http://followersoftheapocalyp.se purity - truth - beauty posterous.com http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/http://creativecommons.org/images/public/somerights20.gif Tue, 22 May 2012 14:01:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Followersoftheapocalypse/~3/VTbjXdfPS8A/always-crashing-in-the-same-car http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/always-crashing-in-the-same-car <p> <div>The UK Institute of Directors has <a href="http://press.iod.com/2012/05/18/new-report-the-uks-booming-space-industry-and-the-case-for-a-uk-spaceport/">recently recommended</a> that the UK invest in infrastructure for space travel, supporting a growing private space sector. NASA has recently celebrated the <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/commercial/cargo/spacex_launch.html">first private-financed delivery</a> of materials to the International Space Station. And a consortium of billionaires (do any three words sound more like the plot for a bad superhero movie?) have <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/04/27/how-billionaire-asteroid-miners-make-money-without-mining-asteroids/">announced their intention</a> to mine asteroids for precious minerals.&nbsp;</div> <p /> <div>Meanwhile, mainstream film and science fiction, from Doctor Who to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Sky">Iron Sky</a>, draws on the retro-futuristic ideas of "steampunk", a conceptualisation of the future as it may have been dreamt in the past. Whilst <a href="http://www.datamancer.net/steampunklaptop/steampunklaptop.htm">brass cogs and filigree woodwork art</a> is undeniably beautiful, it would seem to have little in common with the privatisation of space travel.</div> <p /> <div>I'd argue that we now have the first generation of business leaders who were brought up on pulp science fiction, from <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46482731/ns/business-careers/t/management-lessons-learn-star-wars/">Star Wars</a> right the way back to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W07bFa4TzM">Atlas Shrugged</a>. But the individualistic pioneering world of the hero, the future that they dreamed about as children, is not the world they find themselves living in. Our future (and this is, lest we forget, two-thousand-and-twelve) is one where the primary problems to be addressed are not marauding alien armies or governments restricting the glory of private enterprise, but the trivial issues of how to feed, clothe and comfort seven billion people. The fervent mental preparations for space adventures clearly have been of limited use.</div> <p /> <div>But, as Douglas Adams put it in <em>Mostly Harmless</em>:</div> <p /> <div><em>"[...]This didn't, of course, deter their crews from wanting to fight the battles anyway. They were trained, they were ready, they'd had a couple of thousand years' sleep, they'd come a long way to do a tough job and by Zarquon they were going to do it."</em></div> <p /> <div>Despite the pressing nature of the social and environmental problems &nbsp;the world does face, and despite the clear need for collective action, we still see the old Randian battles for objective individualism re-erupting. And in steampunk-influenced science fiction, we see an explicit wish to return to the simple problems that can be solved by the unfettered heroism of one man (and it is always a man...), without the stifling need to think to deeply about the real needs of others.</div> <p /> <div>Compare the "nerd triumph" - problems fixed by technology, with little reference to the needs of the end user... indeed, with the expectation that the end user will adapt themselves and their lives to the solution.&nbsp;</div> <p /> <div>As I am contractually obliged to mention higher education at least once in these blog posts, let it be here: who *really* wants an online degree that can be squeezed in between shifts in order to reach the post of supervisor? What I believe people actually want is the ability to be immersed in learning in their own time and at their own pace - but rather than sort out the much harder social and economic problems that would make this possible it is far far easier to invoke "reality" as if it was something we couldn't change and produce some streaming videos and a chatroom.</div> <p /> <div>In our cultural response to the current crisis of capital, it is the ideas of earlier battles - the 30s positions of Keynes and Hayek - that economists have reached back to. But within the new saviour mythology of the entrepreneurial start-up the sacred texts are by the nameless writers of&nbsp;<em>Astounding Stories, </em>the expanded-universe industry built around George Lucas&nbsp;and - inevitably - Rand.&nbsp;</div> <p /> <div>Hence, I imagine, the drive for private space programmes. A chance to live those early dreams, to become the people that a generation of -fifteen year-old boys so badly wanted to be. To spend the working day mining asteroids, to take the evening <a href="http://www.space.com/14666-playboy-space-club-images-private-stations.html">Virgin Galactic flight to the Playboy Space Hotel</a>. And you just know those rockets will be gleaming silver with 50s-style fins. And very, very tall indeed...&nbsp;</div> <p /> <div>Using the billions of pounds our work and lives have earned them, they will return humanity to the correct path of the unified "future histories" postulated by writers in the early-to-middle twentieth centuries. Fighting the easy to win battles, ignoring the work of societal and cultural change.&nbsp; Both in terms of their battle against the state, and their battle for the stars.</div> <p /> <div>"<em>Once I had my heroes<br />&nbsp;Once I had my dreams<br /> But all of that is changed now<br /> They've turned things inside out<br />&nbsp;The truth is not that comfortable..."</em></div> <p /> <div><em><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/I8piMHsOya4?wmode=transparent" allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="417" width="500"></iframe></em></div> </p> <p><a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/always-crashing-in-the-same-car">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/always-crashing-in-the-same-car#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Followersoftheapocalypse/~4/VTbjXdfPS8A" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/880558/green_guitar.jpg http://posterous.com/users/5erAmX21C7nj David Kernohan dkernohan David Kernohan http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/always-crashing-in-the-same-car Mon, 14 May 2012 14:26:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Followersoftheapocalypse/~3/fuimPxCP5WA/open-as-in-door-or-open-as-in-heart-mooc http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/open-as-in-door-or-open-as-in-heart-mooc <p> <div>A note on the end of Steve Carson's post about <a href="http://tofp.wordpress.com/2012/05/14/moocs-and-the-liberal-arts/">MOOCs and the liberal arts</a> prompted a brief conversation about the two different meanings of "MOOC" with <a href="http://www.mura.org/">Brandon Muramatsu</a>. Steve's original post drew (based on his conversation with Brandon) a distinction between the <a href="http://www.edxonline.org/">Edx</a>/<a href="https://www.coursera.org/">Coursera</a>/<a href="http://www.udacity.com/">Udacity</a> "MOOCs" and the <a href="http://change.mooc.ca/">Change11</a>/<a href="http://ds106.us/">ds106</a>/<a href="http://openeducation.us/">wileyMOOC</a>&nbsp;"MOOCs" - he suggested using MOCs as a description of the former (as they are not, in the strictest sense, open). But Brandon felt, <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/bmuramatsu/statuses/202040815990747137">on reflection</a>, that the real distinction concerned how massive the courses were.</div> <p /> <div>As a primer for those of you who read this but don't live it (you lucky people!) MOOC stands for "Massively Open Online Course", basically a big global chunk of online learning that doesn't cost you (the learner) any money. It's the big noise in university-level education as it's got that game-changing disruptive innovation feel about it right now.</div> <p /> <div>At the basic level, you could just take your standard online course (crappy managed learning environment, some professor doing a video lecture, discussion forum with tumbleweeds(*) and take off the paywall. Obviously everyone involved still needs to get paid (because isn't that what game-changing disruptive innovation is all about?) so there are a range of models around to ensure that this happens. Most commonly you'll see lots of advertisements everywhere, because that's totally a sustainable business model, or the "open" students getting to pay for accreditation or similar extras.</div> <p /> <div>These get called MOOCs because of some earlier work (Siemens/Downes/Cormier/Wiley and so on) that also involved learning for free, coined the term, and the four words in the acronym seem to fit. But really there is not much else in common. The earlier MOOCs were built around the ideas behind <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectivism">connectivism</a>, which could be (slightly controversially) unpacked as the suggestion that much valuable learning happens because of the connections and networks that learners build during a course. If you want to disappear further down this rabbit hole of networks and educational theory, check out <a href="http://davecormier.com/edblog/2011/11/05/rhizomatic-learning-why-learn/">rhizomatic learning</a>.</div> <p /> <div>So - for your first version above you could see something like:</div> <p /> <div>learner -&gt; guy(**) in a suit who used to lecture in the ivy league -&gt; knowledge</div> <p /> <div>and for the second an unASCIIable mess of learners connecting to each other and discovering knowledge in all kind of places, with a smelly hippy educator generally helping out and making sure it all stays lovely.</div> <p /> <div>But fundamentally there are two kinds of MOOC because there are two competing cultural conceptualisations of the learning process, both of which have value and relevance but which have become politically (small P) polarised. The first, I guess, is easier to monetize as it treats the idea of an expert as a saleable resource.</div> <p /> <div>Hence my categorisation, drawing on Stallman's legendary <a href="http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.09/posts.html?pg=6">"free as in freedom/free as in beer</a>" (libre/free) dichotomy.</div> <p /> <div><em>Some courses are open as in door. You can walk in, you can listen for free. Others are open as in heart. You become part of a community, you are accepted and nurtured.</em></div> <p /> <div>For many the first is and will be enough. For me, having tried the second, I'm not sure I could go back.</div> <p /> <div><em>Post represents my own opinions only. Available under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/">CC-BY</a> license</em></div> <p /> <div><em>(*) no. not your online course, that's great. It's just all the other ones.&nbsp;</em></div> <div><em>(**) and it is always a guy</em></div> </p> <p><a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/open-as-in-door-or-open-as-in-heart-mooc">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/open-as-in-door-or-open-as-in-heart-mooc#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Followersoftheapocalypse/~4/fuimPxCP5WA" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/880558/green_guitar.jpg http://posterous.com/users/5erAmX21C7nj David Kernohan dkernohan David Kernohan http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/open-as-in-door-or-open-as-in-heart-mooc Wed, 02 May 2012 13:35:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Followersoftheapocalypse/~3/6d0uqcfzk_Y/govekleinmurdoch-ii-how-they-are-related http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/govekleinmurdoch-ii-how-they-are-related <p> <div><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://getfile4.posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2012-05-02/HnBigzArGnolfGcwlChHDtGpiGdxyfJAaojDIuyjdfawhxpdoDDwaiDJnfuH/newscorp2.png.scaled1000.png"><img alt="Newscorp2" height="326" src="http://getfile2.posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2012-05-02/HnBigzArGnolfGcwlChHDtGpiGdxyfJAaojDIuyjdfawhxpdoDDwaiDJnfuH/newscorp2.png.scaled500.png" width="500" /></a> </div> As a follow-up to what I think is <a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/spinning-a-story-gove-klein-becta-cameron-and">one of the most popular posts here</a>, I've been reading and logging other curious correspondences and coincidences between NewsCorp, conservative ministers, and the compulsory education systems of the US and the UK. And blimey, it's a bit complicated. I started drawing things together on <a href="http://www.xmind.net/">XMIND</a>, and thought I should share what I did to avoid anyone else wasting an evening doing so.</div> <p /> <div>What disturbs me most - NewsCorp directly funding, and <a href="http://chalkandtalk.wordpress.com/2012/04/06/despite-putting-students-first-michelle-rhee-has-some-very-adult-agendas/">Joel</a> <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/2011/01/ex-schools-chancellor-joel-klein-named-chair-of-education-reform-now">Klein</a> leading, two "grass roots" organisations (<a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/08/18/1008309/-Rhee-s-StudentsFirst-received-Murdoch-money">StudentsFirst</a> and <a href="http://defensedenver.com/2011/08/rupert-murdoch-paid-van-schoales-salary/">Education Reform Now</a>) that are very similar in remit to the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/jul/06/michael-gove-new-schools-transparency">New Schools Network</a>, who are somewhat cagey about the source of their non-government funding.</div> <p /> <div>Yes - it looks a bit like it should be created using post-its and pictures torn from magazines in a dilapidated basement flat. But I'm no conspiracy theorist - this is all sourced and hopefully one day soon I'll dump a bundle of links on this post (shout if you need a particular source, I'll prioritise). And it is a great big PNG that you have to download full size and zoom in to in order to read it - any suggestions for ways I can do this as a proper infograpic with live links would be great.</div> <p /> <div>Have fun now.</div> <p /> <div>Available under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/">CC-BY-SA</a>. As far as any opinions are expressed in this post, they are mine only.<p /><br /></div> </p> <p><a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/govekleinmurdoch-ii-how-they-are-related">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/govekleinmurdoch-ii-how-they-are-related#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Followersoftheapocalypse/~4/6d0uqcfzk_Y" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/880558/green_guitar.jpg http://posterous.com/users/5erAmX21C7nj David Kernohan dkernohan David Kernohan http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/govekleinmurdoch-ii-how-they-are-related Mon, 23 Apr 2012 03:18:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Followersoftheapocalypse/~3/FufgUidsTcI/bricking-against-the-clicks http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/bricking-against-the-clicks <p> <div><br /><em>"[There is] only one answer: really fix public education and give everyone equal opportunity. Present situation a crime against young."</em><em><br /></em><em><br /></em><em>"[C]urrent technology&ndash;and its increasing diffusion among people in all countries&ndash;makes it possible to drive the marginal cost of each new unit of education, effectively, to zero"</em></div> <p /> <div><em>"Technology has transformed how we live and play and will transform how we learn."</em><p />Not the words of inspirational keynote speakers at a recent open education conferences; the words of(in order) <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/rupertmurdoch/status/193675626220236800">Rupert Murdoch</a> (the CEO of NewsCorp), <a href="http://www.saylor.org/michael_saylor/">Michael Saylor</a> (the CEO of Microstrategy) and the Governor of Florida, <a href="http://gettingsmart.com/news/jeb-bush-on-the-right-to-rise-and-the-future-of-learning/">Jeb Bush</a>. Murdoch had recently been visiting the Harlam Village Academy, a "<a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/regional/item_qM5tLTxv4VD6iAzd2A8pcJ;jsessionid=B6F2EB5549FF300018C58001CDD43800#ixzz102Qc7dI3">poster child</a>" of this new wave of education and a favoured project of his (<a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/spinning-a-story-gove-klein-becta-cameron-and">and Michael Gove's</a>) friend, Joel Klein. Apparently, to become a "poster child" you need a <a href="http://ednotesonline.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/harlem-village-academy-retained-only-4.html">75% churn rate of teaching staff</a> within one year - who knew? And you'll recall, of course, that Jeb and George W. Bush's brother (<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35297-2003Dec27">Neil</a>) set up Ignite! learning: <a href="http://www.ignitelearning.com/">a digital content solution for learning</a>.</div> <p /> <div>The highest educational "marginal cost" is not, despite the efforts of many academic publishers, materials: it is salary. This is true in both compulsory and post-compulsory sectors. So all of those wonderful, inspiring quotes about technology "fixing" education above actually relate to the casualisation and de-professionalisation of educators.&nbsp;</div> <p /> <div>This is a neat illustration of the bizarre educational confusion that the political right seems to find itself in. On the one hand we have the kind of techno-determinism above, on the other we have David Cameron's calls for a return to "<a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2132444/David-Cameron-calls-real-discipline-PM-urges-children-stand-adults-enter-room.html">real discipline</a>", with pupils standing up when teachers enter the room (sorry, Daily Mail link). And you get the bizarre target-driving literacy drive via the medium of <a href="http://www.education.gov.uk/inthenews/inthenews/a0068426/michael-gove-announces-reading-progress-check-for-all-year-1-pupils">synthetic phonics</a>, which is the favoured Conservative reading methodology for no <a href="http://www.funmurphys.com/blog/archive/000618.html">adequately explored reason</a> that anyone can see - indeed as far as I understand it most serious educational researchers see Whole Language and Phonic approaches as <a href="http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/Reading_Wars.html">complementary</a>. In higher education you see the split between railing against mickey-mouse courses like Golf Course Studies and in favour of vocational courses like, er, Golf Course Studies. Or the push for higher and higher academic standards, and the push for higher and higher profits and lower costs. With one foot in the imagined past, and another in the corporatised digital future, the only possibility is confused and ill-considered policy.</div> <p /> <div>You'd be hard pushed to spot a unifying link between these seemingly diametrically approaches, and I've struggled with it for a long time. You can also add to this mix the emerging "sound-bite" culture of disruption and educational revolutions - easily grasped obvious interventions that can give the impression of activity where none is needed.</div> <p /> <div>George Seimens' post from <a href="http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2012/04/19/remaking-education-in-the-image-of-our-desires/">ASU Skysong Education Innovation Summit</a> brought this all together for me. The whole post demands to be read, but one key point that stuck out for me:</div> <p /> <div><em>". The best way for me to kill a conversation was to say &ldquo;I work in a university&rdquo;. That would pretty much end things. The correct answer, apparently, was something like &ldquo;I work for [foundation, bank, VC] and I want to allocate funds to this market&rdquo;."</em></div> <p /> <div>There's clearly little or no place for <span style="text-decoration: underline;">actual educators</span> in this gold rush. Which I guess is the point: all of the expected profits in this "market" would come from either employing less educators or from cutting the pay and conditions of existing staff.&nbsp;<em><br /></em></div> <p /> <div><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://getfile4.posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/fota/zq3nUOemSNwJKFs0EsIoEonSAbhqhWqUV4EkXNK8RuINNqHDqm3zlFQCGs8W/unknownname.jpg"><img alt="Unknownname" height="500" src="http://getfile5.posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/fota/OrbdW7LKCOOUGoca35TppK2XwGX9kTtDKaGN9q8VN1UnUL5Uudn3UYYxvsZV/unknownname.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> </div> </div> <p /> <div>Gary Matkin touched on these wider issues in his <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/garymatkin/ocwc2012">should-have-been-a-keynote</a> at the OCWC/OER 2012 annual conference in Queens' College, Cambridge. His characterisation of the commodification of education shifting the value proposition from product to service a parallel to Cable Green's vision of a pay-to-graduate future which was (@dr_neil) <a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/oer-futures-and-universality-inc-altc2010">Universality</a> in a nutshell - and that he seems bizarrely proud to have had mentioned in <a href="http://blog.oer.sbctc.edu/2012/04/ocwc-and-other-ocw-in-money-magazine.html">Money Magazine</a>.&nbsp;</div> <p /> <div>I commented on this trend in my write-up of the <a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/ocwcglobal-and-the-state-of-ocwoer-2011">OCWC11 conference</a> as the "search for a new model" and the "growth of private sector competition". This is no longer a trend, this is mainstream open education.</div> <p /> <div>Panagiota Alevizou (p282 of cam12 <a>Conference Proceedings</a> (pdf)), in my other favourite conference presentation (excluding of course, the amazing ukoer stuff), looked at the way academics are reacting to the commodification implicit within open release using the language of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediatization_(media)">mediatization</a>. Clearly the role and language of the consumer of free "online learning media" sit uneasily within education:</div> <p /> <div><em>"[E]ducators&rsquo; prior knowledge and familiarity with Web 2.0 or technical skills, as well as wider OER advocacy agendas or general familiarity with openness and crowdsourced education, are also high in the motivational threshold." [but] "The sharing of one&rsquo;s own materials and the reuse of others&rsquo; OERs is less expansive"</em></div> <p /> <div>Whereas the rhetoric of openness is superficially attractive to those committed to sharing knowledge, there are also concerns around precisely this kind of commodification within mainstream educational discourse. As nearly all the presenters at cam12 conceded, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/23/world/europe/building-schools-out-of-clicks-not-bricks.html?_r=1">in an atmosphere that at times seemed more like a revival meeting than a sober gathering of academics from 21 countries</a>, open educational resources are inevitable; however this is much more so than the institutions that sustain the academics responsible for releasing them. The developing business models around "open" and "technology" need urgently to take their own parasitic nature into account.<em><br /></em></div> <p /> <div><em>This post represents my own views only and is available under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/">cc-by</a> license.</em></div> </p> <p><a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/bricking-against-the-clicks">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/bricking-against-the-clicks#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Followersoftheapocalypse/~4/FufgUidsTcI" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/880558/green_guitar.jpg http://posterous.com/users/5erAmX21C7nj David Kernohan dkernohan David Kernohan http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/bricking-against-the-clicks Thu, 05 Apr 2012 03:51:50 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Followersoftheapocalypse/~3/pul0aKFi8CQ/small-print http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/small-print <p> <div>So Amazon, that well known global e-commerce company based in Seattle, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/04/amazon-british-operation-corporation-tax">doesn't pay any corporate tax</a> in the UK and avoids VAT on various products by having a "corporate centre" in the thriving metropolis that is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxembourg_(city)">Luxembourg City</a> (twinned, apparently, with the London Borough of Camden Town). This revelation has spurred a great deal of hand-wringing in the UK, but has also introduced the subtle distinction between a vendor and an "order fulfilment operation" to our ever-evolving sacred texts of business-speak<br /></div><p /><div>@Stebax (the <a href="http://enemiesofreason.co.uk/">Enemies of Reason</a> bloke) set a hare running in my mind on twitter by suggesting that, as his business in Britain was merely <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/stebax/status/187807954400063488">"blogpost delivery"</a>, he would henceforth be basing himself in Luxembourg. I wondered if he, along with many of us, are in fact in the business of idea delivery and thus were only taxable within our own minds.</div><p /><div>I blog on <a href="https://posterous.com/tos">Posterous</a>, which is based in San Francisco and is now owned by <a href="https://twitter.com/tos">Twitter</a> which is split between SF and New York. Both organisations graciously allow me to retain ownership of my "work" (such as it is!) which is hosted by their platform. To be more specific, I voluntarily supply ideas to Twitter and Posterous, granting them a global non-exclusive and transferable royalty-free license to publish my work. To put this another way, I have entered into a contractual relationship with both organisations to provide them with content that I permit them to monetise as they see fit, and in return for this they provide a stable hosted platform for me to publish on to.</div><p /><div>In both cases the model is either to use my content to sell ad space, or to use the promise of their ability to use my content to sell ad space to raise venture capital. These ads are bought (or will be bought) by global companies, who hope that they will be seen by a particular demographic of viewers filtered by earnings, interests, geographic location, gender or a million other variables.</div><p /><div>In simple Marxist terms I create value via my labour which is exploited in return for profit, but all of this happens on a global basis. I sit at a desk in the UK, some guy sells ads from a desk in the US, some woman buys ads space from a desk in China but all of these transactions are actually stateless.</div><p /><div>Corporate Tax law, as it currently stands, levies a charge on net profits relating to a trade conducted within a particular country. Section 6.(4)(a-b) of the 1988 <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/1/section/6/enacted">Income and Corporation Taxes Act</a> defines this:</div><p /><div>"(a) "profits” means income and chargeable gains; and<br />(b) “trade” includes “vocation”, and also includes an office or employment or the occupation of woodlands in any context in which the expression is applied to that in the Income Tax Acts."</div><p /><div>Trade is here seen to include "<a href="http://www.global-vision.net/facts/fact15_3.asp">Goods, Services, Income &amp; Transfers</a>", &nbsp;all of which concern the exploitation of commodities ("the products of human labour", after Marx).</div><p /><div>Regarding posterous or twitter, the person producing the commodity in all this is me. My renumeration (as above) is the free use of the platform - a benefit which is not taxable, and/or is also the means by which the commodity I create can be exploited. &nbsp;You could imagine if I was C19th homeworker I would produce a certain number of ladies undergarments without pay in order to cover the cost of a sewing machine. This is the same, except I never get to own the sewing machine or get any wages.</div><p /><div>[Going deeper, am I actually creating the commodity at all? I've been inspired by news on the Guardian, commentary on twitter and content from the UK government, Wikipedia and the town twinning association so far. So, in the same way that I'm adding value to what Posterous do, all these people are adding value to what I do. And what about the likes of Google selling ads alongside search results and aggregation...?]</div><p /><div>So trying to locate where the "trade" happens, who is "trading" with whom and where profits are taxable is by no means a simple matter. I'd be tempted to argue that, as we move to increasingly global business models, that we need a global corporation tax collected by an international agency and spent for the benefit of the entire world - which in the short/medium term would be primarily aimed at the developing world in order to reduce global inequality. Eventually we could move for a global minimum wage and then some kind of sustainable and controlled use of natural and human resources. But I'm just a smelly hippy and I don't understand finance or business...</div><p /><div><em>Personal views only, available to you, dear reader, under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/">CC-BY</a> license.</em></div> </p> <p><a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/small-print">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/small-print#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Followersoftheapocalypse/~4/pul0aKFi8CQ" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/880558/green_guitar.jpg http://posterous.com/users/5erAmX21C7nj David Kernohan dkernohan David Kernohan http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/small-print Sun, 01 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Followersoftheapocalypse/~3/IybqZDjFUjo/important-news http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/important-news <p> <p><em>(yes, obviously... check the date)</em></p> <p>So, for those of you who haven't heard, I'm very proud to announce that Followers of the Apocalypse is becoming the first ever affiliate (non-institutional) member of the <a href="http://www.russellgroup.ac.uk/">Russell Group</a>, the UK grouping of elite research-focused universities.</p> <p>You'll probably all agree that the Russell Group is a "natural fit" for the values and aspirations of FOTA, and I am honoured to be the first mainstream higher education blog to be recognised in this way. I'm sure others will follow.</p> <p>Over the next week and at their indirect request, I'll be using a number of posts to detail ways in which the intelligent use of learner analytics can increase institutional revenue. You'll know that I've long been an advocate of the use of personal data to maximise the monetary value of every educational and social interaction, and it is great to be given the opportunity to write at length about this</p> <p>However, from Monday syndication of this blog (which will be renamed the <em>English Journal of Eschatalogical Locomotivity</em>) will only be available via <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/feb/02/academics-boycott-publisher-elsevier">Elsevier</a>. I've come to the conclusion that only the support of a major publisher can take FOTA to the next level, and Elsevier's reasonable pricing and capable delegation to me in the matters of writing, commissioning, proof reading, typesetting and distributing the new journal have convinced me that this is the best choice. So please, do ask your library to add me to their portfolio of subscriptions, act before Wednesday for a special introductuary rate.</p> <p>--</p> <p>sent from my Apple iPad3</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> </p> <p><a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/important-news">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/important-news#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Followersoftheapocalypse/~4/IybqZDjFUjo" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/880558/green_guitar.jpg http://posterous.com/users/5erAmX21C7nj David Kernohan dkernohan David Kernohan http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/important-news Thu, 29 Mar 2012 02:00:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Followersoftheapocalypse/~3/3fhteiCtSXs/highly-provisional-provision http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/highly-provisional-provision <p> <p><em>Post available under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/">CC-BY</a> license, representing my own opinions only. Written at the suggestion of Mark Leach at <a href="http://www.wonkhe.com/">Wonkhe.com</a></em></p> <p>Reading the <a href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/hefce/2012/12_08/">HEFCE grant tables for 2012/2013</a> is like reading the racing form guide at the back of the Daily Mail. You know that most of what you are seeing is based entirely on extrapolation and guesswork, and you feel fairly dirty and ashamed whilst doing so. As HEFCE themselves say:</p> <p>"<em>The allocations announced in this document are highly provisional: in particular, most of the recurrent teaching grant allocations will be recalculated as we receive more up-to-date student number information for 2012-13</em>." (para 26)</p> <p>The new regime payments are sketchiest, as HEFCE have needed to extrapolate (from 2011-12 numbers and projections), the price per students for funding groups A&amp;B (the only ones attracting direct HEFCE payment under the new model). The rates per student are &pound;9,804 for price group A and &pound;1,483 for price group B.(para 39) These numbers themselves are calculated so that overall HE spending falls within the general need to restrict overall student funding, via student number controls.</p> <p>After a general overall control of undergraduate numbers, there is additional mucking about at the edges via the exclusion of all students with above AAB at 'A'-level, and those studying Medicine or Dentistry as a first degree from this overall control. Institutions can compete to recruit as many students with AAB+ as they like. Further complicating matters, the "margin" places (<a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/margincore-the-binary-divide">that we talked about in an earlier post</a>) are sliced from the general overall control and are then completable for.</p> <p>So poor old HEFCE (and I do feel for them, the financial modelling staff who had to do this are second-to-none in terms of their integrity and capabilities) have had to extrapolate, institution by institution, the following numbers:</p> <ul> <li>An expected number of AAB students that each institution will recruit.</li> <li>An expected number of non-AAB (non-medicine, non-dentistry) students each institution will recruit.</li> </ul> <p>And has added to this</p> <ul> <li>The number of marginal places each institution has successfully bid for.</li> </ul> <p>To put together an "implied" number of students per institution.&nbsp;</p> <p>For those of you who don't live and breathe this stuff, in the bad old days HEFCE just told institutions how many students they could recruit, and how much money they could expect for doing so.</p> <p>These implied totals (one of the strangest sets of data ever to come out of HEFCE) are there in table 4 in the grants table spreadsheet (Annex B). Apparently (and there really is no better word than apparently here), the big dips (by headcount) in student population will be at:</p> <p><span style="font-size: x-small;">Manchester Metropolitan University&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: x-small;">University of Plymouth&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: x-small;">University of Central Lancashire&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: x-small;">Leeds Metropolitan University&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: x-small;">Sheffield Hallam University&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: x-small;">Liverpool John Moores University&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: x-small;">University of the West of England, Bristol&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: x-small;">Kingston University&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: x-small;">University of East London&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: x-small;">Middlesex University&nbsp;</span></p> <p>And the big rises will be at:</p> <p><span style="font-size: x-small;">Institute of Education&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: x-small;">Anglia Ruskin University&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: x-small;">University of Worcester&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: x-small;">York St John University&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: x-small;">University of Durham&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: x-small;">University of Gloucestershire&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: x-small;">University of Bristol&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: x-small;">Staffordshire University&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: x-small;">Aston University&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: x-small;">University of Cambridge&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: x-small;">University of Oxford&nbsp;</span></p> <p>Why? A mixture of the effects of the allocated marginal places (notably those institutions subject to big dips in recruitment have not been successful in getting marginal places) and the inferred additional recruitment of AAB+ students.</p> <p>This latter is simply based on the current number of AAB+ students at each institution, plus an extra 4,000 places applied pro-rata based on the each institutions current AAB numbers as a function of the total AAB population.&nbsp;</p> <p>Cynically, one could argue that this modelling is predicated on the "free market" in AAB+ students having<span style="text-decoration: underline;"> no effect on applications whatsoever</span>, other than magicing up 4,000 extra highly qualified applicants. I'm not levelling this as a criticism (as clearly they need *some* numbers) just as a passing note regarding how unpredictable and convoluted this new funding model actually is. Whereas the figures in Table 4 may suggest that 335 less freshers will be eating pasties at the University of Leeds, and 248 less freshers will be eating pasties at the University of Liverpool, the reality is that no-one has any idea at all what will happen in the late summer of 2012.</p> <p>Which, given that HEFCE are also charged with controlling student numbers overall, is a recipe for utter chaos come admissions time.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> </p> <p><a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/highly-provisional-provision">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/highly-provisional-provision#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Followersoftheapocalypse/~4/3fhteiCtSXs" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/880558/green_guitar.jpg http://posterous.com/users/5erAmX21C7nj David Kernohan dkernohan David Kernohan http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/highly-provisional-provision Thu, 22 Mar 2012 15:31:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Followersoftheapocalypse/~3/6ZuXCDsVNWQ/i-can-see-by-the-sadness-in-your-eyes-that-yo http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/i-can-see-by-the-sadness-in-your-eyes-that-yo <p> <div>I've been thinking more about <a href="http://http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/my-openedspace">my #openedspace post</a>, and the can of worms I opened in acknowledging that many of my underlying ideas about the nature of the learning process came from folk music. &nbsp;I've been wondering what folk musicians say about learning, and how widely applicable this is.</div> <p /> <div><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Thompson_(musician)">Richard Thompson</a> is one of those rare guitar players who is always worth listening to, just because no-one (including him) is quite sure what he is going to do next. He doesn't have a blog as such, but is endlessly quotable and <a href="http://www.richardthompson-music.com/viewpoint.asp">keeps a record of these quotes</a> on his website. I've always been attracted to this one:</div> <p /> <div><em>"For me, the best feeling in music is when you're truly improvising and don't know where you're going, but you know you're going to arrive at an interesting place."</em></div> <p /> <div>This is a fine example of what I would call a benefit of higher education, the ability to follow any thread or collections of threads in the pursuit of knowledge. Improvised learning is that which is utterly learner-led and unbound by extrinsic motivation. A wonderful thing to aim for, but there is a lot of skill needed to get there. So does my underlying idea base itself on technical mastery of learning?</div> <p /> <div><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Gaughan">Dick Gaugan</a> is a very interesting chap, with twin interests in protest songs and web accessibility. He's maintained a proto-blog since the early days of the web and one of his sporadic posts concern <a href="http://www.dickgaughan.co.uk/ramblings/technique.html">the limits of technical mastery</a>. The closing paragraphs are worth quoting in full:</div> <p /> <div><em>"Mastery of technique is not the job of a musician, it is merely the basic toolkit for learning to do the job of a musician. The most essential element of the job of a musician is the skill to intelligibly communicate ideas and emotion from the musician to the listener via sound. The absence of that means it is not music, it is a programmed sequence of noises, regardless of however pleasant and harmonious those noises might be.</em></div> <p /> <div><em>In the words of </em><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incredible_String_Band"><em>Mike Heron's</em></a><em> Hedgehog Song, "You know all the words and you sing all the notes but you never quite learned the song . . .""</em></div> <p /> <div><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Bogz2xZy-bo?wmode=transparent" allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="417" width="500"></iframe></div> <p /> <div>A very odd song, but one chosen as a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/desert-island-discs/castaway/0786752e">Desert Island Disc</a> by none other than the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. Who has also written and spoken a fair bit about learning, including a <a href="http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/1847/cefacs-lecture-birmingham-centre-for-anglican-communion-studies">lecture to the Centre of Anglican Communion Studies</a> in 2004 where he makes almost the same point as Gaugan does from the opposite direction.</div> <p /> <div><em>"It is possible, you see, to learn quite a lot about let us say the history of music, about musical theory. It is possible even to recognise patterns of a page of black marks on a white background which tell you how a composition moves. But it would be strange, as I have said, if that were all pursued in the absence of any acquisition of a skill &ndash; any capacity to do something in a particular way."</em></div> <p /> <div>Both Rowan Williams and Dick Gaugan are arguing that learning requires both the mastery of a set of skills and the ability to set these within a wider pattern that can communicate ideas and emotion to others. However, much of current orthodoxy in educational policy sees the former as an end in itself, which is as unhelpful and uneducational as the occasional <a href="http://larrysanger.org/2011/12/on-educational-anti-intellectualism-a-reply-to-steve-wheeler/">focus on the latter</a> as the point of higher education.<em><br /></em></div> <p /> <div>But there is one key aspect of folk music missing from this picture, the idea of learning as the reinterpretation rather than the reproduction of knowledge. This is what I touched on in the #openedspace post when I quoted song collector Cecil Sharp. But Richard Thompson, in a song that is at once a folk song and not a folk song, expresses the idea thus:</div> <p /> <div><em>"We used to say<br /> That come the day<br /> We'd all be making songs<br /> Or finding better words<br />These ideas never lasted long"</em></div> <p /> <div><em><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/avX5VlU7MXM?wmode=transparent" allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="417" width="500"></iframe><br /></em></div> <p /> <div>There's been surprisingly little written about this idea of "finding better words", but it seems like it has a lot to say a mainstream education that is still reeling from the implications of the read/write web. An encyclopaedia that is rewritten by any reader to reflect their experience is, at heart, a very similar idea to a ballad or tune that is adapted by all those that experience it. In both instances, a certain level of technical mastery is required and a sense of the overarching pattern of the source material is required.<em><br /></em></div> <p /> <div>Competence, Experience, Appreciation.</div> <p /> <div>Or, if you'd rather: purity, truth, beauty.</div> </p> <p><a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/i-can-see-by-the-sadness-in-your-eyes-that-yo">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/i-can-see-by-the-sadness-in-your-eyes-that-yo#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Followersoftheapocalypse/~4/6ZuXCDsVNWQ" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/880558/green_guitar.jpg http://posterous.com/users/5erAmX21C7nj David Kernohan dkernohan David Kernohan http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/i-can-see-by-the-sadness-in-your-eyes-that-yo Sun, 18 Mar 2012 16:06:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Followersoftheapocalypse/~3/8yroqDLJB28/women-in-elearning-technology-storify http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/women-in-elearning-technology-storify <p> <p>After reading Donald Clark's post promising a series of pieces on <a href="http://donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/blog-marathon-50-blogs-on-learning.html">50 learning theorists</a> (in 50 days) I was rather startled to see that only one woman (Ruth Colvin Clark) was mentioned, and then only as a co-author. I wouldn't claim to be any kind of an expert in learning theory (an interested amateur, if anything) but it struck me as - at least - statistically unlikely that only men had ever made significant contributions to our understanding of learning and education.</p> <p>I was unprepared for&nbsp;<a href="http://t.co/I4mOTRJe">the awesomeness that ensued</a>. Huge kudos to Frances Bell, Helen Beetham, Josie Fraser, Catherine Cronin, Anne-Marie Cunningham, GNA Garcia, Jennifer M Jones, Pat Parslow and others.:</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <script src="http://storify.com/dkernohan/women-in-e-learning-theory.js"></script> <p>[<a href="http://storify.com/dkernohan/women-in-e-learning-theory" target="_blank">View the story "Women in (e)Learning (Theory)" on Storify</a>]</p> </p> <p><a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/women-in-elearning-technology-storify">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/women-in-elearning-technology-storify#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Followersoftheapocalypse/~4/8yroqDLJB28" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/880558/green_guitar.jpg http://posterous.com/users/5erAmX21C7nj David Kernohan dkernohan David Kernohan http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/women-in-elearning-technology-storify Tue, 13 Mar 2012 08:28:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Followersoftheapocalypse/~3/302I7UyV0j4/was-he-funding-a-dry-run-for-the-nhs http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/was-he-funding-a-dry-run-for-the-nhs <p> <div>I don't know enough about the NHS or the bill to say anything useful about it, but I am opposed to it based on the comments from <a href="http://bengoldacre.posterous.com/what-do-doctors-nurses-say-about-the-nhsbill">expert bodies and individuals</a> that do. But I am struck by the parallels to the "There is No Alternative" rhetoric about HE funding.</div> <p /> <div>Compare:</div> <p /> <div><em>"To those people who doubt what we are doing I would say, because of the pressures we are facing, we cannot afford not to reform the NHS." </em>- <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/mar/13/nhs-collapse-without-reforms-lansley">Andrew Lansley</a></div> <p /> <div>with</div> <p /> <div><em>"The current system of funding for higher education is no longer fit for purpose" </em>- <a href="http://www.bis.gov.uk/news/topstories/2010/Oct/Browne-Report-published">David Willetts</a></div> <p /> <div>The second quote was fundamentally questioned this week via a <a href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/hefce/2012/12_05/12_05.pdf">report by HEFCE</a> on the financial health of the HE sector. In 2010-11 the sector ran a &pound;1000m operating surplus, the highest on record and a little over 4% of the total government income. And damningly, HEFCE cite the new model as providing a need for retrenchment and savings rather than a new golden era for universities and colleges.</div> <p /> <div><em>"Despite there being uncertainty about the future government policy for higher education, in particular student number controls, there is strong evidence that the sector is financially well prepared for the new funding system" (para 50.).</em></div> <p /> <div><em> </em>And already we know that institutions will face a <a href="http://nds.coi.gov.uk/content/Detail.aspx?ReleaseID=423634&amp;NewsAreaID=2">real terms cut in fee income</a> the following year.</div> <p /> <div>Many commentators and experts (and even me!) have been saying this for nearly two years. Sadly we have been proven right.It seems it is not the current system of funding that is not fit for purpose. It is the new one.</div> <p /> <div>Expert opinion seems to say the same about the NHS reforms. It is possible, though unlikely, that the NHS Bill may still be rejected at this late stage. In comparison the <a href="http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=418801">HE Bill was rejected without a fight</a> though the damage has already been done.</div> <p /> <div>I hope that the same will not be said about the NHS, either with or without the bill.</div> <p /> <div><em>post represents my own opinions only, and is available under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/">CC-BY</a> license.</em></div> </p> <p><a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/was-he-funding-a-dry-run-for-the-nhs">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/was-he-funding-a-dry-run-for-the-nhs#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Followersoftheapocalypse/~4/302I7UyV0j4" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/880558/green_guitar.jpg http://posterous.com/users/5erAmX21C7nj David Kernohan dkernohan David Kernohan http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/was-he-funding-a-dry-run-for-the-nhs Wed, 07 Mar 2012 05:29:00 -0800 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Followersoftheapocalypse/~3/Po_AFW6q46I/margincore-the-binary-divide http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/margincore-the-binary-divide <p> <div>Very few words from me - just one big picture. This is the <a href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk/news/hefce/2012/margin.htm">allocation of "margin" student places to HEIs</a> plotted against institutional QR (quality-linked research) funding.</div> <p /> <div><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://getfile2.posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/dkernohan/RHAfO6DMHTayVDQJeJgyqn4MymjBpFu3IrVtmCvXLzXIeRWnZuP9Jt2NS5xE/unknownname.png"><img alt="Unknownname" height="325" src="http://getfile3.posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/dkernohan/hdCmQsB6y0ikutR4vec9Y9udpF2a8zNlL5qDU9TCHplpla8HGoK19KPsbSmm/unknownname.png.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> </div> </div> <p /> <div>Margin places have been allocated to institutions based on on "criteria of quality, demand and cost &ndash; only those institutions with average tuition fees in 2012-13 of &pound;7,500 or less (net of fee waivers) were eligible to bid. HEFCE received bids from 203 institutions for 36,000 places. Final allocations were made on a pro rata basis" (the "pro-rata" being that everyone's allocation was reduced to meet the total fit below the 20,000 places HEFCE could allocate.)</div> <p /> <div>I'd expected a positive correlation for widening participation funding, hypothesising that institutions with a focus on WP would be good at delivering efficient, effective and popular HE courses. But - of course - delivering HE to non-traditional learners is expensive, so this would play against such institutions having fees of &pound;7,500 or less - and there's no sense having extra places that mean you are running a course at more of a loss.</div> <p /> <div>But just look at the graph! I've never seen a clearer example of a teaching/research binary divide. I'd be interested to come back to this data when we get the AAB numbers.</div> <p /> <div><em>This is a personal post and should not be seen as representing &nbsp;the views of any group or organisation. It is available under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/">CC-BY</a> license.</em></div> </p> <p><a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/margincore-the-binary-divide">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/margincore-the-binary-divide#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Followersoftheapocalypse/~4/Po_AFW6q46I" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/880558/green_guitar.jpg http://posterous.com/users/5erAmX21C7nj David Kernohan dkernohan David Kernohan http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/margincore-the-binary-divide Mon, 05 Mar 2012 03:59:00 -0800 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Followersoftheapocalypse/~3/3M0Icv58qjU/my-openedspace http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/my-openedspace <p> <p style=""><em>Just what is "Open Education"? How does it fit with everything else? This post is one of three exploring the same issue from the perspectives of <a href="http://amberthomas.typepad.com/fragments/2012/03/openedspace.html">Amber Thomas</a>,<span>&nbsp;</span><a href="http://lawrie.jiscinvolve.org/wp/?p=103">Lawrie Phipps</a><span>&nbsp;</span>and myself (and hopefully, others...) as a part of<span>&nbsp;</span><a href="http://www.openeducationweek.org/">Open Education Week</a>. It is available for reuse under a<span>&nbsp;</span><a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/">CC attribution</a><span>&nbsp;</span>license.</em></p> <p style=""><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://getfile7.posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2012-03-03/fbvuDjIDmnsivDrsauzoajhJHsskhwcjxBeiriwhuracunkzirCiwotBBGDr/openedspace_dk.png.scaled1000.png"><img alt="Openedspace_dk" height="375" src="http://getfile9.posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2012-03-03/fbvuDjIDmnsivDrsauzoajhJHsskhwcjxBeiriwhuracunkzirCiwotBBGDr/openedspace_dk.png.scaled500.png" width="500" /></a> </div> </p> <p style="">There are three things I really want people to take away from this very simple model.</p> <ol style=""> <li>Students<span>&nbsp;</span><span style="text-decoration: underline;">are</span><span>&nbsp;</span>at the heart of the system</li> <li>Institutions, certification and the "learner journey"<span>&nbsp;</span><span style="text-decoration: underline;">aren't</span>.</li> <li>Learning is the creation of knowledge.</li> </ol> <p style="">In trying to capture education in any kind of systems model, I'm unavoidably going to end up modelling a significant chunk of what we might call modern human civilisation. I'd be getting in to fairly fundamental ideas about learning as a thing that we do every day rather than as a discrete activity. In short I'm going to overreach my understanding and end up looking rather silly.</p> <p style="">The basis for my own mental model of learning and resource sharing comes from the English Folk Music tradition. It often suprises newcomers to this area of culture that there is no canon - no agreed set of tunes, songs, stories and dances. Instead there are numerous competing regional and cultural traditions, and there are variations even within these traditions</p> <p style="">Writing about this in "<em><a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/english-folk-song-some-conclusions/oclc/164768100">English Folk-Song: Some Conclusions</a></em>", legendary collector Cecil Sharp suggested that "one man sings a song, and then others sing it after him, changing what they do not like". Rob Young, who recently produced a beautifully written history of interest in the English folk music tradition called "<em><a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/electric-eden-unearthing-britains-visionary-music/oclc/676728711&amp;referer=brief_results">Electric Eden</a></em>", explains the idea further:</p> <p style="">"For [Cecil] Sharp, folk songs existed in constant transformation, a living example of an art form in a state of perpetual renewal [...] Don't seek the 'original' copy, insisted Sharp; focus on the transformations themselves - for they are the substance of the song"</p> <p style="">As soon as we start to record and fix songs - even if we take great pains to capture every variation we have discovered, we have lost what has made them live. Derrida neatly encapsulates this idea as <em>diff&eacute;rance</em>. In any written or recorded folk music the subject is indeed "not present".</p> <p style="">For me, the idea that one can learn any body of knowledge without knowingly or unknowingly altering it seems fundamentally improbable. And these alterations are not chance mutations, these are memetic improvements that are shared and disseminated - or discarded and lost. A history of knowledge would be a history of these refinements - their discovery, their use and their usurption. And without this movement - this story - knowledge is simply memorisation.</p> <p style="">Our modern cultural preoccupation with measurement and accreditation of learning plays against this narrative flow. Too often, I think, we are more concerned with the mastery of a body of knowledge (as if it were static and could be memorised) rather than the way in which the act of learning moves knowledge onwards.</p> <p style="">I've interpreted learning as a refining cycle, drawing on resources and on means of connecting to people. Whether this happens within or without an institution is immaterial, the proccess is the same. The institution is simply and at best a wonderful box to protect and nourish the mechanism. And if our strange and graceful machines can change the shape and nature of this box: allowing the contents to be more visible whilst retaining the resilience, so much the better.</p> <p style="">An institution can also steer and nurture enthusiasm, there are many paths that have already been taken and guidance about this should be welcomed.&nbsp; Because are our thoughts our own, or do they come from others? Clearly, the answer here is both - the limits of my reading do not halt my speculation, and my speculation often drives my reading. Surely, I quietly suspect, somebody else has thought about this stuff too?</p> <p style="">At worst, the institiution is a codification engine, a printer of certificates showing that an approved course through the sum of human endeavor has been plotted and measured. The ability to convince others that you and your thoughts are worthy of attention is perhaps the greatest of social skills - the examination is a very poor proxy measure for this, and the database query is an even poorer proxy for the examination.</p> <p style="">Open learning - as painful as it is that we even need these terms - is natural learning. Or even folk learning. It is our own entry into a tradition that lives longer than us, than our cities and countries, than our economies and values. And accreditation? - accreditation is very useful to us as individuals in the short term. It currently has an enormous economic and social value. It is a worthy investment for the present. But we should not pretend that it has anything much to do with learning.</p> <p style=""><em>I need hardly add - as it would be very clear to all intelligent readers - that these are my own views, and not those of my employers, colleagues or co-conspirators.</em></p> <p style="">&nbsp;</p> </p> <p><a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/my-openedspace">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/my-openedspace#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Followersoftheapocalypse/~4/3M0Icv58qjU" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/880558/green_guitar.jpg http://posterous.com/users/5erAmX21C7nj David Kernohan dkernohan David Kernohan http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/my-openedspace Fri, 24 Feb 2012 14:49:00 -0800 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Followersoftheapocalypse/~3/HuD55pe7CJ4/venus-in-oers http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/venus-in-oers <p> <p><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://getfile8.posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2012-02-24/puymjeoJzcmaDpJahlucddoslpjDqsJDGfuAyHBmlwcGjuphIyIsftzxeuur/Pixton_Comic_Venus_in_OERs_by_dkernohan.png.scaled1000.png"><img alt="Pixton_comic_venus_in_oers_by_dkernohan" height="444" src="http://getfile4.posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2012-02-24/puymjeoJzcmaDpJahlucddoslpjDqsJDGfuAyHBmlwcGjuphIyIsftzxeuur/Pixton_Comic_Venus_in_OERs_by_dkernohan.png.scaled500.png" width="500" /></a> </div> Okay, I've been thinking about doing this for ages, and <a href="http://www.pixton.com/uk/comic/gyppks62">Pixton</a> (the comics thing I played with a few posts ago) seemed like the best way of presenting it. @ambrouk 's "<a href="http://infteam.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2012/01/17/storyo/">My story of O(pen)</a>" was a wonderfully positive look at the benefits of open, so here I am drawing both on this slightly one-sided view and her very interesting choice of title to realise that openess is a discipline, and like every discipline it can be both beneficial, enjoyable and very difficult to stick to.</p> <p>Brian Lamb expressed this rather well with his "<a href="http://abject.ca/frustrating-misconceptions/">frustrating misconceptions</a>" on openness, the fact that people outside of "the lifestyle" have very odd ideas of how it actually works in practice - the things that seem to be the "point" when viewed from the outside are not the day-to-day benefits. And the huge elephant in the room, that Creative Commons is all about making better use of your copyright rather than abandoning it.</p> <p>Hope the comic is gnomic enough to be interesting without being incomprehensible!</p> <p><em>The existence of this post and Amber's does not mean that there is a secret BDSM fetish scene at our mutual employers. As far as I am aware. All the bits of the comic I own are available under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/">CC-BY</a>, though note that the good folks at Pixton also require attribution and that their property is not used commercially.</em></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> </p> <p><a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/venus-in-oers">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/venus-in-oers#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Followersoftheapocalypse/~4/HuD55pe7CJ4" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/880558/green_guitar.jpg http://posterous.com/users/5erAmX21C7nj David Kernohan dkernohan David Kernohan http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/venus-in-oers Thu, 23 Feb 2012 04:41:00 -0800 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Followersoftheapocalypse/~3/vpwYUX6FU3A/cetis12-open-mic-session http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/cetis12-open-mic-session <p> <div><strong>Bharti Gupta</strong> spoke about the <a href="http://landmap.mimas.ac.uk">Landmap GeoSpatial Education Resources project</a>. She's based at MIMAS in Manchester, one of our nationally designated data centres. Landmap is a MIMAS service, running until July 2012, working with geospatial data and satellite imagery. It negotiates licenses for, and purchase, datasets on behalf of UK institutions, providing this data freely to end users via Shibboleth.</div> <p /> <div>Four datasets are available: optical/thermal, radar, elevation and feature. Optical imagery includes satellite, infra-red and aeriel photography (both historic and modern). Thermal data and radar data both allow investigation into many areas, such as the type and health of vegetation. The Elevation collection retains height, volume and 3D information. The feature collection covers the age, type and height of specific buildings, usable in estate management, fire prevention, network planning and CCTV location. The service also holds UKMap data, a multi-layered map base accurately locating buildings, garages, boundaries and trees.</div> <p /> <div>Landmap is supported by a learning zone which supports users in accessing and working with the provided data, via 15 free courses. These courses cover basic, immediate and advanced applications in image processing, resource creation and interpretation within a web-optimised pedagogic framework, and are currently in the process of being enhanced. The learning resources are currently accessible to UK HE via a Shibboleth authentication, but will shortly be made available under a Creative Commons license, and the team are working to include resources suitable for schools use at "A"-level.</div> <p /> <div>Thanks to Bharti (<a href="https://twitter.com/#!/dulcet_bg">@dulcet_bg</a>) for adding additional details to this section of the post. Her slides are available on <a href="http://t.co/k2GCnUCn">slideshare</a>.&nbsp;</div> <p /> <div><strong>Martin Hamilton</strong> posed the question "what happens after e-learning?". eLearning used to be a niche activity, but many of the tools and approaches have now become mainstream in institutions beyond learning. Learning technologists should be digital literacy champions, dealing with social media and online practice, project management and other tools. Can we kill off the idea of an "eLearning" expert? Are these people now something else?</div> <p /> <div>A discussion around the room suggested that a decreasing focus in technology (other than legacy stuff like VLEs) mean that the need for a technical "service manager" is decreasing, and the role is now more centred on staff advice and support. There was a lovely anecdote (which I won't cite to save blushes) about a top-down initiative to install electronic whiteboards in every room leading to another expensive project to re-instate traditional whiteboards. This was a great example of where technology is expected to lead pedagogy - the consensus was that this should be the other way round.</div> <p /> <div><strong>Gill Ferrell&nbsp;</strong>covered the "<a href="http://landscape.hesa.ac.uk">redesigning the higher education data and information landscape</a>" project, which she is working on with HESA (with UCAS, NUS, OFFA, HEFCE and others). This is a large scale, high-profile project looking at improving data quality and collection efficiency. Currently a large HE instituion can expect to be making up to 500 data returns to statutory and professional regulatory bodies, the project aims to streamline these multiple conversations. She offered an interesting perspective on the reactions of institutions to the idea of open student data. Questions seem to boil down to "who needs to see this data" and "how accurate does it need to be". Scott Wilson drew an important distinction between data used for individual feedback and summary data for decision making (much as we did in yesterday's session) - he made the point that data protection issues are often (wrongly) based on the assumption of the ability to drill-down at any level. He said that there are a series of interlocking mandates and quasi-mandates that mean standards-compliant data is a de-facto mandate in order to complete required data returns efficiently. Martin Hamilton further evidenced this, showing an image based on UCISA survey data around the ways in which the various institutional systems that can produce this required data need to link together.</div> <p /> <div>Fundamentally, institutional data is used both for knowledge and planning, and for funding. A certain amount of institutional control is expected over data linked to income, especially where projections and assumptions are required. Data attached to "big" funding will be collected however it is requested due to the stakes involved, but for lower-return returns (ahem) the temptation to just offer a take-it-or-leave it "this is our data. Format it how you like" approach must be enormous. It's all a good case for open institutional data. I narrowly avoided a #UserDataBubble rant (which Scott W linked to Stafford Beer's 70s rants about the backwards megaphone.) Generally we should only give people data that they actually want to do something useful with.</div> <p /> <div><strong>Rob Englebright </strong>described the <a href="http://www.xcri.co.uk/">XCRI-CAP</a> project as allowing people to "fix their plumbing" regarding the content and utility of course data. Drawing on Dave White (and teams) OLTF-linked assertion that information on courses is (Rob's paraphrase) "bloody hard to find". XCRI-CAP 1.2 (a format for course data feeds) is becoming BS8581(-1 and -2), a conformant profile of BS EN 15982. The programme is currently running, but there are a number of interesting things emerging around it, one of which being an <a href="http://galadriel.cetis.ac.uk/XCRIValidator/">XCRI-CAP validator</a> and another being an aggregator. This aggregator now has an API, and Rob is looking for a small number of projects to "show us something interesting" combining this API with other data. As an example Scott Wilson showed us UCompare, which mashes up XCRI-CAP and fees/OFFA data.</div> <p /> <div><strong>Shane Sutherland</strong> from <a href="http://www.pebblepad.co.uk/">Pebblepad</a> offered an update on the ways in which the Pebblepad system complies with the Leap2A standard, in terms of allowing data around forms to be exported to other systems. By using a central repository, the system can allow particular forms and templates to ensure that customisations can be shared. However, Shane is keen that forms could be shared beyond Pebblepad using an open standard. He asked - "does anyone know of any existing standards that could be used to describe a form?".&nbsp;</div> <p /> <div>Significant standards related conversations followed, most of which went entirely over my head and over the head of many other people in the room. But I think Shane got some ideas to investigate.</div> <p /> <div><strong>Mark Power</strong> offered an <a href="http://pic.twitter.com/gPDCO7p1">Augmented Reality "rant"</a> (cheers @Lawrie for the quick mashup). He quickly brought us up to speed on the early days of AR, showing points of interest on a live camera overlay regarding "points of interest", which is available to consumers but not yet in wide use. There are some similar general tools around image recognition. Generally he felt that AR needs to find a niche, and that enthusiasts who are becoming discouraged through lack of uptake would agree with this. It is in danger of being "buzzworded out of existence".</div> <p /> <div>Rob Englebright brought up the <a href="http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/elearning/ltig/scarlet.aspx">"Scarlet" JISC LTIG project</a>, that uses AR to show details of manuscripts, but Mark felt that the actual user experience is still lacking. Comparing the area to QR codes, he drew the point that AR is still dependent on individual applications, and the ability of a user to know that something is there. There are also simple technical engagement issues such as screen size. Generally, there are links both to continuing improvements in geospatial data sets (see Landmaps above), and image delivery.</div> <p /> <div>Lawrie suggest that AR data needs to be opened up, allowing for user created data and an end to the locked in "app experience".</div> <p /> <div><strong>Lawrie Phipps&nbsp;</strong>then reported that after a detailed assessment of conference beard activity that he has yet to see any evidence of badgers passing TB to academics over the conference wireless (this could be linked to ongoing wireless connectivity issues). There was a clear link to AR facial hair recognition research, and the potential display of clouds of angry and dangerous badgers around academics at conference on military grade head-up displays such as the Apple iPatch. And audio. But not location-tagging tweets, as such behaviour can lead to funding proposal based holiday discussion.&nbsp;</div> </p> <p><a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/cetis12-open-mic-session">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/cetis12-open-mic-session#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Followersoftheapocalypse/~4/vpwYUX6FU3A" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/880558/green_guitar.jpg http://posterous.com/users/5erAmX21C7nj David Kernohan dkernohan David Kernohan http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/cetis12-open-mic-session Wed, 22 Feb 2012 09:57:37 -0800 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Followersoftheapocalypse/~3/4N6wf3vxUCE/cetis12-systems-mapping-workshop-and-associat http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/cetis12-systems-mapping-workshop-and-associat <p> <div>John Lennon once memorably described the process of creativity as "doing bits that you join together". And in many areas of activity there are a number of "bits" that one joins together, all of which have an effect on other "bits". Putting that into #strokeandpose language, you could say that innovations play out in a complex socio-technical system, with a number of context dependent variables.<p />The systems mapping approach allows us to keep focusing on strategic issues in order to describe causes and effects - identifying key potential issues (and potential solutions) without needing to quantify these issues. Fundamentally we are visually describing cause-and-effect relationships between issues on a strategic level.<p />These maps are only useful where a context is described (and may be linked to the needs of a particular audience). Difference between systems dynamics and systems mapping is that the former deals with with quantified relationships. A map presents a mechanism but does not address the problem of measurement. That said, it must (says Adam Cooper) be possible to describe changes regarding the content of the boxes (even if this is just in terms of "more or less").<p />So we (Simon Grant, Christian Voight, Mark Johnson [for the love of all that is holy, <a href="http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com/">read this man's blog!!</a>], Adam Cooper, me) set to describing a student perspective on the use of learner analytics to enhance the quality of a course. Which causes us to spend much time defining our terms, and led to the realisation that we have two systems that have the name "analytics", one being the personal-level feedback and intervention learners expect as a result of their learning activity, the other being the summation of data concerning this (and other issues) used as to inform decision making at a course or institutional level. Mark attempted to bring these back together using a management cybernetics approach, but other than this we didn't get very far in actually sketching out what is a very complex set of interactions.<p />From looking at the work of other groups this was a common initial finding - the act of attempting to set out processes in this way seemed to be a great way of prompting critical conversations if not actually producing systems maps.<p />What we actually ended up doing (after a lot of interesting discussion) was coming up with a range of potential student "drivers" for engagement with higher education. As follows:<p />DRIVERS<br />1. Employment. (we split this into exchange value and use value of education, very much in the marxist tradition)<br />2. Pleasure. (we went for a split between joissance and plasir, after Lacan)<br />3. Esteem. (split between peer status [extrinsic] and self-worth [intrinsic])</div><p /><div>(I'm sure that these drivers deserve further unpacking, this'll maybe be done in a different blog post as it was slightly outside the scope of the session.)<p />Based on these needs, we agreed that a potential student would need investment-grade data on one (or more - depending on preference) of these in order to make a decision regarding whether, where and what to study, and we went ahead and listed a load of data sources you could probably fill in yourself. The interesting thing for me was the recurrence of the idea of risk management within this conception of education. Upping the financial stakes for students seems to have increased the effect of these risk calculations in decision making - this seems to have been a direct and possibly intended consequence of the Browne Review of HE Funding and everything that followed.</div><p /><div>So... we can use a range of data to help manage risk, then? Well, part of the system mapping approach seems to be identifying precisely which data would be useful in making a particular decision. There was a lot of talk about the need for "filters" to support people in deciphering huge amounts of data in order to make a decision, and Systems Mapping could help us design these filters.</div><p /><div>From an institutional perspective, it could also help make better use of the increasingly over-hyped suite of system-level learner analytics packages - meaning that data can be used reliably and defensibly for particular well-defined purposes. Mapping causality and relationships seems like a fundamental and almost trivial activity, but we found that the act of actually sitting down and doing it opened up a number of important questions about what people were actually trying to do with learning analytics and why.</div><p /><div>As an absurd extrapolation of the data-driven approach, it is possible to argue for an endpoint which would result in the entire learning function of an educational institution actually being managed by a small shell script, responding to constantly updated metrics by instigating interventions. You can imagine a whole article about a Second Industrial Revolution where management functions become entirely automated (indeed in inventory management, futures trading and a few other areas this has already happened).&nbsp;<p /><p /></div> </p> <p><a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/cetis12-systems-mapping-workshop-and-associat">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/cetis12-systems-mapping-workshop-and-associat#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Followersoftheapocalypse/~4/4N6wf3vxUCE" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/880558/green_guitar.jpg http://posterous.com/users/5erAmX21C7nj David Kernohan dkernohan David Kernohan http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/cetis12-systems-mapping-workshop-and-associat Mon, 20 Feb 2012 04:32:00 -0800 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Followersoftheapocalypse/~3/ak_Vv8jsdmU/2become1-assignments380-ds106 http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/2become1-assignments380-ds106 <p> <p><div class='p_embed p_audio_embed'> <a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/2become1-assignments380-ds106"><img alt="" src="http://posterous.com/images/filetypes/mp3.png" /></a> <div class='p_embed_description'> <span class='p_id3'><strong>2 Become 1</strong> by Fota (Feat. Cosmocat And Graham Reynolds)</span> <a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/2become1-assignments380-ds106">Listen on Posterous</a> </div> </div> </p> <div>Ever since I went back to working with <a href="http://www.wonderbrass.org.uk/">Wonderbrass</a> and rediscovered their love of unlikely pop covers, I've had this perfect, beautiful song stuck in my head. The chords are amazing, but the original Spice Girls version just goes too fast to properly experience them. (Craig Armstrong's string arrangement still rules, however)</div> <p /> <div><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/6M9cSez-mY4?wmode=transparent" allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="417" width="500"></iframe></div> <div><small>(set your spirit free...)</small></div> <p /> <div>However, on slowing the progression down I was struck by how close it was to a certain classic ballad by none other than Jimi Hendrix.</div> <p /> <div><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/7HpTteAvKPI?wmode=transparent" allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="417" width="500"></iframe></div> <div><small>(fly on, little wing...)</small></div> <p /> <div>So for the last couple of months, on and off, I've been arranging, recording and tweaking a version of 2 become 1 with a more "little wing" approach. I've had help from some very talented people so hats off to:</div> <p /> <div><a href="https://twitter.com/#!/cosmocat">@cosmocat</a> - UNU's very own gospel soul diva, who generously consented to record the delicious vocal.</div> <p /> <div>Graham Reynolds - drummer with <a href="http://www.jelliedreels.com/">The Jellied Reels</a>, who kindly recorded both of the drum parts.&nbsp;</div> <p /> <div>Jo Jones - Wonderbrass keyboardist, and teacher at <a href="http://www.fortemusic.co.uk/">Forte School of Music</a>, who lent me a glockenspiel :-)</div> <p /> <div>And thank you to the many, many people who have encouraged me to do this, and berated me for not doing so faster.</div> <p /> <div>So here it is, for your listening and sharing pleasure. The song remains the copyright of the composers &nbsp;(Spice Girls/Rowe/Stannard), but this recording and arrangement are made available under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported</a> license.</div> <p /> <div>I'll hopefully be doing a "Behind The Music" featurette on this recording sometime later tonight on <a href="http://darcynorman.net/ds106/radio/">#ds106radio</a>, wherein I'll try to cover how and, indeed, why.</div> <p /> <p /> <p /> <p /> <p /> <p /> <p /> <p /> <p>&nbsp;</p> </p> <p><a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/2become1-assignments380-ds106">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/2become1-assignments380-ds106#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Followersoftheapocalypse/~4/ak_Vv8jsdmU" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/880558/green_guitar.jpg http://posterous.com/users/5erAmX21C7nj David Kernohan dkernohan David Kernohan Fota (Feat. Cosmocat And Graham Reynolds) - 2 Become 1 http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/2become1-assignments380-ds106 Mon, 06 Feb 2012 06:37:00 -0800 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Followersoftheapocalypse/~3/P2p6H2N2dD8/aside-a-quick-note-on-the-apocalypse http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/aside-a-quick-note-on-the-apocalypse <p> <div>Seems like everyone is predicting the end times these last couple of weeks, either as a rhetorical device or a cut-off point for existing practices. Years and dates have been mentioned - so much for "no man may know the day or the hour!"<p />I realise that I've never really written properly about the apocalypse on here, which is odd given the title of my blog. My interest in eschatology is not a ghoulish fetish (those of you who have met me will know that I'm actually pretty cheerful and upbeat most of the time), but a fascination with narrative structures.<p />Stories are brilliantly structured: they have a beginning, a middle and an end. And we (as a society) love stories... we love them so much that we expect events that we experience to have these attributes too. But actual human life is seldom as forthcoming, especially regarding endings. Things tend to peter out, tail away or flat-out stop being interesting. In an increasingly diverse and connected world, this becomes more readily apparent. The advent (so very 1990s!) of post-modernity has highlighted just how important these narrative structures have become.<p />Enter the apocalypse. This is the ultimate "end", a profound way of saying "this story is now finished". My little boy says "The End" after every story he tells, even if it is a story I clearly want to know more about! I think he does it because endings are linked inextricably with beginnings. He wants to start telling a new story.<p />In art we've seen an increase in the use of "apocalyptic" imagery as we entered this economic downturn. I'd argue that this is a wider cultural wish to end this story and switch to a new one. And idly watching speculative Hollywood fiction about some natural disasters is easier than actually doing something about the several man-made ones we are now in the middle of. At the end of the Hollywood apocalypse we see the triumph of humanity, justice, and the American way. In reality this is never quite so certain... and the final triumph is more of a few more snatched days, weeks or months before the next onslaught.<p />To conclude, apocalypses beguile and dazzle because:<p />they are dramatic. Saying "X is dead" is much more exciting than saying, "I don't think X is really working".</div> <div>Linked to this, they are irrevocably final, they appeal to the idea of completion...</div> <div>... and thus to the idea of a new, fresh beginning.</div> <div>they offer the possibility of individual and group heroism. Apocalyptica is littered with heroes: the prophet crying in the wilderness, the action man with the crow-bar caked with zombie, the well organised vault dwellers, Bruce Willis...</div> <div>Wish fulfilment: from St John of Patmos to the Swedenborgians to the DIYU crowd - it's incredibly seductive to imagine all the things that you don't like being swept away so you can be proven right all along...</div> <div>... especially politically. The far right dream of bunkers and guns, the far left of riots and revolution. If my involvement in OER has taught me one thing politically, it's that the bridge from right libertarianism to left anarchism is surprisingly solid.</div> <p /> <div>As a follower of the apocalypse, I'm interested in what happens after all this heroism. Because amid the collapse and the destruction, war never changes. And the slow decline of ideas, the trickle of enthusiasm, is neither dramatic nor inspiring. But it is more true than all the stories we can tell.</div> </p> <p><a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/aside-a-quick-note-on-the-apocalypse">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/aside-a-quick-note-on-the-apocalypse#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Followersoftheapocalypse/~4/P2p6H2N2dD8" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/880558/green_guitar.jpg http://posterous.com/users/5erAmX21C7nj David Kernohan dkernohan David Kernohan http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/aside-a-quick-note-on-the-apocalypse Mon, 30 Jan 2012 03:07:00 -0800 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Followersoftheapocalypse/~3/_SBIpy0WeWo/the-inflatable-cathedral-and-the-carnival http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/the-inflatable-cathedral-and-the-carnival <p> <div><small><em>This post represents personal opinions only. It is available under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/">CC-BY licence</a>.</em></small></div> <p /> <div>It's rare that a blog post manages to implicitly offer a critique of itself, but this one by <a href="http://km4meu.wordpress.com/2012/01/17/the-feast-of-fools-of-feedback/">Ewen Le Borgne</a> at the International Livestock Research Unit does so in a such a mesmerisingly symmetrical way that I can only assume that it is intentional.</div> <p /> <div>As a late 90s lit-crit student, I was of course introduced to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabelais_and_His_World">Mikhail Bakhtin's legendary "Rabelais and his world"</a>, taking from it the central conceit of the carnivalesque in literature - you'd expect to come across this in any literature course. But what was maybe unique for me and my generation is that this discovery coincided with sudden and rapid growth of the world wide web. To me, as a precocious undergraduate, the web and the discourse of the web <span style="text-decoration: underline;">was</span> a carnival, in the Bakhtinian sense that here was a place where social norms and hierarchies were shifted, where anything was fair game for reuse and parody, and where the marginalised and reviled found a new confident voice as their "superiors" were embarrassed, scared and tongue-tied.</div> <p /> <div>What no-one predicted was the way in which, over the following decade and a half, this discourse would become mainstream, the geek would (sorry, horrid clich&eacute;) inherit the earth, and the practices and protocols embedded in our early use of the web would come to define the way in which my generation and the ones after it expected intellectual property, publishing and knowledge management to work. This unexpected carnival radically re-conceptualised ideas of property, of the nature of the idea, of the idea of education and knowledge, of reputation and authority - we thought we were just downloading lost albums from Napster and writing about them on our Geocities pages, but it turned out we were living through the opening years of a revolution similar in scope to the advent of mechanisation.</div> <p /> <div>Writer <a href="http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/01/hello-my-name-is-the-problem-o.html">Cathrynne M Valente</a> recently described the impact of this rather better than I could:</div> <p /> <div><em>"Now that the internet has settled in to being a massive and integral part of our lives on Planet Earth, we are starting to see how it changes our culture in the medium to long term, how profoundly it skews even comparatively young predictions from 10-15 years ago. The internet is not a Singularity with a capital S, but it is a sea change sharing more in common with the industrial revolution than simply a new device."</em></div> <p /> <div>And the carnival is still here, it is just that we have forgotten it in a rush to import pre-digital ideas of authority and property online. And Le Borgne's post, with a call for a limited academian feast of fools, carefully constrained so as not to have any danger of disrupting anything, takes me back once again to <a href="http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Review/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume45/NeverMindtheEdupunksorTheGreat/209326">Jim and Brian's high water mark</a>. But this is not my point.</div> <p /> <div>These days, we are complicit in selling the carnivalesque back to ourselves. Keynote talks and online seminars codify disruption as something that happens on a stage with a wireless headset mic and stock photos that aspire to the symbolic without ever quite reaching it. <a href="http://andreworlowski.com/2008/11/30/the-dumb-dumb-world-of-malcolm-gladwell/">Andrew Orlowski</a> slips this idea into a very amusing rant about Malcolm (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tipping_Point">Tipping Point</a>) Gladwell:</div> <p /> <div><em>"You could say these [Vertical Marketing Bureaucrat roles] are non-productive jobs in non-productive companies: the skills required to prattle on about &ldquo;horizontal marketing segmentation&rdquo; have very little to do with traditional sales skills, or R&amp;D. But what they rely on are the same things the New Bureaucrats rely on: measurement and monitoring.<p />[...] For want of a snappy description, and because it traverses the public and private sect</em><em>ors in a kind of League of the Clueless, I&rsquo;ll call this new class the vertical marketing bureaucracy, or VMB). These are people whose ambition is to speak at, or at least attend, New Media Conferences. Gladwell is their passport. And because TV and posh paper executives are now essentially part of the same vertical marketing bureaucracy (VMB) too, they&rsquo;re only too happy to report on Gladwell, the Phenomenon."</em></div> <p /> <div>There's now an established pattern for disruptive thought, a set of tropes and reference points that alert a bored audience that they are about to have their minds exploded by someone saying that learning is, like, all about people - and here are some numbers and graphs to prove it. Look, here's a picture of a poor person I saw on my holidays. LOOK AT MY HOLIDAY SNAPS, PEOPLE. FEEL MY SOCIOCULTURAL TOURISM! So instead of the full-on feast of fools, we get a feast-lite: a hierarchy of fools... largely white, largely male, largely middle-class, largely Euro-American at the top doing <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TED_(conference)">TED talks</a>, with a slightly wider pool of similarly attributed VMBs beneath them aping their styles at things like <a href="http://www.learningwithoutfrontiers.com/">Learning Without Frontiers</a> and other futurist conferences in exciting inflatable spaces with stages and lighting rigs. And below that, the general seeker after truth - a conference-goer often at public expense - who gets... what?<em><br /></em></div> <p /> <div>They are no longer participants in the carnival. They are a backdrop to the official feast. A means of signifying to the Gladwell-esque that <span style="text-decoration: underline;">they have arrived</span>. Whoop and holler, people.</div> <p /> <div>I don't mind as much for New Media Conferences. I mean, people who voluntarily go to new media conferences deserve all they get. But when this Apple-toting licensed court jester approach sneaks in to serious conversations about education, I reach for my (metaphorical) revolver. Education (and the struggle for the soul of education) is far too important to trivialise with this cut-and-paste, cut-and-dried approach to disruption-by-numbers.</div> <p /> <div>There are a small but significant number of education keynotees who may read this, and <a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/how-to-be-an-elearning-expert-module-2-how-to">I have annoyed them before.</a> But to anyone contemplating a large scale public address in this sphere, I point you to these three words of advice from <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/Rob_work">Rob Englebright</a>.</div> <p /> <div><strong>Purity. Truth. Beauty.</strong></div> <div><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://getfile0.posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2012-01-30/qxjFcBHuevctqxzircffEJdpHsrvIEgliJzFukyJIgtJflBnffJcIhphcBda/ptb-groom.jpg.scaled1000.jpg"><img alt="Ptb-groom" height="353" src="http://getfile1.posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2012-01-30/qxjFcBHuevctqxzircffEJdpHsrvIEgliJzFukyJIgtJflBnffJcIhphcBda/ptb-groom.jpg.scaled500.jpg" width="500" /></a> </div> </div> <div><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(the other rule of keynotes is always to use other peoples ideas. Though to be fair, Jim should absolutely use this slide and Rob would be delighted)</span></div> <p /> <div>Some words in conclusion from Prof. Michael Holquist (introduction to my 1984 edition of "Rabelais and his world"), &nbsp;Mikhail Bakhtin, and Fran&ccedil;ois Rabelais.</div> <p /> <div><em>"Those who lived through [the Russian revolution of 1917] were willy nilly thrown into the work of history. No one was allowed the luxury of a spectator's role. Those who normally seek the safety and anonymity of the gallery, such as peasants, workers, and - perhaps especially - intellectuals, to watch the kings, generals, prophets, and other public figures who occupy center stage go forward to volunteer their blood at Hegel's "slaughter bench of history," discovered they could not sit back and eat popcorn-or read books. The revolution gave a particularly Russian twist to Joyce's line, "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here_Comes_Everybody">Here comes everybody</a>."" (Holquist)</em></div> <p /> <div><em>"[...] the official feasts of the Middle Ages, whether ecclesiastic, feudal or sponsored by the state, did not lead the people out of the established world order and created no <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life">second life</a>. On the contrary, they sanctioned the existing pattern of things and reinforced them." (Bakhtin)&nbsp;</em></div> <p /> <div><em>"Friends, you will notice that in this world there are many more bollocks than men. Remember this." (Rabelais)<br /></em></div> </p> <p><a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/the-inflatable-cathedral-and-the-carnival">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/the-inflatable-cathedral-and-the-carnival#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Followersoftheapocalypse/~4/_SBIpy0WeWo" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/880558/green_guitar.jpg http://posterous.com/users/5erAmX21C7nj David Kernohan dkernohan David Kernohan http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/the-inflatable-cathedral-and-the-carnival Tue, 17 Jan 2012 01:48:00 -0800 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Followersoftheapocalypse/~3/vj58t-3uW2Y/the-origins-of-the-apocalypse-ds106 http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/the-origins-of-the-apocalypse-ds106 <p> <div><em>This post represents my personal opinions only, and is available under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/">CC-BY</a> license. [Both this post and indeed this entire blog have nothing at all to do with the <a href="http://lwf12.sched.org/event/02b4bb43d3533da61614e02772dde011">Education for the Apocalypse</a> session at <a href="http://www.learningwithoutfrontiers.com/lwf12/">#lwf12</a> - a conference so legendarily crap that they give you freeipads just for registering. If you are in London that day (and can avoid the myriad <a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/how-to-be-an-elearning-expert-module-2-how-to">disruptive innovators</a> talking about disruptive innovations like social media, mobile phones and gaming, just like at the 2007 JISC conference) it's probably worth going to that session as it has <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/kerileef">@kerileef</a> in it and she's ace.]</em></div> <p /> <div>Lou McGill told me that if I was doing #ds106 this year, I had to do some of the visual assignments. Make art, dammit - these were the words she used. But the nice thing about ds106 is that you can do something you felt like doing anyway and then claim it as an assignment - so, inspired by <a href="http://gforsythe.ca/soul-tag/">GuiliaForsythe's beautiful narrative</a> about the <a href="http://bavatuesdays.com/the-daily-create/">#dailycreate</a> and tagging, I wanted to do something visual with a narrative.<em><br /></em></div> <p /> <div>Immediately I thought of a <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SuperHeroOrigin">super-hero origins strip</a>. I know very little about graphic narrative, but I love and have always loved origin strips - those background stories that tell you how <a href="http://lab.cogdogblog.com/mather.html">Jim Groom became The Bava</a> and got his powe (kudos, Cogdog!) or whatever. So, I thought I'd make an origin strip for the Followers of the Apocalypse, with more than a hint of the story of ds106 and edublogging in there too. I used <a href="http://www.pixton.com/">Pixton</a> which is an absolutely beautiful tool and I would recommend it to everyone.</div> <div>Here's the <a href="http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/the-origins-of/">assignment</a>.&nbsp;</div> <p /> <div><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://getfile5.posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/dkernohan/6ztsVdy4LgnVsFUru2Cc3Cqc1ZSvsESaayqE2XUI3eJzKoOj7vgJbkCvKTjv/unknownname.png"><img alt="Unknownname" height="363" src="http://getfile6.posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/dkernohan/8dTrcMdAfqz07suMx1qRXYeSc9ClcTArxI5K51yH7MBE99lqhUZ9YWwNqrkA/unknownname.png.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> </div> </div> </p> <p><a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/the-origins-of-the-apocalypse-ds106">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/the-origins-of-the-apocalypse-ds106#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Followersoftheapocalypse/~4/vj58t-3uW2Y" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/880558/green_guitar.jpg http://posterous.com/users/5erAmX21C7nj David Kernohan dkernohan David Kernohan http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/the-origins-of-the-apocalypse-ds106 Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:39:38 -0800 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Followersoftheapocalypse/~3/M6IQYYtNDP4/the-user-data-bubble http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/the-user-data-bubble <p> <div><em>post represents my opinions only. available under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/">cc-by-3.0</a> (unported) license.</em></div><p /><div>In many ways the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble">2000 "dot com" crash</a> was a misnomer - there was nothing fundamentally wrong with the technology. However, what was wrong was the model used to pay for the technology, which was primarily either display advertising revenue or (more commonly) venture capital advanced with the expectations of returns based on display advertising. There were expectations around the revenue generatable from on-line adverts simply because they were online that were just not realisable.</div><p /><div>It is difficult to understand, more than 10 years on, quite why people thought that advertising would be more effective online than elsewhere. Advertising Effectiveness is a young science, and much is advanced (and then debunked) based on nothing more concrete than theorising. But many major advertisement placement conglomerates (Google, Microsoft, Apple... sometimes incorrectly referred to as service providers, hardware manufacturers and search engines) are focusing on one particular theory - the idea of personalised advertising based on user data.</div><p /><div><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/m42vTkXMt7s?wmode=transparent" allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="417" width="500"></iframe></div><div>(apologies for linking to a bad Tom Cruise film of a decent Philip K Dick book)</div><p /><div>Google is widely reckoned to receive <a href="http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312507044494/d10k.htm">99% of total income from advertising - around $28 billion in 2011</a>. Facebook partnered with Microsoft in order to gain <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-20/facebook-revenue-will-reach-4-27-billion-emarketer-says-1-.html">an estimated $3.8billion</a> via advertising in 2011. And Microsoft itself (in partnership with Yahoo and AOL) are determined to break in to this market despite <a href="http://redmondmag.com/articles/2012/01/01/13-most-important-microsoft-product-lines.aspx">losing £2.5 billion</a> a year on providing online services, barely breaking even. However, both <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/leapfrogging/2011/02/03/putting-a-value-on-google-and-facebook/">Google and Facebook</a> have seen recent valuations of substantially more than <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTmXHvGZiSY">£100billion dollars</a>, and Apple (a major provider of mobile-targetted adverts) has is valued at <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jul/29/business/la-fi-apple-cash-20110730">$362 billion</a> (more than the UK national debt),very recently holding more cash on deposit than the US government.</div><p /><div>Large amounts of these earnings, and much of the assumptions made regarding company values, are based on revenue generated by personally targeted advertising drawing on user data. The data these companies hold on our online (and increasingly, offline) activity represents their most valuable asset. Twitter, a company that doesn't even yet have a revenue model, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/aug/02/twitter-valued-8bn-large-investment">is valued at more than $12bn (£8bn)</a> simply on the value of the user data it holds.</div><p /><div>As we reach the bursting point of the bubble we see increasingly crazy activity. Only today Google <a href="http://parislemon.com/post/15627530949/antitrust">launched "search plus your world"</a>, using recommendations on social media (initially it's own Google+) to serve you search results, and thus advertisements, based on the opinions of your online contacts. &nbsp;The "freezing out" of Facebook and Twitter is not the issue here, it simply breaks search. It relies on your G+ account being well-managed in order to provide you with tailored results. Forgetting that if I want the opinions of my online contacts I will most likely ask them, and most likely disagree with them too.</div><p /><div>Tesco, the UKs largest retailer, <a href="https://secure.tesco.com/register/">does not allow you to set up</a> an online account to make purchases without being signed up to their own "Clubcard" user data collection scheme. Simply and startlingly if you don't give them your data, they don't want your money.</div><p /><div>Your user data, goes the theory, allows adverts to be specifically targeted to you. Should you buy, for instance, a decent bottle of single malt, you would be likely to receive advertising for other whiskies and spirits. And as a "single malt drinker", you personal data becomes valuable to other companies selling other products and services that other "single malt drinkers" buy. Online, this is easier and quicker, due to data stored by your web browser such as cookies, and search and purchase histories stored by search engines and shopping sites. This makes personal advertisment serving quicker and easier ("looked at data projectors online recently? You'd love to see these ads about data projectors. Never mind that you just bought one, or were researching for a friend..."). Analysts estimate that targeted advertisements drawing on your user data (on and offline) are <a href="http://www.networkadvertising.org/pdfs/NAI_Beales_Release.pdf">twice as effective</a>.</div><p /><div>To me, all of this seems to be based on a reversal of what I have <a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/the-student-as-labourer-consumer">previously termed</a> "one of the odder beliefs that our culture seems to have developed about markets" - the idea of market efficiency and the rational consumer. Advertisement targeting draws on the idea of our observed behaviour presenting a coherent and realistic picture of our desires and needs. Bluntly speaking, it doesn't. My past spending behaviour likely bears no relation to my spending currently or in the future - circumstances change, tastes change, opportunities change.</div><p /><div>All of this sails wonderfully close to Stephen Downes' recent post on <a href="http://halfanhour.blogspot.com/2012/01/data.html">learner data</a>. He argues, and I would agree, that data is not "wrong", but it is used in ways which are wrong in that it is used to generate conclusions that it cannot support. As <a href="http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/2012/01/11/learning-is-performance-performance-can-and-will-be-analysed/">Brian Kelly points out</a>, the <a href="http://www.nmc.org/publications/horizon-report-2012-higher-ed-edition">NMC Horizon 2012 Preview Report</a> (you can't read it unless you give them your data!!) sees Learner Analytics as a key 3-5 year trend for adoption in HE. &nbsp;And educational technology companies are putting serious money behind the idea.</div><p /><div>You can see the effects of this cultural mindset even see this in UK funding policy. Students are expected to make decisions regarding their place of study (or indeed, whether to study at all) based on the <a href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk/learning/infohe/kis.htm">Key Information Set [KIS]</a>), an abstracted and highly summarised set subset of user data. This data, it appears, can fix broken markets.&nbsp;</div><p /><div>To conclude: estimates of the &nbsp;value of user data are everywhere, and probably overestimate the actual realisable value. True in education and in wider e-commerce. Adjust your investment portfolio or educational predilections as you see fit.</div> </p> <p><a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/the-user-data-bubble">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/the-user-data-bubble#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Followersoftheapocalypse/~4/M6IQYYtNDP4" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/880558/green_guitar.jpg http://posterous.com/users/5erAmX21C7nj David Kernohan dkernohan David Kernohan http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/the-user-data-bubble