The BBC have just screened the final episode of the five night Torchwood season three, Children of Earth, and already the fan sites are exploding with debate about characters lost, plot holes, and open endings.
I don't normally watch Torchwood, but I was pleasantly surprised by the mini-series. It was well-made, intelligent sci-fi.
There were flaws, mainly in the actions of the government, which was realistically evil but uncharacteristically feeble (when will people learn that our government is dangerous precisely because it is capable!), but I have tremendous respect for the way that the series challenged our conventions of heroic sacrifice - through the tragic homosexual romance of its leading men, and the cold-hard rationalism behind not only the government's actions, but also those of Captain Jack in the final concluding moments.
Perhaps most impressive part of all was the final conclusion. This is so difficult to do in a grand story, because Act II is so necessarily dark and full of despair, that when the light finally shines it can seem trite and forced. But Torchwood paid for its particular Deux Ex Machina moment - and the cost fitted the theme so perfectly that it concluded the story neatly, without leaving the viewer feeling cheated.
Having praised modern American drama, I was very happy to see similar quality on the BBC. Torchwood aired on BBC 1 and apparently attracted nearly 6 million viewers. It was brave of the BBC to pitch this over five consecutive nights, and very brave to put this subject matter on at prime time, but I think its worked. Torchwood is not genius - check out Psychoville for that - but this was solid mainstream sci-fi drama, and a real return to form.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Ticket to Ride - New UK Map
A few years ago I created a UK board for Ticket To Ride, the excellent board game from Days of Wonder. Since then the board has been downloaded thousands of times, and I've received loads of kind comments from players around the world who have tried it out.
Earlier this year I was contacted by Ken Meyers, an American who fancied having a go at updating the board. I'm pleased to say that Ken has just finished his update, and the new version is now available from Ken's website.
I think Ken has done a fantastic job, some of the key improvements include:
Earlier this year I was contacted by Ken Meyers, an American who fancied having a go at updating the board. I'm pleased to say that Ken has just finished his update, and the new version is now available from Ken's website.
I think Ken has done a fantastic job, some of the key improvements include:- A new map graphic that better replicates the canvas look of the real boards
- A 100 space points counter (my version used the original 80)
- An improved spread of colours around the board
- An improved track layout (sticking more to the grid layout principle)
- More destination tickets (a la the 1910 version of the game)
Friday, May 1, 2009
Prepare for Disruption
Back in November I wrote a blog article on the momentum that was building behind Open Educational Resources (OER) and I have just published a similar essay in the Language and Linguistics Area Studies (LLAS) Liaison magazine.
When I was writing the article I was hoping to address many of the concerns that teachers and lecturers raise over OER, such as worries over copyright and competitive advantage, but I increasingly found myself seeing OER as part of the Education Sector's response to a significant challenge - the Web as a disruptive technology:
"It seems that the Web is changing the balance of power; in the future Universities will no longer be seen as the primary custodians of public wisdom, there is a need for us to reinvent ourselves as voices of authority in a more open information world.
The growing movement for Open Education Resources (OER) is one attempt to rise to this challenge. OERs are teaching materials that have been released into the public domain, normally through one of the Creative Commons licenses that makes it free for public or educational use as long as the original author is acknowledged.
The argument is simple, by developing OERs Higher Education Institutions are able to contribute to the public information space, share new ideas, raise the profile of teaching, and give individual academics a more public voice."
Having also written recently about the demise of the TV industry I think that its likely that any industry that is based on information will need to change its business model or practices. Higher Education may be dealing in knowledge and learning, rather than just disseminating information, but it will still be effected by this change in values.
Increasingly what I like about OER is that it's pro-active action to reorientate ourselves to a world where information itself is of low value. The core business model of Univeristies, providing an education for a fee, may be reletively stable, but the way in which we deliver that educational experience, and how we participate with broader society is likely to change dramatically. If we accept OER it should mean that we are better prepared for that disruption.
When I was writing the article I was hoping to address many of the concerns that teachers and lecturers raise over OER, such as worries over copyright and competitive advantage, but I increasingly found myself seeing OER as part of the Education Sector's response to a significant challenge - the Web as a disruptive technology:
"It seems that the Web is changing the balance of power; in the future Universities will no longer be seen as the primary custodians of public wisdom, there is a need for us to reinvent ourselves as voices of authority in a more open information world.
The growing movement for Open Education Resources (OER) is one attempt to rise to this challenge. OERs are teaching materials that have been released into the public domain, normally through one of the Creative Commons licenses that makes it free for public or educational use as long as the original author is acknowledged.
The argument is simple, by developing OERs Higher Education Institutions are able to contribute to the public information space, share new ideas, raise the profile of teaching, and give individual academics a more public voice."
Having also written recently about the demise of the TV industry I think that its likely that any industry that is based on information will need to change its business model or practices. Higher Education may be dealing in knowledge and learning, rather than just disseminating information, but it will still be effected by this change in values.
Increasingly what I like about OER is that it's pro-active action to reorientate ourselves to a world where information itself is of low value. The core business model of Univeristies, providing an education for a fee, may be reletively stable, but the way in which we deliver that educational experience, and how we participate with broader society is likely to change dramatically. If we accept OER it should mean that we are better prepared for that disruption.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Web Literacy Revisited
How do modern students study, and how good are they at it? That's the question posed by the emerging topic of digital literacy. Last week I attended the Shock of the Old event in Oxford that addressed this question.
The topic of digital literacy is particular interesting to me because for the past year or two I've been trying to make sense of the new attitude that learners seem to have towards technology, and back in November 2007 I coined the phrase Web Literacy to describe that attitude. For me Web Literacy is not about a person's age or background, and it doesn't refer to their ability to use technology, instead it is more about their "... desire to create an on-line identity, a willingness to forgo some aspects of privacy, and to embrace online relationships as the equal of real ones".
Literacy vs. Literacy
At Shock Tabetha Newman presented a Becta review she is completing on digital literacy, in which she concludes that there are three ways to think about student capability:
We had a number of discussions about how these things do or don't map onto Generation Y or Digital Natives. Those two terms have fallen out of favor in the last year (partly through overuse, partly because of their shaky scientific origins) but its still useful language with which to discuss the current and impending mismatch of skills and expectations between teachers and students.
My view is that both students and staff actually have a similar level of Computer Literacy, and that recent evidence (and our own experience working with students from nursing and social work) indicates that this is more varied than you might expect for both groups. The real mismatch comes in the other two areas.
Students tend to have poor Information Literacy, but good Web Literacy; this means that they do not have the search and research skills HE courses typically need, they find it difficult to assess information sources, and don't appreciate plagiarism or respect attribution in the ways we might want. However, the same attitudes enable them to interact much more freely online, and they are able to merge their online and digital experiences much more effectively.
Staff on the other hand tend to have good Information Literacy, but poor Web Literacy; this means that they are very good at finding and assessing information online, but are reluctant to participate in online interactions and view the virtual world as a separate (perhaps unimportant) space.
It is interesting to see how there might be a tension between these two skillsets - as higher Information Literacy is likely to reduce the trust and openness necessary to build a high Web Literacy.
The PLE as a Way Forward?
One of the problems that institutions face with Web Literacy is that it means that students are increasingly escaping from institutional IT systems, and learning in-the-wild. For some Universities this is a problem in itself - how do we monitor them! - for others the problem is put in more progressive terms - how do we support them?
At Shock there was a good presentation by Palitha Edirisingha and Ricardo Torres Konpen (from the University of Leicester) about an experiment they have running to help students build their own PLEs from third party tools. For example, how to use the Google Suite of tools, or how to incorporate a number of applications into Facebook to help manage learning. Students reported that the experience had changed their approach to learning, and had strengthened the social relationships between both students and staff, although they had required guidance to deal with the complexity of managing their own learning toolset.
Miles Metcalfe, from Ravensbourne College, gave a spirited presentation on their approach to supporting personal learning by directly supporting personal technology. Rather than help students build an explicit environment, they support them by helping students purchase personal technology and by making sure that their IT systems are open and cope with heterogeneity. This results in funding moving from traditional IT (such as workstations and networks) to personal IT (such as laptops and wireless).
I really liked both of these approaches, they are technically lightweight, but emphasize a need for a supportive atmosphere and an open attitude to student's tool choices.
The VLE and Digital Literacy
Shock was also my first experience of the Twitter soundbite. In reply to someone's comment I noted that the VLE is the last refuge of the digitally illiterate - and then watched as my tweet was retweeted around the world.
It's a pithy note, but I meant it sincerely. If digital literacy is really an amalgam of three skillsets including Social or Web Literacy then how can the VLE, a place where teachers can hide from the greater internet community, possibly promote it.
The VLE is a safety net that supports people who are not fully literate, this could be a good thing but not if by supporting them it also prevents them from developing those skills.
The topic of digital literacy is particular interesting to me because for the past year or two I've been trying to make sense of the new attitude that learners seem to have towards technology, and back in November 2007 I coined the phrase Web Literacy to describe that attitude. For me Web Literacy is not about a person's age or background, and it doesn't refer to their ability to use technology, instead it is more about their "... desire to create an on-line identity, a willingness to forgo some aspects of privacy, and to embrace online relationships as the equal of real ones".
Literacy vs. LiteracyAt Shock Tabetha Newman presented a Becta review she is completing on digital literacy, in which she concludes that there are three ways to think about student capability:
- Their knowledge of, and skill with, digital tools and applications
- Their ability to think critically, and evaluate and analyze information sources
- Their social awareness and ability to represent themselves digitally
We had a number of discussions about how these things do or don't map onto Generation Y or Digital Natives. Those two terms have fallen out of favor in the last year (partly through overuse, partly because of their shaky scientific origins) but its still useful language with which to discuss the current and impending mismatch of skills and expectations between teachers and students.
My view is that both students and staff actually have a similar level of Computer Literacy, and that recent evidence (and our own experience working with students from nursing and social work) indicates that this is more varied than you might expect for both groups. The real mismatch comes in the other two areas.
Students tend to have poor Information Literacy, but good Web Literacy; this means that they do not have the search and research skills HE courses typically need, they find it difficult to assess information sources, and don't appreciate plagiarism or respect attribution in the ways we might want. However, the same attitudes enable them to interact much more freely online, and they are able to merge their online and digital experiences much more effectively.
Staff on the other hand tend to have good Information Literacy, but poor Web Literacy; this means that they are very good at finding and assessing information online, but are reluctant to participate in online interactions and view the virtual world as a separate (perhaps unimportant) space.
It is interesting to see how there might be a tension between these two skillsets - as higher Information Literacy is likely to reduce the trust and openness necessary to build a high Web Literacy.
The PLE as a Way Forward?
One of the problems that institutions face with Web Literacy is that it means that students are increasingly escaping from institutional IT systems, and learning in-the-wild. For some Universities this is a problem in itself - how do we monitor them! - for others the problem is put in more progressive terms - how do we support them?
At Shock there was a good presentation by Palitha Edirisingha and Ricardo Torres Konpen (from the University of Leicester) about an experiment they have running to help students build their own PLEs from third party tools. For example, how to use the Google Suite of tools, or how to incorporate a number of applications into Facebook to help manage learning. Students reported that the experience had changed their approach to learning, and had strengthened the social relationships between both students and staff, although they had required guidance to deal with the complexity of managing their own learning toolset.
Miles Metcalfe, from Ravensbourne College, gave a spirited presentation on their approach to supporting personal learning by directly supporting personal technology. Rather than help students build an explicit environment, they support them by helping students purchase personal technology and by making sure that their IT systems are open and cope with heterogeneity. This results in funding moving from traditional IT (such as workstations and networks) to personal IT (such as laptops and wireless).
I really liked both of these approaches, they are technically lightweight, but emphasize a need for a supportive atmosphere and an open attitude to student's tool choices.
The VLE and Digital Literacy
Shock was also my first experience of the Twitter soundbite. In reply to someone's comment I noted that the VLE is the last refuge of the digitally illiterate - and then watched as my tweet was retweeted around the world.
It's a pithy note, but I meant it sincerely. If digital literacy is really an amalgam of three skillsets including Social or Web Literacy then how can the VLE, a place where teachers can hide from the greater internet community, possibly promote it.
The VLE is a safety net that supports people who are not fully literate, this could be a good thing but not if by supporting them it also prevents them from developing those skills.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
The Last Golden Age of Television
When I was a student one of my neighbors in my University halls of residence popped in with a 3.5inch floppy disk, and told me that on it was a file in a new format called MP3. At the time audio compression was pretty abysmal, and a 3 min song made around a 30MB file. Given that my hard disk at the time was 200MB this didn't make for very feasible digital music. As I listened to that 1.3MB MP3 file for the first time I realised that the world had changed.
One of the reasons that the moment sticks in my mind is that I was continually amazed that this epiphany seemed to be restricted to my Computer Science friends. As the 1990's lengthened I kept coming back to that striking moment, and we wondered when the general public would realise the possibilities, and more interestingly, when the music industry would wake up. The game had changed, had changed radically, existing business models were going to fail, and the companies seemed to be sleeping.
Luckily Apple wasn't, and in 2001 they launched iTunes and saved the music industry.
So who is sleeping in 2009, which businesses are facing a tsunami of change and seem ill-prepared? Well, has anyone watched television recently?
TV viewing figures are dropping. In 2006 Ofcom in the UK released a report showing that fewer young people were watching television, and in 2007 an IBM report showed that in terms of time spent, the Internet now rivaled TV. For a child of the 80's its a weird notion, but when you think about it, is TV dying?
The irony of the question is that we are arguably living in a golden age of programming, much of it coming from the US. Consider shows like Lost, the Sopranos, 24, or the West Wing. But this quality has emerged from a system that is on the brink of failing. For example, in the UK ITV has recently announced serious cuts as its advertising revenue is shrinking.
A recent article by Paul Graham was recently highlighted on Slashdot, in it Paul describes how computers have fatally wounded TV, and argues that this is down to bandwidth, piracy and social applications that have eaten into leisure time. These are all certainly factors, but I would actually place more emphasis on the first two than the last. It is TV-on-demand that has done the damage, and much of it is unofficial or illegal, because the TV companies have not yet got their act together.
For example, I recently I decided to catch up on Lost - I stopped watching at the end of series 3 a few years back, and so I needed to get hold of a copy of series 4, which had 14 episodes, to bring me up to date.
On Amazon the dvd boxed set for season 4 is 34.98 (with blu-ray a ridiculous 44.98). I also watched several disc sets on ebay, and the average price was £26.40, which compares favorably with the price on iTunes of £25.99. However I also checked on the BitTorrent network, and sure enough the series is illegally available as a free 5GB download.
Perhaps the problem here is in a mismatch in the expectations of the buyers and sellers. Media has become temporary. Teenagers delete music after having it on their devices for a few months, something that seems quite weird to me, but then I would do the same with a TV show. Buy it. Watch it. Delete it. Two or three pounds an episode seems rather expensive when you look at it like that.
There are alternative funding models that can work in this temporary digital age, but alarmingly for fans of broadcast television they are not being recognized as important. Product placement was recently ruled out by the UK government as a potential income stream, and there is confusion and disagreement about how the BBC license fee should develop in the future.
There needs to be a much more serious and urgent debate about the future of television. In the UK we need to protect the license fee as its one of the better viable funding models, but it needs to be reformed (perhaps absorbed into general taxation) so that it more accurately reflects the radio and online activities that will form an increasingly large part of BBC effort. Product placement seems initially to be quite obnoxious, but along with show sponsorship it is viable in the digital age and resistant to piracy.
This debate is not about how we allow television companies to increase revenue, its about how we save broadcast television. We also have to face facts that in the future there will simply not be as much money in the industry - change is coming, enjoy it while you can, because this is the last golden age of television.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Must Invaders Die?
The Prodigy make angry music for calm minds. I've been a fan since a friend lent me Music for the Jilted Generation some time around '95, and since then the Prodigy's music has got angrier and louder, and thumped and twisted its way to the edges of genius.
Fat of the Land was a heavier album, and deliciously furious. Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned lacked much of the vocal talent, but was funkier, and somehow kept its aggressive edge.
So what to make of their latest album, Invaders Must Die?
Well, it's not a disappointment. Whatever witchcraft the Prodigy use to make their seminal sounds is back doing its unusual evils, and the full ensemble is in attendance. The album is less nuanced that Never Outgunned, almost a throwback to the endless layers and visceral sounds of the Jilted Generation. The Prodigy have returned to their roots and constructed another great opera of noise.
The vocals are very English, and I wonder if there isn't something of our frustrated little island in the frenetic beats; as if punk got lost on acid. There's also a speaking part for 8-bit classics in tracks like Colours and Piranha which made me get all nostalgic about early gaming (and also took me back to Fire starter races in Wipeout).
So Must Invaders Die? Armed with this album I suspect that the Invaders are in deep trouble. The music is merciless and the Prodigy aren't taking any prisoners. Turn up the bass, turn up the treble, then give up and buy a better stereo.
This kind of thunder breaks walls and window panes :-)
Fat of the Land was a heavier album, and deliciously furious. Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned lacked much of the vocal talent, but was funkier, and somehow kept its aggressive edge.
So what to make of their latest album, Invaders Must Die?
Well, it's not a disappointment. Whatever witchcraft the Prodigy use to make their seminal sounds is back doing its unusual evils, and the full ensemble is in attendance. The album is less nuanced that Never Outgunned, almost a throwback to the endless layers and visceral sounds of the Jilted Generation. The Prodigy have returned to their roots and constructed another great opera of noise.
The vocals are very English, and I wonder if there isn't something of our frustrated little island in the frenetic beats; as if punk got lost on acid. There's also a speaking part for 8-bit classics in tracks like Colours and Piranha which made me get all nostalgic about early gaming (and also took me back to Fire starter races in Wipeout).
So Must Invaders Die? Armed with this album I suspect that the Invaders are in deep trouble. The music is merciless and the Prodigy aren't taking any prisoners. Turn up the bass, turn up the treble, then give up and buy a better stereo.
This kind of thunder breaks walls and window panes :-)
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Stephen Fry: Computer Science Linguistics 101
Stephen Fry continues on his merry rise to sainthood with his latest podcast about Language and Linguistics. In fact it's more of a love poem to words, but it's so sprinkled with wry commentary on structuralism, etymology and modern day pedantry that you could use it directly as a student primer on all three.
My early research work was on hypertext systems (I did my PhD around the time the Web came to be) and that led me to look at narrative systems and onto narratology, structuralism and linguistics in the large.
Linguistics is a fascinating subject, with real relevance for computer scientists as it's all about how intelligent systems (us) express ourselves. It's thus well placed to help explain how machines (them :-) might do the same.
It impacts on aspects of agent technologies (speech acts and conversational frameworks), knowledge technologies (contextual grammars and knowledge frames) and HCI (such as *my folksonomic properties like synonymy, hyponymy, holonymy, meronymy and metonymy).
Computer Science students interested in building information and semantic systems could do a lot worse than familiarising themselves with Linguistics - and what better way to start than this informal lesson from a Grand English Gentlemen :-)
My early research work was on hypertext systems (I did my PhD around the time the Web came to be) and that led me to look at narrative systems and onto narratology, structuralism and linguistics in the large.Linguistics is a fascinating subject, with real relevance for computer scientists as it's all about how intelligent systems (us) express ourselves. It's thus well placed to help explain how machines (them :-) might do the same.
It impacts on aspects of agent technologies (speech acts and conversational frameworks), knowledge technologies (contextual grammars and knowledge frames) and HCI (such as *my folksonomic properties like synonymy, hyponymy, holonymy, meronymy and metonymy).
Computer Science students interested in building information and semantic systems could do a lot worse than familiarising themselves with Linguistics - and what better way to start than this informal lesson from a Grand English Gentlemen :-)
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