John Connell: The Blog

Spot­ted this lit­tle crit­ter sit­ting out­side Har­vey Nicks in Edin­burgh, keep­ing his Big-Issue-selling mas­ter company.

I has­ten to add, i was not com­ing out of HN at the time, just pass­ing!

Tech­no­rati Tags: big issue, dog, har­vey nichols, edin­burgh

Does Ryanair need a new PR com­pany — exam­ple 1 — exam­ple 2? Or do two suc­ces­sive ques­tion­able ads add up to a delib­er­ate cam­paign?

Tech­no­rati Tags: ryanair, adver­tis­ing, asa, sarkozy

Watch and wonder!

Can any­one explain the math­e­mat­ics of this to me or point me at some­thing that explains it?

Note the Stephen Hep­pell com­ment beneath the video (unfor­tu­nately next to a cou­ple of par­tic­u­larly igno­rant com­ments from peo­ple with small intel­li­gence and smaller humanity).

Thanks to David War­lick (and Stephen) for the link.

FOOTNOTE — I tried it myself and I now see how it works — bril­liantly sim­ple!

Tech­no­rati Tags: stephen hep­pell, david war­lick, youtube, math­e­mat­ics

Only in America?

I won­der.

Thanks to Doug Noon for the link: Mul­ti­ple Ways of Knowing

Foot­note — if you take time to read any part of the paper in the link above, at least read the sorry tale on Page 4: ‘One Child Left Behind’. Incred­i­ble.

Tech­no­rati Tags: doug noon, bor­der­land, bloomberg, tests

“The Eng­lish edu­ca­tion sys­tem is slid­ing back into Vic­to­rian times with today’s schools almost as seg­re­gated by social class as they were in the 19^th century.”

From a review of a new book by Pro­fes­sor Stephen Ball — The Edu­ca­tion Debate — in today’s Guardian.

I doubt the bulk of the mid­dle classes will care much, nor will they rec­og­nize that such seg­re­ga­tion, ulti­mately, harms their chil­dren too.

For the authen­tic voice of the lumpen-bourgeoisie (a great phrase I heard recently from Lau­rie O’Donnell), see the com­ment in an ear­lier post from a mid­dle class par­ent who had just bought her house within the catch­ment area of a ‘good’ school.

Tech­no­rati Tags: seg­re­ga­tion, edu­ca­tion, vic­to­rian eng­land, the edu­ca­tion debat, stephen ball

Thank you to Inge de Waard for the link, and for her engag­ing hon­esty with respect to bogus cita­tions, a great post from Will Thal­heimer that should make you stop and ques­tion next time you decide to repeat some slick, glib set of sta­tis­tics on any­thing!

Tech­no­rati Tags: sta­tis­tics, igna­tia, inge de waard, will thal­heimer

In the debate last year with David Wein­berger, Andrew Keen said:

“A flat­tened media is a per­son­al­ized, chaotic media with­out that essen­tial epis­te­mo­log­i­cal anchor of truth. The impar­tial­ity of the author­i­ta­tive, account­able expert is replaced by murk­i­ness of the anony­mous amateur.”

The key word in there, apart from the odd use of ‘epis­te­mo­log­i­cal’ and the ques­tion­able use of ‘truth’, is ‘replaced’. It is the key word because it is wrong.

In today’s Guardian, Alas­tair Camp­bell writes:

“It is an inter­est­ing para­dox that while we have more media space than ever, com­plaint about the lack of healthy debate has never been louder, with fewer sto­ries and issues being addressed in real depth in a way that engages large audi­ences; and, despite the explo­sion in out­lets, very few days in which there is not a sin­gle homoge­nous theme or talk­ing point dom­i­nat­ing the vast out­put. With every front-page scream­ing head­line that doesn’t quite deliver the big story, every exclu­sive that isn’t, every whoosh­ing break­ing news that isn’t really break­ing news, every new twist in the McCann case that isn’t a new twist at all, the pub­lic gets a lit­tle wiser.”

Camp­bell is not speak­ing here about the new media, whether per­son­al­ized and chaotic or not — he is refer­ring clearly to the old media: to the press, TV and radio. I recog­nise more than a grain of truth in his descrip­tion of the daily slew of news and ‘news’ that we seem to get from our author­i­ta­tive, tra­di­tional media. I do not need to watch yet another ‘news report’ on Sky News or ITN from the absurd sideshow of par­a­sites and para­noics that make up the Diana enquiry, for instance, to know that there are fewer and fewer tra­di­tional out­lets that can truly claim to offer any real author­ity in their edi­to­r­ial policies.

What is cer­tain, how­ever, and despite what Keen says, is that the tra­di­tional, old media is by no means being replaced by new media — at least not yet! Rather, there seems to be a process of aug­men­ta­tion going on, with new media offer­ing us sources of news, cul­ture, art, dis­cus­sion, phi­los­o­phy — what­ever — but sources that do not, with a few notable excep­tions, define their out­put as being imbued with any faux sense of ‘author­ity’. Even more than in the past, we have to be able to dis­crim­i­nate, to sep­a­rate the triv­ial and the prej­u­diced from the authen­tic and the thoughtful.

Per­haps, it is the issue of authen­tic­ity rather than author­ity that can dis­tin­guish much new media out­put from much old media out­put today. Kevin Ander­son offers an exam­ple over at Strange Attrac­tor. Look­ing at the Amer­i­can Pri­maries, where thought­ful and well-argued speeches by the likes of Barack Obama get lost in the sound­bite and quick­fire pun­ditry that make up most polit­i­cal news report­ing, non-traditional chan­nels such as YouTube are offer­ing vot­ers the oppor­tu­nity to by-pass the edi­to­ri­al­is­ing of the TV sta­tions and to lis­ten to whole speeches, whole debates.

The ‘author­ity’ of old media is not replaced by new media, but at least new media can offer an addi­tional route to authen­tic­ity where it is required or sought.

Tech­no­rati Tags: andrew keen, david wein­berger, old media, new media, alas­tair camp­bell, strange attrac­tor, the guardian, youtube, author­ity, authen­tic­ity

Unlock­ing the promise of open edu­ca­tional resources.….

The cen­tral aim of the Cape Town Dec­la­ra­tion is to develop:

“.….a vast pool of edu­ca­tional resources on the Inter­net, open and free for all to use.”

How­ever, the impe­tus behind the Dec­la­ra­tion goes much deeper and broader than this. If you read it and agree with it’s aims, you can sign the Dec­la­ra­tion here.

The three core strate­gies are:

1. Edu­ca­tors and learn­ers: First, we encour­age edu­ca­tors and learn­ers to actively par­tic­i­pate in the emerg­ing open edu­ca­tion move­ment. Par­tic­i­pat­ing includes: cre­at­ing, using, adapt­ing and improv­ing open edu­ca­tional resources; embrac­ing edu­ca­tional prac­tices built around col­lab­o­ra­tion, dis­cov­ery and the cre­ation of knowl­edge; and invit­ing peers and col­leagues to get involved. Cre­at­ing and using open resources should be con­sid­ered inte­gral to edu­ca­tion and should be sup­ported and rewarded accordingly.

2. Open edu­ca­tional resources: Sec­ond, we call on edu­ca­tors, authors, pub­lish­ers and insti­tu­tions to release their resources openly. These open edu­ca­tional resources should be freely shared through open licences which facil­i­tate use, revi­sion, trans­la­tion, improve­ment and shar­ing by any­one. Resources should be pub­lished in for­mats that facil­i­tate both use and edit­ing, and that accom­mo­date a diver­sity of tech­ni­cal plat­forms. When­ever pos­si­ble, they should also be avail­able in for­mats that are acces­si­ble to peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties and peo­ple who do not yet have access to the Internet.

3. Open edu­ca­tion pol­icy: Third, gov­ern­ments, school boards, col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties should make open edu­ca­tion a high pri­or­ity. Ide­ally, taxpayer-funded edu­ca­tional resources should be open edu­ca­tional resources. Accred­i­ta­tion and adop­tion processes should give pref­er­ence to open edu­ca­tional resources. Edu­ca­tional resource repos­i­to­ries should actively include and high­light open edu­ca­tional resources within their col­lec­tions.

Tech­no­rati Tags: cape town dec­la­ra­tion, open resources, open edu­ca­tion

The world’s fun­ni­est man (and, for me, Scotland’s great­est ambas­sador), Billy Con­nolly, says in a recent stage per­for­mance caught on DVD:

“I have never really under­stood comedy.…..I’m just happy to be here when it shows up.”

Funny thing is, that’s how I feel about edu­ca­tion! All those peo­ple who think they know the answers in edu­ca­tion, I’m sure, must just be ask­ing the wrong ques­tions.

Tech­no­rati Tags: billy con­nolly, com­edy, edu­ca­tion, under­stand­ing

Judy O’Connell alerted me to the pub­li­ca­tion of the 2008 Hori­zon Report, the highly fruit­ful joint ven­ture between Edu­cause and the new media con­sor­tium, part of the out­put from, “…a five-year qual­i­ta­tive research effort that seeks to iden­tify and describe emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies likely to have a large impact on teach­ing, learn­ing, or cre­ative expres­sion within learning-focused organizations.”

The 2007 Report offered immense value for any­one involved in think­ing about, and speak­ing about, such issues. My own talks and pre­sen­ta­tions dur­ing the last year were pep­pered with ideas, pre­dic­tions and find­ings from it.

I’ve only had time so far to glance through the pages of the 2008 report, but already I want to go back and fol­low in detail the report’s think­ing on top­ics such as: Grass­roots Video, Col­lab­o­ra­tion Webs, Mobile Broad­band, Data Mashups, Col­lec­tive Intel­li­gence and Social Oper­at­ing Sys­tems. Each of these is described in terms of a spe­cific ‘time-to-adoption hori­zon’, from just one year ahead up to a 4-to-5 year horizon.

The con­cept of the Social Oper­at­ing Sys­tem is one that is espe­cially inter­est­ing in the light of recent and ongo­ing dis­cus­sions about the ben­e­fits or oth­er­wise of social tech­nolo­gies, social net­work­ing, learn­ing net­works and social net­work­ing sites to edu­ca­tion. Tak­ing recent devel­op­ments such as Xobni, an Out­look exten­sion that gath­ers and presents infor­ma­tion avail­able about your email con­tacts (read ‘xobni’ back­wards!), and a proof of con­cept from Yahoo, called Yahoo Life!, the report looks to the poten­tial for increas­ing lev­els of trust and depth of knowl­edge about your social (learn­ing?) net­works, and the impli­ca­tions of all of this for teach­ing and learn­ing. As the report notes:

“Social oper­at­ing sys­tems will also address the issue of trust in vir­tual col­lab­o­ra­tions. It is not dif­fi­cult to envi­sion appli­ca­tions that will help fill in the spaces of our knowl­edge about a per­son we encounter in an online col­lab­o­ra­tive space or vir­tual world, dis­play­ing at a glance the con­tacts we have in com­mon (includ­ing how deep those con­nec­tions actu­ally are), recent writ­ing or other work the per­son has done, and other online loca­tions where the per­son is active.”

Maybe such devel­op­ments will cause the inher­ent shal­low­ness (in every sense) of sites such as Face­book to founder beneath arrays of self-organizing com­mu­ni­ties built around com­plex inter­ests and con­nec­tions revealed and matched and meshed on the fly by the social oper­at­ing sys­tem. Are Google’s OpenSo­cial APIs a step towards this?

I will cer­tainly enjoy get­ting my teeth more deeply into this lat­est report.

Tech­no­rati Tags: 2008 hori­zon report, edu­cause, new media con­sor­tium, nmc, grass­roots video, col­lab­o­ra­tion webs, mobile broad­band, data mashups, col­lec­tive intel­li­gence, social oper­at­ing sys­tems, xobni, yahoo life!, openso­cial, face­book