EDUCAUSE | Digital Divide

OFCOM Report Offers Reality Check on Learner Access to ICTs

catherine — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 12:31:10 -0500

The recently-published OFCOM Market Report makes for some interesting reading. Some of its numbers you would expect: the report charts, among other things, UK growth in consumption of gaming, user-generated content, and SNS (social network systems). Among the more surprising key facts buried in the report are related to what you might call "under-use", or use of ICTs for unintended purposes, and in unanticipated ways.

For example, contrary to our sometimes comfortable assumptions of universal internet access, OFCOM report that only 57% of UK adults have a broadband connection at home. For reasons of social inclusion, I hope this should be enough to encourage the UK government to take a second look at (though not necessarily to rethink!) its policy commitment to ICT-enabled informal learning. Another fact that especially struck me: a massive 89% of the 12.5 million UK individuals with a 3G mobile phone connection did NOT use their connection to access the internet, email, or other services (such as GPS). Could it be (whisper it) that consumer adoption is more driven by fashion and other social factors, than by technology per se? Finally, and intriguingly, of the 500,000+ users of mobile broadband, only 27% of users connect away from work or the home -- 75% of mobile broadband users use their connection at home!

The media, telecoms, and advertising industries constantly bombard educators with messages that "we" are living in an ICT-saturated environment. But users' level of ICT access is measured in diverse ways, and not all of them are easily comparable or assimilable: e.g. the UK's Higher Education IT Statistics, an annual publication compiled by the Universities and Colleges Information Systems Association, differs from OFCOM in the way that it defines "access". Reading the OFCOM report, I'm reminded how misleading it is to assume that "access" means the same thing as "sole access", "unlimited access", or "unmoderated access". In particular, well-resourced groups, such as 16-34 year olds, do not necessarily represent the norm.

Intel pulls out of "One Laptop Per Child" Project

catherine — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 12:05:59 -0600

Intel's decision to pull out of the One Laptop Per Child project, founded by Nicholas Negroponte, is a blow to the project's ambitions.

According to today's BBC report, the project, which aimed to bring computing to children in developing nations via a custom-built, low-cost laptop, seems to be stalling. The original plan was for costs to be kept low by selling in volume, with governments placing large orders of one million. That has not materialised. Costs per unit crept up accordingly, with the final versions trialled in Uruguay and Nigeria reportedly costing closer to USD 200 (GBP 95). What does this mean?

In a strictly pragmatic sense, it's hard to fault Intel for acting the way it did. Intel has its own competing product, the Classmate, which rivals the OLPC's AMD-powered XO. Clearly, OLPC were not happy about this, seeing it as a direct threat to the success of their project. The OLPC apparently asked Intel to stop backing rival low-cost laptops, but the company refused to do so.

Whether or not one chooses to cast Intel as the "baddies" in this scenario, for refusing to "play nice", the real question is: how will this wrangling affect the intended beneficiaries of the OLPC? That is, how does it impact on the children who need access to information and to the internet in order to function effectively as 21st century citizens and consumers?

From the point of view of the intended purchasers, the governments, think it's quite understandable that they were reluctant to commit to such large orders of a single product from a single provider (albeit a consortium) when prices for standard, mass-market laptops are coming down so rapidly. And competition will, hopefully, deliver better value to the consumer in the longer term. But what about the immediate consumers, the individuals? My personal feeling is that diversity benefits the consumer -- but sometimes that benefit is realised only in the longer term.

The value of the OLPC was that it was directed towards addressing the immediate access gap - the project was, in a sense, taking a deliberately "short-termist" view (in asking its partners to focus on a single product, and to cooperate on its production and distribution) in order to address an immediate need. Can the children of developing countries afford to take a long term view? The longer-term perspective is a luxury that is, in truth, rarely available to the disadvantaged.

Podcast: Faculty Development and the Net Savvy Student - An Interview with Brad Cohen

gbayne — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 14:00:30 -0500

In this podcast, we feature an eight minute interview with Bradley A. Cohen, Assistant Director and Coordinator for Curriculum Development at the University of Minnesota. This interview was recorded at the 2007 ELI Fall Focus Session in Boulder, Colorado where Mr. Cohen presented a session entitled, "Faculty Development and the Net Savvy Student".

Brad Cohen discusses the digital divide and shares guiding principles the University of Minnesota uses to deliver an integrated suite of faculty development programs designed to help faculty meet the needs of net savvy students. The University of Minnesota's approach is informed by the data routinely collected from their students and faculty, the literature, and their practice.

Podcast: 2007 Western Regional Conference Opening Keynote by Linda Thor, President, Rio Salado College

gbayne — Mon, 14 May 2007 12:43:36 -0500

In this 44 minute podcast, we hear the opening keynote address for the 2007 Western Regional Conference entitled "All Aboard the Digital Express". This keynote is presented by Linda Thor, President of Rio Salado College in Tempe, Arizona.

Four distinct generations, from the tech-savvy to the tech-challenged, are enrolled in higher education today. Are we as educational leaders in tune with their wants and needs? In an era where students can text message their registrations, how many bells and whistles should we offer them? How do we manage to track trends? This presentation will explore possibilities and innovative solutions for the digital age.

An Interview with Joel Greenberg

mpasiewicz — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 09:46:32 -0600

In the attached 16 minute recording, we'll hear from Open University's Director of Strategic Development, Joel Greenberg. Listen in as he discusses a range of topics including, among other things, Open University's interest in Moodle.

This interview is provided courtesy of CNI and was recorded at their 2006 Fall Task Force Meeting. The Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) is an organization dedicated to supporting the transformative promise of networked information technology for the advancement of scholarly communication and the enrichment of intellectual productivity. You can learn more about CNI at their web site, http://www.cni.org

An Interview with Ken Udas

mpasiewicz — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 10:11:40 -0600

In this 16 minute recording, Bill Hogue sits down with Ken Udas to cover a range of topics include the business readiness rating, broadband policy and more.

An Interview with Jay Dominick

mpasiewicz — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 17:07:31 -0500

This 22 minute recording provides coverage of an interview with Wake Forest University's CIO, Jay Dominick. Listen in has he shares some thoughts on mobile computing, the Spellings Report, net neutrality, and much more.

An Interview with MIT's Phil Long

mpasiewicz — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 19:44:39 -0500

The attached MP3 provides continuing coverage of a series of interviews conducted at the 2006 EDUCAUSE Annual Conference. Listen as Marilu Goodyear hosts a 30 minute interview with Phil Long, Senior Strategist for the Academic Computing Enterprise at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Among other things, they take on the issue of patents, discuss Ray Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns, and tackle the prospects for continued research on learning space design.

Follow-up on Facebook.edu: Students, Software, and Emergent Social Practices

catherine — Tue, 16 May 2006 11:44:11 -0500

I wanted to follow up on a couple of points that came up in Stephen Downes's reply to my "Facebook.edu" post.

The first issue is about ownership. Cole made the point that students often perceive institutional software as "not theirs". I would add that there are (at least) two sides to this. One is to do with plain old functionality -- does the commercial or publicly available stuff work better? Does it have more critical mass? Does it tie in well with students' overall media use? The other, more important issue is to do with control, the management of personal and social identities, and shared social protocols for use of technology.

I think we have to accept that students are creators of content, as well as users and consumers. There is no necessary conflict between that statement and my earlier comment that "We need to challenge our students intellectually, not just confirm their existing (techno-)social practices". This was reinforced for me today, reading Tom Morris's comments about the BBC's plans "to build its website around user-generated content [...] with the aim of creating a public service version of MySpace.com". Tom writes:

"What the BBC don't seem to understand is that user-generated content is happening all around them, and that we don't need "BBC Blogs" or "BBC Flickr" or "BBC YouTube" for that to happen."

And we don't need institutional versions of them, squirrelled away in a CMS, either. Tom is right to say that degrees of freedom are needed in order to foster the creative use of information, and of technology. Intelligent content creation requires engagement. That's what we should be trying to foster in students. People should be able to use their existing favourite platforms and "draw in" the content that is interesting and valuable to them.

This latter point ties in well with Stephen's thoughts on privacy and recent media scare-mongering about students and Internet use. I am increasingly of the opinion that there is a major generation gap emerging between older academics and administrators and students. For the older academics, identity is protected through restricting access to it; by using the language of privacy and confidentiality to talk about it; by preferring password-protected environments. For the younger students, identity is protected by becoming your own publisher and marketer; the emerging consensus is that you control your image and reputation by editing (and circulating) it yourself. By speaking first, not last. This generation gap may yet end up being more socially significant than the much-heralded "digital divide."

Lies, damned lies, and statistics: European Policy for e-Inclusion

catherine — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 12:56:27 -0600

It’s time to see how the new Austrian Presidency of the EU will affect European strategic thinking on ICT infrastructure and the information society. On 31 January 2006, the Section for Transport, Energy, Infrastructure and the Information Society (TEN) meets in Luxembourg. Discussion of i2010 is Item 6 on the agenda.

i2010, for those who missed it first time round, sets the EU's ICT policy framework for the next five years.

My last comment on i2010, posted more than six months ago now, was skeptical about the use of the phrase “e-inclusion”.

My problem was with the word, not the issue (I still consider “e-inclusion” to be an unnecessary and rather ugly neologism). I never for one moment doubted the importance of countering social exclusion from ICT—on the contrary, I’ve consistently maintained in this blog that it’s too easy for organizations to sideline ICT accessibility and skills development as a “special needs” issue.

Sometimes the media, not the EU, is to blame for this distortion. For example, last year, an EU report provided compelling evidence that the vast majority of public service websites in Europe are failing to meet international e-accessibility standards.

This can readily be spun as a story about failing the needs of disabled users, but its real social impact lies in the implications for senior citizens. According to ESDS data, 25% of citizens, one quarter of the potential consumer/user group, will be aged over 60 by 2020. Can private and public service providers really be said to be treating their consumers well when just 3% of websites are meeting minimum accessibility guidelines?

Pretending that accessibility is not a mainstream issue, and keeping it to one side of the general discourse, is of course a self-legitimating strategy and a convenient way of managing the issue. It becomes a reason to avoid devoting serious resources to enhancing accessibility, and a reason to avoid looking at the underlying social and economic factors that contributed to the problem in the first place. (I’ve previously cited the work of Tavistock Institute staff in this area).

So, what is the EU up to on the ICT inclusion front?

It’s a numbers game, apparently. The Commission is showing signs of stepping up its investment in social and economic statistics. The Information Society Benchmarking Report, now available on the Europa website, actually contains some scatter graphs (pp. 25-28) relating to the consumer takeup of digital technologies. Hey, real stats!

It wasn’t clear to me on first glance whether the accompanying discussion of these graphs is completely free of the sort of poor statistical inference recently (and subtly) parodied on OfcomWatch.

But let’s leave that aside. What else? What other numbers has the EU gotten under its belt?

In early December 2005, Eurostat organised a conference on “The Knowledge Economy: Challenges for Measurement.” Well, it’s good to know that they know it’s not easy getting the numbers right. If you visit the site, you’ll find abstracts of some interesting-sounding papers and links to people researching in this area. But I found less information devoted to discussion of methods of data collection—a major problem for interpretive “diagnosis” and interpretation in this field—than I had expected. Is this, I wonder, a structural problem to do with the division of labour in social research—in which it’s often the case that social researchers are responsible for the research design, whereas statisticians create models from the numbers they’re given?

If you’ve an interest in this area, but you won’t be lobbying in Luxembourg, then keep a keen eye on the OECD’s Key Indicators statistics. These are published on their website (with access to charts and the underlying data) and are regularly updated as the latest information becomes available.