Blocking Pirate Bay - The Continuing Assault on the Internet

I shouldn't listen to radio 4 first thing in the morning. John Humphrys often puts me in a bad mood before I even get out of bed - although I suppose I only dislike his questioning when he's giving someone I support a bad time :o) Anyway...yesterday was no exception. He was doing his usual aggressive questioning, not allowing the responder to get a word in on the subject of the judgement that may force ISPs to block Pirate Bay. This time it was a person representing the ISPs who was arguing that it is not their remit to police what people do on the internet. A perfectly reasonable and correct standpoint. Humphrys however, was having none of it - he thought that they were 'assisting' people in downloading illegal material and pornography by providing a service. That's like saying the Highways agency are complicit in bank robberies by providing decent roads for the robbers to escape on. Ridiculous. What came out of the interview from Humphrys (and a Conservative MP, also interviewed), is that they simply don't understand how file sharing works, or how the internet works. This article fron the Guardian sets out the resons why a block won't work.

This is simply another skirmish in the battle for the control of the internet - Big Business wants to turn it into a one-way vehicle for pushing content at people, government and bureaurocrats want to crush the ability to organise and protest - doing so in the name of 'combating terrorism'. It's a battle that must be fought and won by anyone who values freedom of expression and the right of dissenting voices to be heard

The Reluctant Pragmatist

When it comes to rapacious corporations trampling over innovation and diversity in pursuit of a monopoly, you'll always find me in the crowd chucking rotten vegetables at them.  That's why I was as angry as anyone else at Blackboard's disgraceful pursuit a patent for their proprietary software.  I'm also, in my own small, quiet, almost imperceptible way a part of the background noise grumbling at their recent acquisition of Moodlerooms and Netspot.

Their acquisition of these two Moodle support services seems to be, according to people more savvy than me on these issues, an attempt to diversify their activities so that they become an all-round IT and educational services provider. They also have an advantage over their competitors because they already have access to data that is useful for educational analytics, and that's where their attraction to institutions lies, in addition to being an 'end-to-end' provider for the student learning experience, and that's why they won't be disappearing any time soon (although they might change their name). Essentially, their product will be the people who use their VLE, and the data they can provide.

Which brings me to the fact that I have just got a job as a Learning Technology Assistant, with my main function being to work on Blackboard. I'm not going to refuse to work on it due to my ethical or political objections, I have to get on with it and earn a living, and provide a service for the people who use Blackboard. Whether I think a mashup of free and open source products would be pedagogically better than Blackboard is irrelevant - the university uses Blackboard, and probably aren't going to get rid any time soon (they've just upgraded to the latest version).

So, does this leave me as a hapless, forlorn hypocrite - tossed aside and disregarded by yet another corporate behemoth as it trundles on relentlessly in pursuit of increased shareholder value? I don't think so, I have to be pragmatic, I have a mortgage to pay, and I want two foreign holidays a year :-) I will continue to make a small contribution to the background noise and, as the saying goes, it's better to be on the inside of the tent pissing out, than on the outside pissing in, even if I'd rather not be doing either.

The death of the VLE?

There has been a debate for a few years now about the future of the VLE. It seems that reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated, although the fact that there is a discussion is of interest to me, as someone whose job is to develop an institutional VLE, and to support staff in its use.

The argument against VLEs is that they are owned by the institution, and are there to restrict and control the activity of its users, and that they promote traditional approaches to pedagogy that do not reflect the age of digital collaboration and the new tools available to students and teachers. They are bloated and cumbersome, and are slow to adapt to the needs of their users.

Compare that to the flexibility of 'web 2.0' applications, that adapt according to the needs of users, are owned by users and reflect the way that many students use digital media and applications. They are cheap, adaptable and support learning far better than VLEs.

It is clear that in the longer term these collaborative tools will become ubiquitous, and that the days of the VLE are numbered - however, that is still some way off.  The reason is that the use of web 2.0 tools by students and teachers alike is exaggerated. Most are limited in their ability to use these tools, and the argument that there are 'Digital Natives' isn't backed up by evidence .  The fact is that most teachers, and even learning technologists, don't use these tools on a regular basis, and neither do students. Many are unsure about how to use web 2.0 tools, and social networking applications in education - the VLE offers them a safe starting point, and a route into digital tools in education. There is also the issue of data protection, and ownership of the material that is written and posted to internet tools, and these tools do not provide the institution with the sort of user data sets and usage statistics that institutions increasingly need as part of new funding regimes. The data sets are available from a VLE as a part of a wider managed Learning Environment.

These tools can, however,  be embedded into VLEs - the major VLEs have the ability to stream Twitter feeds and RSS feeds. They allow videos from YouTube and blogs to be embedded, and they have chat, discussion forums, wikis and blogs built-in.

The 'personal web' - the aggregation of tools adaptable by users to their individual needs, will win in the end, but for the moment the VLE is alive and kicking. The main question isn't whether the VLE is dead, but how institutions are going to manage the integration of increasing user-choice tools, and their VLE.

The Real Motive Behind SOPA, PIPA and ACTA

Google and Facebook block content in India after court warns of crackdown | World news | The Guardian

There's a quote near the end of this article:  

But, like many other governments around the world, India has become increasingly nervous about the power of social media.

which indicates the real motives behind the recent attempts to introduce legislation on copyright and internet piracy. Ostensibly aimed at protecting the interests of copyright holders, their effect would be turn the internet into a delivery portal for content from media corporations, and  enable governments to crack down on what they would view as inflammatory material. Governments have seen the role that social media played in the 'Arab Spring' and, despite praising the liberating role the internet at the time, they can see the danger it presents to them and their ability to control information, and the people they supposedly serve.

Apples iPad Textbooks: Everything You Need to Know About iBooks 2

Apples iPad Textbooks: Everything You Need to Know About iBooks 2.

When I first heard of the iPad and the digital readers such as Kindle, I could see the possibilities for both fiction and non-fiction.

The possibilities for non-fiction and text books are obvious - more interactive content, rich with multimedia, and links to other resources and possibilities for annotation and collaboration offering a better learning experience.

The possibilities for fiction are also interesting. It won't be too long before more interactive fiction appears, with multimedia content and links to external resources and material. I was thinking it might be analogous to video games - such as Grand Theft Auto IV. You have the main storyline, but alongside that runs other 'missions' and side stories which introduce a range of other characters and broadens the profile of the main character. I can see fiction including such references to the back story of characters, and side stories, as well as ambient sounds, news footage, metadata and so forth.

Do Learning Styles Really Exist? | doug woods

Do Learning Styles Really Exist? | doug woods.

I get the impression that Doug is conflating 'Learning Styles' and 'individual differences' here. We all have individual differences in the way we learn, but as far as I can see no one has yet defined what a Learning Style is - genetic predisposition? Preference? Aptitude? Attitude? If you can't define what it actually is how can you measure its effect - it can have no reliability or validity.

I suppose there might be some confusion about 'learning styles' and 'Learning Styles'. It's easy to conflate 'learning styles' and individual differences, but I think many of the proponents of learning styles are actually thinking of them as 'Learning Styles' (with capitals) denoting them as actual entities that exist, which can therefore be objectified, packaged, and sold in training courses and books. These people have a vested interest in the existence of 'Learning Styles' so can't be trusted to have an objective view.

I disagree that rejecting learning styles will lead to regressive teaching - a teacher can reject Learning Styles while acknowledging individual differences, and provide a rich learning environment that calls on different modalities.  The material provided should suit the content, not an ill-defined abstract notion about how an individual learns.

What we need in teaching is evidence based practice, and so far there is no evidence to support the view that presenting, for example, visual material to your 'visual learners' is more effective and leads to better learning than other ways of presenting the material.

My view is that 'Learning Styles' inhibit good teaching, because it narrows the focus of the teacher and can lead to labelling and self-fulfilling prophesies (I can't learn this because I'm a visual learner'). It can also lead to the production of content that is inappropriate for the subject matter.

BBC News - Children 'switching from TV to mobile internet'

BBC News - Children 'switching from TV to mobile internet'.

More reasons why schools and colleges need to embrace mobile learning and the use of mobile devices as learning tools. Rather than banning them.

There is an issue, outlined in the comments section to this story, that children are becoming socially isolated and failing to develop social skills. I'd suggest that they are simply developing new types of social skills and ways of communicating with each other.  People still socialise, they still talk to each other. Those who lack social skills would probably have been the sort of people who lacked social skills in any age.