Broadband Wagon: White House=Killer Apps; Parliament House=Kill Broadband

The Role of Student-Led Innovation in ...Killer Apps“ for Broadband Networks | The White House

After a week of trying to incorporate Web 2.0 technologies in the classroom while battling an extremely slow network with outdated computers running outdated software, things are not so good in the Australian broadband scene.

But in the US, the White House is encouraging students to get on the broadband wagon.

Australia has a long way to go. Even the basic capacity is missing. Two things make matters worse:

1. Sceptics who think broadband and educating students in the use of new media are passing fads; and
2. Slow networks, outdated computers and software systems run by conservatives.

It is always a challenge to balance standardisation versus innovation but in Australia the trend toward standardisation starts at the top and flows on down to the bottom. This is not a trickle effect, it is a bitter torrent.

As a nation, there is an urgent need to enable innovation around broadband technoligies, starting with the infrastructure and then moving into the education sector to encourage the use of new communications technologies. Not as an interesting aside, but as a necessary part of the teaching process.

Gone are the days of submitting handwritten assignments, we all accept that. But until we can accept that social media is the new word processor, we remain behind the eight-ball.

Thanks to Bill St Arnaud for this link.

Time to renew your "Do Not Call" registration: But will it make any difference?

Who can believe it is almost three years since the Do Not Call register first opened on 31 May 2007? It is now time to re-register, but will it make any difference?

Who can forget the spectacular failure of the Do Not Call site as the beleaguered horde of telemarketing victims rushed to join? The crash of the Australian register was not unique, with the Canadian register experiencing similar problems when it was launched over a year later.

But does it matter? Recently, a number of my colleagues have been complaining about receiving telemarketing calls on their work telephone numbers. And not just from random 'Scamway' businesses but from some of the major banks and other *respectable* corporations.

The federal government is addressing this issue, but it seems for the moment the Do Not Call register is for private telephones only:

In the 2009-10 Budget, the Government announced plans to widen the scope of the Register, to allow the registration of all telephone and fax numbers, including the numbers used by businesses and emergency service operators (DBCDE website).

The worst thing is that the federal opposition disagrees. So much for corporate social responsibility and encouraging productivity. An unintended consequence of the register has been to re-direct telemarketing to consumers in the workplace.

But how much capacity does government have to regulate telemarketing, spam, scams and so on? It would seem  that regulation of poor business behaviour would best be left to a combination of self-regulation and market forces. 

But half the trouble is that the issues of telemarketing and spam are converged (all related to communications channels and marketing practices) while the legislation is still actively diverged along old ideas of  communications technologies.

It would be good to see the major industry groups collaborate to encourage an acceptable way to conduct marketing - something along the lines of the Internet Industry Associations' Spam Code. Judging by the responses from consumers in both Australia and Canada, it is obvious that poor marketing techniques are an unwanted nuisance for most of us.

In short, it doesn't take a genius to see that poor marketing practices aren't good for business and there is clearly a role for government to regulate such practices. But government needs to stop trying to do it all alone. Granted that many *respectable* businesses are often the main perpetrators, but greater consumer involvement in a self-regulatory model just doesn't make it onto the policy radar. 

In the meantime all we can do is hope and re-register.

Step 5: Sharing my Web 2.0 Teaching Tools

This week all the hard work paid off when my ESL students were writing, learning new concepts, discovering new technologies, reading the news and even talking in the classroom. I trialled a wiki learning activity where students (in groups of two) answer a series of questions on the concept of globalisation. Students can copy and paste anything from the Net in order to answer the questions - no references necessary. I am sick of the blank faces in tutorial discussions so I thought this approach would work in the computer lab. As it turned out, every student was able to explain the globalisation in a variety of ways - they learnt more in one hour then they would have in a full week.

This morning I present my workshop on Assessment 2.0: Blogs, Wikis and Media Sharing to staff at UC. You can see the three main components of the web ‘architecture’ based on Google Blogger, Google Sites, and UC Space. I had originally intended to use Wikispaces but since there is no way to prevent this from being publicly viewable, I decided to use UC Space, UC’s Confluence-based Enterprise Wiki instead. The UC Space site linked here *should* be viewable by the public.

The Blogger Template has been endorsed by the branding people so that is a great start. I have finally completed an assessment rubric for the media sharing assignment.

But my favourite is THE WEIGHBRICATOR - my rubric calculator which enables you to individually weight up to five criteria. Now I have the format established, I will be using rubrics for most of my assessment items.

The next tool I intend to develop is a rubric template in MS Excel with the calculations underneath each cell. But I need to work out how to convert the rubric into html so I can integrate it with the LMS. SpreadsheetConverter did a good job with the trial version, so maybe this is worth the cost.

This morning’s workshop starts at 9:30am. I will collect feedback from the session and make this available on the weekend.