Web 2.0 For Rookies: Appearances Can Be Deceiving

At this stage in the series, I think it's worth taking some time out to consider what is not Web 2.0. In the first article  I said:

… my view of Web 2.0 is that if something lends itself to collaborative working and can be worked on over the web, let's call it Web 2.0.

I think we can go a bit further and take into consideration the spirit of Web 2.0, because just because something looks like Web 2.0 doesn't mean it is Web 2.0. The underlying philosophy is one of sharing and mutual benefit. Or at least, in my opinion, it should be.

I'm thinking in particular of newspapers online. All of them encourage readers to post comments, but I haven't found one that does this in a true Web 2.0 kind of way. Admittedly I haven't looked at every newspaper online, but after a couple of experiences which put me off forever, I stopped bothering to think about posting comments to online newspapers.

For me, here are the fundamental tenets of Web 2.0, especially when it comes to commenting on blogs:

• It should encourage a conversation.
• There should be equal mutual benefit.
• No copy, including comments, should be edited without the author's permission.

I've commented on newspapers online twice. In both cases, my website was omitted. To me, that breaks the first of my 'rules':

It's hard for any other reader to have a conversation with me, if they want to, or me with them, if there is no way to find out any contact information. Obviously, I wouldn't expect, or want, a newspaper to publish people's email addresses, but if they publish people's website/blog addresses then at least other readers have the option of seeking them out if they want to.

But it goes deeper than that. The first thing I do when I read a comment that interests me is have a look at the person's website to find out more about them. That helps me work out where (I think) they're coming from.

For example, if someone posts a comment like "It's appalling that teachers are allowed to take time off school to go on courses", and their website is selling online courses that teachers can do in their own time, that would colour my view of the comment. In other words, the person's website often provides a context for their comment.

It also provides a way of checking the credentials of the commenter. Otherwise, a professor who has been working in that field for 30 years has the same status as someone who has only thought about the issue in the last 5 minutes. In terms of their value as a human being, I would certainly not say one is better than the other. But in terms of expertise in a particular area, not including commenters' 'credentials' reduces everyone to the level of "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells".

Getting back to my experiences, the last time I commented on an article I wrote a blog post about the issue, and drew my readers' attention to the newspaper article. I then commented on the newspaper article, and in particular the comments of another reader, and included the article I had written. Not only did the newspaper not include my own website, but they only published the first sentence of my comment, thereby removing all qualifying statements, and didn't bother to include a reference to the article I'd written in which I mentioned them. Thus, the newspaper broke all of my 'rules':

• They didn't include my website.
• They had the benefit of getting readers from my site, but that wasn't reciprocated. 
• Finally, they edited my comment without my (explicit) permission. I say 'explicit' because there is probably something in their terms and conditions that says if you post anything on their site they can do whatever they like with it. I think it's fine to edit a comment for grammar and formatting, say, or to insert an explanatory note, without the author's permission. I don't think it's OK to make changes which have a direct bearing on how their message comes across.

I've checked the Guardian newspaper, and it seems that you can include your website and so on in the sense that you can put such details in the personal profile you have to create in order to leave comments. But what if, like me, you don't want to register on the Guardian's website?

There are some general principles we can glean from this venting about my experience of commenting on newspaper articles. When coming across a blog or wiki, say, or even when setting one up oneself, there are questions we can ask:

• Does this allow anyone to contribute without having to register first?
• Will they publish my website/blog address if I provide it (unless I ask them not to)?
• Do they seem genuinely interested in a conversation, or is the sole purpose of the comments facility to increase traffic to their website?
• If they want to make substantial changes to my comments, will they consult me first?

I think that if the answers to these questions are not satisfactory, the editor/owner of the website in question is only playing at Web 2.0.

Have you seen the other articles in the Web 2.0 for Rookies series? Feel free to comment, and to recommend them to your colleagues and students.

Getting a Meeting with Colleagues on the First Day of Term: 7 Suggestions

Here in the UK, the first day of term for teachers takes place a day earlier than that for students, and is spent in whole staff meetings, departmental or other smaller-group meetings, and some in-service training. If your remit is to ensure that ICT is taught either solely through other subjects, or by numerous people who teach just one lesson of ICT a week, getting colleagues to come to a meeting on that first day is virtually impossible.

And yet, if you're to ensure consistency of standards, and high ones at that, it is essential that they do attend. Or is it? Here are seven techniques that have been found effective.

1. Admit to yourself that it is unreasonable to expect someone who spends just 5% of their week teaching your subject to spend much more than that proportion of their first day preparing for it. By my reckoning that amounts to about 15 or 20 minutes. This "technique" won't help you get more people to your meeting -- but it may help you cope with the frustration of their not doing so.
   
   
2. Following on from point #1, think about whether you really need a meeting at all. Being realistic, even a whole day's meeting is not going to solve all the issues to do with consistency of teaching standards and assessment grades in ICT throughout the school. So a brief note in the pigeon-hole or in-box of everyone concerned may be a much better approach. And what should the brief note say? It should inform people where they can find the resources they need to do a good job.
   
   
3. There is no doubt that in many respects a meeting is better than just a note in someone's pigeon-hole, which they may or may not read. So, if you decide that you must have a meeting, be sensible and keep it short: no longer than 15 minutes.
   
   
4. Other subject leaders will no doubt be somewhat aggrieved if you arrange your meeting at a time that cuts across their own meeting. One way around this dilemma is to negotiate with the senior management a specified slot in the day. This can be arranged at the last minute if necessary. For example, perhaps the 15 minutes before lunch could be designated as "ICT teachers' meeting or familiarisation with the school's learning platform".
   
   
5. Do you have to have a meeting as such at all, as opposed to a series of one-to-ones? Given that you will want to spend much as possible of the day in your own area of the school, why not simply invite staff to drop in at some point so that you can give them a 5 minute briefing -- and that memo? If you want to avoid being continuously interrupted, you could ask them to come along within particular time slots, eg between 10 and 11, 2 and 3, and for an hour after school.
   
   Whichever approach you take, make sure that you have a list of teachers you're expecting to see, so that you can cross them off as they arrive, and chase up the no-shows.
   
   
6. Another approach, which needs  a bit of advanced preparation (but not much), is to mail-merge your note to staff so that each one is personalised with their name at the top, and ask staff to drop by your room at some point during the day so that they can pick it up. That gives you the chance to engage in a conversation with them if you both want to, and also indicates to you who has collected their "briefing".
   
   In a way that is better for you as well, because it means you can spend more of the day on other things you may need to do in order to make sure everything is "good to go" when the kids return on the morrow.
   
   
7. One thing you may wish to do is to arrange a meeting with your colleagues some time after the first day, but within the first week. You could use that meeting to emphasise the really essential points they need to know and understand, and to check whether they are experiencing any difficulties.

One thing to bear in mind is that as professionals, your colleagues will want to do the best job they can, so their reluctance to give an hour of their first day to an ICT meeting may not reflect anything to do with that. Your responsibility is to ensure that they have the tools and guidance throughout the school year needed to do a good job. Their responsibility is to ensure that they do do a good job, and to come to you for guidance if they are having difficulties. So, although it would be nice to be able to have a "proper" meeting with your colleagues on the first day, it is not the end of the world if that cannot happen.



Web 2.0 For Rookies: What is Tagging?

Tagging is the a way of labelling something, such as a website, an article on a blog, a photo, video, or any other object. By tagging things you group them together. This makes them easier to find.

You may not realise it, but you see examples of tagging every time you go shopping. Go to the supermarket to buy milk, and you'll find cheese and butter nearby. That's because all those items have been, in effect, tagged with the term 'refridgerator'.

In another example, I was watching an episode of Numbers recently, and Professor Epps mentioned that a supermarket analysed its sales figures, and discovered that sales of nappies (diapers) peaked and troughed in synchrony with those of cartons of beer. They drew the conclusion that men who were sent out to buy extra nappies were taking the opportunity to buy extra beer, so they placed the items next to each other and sales of both increased. I'm not sure if that story is actually true, but it's a nice illustration of the concept of tagging because both of these items were, in effect, tagged with the label 'items bought by men sent out to buy nappies"!

Now, you might say we don't need tagging in the context of technology, because we have categories. This article, for example, has been published in a category called 'Web 2.0'. Why give it a tag as well?
The trouble with filing things in categories is that, as a rule, you can only file them in one category, whereas they could, logically, be stored in a different one. This restriction does not apply to this blog, because Squarespace lets you place articles in more than one category at a time, but it was certainly the case with my original website. If I'd been writing this article for that website I'd have to choose between the following categories:

• Web 2.0, because this is about Web 2.0;
• Using and teaching ICT, because it's about using an aspect of ICT;
• Leading and managing ICT, because it's aimed at helping colleagues understand an aspect of ICT, which is one of the things ICT leaders and Co-ordinators tend to do.

None of these is inherently right or wrong, but whichever one you choose precludes the others. If you forget where you 'filed' it, or if other people don't think in the same way you do, the article will, to all intents and purposes, be lost, because nobody, including you, will be able to find it!

There was a marvellous illustration of this many years ago in one of the Professor Branestawm stories (I've included a couple of these books on my Amazon Books page).

Professor Branestawm, as the name implies, was an absent-minded professor. In one of the stories, he borrows a book from his local library, but 'loses' it. So he borrows the same book from another library, and then 'loses' that. Eventually, he has borrowed the same book from over a dozen libraries, and spends all his time cycling from one library to the next renewing the one copy he has managed not to lose, in order to avoid paying a fine for late return of the book. In the end, he decides to come clean and so he invites all the librarians round to his house so that he can tell them all that he has lost their books.

While they are waiting for him to appear, they browse his bookshelves, and start to find their books. What had happened was that Professor Branestawm had filed the book in different sections of his library. I can't recall the exact details, but it was something like this:

One copy was stored under B (for biology). Another was stored under 'P' (for plant). Another was stored under 'T' (for tulip). You get the picture.

Now, that's quite humorous on one level, but at a deeper level it illustrates perfectly the problem with hard and fast categorisation.

Tagging cuts across all that - in fact, you might want to think of it as a kind of horizontal categorisation rather than a vertical one.

Take this article. It's tagged with, amongst other things, the term "Web 2.0". That means that anyone searching this website on the term "Web 2.0" will find it. They will also find other articles tagged in the same way, along with any videos, photos or podcasts I happen to have given the same label too.

I've also tagged these articles with the term "Web 2.0 for Rookies", which means that if you look for that tag you will see all of these articles bunched together. In fact, in a Branestawm-like fashion, I'd completely forgotten this, and have been advising people to search for these articles in the alphabetical index! It was only a message in Twitter from Sandy K giving the tag URL which made me remember! (You can follow Sandy on Twitter.)
There are some things you need to think about when it comes to tagging.

Firstly, you have to be consistent, even down to deciding on what case to use. For example, I discovered, by accident, that the tag "Web 2.0 for Rookies" is not the same as "Web 2.0 For Rookies" (spot the difference!). If you're not consistent, people, including yourself, will not be sure what to search on and will still have difficulty in finding articles.

Secondly, this has an implication when it comes to working with colleagues and students. Do you allow them to create their own tags? If so, should there be rules about tagging to ensure consistency?

Thirdly, bear in mind that tags need to be specific enough to filter off irrelevant search results, but not so specific that people would never think to search on that term. An example of a tag that would not satisfy the first condition would be, on this site, ICT. Given that every article is about ICT in some way, searching on that tag would bring up the entire collection of articles! At the other extreme, a tag like "Terry Freedman's article about tagging in his series about Web 2.0 for rookies" would be as much use as a chocolate teapot because nobody would ever think to use it.

Fourthly, how far should you go in tagging? I know that some people recommend tagging articles with every conceivable label and variation they can think of, in order to maximise its chances of being found, and of being picked up by search engines. It's up to you whether or not you adopt that approach. Personally, I find it boring to spend ages tagging articles, and I've found that tag generating applications are so 'efficient' that I have to spend ages weeding out the ones that I don't think are that useful. Aside from all that, I simply don't like the fact that having loads of tags at the top or bottom of an article takes up so much space!

Used well, tagging is a perfect example of a Web 2.0 'application': it's very effective in linking up disparate objects, and therefore people, as will become apparent in the article on social bookmarking. And it's conceptually simple. What more could one want?

Have you seen the other articles in the Web 2.0 for Rookies series? Feel free to comment, and to recommend them to your colleagues and students.

Psychology, Not Technology

Don't try to be TOO helpful (photo of a sign in Queen's Hospital, Essex, UK)Are you an evangelist? No? Think again. Most of the people in this educational technology game have a quasi-religious zeal that is almost palpable. You don't even have to go very far to see it -- no further than your desk, in fact. Just look at the latest posts of any blogger, and it's odds on that at some point in the last week he or she has waxed lyrical about some new application they've discovered, or a new website that will change the world.

In fact, it's arguably even worse than usual at the moment because of people going on about the best developments of the entire decade. Give me strength!

Leaving aside the fact that, in my opinion at least, these flights of fancy are rarely thought through properly, they are likely to succeed in convincing only those who don't need convincing. The real challenge is this: how do we convince others of the benefits of educational technology, and get them to the point where they will at least entertain the idea of trying it out, even if an act of conversion (there's that religious talk again) is a bridge too far.

The first thing that we need to do is select our target, for want of a better term. There are three groups of people, broadly speaking: those who are convinced of the benefits of technology, those who have no real opinion one way or the other, but who are getting good results and therefore see no urgent reason to change, and those who won't touch technology with a bargepole.

You can ignore the first and third groups, and concentrate on the middle one. Then what you have to do is hone in on individuals, and here is where people make the classic mistake. They try to convince the teacher concerned that technology will allow them to do what they already are doing, but more effectively.

Even if you're not already wary of technology, that sounds suspiciously like a coded message:

"You're not doing as good a job as you could be doing, but don't worry, I can help."

Patronising, or what? And if you happen to be younger than the teacher concerned, the message is likely to be even less warmly received. So what is the answer?

Firstly, forget about doing the same stuff better. What is really interesting is doing stuff that you simply can't do at all with the 'old' technology.  It isn't only technology that can widen horizons, of course. One way of making children aware of what schools were like a hundred years ago is to arrange a trip in which they are immersed in a school environment of a hundred years ago, even down to the clothes and the curriculum.

Technology can help you widen children's horizons too, and thereby enrich their educational experience.

But there is another aspect too, and that is the psychological one. Stephen Potter, author of the one-upmanship books over fifty years ago, understood this very well. His books, whilst humorous, had a serious side to them too. Predicated on the axiom that if you're not "one up" then you're "one down", the books are full of psychological insights into human behaviour, and quite often recommend a course of action that is the exact opposite of that which one might naturally adopt.

To give you a quick idea of what I am talking about, take just one idea from Gamesmanship (subtitled: The art of winning games without actually cheating"). Potter says:

"... it is unsporting, and therefore not gamesmanship, to go in, eg, for a loud nose blow, say, at billiards, or to chalk your cue squeakingly, when [your adversary] is either making or considering a shot."

He goes on to say, however, that it is perfectly legitimate to whistle a tune whilst taking your own shot -- especially if you keep getting the same note wrong. That would be virtually guaranteed to get your opponent so agitated that he or she would start to make silly mistakes.

(Unfortunately, most of the 'Upmanship' books are out of print, although it's worth looking on Amazon for used copies. I've placed a link to one called 'One Upmanship' on my Amazon Books page.)

So, back to the subject in hand, and I think that a pertinent section from Lifemanship (the application of the principles of Gamesmanship to everyday life) is Woomanship, which is about how to attract a member of the opposite sex. There's a section called "Triangulation, or Third Person Play", which recommends the following, if you are in a situation in which the person in whom you are interested is being suited by another:

"The wooman if he knows his business will, as soon as he knows the identity of this Second Man, leave the girl almost unattended, if necessary for days on end, and make a thorough examination of this person, observe, make discreet enquiries at his place of employment. And then, once he is thoroughly acquainted with the Second Man's character, he can woo with a clear mind and heart. For he will know what to do. He must be sure that his character, habits, hobbies, tastes and mannerisms are the precise opposite of his rival's."

Now, if you stop to think about it, this is brilliant psychology. What's the point of trying to be like the girl's current suitor or boyfriend? She already has him! The only sensible course of action (assuming you accept the basic premises of this situation in the first place, of course!) is to be the complete opposite.

I would contend that the same applies when it comes to winning someone over to the joys of technology. There is little point in trying to convince them that they will get better grades, if the grades they are getting are already good. There is no point in being incredibly exuberant, because that just turns people off: there is nothing worse than a friend who has just discovered a new religion/holiday resort/musician/health food, because they just never stop going on about it. In the end, they achieve the reverse of what they intended.

A far better approach would be to adopt the opposite attitude, which in this case would be almost complete indifference. Yes, be available to help people, lower the barriers to entry, as it were, but don't go overboard. For example, rather than say:

"I've seen this fantastic new program that will transform your teaching of geography overnight",

say:

"I don't know if you're interested, but I've come across this geography program. I don't even know if it's any good. I was wondering if you could look at it and let me know what you think, like is it worth getting? But if you're a bit busy, it doesn't matter."

In other words, place him/her in the position of the expert (which they are, actually) whose advice you are seeking. Most people respond well to being approached in that sort of way.

Although this is not ostensibly the same as the romantic situation described above, there are similarities. The teacher already has an attachment (to traditional ways of teaching). You are trying to woo them away from all that. It's a clear case of needing to understand a little bit of human psychology, rather than a great deal about educational technology.

New Year Greetings

Call me boring, but I am really looking forward to a quiet night in, knowing that nobody is likely to phone because everyone I know will be out celebrating.

In fact, I have followed the example of Joe Cocker in his song "Dangerous Mood":

I parked the car down the street,

And I unplugged the phone,

So it would look just like

Ain't nobody home.

Nevertheless, I haven't quite reached the stage of grumpy-old-man-ness which adopts the philosophy that if I'm not partying, why should anyone else be? So I, together with Elaine, would like to wish you an enjoyable night, and a happy and prosperous new year. Let the Noughties begin!

Web 2.0 For Rookies: Embedding

In this series I'm looking at Web 2.0 for the benefit of the complete novice. If you would like to get your colleagues or, conceivably, even some students up to speed, these articles should help. At least, I hope they will provide a good starting point. In this one, we look at the idea of 'embedding'.

You've almost certainly already seen examples of embedding. Go to any website where there's a video clip on the page, and you're looking at it in action. In other words, embedding is simply the act of inserting code into a web page or blog that puts the object right there on the page. This 'object' might be a video, a presentation, a document, a picture -- just about anything, in fact.

One thing that's important to bear in mind is that when you embed an object all you are really doing is inserting a link to it -- but a special type of link which puts the object itself, rather than the usual sort of blue underlined hyperlink, in front of people.

So, a reasonable question would be: why bother? After all, how much effort is it for people just to click on a link to take you to the object itself? There are several reasons why you might want to use embedding rather than plain old-fashioned linking.

Firstly, why encourage people to leave your site when you don't have to? Go into a department store and you'll notice that there is, say, a Costa coffee bar: not a sign telling you where the nearest Costa is on the high street, but Costa itself. Embedding is the same sort of idea.

Secondly, in some cases you might not want people to go off-site because you have an enclosed space like a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) or Learning Platform.

Thirdly, if you have embedded more than one object in the page, it would become tedious for the reader to have to keep going somewhere else, and then coming pack to the original page.

And fourthly, as implied by the previous point, placing the object where the reader is, rather than expecting the reader to go to where the object is, provides a service to the reader -- a bit like meals on wheels.

A couple of things to bear in mind about embedding are as follows.

Firstly, because the embed code is really just another kind of link, if the object itself is moved or deleted, or if access to it is blocked, then embedding it won't do you any good. For example, if YouTube is banned in your school, there's no point in trying to embed a YouTube video.

Secondly, if YouTube, say, is not banned in your school, you might still want to place some sort of disclaimer on the page to the effect that you can't guarantee that the object will always be available. Teachers need to understand this, because if they have prepared a lesson based on watching an embedded video, and that video is no longer there when they start their lesson, they need to have something else to fall back on (which is good practice anyway).

Thirdly, although embedding an object is not the same as downloading it and then uploading it onto your own website, you should still be aware of copyright issues. Some sites specifically state that you're allowed to use their materials for educational purposes. With those that don't, you may wish to seek permission. Where this is impractical, my own suggestion would be to make sure you include citation information if this isn't obvious. For example, a video hosted on YouTube will have the YouTube logo embedded in it, but a photo from Flickr won't have any such logo, so a proper citation is in order -- assuming the owner has allowed people to use his or her photos in the first place.

Example of a video embed codeHow do you go about embedding an object? In the case of YouTube or TeacherTube, the embed code you need will be right there on the page, as illustrated in this screenshot. You select the code by clicking in it and pressing Ctrl-A, and then copy it to the clipboard by pressing Ctrl-C. Then, in your blog editor, find a button labelled 'Source' or 'HTML', click on it, and paste the code there by pressing Ctrl -V. If you paste it into the normal editing window, all people will see is the embed code. (Note that some blogging platforms, such as Squarespace, which is what I use, have a facility which enables you to paste the code into a special window without having to find the Source area.)

What if it's your own video, hosted on your own website, or the school's server, or your Local Authority's server, that you wish to embed? Where do you get the embed code from? The best site I've come across for this is the Video Codemaker site.

To embed a picture from Flickr, go to the size of the photo you want to use (by clicking on the label 'All sizes' above the picture), and copy the code under the heading 'Copy and paste this HTML into your webpage:'.

But why stop at video? The article, How to embed almost anything in your website is very good, with instructions on how to embed files of all descriptions in your website or blog. The only thing I would say is ignore the instructions for embedding video: they're far too unwieldy. Use the Video Codemaker site instead.

Finally, don't forget to check out the other articles in this series by looking in the alphabetical index for 'Web 2.0 for Rookies...'.

Targets and Technology: 4 Ways to Show That You’re On Track

One of the problems with targets is that, in order to show that you’re meeting them, the temptation to cheat becomes greater and greater. Perhaps ‘cheat’ is too strong a word. After all, what goes hand-in-hand with targets is back-covering. Don’t be surprised if people start to spend a disproportionate amount of time showing that they’ve met their targets, even assuming they are still pursuing targets worth bothering about. This is one of the things I’ll be covering in my seminar at BETT, Driving Your Vision (and I’ll be suggesting an antidote too!).

The Daily Telegraph reported recently that some police forces in Britain are spending their last hour of the day in the police station compiling notes of who they spoke to during the day – in order to prove that they are meeting their target of being visible to the public.

Think about that for a moment.

If the police, or any other group for that matter, are spending time proving that they are meeting a target, and thereby not meeting that target at that particular time, something has gone wrong somewhere. However, let’s be realistic: target-setting is no bad thing in itself – quite the reverse, in fact. But it’s surprising that the police appear not to be using a technological solution to their dilemma. Here are four suggestions to start with:

• Some years ago I was working with a programmer in a Local Authority to make it possible for the educational advisory staff to log their visits and interactions without having to spend hours writing up their notes afterwards. By the time we’d finished, it was possible to log the results of a two hour meeting in about 5 minutes, including sending emails to any other officer who needed to be kept informed.
  
  We were also working on a mobile version that enabled staff to log the results without even coming back to base. The program we were using was based on Lotus Notes, and was a real time-saver.
• We’ve watched local traffic wardens at work. I’m not sure exactly how they work (I did try to find out once but the person was very unforthcoming: he probably thought I wanted to know how to ‘get away with’ parking where I shouldn’t). But what they seem to do is take a digital photo of the car’s number plate, and then press a button and print out a ticket.
  
  Why can’t the police do that? They could issue a ticket to every person they meet, possibly in the form of a sticker people could wear on their lapel. In the case of miscreants, they could take a photo too, which could be beamed automatically back to the police station (the Press Association uses a camera that works in this sort of way). If someone is given 5 ‘warning’ stickers, maybe they could be given an Antisocial Behaviour Order (ASBO)) straight away.
• A simple solution would be for the police to wear headcams all day. The resulting record would be proof in itself of being visible to the public, with the added advantage, if streaming in real time, of alerting the people ‘back at the ranch’ when trouble was brewing.
• And why not give all police a GPS-enabled device that would show, in real time on Google Maps, where each one is at any given moment? It would be easy to tell from that data if they are fulfilling their requirement to be visible.

And, of course, these solutions are not mutually exclusive.

Admittedly, I’ve been slightly tongue-in-cheek in this article, but that’s more a reflection of the time of day and the time of year I’m writing. On a serious note, why would any profession in this day and age spend time and labour compiling or completing records when there is almost certainly a perfectly good technological alternative either readily available, or which could be created?

These are issues you might wish to discuss with your students. You will almost certainly touch on other things, such as:

• Can technological systems be relied upon?
• Is there a danger of too much data being generated?
• What about the privacy aspects: would you like to be photographed or filmed every time you speak to a policeman – or whenever you happen to be ‘in shot’ when someone else does?
• What about the unintended consequences? For example, would anyone want to talk to a policeman wearing a headcam?
• What about dignity? When the headcam wearer removed or switched off his headcam to go to the toilet, that would be like broadcasting their intentions; and will someone back at base be standing there with a stopwatch timing them?
• Would some people go out of their way to collect as many stickers as possible, thereby preventing the police doing their real job?
• Is all this using a sledgehammer to crack a nut? In the days when we had police on the streets, I was a lot younger, but their presence seemed to me to be visible as a matter of fact: nobody needed to prove it.
• Leading on from that last point, does having the technological means to solve a problem induce a form of laziness in which we don’t question whether the problem is actually worth solving?

It would be interesting to hear what your views are on such matters, and the views of your students of course.

Web 2.0 For Rookies: What is a Wiki?

A wiki can best be defined as a web page which can be easily edited. The emphasis here is on the word ‘easily’. It’s true that editing web pages these days is far easier than it once was. Programs like FrontPage and Dreamweaver have made it a simple task to create nice-looking pages without knowing much about HTML, the underlying coding that makes web pages work. Also, programs like these get rid of the need to have to design each new page from scratch. Nevertheless, there is still a certain degree of skill involved, and in any case, the problem with locally-installed programs like these is that anyone to whom you give editing rights has to be on your computer.

Enter the wiki, a special type of web page which can be edited by anyone no matter where they are. All they need is your permission, ie user rights, to be able to do certain things, and access to the internet. The question arises, however, why exactly might the facility  to edit a web page be of any use to anyone except yourself?

The answer lies in that magic word, ‘collaboration’. Placing stuff on a web page makes it easy for anyone to see it. Placing it on a wiki makes it easy for anyone to contribute. There are lots of ways in which you could use a wiki in an educational setting. For example, it really lends itself to collaborative writing, especially where the pupils doing the collaborating are in different schools or even different countries.

OK, you say: why not use a word processor? Well, for a start, sending a word processed file backwards and forwards between two people may be just about workable, even though it can be slow and clunky. But between three, four or more people? Forget it. The version control alone is a nightmare. In my experience, it doesn’t matter how much effort you put into making sure people save it in a particular way, someone will always find a way around it and save the latest version as ‘Fred’ or something equally useful.

In any case, being a web page, a wiki lends itself to including far more than text. For example, you can embed videos too, as can be seen on wikis like the Flat Classroom project.

In fact, the Flat Classroom is an example of a huge wiki which involves lots of people in several countries collaborating, and potentially editing the pages more or less at the same time. Although there can be a danger of someone’s edits being lost because someone else saved a different version at the same time, in the last five years that has only happened to me once. It’s highly unlikely, but the solution as always is very straightforward: save your edits frequently, and if you see that someone else is editing the file at the same time as you, leave it and come back later just to be on the safe side.

The most famous example of a wiki is Wikipedia, an encyclopaedia which has been created and expanded by anyone who wished to contribute (although some restrictions have been imposed recently because of false information being published, and no doubt genuine information being unpublished).

Another example is Wikibooks, which enables anyone to help create a textbook. I have to say I don’t much like this idea, as I prefer textbooks to be written by people I regard as experts, which is difficult to surmise from anonymous entries, and who can explain things well (I looked at an explanation of the concept of marginal utility, a term used in Economics, and thought it clumsy and not very informative; I realise that one swallow doesn’t make a summer, but I think it’s illustrative). Also, I am not sure why any autodidactic student would use a book created in this way when there is no guarantee that the information in it is accurate; I for one would not entrust my examination success to a wikibook, but perhaps that’s just me.

Whatever your opinion, it’s important to distinguish between the tool, in this case a wiki, and what it might be used for.

If you’re involved in drafting policy documents then wikis can be a great time-saver. I’ve been in the situation of having a Word document doing the rounds, and when twenty or more people have to be consulted, that approach can be a nightmare: give me a wiki any day!

An excellent book on this aspect of using wikis (amongst others) is Wikified Schools, by Stephanie Sandifer, which I reviewed in Computers in Classrooms.

An important way in which wikis lend themselves to this sort of work is that they automatically record a history of changes, so you can always go back to a version which was, if I can put it like this, several changes ago. I especially like Wikispaces because it has a discussion facility, so you can discuss the changes which have been made, or which are being proposed.

So can anybody view or edit your wiki pages  ad infinitum? No, because in at least two wiki applications I know of you can choose whether or not to make your wiki visible to the public, and whether or not they can edit it, and to what extent. These applications are generally free to use, but having extra facilities such as keeping your pages completely private, or being able to assign different levels of rights, sometimes come at a premium. You can also lock the file to prevent further editing.

Examples of wikis include Wikispaces, which I’ve already mentioned, which has a great free version for school use, PB Works, ditto and Google Docs, with Google Wave for all on the horizon.

Finally, don't forget to check out the other articles in this series by looking in the alphabetical index for 'Web 2.0 for Rookies...'.

Web 2.0 For Rookies: What is a Podcast?

A podcast is a recording in digital format that you can listen to online, or download to your computer, and transfer to a portable device like an iPod. In fact, the name 'podcast' derives from the name 'iPod' -- but you don't need an iPod to listen to podcasts.

In many respects, podcasts as an educational tool will be familiar to even 'traditional' teachers. For many years, schools have made use of radio programmes and other recordings, and have incorporated the making of recordings into classroom practice. There are, however, important differences between podcasts and these older types of recording.

The main difference lies in the use which podcasts make of RSS feeds. By subscribing to a podcast's RSS feed you can ensure that you will automatically receive each new episode without having to make a special effort to go looking for the latest one.

There are differences, too, in the making of recordings these days. For a start, recording devices are a lot smaller than they used to be. Indeed, you could use an ordinary mp3 player as long as it is able to record, although I prefer to use a dedicated device like the Edirol recorders, which I find give superb results even where there is a lot of background noise.

Editing is easier as well. In the old days of reel-to-reel tape recorders it could take a long time finding the section you wanted to cut out, and then cut it out, and then splice the two ends of the tape together again. Cutting out was pretty much the only editing option open to the amateur, unless you had access to some fancy equipment that would allow you to add a musical sound track or sound effects. But there was little scope for subtleties like fading the music out and the commentator's voice in -- at least, not in the normal run of things in a classroom situation.

Not only that, but the results of cutting bits out were often jarring to listen to, and the process physically weakened the tape.

When cassette recorders appeared, editing was more or less out of the question altogether. Although there were editing tools available, the facts that (a) the format was so small and (b) most of the tape was enclosed made editing impossible to all intents and purposes.

Editing now is so much easier. Using a program like Audacity means that you can see what needs sorting out, so the process is less hit and miss. You can cross-fade, amplify soft parts, add music, and easily cut out gaffes. And you can do all this without fear of making a fatal error, as long as you make sure you've backed up the original recording first, and without weakening the quality. Best of all, Audacity won't cost you a penny.

Podcasting has a place in every area of the curriculum. Youngsters can have fun and be creative by making their own radio programme. They can even include interviews with people from abroad by using Skype together with a Skype recording program.

A number of projects in the Web 2.0 Projects Books make use of podcasting, so you may like to have a browse through that for some ideas. The original edition is still available from http://www.ictineducation.org/free-stuff/. Not all of the links work now, but the ideas still do. The second edition will be out in January 2010, so look out for announcements for that.

One thing which has to be said is that, strictly speaking, a podcast is not Web 2.0, because it doesn't easily lend itself to collaboration with others, in the sense of editing the recording itself. However, people can leave comments if you create a blog to go with the podcast series, or if you have the podcast hosted on Podomatic, and the use of the RSS feed makes it worthy of being included in the Web 2.0 panoply. Besides, a well-made podcast should not only encourage others to comment, but will have involved pupils collaborating with each other in order to make it in the first place.

If this article has whet your appetite for creating a podcast, have a look at this how-to article. You will probably also find my account of my visit to the John Hanson Community School interesting.

My own efforts at podcasting may be found on Podomatic.

Finally, don't forget to check out the other articles in this series by looking in the alphabetical index for 'Web 2.0 for Rookies...'.

Review of The Making of a Digital World

The Making of a Digital World has a very promising subtitle: The Evolution of Technological Change and How It Shaped Our World. It sounds like a more academic version of Thomas Friedman's 'The World is Flat' – and in many respects it is. To be more precise,

The central question of this book can be … formulated as follows: do the past patterns of global system development still hold true for its current transformation or are we witnessing a structurally different development, whether technologically induced or the result of its increased complexity?

The book is certainly detailed: the wealth of historical data and the breadth of literature cited are impressive.

Unfortunately, however, I found the book to be almost unreadable. Now I realise that some may protest that academic books are not meant to be readable: they are there to be consulted, which is not quite the same thing. I would have to disagree: the best written work is always gripping, even if it is intellectually alien. For example, I sometimes read Scientific American. The technical terminology used in some of the articles renders large parts of them effectively inaccessible – but that does not prevent my enjoying the bits I do understand.

Not so with this book. Long and complex sentences (such as the one quoted at the beginning of this review) do not make the reading easy. But it's not just that: the book is also – there is no nice way of saying this – poorly written. Take the following sentence, for example, which I do not think is atypical of the book as a whole (although it is one of the worst examples):

This process is nested in the process in what Modelski terms the active zone process, defined as the spatial locus of innovation the world system, representing the political process driving the world system evolution, and unfolding over a period of roughly two thousand years (again separated into four phases).

Dorothy Parker once said, in reviewing a book,

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

I dread to think what she would have done with this book.

So, is there anything positive I can say about it? Well, there is the enormous amount of data it contains, along with references for further reading. The author has done an impressive job of drawing together many disparate sources into an overarching conceptual framework. I have to say that the price is somewhat alarming, but if you can persuade your local library to stock it you might use it for source material for assignments and discussions.

Bottom line:

Try to persuade your nearest library to buy it.

Season's Greetings

White ChristmasElaine and I wish a Happy Christmas to all our readers and subscribers.

Web 2.0 For Rookies: What Is Microblogging?

In this series I explain in plain and simple terms what various web 2.0 concepts and applications are. Items covered so far are Web 2.0 itself and blogs. This time, microblogs are under the microscope.

Microblogging is a form of blogging in which the length of each post is limited to a certain number of characters. Usually this is set at 140, but in some cases it is 160, the same as sms (text) messages.

So what can you use this sort of thing for? In other words, what's the point?

The best-known of these services is, probably, Twitter. To some extent, and certainly at first, its value was doubtful because, believe it or not, nobody really cares what you had for breakfast or that you're going to watch Neighbours.

But there are more serious uses. For example, teacher Chris Leach used Twitter to help his class of primary (elementary) school children understand the Gunpowder Plot, as you can read in the Web 2.0 Projects Book (2nd Edition) -- look out for that in the Free Stuff area of this website -- and in this summary.

Another popular use is as a means of recording what a speaker at a conference is saying, which can be especially useful to colleagues who were unable to attend.

It can also be used as what is called a 'back channel', which is a conversation between members of the audience about what the speaker is saying. Sometimes this can be quite useful, with people dropping in useful links and their own insights.

You could also use it in lessons, such as asking the students to have a meaningful debate through Twitter, or to write film of book reviews. It sounds impossible, but in fact the 140 character limit really focuses the mind and forces you to cut out excess verbiage. It also encourages 'sms-speak', which some educators do not approve of.

One of the most common uses of Twitter is to pass on information about useful resources. Indeed, I regard this as essential to my attempts to keep up with all the developments in education and educational technology. As part of this dissemination process, some people (including myself) use Twitter to announce the posting of new articles on their blog. You can use a service like Twitterfeed to automate this through the use of your blog's RSS feed .A school could use this facility to let parents know when something new has appeared on the school website. For this to work, you'd have to set up a Twitter account for the school, and then try to encourage parents to sign up to Twitter and then 'follow' the school.

Topics of interest can be assigned a hashtag, eg #myconf. By entering the hashtag, 'tweeters' can help to ensure that their post will be picked up by anyone keeping track of that hashtag.

Twitter also has a list facility, which enables you to join or create lists of people in Twitter whom you'd like to 'follow': following someone means that you are more likely to see their messages than if you weren't following them.

Twitter is not the only game in town as far as microblogging is concerned. There are two others which are especially suited to education, these being Edmodo and Cirip. Each of these allows you to create groups, which can be very useful, and its worth exploring their features to see which one is right for you. or example, Edmodo allows you to upload files, whilst cirip lets you include pictures and even video clips in your posts, and to create or join private groups. Don't let the fact that it's Romanian put you off: there's an English version of the website. ave a look at José Picardo's article on Edmodo, and the related articles he lists at the bottom of the page.

A moment ago I mentioned reviews. There's a service called Blippr which is specifically set up to enable you to review books, music and films in 160 characters. Moreover, it incorporates elements of social networking because you can easily see and interact with others who have reviewed the same thing. Obviously, though, this has implications for e-safety, as does any kind of open online space. The same applies to the similarly-named Blip, which lets you create playlists of music tracks, which you can also review, and connecxt with others who share your taste in music.

One last thing: the groups facility in Edmodo and Cirip could be used in the service of admin. I think if I were still a Head of Department I would seriously consider setting up a group for my team, to enable us to quickly and easily exchange notes, news, links and other resources.

In conclusion, blogging and microblogging are two very different, but potentially complementary, manifestations of Web 2.0. 

Update on 2009-12-24 11:14 by Terry Freedman, Educational ICT Consultant

Carmen Holotescu, who first told me about Cirip (a fact I forgot to mention in the article) has told me about these further articles about microblogging.

Authorised Madness

I offer this rant partly to get things off my chest -- I think I now officially qualify for the title "grumpy old man", even though I don't much care for the "old" part -- but even more so as a topic which teachers may like to raise with their students. The basic question is, I think, is technology being used inappropriately, or intrusively or even, ultimately, ridiculously?

I visited my local supermarket yesterday and decided to use the self-service check-out. This is a very advanced service which seems to require there to be at least two members of staff on hand at all times in order to sort out the problems it comes up with. If I tell you that I, of all people, have developed what amounts to a phobia about using it you may get a sense of how awful I think it is most of the time.

It isn't that the problems which arise are terrible in themselves, just that it's so embarrassing when a line of people is building up behind you. And that's another thing: it works perfectly when nobody else is around....

Just to put the positive side to the equation, I will admit to having found it much faster, sometimes, than the normal check-out, and it is undoubtedly more fun. There is a video game-type display showing you what to do, and a voice which guides you though the process.  That voice is female and was chosen, I am certain, to sooth the nerves of people such as myself and thereby prevent acts of vandalism directed towards the machinery.

But yesterday even I was floored by a message that appeared on the screen.

Before going any further, I have to inform non-UK residents that we in England have reached the point where anyone who sells anything is scared to death of being sued. Thus it is that if you buy a drink from a fast food outlet you'll see a notice on the cup informing you that the contents may be hot -- even if you've purchased an iced tea. On foodstuffs, just about everything contains the warning, "May contain nuts". Bizarrely, bags of nuts do not come with such a warning. I must contact my attorney....

Even food which could not possibly contain anything even resembling a nut comes with the caution that it may contain traces of nuts, or that it was processed on machinery that may once have been used to process nuts.

Medicine packets list every single possible side effect of the contents therein. So, if 3 years ago someone took one of these tablets and then 2 weeks later his left leg dropped off, one of the possible side effects listed will be "May cause leg to drop off."

Back to the supermarket. The way it works is that you scan the item, then drop it into a plastic bag. The item shows up on the screen, then you're ready to put the next one on. One of the items last night was a box of painkillers. I scanned it, dropped it in the bag, and then had a warning message appear reading something like: "You have bought painkillers. You cannot buy any more unless you are authorised to do so. Are you authorised to do so? Yes/No"

Authorised? By whom? My mother? The store manager? I pressed "Yes" and it let me continue. In discussion with my wife we decided that it must be the store's way of protecting itself against prosecution by the families of people who decide to end it all by taking an overdose of painkillers. Presumably such people are too depressed to think about buying one huge box, buying several small boxes in several shops, or just to press "Yes". Perhaps there is some law that states that nobody is allowed to sell anyone more than one box of painkillers at a time.

Perhaps this idea could be extended to other areas of modern life? How about this: when you press the button on a traffic light, suppose a message came up: "Crossing the road is dangerous. Have you been authorised to do so?"

Homes could be fitted with such a system, so that as you go out of the house you're warned that "There are muggers and drunk drivers out there. Don't do it!" And when you put your key in the door to come in: "You do realise, I hope, that most accidents happen in the home? Do yourself a favour and head to the nearest hotel. Here's a list of the nearest ones which have vacancies..."

And by the way, I do hope you've printed this out to read. Computers use electricity, and electricity is dangerous. Make sure you've been authorised.


Mad Blogger: 2 Tools for the Literacy Classroom

I'm always having ideas for articles. I've got more ideas than time. Somehow, I can often 'write' a story in my mind. Then I have to go through the labourious process of actually producing it. If only there was a way of connecting my brain directly to a word processor....

In the tradition of the kind of comics I consumed in my misspent youth, I have created this 'mad blogger', aka 'mad scientist':

 Mad BloggerThis is how I did it:

1. I went to Be Funky.
2. I took a snapshot of myself with my webcam (although I could have uploaded a photo instead had I wished to).
3. Once the photo had been taken I chose one of the Pop Art special effects - but there are loads of other categories I could have selected instead.
4. I saved the completed picture to my desktop. All of this was seamless, but it would be nice if Be Funky had an effects preview window, because it's a bit trial-and-error. But hey, it's free: what am I complaining about?
5. Then I went to Say What?, where I uploaded the picture I'd just saved.
6. Adding speech bubbles was dead easy, thanks to the brief but accurate guidance on the page.
7. Once finished, I saved the picture to my desktop once again, and you're looking at the result.

Total time? Maybe 10 minutes at the most.

But I've written this back-to-front. Here's how I should have written it:

I wanted to write something -- anything -- and illustrate it with a Roy Lichtenstein-like drawing. Obviously I couldn't simply use one of Lichtenstein's paintings without probably either landing myself in court or paying a fortune in licence fees. I needed an alternative.

Drawing an original cartoon was out of the question. I can draw cartoon faces, but I don't have the patience to paint in all the dots that give Lichtenstein's paintings that printed comic book effect. (He actually painted scenes from comic books.) I needed a program to do the work for me.

Searching for something like "free online cartoon-making program" led me to Be Funky. Subsequently, searching for "free speech bubble program" steered me towards the Say What? application.

In other words, the two applications helped me solve the problem of: "How can I illustrate my article with a comic-style picture without spending all night on it or ending up bankrupt?"

That is why I think these two applications belong especially in the toolkit of the literacy staff in schools, as well as the more obvious places such as Art and ICT.

Writers I like: Lucy Kellaway

I've been thinking for a while of starting a new series about blogs I like to read or podcasts I like to listen to or watch. I may still do one specifically about podcasts, but for now I have plumped for the title "Writers I like" because that will encompass journalists and others as well as bloggers.

I've started the series with Lucy Kellaway, not because she writes anything about educational technology (as far as I know), but for the following reasons:

• As the holiday season nears I intend to take a short break and not think about ICT for a day or two. One of the things I hope to be doing instead is catching up with blogs, columns and podcasts I've fallen behind on. Lucy Kellaway's is top of my list.
• She writes about (bad) management. Bad management is bad management is bad management, wherever it appears. We can learn much from the example of those who get it wrong.
• She produces a podcast as well as a column (one is a spoken version of the other), thereby straddling two of my categories.

What I especially like about Kellaway's work is that it cuts straight to the quick, and is fearless. I don't know what it's like in other fields, but in education a lot of people are frightened to point out the emperor's new clothes in case it turns out to be, in the memorable phrase of one of my previous line managers, a 'career-limiting statement'.

Whether giving answers in her 'agony aunt' column called 'Dear Lucy', nominating businesses for her annual Twaddle Awards or in her weekly column/podcast, Kellaway slices through the BS in a witty, acerbic style.

Thanks to her, I recently discovered David Thorne's blog, which is hilarious (read the email exchange headed 'Please design a logo for me. With pie charts.', unless you are of a sensitive nature: the language gets a bit fruity).

Business leaders are lucky (although they may not think so) to have Lucy Kellaway. I'm not aware of anybody who performs the same role in education since Ted Wragg died (there's a link to a collection of his articles in my Amazon Books page).

It's slightly frustrating that you have to register on the Financial Times website to be able to read more than 2 articles a month - and slightly bizarre too given that you can subscribe to the feed readers of her column and podcast. You'll find her on the Lucy Kellaway page. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Web 2.0 For Rookies: What is a Blog?

This series, as explained earlier, is intended to give people a flavour of what Web 2.0 is all about in as non-technical a way as possible. This time we look at blogs.

I think it would be true to say that many people have heard of blogs and have a vague notion of what they are. What a lot of people struggle with, however, is the question: What's the point of them?

First things first. A blog, short for 'web log', is a kind of website where you can do four things very easily:

Firstly, you can write new content without much ado. Sure, you can write new content on an ordinary website, but that usually means thinking about what kind of editor you're going to use to do so, how to link the new page to the rest of the site or how to change the content on an existing page without messing up the formatting. When you set up a blog you can, if you like, not worry about anything like that until you want to start exploring the possibilities. You can often even update the blog by sending an email from a mobile phone, or a picture from a phone or a camera.

Secondly, you can get the word out very easily that you've updated the website. Often, the platform you use will automatically create an RSS feed, which is the means by which people find out there's been an update without having to visit your website itself just on the off-chance in order to check.

Thirdly, and this is key, the default setting in a blog is to allow people to comment on what you've written. That's what turns a website from a repository of content to an area where discussion is positively encouraged.

Fourthly, you can quickly publish your work to a potentially worldwide audience. You can do that through a normal website too, but having an RSS feed plus the commenting facility makes the idea of a global audience much more likely to be realised.

Setting up a blog is easy: just go to http://www,blogspot.com and follow the instructions, and you'll be up and running in less than 10 minutes. In fact, the hardest thing will be to think of a name for your blog.

But let's move on to the question of: so what? There are a number of ways in which blogs can be, and have been, used in education:

As a personal learning journal. If you're doing a course, such as an MA, you could use a blog to record papers you've come across and your thoughts on them. You can then refer to these notes -- which nobody else need see -- when preparing essays. You could do the same on paper, of course, but a blog is accessible from anywhere in the world, more or less, and you can't cut and paste URLs and references using pen and paper.

As a diary of feelings or events. This is, I believe, how blogging started in the first place: with people keeping a diary, a log, of their activities.

As a place to do some creative writing. Or just to think aloud.

As a place to show off, and easily update, your creative portfolio. That could be writing, artwork, photography -- you name it. Next time an editor requests a sample of your work, point them to your blog.

As a place to keep, and update, your CV (Resume). Not necessarily the whole thing, but for the headline roles you've had and skills you possess. Interested parties will ask for the 'real thing' if they like wht they see online.

As a means of keeping a group of students informed. If you have a blog to which you publish new links and assignments every week, students can access that from home, their library or even, potentially, their local shopping mall.

As a means of obtaining students' thoughts and feedback, either by giving them the access rights to write blog posts themselves, or by encouraging them to comment on yours.

As a means of engaging students, either to record what went on in the lesson (see, for example, The Scribe Post by Darren Kuropatwa)or as a means of encouraging kids to write.

If the idea of having your students blog appeals to you, look into ClassBlogMeister from David Warlick.
You'll also want to read the relevant sections in Coming of Age: An Introduction to the NEW Worldwide Web, and browse through the many projects in the Web 2.0 Projects Book, both of which can be found in the 'Free Stuff' area of this website.

And look out for the utterly fantastic updated version of the projects book and, if you're in London in January 2010, my seminar on the subject. You can read all about these wonderful developments in my original article  in this series!

Déjà Vu

It's quite possible that sometimes when you read an article on this website you have the feeling that you've seen it somewhere before. If so, there's a reason for that.

I'm slowly going through the original ICT in Education website and semi-republishing some articles on this new website.

Semi-republishing? Well, things change so rapidly in technology, and in education policy, that I don't want to just republish articles without evaluating their content. Some articles are of their time and would not warrant republishing. Others stand up to scrutiny but require a fresh coat of paint in the form of an update. Others may no longer be apposite, but having been conceived in a particular set of circumstances and at a particular time are of some historical or curiosity value.

All of which is why I haven't simply moved everything to the new website lock, stock and barrel.

If you're wondering why I am doing this at all, it's in order to give some of the more popular articles a new lease of life by exposing them to a new audience. One of the big problems with the original website, one of the main reasons for starting a new one from scratch, is that it's so hard to find anything. Even if I were to write an article pointing people towards some of the older ones it would soon be lost without trace.

Why not add a widget? I think I have already explained my reasons in one of the Wasteful Widgets articles.

It's been interesting to see how many times each semi-republished article has been read. In some cases, thousands of times in a couple of days. You'd think that an article several years old would have no life in it, but you could be wrong.

So what have I learnt from this?

Firstly, it is definitely worth revisiting older articles every so often and seeing if they need updating, need complete rewriting, or should just be left alone. Blogs and websites are not newspapers or magazines: you can change old articles with ease and impunity.

Secondly, it is much more useful, and much more of a service to readers I believe, to review old articles every so often than to simply point people towards them.

Thirdly, looking at articles from a few years ago (or sometimes even more recent than that is quite revealing of either issues going on at the time or one's attitudes towards them -- or both.

So, although you may have a feeling of déjà view occasionally when trawling through this site, rest assured that the previously-published articles have been reviewed for relevance and changed or added to where necessary.

Thus, even an article is exactly the same as it was originally, it has still been subject to scrutiny. (Presumably that means that, in some sense, the two articles -- the original and the new -- are not the same at all. I see no practical value of pursuing this line of thought, but if you have some time you may find it amusing to read 'Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote', in the Fictions anthology of Borges' short stories (which is listed on my books page. In the story, Menard attempts to make up for the shortcomings of the original Don Quixote story:

"Menard did not want to copy the book; his goal was to write a few pages independently, which would coincide, "word for word, and line for line," with the original version by the author."

This is followed by a comparison of two extracts, one by Cervantes, the other by Menard; the extracts are identical.)

Coming back to the real world, it strikes me that a really interesting exercise would be to ask students to look at a story or an essay they wrote a year ago, and 'correct' it if necessary. Tools like wikis or the revision features in Office suites make this very easy to do without losing the original.

Being able to see, in a very visual way, what changes have been made could be very instrumental in getting a decent discussion going.

Just a thought.

A Touch of Humanity

It is a sad but incontrovertible fact that one of the unfortunate effects of technology is that it provides some people with the excuse they need to abrogate all sense of personal responsibility or discretion. Note that I don't say the rise of technology causes people to behave in particular ways, just that it creates conditions in which such people can thrive.

This was epitomised and satirised by the Little Britain sketches on the theme of 'The computer says 'no'!" (See below for an example.)

Automated menus are another manifestation of this phenomenon. The worst ones are the ones where you end up in a sort of closed time loop, in which, after ten minutes of increasingly 'niche' destinations you end up in the same menu you started at.

Possibly the absolute worst one was the one which, after ten minutes getting me to the extension I wanted, announced that the office was now closed and that I should try again in the morning. I quite like the automated answering machine script in this context.

The Oyster CardYesterday I raced for a bus and placed my Oyster Card against the automated reader. The Oyster Card is a kind of cashless travel ticket that stores details of all your journeys on the Transport for London system. It probably also stores how many cups of coffee you've consumed, the point you're at on your circadian rhythm cycle and details of your DNA.

The wretched machine bleeped twice.

"What does that mean?", I asked.

"It means you haven't got any money left on the card", came the response.

"OK, how much is it then?"

"Two pounds."

"Two pounds?!" I exclaimed. "Good grief."

I rummaged around for some money, but found just a few loose coins.

"Can you change a ten pound note?" I asked.

"Where are you going?"

"The station".

"Forget it", said the driver.

"Really?", I said. "You are a gentleman, Sir."

In times gone by I would have written to the bus company, giving the time and route on which I was travelling, to thank them for such commendable service. If I did that now, he'd probably lose his job for not following some set of rules to the letter.

But it was a pleasant experience to meet someone who could exercise a bit of judgement, and show a touch of humanity.

Web 2.0 For Rookies: What Is Web 2.0?

I think it's all too easy to assume that everyone knows about Web 2.0. Well, I am always coming across intelligent, well-informed people who don't know about it. So, this 'Rookie' series is for two sorts of people: those who don't know about Web 2.0, and those who do know about Web 2.0 (because they can send the articles to those who don't!).

Web 2.0 is so-called to distinguish it from the original experience of the world wide web. Traditionally, the web has been mainly a publishing medium, but in one direction only: from the publisher to the reader. That's great for making a lot of stuff available to a lot of people; not so great for having an interesting interaction, or 'conversation'.

Collaboration is what Web 2.0 is all aboutWeb 2.0 is sometimes referred to as the 'read-write web'. This nicely summarises the new web from the old: now you can write to it, ie contribute, rather than just read what someone else has written. You don't have to look very far to find examples of this: just add a comment to this article and you'll be doing it yourself.

Like many delineations, this one blurs at the edges. After all, long before 'Web 2.0' as such was born we had discussion forums to which anyone could contribute once they'd signed up. For a very good analysis of the different types of tools and interactions available, see the article by Miles Berry and Steve Lee in the free ebook Coming of Age: An Introduction to the NEW Worldwide Web, which is available from the 'Free Stuff' page on this website.

The delineations blur at the edges, too, when you have a practical decision to make, as I had recently, in whether or not to include a submission to a book about Web 2.0 projects. For example, one project involves the use of a cell phone and PowerPoint. Not much Web 2.0 in evidence there, you might say. But if the kids had used their own cell phones, and contributed to a SlideShare presentation, say, then it would have been Web 2.0.

In other words, I decided to take a pragmatic rather than a purist approach, a leaf I've taken out of the economists' book. Faced with endless debates about what money is, and whether X is money, near-money, or not money at all, economists have largely adopted the view that if it acts like money, if people use it as money, if people accept it as money, then it must be money.

In a similar way, my view of Web 2.0 is that if something lends itself to collaborative working and can be worked on over the web, let's call it Web 2.0. I'm sure that will upset the purists, but as far as I'm concerned it's a good practical definition which, hopefully, will make sense to 'rookies'. It makes sense to me, and I consider myself a perpetual 'rookie'.

Examples of Web 2.0 applications include blogs, wikis, online presentation tools, online photograph-sharing sites like Flickr and many, many more. For a good introduction to Web 2.0, download and read the aforementioned Coming of Age.

Also available from the same place is the Web 2.0 Projects Book, which contains around 60 projects undertaken by teachers using Web 2.0 applications. Not all of the links work now, but the ideas are still valid.

A brand new edition will soon be available, containing over 100 amazing projects. In fact, it will be officially launched at my seminar at the BETT Show 2010 entitled Amazing Web 2.0 Projects: Real projects in real classrooms with real kids! That would be a good place to gain an introduction to Web 2.0 if you're at BETT this year, but there are other seminars too as well as the Teachmeet event.

But if you can't get to BETT, not to worry: just follow this series and download the new projects book when it's available!

Big Brother Is Watching You

A weapon in the fight against drink-driving?I thought this an interesting picture. It reminds me of the scene in the 1956 version of the film '1984' in which Winston Smith is stopped by a police vehicle and questioned whilst walking along at night.

The poster itself is quite sinister, though it has a nice poetic touch.

I imagine that this photo could be used as the starting point for some creative writing, or a discussion about the pros and cons of CCTV in public areas.

Interestingly, the position of the poster -- high up on a lamp post, unlit, and facing the wrong way in a one way street -- is such that the only people likely to see it are those sitting in the back row of the upper storey of a double-decker bus looking backwards.

In other words, whilst the poster may well be sinister, it is also pretty pointless.