Musings on education, techology, and life..
Among other speakers at our Internet2 Day was Doug Van Houweling, President and CEO of Internet2, etc. Just about every discussion of Internet2 seems to come back around to video delivery. I was hoping Doug, speaking on the topic “Beyond Tomorrow’s Internet” would help open peoples’ minds to some real innovative ideas. Unfortunately, while his notes about partnerships, neutral nets, and the nuts and bolts of Internet2 becoming everyone’s bandwidth were well taken and on-point, when he had a chance to talk about innovation he fell right back into the same old song and dance I’ve seen a dozen times before.
Doug’s house of the future was essentially my household with some Jetson’s style video layered on top. So you have kids surfing the net and using IM and eyeball cams, and you have work and downloads happening with impressive speed. But beyond that it was just more video: high def videoconferencing, video phones, high def delivery of movies, high def entertainment delivery and storage. I’m not denying that most of these are good things that will happen. They are happening now, they’ll just be happening faster and with more clarity.
But that’s exactly the problem. When it comes to communication, there’s a reason George and Jane Jetson’s video phones haven’t become ubiquitous, and it’s not about bandwidth. It’s because people don’t want them. Videophones are a dead idea. Videoconferencing, no matter how high-def, is a highly constrained technology. The fourth wall remains, the high transactional distance remains in full force. Video conference works in certain settings and with a certain definition of “works” that is usually based on there being no other technology available. But adding increased clarity and more frames-per-second will have almost no effect on that rate of success. Videconference is simply a very poor educational tool that is highly desired by those who don’t have it, valued by those who have nothing else, and easy to understand by those who don’t use it.
No matter how speedy and how many pixels there are, the heart of videoconferencing is hollow. You can make it bigger, you can make it faster, you can make it sharper, but it doesn’t make it better. It has an undeniable hold on the imagination of administrators (and when it comes to entertainment it makes great sense), but ultimately it’s just what I’ve started calling “polishing the poo.” No matter how lacquered and attractive, it’s still a turd. It’s not innovation.
Our Internet2 Day demo went quite well (a few photos here– I actually did present despite the picture of me in apparent stasis). Our basic question was: if you had Internet2 connectivity right now (we do in fact have access to Internet2 bandwidth, but since it doesn’t go anywhere except to other Internet2 participating institutions it isn’t particularly useful) what would you do with it?
Doing a demo on this question is a bit tricky– we don’t spend time developing for extremely high-bandwidth, so anything we did would have to be theoretical, but it was important to me that we tie it to real practices. So we basically came up with a demo that talked about creating a unified interface that would pull together the three main segments of a future classroom interaction:
All three of these are achievable now, but bringing them together cohesively is the big-bandwidth dream. Not incidentally, the three pieces align perfectly with the “arc of technologies”: broadcast, transaction, and transformation.
My idea to do real-time scanning electron microscopy and analysis was scuttled because the remotely controlled scanning electron microscope was being used for a different session right after ours. So we decided on a hypothetical class bringing together remote biology and geography students to study the Avian Flu. The basic layout was:
There were only two minor technical flubs on the part of the sound and light stage crew, but they were basically invisible to the audience anyway. The important things were we were on-time, the transitions all worked seamlessely, and we were able to hammer home the most important messages: creating a learning environment that allowed for creation of new meaning, place-based relevance in the learning environment, reaching a distributed cohort across disciplines, real-life examples of the educational arc, that much of this was available now and that Internet2 could be about more than just video (more on that in my next post). I may have ranted a little bit towards the end in reaction to earlier speakers that kept talking about making the location of users irrelevant (equal access) where I want to see the location take on a new, important relevance in learning!
from the New York Times:
Something has gone very wrong with the United States patent system.
What was their first clue??
At least in Georgia. The real problem here can be seen in the headline: if these are going to be acceptable in a public high school, then they shouldn’t really be “bible classes” should they?
I heard a news segment on this legislation this morning. Even proponents argue it will be hard to teach. But it shouldn’t be hard at all if the subject is actually taught as history and literature not as religion. While the sponsor of the bill said that this wasn’t about religion or indoctrination and that the subject matter would be taught in a secular manner as a subject of social studies, history, and literature, he is proposing this in a heavily conservative state with a strong Christian conservative lobby.
It was ironic, but not surprising, that the first legislative supporter interviewed talked about how this class was needed because students “need faith… they need to understand the power of scripture.” Sounds real objective to me.
aka The Comedy of IP Overkill:
Some choice quotes:
IN 1982, Motion Picture Association of America head Jack Valenti told Congress that “the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman home alone.â€BILL GATES had the 11-million-image Bettmann Archive buried 220 feet underground. Archivists can access only the 2% that was first digitized.
IN 2002, Valenti described Hollywood’s antipiracy campaign as “our own terrorist war.â€
A FRENCH DIRECTOR had to pay $1,300 after a character in his film whistled the communist anthem, “The Internationale,†without permission.
THE PUBLISHER of Super Hero Happy Hour removed “Super†from the comic book title after Marvel and DC Comics stated they own the phrase “super heroes and variations thereof.â€
42% OF ALL VIDEO files shared online are pornographic. No porn-sharing cases have yet been tried in the U.S.
MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.’s estate charges academic authors $50 for each sentence of the “I Have a Dream†speech that they reprint.
In contrast to Stephen Downes, who will be missed, I don’t think this day can come soon enough. Of course, it seems just like the guy to draw his decision out for attention rather than just making a decision and doing it. Dave Winer’s the internet version of the horrible girlfriend who threatens to leave, hoping to hurt you, and all you can think of is how nice it will be when she’s gone.
I’m late in noting the hiatus of Stephen Downes’ blog (and site), the announcement coming– as it did– during a busy time. So I add my voice to the chorus of farewells, but would like to note that it’s with only a touch of selfish sadness at this particular river of information drying up for a while. Whatever the circumstances, Stephen is hopefully doing what all innovative thinkers must do from time-to-time– stepping back, contemplating, and eventually moving in a new direction (or back in the same direction with renewed vigor and insight). I wish him great success!