Fortnightly Mailing

A quick review of Google Chrome. Guest Contribution by Dick Moore.

Minor revisions 5/9/2008

First glances are promising: the integrated search and address bar works well as do the visual representation of most common visited sites, and bookmarks as thumbnails.

When Chrome encounters a poorly written website (or one that it is unable to cope with) then it is the tab that crashes and not the browser, though in testing I have not been able to cause a crash (a good sign in itself). Chrome’s privacy mode, called "incognito" will be of benefit to anyone wishing to browse on a shared computer: it ensures that no history or cookies are kept locally. (Internet Explorer 8 also has this feature called "inPrivate Browsing".)

Chrome’s interface is quite stark but its ability to go full screen and minimal would suggest that its intended use is as a means to access web based applications such as Google Docs and Gmail.

In a very rough test, Chrome was significantly faster than both Internet Explorer 7 and an "un-tuned" installation of Firefox.

Chrome is Open Source, which will surely mean that, as with Firefox, a wide range of plug-ins get developed.

Download and installation were very quick and easy, with bookmarks and tabs picked up from Firefox. As yet there are no Mac or Linux versions, but these will surely come.

Privacy considerations

For the more paranoid, the combined search and address bar suggests that every address we type will be recorded by Google, thereby enabling Google to collect even more data on which sites users visit, and thus Google better to target advertising at individual users. The privacy options give you some control over the "pass-back" of usage information to Google ; and the fact that Chrome is Open Source should allow the more technically capable to confirm that these privacy options work.

Overall, if you interested in a lightweight web browser, Chrome is well worth a look; and it is bound to get better. I will be comparing Chrome with Firefox over the next few months. For the moment I am not planning to take Firefox, with its invaluable range of plug-ins, off my PCs.

You can download chrome at google chrome download. Meanwhile there are lots of YouTube demos sprouting up. Personally I quite liked the comic strip that Google uses to describe the engineering thinking behind Chrome. This is at Read about the Technology

Dick Moore is Director of Technology at Ufi learndirect

Nicholas Carr on Google's new browser Chrome + my three halfpenny worth

Nicholas "The Big Switch" Carr is quick with a brief calm first reaction to Google's release of a test version of its Open Source browser. My three halfpennyworth is that we should expect Chrome to work well with Google Aps (Documents, Spreadsheets, Google Mail, Sites etc), where Google thinks there is substantial not-generated-by-advertising revenue to be had from organisations (and ISPs) outsourcing to Google their email (and, in the case of organisations) the software for writing, and the storage for, their internal content; and with Google Gears.

Itiel Dror and Stevan Harnad: the Web is the "Cognitive Commons"

Itiel Dror, who will be speaking at the 2008 Association for Learning Technology Conference (disclosure: I work for ALT half-time) on Wednesday 10 September in Leeds, sent me a chapter from a forthcoming book edited by him and Stevan Harnad - "Distributed Cognition" - which will be published - not sure when - by John Benjamins. The final sentence of the abstract (below for reference) struck a particular cord. You can also access the whole chapter in various formats including PDF and HTML from the University of Southampton's ePrints Server.

"'Cognizing' (e.g. thinking, understanding, and knowing) is a mental state. Systems without mental states, such as cognitive technology, can sometimes contribute to human cognition, but that does not make them cognizers. Cognizers can offload some of their cognitive functions onto cognitive technology, thereby extending their performance capacity beyond the limits of their own brain power. Language itself is a form of cognitive technology that allows cognizers to offload some of their cognitive functions onto the brains of other cognizers. Language also extends cognizers' individual and joint performance powers, distributing the load through interactive and collaborative cognition. Reading, writing, print, telecommunications and computing further extend cognizers' capacities. And now the web, with its network of cognizers, digital databases and software agents, all accessible anytime, anywhere, has become our 'Cognitive Commons', in which distributed cognizers and cognitive technology can interoperate globally with a speed, scope and degree of interactivity inconceivable through local individual cognition alone. And as with language, the cognitive tool par excellence, such technological changes are not merely instrumental and quantitative: they can have profound effects on how we think and encode information, on how we communicate with one another, on our mental states, and on our very nature."

Some Blackboard and Desire2Learn bits and pieces

Source: Blackboard Inc. Sneak Preview of Project NG

Several Blackboard- and Desire2Learn related items come my way in the last few weeks, but holiday absence prevented me from using them. 

First, two long posts by Jim Farmer on Michael Feldstein's e-Literate blog:

• 11 August - about Blackboard software licences;
• 27 August - about Blackboard's financial performance (with some discussion about the company's UK market share, based on a comparison between UCISA's 2005 and 2007 CIS surveys).

Second, a slick and impressive promotional video from Blackboard about its "Next Generation" product - known as Blackboard NG - which has been described to me by someone on the inside of Blackboard as "light years ahead of Blackboard 8.0" (see also Nial Sclater's description of a talk about NG in Manchester earlier this year). I watched ech of its eight "chapters".

The inexorable shift to online learning, in US HE at least

Mixed = at least one online and one onground class

Fall enrollments '04 = 4,396  ~~  Fall enrollments '07 = 4,855

For the first time I have a reason to use an animated gif/chart, and with its author Ray Schroeder's permission. Ray writes, about the University of Illinois at Springfield:

"The next click of that chart will move us to a place where fewer than 1/3 of our students are taking only on-ground classes.  Forgive my bias in thinking that what we are seeing at UIS will spread among the rest of the 500 regional state universities. "

 

Devedžic's Semantic Web and Education, reviewed by Bürger

Source: elearning-reviews

elearning-reviews is an impressive, well-organised printing-friendly web site, from the Swiss Centre for Innovations in Learning. It "provides those interested in research on elearning with concise and thoughtful reviews of relevant publications".

This review by Tobias Bürgerof Vladan Devedžic's 2006 "Semantic Web and Education", does just that. Concluding paragraph:

"This book also shows that the marginal importance (compared with e. g. prior learning experiences) of “general” learning styles (as it was shown in research) is still not recognised in the world of artificial intelligence and computer science; they still deal with the idea of several cognitive styles and the possibilities for adaptation of e-learning materials. By the way: We were surprised that the different ways of reasoning seemed not to be important to Vladan Devedižic. Some could say that we should not be so harsh with our comments on this book, because it is one of the first longer publications on this topic (published 2006). Yes, we agree – but we would not have been as harsh, if there were not some very interesting older publications, where we find a deeper understanding of what learning and education is and could mean in the Semantic Web. Nevertheless, we will use this book and can recommend it as a standard work about education and the Semantic Web with the clear strength in an overview about relating technical concepts."

Felling the towers - 24/8/2008

Photo: BBC web site at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/south_yorkshire/7578266.stm

Sheffield's landmark 70 year old cooling towers were demolished at 02.00 GMT today.

Links to video and BBC web site description of the towers falling.

[Previously updated 27/9/2007]

These two cooling towers above are on the edge of Sheffield, where I live, in South Yorkshire, England. They are next to the vast Meadowhall shopping centre, and the Tinsley Viaduct of the M1 motorway. Taking a leaf out of Soweto's book (see also the picture on the right), there is a campaign to turn them into massive works of public art to reflect what Sheffield is now: "green, creative and different".  Funds are stacking up to make the project a reality. The Channel 4 TV company is committed to the idea.  But there is a problem. Eon, owners of UK electricity company Powergen and the towers, wants to demolish them.

Coroner calls for Government action on sleep apnoea

Today my sister and brother in law issued a media release stemming from last month's Inquest into the death of their son Toby. Regular readers of Fortnightly Mailing may remember from a long post I wrote in October 2007 that my 25 year old nephew was killed 2 years ago on his way to work in Liverpool. His car was waiting in a morning rush hour queue on the M62 motorway approaching the Rocket Interchange. The queue was hit from behind by a heavy goods vehicle and Toby’s car was crushed. The driver of the HGV had fallen asleep at the wheel, and was later diagnosed to be suffering from Obstructive Sleep Apnoea (OSA).  When we investigated OSA we found serious weaknesses in the way that the condition is controlled by Government, by the road haulage industry, and by General Practitioners.

Following the Inquest, the Coroner issued a Rule 43 Report to the Lord Chancellor, calling for major changes in the way that sleep apnoea amongst lorry drivers is dealt with. The media release [137 kB PDF] provides full details, and includes the Rule 43 Report itself, as well as the bulk of a fascinating and comprehensive report to the Inquest by Dr Dev Banerjee, who is Consultant Respiratory and Sleep Physician at Birmingham Heartlands Hospital.

The Coroner's Rule 43 Report calls for the following:

• regular medical screening for all lorry drivers;
• amendment of the DVLA Medical Examination Report form to improve identification of undiagnosed sufferers from OSA;
• fast track medical assessment of commercial drivers involved in road traffic collisions;
• better education of all drivers on the dangers of tiredness when driving, in the same manner as drink-driving campaigns;
• better education of commercial drivers to make them aware that a diagnosis of OSA is almost certainly not the end of their livelihood as a driver.

Under new rules that came into force on 17 July, the Lord Chancellor is required to respond to a Coroner’s Rule 43 Report within 56 days.

European e-Inclusion Awards - closing date 12 September

The European Commission has launched the first ever European e-Inclusion Awards. The Awards will "celebrate the best and most imaginative uses of Information and Communications Technology to reduce digital and social exclusion". The closing date for applications is 12 September. Excerpt:

"The European e-Inclusion Awards are open to organisations in the public, business and voluntary sector or civil society. There are seven competition categories:

• Ageing well
• Marginalised Young People
• Geographic Inclusion
• Cultural Diversity
• Digital Literacy
• e-Accessibility
• Inclusive Public Services"

How to stop email overload

Nice clear explanation by Anand Rajaraman about how his 30+ person business (Kosmix - a company that is developing a pretty impressive topic-focused search engine - example 1; example 2) uses blogs, wikis, and instant messaging for internal communication. Plenty to emulate there for many organisations.
 

Court in Texas denies Blackboard's motion for contempt against Desire2Learn

According to Desire2Learn, Blackboard Inc.'s forcefully worded motion for contempt against Desire2Learn was denied by the court in Beaumont, Texas, yesterday. Blackboard has apparently failed to convince the court that the changes made by Desire2Learn in Version 8.3 of its VLE are "only transparently cosmetic", and "do not design around the claims of the ’138 patent".  Blackboard had sought explicitly coercive damages in its motion for contempt:

"Blackboard suggests that for each day following this Court’s order that Desire2Learn uses, sells or offers for sale version 8.3 or associated services, Desire2Learn should be ordered to pay Blackboard $23,000.00. No litigant can be permitted to simply choose to pay a sanction and continue to violate a federal district court’s injunction, however. If, after five days, Desire2Learn continues to defy the order, the daily sanction should double to $46,000.00. And if, after five more days, that sanction is insufficiently strong coerce Desire2Learn into compliance, it should double again. The sanction should continue to increase until Desire2Learn complies."

so the failure - even if it is only a temporary failure - must come as a relief for Desire2Learn. Expect more on this in the next few days on the Desire2Learn and/or on the Blackboard patent information pages, especially once the full judgment from the case is published. Conceivably this may have a sting in its tail for either company.

US National Academy of Engineering selects "Advance personalized learning" as one of 14 grand challenges for engineering

Source: US National Archives

Advance personalized learning is in pretty august company as one of 14 grand challenges for engineering (alongside, for example, Make solar energy economical, Provide access to clean water, Prevent nuclear terror, and Provide energy from fusion) chosen earlier this year by a panel of luminaries including Ray Kurzweil, Alec Broers , and Google's Larry Page. (The picture, from the Grand Engineering Challenges web site, is of a one-room 1950s US school-room  where lessons were individualized, since classes included children of different ages.)

There are two short video interviews from panel members: Calestous Juma (Professor of the Practice of International Development, Harvard University), and Wesley Harris (Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology).

The rubric about the personalized learning challenge is interesting for the way challenge is posed; and the fact that personalisation is seen as a long-term challenge - on a par with fusion power - does act as a useful caution to the current UK policy emphasis on achieving extensive personalisation using technology right now.

Why are researchers citing fewer papers than ever?

Via this article about James Evans's work in the Economist, referring to Electronic Publication and the Narrowing of Science and Scholarship, published yesterday in Science, I came across this (poorly produced!) National Science Foundation short video of Evans discussing why researchers cite fewer research papers despite having access to more. Blurb:

"Thanks to the Internet, scientists now have access to an astonishing number of research papers, scholarly journals and other papers. But according to new research conducted by James Evans, a professor sociology at the University of Chicago, researchers are actually citing fewer papers than ever, and they tend to cite newer papers that are also cited by many of their peers. In this interview, James discusses what got him interested in the topic, how he conducted his research and what he believes are some of the implications of this trend."

The key cause of the change - which Evans alludes to towards the end of the interview - is surely "search", and in particular the ranking technologies that search engines employ: once a paper on the Web has a lot of citations from articles also on the Web, then that paper's search ranking rises; if its search ranking is high it is more likely to be cited.  You wonder what account is being taken of this by proponents of metrics-based assessments of research excellence.

Becta-funded "Schools Open Source Project" is looking for serving teachers for its advisory committee

The Schools Open Source Project is looking for practising senior teachers to serve on the project's advisory committee. The committee will meet 3 or 4 times each year, receive reports from the project team and provide advice and guidance to ensure the service meets the objectives of the project and its customers. Here is an excerpt from the project web site:

"The Schools Open Source Project is a Becta funded initiative to help schools with awareness, adoption, deployment, use and ongoing development of Open Source Software. A number of schools are already realising the benefits of OSS within their ICT strategy. This project will work to share their experiences along with good OSS practice from other sectors with the wider community of educational practitioners, including teachers, decision makers and IT specialists.

From September 2008, we will provide an authoritative, informative and impartial website that will raise awareness of how OSS can be used to enhance teaching and school infrastructures. The project will then develop and support a community of practice that engages those who are currently using OSS and welcomes and supports new members."

A welcome development, but you are left wondering what the link is between this Becta-funded activity, and JISC's Open Source Software Advisory Service. How will these two services avoid duplication of effort? How can the knowhow they are each developing be shared? Why not have a single cross-sectoral service? Readers with insights are welcome to comment below, or to write to me directly and I will summarise.

ALT-C 2008 - Rethinking the Digital Divide. Programme published.

The Association for Learning Technology (ALT), for which I work half time, has just published the full draft programme for ALT-C 2008, which will take place in Leeds, England, between 9 and 11 September 2008. The programme [160 kB PDF] describes a wide spectrum of short papers, workshops, symposia, research papers, posters, and demonstrations. As reported previously, the keynote speakers are Hans Rosling, Itiel Dror, and David Cavallo. Invited speakers are Denise Kirkpatrick, Richard Noss, George Auckland, Lizbeth Goodman, George Siemens, Jane Hart, Gilly Salmon and Clive Shepherd. The deadline for booking is 15 August 2008.