http://www.masternewmedia.org/2004/04/04/nine_rules_for_good_technology.htm
'Educational technology' is often seen as oxymoronic, and quite justifiably so. This article, which links to a downloadable book, is an instructive and provocative meditation on how technology actually can support education. The 9 Rules mentioned in the title are:
1) Always Available
2) Always On
3) Always Connected
4) Standardized
5) Simple [Boy, I agree with this -- if it needs a manual, you don't need it]
6) Does Not Require Parts
7) Personalized
8) Modularized
9) Does What You Want It To Do.
Come to think of it, that is not a bad list of rules for any technology!
http://www.linuxinsider.com/perl/story/33301.html
Interesting overview of 8 textbooks which are popular for teaching IT to MBA students, and the degree to which they minimize Linux, or are positively hostile towards the alternative operating system. Textbooks, by their nature, tend to the 'plain vanilla', and it is not surprising to find that the sorts of errors for which humanities texts get castigated in vain also crop up here. It is certainly worth noting by IT educators the degree to which text bias exists.
Interestingly enough, if you move towards books intended for computer science types [for example, general titles on operating systems], there Linux and UNIX get all the coverage they deserve, which is extensive.
To turn a phrase: "I mild less who writes the nation's laws, and more who writes the nation's business texts".
http://www.freep.com/money/tech/mwend4_20040304.htm
Article discussing a study by Michigan State University of a state demonstration project that gave laptops to 7,000 grade-school children. The results of the study suggest that such distribution is a win for all concerned, parents, teachers, and students in terms of the study being done. The study also noted problems, but indicated the benefits far outweighed the costs.
This is by no means an uncontroversial area of study, but should these findings be sustained by additional research, the relatively low cost of student-capable laptops may mean this technology really has a place in the grade-school classroom.
http://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline/
OK. I'll 'fess up -- not only do I not understand what is written in this book, I can't even understand the pictures. The link indexes an online version of A New Kind Of Science by Stephen Wolfram, the underlying premise of which [to the extent I grasp it at all] is that computation is giving us the capacity to do science in new and valuable ways outside the realm of material experimentation.
If he's right, this is A Big Deal indeed, and having this book online is the equivalent of having Newton's Principia Mathematica delivered to your doorstep in the 17th century.
Indexes a project which should be extremely interesting to those teaching networks and operating systems -- the ADIOS objective is to provide downloadable installable OS versions where students have administrative priveleges. This looks like an excellent way for students to gain administration experience without putting real networks at risk.
The website contains a comprehensive explanation of what is involved with this project, which certainly looks worth investigation.
http://news.com.com/2100-7345_3-5096702.html
An article describing how IT, in the form of improved Web services, is being used in education rather than as a subject of it. Microsoft has given a grant to MIT to research campus quality of life improvement through technology. Here is a case of clever giving, since the results can help Microsoft clarify its focus while establishing itself as an educational benefactor.
And of course the hope must be there that creating an appetite for Web services will improve the demand for Microsoft solutions in this area.
http://www.computerworld.com/managementtopics/management/itspending/story/0,10801,86122,00.html
Despite appearances, I am just as human as the next person who has my same quotient of human kindness, and one thing to we are prone is looking at which technologies are on the upward slope, since these are the logical candidates for curriculum development. This article lists 5 technologies which are going in the opposite direction, plans to abandon which should be put in place posthaste:
* Windows 9x
* Client/server computing [as strictly construed]
* IBM SNA and proprietary network architectures
* Tape backup
* Visual Basic 6
In fact, I de-emphasize the first four of these in my current classroom teaching, only avoiding the last one because I don't teach programming.
http://www.debugmode.com/wink/
The link indexes a free tutorial and presentation creation tool called "Wink", which those who have used report on favourably. It could be a handy tool to the classroom IT teacher in a situation where specific software is either lacking or cannot be mounted on a class computer.
http://education.guardian.co.uk/cof/story/0,13893,1047449,00.html
If computational power continues to grow in an approximation of Moore's Law, then, as this article indicates, we will have the power of a human brain on a computer before the middle of the decade [if one accepts with the Itanium and similar 64-bit chips that we now have the power of an ant brain on a computer -- itself no mean feat -- then the progression seems inevitable].
Well, perhaps not -- there are no lead pipe cinches in this arena. But should it come to pass, and the thing this article makes worth thinking about, our educational systems will have to change, not only in terms of methodology, but also in terms of product. If technological developments also allow more reliable output measures to be applied [something which is already ongoing] then the radical nature of this set of challenges to the current education system is impossible to overstate.
Again, apocalyptic prognostigations of radical change usually don't pan out...but the current spate of IT offshore outsourcing is a minor indication of the kinds of change in educational goals which technology demands, suggesting we cannot ignore this projection either.
Creative answers here are going to be so valuable that the nation or institution first coming up with them can have a major competitive advantage if such answers can be implemented institutionally. This of course begs the question that existing institutions can implement these answers....
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20030920/ap_on_hi_te/classroom_gadgets
If any segment of the population is gadget-happy it is teenagers, the greater part of whom are in school, particularly Secondary schooling. The "problems" such tools present educators are discussed in this article, along with some "remedial" measures which school systems are taking.
Yet in some measure there is a distubing resonance of the K-12 school system's habit of viewing everything which is different as a "problem". In fact, some consideration should be given to the degree to which these gadgets represent an new intellectual ecology, and should, therefore, become part of the curriculum rather than being seen as something to be resisted or suppressed.
I do not want to suggest this is simple, but I do want to suggest that attitudes often preclude possibilities -- which may, in the end, be simple, but should be far from satisfactory.
http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/31502.html
One of my colleagues uses the tagline: "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance!". This article suggests he is literally right -- that workers with computers everywhere suffer economic losses at home and at work, because they don't know much about their machines. While I myself have been heard to whine "It shouldn't be this hard!", I also have a wealth of anecdotal evidence suggesting that most organizations suboptimize computer use by scrimping on training, when in fact the returns inherent in more educated computer workers should, if it works, greatly outweigh education's costs.
The need for extensive basic training, probably on a certification basis, appears hard to dispute.
http://www.bbctraining.co.uk/pdfs/newsStyleGuide.pdf
As a Canadian, I am perhaps somewhat more sentitive to national stylistic issues than most of my audience. Here is a tonic guide to style from an authority with oomph -- the BBC itself. Seriously, much of what is written here would be excellent for students to read, and it is very clear and to-the-point -- it is also slyly humourous.
One interesting item in the section on "Americanisms" -- which of course, all true native-speaking Englishmen outside the USA eschew with vigour -- concerns the distinction between "meet" and "meet with", which I do not think an Americanism at all. I tend to use "meet" in terms of contact, as in "I meet a lot of people I know when I walk down the street", and "meet with" in terms of process "I meet with my development staff every week". In the first case, there is no formal meeting, while in the second there is.
Additionally, to say, as I would of this guide, that it "meets with my approval" is surely a defensible colloqualism on a global basis.
http://www.microsoft.com/education/?ID=21stCenturyCitizen
An extensive on-line and downloadable [WORD format] white paper titled "Educating the 21st Century Citizen" setting out Microsoft's future education vision. The broad coverage in this paper gives ample pause for thought, regardless of one's opinion of the originator.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23689-2003Jul7.html
The tension between what can be known and what should be known is exemplified by the example of a PhD student, whose dissertation has mapped every part of the USA economy to its connecting fibre-optic network. Since all the data were gathered from public information, no direct security breach resulted from their compilation and interpretation.
Both corporations and the government, however, are eager to suppress these research results, and the university involved will only allow publication of the most general information about this topic. This is a major problem, in that suppression is antithetical to the benefits which open research generates, so we may have a bad precedent here.
It is equally understandable why those in authority should object to vulnerabilities being easily known, although ultimately the only justification for continued censorship here is to give the responsible parties the time to cure the identified defects. Previous examples in this regard do not give rise to undue confidence that those in control will "do the right thing".
To the extent that the defects are not capable of correction, a posture of public ignorance is at least questionable and at worst, objectionable.
http://ts.mivu.org/default.asp?show=article&id=2010
Tools for the expert are one thing, but tools for everyman are the ones which really have the most impact on our daily lives [when was the last time Michael Schumaker passed you on the InterState?]. A correlative development with Weblogs is Rich Site Summary -- a way to keep automatically updted on news and developments on the Web, allowing ready communication and networking on any specific topic. This article looks at the implications of RSS for education in general and academe in particular.
As whoever it was that said it said: "Stay tuned -- you ain't seen nothing yet."!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46807-2003Jun11.html
My position on whether IT is coming or going is neither here nor there, but certainly one of the aspects which has made IT education more difficult is the dearth of degree programmes looking at applied IT [as opposed to computer science, which is a disk of another colour]. The combination of techology and business training is particularly attractive to many students, and this article discusses several new programs from higher education dedicated to technical skills development.
http://www.freepint.com/issues/050603.htm#tips
The whole point of the Information Technology enterprise is not the whirring disk drive nor the flashing monitor, however absorbing these may be to those of us with a technical bent. In some sense this article refers to what is at the "wide end" of the IT funnel, in terms of how people can be educated for knowledge management -- another facet in the creation and implementation of mind tools. Just scratching the surface, for sure, yet also significant as a signpost -- if we allow ourselves to be paralyzed by the vasty informational deep, we will lose all potential as we fall beneath the shadow.
According to a recent survey conducted by gradschools.com, an Internet research site, clinical psychology and mental health therap are now preferred by those pursuing graduate studies over computer science. How this impacts on information technology education as more narrowly viewed is not entirely clear. There always has been some association between intense computer fascination and a lack of mental health, so perhaps this development represents a new growth field consequent on IT developments....
This from the Syllabus News Update:
Copyright Holders Can Shut Down University ISP Services
The U. S. District Court for the District of Hawaii has ruled that the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) does not require copyright
holders to conduct an investigation to establish actual infringement
before sending notice to an Internet Service Provider (ISP) requiring
them to shut down an allegedly infringing Web site, or stopping service
all together to an alleged violator.
I expect my somewhat sulphurious opinions on the DCMA and similar malign manifestations of information barrier will burble up in this blog later or later, but just for starters, this raises one question in my mind: what has become of the Anglo-Saxon legal cornerstone of assumption of innocence? Surely if I have *not* infringed a law, it is completely inappropriate to sanction me until you have some case or evidence that I *am in fact* infringing it.
But then, I can sigh sententiously about not being a lawyer [and loving every minute of it!], so you can take this with whatever saline grains appear appropriate.
Canadian College Offers Virus Writing Class: http://eletters.wnn.ziffdavis.com/zd/cts?d=75-17-1-1-618817-421-1
Virus-Writing Course Stirs Controversy: http://eletters.wnn.ziffdavis.com/zd/cts?d=75-17-1-1-618817-424-1
The issues involved in this are worth remark: on the one hand -- there are things man was not meant to know; on the other -- if we want to understand some of the deeper implications of fighting malware, we need to educate in this specialty. One thing for sure -- the graduates of this class can expect the beady eye of authority to be firmly fixed upon them.