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Mobile makes a difference – always available #glew #EDUScotICT #glow #glowplus

I recall an occasion when my dad was involved in a road traffic crash.  He was alone in the car but fortunately had his recently obtained mobile phone with him.  He called me and I was able to travel to where he was and assist him to as we waited for the recovery vehicle to arrive.  My dads approach to mobile telephony was moulded by his experience up to that time, consequently he would only switch on the mobile when he needed to use it.  The suggestion that he should leave it switched on was a foreign concept to him.  He was more concerned about not running down its battery…..

Of course he had a telephone at home which was switched on all the time and that was acceptable.  If he was at home and I needed to contact him I could do this by calling the land-line. But if he weas out and about – even with his mobile – it is more than likely the case that it would be switched off.  This made his phone a one way device!!!!  From him to others but the reverse was not really feasible.

Today’s young people seem to become equipped with a mobile phone/device at a very early age and they are very comfortable with the idea that they are contactable at any time – day or night!!!!  In fact I observe that people in general seem to react to a mobile phone communication – SMS or voice call with a irritating priority.  How annoying it is when someone’s mobile phone rings when you are in mid conversation and they interrupt the conversation to take the call or respond to the SMS…….  Gone are the days when you might walk up to a person already in conversation with another and politely wait for them to end the conversation before engaging with the new one.  Seems all you need to do is SMS or make a mobile call to get their immediate attention. 😉

I don’t mean to over generalise on this matter but I do think that the introduction of mobile phones and their now almost universal availability, has had a marked affect on people in general.  Particularly, the young generation.  How often have you been on a train and been surrounded by people who have their heads bowed writing the next SMS reply, or playing a game, of interacting with friends on facebook  etc.

It seems to me that we do need to accept that “mobile” is now firmly embedded in or culture and we do need to recognise this in all aspects of life.  I can recall the time when I would interact with my friends only on a face to face basis – where as now relationships and associated commuications seem to be continuous and less dependant on physical proximity.

Schools have a habit of asking children to either not bring their mobile phones to school or to switch them off when in the classroom.  I feel that this is a matter that does need to be re-thought.  We should make use of this medium for the benefit of every child’s education. We should certainly consider that mobile phones are definitely now a defacto medium for communication for many/most people and embrace this as an acceptable way to reach learners (and teachers) more efficiently.  Is there a need to include phone etiquette basic social skill we want children to learn from an early age?

Lets also remember that the days where phone were a medium for only voice communications are truly in the past!  That time is history – we need to recognise that we can communicate and interact with people using voice, text, and graphic and even video using these devices that have now been firmly adopted by todays society.

I expect there will be people like my dad around for some time to some but lets face it, todays youth are now setting their own standards for communication in light of their adoption of mobile communications.  We can’t expect to get their attention if we continue supress this technology in our schools.  Just a thought!!

Network Fit for Purpose? #glow #glew #EDUScotICT #GlowPlus

There has been much discussion about Content Filtering in the context of Glow Futures or GlowPlus recently.  Some commentators suggest that the reason LA’s apply content filters is more about traffic shaping than blocking access to content for safety reasons.

see also  http://www.ruachonline.org.uk/blog/?p=690

This leads to wholesale blocks on some internet services which contain useful content in the context of teaching and learning.

  • It is much easier/takes less effort to block access to www.youtube.com than is it is to block access to specific known “bad” videos on the service.
  • It also easier to block (or fail to open) access to the ports needed to support an interactive service like video conferencing etc.

I can remember the pain of convincing Scottish  Local Authority IT support people that it was OK to open a number of ports to enable the original Glow Meet application  – Marratech.  Concerns there were about the risks associated with opening these ports as they may used by network hackers for other harmful purposes.  I also recall at the time how some LA technical staff had insufficient knowledge about how to configure their firewalls to allow certain type of traffic through etc.  This took place approximately 7 years ago, I do hope that things are better today?

Youtube is one example (there are others but I choose youtube as an illustration) of a service which definitely contains useful content for education and also supports the capability of users to easily publish video material which is designed to support teaching and learning objectives.  But this is also a service which is generally blocked by many/most Scottish Local Authorities.  I think it is fair to say that the justification for blocking video content is a concern about the impact that video material can have on the network service. Video needs bandwidth and can lead to a position where the network becomes more congested and end user response times deteriorate as a result.

I recall one case where an online work experience simulation had been created which made extensive use of video.  In order to make this available to all Scottish Schools a decision was made to host the servers in a Central Data Centre.  Schools could then run the simulation on network connected desktops.  Schools typically wanted to do this as a class activity with 15 – 30 students accessing the simulations at any given time.  Pupils could explore a number of specific work place scenarios and view videos of workers talking about their work etc….  This led to a situation where the school network up link became congested and response times became unacceptable.  This problem was resolved by pre-positioning the videos on a school based content server – upgrading the bandwidth on the school up link was not a short term option (from memory, I believe that the school concerned had a 2 Meg synchronous link at the time which performed well in other circumstances).  So finally the video traffic was contained with in the network.  It is easy to see from this example that concerns about the effects of video traffic are justified.

I take the view that responsible use of the internet is now an essential life skill and further that is should be a curricular objective help learners develop a high degree of “network maturity”.  This would make users more informed about the potential of the internet whilst at the same time informing them about the risks that it brings.  Learners should also develop a high standard of net etiquette in the same way that we try to teach them life skills that make them good citizens in the offline world.  For this reason I hold to the view that the internet as we see it from home should also be available in schools – access to this should rightly given to pupils in a gradual manner – with less filtering being applied as the use develops his/her “network maturity”.

But this does pose a real concern about the current regime which leads to this discussion in the first place.  In order to provide a service in schools which is fit for purpose we need to ensure that the school network and its uplink are appropriately provisioned to support the whole range of content sources that need to be accessed – and this I believe includes service such as YouTube.

So the challenge is to adequately provide LANs and network connections to schools which have sufficient bandwidth to cope with the routine daily needs of pupils and teacher alike.  The connections should be synchronous and non blocking – the actual amount of bandwidth provide should be such that it can support daily usage patterns.  Communication technologies like ADSL – or even ADSL + are not right for schools in my view (I have expressed this view many time before) we should look for multi-megabit synchronous circuits every time.  Metro Ethernet services provide the sort of connectivity needed over fibre optic circuits.  But let us also appreciate that LA’s are currently struggling through times of austerity so it may not be easy for them to find the funding needed to invest in the network technology which is considered to be “fit for purpose” overnight.   I do not have access to current stats about school connectivity across Scotland – it may be that some schools do have adequate bandwidth to support my proposed objective even now.

Some points to consider

  • Need a filter capability which is linked to the user network maturity
  • Need to stop blocking services which are judged to offer useful resources for education
  • Filter policies to be frive by curricular priorities – not traffic shaping concerns
  • Have a mechanism to deal with abuses of the system – which can be invoked as and when necessary.
  • Ensure that school LANs and up-links are fit for purpose and upgrade if necessary

Net losses – #glew #EDUScotICT #glowplus

I read the following article with some interest yesterday.

http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6287822#

I want to start by clarifying my own position on the topic of Internet Filtering in a schools/LA/Education context.

For reference – here is a link to my earlier post on this topic http://www.ruachonline.org.uk/blog/?p=453

Firstly:
I consider that some degree of filtering is necessary to protect users from the considerable amount of illegal/undesirable content which is available and accessible on the internet and also prevent illegal use of publicly funded facilities.  The Internet Watch Foundation provides  and maintains a filter list which it considers contains a list of content which is unacceptable for use/access in schools.  Any network provider who is making content available for children should take account of this and apply at least a basic level of filtering in line with the IWF approach.  There may also be additional content which should also be blocked.

Secondly:
When I was involved in provisioning the original SSDN Interconnect (now known as the Glow Interconnect), one of the driving objectives was to provide more cost effectively a connection to the internet which could sustain classroom (and admin) ICT needs for schools, libraries and LA’s.   The SSDN (Glow) Interconnect provided an unfiltered path – again I say an unfiltered path, to the internet via Super Janet.  The Interconnect provided bandwidth/capacity which far exceeded the amount of bandwidth LAs could traditionally afford.  The Interconnect was/is provided by the Scottish government at no cost to the LAs.  It remained the responsibility of the LA to provide connectivity between Schools and the LA SSDN (Glow) Interconnect node – LAs also had to sign up to the Janet Acceptable Use Policy – which refers to the transit of unacceptable information/data across the network.  The connection between the school and the LA SSDN Interconnect node was/is paid for by the LA (the cost of this, which to some extent was dictated by circuit bandwidth, geographical location and circuit length etc).  LAs provided the connections that they could afford which resulted generally in urban schools being provisioned with better connectivity than rural ones.  ADSL was often used to connect schools which was always, in my opinion, an inappropriate technology for schools connectivity (I don’t want to develop that line here) but it was often the best that could be provided.  The Broadband Pathfinder (Scottish Government funded)  project lead to an improved position for schools in the following LAs, Shetland, Orkney, Highland, Moray, Argyle and Bute, Dumfries & Galloway and Scottish Borders.

Why do LA’s Block certain traffic types?
Now some comments regarding the position in Scottish Education which has lead LA network administrators blocking whole services as opposed to specific instances of inappropriate content. This includes Twitter, facebook, youtube etc……  I believe that some original decisions were based on the need to protect bandwidth resources.  This particularly in relation to YouTube where there was a concern that LA WANs were not designed/provisioned to support video traffic.

Video and its use to convey knowledge was always attractive for educators.  The introduction of YouTube and other similar services would provide attractive possibilities for learning and teaching which when appropriately exploited, would add value.  Video needs bandwidth – and many LAs were aware that to open up the likes of YouTube would lead to a potential flood of network traffic.  This could certainly lead to problems on the LA WAN and reduce performance as seen by end users to unacceptable levels.  So I would maintain that in order to open access to video based sites it would make good sense to increase bandwidth on school uplinks and ideally move to synchronous circuits (same bandwidth for up and down stream data paths).  Interactive video services – video conferencing etc was another video application which was commonly blocked.  There may be other reasons for blocking access to video services (the common use of commercials etc) but I think that the original bandwidth preservation issue may well have lead to a continuation of the “status quo” even as bandwidth provision improved.

I take the view that all of the services listed above should be made available where there is a clearly understood and demonstrable value of the service to the learning/teaching process.  Regarding the question of who is best placed make that judgement – I think the answer to that has to be teachers.  This said there is also need to be able to identify abuses of the “network” and to provide mechanisms to deal with such incidents.

Ideally, I would like to see system that provides access to most of what the internet/web has to offer as long as the content being access is legal, relevant and appropriate for the individual viewing/using it.  This applies to web pages, any other web accessible services/content including social network tools and interactive services etc.    But the users we are responsible for are at a wide range of different stages in their IT literacy journey and I feel that this needs to be given careful consideration when designing filter policies.

What could be done to improve the situation?
‘What if’ there was a badge system which pupils and teacher can be linked to – simply put the there would be a beginners badge (all users would be assigned this when they enter the school system) through to a advanced user badge (the ultimate level which all teachers should attain and also any pupils considered to have achieved internet maturity) and various intermediate stages.  The badge would be accessible by the filtering system (which should be a nationally provisioned and linked to the Glow Directory and authentication system) so that users would have a filter policy which is linked/controlled by their badge level.  There would be an incentive to progress through the badge levels which would be based a on users “network maturity” – the topic of how to define “network maturity” certainly need further investigation/discussion.  Network abuses, if they occur, would result in the user being demoted down an appropriate number of badge levels – the number of levels of demotion would be decided by school staff.

A users publishing rights as well as their rights to view internet based content should be controlled by their badge level.  Being a network user should include the concept of consuming content but also that of publishing content.  For this reason I think it reasonable that a pupils of low network maturity should be able to engage in network activity’s – such as blogging – but their content should not be published automatically – and be subject to teacher or peer review!  A very mature pupil on the other hand should be able to have their blog posts immediately viewable on the public internet.  This brings me to the point that there is still a valid need for a Glow like intranet environment which becomes more open in as the user matures.  I think this will be subject matter for another post.
In conclusion
In this post I supports the need for a filtering service – but one that is “fit for purpose” and sensitive to an active users degree of “network maturity” as opposed to what still seems to be the case today where an all or nothing approach is taken.  The end goal of the school education system should be to help pupils achieve full network maturity and the badge system would be a mechanism to allow them to see progress towards that goal.

To read more of my blog posts around Glow Future see here http://www.ruachonline.org.uk/blog/?p=575

Note – the views expressed in this post are my own, based on my own knowledge and experience and are in no way connected to my employer which is Cisco International Limited.

 

Andy – laid to rest

It is the day after the funeral of Andrew Duthie (Andy) – it was an emotional day as you might expect.  But it was good to catch-up with old friends and family that we seldom see.  That is one of the “good aspects of a funeral”.  The service was a good one !  It was very personal to Andy and had contributions from some members of the family and close friends.  There were moments of tearfulness, and a cause to chuckle and lots of opportunities to reflect on the man we individualy knew.

For his memory is a lasting legacy to the times we shared together as I am sure is the case for all the people that knew him. I want to share two things this morning!  First a poem written by a good friend William George Sutherland – which I felt captured the essence of Andy very well.

Andrew Duthie

We watched him growing old
A friend true and dear
His years their tale had told
And he often strained to hear
But that wry smile on his face
And the twinkle in his eye
Displayed an inward grace
That no one could deny!
He never raised his voice
But spoke in gentle tones
Firm: when made a choice
And loyal; to his bones
Often deep in thought
As he sat silently
Contented with his lot
And loved his family!
Now that he is gone
We will miss that loving smile
Those eyes; that with pleasure shone
In his own individual style
His words of wisdon; great
No more to hear again
To try them; emulate
Would be all in vain?
His trust was firm and strong
His faith was anchored well
Now amongst the ransomed throng
His voise in praise shall swell
Though quiet and reserved
He loved his Lord; divine
That; hope in Christ preserved
Eternaly shall shine!
William George Suthernand August 2012

And this picture taken just a few weeks before he passed away which was taken at a family wedding.  This is how I shall always remember him – bursting with joy and laughter – I feel so privlidged to have known him !  R.I.P Andy Duthie.