April 25, 2008

the ‘web 2.0′ bubble - shiny, new and thinly stretched across the curriculum

Category: tech, futures, learning, inner voice — rob @ 1:41 am

[wrote this as postscript for some studies - following the intuition that the common experience of ICT as web 2.0 may eclipse some crucial understandings of classic IT, water down the content of  computer science in schools]  :

Sitting on a train, after a day wrestling with a research proposal, an interesting synchronicity unfolds. Passengers cram in; opposite one starts a crossword puzzle. Adjacent, one opens a laptop and starts programming. A few minutes layer another passenger gets on, sits opposite, and starts a sudoku. A moment later the sudoku solver and the programmer recognise each other; obviously know each other a little; but don’t talk for long, and settle back to their tasks. I’ve been glancing at the programming beside me; its in a terminal window and is full of test cases and assertions. I guess it might be a test harness for an electronic board.

After a while I notice the approach the sudoku player is taking, systematically listing, in small script at the top of each cell, the candidate possibilities for each square, identifying the most constrained cells first – then reducing elements out other cells once one is determined. I find myself thinking of procedures I could use to program that - looping through each column, and row, with an array attached to each cell; - maybe with colour if one just wanted to hint at productive cells…. I glance back at the programmers screen –and it suddenly seems like that is exactly what he is programming  - he flicks a window and I see its called sudoku.py.

My sudden conjecture is that there might be coworkers, since they did recognise each other … even though the common link of sudoku algorithms seems like improbable work  .. so I break the convention of commuting silence and start a conversation.  It turns out their common focus is not these little numerical puzzles - they actually did a computer science course some years ago; the manual sudoku solver now works in a bank; as a systems designer;  the programmer works for a stockbroker, programming automated trading systems  – both are tackling the sudokus for distraction. 

We chat, and I talk about this research, and Sherry Turkle’s reservations on today’s notion of IT– around the that fact that 20 years ago many kids programmed computers for fun –  we all agree on that - but today kids are more likely to be on MySpace or World of Warcraft. I mention my suspicion that the lack of a 'BASIC' – the simple, pre-installed language we learnt with, might contribute to this.  I’m interested in their opinions. The stockbroker programmer indicates, wryly, he is happy with the lack of competition coming through from junior programmers. The sudoko banker rebukes him, and warns that below a critical mass that whole sector of the IT industry will be outsourced to India. Working in a large bank, he sees it already; there are no local programmers below the system designers. He also seems bit conflicted about ICT in schools; since he has fond memories of the control he felt in teaching himself programming language, and spending hours trying to make games, on a Commodore 64;  but isn’t sure there is a future in it now. The stockbroker programmer disagrees – loves the technical work and sees it as a good career option for students.

I feel like I should interview these two, incarnations of the concerns I’ve been reading over for two days; early dialogue in an outcome space.. after they leave at the little satellite town, I travel on, feeling I might be on to something - that the historical tensions around how IT is conceived corresponds to real and current issues,  and the strength of this little debate tells me the issue goes beyond schools - and the idea of visual schematics to examine the tensions might work.

many in education seem set on cheerleading the '21st century ict' ='web 2.0' =transformation' theme - lots of syrupy youtube videos  on that theme - but not everyone agrees, or at least not without reservations about what is missing in that equation. Some have even stepped away from the spin and put it all in historical context. Its quite stabilising to have some sense of the real historical trajectory of educational computing - the popular idea that its all progressed betrays some of the real history. 

April 29, 2006

inside story of a virtual pizza

Category: pizza, tech, inner voice — rob @ 1:42 am

an hour or two after my little boy was born, I went out to find a late night pizza for the drained parents. (Ok, I wasn't that drained). Anyway, i had a sense that this little trip down Centre Rd in Melbourne was now an inner story, a hidden detail - just like 33 years earlier my father must have done something - gone home to a silent house, poured a whisky, sat in the park, called a friend - but thats another story; inner to another life

 I say this to illustrate that events have an inner story thats different to the public record, different to the newspaper version. Well, of course they do.  But since this is the second post to this blog, i'm wondering how much i'll use the useful official newsletter voice, at the risk of being boring, and how will much be a personal voice. My gut feeling is newsletters have limited appeal, even to those they're immediately targeting, and practically none beyond. Where a personal story, on the other hand, is more universal.

So back to this PD day, the newspaper version below is the factual record. The possibly boring "this is what we did" version. No pizza story.

A little pizza story for me, though, is two days before, talking with the neighbours. I'd driven around the top of our court on the way home and they were in the front yard, so we got chatting and then drinking a beer - friendly neighbours. They have a two year old and the mother telecommutes from regional Victoria into her work at an oil company, via an internet connection that logs her in to the main office system in Houston Texas. Pretty handy, because she can limit the days she travels to Melb (160 km), by "telecommuting" from home to the multinational office, and spend more time accessible to family.  

We got talking about that, since the next day i would need to use the same technology to be trained in the new reporting software that our schools will be using; we'd managed to get a prerelease version for training.  There would be less than 24 hours between seeing the software for the first time in the training, and demonstrating it myself the next day. But i had a feeling it would be ok. I've used this sort of remote access before, and administered other reporting packages, so it looked ok.

Interesting thing was that oen of them commented that i was probably relaxed about it because i'd been "learning how to learn" computer software for a long time. Thats pretty true, but it was the "learning how to learn" phrase that got my attention; its sort of thing you expect teachers say, but when you hear it from your (non teacher) neighbour over a beer, it cements something about it being a reality, and not just educational jargon.

So ... the overlap of virtual technologies and learning theory with the neighbours, was one slice of my pizza story for this event