A Networked World

The Cartoon War

I'm all in favour of nations solving their differences by satirising each other. Along the lines of the wit whose name I forget, who said that the first of our ancestors who swore at someone instead of braining them with a rock, made a huge step forward for civilsation. There are times when I doubt we have reached that point ourselves yet.

There's another point, its the one where sanctioned rage turns to wholesale murder, and belatedly I think the west is waking up to the fact that we are very close to that point, if we haven't passed it already.  I've been collecting some comments on Furl on this Free Speech thing, and, aside from a few rabble rousers, there is some interesting stuff coming out. Sadly, among the rabble is Australian Andrew West. Those cartoons: In the interests of democracy, they must be published

Hello Alice

`How would you like to live in Looking-glass House, Kitty? I wonder if they'd give you milk in there? Perhaps Looking-glass milk isn't good to drink -- But oh, Kitty! now we come to the passage. You can just see a little PEEP of the passage in Looking-glass House, if you leave the door of our drawing-room wide open: and it's very like our passage as far as you can see, only you know it may be quite different on beyond. Oh, Kitty! how nice it would be if we could only get through into Looking- glass House! I'm sure it's got, oh! such beautiful things in it!

Hi Alice, looks like we made it. Law makes euthanasia unspeakable

WHEN some elderly men and women get together at their local library today to email John Howard to tell him how to hang himself, their act is not just crass, it is illegal. They are not doing so because they want the Prime Minister dead. They say they are making a point about freedom of speech. For this they could each be fined more than $100,000.

Some people reach a level of pure idiocy that it becomes an art form in itself, the new law that came into force in Australia today may well have reached that level.

A Travesty of Education

Although I live in Sydney, I have a major investment in my homeland and its education system. Mainly because my daughter is at univeristy there, but also because I will go back one day and want to live in a place where education has been good while I've been away.

Which is why this damned fool thing gets right under my skin.

Values to be Taught in NZ Schools

Values will be taught as part of the school curriculum to fill a void left by those parents not instilling them in their children at home. As part of an Education Ministry review, a comprehensive list of values to be taught in schools has been put together, the Dominion Post newspaper reported today. This will bring the 10-year-old curriculum in line with what is already being taught in many schools.

Kids click, but teachers don't compute

Many years ago I was on an IT in Education list where there was endless debate about what software should be used in schools and how it had to be standardised across the suystem because otherwise the "kids would find it confusing".

A couple of us finally closed out that thread by observing that the only people worried about this were the professional educators who were scared witless of having to learn new skills and wanted to limit their exposure to failure and loss of authority.

It seems nothing has changed. Cyber-savvy students are being held back because teachers do not know how to use information technology, experts say. A survey of 234 teachers and 2023 students from Sydney Catholic high schools also suggests teachers do not value the superior information technology skills of their students.

The Power of Evidence

I look through the headlines from the last week and it astonishes me that there is not an endless series of articles and programmes on the subject of global warming. What actually is it going to take to get our media and our politicians engaged in this? Its not as if there is now a lack of evidence for something very startling and directly dangerous to human life happening in the weather. I wonder what it will take for our decision makers to find compelling the evidence before them, or are they just so paralysed that they will sit meekly and wait to drown, fry or be blown to kingdom come? lets see. India monsoon deaths rise to 800 Tornado wreaks havoc in suburbs of Birmingham Spain's Drought Hurts Food Production, Boosts Prices in Europe Italy struggles with drought crisis Farmers' despair in parched France Nope, nothing much to get alarmed about there.

The Feeling of Getting It

Every now and then, amid all the rants and pontifications, there comes a moment, rarely enough, when I think I might be on the right track. had one of those last night.

I've been doing a Delphi Process on ICT in Education and Professional Development for my mate Ed Gaible at Natoma Group. One of the questions in the first round went like this

Using technology to support teacher professional development

In many developing countries, efforts to achieve Universal Primary Completion and the goals of Education for All are limited by a scarcity of teachers and by current teachers’ lack of mastery of their subjects and of teaching practices. Education systems in these countries often have invested in, or are planning investments in, projects that use technologies to address such limitations. These technologies—computers, the Internet, radio and audiotape, television and videotape, handheld computers, and other tools—can be used to accomplish many different objectives in relation to teacher professional development.

Question 3: What technologies hold the most promise for teacher professional development in developing countries over the next 15 years, and why?

So my role is in part strirrer and this seemed as good a place as any to play it.

We Prosecute Kids Who Don't Respect Our Dumb Computer Policies

This is in part an experiment with a service called Chitika Blogads that insert contextual text based ads at the point in the text that relates to the content they serve so expect some slight weirdness while I sort out how it works. (Thanks Arieanna for pointing out the blooper)

Steve Gilliard has this piece Idiocy in action

Thirteen Kutztown Area High School students are facing felony charges for tampering with district-issued laptop computers.

Textbooks & Entertainment - Compare and Contrast

The ever inventive Tim O'Reilly has taken the next logical step in the Open source revolution by getting all granular on us with SafariU. The quickie from the site says

While talking with instructors and trainers about what's not working for them in the classroom ... we've come up with a solution: SafariU, O'Reilly's new web-based platform for creating, publishing and sharing textbooks. With SafariU, you can create and publish your own textbook, selecting exactly the book chapters, sections, or articles you need from the impressive Safari database. SafariU costs you nothing to use and offers your students more focused course content at less cost.

Cleaning the Media Stables

It came as no surprise that the US media missed the fact that a male prostitute who had sex with men, using a false name and representing a bogus news website supported by the Republican party was given 2 years worth of daily passes to the White house press conferences where his role was to lob patsy questions, especially when the actual (although totally ineffectual) mainstream media started to ask awkward questions.

You could trade in any surprise you might have had for the quality of the questioning of US politicians as exemplified in this piece from Carla Marinucci from the SF Chronicle.

Take the recent no-holds-barred exchange (with Governor Arnie Schwartzenegger) on Los Angeles radio station
KZLA:

Q: You've got the best suits I've ever seen. Are they custom-made or are they off the rack?

A: You know, with my body I cannot get things off the rack ... .

Q: May I say, from one man to another, beautiful? They drape unbelievably. ''

Schwarzenegger also took this grilling: "I've got to ask you, governor. A lot of the guys we talk to ... say their wives turned them on to country music. Does Maria like it as well?''

And at an "all news" Los Angeles station, there was this recent interrogation:

"You have done so much in your life. You won what, five Mr. Universe titles, I believe -- is that right?

And there was this probing question during a radio interview last week: "You sound terrific. The energy you have is unbelievable. How do you do that every day?''

Deconstructing the language of cognitive dissonnance

There’s a weight-loss product TV commercial that goes “No offence, but if you can lose all the weight you need to, Cortislim may not be for you”

Why on earth would I be offended by not being able to use a weight loss product? That assumes that exclusion from a drug product is a social or civil disadvantage, that such people are being excluded from an important part of society; drug ingestion for morbid overweight conditions.

Now in a place where there are anti-fat-discrimination groups operating, trying to support overweight people who are treated as second class citizens, we have a company insisting that they are in fact privileged members of society with the special privilege of ingesting weight control medication.

Apart from being absurd on its face, I’m interested in the level of cognitive dissonance this company builds into its message at the very beginning. Nobody I have shared a room with while that ad runs have even remarked on it. I’d bet that a significant percentage of their sales is to people who are a bit overweight, but want to be socially included. That’s propaganda in support of wholly unethical objectives; treating people who don’t need it.

No wonder I get so itchy about critical literacy, we haven’t learned a thing from Hitler, Mao or Stalin; there is still one born every minute.

Meanwhile, there was this News Item