Connectivity ... and speed

The acceptance of instant connectivity whenever, wherever is becoming an issue in how we deal with people. Conversations in which friends apologise for not being able to respond quickly enough or of 'being out of reach' are becoming more and more frequent in my life and I notice that yesterday BBC News Technology ran an article on the 'great divide' (my words). A different group of 'haves' and 'have-nots' that all reading this will know about.

I am not the first, but would certainly like to be the last person, who points out that any education methodology that begins to rely on an infrastructure that is not equable can't be fair.

So what to do ? If you live in rural Scotland then conventional broadband will not come your way. But where there is a will there is a way:

The residents of Arnisdale, a remote village on the west coast of Scotland, cannot get broadband at all by conventional means. The village is nine miles from the nearest BT exchange at Glenelg - too far for a broadband connection to work.
But, in a project backed by the University of the Highlands and Islands and by the University of Edinburgh, Arnisdale is getting a wireless broadband connection from a series of masts which beam a signal from the Isle of Skye.
The project has been led by Professor Peter Buneman, an academic from Edinburgh University who lives in Arnisdale. He campaigned without success to get BT to take broadband to the village, and then decided that the community would have to find its own solution.
"I'm now getting better than 10Mbps," he said, "faster than you would get in a city."

So not a one-size-fits-all solution then.I also noticed innovation in Dundee where broadband is arriving by sewer!

Flash Meeting OZNZ

This morning I had the pleasure of joining about twenty or so teachers from Australia and New Zealand in their regular weekly 'flash meeting'. The span of distances on the far side of the world from me is so great that for teachers to travel to meet is impossible so this informal but very informative platform gives and shares information across distances.

While we were chatting in the Flash meeting many of us were also talking privately to people in the meeting on Skype or Twitter a real development of communications.

Today's meeting spent time discussing the new Flip Video cameras and how great they were for educational use. This lead us on to the use of ustream across the countries and how lack of broadband connectivity was, in more ways than one, slowing down engagement with this powerful tool.

In a couple of weeks time we (they said I could join in) are going to meet in Second Life rather than use Flash Meeting ...

The hour past quickly, was engaging and informative and I felt connected to like minded people on the other side of the world.

Getting onboard ...

Over the last couple of weeks I have presented in various venues and lectured to different groups in University education settings. The one thing that is coming over to me at the moment is that everyone listens and nods and gets enthused but I just don't detect things happening.

In a huge lecture theatre with over 250 students I noted that not one one them had a laptop or any other device switched on to take any notes (let alone Twitter) ... they all had pieces of paper to write on ... I asked them how they were going to share their thoughts with others in the room, put that did not seem to be part of their learning agenda. They had come there to listen and absorb not interact. Similarly with a largish group of ICT coordinators at a conference ... no sign of anything but the pads provided by the organisers. It was the same on a course for heads. It is as if the message of sharing/collaborating and the read/write nature of the next stage is out there but it just isn't happening.

If our training teachers and our teacher leaders don't respond and model what chances further through the system? I note that on the Naace Conference blog from Torquay that there are almost NO comments at all on any of the sessions ... even the foremost ICT educators in the country don't appear to make their thoughts known so that they can help to shape the thoughts of others. I posted a comment straight after listening to a recording of Ewan's address, and there mine sits, all on its own.

Will Richardson in a post on his blog highlights a similar issue:

I feel like it sometimes when I go to an education conference with 6,000 attendees and virtually no Internet access where almost no one who is presenting is modeling anything close to great pedagogy with technology.

He goes on:

...how in god’s name can we talk seriously about 21st Century skills for kids if we’re not talking 21st Century skills for educators first? The more I listened, the less I heard in terms of how we make the teaching profession as a whole even capable of teaching these “skills” to kids. Sure, there were mentions of upgrading teacher preparation programs and giving teachers additional time in the school day to collaborate, etc. But the URGENCY was all around the kids. Shouldn’t the URGENCY be all about the teachers right now?

Barack Obama using a quote from Dr Martin Luther King calls for the people of USA to pay attention to 'The urgency of now'. It makes a good rallying cry for the moment!

The longer it takes educators to develop their own ICT capability to support what is happening, the more young people will be leaving formal education without having been able to take advantage of the technology they deserve.

The rest of the post on Will's blog tells the story well as do the comments on the post.

In Torquay last week on Tuesday evening Ewan McIntosh said at 9:06 Don't think - try! ... we need to make a move NOW.

PS

There are now 138 comments to Will Richardson's original post and heaven knows how many people have linked into it on their own blog ... the Twitter lines have been burning.

Every child to 'get' Internet access at home

The Guardian reports that the Government has a plan to give every child internet access at home.

In the report Jim Knight, the schools minister, said: he is in talks with companies such as Microsoft, BT, Sky, Virgin and RM to help close the widening achievement gap between pupils from the richest and poorest families...

In the interview Mr Knight says: .... that the government was putting pressure on IT firms to bring down the cost of equipment if internet connections are in effect made compulsory for nearly six million children.

It is the 'made compulsory' bit that interests me. How so can access to the Internet be made compulsory ... the implication being in homes throughout the land? ( England that is !!) Interestingly it all seems to be about reporting rather than learning.

Emily Sanderson - a girl in 120,000

Sharing Good Practice is the printable but also online magazine of ictopus(ICT online primary user support)a support service for primary education.

This week the whole of the magazine is devoted to the celebration of how online connectivity is changing children's lives. Written by Robert Hart, Director of Research at Intuitive Media Research Services it give a research based indication of the enormous potential opened up to young people by carefully constructed, protected social networks.

An interesting statistic from the research shows how little of Emily's time is spent 'connected' at school. It also shows that she has all of the equipment necessary to connect wherever she is. ( except at school of course because children are told not to bring their 'gadgets' with them into the school environment)

My question is just how does this post fit in with the previous one ?

If you are not an ictopus member, just sign up. It is free!

PS
Geoff Dellow in a post to the ictopus site wonders:
Is this not about an organisation that has provided the facility for children to communicate with each other but not with adults. This worries me - yes with each other but surely far more important with adults as well - or is the great monster pedphilia lurking. Surely children need contact with more adults not less. Schools are already a very artificial enviroment with few adults.

PPS

If you go to the ictopus SGP blog site you can read Robert Hart's response to Geoff.

Let their voice be heard !

On 10th/11th February I am going to Paris to take part in a European convention concerned with looking at network connectivity for schools and services provided to schools, as well as how they are used by schools, and what the needs of schools are in this respect.

http://www.terena.org/activities/earnest/ws-schools/

I have just read the DEMOS pamphlet by Hannah Green and Celia Hannon called 'Their Space - Education for a digital generation' and find myself, not so much agreeing with them, but noting that they concur with beliefs that I strongly hold.

http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/theirspace

The Executive summary of the work says:

' School’s out ...

The current generation of decision-makers – from politicians to teachers – see the world from a very different perspective to the generation of young people who do not remember life without the
instant answers of the Internet or the immediate communication of mobile phones. It is these decision-makers who shape the way that digital technologies are used in the system and who set them up to limit their use and role in everyday life. This is a short-term solution to a long-term change. In an economy driven by knowledge rather than manufacturing, employers are already valuing very different skills, such as creativity, communication, presentation skills and
team-building. Schools are at the front line of this change and need to think about how they can prepare young people for the future workplace. But it is not just about schools – parents, young people and society in general have a blind spot in terms of recognising and valuing these ‘softer’ skills.'

Is this how you see it ?

I am concerned that unless we recognise ( their final chapter) ...' The world has changed so why haven't we'... any system 'we' think is acceptable will be bypassed.

What do you think and feel please?