Wednesday, 25 February 2009
How different was the Web in 2006?
In his article "Jurassic Web" Farhad Manjoo in the online magazine Slade talks about how unrecognizable the Web in 1996 was compared with the Web today. He concludes that despite early trends which predate blogging and user-generated content, it was all fluff and nonsense.
I beg to disagree. In 1996 I was one of the Web generation, ordinary people who were creating websites, discussing digital creativity and applying it to real world challenges. We were creating early blogs - only we called them metajournals in those days. My first was on a site called LitWeb, which has sadly now gone, but anyone who usesLiveJournal or other blog/social networks would have recognised it.
Community and collaboration were the words that drove us in the early days of the Web - and it feels like it has turned full circle having taken a more commercial turn around the turn of the century.
For Manjoo to say that Geocities was the forerunner of user-generated content is to miss the whole ethos of the Web back then. We were collaborating, sharing information, in a way that would be recognised by the open source community today and we created websites which users were invited to contribute to and collaborate in developing the content for. Look at a project like the Noon Quilt (OK it was two years' later in 1998 but a development of what we were doing at the trAce Online Writing Community from 1996-2006)...
Our children's writing website Kids on the Net was invented in 1996 with a website launched in 1997. From the start it was a place for children to publish their own writing, safely with full moderation. It is still online today and still publishing children's own writing. There are hundreds of thousands of pieces of content generated by the children themselves.
Yes there was no Google, yes for a company to have a website was still unusual. But the Web wasn't all that strange compared with today, because those of us who experimented with the potential of the technology knew what it was going to become and created the forerunners for the modes and behaviours that characterise the Web today.Labels: 1996, collaboration, Kids on the Net, online community, trAce
posted by Helen Whitehead 2:44 PM
Wednesday, 4 February 2009
'New and extraordinary insights' at ELESIG
Rhonas Sharpe has made a couple of posts about ELESIG (one of the academic networks I manage the online space for) on her blog. She asked members what benefit they found from the experience of being a member of the community, and got some great answers:From Esyin Chew's "I have experienced something new and extraordinary insights that have challenged my preconceptions about digital literacy and learners' experience through ELESIG.”
to Jana Dlouha's "ELESIG is the working group with great potential for changes in higher (and other) education system as it works with learners' perspective - this is not as usual as it should be! Access to this research (and meta-research, researching the ways of research itself) is available through ELESIG work - often providing free methodological and other resources."
I'm pleased too that Amanda Jefferies was able to say that "The online NING network for ELESIG has been an excellent way to keep in touch 'virtually' with other researchers into the Student Experience and to be inspired by examples of innovative practice. "
More on Rhona's blogLabels: communities of practice, e-learning, elearning, elesig, HE, learner experience, onlne communities, Reach Further, research
posted by Helen Whitehead 12:45 PM
Sunday, 1 February 2009
Widening access to Higher Education
How do we get more students from lower income families to go to University? Aimhigher and similar projects have not had the impact that was hoped. In fact, widening participation may be purely about financial aspects of studying.
This was brought home to me the other day when someone pointed out the student loans are not interest free and it's true, of course - student loans are designed with low not no interest.
Last year it was clear that that with low-interest student loans a student was better off getting a loan even if the family had savings, because the saving rates were higher than the interest on the student loans. But now, savings rates are ridiculously low and student loan rates are still pegged to inflation (not savings rates) - and I think it's no longer worth having one. And if it's time for second thoughts for a family that wholeheartedly supports education and has a reasonable income to support its student members, how much more difficult is it for someone from a low-income family to take on such a loan - to study for a degree at a time when graduate employment prospects are the worst for 20 years? You can see why they'd think it's much better to get a "job in the hand" now.
The correlation between students attending University and their parents having attended University in the UK is the highest in WEstern Europe.
Even casting aside the financial issues, are the institutions themselves and their culture actually creating barriers. How much does the HE sector need to change its offerings to attract wider participation? Skills and knowledge are much needed to support the ailing economy - but should Universities become something quite different to suit the situation? Would it be throwing the baby out with the bathwater to lose the many benefits offered by a traditional University education?
Yes, it is vital that young and old get equal access to education and development, but perhaps Unviersities are just aprt of the answer, and not the most appropriate route to education and training for everyone. The FE and lifeloong learning sector and skills training of various kinds may be the areas to develop to encourage a variety of courses and educational opportunities that really meet learners' needs.
Is it necessary to change University courses to 2 years full time to suit workers? For some this may be appropriate - but there are doubts that courses can be delivered effectively in such a timescale. Work-based education and training may be very much more useful to many learners.Labels: access to education, education, HE, lifelong learning, training, universities, widening participation
posted by Helen Whitehead 2:24 PM
