Matthew Allen

On Thursday 2 December, I am presenting at the National Curriculum Innovation and Quality Forum on the subject, “Risks and opportunities in authentic learning via the Internet”.

The basic brief for this keynote presentation is to:

• summarise approaches to authentic learning in the BA (Internet Communications) at Curtin University;
• identify the key benefits in using a public knowledge networking approach to authentic learning; and
• highlight risks and strategies for managing those approaches in the pursuit of authentic learning online.

While I hope to do that, with a particular emphasis on giving some examples from the great work that students in the BA (Internet Communications) have done, I also have found that in preparing my talk I have had to develop a more coherent argument about the nature of authenticity in learning and the relationship between education and learning.

The talk can be found here: https://netcrit.net/content/nciqf2010.pdf

This paper draws also on some specific work I have done on the authentic assessment in our online conference unit, Internet Communities and Social Networks 204 and more generally on social media and authentic assessment (presentation in the UK, May 2010)

Some of the examples I refer to will be listed on my blog within the week.

Disclaimer: live blogging

Will we be smart enough soon enough?
Putting Civic Intelligence into Practice

Doug Schuler

(Keynote paper, Research for Action Workshop, Making Links 2010 Conference)

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Civic Intelligence defined pragmatically: people to have the ‘smarts’  by which to acquire the things they need to prosper in society.

The world needs ‘our’ help: global problems, local problems – all need attention and those in power, and the operation of the free market will not solve them. Doug frames his work by asking: “How smart need we be to solve these problems? Will we be smart soon enough for the problems to be solved before they overwhelm us?”.

Civic intelligence is a concept to lead us to the answer to these questions. It refers, effectively, to a judgment of how smart a group might be relative to the problems it faces; it is a form of collective intelligence, focusing on shared problems (eg the problems that define the group). Civis intelligence is about being smart, through civic means, to achieve civic goals. A particular modality of this form of collective intelligence is its distribution throughout society. Civic intelligence as a paradigm for activists and researchers.

Examples:

Sustainable prisons: question – “Can prisons save money and the environment while changing lives?”

Sidenote This example suggests that productive action to solve significant social problems lies in joining together multiple problems – it is not so much finding innovative answers to a single problem but, rather, actively constructing a new problem set in which the action serves two or more problems at once. In this example, spending money on a sustainability project within prison not only makes prisons better at the ostensive goal (rehabilitation), but also contributes to the problem of educating people about how to live and act sustainably while also, potentially, making prisons more productive and therefore cheaper

Beehive Collective’s work in relation to land degradation and renewal, “The True Cost of Coal” – sophisticated interweaving of skills and action, notion of research through action at the grass roots.

Sidenote This example suggests that productive action involves very different paradigms of knowledge work where creativity, sharing, working together to represent the world and tell stories about it is more effective in addressing problems (and in doing so building civic intelligence) than traditional models of ‘research’

Liberating Voices project: promote and assist citizen engagement through thought and action – pattern language responses. Everyone is an activist. Patterns are not recipes: “tools for thought”; patterns “change the flow of what would have happened in its absence”.

Patterns here could be understood as scaffolding for cognitive developmental action – without them, people don’t know where to start even if they know what the goal might be. Patterns don’t determine the outcome but give sufficient support for people to begin work. Moreover, patterns provide a shared language through which people can identify commonalities and work together. Without them, they remain individuated. So, do patterns create a kind of autonomous foundation for collective engagement?

Interesting diverse list of points to define civic intelligence, interesting because of its diversity of categories:

civic intelligence builds more civic intelligence (it is productive beyond any specific act)
inclusive and participatory
efficient and creative
real problems (e.g. inequality, not just increased wealth for a few)
addresses several problems at once

The last point is especially revealing: “Make activism cool (again)”. Schuler comments – “what is preventing people from doing this stuff? It’s not cool”

I believe this comment taps into the increased knowledge- and engineering-focused state of contemporary society – what is now ‘cool’ is doing knowledge work so demonstrations, ranting, protesting which used to be cool forms of social activism now appears to be insufficiently ‘efficient’ and ‘creative’ for our contemporary society.

Keynotes, Day 2, EDEM10 Conference

The Promise and Contradictions of E-Democracy, Obama Style
Micah L. Sifry (Personal Democracy Forum)
Sifry begins by drawing a distinction between the social media, Internet based mobilisation from Obama during the election campaign and the lack of such activity within the administration, since Obama’s victory. At first (for example the Transparency and Open Government directive), there was a strong sense of Obama moving towards digitally enabled collaborative and participatory government. But, we have ended up, Sifry says, with an administration that is centralised and traditional and dominated by the big institutions.
Sifry demonstrates that the USA is now in an era of mass participation in the electoral process; gives the example of the Vote Different citizen advertisement pro-Obama and against Clinton. Sifry asserts that Clinton campaign was a monologue – not a conversation; scripted and led from the front by Clinton; Clinton was ahead clearly in 2007 and Sifry claims the Internet was the key factor which pushed Obama ahead. Relations between citizens and activists, not just between citizens and the leaders/ politicians are what the Internet enables; that said, the mass mobilisation effects did depend a lot on Obama’s personal qualities and the particular spirit of the times. Fundamentally, though, the mass of the population – even over 60 – are all now getting online. “people are not just going online to access information: they are doing it to participate” (based on Pew ILP data). Data on Obama campaign – 13 million email addresses; 200,000 events; 75,000 related (self-made) webpages; 4 million donors; 2 million people on myOB social site; $750 million raised, 2/3rds online – so clearly this campaign worked.

Simple argument here, based on pretty clear data, that Obama was compellingly successful in mobilising people for his electoral cause – not just giving money, but organising activities, linking between the campaign and the voters. It’s clear that Sifry has identified the key point: social media not only recruits, and funds, it also empowers a cadre of activists, turning followers into micro-leaders.

Starts the next part of the speech with a deeply offensive image of Obama which was made by the Tea Party and is being distributed, via social media, by the rightwing of US politics. The point is: social media is not just ‘the good guys’. It can go in both directions and there is perhaps less grass-roots that Obama might like to claim.
Sifry now starts to unpick the mythology of the ‘small donor’ myth of Obama. The trend in US politics is who raises the money, from big business, in the year before the election wins. This is true for Obama – he got 36%, Clinton only 30%. Obama also has an overall donor pattern that is similar to McCain and others. Howard Dean, in fact, had all the ‘small donor’ ($200 or below). Obama might have tapped into some additional funds, but principally his campaign was funded in the normal way.
Turning to the grass roots campaign – shows video of Obama expressing his hope that the network he has built around his campaign will be sustained “I want to continue that after the election”, he says. “I want to revamp our Whitehouse website…I want people to be able to say, today, this issue is going on…Creating the kind of situation where, if people want to get involved, they have the information they need”. Not just Internet, however, he focuses also on town hall meetings and getting leaders out from Washington to visit the people – “the more we can enlist the American people to get involved, the more we can move forward”. Ties this sort of participatory behaviour to fighting the Washington special interests and institutional structures.
Reviewing this myth, he cites one of Obama’s key campaign managers – at first, the campaign didn’t really appreciate what they were doing, and perhaps even saw some social media use as simply a way of creating a positive spin for the campaign through traditional media. Plouffe is cited saying his view of the campaign’s email havesting was “we had essentially created our own television network, only better”.

Sifry reveals here that the Obama campaign did not, itself, understand or deploy social media so much as discover it, and then harness it, all the time seeking to turn it back into something which is controlled, managed, and top-down and hierarchical. Once again, the Internet blindsides the centres of power because it threatens their identity as the experts of media manipulation

Sifry then turns to analyse the way Obama behaves as President – highly critical of the level of control from the Whitehouse press office (less press conferences than Bush); also critical of the trivialisation of participatory forums online by Obama. Notes, too, the way the special interests (such as the Tea Party) have attempted to hijack some of the open government debate. Looks at the way very few people have actually participated in the open government dialogue, though some valuable information gleaned.

Sifry is trying a difficult trick – to see both positives and negatives in the way the Obama administration has done ‘open’ online digital government. Speaks of the duality of “Obama”. It is clear that the duality is partly to do with the fact that there are many players (various departments and agencies), that some e-government topics / uses are not very contentious or perhaps appeal to the ‘rational’ in the public. A good analysis, if perhaps needs to explicate the way in which e-government has a series of dimensions – political, rational, expressive and so on – which don’t always fit together easily.

Sifry now reports that the kind of engagement Obama promised has not really occurred and indeed those things which have been done have not had any impact on the populace. Asserts that there is now a loss of trust; that the administration has not been ready to cope with, to embrace the “loss of control” which social media requires. Uses a slight analysis of health care speech by Obama to show that the “we” and “us” of the campaign has morphed into “I” and “you” now that he is President. And yet, Sifry cleverly identifies that the participants themselves have “walked away” from their responsibility to stay engaged.
So, conclusions. The Internet doesn’t empower anyone; we empower ourselves. One-to-many and many-to-one are easy; many-to-many is hard. Describes the Internet’s technologies for collaboration and networking as “weak tools”. Ends up, really, with a technologically oriented approach – it’s the tools that are the fault.

Sifry’s analysis is very useful here. He doesn’t explicate it, but hints at the reasons for the failure – that opposition and campaigning is not the same as government and administration. The promises were easy to make, and were – through the force of the campaign – easy to build on, but the realities are much more complicated. Furthermore, he astutely undercuts the reality of the ‘social media’ campaign idea – in fact it was only marginally so, or (perhaps) was seen by grass-roots participants as participatory while seen by the campaign management as not at all like that. It is therefore slightly unusual to see him conclude that we need better tools. I am wondering whether, in fact, the point is this: all online tools are weak tools and thus what matters is the intersection between strong ties outside of the Internet, with ‘weak tools’ to sustain and expand those ties across distance. And, in discussion, Sifry to some extent showed the problem: the tools can be made stronger – at least in the USA – in electing candidates, or shaping the candidates to stand, but become less effective when those candidates are serving politicians.

Discussion: media….“the government’s ability to be media is incompletely understood” (that is, how to mediate a conversation) ; discussing the failure of the mass media, the bias, the extremes and immediacy of cable news and the way the mediasphere in US politics is adapting to change by emptying itself out of authority through reporting and demanding authority through opinion (“truthiness” – reference AoIR Conference keynote 2009)

And, interestingly, a lot of Sifry’s discussion of successes with social media were couched in terms of ‘and it made an impact on the mass media’: so, is this too media-focused?

Discussion: “weak tools”…“politicians really do respond to money in the USA” – discusses how tools, especially around money raising and making visible the aggregation of micro-contributions, can show politicians why and how people are giving; yet still, Sifry notes, the problem is this: what happens when the political candidate is elected – do they remember what the participation meant and why they received the voter support?.
Discussion – Obama campaign had massive plans for transition of themselves to administration and no plans for transition of the grass roots to a supportive governmental grass roots campaign. Cites the fact people were calling up their local Dem office and saying ‘what do I do now?’ that Obama has won… there was nothing. Concludes – most Obama people do not believe in and are hostile to grass-roots empowerment: Democrat party is cynical of their own voters – even despite the evidence of Obama’s success.

Realising our Broadband Future
Disclaimer: live-blogging

Smarr, Conroy, Thomas, Tucker and McDonald

Larry Smarr, CITIT
NBN best example of inventing in the future of the country; uses the standard rhetoric: “level playing field”, “global environment”, “citizens competing”; like one of the speakers yesterday (Cole) compares Australia and USA with Australia better. “Have early working prototypes” of the applications; it will take “a lot of working through” to get to the next level. “We are at the end of a long era, the era of copper”. This future-proofs the network. Points to the role AARNET might play, because AARNET is working at 100 x the speed of the NBN.

Stephen Conroy, Min DBCDE
Conroy starts with the selling job. Characterises the critics as those who think we already have broadband, or that the market should just sort it out. Compares them to people who criticised the introduction and expansion electricity networks by government in the 19th and 20th century. Public role of government is to build a platform, onto which the market then builds applications. Refers back to the conference: what day 1 shows is that the future of high-speed broadband is not just downloading movies faster. It’s about education, health and so on. Picks up on the economic benefits; the community benefits etc.

Key message: investing in broadband is about investing in health, education, regional centres, energy efficiency and so on. It will be “Australia’s first national open-access wholesale only..network”. “we remain confident it will work on a commercial basis”. Critics are wrong for just not seeing the vast array of flow-on social and economic benefits. The return on the wholesale network will be more like a utility return, NOT like that of a vertically integrated market. Case is “compelling” and “encompassing” -[new word! encompassing!]. It is very strongly linked to globalisation and international competition, according to Conroy. (Which then is referenced to the 16th location, and 3rd most expensive data from OECD).

“Despite the myth, high-speed broadband is not accessible to all Australians”. Cites telstra exec – 50%+ cannot get 12 Mbs in Australia. Also emphasises the fact that the Internet generates major advantages for regional areas – and yet that is precisely the area of Australia least well-served by current infrastructure (backs up this argument by discussing how Tasmania is poorly served).

Abigail Thomas, ABC
“What difference will the NBN make in our everyday lives?” she asks. “What will ordinary people be doing? How will they get their information? How will they entertain themselves?”. New media bring something new, but build on past media. Uses the analogy of filmmaking – started out as ‘film a performance on a stage’ (new+old); then became something different (new+new). Explores these ‘new things’ via some examples and innovations in new media, showing how media will be very important for the NBN but not media as we know it. Essentially, the presentation makes clear that media will drive NBN takeup but not just movie and TV watching / downloading – more interactive experiences such as multi-story line TV (‘cubic’ TV), multimedia-style presentations of historical documentary (for school research) AND, more importantly, has democratising upload possibilities far in advance of what we see just emerging now. The emphasis here is on user control – eg non-linear, or self-created, or game-style choice oriented, or collaborative online.

Tucker and McDonald
Marketing of homeloans discussion.

Interesting history of Aussie Homeloans interaction with new media for marketing – showing from 1995 through to now. 2002 – company had bad brochureware website (and didn’t even own domain name!) “but it didn’t matter”. 2007 – “awakening” at Aussie to realise how significant the networked digital environment might be. They realised 28% of business coming from online; but only 18% actually completed the website process. So had to have a digital strategy.

Commentary

There’s now a link between the NBN and new (different) ways of working. earlier rhetoric around broadband was similar, but I think there has been a shift now to emphasising that we can’t know what happens next, but that we must change. Climate change is probably the main difference now between this rhetoric and early 2000s

Conroy’s speech is a very finely tuned pitch, not to the audience (one imagines they are already convinced), but to ‘the people’, via the media who will no doubt report it. It identified the criticisms which are most likely to be launched and then answers them. It also makes two significant interventions. First, it emphasises that the return on investment for NBN is utility / wholesale business, and NOT comparable to a retail / vertically inttegrated company (such as telstra). This move implies that there will be cost savings in the lower profits to be made, in the long run. The second intervention, which is apparent yesterday also, is to de-couple the NBN from specific applications and services. Just as the NBN will be a layer-2, non-service foundation, on which the market builds competing and specific applications, so too, the argument FOR the NBN relies now on the claim that the specific applications (health, business, education etc) will come from the market, because of the level-playing field of the wholesale network. This logic is astute, if a little vague, because it completely undercuts the ‘but exactly what is it for?’ counter-arguments. These arguments are still interesting, but they are ruled out of the specific debate about the NBN; the arguments are now emphasising the broader, infrastructural issues.

Thomas, from ABC, presents a sophisticated argument through simple narratives – stories of imaginary characters. Is this what is missing? There has been insufficient imagining of the future from the perspective of the everyday user – too much ‘gee whizzery’ and talk of economics and nation building. Does the argument for NBN need to fill the gap between the political spinspeak and the everyday desires of the audience? How can we create the ‘audience’ for the NBN – that is, the people who invest in it desires and dreams and seek pleasure through their sense of ‘being’ this audience regardless of what they actually?

Contrasting NBN arguments from technologists vs those of Thomas’ media oriented presentation: people are already very familiar with the idea of remote, electronic entertainment and will readily accept and explore new versions and indeed contribute to their creation. however, there is still a strong ‘sense of presence’ around things like health and education (especially children’s education) which makes it a lot harder to convince individuals of the benefits of telepresence in these spheres, even though people happily involve themselves in online transactions like banking. I would argue that media will be the uptake driver for broadband – but, as Thomas says – just not media as we know it

Big reality check: Aussie Home Loans example shows that business (a large business, with a lot of online business – 28%) didn’t realise until 2007 (!!) that online marketing and selling was critical to its business and that old-style websites didn’t work and that the whole strategy needed to change. Even in a business that is entrepreneurial, digital marketing took a while to take off.

Realising our broadband future
Disclaimer: Liveblogging

Second session of the 2009 Australian Govermment summit on broadband, http://broadbandfuture.gov.au, featuring Craig Mundie (Microsoft), Vint Cerf and David King (Google), Samantha Hannah-Rankin (Auspost), Nick Gruen (Gov 2.0).

Mundie, Microsoft

Broadband access is not simply about infrastructure but also inspiring social and economic innovations. Discusses the way devices are going to change and become embedded in our everyday life, through user interfaces involving gestures, facial signals and so on – “entirely new relationship between computers and people… pervasive and intuitive system that works on your behalf”. [A relatively underwhelming piece of gee-whizzery]

Vint Cerf, Google and Father of Internet

Investment in NBN needs to be carefully managed – not just edge connectivity, but more impact at core and the backhaul. Cerf emphasises the importance of end-to-end principle and the requirement to avoid constraints within the system once a person gets access. Cerf calls it “permissionless innovation”. Also bear in mind that we need to help people to see why they should use the new ideas which might flow, potentially, from the new infrastructure. Cerf comments on the lack of competition within the USA – Australia’s approach is “quite stunning” in separating the network from the services. “new kinds of competitive applications” can emerge without constraints. Cerf notes that high-speed widespread networks enable Australia to connect economically much more easily with the rest of the world, not just within Australia. Ponders that there might be multiple and different fibres passing or near premises. Cerf sees this as a benefit, not a problem.

David King, Google (You Tube)
Why talk about YouTube in this kind of forum? Great case study of what more bandwidth can do. YT is good for culture and politics, media and moneymaking. Note the importance of link to other technologies – cameras are cheaper now, easier.

YT is growing steadily. Example of business link: marketing of music via videos. But, more than that, YT creates new business – people want to put music into their OWN videos and the originator of the music shares in the revenue when this happens, as well as adverts to sell. Example: home film maker puts short demo up on YT, ends up getting major studio contract to turn demo into real film.

Reach: – global audience like no other platform (eg Sarah Boyle 300 million views = #1 on album charts)
Rights: – scalable, automated, choice-laden system for video management (inlcluding archive of video!)
Research: – people can understand who and when and where people watch videos. (e.g. Mr Bean popular in Saudi Arabia, discovered this via YT)
Revenue: – 38% of media consumed online, 9% of ad revenue

Hannah-Rankin, Australia Post
AusPost view – NBN establishes capacity for digital services the same as traditional postal analog services (security, confidence, etc of communication). Need to establish familiarity among consumers and services so they know why and how to use NBN. Auspost is about equality of access.. everyone can use it; trying to bring a similar apporoach into the future via the NBN.

H-R claims we move from massification from customisation, classic link of postmodernity and IT as the sequel to modernity.

[H-R utilises standard language re interoperability, unlocking potential value, confidence, synergy and so on: this is part of the problem. The language of 'IT implementation' is not the language of politics, culture or real business, even though we depend ON that language]

“Compelling consumer-centric solutions”

Gruen

Simple definition of Web 1.0 – email and website (point to point) – vs Web 2.0 – multi-channel and networks. Emphasises that Web 2.0 is NOT fancy technology. What broadband brings is “higher speeds and ubiquity”. What is Web 2.0? “I’s about culture change” (Draws on O’Reilly).

See The Government 2.0 Taskforce reports at : http://gov2.net.au/

• Collaborate
• Improvise
• Share
• Play
• users build value
• be modular
• Build for value, monetise later

- this stuff makes government VERY nervous.

Before 2000, Gruen says as an economist, that he thought governments built public goods. But, in Web 2.0, the private sector builds public goods [well, you might say THAT about the internet!]. So government needs to catch up to this approach.

“Organisation without organisations”

“low-cost social formations”

“low-cost experimentation and startup”

“turbocharge the market for reputation”

Key point – identity needs to be STABLE. We don’t need to know WHO you are, we need to know you are the same person you were before and will be in future. And, once we start to get identity stable, online, then reputation can be built, attached to identity

A final key point from Gruen re Government 2.0 work: it’s about data, of which we have masses, visualised in new ways, leading to understanding, acceptance and so on. I would add that the visualisation and management of data involves the need for lots of bandwidth – which further provides an reason for NBN not previously or commonly discussed.

Brad Wearn, CIO BHP
Presents case study on BHP Billiton’s use of broadband comms within their massive Pilbara operation. Straightforward discussion of infrastructure re railroad control system. Like a mini version of NBN since it includes fixed and mobile.

Commentary

An array of presentations, all of which appear to be part-advertisement for the the business behind them, part advertisement for the possibilities of broadband, and show a diversity of ways of addressing the possible audience. Microsoft: a smoke and mirros performance that owes more to science fiction than the realities of social change; YouTube: a presentation that embodies why YT is successful – clear and precise and in the language of the audience; Australia Post: presentation laden with biz-speak from the IT sector which, fundamentally, is a plea for relevance from a threatened organisation…or is that too harsh?

Gruen is such a literate and capable analyst of and proponent of Web 2.0 and its relationship with governance. His linking of the economics of public goods to the development of Web 2.0 style architectures and systems (the private is the public, reversing the way that the public tried to become private) is critical to grasping the entry of the internet into mainstream. Many internet commentators have been saying for years that the internet is explicable as privately created and owned public goods; now this idea enters the mainstream. He also is fearless to utilise the government’s own failings (eg in copyright of goivernment documentation) to demonstrate the change needed.

It is often difficult to extract from the presentations the precise reason why they speak to the need for NBN, except insofar as the NBN achieves some other aspects of Internet accessibility rather than the obvious one of speed. In fact, they are starting to suggest to me that the emphasis on speed is irrelevant – it’s about access, first of all; it’s about reliability and soiphistication in the infrastructure; it’s about competition to drive services, not supply of access; it’s about the transition to the ‘ubiquitous utility’ model. Sure, speed matters in relation to some aspects, but there are deeper cultural matters here.

Should we also be considering the diversity of uses as including fundamentally different things? There is a strong move at the moment to try and aggregate many kinds of use (games, business services, ehealth etc) into a single whole – similar to the claim of the entirety of “social computing” in recent EU report – to claim the need for NBN. But, realistically, we know the Internet is now like a road system with 100s of lanes, moving in concert but sometimes not interconnected – it’s not a single superhighway but a dense twisted set of layers and tunnels and so on. From a technical perspective, no problem with aggregated; from a selling / managing perspective – we need multiple messages to different kinds of users. (Comment sparked by Wearn’s comment re latency).

Realising our broadband future
Disclaimer: Liveblogging

Opening session of the 2009 Australian Govermment summit on broadband, http://broadbandfuture.gov.au, featuring Kevin Rudd, Mike Quigly (NBN) and Jeffrey Cole (Annenburg, USC).

Paul Twomey, ICANN, opens the forum: “we are using Web 2.0 tools throughout the forum” to encourage particiation both at the event and elsewhere. Stephen Conroy, Min DBCDE welcomes delegates: plenty of hype around the critical importance of NBN

Kevin Rudd, PM
(Full text of speech)
Economic strategy is a key point: for today and the future. The NBN is linked to that strategy. Rudd frames the summit by reminding us of the global financial crisis. Describes the NBN as “core infrastructure” for the new century like rail (19th) and roads (20th). Links the NBN to sustainability, but also emphasises health and education and the advantage for all Australians.

“The reality is that our current broadband…is not up to scratch”; “slow broadband is holding us back” “Australians want fast broadband”. Uses the rhetoric of international competition “we are even behind the Slovak Republic”. Notes 18 failed plans for broadband in 12 years before the Rudd Government elected. “This is like building the Snowy Mountain Scheme, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the national road network” – it’s about confidence in the future. “It is a massive task”. It is the work of government, because of this fact.

Potential to “transform our economy”, “transform many aspects of our lives”. Fast broadband is the answer to global communication, to regional disadvantage, to 24/7 businesses, to enabling advantages throughout Australia. “Plug our nation fully into the global economy”. It’s about addressing challenges in the future – climate change, ageing, city congestion. “Our national broadband policy is not just about communications policy…It is about the whole way government meets the needs of people”. Emphasises in particular greenhouse gas reduction, principally through telepresence technology to reduce travel; also smart metering of the electricity grid.

“What excites me about broadband is the applications that none of us have thought of yet”. It’s about new trade opportunities (access to global markets), smart business practices; it will create jobs now and into the future. NBN underpins innovation to create jobs across “every part of our economy”. Cost savings – eg paper, time, etc – and new growth at less cost.

Rudd then announces several innovative projects relating to health, emergency management, education all of which tend to focus on rural and regional disadvantage. Summarises the current progress on NBN – planning, testing in Tasmania, the new regional backbone development recently announced. Legislation for structural reform – more competition, innovation and protection for

Moves to the Goverment 2.0 agenda. “While the internet is the citizen’s most important point of contact with government, it is largely a passive engagement”; Gov 2.0 is to be about ‘listening’ to those using public services to improve them (eg “it’s buggered mate”); also about accountability. Calls on government to accept and embrace. Rudd website now includes comments and webchat, for example. “Accessible, transparent, accountable”. “Digital inclusion” for remote and regional – uniquely needed in Australia with its dispersd population and large area.

“Wider Australian Digital Community” called upon to participate: conference now opened.

Quigly, NBN co CEO
(great slides for this talk, with graphics of key points – pdf file).
3 objectives for NBN High speed; competitive level playing field; do this cost effectively. Achieve them transparently and accountable. Technical design, financial plan (with McKinsey) and project plan Supports the dual stream approach – NBN more focused on technologies; McKinsey-KPMG financials.

Two key questions:

• Why 100 MBits/sec? Cisco predicts, by 2013, 500% increase in the traffic over global networks based on the increased resolution of screens and power of computers to support massive data traffic. Nice graph showing, if we don’t go to 100, then we assume downstream traffic speed will level off from historical growth from 1990s.

• Why not all wireless?Cisco research = fixed line traffic will dwarf mobile. Laws of physics cannot be broken – limits in spectrum, will run out of tweaks of the wireless technology, but mostly, it’s about the increased number of cells available for mobile transmission. And, how does data get OUT of the cells? Fibre. Moreover, if we have to build many more cells, then this is likely to be just as expensive. Also notes the very low AVERAGE speeds of wireless because of sharing. Note too the problems of being at the edge of the cell – which can reduce single-user speeds by a factor of 10-20. Wireless still important, but it is not the only solution.

Critical importance of equivalent access across system to ensure competition. How? Fibre-based wholesale service…connects premises to points of interconnect via Layer-2 ethernet (layer 1 = passive optical), nothing above layer 2 which is for ISPs and others – BOTH wholesalers and retailers – covering services and application. Logical separation of streams to enable endusers to choose multiple providers of services; technology for maximum efficiency of bitstream. Note – layer 2 = access QoS, but not service QoS.

Quigly explains NBN relationship with ISPs backhaul etc. – Critical point – NBN is NOT going above layer 2, and will mainly focus on fibre from premises to Points of Interconnect. only where there is a single backhaul provider to a PoI will NBN then aggregate traffic from that PoI and haul it to another one where there is competitive backhaul provision. Essentially, the NBN will be putting in backhaul mainly in regional areas (as indeed NextGen is already starting to do); in well served areas, it will be focusing on fibre to the home/premises. Small footprint in the overall value chain. “Plumbers” of the network – everything else by other people.

Key is the suite and pricing of products; to cover both legacy and future applications and services.

Future proofing for further technology improvements.

One major building issue: the civil works involved in placing cables and equipment that supports cable. CLaims that the data needed to absolutely settle on a business plan (eg pricing) is not available – it’s such a complex business and many variables.

91% of premises served by roadside teclo pillars; (8% of land area). Remaining 9% = rural and served by radio or direct copper from exchange.

Cole, USC Annenberg

There is a bigger gap between dialup and broadband than between no access and dialup. BB changes the world “like nothing we have ever seen except the printing press and electricity”. What are some of the early changes from dialup

Dialup – households – 2-3 times a day, 20-30 minutes at a time. logging on was a big deal, we aggregated our tasks and did them en masse at one time. Time was focused ON the internet and its use, not on as many local interactions (eg with family). People wanted to be undisturbed. But, broadband – from 2002-3 – people were on 30-50 times a day, but for 2-3 minutes at a time. There was no aggregation of tasks, no scheduling. The internet is not in the background now, but integrated into our lives, where we were in life. Broadband moves the internet into the centre stage [what evidence? see http://www.digitalcenter.org/]. This has also got something to do with wireless, however. The changes broadband enacts are changes in how and when we do things involving online activity.

Broadband is not a threat to TV in the same way dialup is. “It’s the best friend TV ever had”. But… newspapers? No. teenagers are interested in the news – more so than any time in last 70 years. But just not from newspapers. When net penetration hits 30%, newspaper sales decline. (Annenberg research). So news has to be online, constantly updated – broadband is the only way for news institutions to survive since they are so much more readable and immediate. [Not sure these assertions are sustainable given the changes in the nature of the media - feels like a re-run of 'put the newspaper online in 1980s-1990s].

Cole moves onto more sustainable ground when he moves into discussion of interaction and user-generated content – especially saying don’t forget upload speed and limits, particularly in the era of video creation.

Key points – uploading is vital “democractic part of broadband”; younger people have grown up with internet and, increasingly, growing up with broadband; collaboration is the absolute essential component of broadband; cites some research showing people who went back to dialup from broadband were shattered to discover that whole parts of the net they were used to using had become unusable.

We know that we have the right kind of broadband when we stop talking about speed etc, and the system just does what you want and only noticeable when it is not there (like electricity). Always on, always there is the goal.

Commentary

Note the change in rhetoric around NBN to include current issues such as climate change which were far less significant earlier; similarly, the emphasis on short-term jobs which did not matter prior to the GFC. I also believe there is a deeper emphasis now on the economic dimensions of the NBN, even though Rudd also says that NBN is not ‘communications’ policy, but policy across all areas of government. The political aspects are also clear: note the reference to Howard government failures on broadband; look at the appeal to rural and, especially, regional voters utilising the NBN as a mechanism to articulate the ‘whole of Australia’ position by the government. Note also the linking of other digital initiatives (Government 2.0) which, largely, are independent of broadband development, to the NBN – creating an all-encompassing ‘we are the digital government’ image.

Reflect on the notion of ‘revolution’ and change of state. Why is NBN not understood as incremental change? How does it fit with the actual history of incrementalism over past 15 years? Is the promising of NBN’s radical potential ever going to be realised because, fundamentally, it will not be experienced as a radical phase shift?

Cole’s presentation is an important statement about the radical changes involved in internet use, especially as experienced by younger users who are the future (note link to Rudd’s future rhetoric). What is interesting is that he discussed what people are doing now online and have been for 4-5 years as part of promoting a network for the future. The real fact to take away from this presentation is that we can’t easily predict what people will do online in 10 years given that noone was really expecting the whole social media craze in the 1990s.

Authentic Assessment of Authentic Tasks
ATN Assessment Conference Keynote; Jan Herrington

Opens with the maxim “We assess what we value and we value what we assess”. Uses it to show how assessing time online, numbers of posts to forums, doing MCQs values lower-order knowledge repetition, the time spent online, and quantity of participation.

Cites Angelo “educative assessment tasks” – that should be the focus of our attention. Anything which is ‘to do’ – the task – that matters most. Tasks and assessment are inseparable.

Reprises the classic ‘from this to that’ movement for online learning – eg from instructivist to constructivist; individual to collaborative. Suggests that there are now further moves towards connectivism, Web 2.0, and so on.

Herrington outlines 9 elements of authentic learning:

1. Authentic Context, reflecting the way something will be done in the real world; embracing the complexity of real world; provides purpose and motivation of learning;
2. Authentic tasks, which have real-world relevance; may take the whole semester; complex and ill-defined (because time has to be taken to learn what the problem is);
3. Expert performance, which Herrington linked to Web 2.0 – the crowd has the expertise; the expert knows more than you and can mentor – not necessarily an acknowledged expert; Herrington justifies the lecture when it is expert performance, not because it is transmission;
4. Multiple perspectives
5. Collaboration, including joint problem-solving and social support;
6. Articulation, where online learning can be silent, it becomes authentic as a learning environment where people speak to their learning, present publicly and defend their positions;
7. reflection, that gives opportunity to consider post-facto the choices made by students (reflection in action and on action differ);
8. scaffolding and coaching role, which to be authentic can include others;
9. authentic assessment, which through the Internet, provides public audience and thus motivates people to work harder at preparing for that greater exposure – the product at the end of the assessment has to be authentic beyond being just something for assessment.

Herrington gives an example of a virtual environment involving interviews, artefacts which mimic the real world, a screen design that cues people to the ‘reality’ in a manner not unlike a game. Emphasises that authenticity is not linked necessarily to high-resource, intensively produced environments.

More on authentic assessment: list of either ors which does beg the question of whether authentic is serving as a euphemism for ‘better’.

1. Context factors: fidelity / transferability to world beyond classroom

2. Student factors: production of knowledge; problem solving; collaboration with others; conversation; performance of knowledge
3. Task factors: ill-structured challenges; wide range of responses; assessment integrated with the activity

Some problems with authentic assessment:

• minimum number of assessments challenges authenticity
• restrictions on group work or amount of grades for group work
• invigilation requirements

Herrington emphasises the alignment of assessment to the task – e.g. don’t use exam to assess authentic task. Instead, assess work from the perspective of the ‘assessor’ in the real world – role play the role from the real-world context. Also emphasises the need for scenarios to be consistent with what students expect and understand, to prevent the cognitive challenge being to ‘accept’ the authenticity. Cites Savery and Duffy: problem must be real – but challenges it to argue that students can manage with moderately real, or believably real.

Herrington concludes with a substantial example (Virtual Records) which dates from some year ago but shows many of the key elements – combining relatively artificial representations of reality, but with astute – quite dramatic / produced – cues which turn them into reality for students once inside the system. A key point which emerges to guide us: Alesio’s (1998) concept of cognitive realism.

A critical commentary
It is clear from Herrington’s presentation that the term authenticity is growing in its reach to serve as a synonym for multi-dimensional, high-quality learning experiences. Within her 9 elements, it is true that all are necessary and that, indeed, all can be linked to the world outside of the artificial confines of ‘study’. Yet, to some extent, this extension lowers the precision of application of authenticity by essentially saying all study is just like not-study; in fact it is not…authenticity at moments, even quite extended moments, is vital – but the artificiality is also important.

At times the assumptions – that authenticity involves, say, collaboration – really expose the partial definition of authenticity. What, for example, if the task is (in the real world) individual and not collaborative? Would it not be authentic to limit collaboration? Developing this point to consider Web 2.0, one of the challenges for the emphasis on collaboration is that, to be honest, Web 2.0 is also about networked individualism and thus, to be authentic, different forms of collaboration would be required.

One of the examples Herrington gives is a ‘virtual environment’ which is authentic in her judgment. The primary markers of authenticity here are visual display (imagines of labs in this case), interactive navigability (as if they were inside the images) and so on. While clearly different to ‘read this about…’, its authenticity might also be seen as quite limited; that said, what makes it authentic is the assessment task which is very much ‘real world’. Thus authenticity is a complex – made up of more and less real components whose totality allows students to believe themselves to be ‘in the real world’ even when they are not. Indeed, belief, not actuality, matters – else the mistakes they migh make would not be possible and it is through mistakes that we learn,

Herrington’s examples – for example from educational research units / courses – show that some kinds of content / learning outcomes do suit better the authenticity approach, either because of the cohort or similar factors, or because making a viable realistic scenario or similar works easily; perhaps, because there is alignment between what the academics ‘know how to do’ (eg research methods) and what is being taught. Therefore they can model their practice. In some other areas, perhaps, the learning concerns broader and more shallow material – not ‘inhabited’ by the teacher. Of course, authenticity can still be generated, but perhaps takes more work, or perhaps requires a focus on that particular element of being at university which makes it most especially ‘artificial’ and avoid that aspect, so as to reduce the ‘unreality’ overload.

Assessment Practice: a manifesto for change
ATN Assessment Conference Keynote; Chris Rust

Rust reviews the literature and popular inquiry to establish that assessment is a major focus for concern. In particular, he points to Boud’s words: “students … cannot (by definition if they wish to graduate) escape the effects of poor assessment…. We must confront the ways in which assessment is undermining learning.” (Boud, 1995).

Rust then outlines the process by which the Manifesto, for which he played a leading role, was developed in 2007. A key aspect of the manifesto is the establishment of standards: standards provide guidance to students, enable them to monitor, and through evaluation ensure reliability and relative judgments to be made about students completing courses at university.

What is the manifesto? Its tenets are all about what is wrong and why it needs to change.

Why is change needed? The system is broken, assessment can even lead students to become less interested in deep learning; our practices – for example grading students across %ages (61% or 62%), or adding up score from different assignments, or working from different scales conventionally; is irrelevant and non-supportable. Rust emphasises that the institutional rules – length of assignments; numbers of assessment tasks and so on that are meant to produce consistency – are actually false. Points to deeply held disciplinary differences – for example the difficulty of getting a First in history compared to mathematics.

Rust also critiques the emphasis on ‘transparency’ and explicitness: not that being explicit is bad, it is just that it doesn’t achieve all that we claim it might. The explicitness of criteria and process and so on simply refines the levels of debate about what the words mean. There are other steps to be taken beyond just detailing in words the ways we might judge good work. Notes in particular the work of Royce Sadler (1987, 2008) on this point and concludes with Polanyi’s comment “we can know more than we can tell”. To some extent back this up by arguing for a community of practice model: students need to learn about the culture and conventions of the field in which they are working so as to interpret the criteria and processes of assessment; thus Rust asserts the importance of feedback as dialogue. Ultimately, (Astin 1997) student achievement is predicted by the degree of staff-student and student-student interaction. Gibbs (2007) – high levels of student involvement in a department generate excellence in research and teaching (rankings of departments).

Time, meaning duration, is important: lengthy involvement (assessment, feedback and re-assessment) includes “rehearsal” across the length of a degree, not just within a unit (Knight and Yorke, 2004). Cites examples of quality research – higher-grading areas, even when they covered very different subject matter – were not marking higher; they were more likely to be holistic programs in which there was a clear coherence between year 1 and year 3, and staff worked together on the assessment patterns. Such programs are more likely to create a community within which apprenticeships can occur over a long period of time; they are also likely to enable staff to inculcate new academics into the culture of assessment practice. One reason for the value of such apprenticeships in assessment is that being able to self- and peer-assess is a key graduate outcome.

A critical commentary
One of the slightly troubling aspects of the current debates on, and calls for change in, assessment is that they cite literature from at least two decades. Undoubtedly there has been a lot of conservatism over this time, but to be fair, there has also been significant change. So, is it legitimate to use ‘calls for action’ from the 1980s and 1990s to found action in the 2010 period onwards? It is also clear that there is significant overgeneralisation: comments about examinations, for example, imply that everywhere, everywhen, there is an examination. In fact, significant areas of the academy – particularly in the creative and humanities disciplines – are not especially interested in exams, do not use them, and have already got a strong tradition of authentic, deep-learning, and student-centred assessment. What place is there for these academics in all of the heat and light about our failings?

Rust’s work puts forward an argument for the invalidity of many policies which are used to guide assessment; yet he does not go further to consider the reasons for these policies – the attempt to standardise and control the diverse and complex disciplinary array which makes up a university. Thus, to some extent, Rust’s arguments for the need for greater standardisation, and control and overarching unification of assessment is challenged by the fact that the problems he describes have in fact been caused by this kind of movement in higher education in the first place. That said, Rust usefully points out that – in some cases – people do not distinguish between one discipline and another (for example, in employment of graduates generally); thus different between disciplines have a real impact on the general conditions of higher education as a social institution: universities, while traditionally an aggregration of disciplines and professions engaged in parallel play, have become – or are becoming – singular entities whose brand, products (graduates) and value proposition constrain and corral disciplinary diversity to the central corporate mission.

It is also important, when thinking about the current practical debates and operational plans for assessment improvement, to emphasise the standards and quality assurance agenda. Rust contrasts US and British systems: no attempt in the US to presume that all graduates from all universities can be provided with equality such that one can compare graduates across degrees, disciplines and institutions. Such a move would be madness from a US perspective. Rust neatly constrasts that view with the British government’s enthusiasm for standards, based in large measure on the massive public investment in universities. Perhaps more attention should be paid, therefore, to how assessment is not about learning but about the management of the complex political economy of public expenditure in nations that have responded to the triumph of the market by attempting to explain and justify public expenditure to avoid public political concern about taxation.

Is E-Learning True to the Principles of Technology?
(John Daniel, Commonwealth of Learning)
Keynote Paper at E-Learn conference, 2009, Vancouver

Disclaimer: Live blogging; see end for reflections, side notes.

Begins by emphasising the wide variety of capacities of nations to engage successfully in elearning

Declares the “absolute importance of technology in the educational development of the world”; attempting to link purposes and technology together. Fears that we are missing out on the benefit technology might bring. Will present argument that explores the relationship between the purpose and use of “Technology”, and what technologies for learning might bring).

Breaks into a short description of the Commonwealth of Learning (note its emphasis on technology and development, especially role of distance learning / technology, especially at secondary school AND teacher education; examples of bringing education TO the traditional farming communities).

For higher education he indicates the central challenge: wider access; higher quality; lower cost. With traditional methods, you can’t achieve increases in access at lower cost with quality; you get ONE or TWO of the three (but not all three). Discusses the ‘iron triangle’ which links exclusivity and quality. Educational technology CAN give you all three.

Technology = “application of scientific and other organised knowledge to practical tasks by organisations (including both people and machines)”; notes Smith – four principles of technology (division of labour; specialisation; economies of scale; machines/ICTS). Uses the OpenU as the example – eg division of labour between content / process / delivery experts; massification – 1M students worldwide; use of ICTs essential).

Daniel emphasises that it’s not just or mainly ‘online’ – eg Indian national open schooling – 1.6 million students, mostly print based.

But question: is elearning true to the principles of technology? (meaning: scale, etc). Asserts that academics like elearning because it enables them to maintain the ‘cottage industry’; is very sceptical about ‘elearning’ as a major force for economic change. Asserts that, overall, there are no differences (or, worse, are increased expenses) from introducing ‘elearning’. This doesn’t matter in 1st world, especially; but really is a major problem in developing nations. So, technology (elearning) must change the system, not just layer on top of it.

Returns us to an emphasis on producing, sharing content: the Open Educational Resource Commons – information freely available, and usable in print form as much as online, will make a major difference in countries that are developing. Another example, Wikieducator: commitment to creating, sharing and using open content.

Discussion of VUSSC; major project of CoL, to coordinate and network the small states of the commonwealth’s university activities. It’s as much about QA, management, assistance as ‘virtuality’ – again, emphasising how organisation is critical, not just ‘using’ elearning.

Fear is: Elearning is “provoking a throwback to pre-industrial times” which would vitiate its major cost and other savings and benefits.

Good comment in Q&A – universities which invest heavily in space might get caught by the number of students who are studying ‘sort-of’ on campus – actually spending quite a lot of time offcampus. [This strikes me as an effect of the network society - people, even younger and naive social subjects are not investing very much significance in buildings and places - investing in networks and forms.]

Side Notes
There is a consistent emphasis of technology as a force in society.There is also a degree of blindness to the changing nature of the economic-technological system of the Internet. However, it’s interesting to consider the background – the very strong emphasis in CoL on developing nations, with limited infrastructure. Something as simple as having free, good-quality, pdf files of information can have a major difference / impact in developing nations; it’s not about sophisticated elearning.

On reflection, the challenge is to distinguish between ‘elearning’ as a kind of global force for change and as a way of doing what is already done and thought, but in an era of networked ICTS. Systematisation, massification and so on, are not the only productive and quality-enhancing approaches to the use of technology. Some of the answers to questions also indicate a degree of naivete or, at least, out-datedness from Daniel about the way in which elearning is now being done. Curiously, Daniel is on stronger ground when he argues that people good at teaching should focus on it, and do it in teams (the real lesson of OpenU); the idea that ‘elearning’ should – only – be done in this way is incorrect

The death and rebirth of journalism (A panel on future of journalism and the news)
[disclaimer: liveblogging]

Brian Solis (Moderator), Don Lemon, Hugh Hewitt, Jay Rosen, Joanna Drake Earl (google them)
(can’t assign comments to people since can’t see from the back row )

Start with some data: “how is new media comparing to traditional media”

monthly – 400 million tweets; weekly – facebook – 2 billion pieces of content shared; 2008 – 16,000 job cuts in US news. twitter.com outperforms CNN. Then again, NYT is growing too.

Comment – twitter big, yes, but a lot of it is links to big media or spreading of the word.

Evolution of new media – Jay Rosen (NYU) – blogworld in 2003 to now “we have built around that system (RSS blogs, etc) the live web – everyone is connected to the news system as a whole – old media and new media wired into the same ecosystem – more complex, more aggregators, more fights for attention” “we didn’t anticipate the live web, which is represented by twitter” “lot more competitive for attention” – 2003 – people who blogged were like those with own magazines; now it has transformed into something much broader”.

Lemon (CNN)- the key to blogosphere/twitter now is immediacy – old media can’t keep up with people’s thirst for information.

Hewitt. – the real change now is the massive amplification of the desire to be noticed and to gain attention.

Question from Hewiit to audience – how many aspire to be journalists? – There will be too many of ‘you’ to be employed as journalists -[ this is completely the wrong question and the wrong answer. Journalists are not employed only; they are the citizens who do it; bloggers and pro-bloggers are not wanting to be journalists! More old media hubris?]

Jay Rosen and Don Lemon arguing about fact checking – Rosen asserts old media doesn’t report ‘factual news’ in the way that they claim – sure, it’s accurate to some extent, but it’s not objective – this is not argument between facts and opinion, but different views. Rosen emphasises that participants now can directly report their experiences, without relying on journalists; but his key point is that this kind of reporting connects with (doesn’t replace) the journalistic reporting, adds new layers. Rosen demands that bloggers pick up the ethics of journalism; but also says, journalism, news ALSO needs to recommit to news ethics.

Lemon, in answer to another question, returns back to the profession of journalism – we need resources, fact checking, trained people to “look into” things. But “social media has upped my game” – because if he doesn’t get it right, he’s going to be hammered in tweet-world. Strong emphasis on the interrelationship between big and social media – big media

Rosen – cites the scene from the film Network – Beale shout out the windows “mad as hell” – audience is isolated from one another, ppl couldn’t share horizontally; today, Rosen says, it’s different – people are still watching Tv, reading papers, but through the Internet they are connected across as well as vertically in society. They can share news with each other as easily as they can get it from the mainstream. More people shared Obama’s race speech than who watched it. Over the Internet, people can find each other if they disagree with what they see; the Internet is a powershift, it has already happened – people can inform themselves. [Lemon responds - clear dynamic here between him and Rosen - polite agonistics of the media].

Hewitt – excellent comment – the people who are trusted in social media world will become the key sources for the traditional media. [It is an accurate representation from within media of how they see the social media world]. Social media ‘increases’ the opportunity for media to find those in society who know what they are talking about; social media is a test of credibility.

Rosen – calling for a mutual relationship between information professionals and their audiences / networks which is based more on human connection than expertise and skill. Value of more and more people gaining a sense of ownership of news; if we collectively believe we own the news, then there’s a bigger stake in taking care of it, caring about it, and using it.

Lemon – there is not the accountability in social media and cannot be; journalists feel exposed, bloggers are not (eg to legal action). Asserts in such a manner that it is a definining difference between trad and social media.

Do we still need Journalism Schools?

Hewitt – students are getting “completely irrelevant skill sets”

Rosen – used to teach journalism around platforms; now that doesn’t work. Now use ‘studio’ approach (eg model from design, art etc) – how will you build a new news system embedded in the program – build intellectual capital, hook students into the news business as innovators. News can’t innovate.

Side notes
Claim that people thirst for immediate information: is this a media industry construction? – does connectivity create a VOID which can only be filled by immediate, endless streaming of information. Do we hold to a notion of humans as infovores? or is the thirst for information actually a thirst for meaning in connectivity – without meaning connections through twitter, blogging etc feels empty? Perhaps it is also a dominant theme of the moment that one ought to be information hungry – a kind of postmodern version of the ‘improve oneself through knowledge’ of modernity (think Workingmen’s Educational Association in 19thC GB)? Ultimately, there is an affective as well as intellectual relationship between humans and information; we need to ask what the search for, acquisition of, information signifies in and of itself, regardless of that; then ask how modalities of information change meaning.

There’s no mention here of Google – new media/old media divide works well around things like twitter and blogging, but there is limited understanding of the informatic basis for news and so on – no mention of mining twitter for example.