November 30, 2012 · 9:58 am

Mike Trucano’s ten worst practices in e-learning

I have always admired Mike Trucano‘s work, and so it was great to hear him speaking this morning at Online Educa Berlin.  His theme was understanding failures in e-learning, especially in the countries where the World Bank is working.

This was his list of the ten worst practices in e-learning:

  1. Dump hardware in schools, hope for magic to happen
  2. Design for OECD learning environments, implement elsewhere
  3. Think about educational content only after you have rolled out your hardware
  4. Assume you can just import content from someone else
  5. Don’t monitor, don’t evaluate
  6. Make a big bet on an unproven technology (especially one based on a closed/proprietary standard) or single vendor, don’t plan for how to avoid ‘lock in’
  7. Don’t think about or acknowledge total costs of ownership/operation issues or calculations
  8. Assume away equity issues
  9. Don’t train your teachers (nor your school headmasters, for that matter)
  10. ….for your own worst practice

The really sad thing is that all of these known worst practices continue to be replicated across the world.  Hopefully, more people will listen to Mike, and then we can develop much better ways through which technology can really be used effectively to enhance learning!

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November 23, 2012 · 4:28 pm

New GSMA publication on how mobiles contribute to economic growth

The GSM Association, together with Deloitte and Cisco have recently published a useful report (.pdf 3.4 MB) on the contribution of mobiles to economic growth, and they intend to run their analysis on an annual basis so as to provide a barometer of change in the industry and its impact.

Some of the key findings of the report include:

  • For a given level of total mobile penetration, a 10% substitution from 2G to 3G penetration increases GDP per capita growth by 0.15% points
  • A doubling of mobile data use leads to an increase in the GDP per capita growth rate of 0.5% points
  • A 10% increase in mobile penetration increases Total Factor Productivity in the long run by 4.2% points

The Appendices provide much more detail about the precise econometric models used, and it is good to see such detail and transparency.  I retain some concerns, though, about the ways in which causality is imputed from what are essentially relationships between economic indicators.  This could be the basis of an interesting dialogue about methodologies for undertaking such research, which I guess would depend heavily on ideological premises!  However, using this as a starting point, it would be interesting to drill down in more detail to ask what factors need to be in place for the economies of particular countries to follow the general observations noted.  From my perspective, we need to learn more about what some of the poorest countries and peoples can do to ensure that they too benefit.  In other words, we need to disaggregate the data, and understand in detail about the wider governance structures, infrastructure and social conditions that need to be in place to enable growth.  That is, of course, if economic growth is of prime concern!

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November 21, 2012 · 4:57 pm

There is one good call-centre employee at Vodafone after all!

Following my recently highly critical rant about the appalling customer service that Vodafone ‘provides’, I was delighted at long last to ‘meet’ someone who was not only polite and could speak English that I could understand, but who was also able to resolve the latest problem in our relationship.  Her name is Mia. I suggest that anyone calling Vodafone explicitly asks for her by name – I guess she is based in India, and she does speak with a slight US accent, but don’t hold that against her!

I know it is not Mia’s fault, but Vodafone’s website is still not functional for some users – I wonder how many more weeks it will take before I can access my account?

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November 17, 2012 · 10:15 am

Appalling ‘service’ by Vodafone

I don’t usually use my blog to illustrate poor customer service, but an e-mail I received this morning has infuriated me so much that I am putting fingers to keyboard!  Vodafone has to be one of the very worst companies for customer service in the UK! Why does anyone still use them? For that matter, why do I?!

I renewed my contract with them a couple of weeks ago, and upgraded my phone.  Since I could not do the necessary change-over online, because their website was down, I took my new phone in to a Vodafone shop (in Hammersmith) to ask them to activate the SIM and transfer my data across.  “Of course”, the assistant said, “It will only be a couple of minutes”.  Half an hour later, when the assistant was unable to do it, his manager came over and managed to get most of the issues sorted.

However, not all of the data was transferred, and I could not access WiFi from the hotspots because of a problem with my account, which they said would soon be activated.  A week later, nothing had happened, and so began a series of quite bizarre phone calls with ‘customer service staff’.  None of theme were able to resolve the problem.  Unbelievably, three out of the four staff could barely speak English, and I kept having to ask them to repeat their questions – really simple things like “What is the first line of your address?” were completely unintelligible.  Eventually, I was told that I could not access my account because of a problem with their website that they were fixing, but that they would give me a £5 refund on my next bill because of the inconvenience.

Still nothing happened – I could not access my account online, and still could not use the WiFi hotspots because I could not sign into my account!  So, I sent an e-mail, and two days later received the message below:

“Thank you for contacting Vodafone Customer Services
I have checked the online account and can see that you are not able to access the online account however if you are unable to access the account; hence I have escalated this to the online escalation department they will look into this matter.
Your patience will be appreciated in this matter
I trust the above information is helpful.
Kind regards,”

This is unbelievable.  First, I am appalled that an e-mail can be sent by a company based in the UK that is so illiterate!  Second, I am not told that the problem is being fixed, but merely that the matter is being escalated to the escalation department!

I wonder how many more weeks it will take for them to get this fixed?!

 

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October 1, 2012 · 4:08 am

Wildlife in Costa Rica

Staying with friends in Costa Rica provided a wonderful opportunity to spend  Sunday exploring something of the landscapes and wildlife of the country.  The photos below, mainly from the Carara National Park on the Pacific coast, provide an interesting comparison with those that I took recently in the tropical rain forests of southern Sri Lanka.  At least we avoided the leeches this time!

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September 16, 2012 · 9:47 am

Wildlife at Yala, Sri Lanka

A short holiday in Sri Lanka has enabled us to visit the wonderful Yala Nature Reserve covering some 98,000 hectares in the south-east corner of the country.  A seven hour drive from Colombo on Saturday has meant that we can spend a relaxed Sunday exploring the Park, and chilling out by the sea!  Yala is renowned for its elephants, leopards, deer, wild boar, buffalo, crocodiles, monkeys, jackals, sloth bears and some 135 species of birds.  Setting off at six this morning, we saw most of these – apart from the sloth bear!  We were amazingly fortunate to see a leopard keeping a watchful eye on a group of deer drinking from a pond, just too far away for it to pounce on them!

The photos below show just some of the rich diversity of wildlife to be found in this peaceful haven – definitely worth visiting for anyone who is coming to Sri Lanka!

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August 31, 2012 · 11:04 pm

London Paralympics 2012

Thanks to the generosity of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, who co-hosted the Commonwealth e-Accessibility Summit with the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation, I was able to attend the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games.  The photos below seek to capture some of the amazing and inspirational atmosphere of the ceremony.

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August 11, 2012 · 9:25 pm

Save the Hobbit – that is, the pub in Southampton

I have often driven past the Hobbit pub in Portiswood, on the edge of Southampton, and although I have never been inside I have always thought that it was a great name for a pub – and it has been there for some 20 years.  So, I was more than a little concerned to read a recent BBC report that mentioned that the pub has been threatened with legal action by the Saul Zaentz Company (SZC) back in March 2012.  SZC owns the worldwide rights to various brands association with the author JRR Tolkien (acquired in 1976), including the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and appears to be flexing its muscles to ensure that these rights are not infringed.  However, taking it out on an English pub seems to be going a bit too far.

It is good to see that others have come to the rescue of the Hobbit – that is, the pub!  Some 59,830 people have indicated that they like the Facebook page Save the Hobbit, Southampton, and actors Stephen Fry and Sir Ian McKellen have apparently offered to pay for the copyright licence fee so that the pub can carry on trading under its present name.

Tonight, there is a party at the pub to raise money to pay for legal fees to ensure that this dispute is resolved sensibly.  So, if you are anywhere near Southampton do get on down to the Hobbit and party for a cause.

Could this be a reason not to watch the Hobbit (in all its money making parts) when the film comes out?!

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August 9, 2012 · 7:55 pm

Olympics hockey 2012 – night and day

We were among the thousands who did not get any tickets in the first round of applications for the 2012 Olympics, but were fortunate enough to get tickets for several of the hockey matches at the Riverbank Stadium – enabling us to see the Olympic Park both during the night (7th August – seeing GB (1) draw with Spain (1) and  New Zealand (5) draw with Germany (5)) and also during the scorching hot day (9th August – watching New Zealand (3) beat Argentina (1) and Pakistan (3) beat South Korea (2)).

The pictures below seek to catch something of the diversity and beauty of the London Olympics.

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July 27, 2012 · 10:28 pm

Google admits it is in breach of UK data privacy

The BBC has reported that “Google has admitted that it had not deleted users’ personal data gathered during surveys for its Street View service. The data should have been wiped almost 18 months ago as part of a deal signed by the firm in November 2010. Google has been told to give the data to the UK’s Information Commissioner (ICO) for forensic analysis”.

When it was originally reported that Google had obtained private data from unsecured wireless networks whilst it was gaining images and spatial data for Street View, the company said it was a mistake and agreed to delete the data by the end of 2010.  However, Google has now contacted the UK’s Information Commissioner to say that not all of these data have been destroyed, asking what it should do with it.

As the BBC continued to report “Possessing data that should have been deleted ‘appears to breach’ the undertaking Google signed in November 2010, said the ICO in a statement. ‘The ICO is clear that this information should never have been collected in the first place and the company’s failure to secure its deletion as promised is cause for concern,’ it added”.

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