I would see that as evidence of a weak willed MP unable to stand up for what they believe in despite huge evidence and expert advice, and clear evidence of someone unfit or office to represent this constituency.
Certainly, almost every MP who spoke on the bill in the house (with a couple of notable exceptions) made it clear that they felt this bill was flawed and should not be passed but felt unable to oppose it due to all 3 front benches supporting it.
While not unusual in our flawed democratic system, this was exacerbated by pushing this through in washup despite ample opportunity for due process earlier in this parliament which this government declined to go through - something which makes it stink worse than most other similar examples.
While the amendments for a super affirmative are supposed to mitigate passing a fundamentally flawed/counter productive bill, it still means the house (including you) supported passing this as it stands taking the risk that someone will clean up the mess at some later stage. If this were your reason for supporting the bill, it would again appear to me as evidence of being unfit for the responsibilities of such public office.
So, did you vote for this bill through incompetance or lack of backbone? ...or have I missed another alternative which might convince me to change my current intention to return a spoilt ballot as my only remaining option in the coming election?
Yours,
Nick Sharratt
-- Posted from my phone
Since you did so, as a constituant concidering my vote in the impending election carefully, I would appreciate your answers to a few pertinant questions.
Firstly, since you supported this bill, can you clarify if you did so because you believe it to be a well formed bill worthy of passing into law, befitting of the long tradition of democracy in this country?
Secondly, if you do not feel this bill to be well formed, did you therefore vote for it simply due to pressure of the whip?
I should clarify that in the first instance, if you believe this to be 'good law' having received due process and diligence (despite advice from proffesional bodies such a the British Computing Society to the contrary) I would see this as evidence of either poor judgement or incompetance.
Secondly, if you feel this is a bad law and still voted for it due to the pressure of the whip, I would see that as evidence of a weak willed MP unable to stand up for what they believe in despite huge evidence and expert advice, and clear evidence of someone unfit or office to represent this constituency.
Certainly, almost every MP who spoke on the bill in the house (with a couple of notable exceptions) made it clear that they felt this bill was flawed and should not be passed but felt unable to oppose it due to all 3 front benches supporting it.
While not unusual in our flawed democratic system, this was exacerbated by pushing this through in washup despite ample opportunity for due process earlier in this parliament which this government declined to go through - something which makes it stink worse than most other similar examples.
While the amendments for a super affirmative are supposed to mitigate passing a fundamentally flawed/counter productive bill, it still means the house (including you) supported passing this as it stands taking the risk that someone will clean up the mess at some later stage. If this were your reason for supporting the bill, it would again appear to me as evidence of being unfit for the responsibilities of such public office.
So, did you vote for this bill through incompetance or lack of backbone? ...or have I missed another alternative which might convince me to change my current intention to return a spoilt ballot as my only remaining option in the coming election?
Yours,
Nick Sharratt
-- Posted from my phone
Location:Plymouth, UK
2010/01/31
Comment on "what if the iPad had come first before the iPhone"
Just tried twice to comment on this ( http://thenextweb.com/apple/2010/01/31/ipad-arrived-iphone/) and failed (ironically?) doing so with iPhone so here are both attempts at comment instead:
---
But the key point is surely that the iPhone dominating the form factor for phones has shown that "smaller is better" is not universal, and "bigger can be better" when the resulting form factor suits the dominant use better.
And that's surely why the iPad has a place, because the iPhone has now built the market for a mobile appliance computing platform rather than 'just a phone' but you need a bigger screen really for that to be fit for purpose.
That said, I think it's also important that it's a common platform so you can use your iPhone as the pick up and go ultra mobile version with 3G to connect when out and about - with data in the cloud moving seamlessly to where you want it.
---
Take 2
But the point is that the iPhone showed that the trend for 'smaller is better' is not inexorable and that the important thing is to have the best form factor for the dominant use for a computing appliance.
The iPhone has also demonstrated a demand for mobile browsing and apps platform (not a general purpose computer) and the phone has still been looking at the web (and apps) through a key hole. So if things had been reversed, the iPhone would be seen as an excellent pick up and go ultra mobile allways connected version of the ipad, but everyone would be focussing on the compromises necessary to squeeze it into a smaller form factor. I don't think it would render the iPad obsolete any more than portable TVs made the screen in the living room redundant - another area where "bigger is better" has become the mantra where once the market was applying the premium for ever smaller TVs (remember the hype over Sinclair's hand held TV and the TV watch? There's still a place for it, but no one would think that means the latest 108" LCD screens aren't still desirable)
-- Posted from my phone
---
But the key point is surely that the iPhone dominating the form factor for phones has shown that "smaller is better" is not universal, and "bigger can be better" when the resulting form factor suits the dominant use better.
And that's surely why the iPad has a place, because the iPhone has now built the market for a mobile appliance computing platform rather than 'just a phone' but you need a bigger screen really for that to be fit for purpose.
That said, I think it's also important that it's a common platform so you can use your iPhone as the pick up and go ultra mobile version with 3G to connect when out and about - with data in the cloud moving seamlessly to where you want it.
---
Take 2
But the point is that the iPhone showed that the trend for 'smaller is better' is not inexorable and that the important thing is to have the best form factor for the dominant use for a computing appliance.
The iPhone has also demonstrated a demand for mobile browsing and apps platform (not a general purpose computer) and the phone has still been looking at the web (and apps) through a key hole. So if things had been reversed, the iPhone would be seen as an excellent pick up and go ultra mobile allways connected version of the ipad, but everyone would be focussing on the compromises necessary to squeeze it into a smaller form factor. I don't think it would render the iPad obsolete any more than portable TVs made the screen in the living room redundant - another area where "bigger is better" has become the mantra where once the market was applying the premium for ever smaller TVs (remember the hype over Sinclair's hand held TV and the TV watch? There's still a place for it, but no one would think that means the latest 108" LCD screens aren't still desirable)
-- Posted from my phone
A fair days pay for a fair days work-new model for music industry ;)
I watched the Virtual Revolution on BBC earlier and was struck by something someone from Metalica said about music piracy.
To paraphrase, his argument was that stealing his music was akin to him calling out a plumber at anytime and demanding they work for free.
This to me is the core fallacy at the heart of the music industry at present. They don't actually sell anything, they don't even sell their services like a plumber. Instead, they offer very limited licenses which isn't even for the music but is for the music provided in a very particular way for a very particular set of uses.
In fact, recording musicians work just like other people, but instead of being paid a fair wage for their work, they gamble on not being paid but instead asking for a share of this limited licence revenue.
The problem is, that model only really worked when the distribution channel and physical media (and retail store overheads) added most of the costs of music to the consumer.
With digital media, the costs for transport and retail are both minimal, and the model is increasingly anacroniatic.
Using the earlier analogy, if musicans adopted a wage instead, music piracy is akin to someone using a tap to get a fresh drink of water. The plumber who fitted the tap was paid long ago and is in no way disadvantaged by anyone using their work later. The plumber recieved a reasonable working wage for their effort and the result of their work is available then 'for free' (until things mechanically fail which I suppose would be akin to someone losing their files without a backup and needing someone to re-record the music which isn't a good fit, but then digital media is really akin to the plumber making perfect indistrictable taps that will never fail)
Now, of course, this would mean the end of the "rock and roll lifestyle" enjoyed by the few successful musicians who's work is enjoyed by many, it would also mean the end of huge proffit for the few people who benefit most from the current media conglomorates, but everyone in the business (which would be many fewer people) could make a 'fair wage' if they had a deal for the initial distribution of the music onto a service which then allowed free dristribution. That service would only be supporting the fair wage for the artists themselves plus their own overheads, so could probably make more than adequate returns from a simple advertising model. Sure, the file would be shared on other sites too, but by having first release rights only and becoming THE site to go to, they should get adequate return to cover the modest overheads.
It would probably mean musicians would need other jobs for when not actively creating or recording new music, but then they wouldn't have the huge incomes to need the free time to enjoy spending it all anyway.
This could have a benefit for the quality of music too as it's often said that succesful musicians lose touch with reality by their 3rd albumn - this way, they'd keep their feet on the ground and society could enjoy more good music from them.
Society would also be richer by avoiding all the wasted effort attempting to police and prosecute file sharing - human effort that could be redirected then to something more productive, like solving the meaning of life.
The musicians would also avoid the temptations of excess and live happier lives as it's been shown empirically that there's a negative relationship globably between affluance and happiness.
It should also allow many more musicians who currently can't get signed to make big buck to still make a good living wage and we'd all benefit from the richer tapestry of music then available widely.
Seems like win win for everyone except the greedy money skimming people currently inflating the music costs, and they don't add anything the rest of us would miss so that's a big win too.
So as Metallics asked us to, let's make musicians more like plumbers so we can all enjoy the fruit of their labour for free once they've been paid once for their time, just like the rest of us.
;)
-- Posted from my phone
To paraphrase, his argument was that stealing his music was akin to him calling out a plumber at anytime and demanding they work for free.
This to me is the core fallacy at the heart of the music industry at present. They don't actually sell anything, they don't even sell their services like a plumber. Instead, they offer very limited licenses which isn't even for the music but is for the music provided in a very particular way for a very particular set of uses.
In fact, recording musicians work just like other people, but instead of being paid a fair wage for their work, they gamble on not being paid but instead asking for a share of this limited licence revenue.
The problem is, that model only really worked when the distribution channel and physical media (and retail store overheads) added most of the costs of music to the consumer.
With digital media, the costs for transport and retail are both minimal, and the model is increasingly anacroniatic.
Using the earlier analogy, if musicans adopted a wage instead, music piracy is akin to someone using a tap to get a fresh drink of water. The plumber who fitted the tap was paid long ago and is in no way disadvantaged by anyone using their work later. The plumber recieved a reasonable working wage for their effort and the result of their work is available then 'for free' (until things mechanically fail which I suppose would be akin to someone losing their files without a backup and needing someone to re-record the music which isn't a good fit, but then digital media is really akin to the plumber making perfect indistrictable taps that will never fail)
Now, of course, this would mean the end of the "rock and roll lifestyle" enjoyed by the few successful musicians who's work is enjoyed by many, it would also mean the end of huge proffit for the few people who benefit most from the current media conglomorates, but everyone in the business (which would be many fewer people) could make a 'fair wage' if they had a deal for the initial distribution of the music onto a service which then allowed free dristribution. That service would only be supporting the fair wage for the artists themselves plus their own overheads, so could probably make more than adequate returns from a simple advertising model. Sure, the file would be shared on other sites too, but by having first release rights only and becoming THE site to go to, they should get adequate return to cover the modest overheads.
It would probably mean musicians would need other jobs for when not actively creating or recording new music, but then they wouldn't have the huge incomes to need the free time to enjoy spending it all anyway.
This could have a benefit for the quality of music too as it's often said that succesful musicians lose touch with reality by their 3rd albumn - this way, they'd keep their feet on the ground and society could enjoy more good music from them.
Society would also be richer by avoiding all the wasted effort attempting to police and prosecute file sharing - human effort that could be redirected then to something more productive, like solving the meaning of life.
The musicians would also avoid the temptations of excess and live happier lives as it's been shown empirically that there's a negative relationship globably between affluance and happiness.
It should also allow many more musicians who currently can't get signed to make big buck to still make a good living wage and we'd all benefit from the richer tapestry of music then available widely.
Seems like win win for everyone except the greedy money skimming people currently inflating the music costs, and they don't add anything the rest of us would miss so that's a big win too.
So as Metallics asked us to, let's make musicians more like plumbers so we can all enjoy the fruit of their labour for free once they've been paid once for their time, just like the rest of us.
;)
-- Posted from my phone
2010/01/19
A new kind of literature not just a new e-reader?
I just read this article :
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/rorycellanjones/2010/01/is_publishing_about_to_have_an.html
(thanks @jamesclay) and struck by a thought.
The reason MP3 took off is because it allowed you to listen to music anywhere (OK, and probably being able to get content 'free' had something to do with it too), even more flexibly than portable Cd/tape players had and with your own choice of music with you rather than the radio - and as the article points out, books are already portable so the demand isn't the same.
What struck me in that is music is usually small chunks of songs, so we want lots of it with us to fill the time and to have variety to fit our mood. We don't do that with books. Most people will have one or 2 books on the go at any one time and they tend to be long enough to fill a chunk of time on their own.
But what if 'books' were small bite sized things instead and if we could then carry thousands of them with us, put then on shuffle or pick a category to suite out mood etc? Basically, which if e-readers are not suitable for books at all but need a new sort of literature to drive the demand for them?
It's not unusual for technology to drive changes in literature formats or at least to adapt hand in hand. Small brochures, comics, short novels etc all lent themselves to the particular media and form factor available with the technology.
Or Perhaps the killer thing a really good e-reader could have over a book though is dynamic content. Illustrations in novels that are animated, books that know which word you're reading by eye tracking and provide additional audio ambiance or haptic feedback - perhaps a horror novel with dramatic music generated on the fly that times a dramatic strident chord to when you read just the right phrase...?
Or perhaps books need to be incredibly cheap to justify all that space to hold thousands of novels? Who would ever read that many novels in the lifetime of such a gadget anyhow?
Or perhaps the devices themselves need to be cheap enough to be practically disposable?
I suppose i have no idea what suitable new such literature would be like or even if people would want it, but without it, I'm strugling to see the real market for e-book readers besides appeal to the gadget lover.
However - a general purpose device that can access the net anywhere and just happens to also work as a good reader? Well maybe that would interest me. *cough* Apple *cough* and once a device is out there with a market place suitable for micro-payments for content on demand the 'new literature' could happen?
-- Posted from my phone
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/rorycellanjones/2010/01/is_publishing_about_to_have_an.html
(thanks @jamesclay) and struck by a thought.
The reason MP3 took off is because it allowed you to listen to music anywhere (OK, and probably being able to get content 'free' had something to do with it too), even more flexibly than portable Cd/tape players had and with your own choice of music with you rather than the radio - and as the article points out, books are already portable so the demand isn't the same.
What struck me in that is music is usually small chunks of songs, so we want lots of it with us to fill the time and to have variety to fit our mood. We don't do that with books. Most people will have one or 2 books on the go at any one time and they tend to be long enough to fill a chunk of time on their own.
But what if 'books' were small bite sized things instead and if we could then carry thousands of them with us, put then on shuffle or pick a category to suite out mood etc? Basically, which if e-readers are not suitable for books at all but need a new sort of literature to drive the demand for them?
It's not unusual for technology to drive changes in literature formats or at least to adapt hand in hand. Small brochures, comics, short novels etc all lent themselves to the particular media and form factor available with the technology.
Or Perhaps the killer thing a really good e-reader could have over a book though is dynamic content. Illustrations in novels that are animated, books that know which word you're reading by eye tracking and provide additional audio ambiance or haptic feedback - perhaps a horror novel with dramatic music generated on the fly that times a dramatic strident chord to when you read just the right phrase...?
Or perhaps books need to be incredibly cheap to justify all that space to hold thousands of novels? Who would ever read that many novels in the lifetime of such a gadget anyhow?
Or perhaps the devices themselves need to be cheap enough to be practically disposable?
I suppose i have no idea what suitable new such literature would be like or even if people would want it, but without it, I'm strugling to see the real market for e-book readers besides appeal to the gadget lover.
However - a general purpose device that can access the net anywhere and just happens to also work as a good reader? Well maybe that would interest me. *cough* Apple *cough* and once a device is out there with a market place suitable for micro-payments for content on demand the 'new literature' could happen?
-- Posted from my phone
2010/01/17
In response to Article: Open for Learning: The CMS and the Open Learning Network
I read this article the other day and commented on twitter that I felt it had flaws and that I'd comment in more detail what I felt they were later as I didn't think a tweet would be long enough to capture what I wanted to say. Eventually got around to that today, but didn't realise just how much I wanted to say! :-)
Firstly, I should note I'm not an expert in this subject and I'm specifically commenting in the context of the UK, and it's entirely likely that the flaws I perceive are erroneous - in which case I would welcome the feedback :-)
Secondly, while I do see some of the arguments as flawed, I believe I completely agree with the conclusion and recommendation.
I'll go through this in the order the points occur to me through the article, so probably best read along side the article.
Bloom, 1984 is cited and appears to underpin much of what the rest of the article is based on. While undoubtedly most students can achieve better results academically with individual tuition, are academic results really the only measure of the effectiveness of an education system? As one alternative metric to consider, would the sheer number of students who now go on to achieve a degree have been possible without the technological innovations adopted in education at all levels? Hence, rather than increasing the attainment of a similar number of individuals to meet their absolute potential, it could be argued that the education systems are now guiding a much higher proportion of students to reach more of their potential.
It is then argued that the improvements in education to delivery better academic results have not been delivered subsequently. However, the ever higher pass rates of students in exams and improving grades could be evidence to the contrary surely? It would seem obvious to me that as resources are limited (so you can't just throw money at the problem) and society needs to accept any changes made (e.g. employers need to trust the accredited certificates students are awarded mean something), any changes are going to be slow by necessity.
My individual perception of education systems is that education has been transformed with the use of technology, beyond simply automating the past - but by evolution not revolution and hence perhaps is not as obvious. As an example, with the advent of the Internet and search engines, the question of assessing information literacy and research skills rather than simple knowledge retention and regurgitation of 'facts' has undoubtedly had an impact on not only how teaching is assessed but also the very skills which are seen as most valuable in a knowledge based economy.
The limiting factors in implementing innovative technologies in education are not technological or even necessarily pedagogical, they are societal, and changes in society tend to be slow...very slow. Revolutions in society tend to be associated with periods of major unrest and hardship, while in periods of relative stability and peace 'people' tend to prefer slow small changes to the status quo. It is therefore little surprise that parents, employers, educators, administrators would all apply pressure on education to "stick with what we know".
Often groups will not accept significant change unless the status quo is obviously broken. With increasing grades in schools and drastically increased numbers obtaining further education, there are no obvious signs of that (although the current economic outlook could change that view!)
The article then argues that CMS/VLE have been focused on improving the administrative tasks of instruction rather than changing the dominant learning modality (from classroom based instruction to online/hybrid courses). However, this to me misses the key point that educators are often also required to perform course administration functions, and that by liberating them of that overhead, they can be more productive in the individual support and tuition identified by Bloom as being of such benefit.
I would also argue that even simply putting course materials online breaks the modality of teaching of the past, especially if those materials are made available in advance of the traditional classroom based sessions. Students can and do then have the opportunity to study in advance on a subject, to engage more with the content when delivered in the lectures and potentially for those "lectures" to become much more interactive and discursive with many benefits as a result.
I do not feel that the importance of the CMS/VLE as a simple content repository should be underestimated in the impact this can have on education. Without knowing the content of lectures in advance, the power in the lecture theatre was clearly with the lecturer, but when students have the power to have studied in advance, at least some of that power has been handed to the them. That can radically change the dynamic in a group, it can increase the likelihood of building personal learning networks which can be sustained outside and beyond the formal education setting too.
While on the subject of personal learning networks and personal learning environments....these are things I believe students have always had, but they have now been given a label. Students have always discussed subjects with others, they have always read books outside of the proscribed reading materials (or watched TV/radio/opera etc). The difference that technology and social networking/Web 2.0 brings is the breadth and visibility of these things. As such, they are another evolution in learning rather than a revolution, and in the same way that universities have always had social spaces for students, it should be obvious and trivial that by extension this should extend to the virtual world too now.
It is argued:
That aside, the simply huge increase in the number of students now progressing through HE in the UK must point to some significant benefits which would not have been possible with the resources available otherwise. Surely that is a clear improvement in learning outcome for those additional students, and would not have been possible without the simple administrative efficiency improvements (amongst other factors too of course).
I do agree that there is much more potential for improvement in the use of technology to facilitate learning, but dismissing the benefits already made with the doorstop analogy is mistaken. I would feel it more appropriate to use the analogy that while a desktop computer can be used to read War and Peace, it can also be used to pay your bills online, control the heating, do the shopping etc. It is these tedious admin rolls that by facilitating can give one the time to eventually read War and Peace though.
While we would all probably like to imagine students as being keen to adopt a self directed approach to their life long studies, this doesn't appear to be a reflection of reality. The vast majority of students are studying to get a certificate which acts as a free pass in later life to better pay, more interesting jobs, better social standing. They are not actually that interested in "learning", instead wishing to be "taught" how to get through the gates that HE makes them navigate to get to their real goals in life. Anecdotal comments suggest to me that it's still as little as 5-10% of students entering HE which have any interest their life long "learning".
While HE could adapt an alternative approach that insists on students owning the learning, would this really fit with most of them? Would drop out rates actually increase if it became a barrier too far for the majority of students to be motivated to climb? I agree it's possible, and that it is sad that more students don't already enter HE with that mind set, but I believe it naive and dangerous to expect radical change, at least in the short term. Any such changes need to be established and embedded in education before students reach HE, and need to be sold to parents and employers even before that.
RE: Artificial Time Constraints in the CMS - I agree that the automatic registration of students on modules is a great boon, and also that "De-registering" at the end of a module breaks the learning network etc. However, that doesn't have to be the case and is not something that I see as philosophically linked with the CMS/VLE as a concept. I've seen an example in the US (built on Sharepoint the same as we use at UoP) where module sites persist and previous students engage with current and even future students within the sites. This would seem to have all the benefits while avoiding the pitfalls. Currently at UoP, we create new module sites for each cohort, but retain previous sites - we do however "lock" them which has the same problems. This is currently being discussed and may change though.
I see your learning network diagram as hopefully flawed. Each semester, the students learning network (which includes those parts outside of the VLE in my view) should be starting at a slightly higher level and should grow again more steeply than the semester before as they gain proficiency in the skills of developing such a network. There should therefore be a general improvement overtime while keeping the same general saw tooth shape in my view.
I agree that social networks like Facebook tend to have more persistence, but it is flawed to think they are perpetual either. Ask anyone who established a network on MySpace and then found everyone else flocked to Facebook instead. The drivers of the demise of the networks are different, but no such social network is permanent, and neither are employment networks. Much work involves the creation of small, transient groups to contribute to a common goal and such networks rarely have a persistence although producing outputs which may. As such it could be argued that forcing students to practice the skills of re-establishing such networks over and over in the CMS/VLE is actually a positive learning outcome :-)
I agree that there is a human desire to "leave a mark" - and that it is appropriate for these to be outside of the VLE/CMS in the same way that the classes I took in wood work were transitory, but the things I made in it were more permanent and persisted longer (still all gone now though). This is where I see an e-portfolio part of the total VLE being appropriate. An area where students can have clear ownership of persistent "assets" which they can take with them when they leave. This could equally be entirely outside the provision of the institution, but in the same way that e-mail was previously seen as a luxury and valued by students, I believe a e-portfolio is currently.
In the same way, if we are arguing that knowledge-able is now more important than knowledgeable (to borrow from Martin Bean at Alt-C I think it was), then perhaps removing the crutch of having the previous semesters module folders available as a short cut to information in later modules is also a positive benefit? If students could simply refer back to a module notes online rather than utilising the skills to find information "from the ether" whenever its needed then are we really building the right skills still? Now of course, they'll have their own notes to refer back to, but that means they've taken ownership of that information - it's part of their toolkit for future problems and is helping them move away from relying on answers from the tutor?
RE: Learners as Co-Instructors, Instructors as Co-Learners
Again, while many current CMS/VLE do not facilitate this sort of activity, I do not see this as a fundamental philosophical issue. If anything, it's a legal liability issue. If students are publishing things in a system owned by an institution then that institution accepts some liability for that content. If it were to prove contentious in any way, the institution needs some mechanism in place to react to that. That could be costly in either admin or legal fees to mount a defence - particularly with the current libel laws in the UK (e.g. see #libelreform on twitter). It is even a minefield if the institution were to require students to create content on 3rd party sites where the liability would lie.
At UoP, we are currently rolling out the ability for sub parts of a module site to be made visible externally, either for specific named access or anonymous viewing (not contribution though), and the limiting factors are almost entirely legal not technical or VLE specific issues.
This is regrettable, but is perhaps best addressed with a change in the law limiting liability for such materials in the same way as the exemptions for copyright when used for academic assessment etc.
Costs - license costs for CMS/VLE - I suggest this is simply part of market forces and suppliers will charge what the market will stand. If institutions begin refusing to pay, prices come down. There are options which do not have licensing costs but have other costs instead (e.g. Moodle where skills and tech support costs are hidden in staff time rather than up front), or the approach UoP has taken which has been to use Sharepoint which we has strategically decided to adopt as the collaboration and extranet tool anyhow, so using it to build a learning environment didn't include additional license costs (at least, that was part of the argument although various add ons and the significant additional staff resource to develop things in house mean it's not a "free" solution either).
Hosting costs are potentially decreasing recently with the advent of cloud computing and outsourcing - it's a cost benefit consideration.
RE: having a single VLE for the whole institution and the issues of "...fundamental philosophical and pedagogical problems with this monolithic approach." - I'm sure the same argument goes for general purpose teaching rooms, having a single library etc. If the cost and other benefits outweigh the problems, then it's a case of "suck it up". If they don't then the institution needs to firstly recognise that, and secondly adapt to allow flexibility. The fact that more institutions are adopting the single monolithic approach either means the benefits are seen to outweigh the issues or the decision makers are isolated from the issues and/or are not listening to the people they should be, or those people are not speaking up.
As I argued at the ALT-C event, if your institution isn't giving you the tools you need then either the issues aren't as big as they seem to you, or the decision makers are incompetent, or you've not told anyone what the issues are. In all three cases, the issue is not really with the VLE, it's with how the institution operates.
RE: Social Learning and the Network Effect - The only real issue I have with this section is that not everyone learns best through discourse. Some people are fine with the "download learning" approach.
In addition though, I would say that the innovative part of things like the MIT materials being available comes not from them putting them out there but from how other institutions can re-use them and provide the space (physical and virtual) for the discourse around them.
This brings me to "the future of HE" - is there a role for physical campuses if everything is available online? Well, I strongly believe there is as HE is also about learning social, face to face skills, building "real world" social networks, and perhaps most importantly, it's important for those inspirational performances which really good lecturers can deliver.
Has TV marked the end of theatre? (OK, nearly might be the answer to that one!) Did the radio and records mark the end for live bands? No. There is something very human about seeing a performance in person, and unless/until virtual reality can become indistinguishable from being there, then I see campuses having a valuable part to play in HE.
Online social interaction is great. Is it a replacement for all face to face interaction? No way, and I speak as a geek :-)
RE: The open Learning Network - I agree, there is probably too much inertia in the commercial CMS/VLE offerings to easily make significant changes (and little evidence of the dialogue between practitioners and developers being healthy - perhaps with procurement and management in between too much now they are established).
Similarly open source projects have the problem of gaining enough consensus to make such changes (or fork off and then probably suffer the doldrums of lack of critical mass).
So, I can see therefore that something outside might be needed to maintain momentum now - but does that really mean it needs a new name?
I completely agree that it is a false dichotomy between VLE and PLE. I argued at Alt-C that a good VLE would allow individuals to use their PLE with the VLE as just one part of it (akin to using the library as well as chatting to other students or watching TV in the past).
I agree that we need content in the VLE to be open, but as noted earlier - the problem there is mostly legal, not technical, pedagogical, or philosophical.
Where I disagree is that staff and students should be wasting their time picking any old 3rd party tool practically at random. Sure, use 3rd party applications to supplement the VLE, but don't imagine that is a trivial exercise which should be dumped on every member of staff and every student. This perpetuates the myth that because it's easy to use Facebook that everyone could use it for teaching and learning. Or that there are no legal or business risk issues to consider in the choice of 3rd party tools.
Yes, some of the 3rd party tools out there could be useful, but if their terms of service mean they'll share every one's private data with the world, or if their business model is flawed and they're likely to go belly up before the end of the first semester then they're probably best avoided. Similarly, if each system requires staff/students to create and maintain a separate username/password, don't for a second think that won't have technical support and teaching and learning issues when they can't remember which username/password was for which site.
And business continuity - imagine a course that's heavily using a 3rd party site and all the students have put all their work in there, but then the only academic that has rights to access the work is knocked down by a bus?
I know you allude to IT providing bridge applications for single sign-on etc, but these are non-trivial developments, and to justify the costs of developing each for a 3rd party tool, there would need to be a clear business case justifying the separate additional cost (and it's a revenue cost just like those horrid license fees for the CMS/VLE as it'll need maintaining over time too). It would need legal agreements with each 3rd party organisation with the costs that would involve and the time to implement.
Instead, what is needed is an open network that allows academics to use a Personal Teaching network (mostly to "squirt" content into it), and for students to use a Personal Learning network (mostly to grab content). Both would also need to be able engage in dialogue etc too using their preferred tools. So a lecturer might tweet something - that gets picked up by the VLE because the academic has configured it to pick up the RSS feed, and it's re-published within the VLE (or the RSS feed is just re-directed with a VLE address). The student then picks that up in Google reader from the RSS feed published through the VLE. Ditto for documents, dialogue etc.
So yes, the VLE acts as the glue between the PTN and the PLE, but using open standards and as a cohesive role for business continuity etc too.
I've already covered why forcing students to re-build learning networks is not necessarily a bad thing, but actually I do agree that building on existing networks is preferable :-)
RE: reliability/stability - it's interesting that you note that these are not likely outcomes of this proposal as of course, they would be reliant on multiple points of failure and therefore probably inherently significantly less stable/reliable. As I noted at ALT-C, feedback from students in the paper presented there is that reliable, stable and consistent were the key things they want from an institutional learning environment. Without a research paper on it, I would suggest that these would be the priorities for 90% of academics too!
Similarly, you note that this proposal would not be likely to save money. In the current economic climate facing HE in the UK in particular, the significant additional investment needed to develop such an infrastructure would therefore seem reckless at best.
RE: "...we believe teachers have a moral obligation...to be the best teachers they can be." I agree of course. However, I believe part of doing so is to take an holistic view, which includes understanding the business risks, the reality of the financial situation, the need for sustainability in education, the place of employers etc in determining what should be done, and actually - what students want.
If (most) students want to be taught to pass an exam to get a better job rather than dragged kicking and screaming into being life long learners and into doing they best they possibly can academically but maybe not in life generally, then maybe, just maybe, that is the moral thing to do?
(this last point very much tongue in cheek!)
- let the flack begin.
(I will just emphasise again, these are not necessarily the views of my employer - they're not necessarily my views if someone points out I've made a glaring error of judgement, in which case I'll deny I every really meant any of it ;-)
Firstly, I should note I'm not an expert in this subject and I'm specifically commenting in the context of the UK, and it's entirely likely that the flaws I perceive are erroneous - in which case I would welcome the feedback :-)
Secondly, while I do see some of the arguments as flawed, I believe I completely agree with the conclusion and recommendation.
I'll go through this in the order the points occur to me through the article, so probably best read along side the article.
Bloom, 1984 is cited and appears to underpin much of what the rest of the article is based on. While undoubtedly most students can achieve better results academically with individual tuition, are academic results really the only measure of the effectiveness of an education system? As one alternative metric to consider, would the sheer number of students who now go on to achieve a degree have been possible without the technological innovations adopted in education at all levels? Hence, rather than increasing the attainment of a similar number of individuals to meet their absolute potential, it could be argued that the education systems are now guiding a much higher proportion of students to reach more of their potential.
It is then argued that the improvements in education to delivery better academic results have not been delivered subsequently. However, the ever higher pass rates of students in exams and improving grades could be evidence to the contrary surely? It would seem obvious to me that as resources are limited (so you can't just throw money at the problem) and society needs to accept any changes made (e.g. employers need to trust the accredited certificates students are awarded mean something), any changes are going to be slow by necessity.
My individual perception of education systems is that education has been transformed with the use of technology, beyond simply automating the past - but by evolution not revolution and hence perhaps is not as obvious. As an example, with the advent of the Internet and search engines, the question of assessing information literacy and research skills rather than simple knowledge retention and regurgitation of 'facts' has undoubtedly had an impact on not only how teaching is assessed but also the very skills which are seen as most valuable in a knowledge based economy.
The limiting factors in implementing innovative technologies in education are not technological or even necessarily pedagogical, they are societal, and changes in society tend to be slow...very slow. Revolutions in society tend to be associated with periods of major unrest and hardship, while in periods of relative stability and peace 'people' tend to prefer slow small changes to the status quo. It is therefore little surprise that parents, employers, educators, administrators would all apply pressure on education to "stick with what we know".
Often groups will not accept significant change unless the status quo is obviously broken. With increasing grades in schools and drastically increased numbers obtaining further education, there are no obvious signs of that (although the current economic outlook could change that view!)
The article then argues that CMS/VLE have been focused on improving the administrative tasks of instruction rather than changing the dominant learning modality (from classroom based instruction to online/hybrid courses). However, this to me misses the key point that educators are often also required to perform course administration functions, and that by liberating them of that overhead, they can be more productive in the individual support and tuition identified by Bloom as being of such benefit.
I would also argue that even simply putting course materials online breaks the modality of teaching of the past, especially if those materials are made available in advance of the traditional classroom based sessions. Students can and do then have the opportunity to study in advance on a subject, to engage more with the content when delivered in the lectures and potentially for those "lectures" to become much more interactive and discursive with many benefits as a result.
I do not feel that the importance of the CMS/VLE as a simple content repository should be underestimated in the impact this can have on education. Without knowing the content of lectures in advance, the power in the lecture theatre was clearly with the lecturer, but when students have the power to have studied in advance, at least some of that power has been handed to the them. That can radically change the dynamic in a group, it can increase the likelihood of building personal learning networks which can be sustained outside and beyond the formal education setting too.
While on the subject of personal learning networks and personal learning environments....these are things I believe students have always had, but they have now been given a label. Students have always discussed subjects with others, they have always read books outside of the proscribed reading materials (or watched TV/radio/opera etc). The difference that technology and social networking/Web 2.0 brings is the breadth and visibility of these things. As such, they are another evolution in learning rather than a revolution, and in the same way that universities have always had social spaces for students, it should be obvious and trivial that by extension this should extend to the virtual world too now.
It is argued:
"...one possible characterization of the CMS is a very effective, albeit very expensive, course content distribution and teacher-student communication platform. While improvements in efficiency are certainly beneficial to faculty members and students, the CMS has yet to yield consistently demonstrable, replicable, significant improvements in learning outcomes."Expensive? That appears subjective and depends on a lot of details, particularly in the implementation locally. I have argued previously (at ALT-C 2009) that the VLE could equally be an amalgam of 3rd party tools, many of which are "free" to an institution such as Google Apps or MS Live@edu, which could mitigate the capital costs and many of the revenue costs too.
That aside, the simply huge increase in the number of students now progressing through HE in the UK must point to some significant benefits which would not have been possible with the resources available otherwise. Surely that is a clear improvement in learning outcome for those additional students, and would not have been possible without the simple administrative efficiency improvements (amongst other factors too of course).
I do agree that there is much more potential for improvement in the use of technology to facilitate learning, but dismissing the benefits already made with the doorstop analogy is mistaken. I would feel it more appropriate to use the analogy that while a desktop computer can be used to read War and Peace, it can also be used to pay your bills online, control the heating, do the shopping etc. It is these tedious admin rolls that by facilitating can give one the time to eventually read War and Peace though.
While we would all probably like to imagine students as being keen to adopt a self directed approach to their life long studies, this doesn't appear to be a reflection of reality. The vast majority of students are studying to get a certificate which acts as a free pass in later life to better pay, more interesting jobs, better social standing. They are not actually that interested in "learning", instead wishing to be "taught" how to get through the gates that HE makes them navigate to get to their real goals in life. Anecdotal comments suggest to me that it's still as little as 5-10% of students entering HE which have any interest their life long "learning".
While HE could adapt an alternative approach that insists on students owning the learning, would this really fit with most of them? Would drop out rates actually increase if it became a barrier too far for the majority of students to be motivated to climb? I agree it's possible, and that it is sad that more students don't already enter HE with that mind set, but I believe it naive and dangerous to expect radical change, at least in the short term. Any such changes need to be established and embedded in education before students reach HE, and need to be sold to parents and employers even before that.
RE: Artificial Time Constraints in the CMS - I agree that the automatic registration of students on modules is a great boon, and also that "De-registering" at the end of a module breaks the learning network etc. However, that doesn't have to be the case and is not something that I see as philosophically linked with the CMS/VLE as a concept. I've seen an example in the US (built on Sharepoint the same as we use at UoP) where module sites persist and previous students engage with current and even future students within the sites. This would seem to have all the benefits while avoiding the pitfalls. Currently at UoP, we create new module sites for each cohort, but retain previous sites - we do however "lock" them which has the same problems. This is currently being discussed and may change though.
I see your learning network diagram as hopefully flawed. Each semester, the students learning network (which includes those parts outside of the VLE in my view) should be starting at a slightly higher level and should grow again more steeply than the semester before as they gain proficiency in the skills of developing such a network. There should therefore be a general improvement overtime while keeping the same general saw tooth shape in my view.
I agree that social networks like Facebook tend to have more persistence, but it is flawed to think they are perpetual either. Ask anyone who established a network on MySpace and then found everyone else flocked to Facebook instead. The drivers of the demise of the networks are different, but no such social network is permanent, and neither are employment networks. Much work involves the creation of small, transient groups to contribute to a common goal and such networks rarely have a persistence although producing outputs which may. As such it could be argued that forcing students to practice the skills of re-establishing such networks over and over in the CMS/VLE is actually a positive learning outcome :-)
I agree that there is a human desire to "leave a mark" - and that it is appropriate for these to be outside of the VLE/CMS in the same way that the classes I took in wood work were transitory, but the things I made in it were more permanent and persisted longer (still all gone now though). This is where I see an e-portfolio part of the total VLE being appropriate. An area where students can have clear ownership of persistent "assets" which they can take with them when they leave. This could equally be entirely outside the provision of the institution, but in the same way that e-mail was previously seen as a luxury and valued by students, I believe a e-portfolio is currently.
In the same way, if we are arguing that knowledge-able is now more important than knowledgeable (to borrow from Martin Bean at Alt-C I think it was), then perhaps removing the crutch of having the previous semesters module folders available as a short cut to information in later modules is also a positive benefit? If students could simply refer back to a module notes online rather than utilising the skills to find information "from the ether" whenever its needed then are we really building the right skills still? Now of course, they'll have their own notes to refer back to, but that means they've taken ownership of that information - it's part of their toolkit for future problems and is helping them move away from relying on answers from the tutor?
RE: Learners as Co-Instructors, Instructors as Co-Learners
Again, while many current CMS/VLE do not facilitate this sort of activity, I do not see this as a fundamental philosophical issue. If anything, it's a legal liability issue. If students are publishing things in a system owned by an institution then that institution accepts some liability for that content. If it were to prove contentious in any way, the institution needs some mechanism in place to react to that. That could be costly in either admin or legal fees to mount a defence - particularly with the current libel laws in the UK (e.g. see #libelreform on twitter). It is even a minefield if the institution were to require students to create content on 3rd party sites where the liability would lie.
At UoP, we are currently rolling out the ability for sub parts of a module site to be made visible externally, either for specific named access or anonymous viewing (not contribution though), and the limiting factors are almost entirely legal not technical or VLE specific issues.
This is regrettable, but is perhaps best addressed with a change in the law limiting liability for such materials in the same way as the exemptions for copyright when used for academic assessment etc.
Costs - license costs for CMS/VLE - I suggest this is simply part of market forces and suppliers will charge what the market will stand. If institutions begin refusing to pay, prices come down. There are options which do not have licensing costs but have other costs instead (e.g. Moodle where skills and tech support costs are hidden in staff time rather than up front), or the approach UoP has taken which has been to use Sharepoint which we has strategically decided to adopt as the collaboration and extranet tool anyhow, so using it to build a learning environment didn't include additional license costs (at least, that was part of the argument although various add ons and the significant additional staff resource to develop things in house mean it's not a "free" solution either).
Hosting costs are potentially decreasing recently with the advent of cloud computing and outsourcing - it's a cost benefit consideration.
RE: having a single VLE for the whole institution and the issues of "...fundamental philosophical and pedagogical problems with this monolithic approach." - I'm sure the same argument goes for general purpose teaching rooms, having a single library etc. If the cost and other benefits outweigh the problems, then it's a case of "suck it up". If they don't then the institution needs to firstly recognise that, and secondly adapt to allow flexibility. The fact that more institutions are adopting the single monolithic approach either means the benefits are seen to outweigh the issues or the decision makers are isolated from the issues and/or are not listening to the people they should be, or those people are not speaking up.
As I argued at the ALT-C event, if your institution isn't giving you the tools you need then either the issues aren't as big as they seem to you, or the decision makers are incompetent, or you've not told anyone what the issues are. In all three cases, the issue is not really with the VLE, it's with how the institution operates.
RE: Social Learning and the Network Effect - The only real issue I have with this section is that not everyone learns best through discourse. Some people are fine with the "download learning" approach.
In addition though, I would say that the innovative part of things like the MIT materials being available comes not from them putting them out there but from how other institutions can re-use them and provide the space (physical and virtual) for the discourse around them.
This brings me to "the future of HE" - is there a role for physical campuses if everything is available online? Well, I strongly believe there is as HE is also about learning social, face to face skills, building "real world" social networks, and perhaps most importantly, it's important for those inspirational performances which really good lecturers can deliver.
Has TV marked the end of theatre? (OK, nearly might be the answer to that one!) Did the radio and records mark the end for live bands? No. There is something very human about seeing a performance in person, and unless/until virtual reality can become indistinguishable from being there, then I see campuses having a valuable part to play in HE.
Online social interaction is great. Is it a replacement for all face to face interaction? No way, and I speak as a geek :-)
RE: The open Learning Network - I agree, there is probably too much inertia in the commercial CMS/VLE offerings to easily make significant changes (and little evidence of the dialogue between practitioners and developers being healthy - perhaps with procurement and management in between too much now they are established).
Similarly open source projects have the problem of gaining enough consensus to make such changes (or fork off and then probably suffer the doldrums of lack of critical mass).
So, I can see therefore that something outside might be needed to maintain momentum now - but does that really mean it needs a new name?
I completely agree that it is a false dichotomy between VLE and PLE. I argued at Alt-C that a good VLE would allow individuals to use their PLE with the VLE as just one part of it (akin to using the library as well as chatting to other students or watching TV in the past).
I agree that we need content in the VLE to be open, but as noted earlier - the problem there is mostly legal, not technical, pedagogical, or philosophical.
Where I disagree is that staff and students should be wasting their time picking any old 3rd party tool practically at random. Sure, use 3rd party applications to supplement the VLE, but don't imagine that is a trivial exercise which should be dumped on every member of staff and every student. This perpetuates the myth that because it's easy to use Facebook that everyone could use it for teaching and learning. Or that there are no legal or business risk issues to consider in the choice of 3rd party tools.
Yes, some of the 3rd party tools out there could be useful, but if their terms of service mean they'll share every one's private data with the world, or if their business model is flawed and they're likely to go belly up before the end of the first semester then they're probably best avoided. Similarly, if each system requires staff/students to create and maintain a separate username/password, don't for a second think that won't have technical support and teaching and learning issues when they can't remember which username/password was for which site.
And business continuity - imagine a course that's heavily using a 3rd party site and all the students have put all their work in there, but then the only academic that has rights to access the work is knocked down by a bus?
I know you allude to IT providing bridge applications for single sign-on etc, but these are non-trivial developments, and to justify the costs of developing each for a 3rd party tool, there would need to be a clear business case justifying the separate additional cost (and it's a revenue cost just like those horrid license fees for the CMS/VLE as it'll need maintaining over time too). It would need legal agreements with each 3rd party organisation with the costs that would involve and the time to implement.
Instead, what is needed is an open network that allows academics to use a Personal Teaching network (mostly to "squirt" content into it), and for students to use a Personal Learning network (mostly to grab content). Both would also need to be able engage in dialogue etc too using their preferred tools. So a lecturer might tweet something - that gets picked up by the VLE because the academic has configured it to pick up the RSS feed, and it's re-published within the VLE (or the RSS feed is just re-directed with a VLE address). The student then picks that up in Google reader from the RSS feed published through the VLE. Ditto for documents, dialogue etc.
So yes, the VLE acts as the glue between the PTN and the PLE, but using open standards and as a cohesive role for business continuity etc too.
I've already covered why forcing students to re-build learning networks is not necessarily a bad thing, but actually I do agree that building on existing networks is preferable :-)
RE: reliability/stability - it's interesting that you note that these are not likely outcomes of this proposal as of course, they would be reliant on multiple points of failure and therefore probably inherently significantly less stable/reliable. As I noted at ALT-C, feedback from students in the paper presented there is that reliable, stable and consistent were the key things they want from an institutional learning environment. Without a research paper on it, I would suggest that these would be the priorities for 90% of academics too!
Similarly, you note that this proposal would not be likely to save money. In the current economic climate facing HE in the UK in particular, the significant additional investment needed to develop such an infrastructure would therefore seem reckless at best.
RE: "...we believe teachers have a moral obligation...to be the best teachers they can be." I agree of course. However, I believe part of doing so is to take an holistic view, which includes understanding the business risks, the reality of the financial situation, the need for sustainability in education, the place of employers etc in determining what should be done, and actually - what students want.
If (most) students want to be taught to pass an exam to get a better job rather than dragged kicking and screaming into being life long learners and into doing they best they possibly can academically but maybe not in life generally, then maybe, just maybe, that is the moral thing to do?
(this last point very much tongue in cheek!)
- let the flack begin.
(I will just emphasise again, these are not necessarily the views of my employer - they're not necessarily my views if someone points out I've made a glaring error of judgement, in which case I'll deny I every really meant any of it ;-)
Things to consider when shopping on line
I've just been asked by a member of my family for some advice regarding security when shopping on line and having written it, I thought it might be worth sharing publically even though there are lots of other sources out there with similar advice already. Is there anything I've missed in the advice you'd give people?:
There are 3 things to consider when shopping on line:
1) your computer
2) the site your buying from
3) the connection between them
Any of these can be a route through which your credit card and other personal info can be obtained by the bad guys.
Your computer needs to be "clean" or else it might already be running invisible malicious software just waiting for you to visit a web site and put in your credit card details and it'll send them off to its masters - usually the Russian mafia for credit card fraud (different countries bad guys tend to specialise in different crimes).
So, your machine should be running up to date anti-virus software, it should be regularly fully patched (not just the operating system but also any software on it - in particular recently Adobe Acrobat has been used as an infection vector into peoples machines). Ideally you'd also have a firewall running, but if you're connection to the Internet is via a router, it's likely its acting as a NAT (network address translation), and providing a degree of firewall type protection.
The site your buying from has various things to consider in itself:
A) is it a legitimate company
B) is the web address your using the real address for the genuine company
C) are they trustworthy
D) Do they take the security and privacy of your data seriously
E) What is their customer service like if things go wrong
F) What delivery provider do they use and are they any good
Taking those in turn, A - there are a lot of "store front" web sites out there intended to sucker people into providing their details to the bad guys. These can look very legitimate as a fancy web site costs very little. Always check the company has a real physical existence too - if they're not well know (like Amazon etc) I always check the domain name registration details (use a Whois service and put in the web address). This tells you the details of the person or organisation that registered the domain name and when. If it's only been registered recently, or if the location details don't match the details provided on the web site or anything else rings alarm bells, I walk away.
B is related to this - bad guys often create "look alike" web sites with very similar web addresses to catch people typing the address in wrong, or they send out spam/Phishing e-mails to socially engineer people to click on links to their site believing you've gone to the real company pages. Always type addresses in yourself for a site you're going to put your credit card details into and check and double check you've typed it correctly. The same goes for online banking, perhaps even more so.
C - is really the key. There are lots of genuine companies out there but many of them sell rubbish to grow their profits. Always check the web for reviews and opinions of other people to get a feel for their trustworthiness. I usually do a Google search for the company name and review in Google and spend some time getting a feel for other people's experiences before I deal with any company for the first time online. There have been many I've decided to walk away from as a result. Its amazing how many ways some companies find to make a mess of things!
D -this is tricky to be sure of, but they should at least have both a security and privacy statement of policy on their site. Take time to read it. Some companies do make a little extra money by selling on your details to other companies and are often up front about this in their TOS. This is also worth a Google search to see if security experts have written anything about a company having particularly lax policies or procedures. Ultimately though, any company can be a problem with this as even some big names have managed to mess up sometimes, in some cases allowing the credit card details of millions of people to be stolen in one hit.
E - again, you want to check previous customers comments. What are they like if you need to return things? Do they provide a phone number to contact them on the web site? If so, try calling it before you order anything to see if it's genuine and also to see how long it takes to get to speak to someone.
F - this is one of my pet peeves. Some delivery companies are a real pain to deal with, refusing to arrange alternative delivery times or arrangements and it can end up adding significant costs to an order. I had one company who I bought something costing £20 from, and because the delivery company was awful, it ended up costing me an additional £10 to actually get the thing delivered in the end. Again, check which company they use and then check the web for reviews from real people.
So, the last thing to consider is the connection between your computer and the web site. In many ways, this is actually the easy bit. Before you put any credit card details into a site (after all the checks above), make sure your web browser is showing a padlock for the pad your viewing. The exact look of this varies by browser - in IE8 it shows up at the end of the address bar as a yellow padlock. The web address should also start "https://", this shows the site has established an SSL (secure socket layer) connection between you and the server and that all communication back and forth is being encrypted. This stops a "man in the middle" type attack on the data from an eavesdropper.
Last point, not directly related to buying online but relevant - if you're using wifi to connect to the Internet then ensure your using an encrypted signal and that it's using at least WPA encryption and not WEP. With no encryption on the wifi, someone up to a few hundred yards away could eavesdrop every web page you visit (except if it uses SSL), everything you type into them etc. With WEP encryption only, it takes a few minutes snooping and then they can eavesdrop. With WPA encryption, few people will be able to crack it, and it'll take them a good few hours at least even if they try.
So, having said all that, I generally stick to the bigger companies like Amazon, who do accept credit cards.
Hope that helps.
There are 3 things to consider when shopping on line:
1) your computer
2) the site your buying from
3) the connection between them
Any of these can be a route through which your credit card and other personal info can be obtained by the bad guys.
Your computer needs to be "clean" or else it might already be running invisible malicious software just waiting for you to visit a web site and put in your credit card details and it'll send them off to its masters - usually the Russian mafia for credit card fraud (different countries bad guys tend to specialise in different crimes).
So, your machine should be running up to date anti-virus software, it should be regularly fully patched (not just the operating system but also any software on it - in particular recently Adobe Acrobat has been used as an infection vector into peoples machines). Ideally you'd also have a firewall running, but if you're connection to the Internet is via a router, it's likely its acting as a NAT (network address translation), and providing a degree of firewall type protection.
The site your buying from has various things to consider in itself:
A) is it a legitimate company
B) is the web address your using the real address for the genuine company
C) are they trustworthy
D) Do they take the security and privacy of your data seriously
E) What is their customer service like if things go wrong
F) What delivery provider do they use and are they any good
Taking those in turn, A - there are a lot of "store front" web sites out there intended to sucker people into providing their details to the bad guys. These can look very legitimate as a fancy web site costs very little. Always check the company has a real physical existence too - if they're not well know (like Amazon etc) I always check the domain name registration details (use a Whois service and put in the web address). This tells you the details of the person or organisation that registered the domain name and when. If it's only been registered recently, or if the location details don't match the details provided on the web site or anything else rings alarm bells, I walk away.
B is related to this - bad guys often create "look alike" web sites with very similar web addresses to catch people typing the address in wrong, or they send out spam/Phishing e-mails to socially engineer people to click on links to their site believing you've gone to the real company pages. Always type addresses in yourself for a site you're going to put your credit card details into and check and double check you've typed it correctly. The same goes for online banking, perhaps even more so.
C - is really the key. There are lots of genuine companies out there but many of them sell rubbish to grow their profits. Always check the web for reviews and opinions of other people to get a feel for their trustworthiness. I usually do a Google search for the company name and review in Google and spend some time getting a feel for other people's experiences before I deal with any company for the first time online. There have been many I've decided to walk away from as a result. Its amazing how many ways some companies find to make a mess of things!
D -this is tricky to be sure of, but they should at least have both a security and privacy statement of policy on their site. Take time to read it. Some companies do make a little extra money by selling on your details to other companies and are often up front about this in their TOS. This is also worth a Google search to see if security experts have written anything about a company having particularly lax policies or procedures. Ultimately though, any company can be a problem with this as even some big names have managed to mess up sometimes, in some cases allowing the credit card details of millions of people to be stolen in one hit.
E - again, you want to check previous customers comments. What are they like if you need to return things? Do they provide a phone number to contact them on the web site? If so, try calling it before you order anything to see if it's genuine and also to see how long it takes to get to speak to someone.
F - this is one of my pet peeves. Some delivery companies are a real pain to deal with, refusing to arrange alternative delivery times or arrangements and it can end up adding significant costs to an order. I had one company who I bought something costing £20 from, and because the delivery company was awful, it ended up costing me an additional £10 to actually get the thing delivered in the end. Again, check which company they use and then check the web for reviews from real people.
So, the last thing to consider is the connection between your computer and the web site. In many ways, this is actually the easy bit. Before you put any credit card details into a site (after all the checks above), make sure your web browser is showing a padlock for the pad your viewing. The exact look of this varies by browser - in IE8 it shows up at the end of the address bar as a yellow padlock. The web address should also start "https://", this shows the site has established an SSL (secure socket layer) connection between you and the server and that all communication back and forth is being encrypted. This stops a "man in the middle" type attack on the data from an eavesdropper.
Last point, not directly related to buying online but relevant - if you're using wifi to connect to the Internet then ensure your using an encrypted signal and that it's using at least WPA encryption and not WEP. With no encryption on the wifi, someone up to a few hundred yards away could eavesdrop every web page you visit (except if it uses SSL), everything you type into them etc. With WEP encryption only, it takes a few minutes snooping and then they can eavesdrop. With WPA encryption, few people will be able to crack it, and it'll take them a good few hours at least even if they try.
So, having said all that, I generally stick to the bigger companies like Amazon, who do accept credit cards.
Hope that helps.
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