Fast wifi and smart phone beats the fast food.
Ed's burger here I come!
Friday 24 February 2012
Inane Post 1
I don't normally post twitter type 'what I'm doing at this moment' stuff but ...
Fast wifi and smart phone beats the fast food.
Ed's burger here I come!
Fast wifi and smart phone beats the fast food.
Ed's burger here I come!
Friday 17 February 2012
eMail at Thirtysomething ....
A story from a couple of months ago keeps popping into my head so today's feature contains some thoughts on the place of eMail some 30 years on.
Ray Tomlinson sent the first network eMail in the autumn of 1971. Ray was a programmer developing a time sharing system for large computers that formed part of the ARPANET project. Local electronic mail had been around for 10 years or so but Ray modified the software, named SNDMSG, so messages could be sent to a username at a computername. Electronic mail could now travel across the ARPANET network to remote (rather than just local) users.
Using the 'at' symbol ( @ ) was his inspiration!
I love stories about the origins of things we take for granted. When asked why he did it he says "mostly because it seemed like a neat idea" - fantastic!
Bizarrely, the @ symbol has become a work of art acquired by the Museum of Modern Art as part of its Architecture and Design collection in 2010 (see: http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2010/03/22/at-moma). You can't make this stuff up :-)
I digress.
The story that started me thinking about the role of eMail surfaced in December 2011:
Atos boss Thierry Breton defends his internal email ban (see: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16055310)
Health and Wellbeing champions in the IT services company suggested banning internal eMail as a way of improving working conditions. A study showed employees were receiving an average of 100 internal emails and were spending up to 20 hours a week checking and answering eMail. The employees estimnated that only 15% of messages were useful.
From it's beginning, eMail was a 'killer app'; easy, quick and cheap. A great way to keep in contact with people all over the world and in other organisations. Internal eMaill however often has different motivations where messages represent proof that you've done your job, that you have 'communicated', defence against others etc. As a means of group communication there are drawbacks. It isn't easy to revisit who said what when, you need a threaded discussion group for that. Even the 'streams' of Web 2 tools are difficult to follow (these however are often more like 'Waiting for Godot' where largely unrelated statements masquerade as discussion and the end point never comes).
Atos are carrying out a pilot with 500 staff (of their 80,000 employees) using new tools such as a cloud computing environment, social networks, instant messaging, micro blogging, document sharing to create a knowledge community. After 18 months, the company is close to having everything in hand to make the change away from internal eMail which should be completed by Feb 2014.
Although a fraction of the size, my organisation is large and getting larger with 2 mergers in 3 years, my experience of internal eMail echoes that of Atos. One of the projects I'm working on at present is trying to develop the digital literacy across the organisation by promoting the use of the sort of tools described above. Progress is slow. Whatever the barriers, staff are reluctant to engage with internal discussion groups and digital workspaces. Maybe having internal eMail is too easy an alternative or maybe our organisation is too old (the average age for Atos is 35)?
I'll let you know if we have a breakthrough.
I've got my fingers crossed hoping for a 'Ray Tomlinson moment'.
TGIF
PS Should that have been R@y Tomlinson?
Ray Tomlinson sent the first network eMail in the autumn of 1971. Ray was a programmer developing a time sharing system for large computers that formed part of the ARPANET project. Local electronic mail had been around for 10 years or so but Ray modified the software, named SNDMSG, so messages could be sent to a username at a computername. Electronic mail could now travel across the ARPANET network to remote (rather than just local) users.
Using the 'at' symbol ( @ ) was his inspiration!I love stories about the origins of things we take for granted. When asked why he did it he says "mostly because it seemed like a neat idea" - fantastic!
Bizarrely, the @ symbol has become a work of art acquired by the Museum of Modern Art as part of its Architecture and Design collection in 2010 (see: http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2010/03/22/at-moma). You can't make this stuff up :-)
I digress.
The story that started me thinking about the role of eMail surfaced in December 2011:
Atos boss Thierry Breton defends his internal email ban (see: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16055310)
Health and Wellbeing champions in the IT services company suggested banning internal eMail as a way of improving working conditions. A study showed employees were receiving an average of 100 internal emails and were spending up to 20 hours a week checking and answering eMail. The employees estimnated that only 15% of messages were useful.
From it's beginning, eMail was a 'killer app'; easy, quick and cheap. A great way to keep in contact with people all over the world and in other organisations. Internal eMaill however often has different motivations where messages represent proof that you've done your job, that you have 'communicated', defence against others etc. As a means of group communication there are drawbacks. It isn't easy to revisit who said what when, you need a threaded discussion group for that. Even the 'streams' of Web 2 tools are difficult to follow (these however are often more like 'Waiting for Godot' where largely unrelated statements masquerade as discussion and the end point never comes).
Atos are carrying out a pilot with 500 staff (of their 80,000 employees) using new tools such as a cloud computing environment, social networks, instant messaging, micro blogging, document sharing to create a knowledge community. After 18 months, the company is close to having everything in hand to make the change away from internal eMail which should be completed by Feb 2014.
Although a fraction of the size, my organisation is large and getting larger with 2 mergers in 3 years, my experience of internal eMail echoes that of Atos. One of the projects I'm working on at present is trying to develop the digital literacy across the organisation by promoting the use of the sort of tools described above. Progress is slow. Whatever the barriers, staff are reluctant to engage with internal discussion groups and digital workspaces. Maybe having internal eMail is too easy an alternative or maybe our organisation is too old (the average age for Atos is 35)?
I'll let you know if we have a breakthrough.
I've got my fingers crossed hoping for a 'Ray Tomlinson moment'.
TGIF
PS Should that have been R@y Tomlinson?
Friday 10 February 2012
TeachMeet – Show and Tell for Teachers
I heard of TeachMeets about 5 years ago and attended one a year later. I went to another a few days ago. My experience at each has been very different and while I think any event where teachers share what interests them is good news, I have some reservations. I’ll come back to that later.
TeachMeets started in Scotland in 2005 when Ewan McIntosh, David Noble and John Johnston, who knew each other on-line, met in-person for the first time to share how they had been using new technologies in education. The informal TeachMeets started with a dozen or so people in the Jolly Judge pub in Edinburgh (the Scots have a style I can relate to).
See: TeachMeet – The Story so far…. by Iain Hallahan (http://h-blog.me.uk/?p=161)
See: TeachMeet – The Story so far…. by Iain Hallahan (http://h-blog.me.uk/?p=161)
The idea caught on and events are now organised across the country by a wide variety of people and organizations with a wide variety of foci. Many events are promoted through an open pbworks site.
See: http://teachmeet.pbworks.com/w/page/19975349/FrontPage (the Navigator Panel to the right of the page gives links to details for each event).
See: http://teachmeet.pbworks.com/w/page/19975349/FrontPage (the Navigator Panel to the right of the page gives links to details for each event).
The mid-week event was hosted by an Llandrillo FE College and was well attended by college staff, nearby secondary school teachers and some Local Authority IT staff. The organisers, NGfL Cymru and RSC Wales provided a live webcast for those who preferred the comfort of their own laptop (and recorded clips of each presentation). There were 15 micro presentations (7 mins each) and 3 nano presentations (2 mins each) and a rather nice buffet half way through (see here for details). All presenters spoke with knowledge and enthusiasm for their topic. I learnt something from almost every presentation and I will highlight those bits over the next few months. Today though, I will mention 3 topics that seemed to connect with me more than the others:
- Questioning (David Morris) – Most teachers are aware of closed and open type questions but the message here was to get students to ask the questions rather than the teachers as a way to encourage curiosity.
- Wordwall (Josh Smith) – I’ve investigated a number of voting systems over the years and most are variations on a basic theme. The handsets shown and the presentation software represent a completely new approach to collecting feedback. Shows huge potential!
- Digital Leaders (Allan Heard) – It’s really interesting to see how pupils will respond when you give them some status and a purpose.
And there lies my reservation; professional.
The first TeachMeet I attended was very informal, more like the original format but it turned out rather chaotic because there were too many people. Reading
TGIFIain Hallahan’s blog further (http://h-blog.me.uk/?p=225) there are fundamentalist stirrings at the moment that explain my reluctance to endorse the approach whole heartedly. There seems to be a desire to get back to more informal smaller gatherings that mix the social and the professional in more equal balance. I look forward to future TeachMeets that are more ‘a chat with friends’ than a ‘professional conference’.
The first TeachMeet I attended was very informal, more like the original format but it turned out rather chaotic because there were too many people. Reading
TGIFIain Hallahan’s blog further (http://h-blog.me.uk/?p=225) there are fundamentalist stirrings at the moment that explain my reluctance to endorse the approach whole heartedly. There seems to be a desire to get back to more informal smaller gatherings that mix the social and the professional in more equal balance. I look forward to future TeachMeets that are more ‘a chat with friends’ than a ‘professional conference’.
Friday 3 February 2012
Apologies - I must try harder to post on time
I had decided to post here on a Friday at 12 noon (GMT).
I've been a bit busy at work recently and not kept to my deadline.
After giving myself a good telling off (one detention and 100 lines later) I will post on time from now on.
TGIF
I've been a bit busy at work recently and not kept to my deadline.
After giving myself a good telling off (one detention and 100 lines later) I will post on time from now on.
TGIF
Teachers Shouldn't Have Friends
When I was a teenager, I spent a lot of time after school hanging around various bus stop shelters* with my friends 'being social'. If one of our teachers started hanging around with us we would have reacted quite strongly (or being the polite young man I was, we would probably have just gone somewhere else :-^).
Teachers 'Friending' students is the digital equivalent.
Now as a teacher, advice was given by my organisation a few years ago stating clearly that 'Friending' is inappropriate.
A few teachers from one of the departments wanted to know recently how to 'quickly' unfriend people because of the details/photos that they were starting to see about their students.
The whole issue of why a teacher should want to use Facebook for educational purposes in the first place will be the topic for another Friday.
By coincidence, the Guardian published an article (Teachers warned over befriending pupils on Facebook) a few days later. Communication is a slippery sucker:
Sometimes it's better not to say anything in certain surroundings!!
TGIF
*I'm glad to report that as I've got older the bus stop thing has changed (hmmm).
Teachers 'Friending' students is the digital equivalent.
Now as a teacher, advice was given by my organisation a few years ago stating clearly that 'Friending' is inappropriate.
A few teachers from one of the departments wanted to know recently how to 'quickly' unfriend people because of the details/photos that they were starting to see about their students.
TEACHERS SHOULDN'T HAVE STUDENTS
AS FACEBOOK FRIENDS
The whole issue of why a teacher should want to use Facebook for educational purposes in the first place will be the topic for another Friday.
By coincidence, the Guardian published an article (Teachers warned over befriending pupils on Facebook) a few days later. Communication is a slippery sucker:
I know that you believe you understand what you think I said,
but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
Sometimes it's better not to say anything in certain surroundings!!
TGIF
*I'm glad to report that as I've got older the bus stop thing has changed (hmmm).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)