Half baked but crispy

A people's history of the internet: from Arpanet in 1969 to today

To mark the 40th anniversary of the first stirrings of the internet we asked you to tell us your experiences of life online. Hundreds of you responded, and here we present an interactive documentary of your stories and videos, alongside our own research and interviews with key figures (About this project)

Why does so much interesting stuff happen when there's a nine in the year? This year it's been the anniversary of the start of WWII (70 years), my own half century (7th May 1959), the Apollo moon landings (40 years); the world-wide web and the fall of the Berlin wall (20 years) and now the Internet (40 years on October 29th). To celebrate the latter, The Guardian has published a number of articles, including this fascinating interactive time line, and we can be pretty sure that there'll be more to come over the next week or so. (Of my own anniversary, the least said the better!)

I have just completed a short article for the November edition of e.learning age magazine.

e.learning age is the UK’s number one media resource for the e-learning community.  The magazine is the only one if its kind for anyone involved in the e-learning industry - from board directors responsible for skilling the workforce, to training and HR professionals choosing and implementing the best systems, to vendors who want to find out the latest news and trends in the industry.   

In my article I highlight 10 of the new tools appearing on the emerging Top 100 Tools for Learning 2009 list that I think are useful, innovative, cost effective and worth considering by workplace learning and development professionals for 2010.

What are the 10 tools? Take a look at my article here:  10 Tools for 20(10)

 

Interesting list of new stuff. I think that the Learning Lab might agree with the last 5: screenr, posterous, yammer, wordle and flip. I've tried prezi myself but I'm not so sure that it's much more than a gimmick: it takes quite a lot of effort and the editing tools are quite limited!

Has anyone tried any of the other four tools?

Young people have evolved to communicate in more advanced ways than older generations, living 'hybrid lives' where the internet plays a critical role, says a new report launched at the House of Commons [on October 14, 2009].

The report Life Support: Young people's needs in a digital age looks at how digital communications have impacted on the psychological and neurological behaviour of young people - and the challenge this poses for agencies and organisations who aim to support them.

Undertaken by Professor Michael Hulme [...] the report draws together literature and new research conducted with 994 young people aged 16 to 24 (funded by Nominet Trust). It found that of the young people surveyed:

• 75% said that they couldn't live without the internet
• 45% said that they felt happiest when online
• 32% agreed with the statement: 'I can access all the information I need online, there is no need to speak to a real person about my problems'
• Four in five (82%) said they had used the internet to look for advice and information for themselves and 60% had for other people
• 37% said that they would use the internet to give advice to others on sensitive issues. 

Government Advisor on Children and Technology, Professor Tanya Byron, welcomed the report, saying: "This research illustrates the vital role the internet plays in the lives of young people. Far more than just a way to keep in touch – it, and its online population, have become a confidant for young people facing difficult, stressful or confusing times. 

The ease of access to opinion, support and advice is of course appealing to a generation who have grown up with immediacy, but it's essential the adults and organisations that provide support to this age group recognise this, and offer services that are easily accessible through the internet."

 

This report was mentioned in the Click On item on "Digital Natives" (see previous post) in which Michael Hulme appeared with James Clay on the programme. The report itself is available to download as a PDF.

Digital Natives

A just-published report into the technology habits of 16-24 year olds revealed that half of those asked felt happiest online, and three quarters of them couldn’t live without the internet. Simon is joined by the report's author Michael Hulme, and James Clay, manager of e-learning at Gloucestershire College - an institution which found that embracing social networking sites reduced their dropout rates - to discuss why it's important to recognise the needs of today's teens

The item starts at about 19 minutes. Broadcast on BBC Radio 4's Click-On show on Monday 19th October 2009 bwteen 16.30 and 17.00 GMT+1. All editions from the current (5th series) are available as are a couple of episodes from series 4. There's also a Podcast feed  which makes the last episode available for a week. But there's no apparent restriction on how long you can keep the MP3 files.

... Furthermore there’s scope for building an MLE on top of the same federation framework, making inter-institution courses simple- e.g. outside tutor commenting on student work directly?

Scope for a University project here I feel!

I wonder if there's anyone interested in Paul Manning's contention that you could build a MLE on Google Wave!

As part of Cascade we are updating our online assignment handling system.  Currently the vast majority of assignments in the department are handled in hard copy, so that making this service available more widely will be a big change for many of our students, administrators and academics if they use it.

In our relatively informal consultations up to this point we have encountered widely differing reactions to the prospect of moving this online, both negative and positive and we are now moving forward with a more systematic survey in this area. As part of this we are trying to come up with a list of  attitudes which stakeholders can indicate agreement with or not – we started out with about 5 statements each for academics and students but since consulting a bit more are now up to well over 10 for each.

 Academic statements

1. Many of my students hand write assignments
2. I would be technically confident handling assignments online
3. I am confident that online assignment handling is secure
4. I do not want to spend more time at a screen
5. I think that online assignment submission would speed up the marking process
6. I would welcome being able to use plagiarism detection software
7. I am worried about having to remember more passwords
8. I think typing feedback will take longer than writing it by hand
9. I am worried about students submitting assignments in file types I cannot read
10. I do not want to have to print out assignments
11. I am worried about having a good enough computer to deal with marking assignments online
12. In my subject it is difficult produce electronic assignments e.g. maths notation or Cyrillic script
13. I am worried that online submission will make it easier to plagiarise
14. I think online assignment submission will be more stressful for student

Student statements

1. I currently hand write my assignments
2. I would be confident about the security of submitting my assignments online
3. I have the technical skills to submit an assignment online
4. If I submitted an assignment online, I would like to receive confirmation of receipt by email
5. I would welcome the additional time the option of online submission would offer in meeting a deadline
6. I would be happy to receive my work back electronically
7. I think that online assignment submission would speed up turnaround of my assignments
8. I prefer handwritten comments on my assignment
9. I find typed feedback easier to read
10. I currently submit my assignments by hand
11. I currently submit my assignments by post

We are hopeful we have captured the most common attitudes, but it is hard to balance the positive and negative and there is always the worry that this will draw attention to points of view that would have never have occurred to our stakeholders if we had not brought it up.  If anyone has any experience in this area and can suggest anything they found useful it would be great to hear from you.

This entry was posted by Marion Manton on Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009 at 11:44 am and is filed under Cascade, assessment, conted. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

I wonder if this is any way relevant to the HEFCW eMark project?

There are lots of interesting things going on at Mozilla labs. For example, Ubiquity is an experimental plugin that makes mash-ups between web services possible with a few natural language commands. This blog posting from Asa Raskin explains the idea, but the video makes it clear.