The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) have published an animation explaining the benefits of the single sign-on and becoming a member of the UK Access Management Federation. They are distributing it via Google Video which is cool (see below).
The UK Access Management Federation gives educational institutions in the UK the ability to provide identity management features– primarily Shibboleth.
The UK has come in 9th in the World Economic Forum’s Network Readiness Index with Denmark and Sweden coming in front. This is an improvement on our 10th ranking in 2005-6. The US has dropped from 1st in 2005-6 to 7th in 2006-7.
Looking at the last three years it seems that those in the top 10 stay fairly stable (Japan bobs around a bit!) with Singapore, Iceland Finland Denmark and the US generally doing well under this index. Interestingly, China and India are dropping a little with central America gaining ground. Sadly, Africa is not gaining ground in the index.
With regard to education, the summary states.
In education, IP networks are turning the traditional classroom into virtual schoolhouses that deliver education to remote students, life-long learners, and others. Essentially, education has been transformed from a teacher-led class to a student-centric experience accentuated by self-learning; peer-to-peer teaching; rich, readily available content; greater accessibility; and discovery-based learning.
That all sounds rather nice but it is not my experience here in the UK- perhaps that’s why we are not 1st! It’s something worth aiming for but I do wonder if ‘ learning platforms’ will take us closer. The key phase is ’ IP networks’: that’s the transformational technology and not any one application of it. The Internet, including ways of accessing it, is the platform.
Maybe I’ll try to wrangle a trip to a Nordic country by way of research to see how it’s done.
‘Derek’s Blog‘ has a link to a good piece of research for those of you interested in pupils’ use of new web technologies. This survey of Web 2.0 was funded by JISC as part of the SPIRE project which looks at peer-to-peer technologies in education.
A summary of the findings can be found here.
I’ve been involved in a couple or recent projects looking at new school builds and refits. The usual situation is one where there is a pot of capital cash set aside for ICT that is used to buy computers, whiteboards, projectors and so on. The procurement and installation charges are usually considered separately from the ongoing, day-by-day costs of running the equipment, as this is the way in which the budgets are allocated. As environmental issues, and in particular carbon footprints, are in the news at the moment, I thought I’d have a look at the ongoing energy costs it ICT.
It turns out that your choice of display device (and even graphics card) can have an impact on the amount of energy used– and hence your electricity costs and impact on the environment. In my experience, these factors are not often taken into consideration. Spending more on the initial unit price per ‘box’ could save you more over the lifetime of the equipment.
There is a long interview in Popular Science with Will Wright the creator of Sims. One of the interesting themes in the article is the role of failure in learning with simulations and games. Will describes how a child will begin a game and fail many times as they work out the rules and how to get better at the game. He then contrasts this as a method of learning with common educational practice that is aimed at protecting children from failure.
For me, the facility to fail repeatedly without judgment is an important dimension that computer based learning can bring and is related to provisionality– the ability to re-edit, change, cut & paste and never actually be finished.
Furthermore, simulations, augmented reality and the provisionality of IT based work all represent areas in which technology can also transform assessment. Much of the current assessment using IT is based on automating existing methods (from multi-choice through to checking for plagiarism). A recent article in The Guardian exemplifies this by missing the point about what technology can add:
The benefits are obvious. It’s quicker, cheaper and more efficient. The really dull components, such as multiple choice or simple questions such as “name four things that contribute to global warming”, can be marked automatically or by less experienced markers, whereas questions requiring a more nuanced, longer answer can be left to the old hands. Your best markers don’t have to be wasted on the straightforward stuff.
A lot of current assessment practice is out of date and does not measure the things most important for a successful life in the modern world. So why waste time and money on making it more efficient. We need to measure new skills and capabilities in new ways.
Learning, teaching and managing with ICT: Funding guidance for schools and local authorities 2007-08 has been published by Becta. This is essential reading for those involved in ICT in UK schools. This post is a quick notice–I will look at aspects and implications in more detail later.
Things to note:
Of course what people want to know is how much do I spend and what are other people spending. The Financial Benchmarking site from Teachernet is supposed to help (good luck!!). However, the information here does not cover the true costs (staffing, licenses etc) and is a reflection what what schools have reported that they have spent. I know that this is often unreliable. Therefore, for the purpose of planning, Becta’s Total Cost of Ownership ICT Investment Planner is probably of more use but does need upgrading.
The Learn for Life website has a podcast from Robin Ball, Learning Services Manager of BECTA, in which he talks about learning platforms, the framework , and pupils being unable to use Web2.0 from within schools (an e-safety issue).
Amongst a discussion about pedagogy and VLEs, Robin expresses some frustration that the framework has been interpreted as a list approved products rather than the capacity of those companies to provide a fully managed service (including training, support, migration from legacy systems…). However, it is difficult to separate those companies from their products. Would RM want to provide anything other than Kaleidos for example? Once again, we end up talking about the technology and not what we might do with it.
I was also interested to hear him talk about Becta increasing their role in supporting schools’ SMTs and LAs with strategic ICT development. This is especially interesting at a time when many LAs are reducing their ICT support and the National Strategy had decided that ICT is the lowest of its priorities. Are we seeing the movement of ICT support to the centre where it can be much more closely aligned with national policy–and funding? Is this a criticism of the work LAs are doing and have done in the past?
With regard to Becta’s focus, the next phase is to support regional broadband consortia, local authorities and schools in procuring LP technology with the longer term goal of achieving ‘total (i.e. dynamic) interoperability’ by 2010. Surely it would be better to build these things with interoperability from the ground up rather than trying to bolt them all together at the end? I’d like to be a middle-ware vendor in 2009!
So what should schools be doing now? Use the Learning Platform Matrix to gauge where you are and then get some advice on procurement (from your LA/ RBC) once you understand what you want.
What should LAs/RBCs be doing now? Trying to understand their position between schools and central government. Not an easy place to be on this issue.
The results of a survey of e-portfolio and e-Personal Development Planning (PDP) practice in UK higher education has been published by the Centre for Recording Achievement on behalf of the Higher Education Academy.
Things of note:
The report cites some uncertainty over the definition of an e-portfolio and e-PDP. To quote the report under a table called Electronic resources described as e-portfolios’ :
The most frequently cited (12) was the Blackboard e-portfolio which is bundled with the content system (Blackboard CS), sometimes in use on its own, sometimes as part of an ongoing trial. Next most popular was PebblePAD (developed at the University of Wolverhampton) with 6 mentions. ePET (developed at the University of Newcastle) received 4 mentions but 2 of these were trials. RAPID (developed at Loughborough University) was mentioned twice, but with disagreement as to whether it was actually an e-portfolio system. LUSID (developed at the University of Liverpool) was mentioned by 2 respondents but not regarded as a full e-portfolio system. The WebCT portfolio was being trialled by 2 respondents and 2 more expected to be using it eventually. The Nuventive iWebfolio was being trialled by 1 respondent. OSP was being used in some departments in 1 institution. Six other systems mentioned as being used or on trial were Profile (developed at the University of the West of England); Concord Scioware; It’sLearning (a Norwegian VLE mainly used in schools); Uniservity (a commercial product also mainly used in schools); PROSPERO (developed at Queen Mary, University of London); Mercury Learning Log; and Microsoft Class Server. 10 other institutions claimed that their own internally-developed system was an eportfolio.
To echo the experience of schools, most still regard themselves as being at a pilot stage and have plans to evaluate their experience. Again, like schools this might imply that the suggested benefits of these systems are not yet being seen.
Interoperability in terms of inter-institutional transfer is not yet a high priority. However, there is considerable interest in integration of systems within institutions, particularly between e-portfolios, VLEs and student record systems. In my view, the real benefits of such systems come from the interoperability as this will cause system-wide change. Whilst the individual components my improve efficiency and access, on their own they can only provide incremental change to the existing system. Join them up and interesting things can begin to happen!
Survey at: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/resources.asp?process=f…
An article on ZDNet with Stephen Lucey (Becta’s executive director of strategic technologies) is worth a read. Good advice for Vista and Office 2007.
I am glad that Stephen defined a learning platform in the following way:
A learning platform is a range of products, so we were looking for the ability of a supplier to be able to pull together a solution. It was product-agnostic. Suppliers need a range of skills to offer support over a period of time. Some suppliers came forward with open source as part of their offering. Those [10] were the suppliers who met the criteria. Those who weren’t awarded didn’t meet the criteria.
However, many of the products on the list are not ‘a range of products’ –they support the notion of a learning platform being one monolithic thing that ticks all the boxes. I think it is better to work with schools in understanding that the way in which they configure their VLEs, MIS systems and internal self-review, reporting and assessment-for-learning processes all form the platform. However, it is also good that he acknowledges the need for support over time. I.e. this is not something that is bought off-the-shelf and plugged in.
Ian Usher of Bucks (and big Moodle advocate) makes an interesting point in a recent blog posting:
embedding a learning platform in the culture of a school is something which you can’t do during a month’s or a week’s “free trial” of a commercial product – unless they’re willing to let you trial it for at least a year. GMS get to practice with their learning environment, get it how they want it, configure it as they see fit, and they’re not paying a licence to do so.
It is difficult to see how a commercial provider could do this and still stay in business unless their strategy is to initially pump in lots of money in order to dominate the market, and then rely on the network effect to recover costs and make a profit further down the line. At the end of the day, all providers need to generate some form of lock-in to build up future revenue. This is not a bad thing in itself as long as competition provides schools with the things they really value and need.
The problem arises when the cost of switching from one supplier to another is (or is perceived to be) too high. For me, this is a powerful argument for open standards and government’s role in enforcing these. Open standards can also help to ensure that dominant players do not get a complete strangle-hold on the market–anyone using the open document format as a standard yet? They also leave the door slightly ajar for smaller firms to come in and innovate.
To come back to the point about not paying the license whilst getting familiar with the product, there is still the overhead of having to maintain and develop the product, and train staff to use it: services that many commercial suppliers will offer. The key point here is that in the school Ian describes:
staff from the school, including technical staff and teaching staff, were involved today – it wasn’t a meeting with just one person who feels they are doing something on their own.
So clearly this is the type of school for which this solution is a good one. I.e. one with the confidence, vision and understanding of how to embed ICT, not one that needs to bring it in.