And the tour continues with ASCILITE 2009 in Auckland. Better network here and I'll be tweeting using the conference tag #ascilite09.

I'm lucky enough to be in Berlin for the Online Educa 2009 conference presenting on the eMM work done over the last two years. Berlin is a lovely as usual (cold as expected) but sadly I have no time for tourism this year as I'm literally only here for the conference (56 hours traveling for 48 hours in country, yes I am mad). So far I have attended the first plenaries (1 good, 1 ok, 1 mediocre - about par for the course). Details to follow later. Tweeting as well using the #oeb2009 tag. 2000+ people from many countries, this is easily the most international e-learning conference out, and I'm looking forward to hearing about initiatives that we don't normally find out about easily on the other side of the world.

Colin Jackson nailing the issues right on the head.

I've always been a supporter of a differentiated tertiary education system in New Zealand, designed to provide different educational experiences for different student needs and social outcomes. The current Government's approach of forcing differentiation by reducing access to University education is not one I would have chosen, driven as it is by cost reduction and a panic about school leaver unemployment. To date, the debate has been framed as one of encouraging the pursuit of higher qualifications - moving people from certificates to diplomas and then on to degrees, rather than gaining multiple low-value pieces of paper. A more fundamental challenge is whether the current sector is going to be able to change in ways that meet our social and economic needs for the future - rather than asking whether too many students are going to university, we should be asking whether any students need to be going to university?

Read more...

A moral panic is a type of mob hysteria that generates witch burning and idiotic laws banning paople from access to the Internet. Unless you buy into some serious conspiracy theories about organised religion, at least the witch burners have more basic integrity than the media distribution companies. France has recently made the serious error of trying to save a doomed industry's business model, the UK and New Zealand seem to be teetering on the edge of the same fatal mistake. Cory Doctorow, no friend of copyright maximisers, has just published his response to the UK Mandelson proposal in the Times, we in New Zealand need to be rehearsing these same arguments to get out politicians to listen to New Zealanders, not Sony, Viacom and others desperate to save their outdated businesses.

Read more...

One of the (pleasant) pecularities of employment as an Academic is the freedom to set my own research agenda and how and where I seek funds and publish the outcomes of my work. This freedom is fundamental to academic work and is consistent with the legislative expectation that universities "develop intellectual independence", employ people "who are active in advancing knowledge" and act as "critic and conscience of society (Education Act 1989, section 162(4)). A further freedom enjoyed by many (but not all) academics is that I own some (but also not all) of my intellectual property - something that may be changing significantly if recent Australian developments are followed through locally.

Read more...

Kim Hill spent a portion of her Saturday Morning radio programme discussing the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) with Mark Harris (who blogs On the Gripping Hand which I love as a blog name). The conversation covered the normal range of issues (unfortunately mixing copyright with patent law freely), most of which I agree with, but I think they both missed the key risk of ACTA.

Read more...

Time and money pressures facing our increasingly mature students mean that some form of prioritisation is inevitable. Some lecturers have responded to this by making attendance mandatory, something that I oppose, others are taking a different approach - Teaching Naked!

Read more...

George Santayana's quote 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it' is familiar to many, as in the tale of Cassandra, princess of Troy, and doomed to foretell the future and never be believed. Recent events affecting Kindle owners make me think that Richard Stallman and Clifford Lynch must be feeling increasingly like Cassandra.

Read more...

Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) is a well established field of study within computer science, one that is distinguished by how little impact its practitioners have had on the daily experience of most computer users. Much as Google Maps took the unregarded area of GIS and opened it up to the rest of us, Google Wave may similarly finally see 30 years worth of CSCW research finally become relevant to mainstream users.

Read more...