iPad only one technology, schools fall for good marketing

Tablet PC Episode XXIV
(Photo by Jim Henderson)

I recall MAD Magazine making fun of the endless Rocky sequels during the 1980s, Rocky fighting in his late 90s, Rocky XXIV screening in 2015, that sort of thing. We ended up with Rocky VI in 2006 but you get the idea.

Yet Apple seems to be challenging Rocky as the never-ending-sequel par excellence. It appears that no sooner is a new iPad released, that yet another new iPad is being released. How can we possibly keep up with all of these changes in a corporate environment?

Put simply, we can't, and we shouldn't.

BYO technology is the answer, where people use their own devices. But this means that corporate systems need to be revamped to cope with increased-capacity wireless services, faster corporate backbones with less software bottlenecks, and increased range of devices.

The savings for organisations are obvious: less expensive hardware, no need for corporate SOE "upgrades", no need for telephones, large screen projectors, lecture theatres and so on. Deakin University (my alma mater) is making this happen right now.

Interest in BYO technologies is growing fast, and this year at the University of Canberra we have been trialling  the use of BYO computer labs in my first-year undergrad unit. Following an upgrade to the network backbone over the last 12 months, things are all going swimmingly.

Ever since returning from Jordan, where I relied on Google translate to have half a clue what was going on around me in Arabic, I have taught all of my classes in computer labs. This has given my students immediate access to information. 

Don't understand something in English? Use Google translate, understand the word, now let's discover the concept. Don't know which war I am talking about when I say the post-war golden age? Look it up on the Net then straight back into the tutorial discussion.

Remember the "no looking at draft essays" policy? All gone - simply look at it online in the classroom. Until you have taught a non-tech uni subject with several hundred students in a tech environment, you haven't lived.

So when I hear about schools investing in one particular device, I shake my head in disbelief. But it is much easier when you can supplement your investment with government funding: West Moreton Anglican College recently purchased 640 iPads for year 7-12 students at a cost of $480,000 using government funding.

Governments can't pick winners, so what makes schools any different?

Good marketing, it seems. Apple, through its devoted evangelistic followers, even has a uni domain name: auc.edu.au. 

In the 1990s, while working as an accountant, the number of clients who purchased an Apple computer to do their own book-keeping would say to me: "The kids use Apple at school, so they must be easy to use". Even today I can't use simple things like flash video on my iPad, so you can imagine how upset my clients were when their work was not compatible with our Microsoft systems.

The short-term investment in iPads is not new -the University of Adelaide did this nearly two years ago. But this isn't anywhere near BYO technology.

For me, BYO technology is all about access to the Internet and the local network at super-fast speeds. Here at the University of Canberra we have been blessed with an IT team that is second to none and my trials are working out just fine.

But what bothers me is that the Digital Education Revolution is falling victim to some very good marketing from the key device manufacturers. I have argued elsewhere that Australian policy-makers focus too much on the device and not enough on the capability:

The Digital Education Revolution (DER) aims to contribute sustainable and meaningful change to teaching and learning in Australian schools that will prepare students for further education, training and to live and work in a digital world. 

If the DER is to move to sustainability, then buying a bunch of iPads for students is a clear waste of taxpayers money. I just hope that management at West Moreton Anglican College were savvy enough to purchase the iPad three so students enjoy the prime time of their new devices.

But in the meantime, there are the institutional arrangements, and, more importantly in an educational environment, the equity issues. Instead of buying a handful of iPads, why isn't the DER providing cheap loans to students to purchase their own devices? 

The "digital world" our students will inhabit will be a BYO technology world - taking away students' ability to choose for themselves is a bureaucrat's dream of the most "efficient and effective"single solution. The approach is misguided: there are multiple solutions and we all use modern communications technologies differently. 

If the digital education revolution is to be truly revolutionary, then we need to get away from good marketing and go back to basics: user choice. BYO technology will enable the DER, but bureaucrats need to stop looking at the marketing and start talking to the people who are actually in the trenches of the digital revolution.

Convergence comes to Australia, Department of Innovation says "No"

Photo by State Records NSW CC-BY-2.0

Austar CEO John Porter decided to "suspend political correctness" this week to talk about convergence: "Telstra needs to let Foxtel sell broadband".

Convergence has come to Australia.

But in an admirable attempt to hold back the tide, the Department of Innovation says "No" to convergence.

Convergence is not new, nor is it necessarily the result of new technologies. Since the time of the telegraph and telephone (particularly in countries which did not establish public monopolies), most communications industries have been deliberately diverged to create distinct markets - not because of technology, but because of corporate interests.

For example, Canada’s broadcasting and telecommunications industries were deliberately diverged by numerous corporate agreements established amid government policies based on the idea that telecommunications was a natural monopoly. However, by the 1990s, regulators and key industry players were arguing for the (re)convergence of these industries.

During the 1990s, while Canadians were arguing for (re)convergence, Telstra was doing the opposite: extending divergence to take advantage of pay-TV.

Telstra, as part of the FOXTEL pay-TV service, deployed broadband cables and had 200,000 pay-TV customers by 1997. Telstra’s BigPond service utilised the cable to offer high-speed broadband Internet services via cable modem to customers in Sydney and Melbourne, but this was largely an after-thought. Further, the initial deployment of cable broadband services was deliberately delayed by Telstra and News Ltd for financial reasons:

While we are hopeful about the future potential for broadband services, we recognise the need to balance investment with returns in the context of the changing competitive environment and developing markets and services. Telstra has worked closely and productively with our partners and other players in the Pay-TV industry during the second half of the financial year to seek to resolve some of the financial issues that have contributed to the instability of the industry. The outcome of these discussions is that Telstra and News have further agreed to limit, at this time, Telstra’s broadband cable rollout obligation to 2.5 million homes by the end of 1997. Any resumption of additional broadband cable rollout will be delayed until overall market conditions justify such investment (Telstra 1997 Annual Report).

Due to a proposed merger between FOXTEL and Australis at the time, a pay-TV provider with a satellite and microwave distribution system, there was no commercial reason for Telstra to continue expanding cable infrastructure to compete in the pay-TV market. Atkinson, Correa & Hedlund (2008: 53) found that:

The Australian government allowed Telstra, the incumbent telecommunications operator, to take over the nascent cable companies in the early 1990s, thereby dramatically limiting broadband cable competition. Consequently Australia has among the lowest cable penetration in the OECD.

However, it would appear that whatever value was gained by keeping the industries diverged in Australia is nearing the end of its useful life. Now that the Foxtel-Austar merger will go ahead, change is in the air.

Expect to see an increase in the provision of paid content - not just pay-TV but paid media content, too - as the old paper-based industries die out quickly. Indeed, it would appear that enough consumers are willing to pay for content that the "paywall" may soon be ubiquitous.

It was only a matter of time. Unless you are in the innovation game.

The Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education (DIISRTE) has taken it upon itself to fight convergence.

A key strategy of the Department's war on convergence is to provide targeted support to the print-based industries. In 2012, research which is published in electronic-only formats does not count in the Higher Education Research Data Collection (HERDC) rules.

In a recent revision, the Department of Innovation decided to exercise its authority over technology and put research back on paper where it belongs: 

“[B]ooks only published electronically"... do not meet the criteria [and] "books and book chapters only published electronically” can not be included under HERDC.

In light of industry's re-convergence, the Department of Innovation is certainly being innovative. Thankfully, paper refuses to receive ink from lesser researchers, and simply by excluding e-publishing, DIISRTA has significantly improved the quality of Australian research in what is a very clever policy.

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Comment: Does the NBN Matter?

By Michelle McAulay CC: BY-NC-SA

In 2007, broadband became a surprise election issue, culminating in the NBN some two years later.

Recently, I was asked to comment on the NBN and whether it would be a major election issue as it was in 2007.

Below is my response. This appeared in the Australian Financial Review on 5 March:

The NBN has been dragging on for so long that it will be difficult for it to “cut through the noise” at the next election.

If we look at the situation during the 2007 election, politicians such as John Howard and Senator Bill Heffernan really didn’t “get” broadband. Australians had suffered appalling broadband speeds and draconian download limits for so long that hearing politicians talk about broadband as a way to simply “download movies” was a case of a government with “no idea”.

Rudd was able to clearly blame the Howard years as an opportunity lost for the digital economy and to provide the NBN as an instant remedy.

However, once the policy became bogged down in the details, Australians became sick of hearing about the NBN and its outdated equipment (Tasmania), then a few years later, Armidale being connected – it was all a “big fizzer”. Some five years down the track and the Telstra agreement, arguably the whole point of the NBN, has only just been completed and the situation for broadband hasn’t changed for the majority of Australians who were suffering from “fraudband” back then.

Broadband is still an important issue, and whether Australians get the NBN or the Coalition’s version of high-speed broadband will be less important this election unless NBN Co performs a miracle and gets some major “runs on the board” very soon.

Otherwise, the major difference between 2007 and now is that in 2007, the government had no idea that things were so bad. The focus was all on selling Telstra, not on improving the appalling state of broadband in Australia.

Now that all politicians acknowledge that something needs to be done, I don’t think there is the same imperative that existed in 2007 to acknowledge how bad Australia was (and still is) performing in relation to the rest of the OECD (and even some poorer countries).

The lack of acknowledgement was the big issue. But with the NBN saga now just dragging on, recent events in politics will see broadband sitting in the background during the next election unless scrapping the NBN becomes a major budget issue.

 A follow-up article in the Australian Financial Review included my comments on 6 March.

Back to the Future or: Today I Wrote a Letter...

Artwork by Stefan Prohaczka

Ever since ditching Facebook and other social media a few weeks ago, I have undergone the strangest transformation. I think I am very quickly becoming part of the slow movement. I am not sure whether this is a product of age, but I have been rediscovering some simple pleasures which disappeared two decades ago in a blur of screen-reading and computer addiction.

I am still required to be glued to the computer on a regular basis, but the return to the natural world has been nothing short of cathartic: Enjoying time with my mini-fox terriers, reading books (and the odd e-book), and gardening. But most recently I am fascinated by old technologies.

A while back we purchased a record player. It has a USB connection to convert records to mp3 files, but listening to the humble record has re-initiated a joy I haven't experienced since the 1980s. The crackle of the dust and imperfections in the sound are brilliant.

For the last three years or so, I have been presenting The Rebel Chorus on 2XX 98.3 FM community radio. A while back we found an old transistor radio in the garage and bought some batteries so we could listen to my colleagues or my wife could listen in to my program. But every morning, the transistor radio, complete with tuning imperfections, is tuned into ABC Classic FM. After decades of neglect, the radio is now a big part of my morning - just as it was when I was a child.

My retro-fascination is not only related to communication, but also to transport. Despite the annoying bits of ACTION buses, I have settled into the routine of catching the bus. The stress of driving is now a rare annoyance - once I overcame my reluctance to substitute the car for the slightly longer bus ride. Palmerston not only has slow broadband, the buses go everywhere but direct to where you want to go so a ten minute drive takes 30-40 minutes on the bus. But once I became disciplined enough to take a book or use the commute to plan or even - God forbid - take the time just to think or dream, it is now reasonably pleasant.

But the most fascinating thing for me has been the rediscovery of the humble postage stamp and the handwritten letter. While researching the role of the Postmaster-General's Department (PMG) in Australian telecommunications, I ended up on the Australia Post website and it reminded me of stamp collecting as a child.

I have been an avid Internet shopper for many years and over the last fortnight I have collected a few items from the post office at the University of Canberra. While I was there, I noticed one of the latest releases for Australia Post's stamps: Technology - Then and Now. I was so fascinated I bought the first day cover and the mini-sheet.

Ever since, I have had a burning desire to write a letter. It has been almost twenty years since I posted a handwritten letter - I think the last time was a job application in 1988. I was forced to write handwritten minutes in the Army up until 1994 when I purchased my first portable word processor - it was an Amstrad similar to this one:

Photo by putput.

I remember how the Battery Commander's red pen was the subaltern's nightmare - reams of paper disappeared in minor errors as the red pen bit deep. Until the Amstrad. As soon as the pen hit the paper, I amended it and printed the update. It annoyed my bosses so much they soon gave up. My peers looked on in envy as they wrote and re-wrote their minutes using the lined page underneath. I had a ready-made format in my portable freedom machine and life was sweet.

But my rediscovery of some of the simple pleasures of slow technology has me baffled. All the years of learning, re-learning and keeping up with technology left me little time for reflection. I still love my technology, but I have a new-found respect for the ways of the past. It appears that there is much more to it than technological determinism and the never-ending game of catch-up: iPad 3 being a case in point.

So today I wrote a letter. Not just one but two: one to each of my grandmothers. You have to pick your audience, and I thought my grandmothers would be most capable of deciphering my unpractised handwriting.

I have been working in the space between  technological determinism and social constructivism for some time. The two extremes (respectively) suggest that technology determines how we do things or otherwise we, as humans, shape technologies and in turn are shaped by technologies.

The retrospective I have enjoyed in the last few weeks has given me fresh insight into all things technological. I am very interested in how we feel about certain technologies, rather than how these make us feel. It's a case of back to the future I know, but with so many time saving devices and less time than ever, I am finding that old technologies offer an alternative to the commercial black hole that is sucking the living privacy out of our souls.

So the next time you receive a targeted advertisement from Google or you feel that your spirit is trapped in the social web, stop, breathe deeply, and write a letter or two. The pen is mightier than the sword, after all.