open thinking

Sasktel’s Great Bait & Switch

Alec — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 02:07:13 +0000

Last year, I terminated my mobile phone contract with Rogers, and signed a three-year contract with Sasktel Mobility. I chose Sasktel at the time for two reasons. First, their coverage area within Saskatchewan is much better than Rogers’ (although now it is comparable to Bell or Telus). Second – and this was the most important reason - Sasktel offered a $40 unlimited Canadian texting & data plan (the data portion of my average $80/month bill). Seeing that I am a heavy data user and that I travel frequently across Canada, this was by far, for me, the best mobile data deal in Canada. However, that all changed when Sasktel drastically changed the terms of this contract through the institution of what they term a “fair usage policy”.

I do not believe that I received official word from Sasktel about this change, although I may have (perhaps a text or a letter?). But, I noticed a subtle change in their advertising on billboards and other signage. Sasktel began to advertise their “unlimited in Saskatchewan data plan”. I found this odd, as it seemed to describe the same plan that I had, except the company had never before described the unlimited data plan as being limited within Saskatchewan. So, curious, I stopped in at a kiosk and was informed that my plan had indeed changed. Instead of the unlimited Canadian data plan that I had signed, instead, I found myself stuck with an unlimited Saskatchewan-only data plan with only 200 MBs of Canadian data! There is now a $.10/MB fee charge on any data over 200MB. To put this into perspective, a 1GB overage (which I could easily accrue) will now cost me an additional $100/month on top of the $40 I pay for the standard data portion of my bill. To take this further through a somewhat extreme but plausible example, if I use what Sasktel originally termed as ‘unlimited data’ (softcap of 10GB, connection slowed thereafter) outside of Saskatchewan, it means that this plan would cost $1000 more per month than stated in the original contract.

So, I took to Twitter and expressed my outrage at these changes, and after a short dialogue with the @sasktel Twitter account, I received an email from Sasktel. You can read the entire message here if you are interested, but I have only included the portion related to the “fair usage” policy.

The purpose of the Fair Usage Policy is to ensure that all customers have equitable access to wireless services. It also ensures that SaskTel can continue to offer competitive rates. We did revise our out-of-province roaming in February 2011 by imposing a limit of 200 Mb of data outside Saskatchewan per month within all plans, after which customers may pay additional charges of 10 cents per megabyte and data speeds may be reduced for the remainder of the month (to 256 kbps which is equivalent to SaskTel’s High Speed Light DSL Internet service and is capable of streaming standard definition video).

From time to time the Fair Usage Policy is revised to meet changing circumstances in the industry such as the incredible increase in demand for wireless data. All providers are experiencing these issues.

I applaud Sasktel’s public relations team for coming up with this “Fair Usage” policy, and for a second there, I actually felt guilty that by signing up for an unlimited data plan and then by actually using it as it were … ummmm … unlimited, that I have been contributing to the high cost of mobility coverage in our nation. It seems that this is my fault, and Sasktel is only providing me with an ethical framework linked directly to a strict financial penalty – just in case I get out of line.

Or, I could read this differently. Maybe Sasktel simply underestimated its growth and success in this market, and therefore, was negligent in understanding the real costs of its services? Maybe Sasktel’s infrastructure has not grown as quickly as its success in attracting new subscribers? Or perhaps, Sasktel just doesn’t see a serious obligation to honour commitments to its subscribers, those that signed up for contracts under very strict terms. I see shades of all of these possibilities in my communication with Sasktel, and you may as well. If any of these points are in fact accurate, is this a company that you’d want to do business with?

What should Sasktel do to make this right? It’s simple. Honour your existing contracts through grandfathering the original terms. If you don’t want to provide unlimited Canadian data to your subscribers in the future, that’s fine, but provide the services that you have committed to in contracts such as mine. I used to have the best data plan in Canada. I now have the worst data plan in all of Canada, and I am tied to a company that I no longer trust.

I know that many of you reading this don’t live in Saskatchewan, and directly, this issue may not be of concern to you. But perhaps by sharing this in some way, I can help get this issue resolved for many of us, and it may prompt other mobile providers to be more serious about the commitments they make to subscribers. Thanks in advance.

Student Work – Fall 2011

Alec — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 03:37:31 +0000

For the third year in a row (see 2009 and 2010), I wanted to use the last post of the year to share a few examples of the great work that is being done by my graduate and undergraduate students. I am so very fortunate to have creative & hard-working students who are committed to improving their knowledge of teaching and learning in light of our new digital landscape. I hope that some of these examples will inspire you to take up new challenges in your own context.

From EC&I 831 (Open graduate course, Social Media & Open Education):

Summaries of Learning:

Leslie – used stop-motion technique.
Tannis – used Glogster, an interactive, digital poster-making tool.
Shauna – used Freemind (free & open source mind-mapping tool) & video-editing.
Laura – used Xtranormal, a freemium “type-to-create-movies” tool.
Gail – used Screenr, a free and easy screencasting tool.
Kelley – used Jing, another free screencasting tool.
Lorena – used Voicethread, a group conversation and presentation tool.
Katy – used TikaTok (a tool for creating books) and Jing.
Alison – used Prezi, an less-linear Powerpoint alternative.
Kevin – used Knovio, a video-enhanced presentation tool.

Final Projects:

Tannis’ Global Gateway – a wiki resource for global citizenship.
Lorena’s Social Media Classroom – a reflection on the use of social media in a high school classroom as a final project. Be sure to check out student video testimonials #4, #5 & #6)
Kelley’s Social Media resource – a comprehensive guide to using social media in the classroom.
Gail’s PLN – a wiki resource for understanding social media in teaching, learning, and professional development.
Mike’s Woodworking – a woodworking project with video tutorials and QR codes.
Kevin’s PKP School – Public Knowledge Project school with an open course on managing a Open Journal System journal.

From ECMP 355 (An Undergraduate Technology Integration Course):

Summaries of Learning:

Randi – done via stop-motion.
Kailee- uses Voicethread.
Brodie – uses video-editing & screencasting.
Riley – done via Silent Film Producer (iPhone App).

Electronic Portfolios:

There were many other good projects to share, but this represents a good sample of the student work from the semester. I’m looking forward to one more great semester before a 16 months hiatus from teaching as I move toward my sabbatical planning.

Happy New Year everyone!

RIP Steve Jobs

Alec — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 00:05:13 +0000

Today, the world lost a remarkable man – a visionary and a world-changer. You will be deeply missed Steve.

I’ve always loved this video (above) of Steve introducing the Macintosh in 1984. There’s something about the look on his face as people applaud near the end – it’s like they all knew Steve would change the world. And, as we all know now, he truly did.

He’s Henry … Oh Henry …

Open Course: Social Media & Open Education

Alec — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 05:18:49 +0000

I will be facilitating an open graduate course this Fall titled EC&I 831: Social Media & Open Education. This will be the 5th time I have taught the course (first time was 2007), and it’s different each time. It looks like I will have about 25 graduate students taking this for credit (which is well over the usual limit), and I’m also inviting anyone out there interested in the experience to participate for free.

If you would like to learn more about the course, go to http://eci831.ca. If you’re familiar with the course (from past iterations), you’ll notice that I’ve abandoned the old wiki and moved over to a WordPress site as the ‘central’ space. If you are interested in participating, see the page for non-credit participants. In a nutshell, as a non-credit participant, you can participate as much or as little as you’d like. You are welcome to attend and participate in our weekly, online sessions where we often feature conversations with experts in the field. Or, we’d love you to participate in any or all of our asynchronous activities outlined here (and to be explained further throughout the course).

But most of all, my students could use your help. Last year, I announced a call for network mentors and I believe it was quite successful. We had about 200 people participate (in many different ways) and who helped, at times, to support, and in some cases, mentor my students. So, if you are interested in participating at all in this course as a non-credit student, please sign-up here on this Google form (this gives me a better idea of who you are). And, if you are further interested in taking on a mentorship role, please choose ‘yes’ or ‘maybe’ when you are asked that question on the form. I’ll get back to everyone on the list with next steps via email.

For non-credit students, the course begins on September 20th at 7pm Saskatchewan time, and you’ll find us by clicking on this this Blackboard Collaborate link. The first session is an overview of the course, and how it all works. All sessions are recorded and will be made publicly available.

Thanks everyone, and I hope to learn with you soon.

Connections: A Free eBook

Alec — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 18:51:45 +0000

One of my favorite people on the planet, Dr. Richard Schwier, has just released his new free eBook titled Connections: Virtual Learning Communities. Read about the book here, or download directly from this link. The book is in .epub format, so if you are unfamiliar with how to handle that format, see this resource.

A little bit about the book:

This ebook pulls together the big ideas from our work for educators who might actually be able to put what we have learned to good use. That’s what this book is about—making sense of online learning communities. In a sense it isn’t original; it is rewritten out of material the VLC Research Lab already created along with a healthy dose of my own speculations. So it is selective rather than comprehensive. It doesn’t attempt to pull together all of the excellent work and writing about online learning.

This is also an experiment with this digital form of a book. The ebook format offers a number of fresh affordances and imposes some really difficult layout restrictions. The book includes a number of links to resources and examples. Every chapter has a video introduction that you can jump to if you want to get the big idea without combing through an entire chapter to dig it out. And by the time I release the next edition, I hope to discover a reasonable way to embed videos into the document, instead of having to link to external files.

Thank you Rick for pushing the boundaries on academic writing and sharing this work for free and in the open. I’ve downloaded it to my iPad, and I can’t wait to read it.

Intel’s Museum of Me

Alec — Tue, 31 May 2011 23:36:40 +0000

Intel has released “The Museum of Me“, a website that connects to your Facebook account, pulls out relevant data, and produces a virtual gallery/archive of your social (network) life. I am not sure it did a great job of capturing my social ‘essence’, partly because I don’t pay much attention to Facebook (I don’t feed it much these days), but the resulting virtual gallery is really quite impressive.

If you’d like, give it a try here. Remember that it is accessing your data and the shared data of your Facebook friends (as the majority of Facebook apps often do). For those who would rather just see a demo of what it does (rather than trying it yourself), I’ve captured the rendered video using Snapz Pro X, a higher-end Mac-only screencasting tool.

By the way, if you want to experience something similar, be sure to check out Arcade Fire’s “The Wilderness Downtown”.

Shiny Happy Internet

Alec — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 18:53:17 +0000

This morning I noticed an emotional thread on Reddit, a popular, user-generated, social news site. The thread began as an IamA/AMA (“I Am a [blank], ask me anything…”) where a pseudonymous poster (‘lucidendings’) described having only 51 hours to live due to a long battle with cancer and having chosen to die under Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act. While reading through the comments, it was difficult not to get caught up in the emotion around this post and the outpouring of (mostly) kindness toward this person. I’m a sucker for these kinds of stories, the #ShinyHappyInternet as my friend Jen often jests, and I regularly use such examples in my presentations (e.g., Help Me Fix My Last Picture of Mom, Kathleen Gets a Toy Shopping Spree).

If you follow the story through the thread, you will see remarkable things. For instance, the thread itself (at the time of writing) has over 6500 comments, the majority being kind & generous. There’s the user-generated map featuring warm, heart-felt messages from across the globe. There’s the touching but short-video from a Youtuber featuring a star-balloon as it rises to the sky (wait for the smile at the end). Then there’s the flurry of people attempting to stream the sun rising in Key West as it was identified by lucidending’s as a favorite moment in life.

Yet, the entire time I read through these threads and viewed the kindness of strangers, I thought to myself, what if this person is lying? It happens (thanks Chris). In this case, we may never know for sure. But how demoralizing could this be for a community (online or not)?

But maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe the humanity that emerges here in times like this is enough for us to be optimistic. Jen notes,”That whole thing is a good example of an occasion where it doesn’t matter if the original post is authentic.”

In digging deeper into the original thread, I find this gem. One Redditer, in critiquing the outpouring writes:

…another bandwagon to jump on. Just like the TSA and Wikileaks, reddits short attention span settles on the death of a complete stranger.

Countless people around the world are going to die today. Almost none of them are going to make that choice, almost none of them are going to choose to die today.

Lucid got to choose when to die. He gets to prepare. Not one tear for all the other deaths, but a thread of people bitching about onions for this guy.

He deserves the attention he’s getting. What he’s gone though, and what he will do through in the next few days… well, none of us could ever comprehend it.

And this is countered with the following …

I think you fundamentally misunderstand the outpouring of emotion for Lucidending. The outpouring of emotion is for all those faceless and nameless deaths, for our own deaths, and all the ones before and since. The outpouring of emotion is a small window into our own mortality and humanity, and with it the pain, love, joy, and despair of them all.

Lucidendings, if your destiny is as you describe, I feel nothing but warm thoughts for you and I wish you all the best on your journey. In any case, your post has inspired others to be generous, caring, and inspiring to others. I can still believe that the Internet, and of course the world that it reflects, is a (mostly) shiny, happy place.

So what are your thoughts on all of this?

Update: As was somewhat suspected, lucidending’s story may have been a hoax. Gawker’s Adrian Chen has taken responsibility for the hoax, although that story is also being disputed.

Friendships

Alec — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 17:31:44 +0000

So I turn 40 today, and I was so incredibly shocked & humbled to see this:

My friend and colleague Dean Shareski orchestrated a crowdsourcing initiative which resulted in this heart-warming video in honour of my birthday. The people in the video, about 75 in total, are my friends, many of whom I’ve been fortunate enough to have met face-to-face or online over the past few years. I am truly blown-away by this – this is seriously the best birthday gift I’ve ever received. Thank you to everyone who participated in this and to all of those who shared warm birthday wishes with me via Twitter, Facebook, email, and face-to-face. I am so very fortunate to have such wonderful friends and loved-ones dear to me. Thank you all!

Special thanks to Dean Shareski. I know how much time an initiative like this takes and it is truly appreciated. This is truly wonderful. This is community.

And, if you haven’t seen it, here’s the vid:

Update #1: I wasn’t sure exactly how Dean facilitated the crowdsourcing of this project, but Rod Lucier’s post explains the process a bit better.

Update #2: Dean put together a great post clearly explaining the process.

Writing Prompts (Collaborative Document)

Alec — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 01:11:14 +0000

In the style of previous collaborations (here and here), we’ve collaboratively written a great list of writing prompts related to technology & media in teaching & learning. These were intended for the teacher candidates I teach, but I see tremendous value for anyone who is writing or thinking about the use of technology in education.

Thanks again everyone for showing me that this form of collaboration really does work and for contributing great ideas to the document. I now have a great, growing resource for my students when they tell me ‘I have nothing to write about’.

See the collaborative document here.

Assignment 1 for #ds106

Alec — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 23:32:08 +0000

The following is a pretty sore excuse for my first assignment in Jim Groom’s #ds106. However, I wanted to at least keep up with some of the assignments. I’m amazed and inspired by some of the stuff that has been created by the participants so far, and I’m learning a lot about how Jim has set up the course.

I found myself with a few extra minutes today so I thought I’d attack Assignment 1 which was meant to be a short 30 second story. I think the video is closer to 5 minutes as I ramble on, kind of get to the story, and somewhat get to a point. I didn’t want to do any more than one take, and didn’t have time for any video editing this time around so it is what it is. It’s simply raw video of me walking through the snow, thinking about warmer climates, a tip that D’Arcy gave me, living life by the second, contemplating what an Italian guy said, and spending time with fish and my precious daughter.

See video below. Thanks for pushing us, Jim.

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