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:
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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.
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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
2010/01/31
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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