Posted my talk this afternoon at the Engineering in Context symposium here.
Its main focus is the impact of the internet on education and teaching; and the role of mentoring and coaching by professional engineers to young engineers.
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Friday 3 July 2009
Saturday 23 May 2009
Jim Cooke: a quiet Irish hero
I attended the third annual conference Science, Engineering Communications and Outreach conference earlier this week at Engineers Ireland. As incoming President of EI next week, I had the privilege of presenting the annual award for Science, Engineering and Technology Awareness to Jim Cooke.
I had not met Jim before, but had heard of his remarkable work. Jim has been a physics and mathematics teacher at the Christian Brothers School in Synge Street, in Dublin city centre, for over 40 years. He also reintroduced the teaching of Applied Mathematics at the school, after it had been absent from the school curriculum for a very long time.
Monday 6 April 2009
Social Newsworking - reflections on the future of newspapers
A couple of weeks ago on the last Saturday of March, the Irish Times, a popular broadsheet here in Ireland, included a full paper reproduction of the 4 pages of its very first edition, from 150 years ago and launched on the 28th March 1859. It is a fascinating read, not least because the entire front page is given over to advertisements. I also found the style of writing captivating - archaic but nevertheless highly articulate. The editorial contains the opening paragraph:
The editor, Laurence Knox - who personally signed the inaugural edition - goes on to justify the appearance of the new newspaper as a voice independent of politics or partisismship. Reminiscent of Deng's famous assertion a century later - "No matter if it is a white cat or a black cat; as long as it can catch mice, it is a good cat" - Knox goes on to assert "Every year sees a larger and larger proportion of our population indifferent to the manoeuvres of faction...They are anxious for good government, but care little in whose hands the government may be placed".
The contemporary Irish Times commentator Fintan O'Toole recently wrote an excellent assessment of the then national context in which the Irish Times was launched. He believes that Knox's aspirations were perhaps a heroic denial of the political climate, but that from the lengthy perspective of 150 years later, Knox was perhaps not as naive as first imagined.
Ironically the same issue of the Irish Times (on 28th March 2009) also contained a topical assessment of the newspaper industry, from the paper's America based correspondent Denis Staunton. He discussed Maryland's Senator Ben Cardin's initiative to use tax policy to try and save what is left of the US newspaper industry. Cardin is of the view that it is in the US national interest, for good governance and for democracy, that at least some newspapers survive.
Devoting the entire front page to advertising may have worked well in 1859, but with advertising revenue now under immense pressure and readers migrating to free global news sources on the internet, something has to change. Web based newspaper subscriptions in general have not been particularly successful. Web based advertising is a challenging model for newspapers, in the face of Google.
What can be the future of the Irish Times, and newspapers like it ? Perhaps tongue in cheek, last January I responded to a request from the Irish Times for some crystal ball gazing - what was the company to watch in 2009 - by identifying the Irish Times itself! Will the Irish Times, and newspapers worldwide like it, survive in its current form by January 2010 ?
In my view, there are three major aspects of the essential content of a newspaper: reporting, investigation, and commentary.
The role of reporting news and events would seem well fulfilled by the density of the web itself. Timely notification of events can be reported almost by anyone: the use of Twitter by Jim Hanran, an ordinary member of the public, to first report on the crash landing of US Airways 1549 in the Hudson is an obvious example. What therefore does the traditional news reporter bring to the web ? The general answer should surely be honesty: readers are generally attracted to reputable reporting, despite occasional reporters such as The News York Times' Jayson Blair. Honesty on the web is always difficult to certify, but other web based systems leverage reputable participation - eBay auctions come to mind, perhaps also Wikipedia's consensus mechanism. However honest and reputable reporting on the web certainly is not the sole domain of newspaper reporters.
What about investigative reporting ? Most democracies can point to occasions when an investigative reporter brought malpractice to light. The Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's exposure of the Watergate scandal is possiby the most renowned. Here in Ireland we still mourn the Sunday Independent's Veronica Guerin, assassinated for her investigative reporting of drug trafficking.
Investigative reporting surely serves the public good. Will our democracies come under threat if there is no longer a business model for newspapers to exploit, and thus no money for investigative reporting ? This thinking seems to overlook the integrity of most members of the public: ethical employees can be appalled by what they see in their organisations, and can and do speak out. Sherron Watkins at Enron blew the whistle on her employer's malpractice. In Ireland, James Gogarty's whistleblowing led to the Mahon tribunal to investigate payments to corrupt politicians. With the internet, whistleblowers can quickly bring concerns to global public attention - India now has several public web sites (eg corruption in india, and whistleblowers) devoted to whistleblowing, particularly following the murder of Sri Satyendra Dubey. Democracy and accountability is probably best supported by well considered whistleblowing processes, which both protect a valid whistleblower but also protect an organisation from inaccurate allegations. Democracy need not rely on the finances of newspapers to underwrite investigative reporters.
Commentary, opinion and analysis is perhaps where great newspapers add most value, separate the significant from the trivial, and correlate patterns to extract observations. But there appears no inherent reason why articulate observation should just be the preserve of a newspaper: the online community and bloggers can equally serve society at large.
Clay Shirky recently blogged that the current business model of newspapers seems doomed, and replacement models have yet - if ever - to appear. Jeff Jarvis argued back in 2005 that saving newspapers is not the same as saving newspaper jobs. Perhaps it really is time to confront the unthinkable: the newspaper, as we know it, may be doomed.
Does the internet really signify the demise of the newspaper ?
Most newspapers do serve the public good. Senator Ben Cardin's Newspaper Revitalisation Act would enable US newspapers, if they so chose, to become not-for-profit organisations, thus benefitting from tax exempt advertising and subscription revenue. Members of the public could make tax deductible contributions to their favourite newspapers. I understand that public service broadcasting is similarly tax exempt in the US. Using the tax code in this way may be an approach, but I do wonder how effective newspapers may be able to operate if they come to rely on regular voluntary donations from their reading public to cover their costs of distribution and of professional staffing.
Are there any other different business models for those online newspapers which do serve the public good ? In Ireland, we have a national license which every TV set owner is supposed to pay to the Government, which in turn is used to support public service broadcasting. Could there be an online tax for public service newspapers ? Perhaps a Government could impose a tax on all internet service providers nationally, since they represent the national access points by the public to the internet: then directly, or via a neutral third party agency - use the money collected to allocate to online public service newspapers. An interesting thought perhaps, but I'm unsure the economics would really work: would internet users really accept what would amount to a personal daily tax of several euros just to support online newspapers ?
Some have given thought to a micropayment model for individual newspaper contributions. This would presumably operate something akin to iTunes: individual newspaper articles could be disaggregated - like tracks from a music CD - and made individually readable and paid for. But a musical track is a marketing teaser to promote itself: if you hear a piece of music and like it, you'll want to hear it again (and perhaps again and again) and so may be tempted to buy it from an online store. A newspaper article is typically by contrast a singular experience: having read it, you are unlikely in most cases to seek to read that particular article again.
As I reflected on the demise of the newspaper, I also reminded myself that a newspaper is a mirror held up to reflect society and the world to the eyes of its readership. It informs its readers about what is happening, and tells them something about themselves and their community, in the terms and ways to which they relate. If newspapers were to disappear due to the impact of the internet on their business model, what could be done on the internet to replace these lost mirrors on society and the world ?
In a newspaper, a selected few contribute articles and news, with feedback from ordinary members of the public filtered through the letters to the editor page. In the internet world, everyone can openly contribute. We can read posts and comments and blogs and emails and tweets from anyone. We can use Google to try and find interesting items, but even then it is easy to get lost in the morass, and perhaps miss what we ourselves find particularly interesting and significant. The specific newspapers we buy by contrast in general do a good job in only presenting articles which we ourselves find interesting and significant, filtering out the mundane, and presenting information and comment which in general match our own particular ethos and values. Any online replacement of a newspaper is going to have to do something similar.
In my view, wiki technology already provides the basis. A wiki is a web site in which not only can anyone read its content, but anyone can also edit the content, as result of Ward Cunningham's work in the 1990. At first this sounds extraordinary - what prevents somebody from editing accurate content and defacing it ? In fact, the answer is nothing, and defacement happens - however, the wiki keeps a record of who edited what, and what was the previous version (and the previous version to that and so on). Anarchists and political pundits can quickly be identified by the community of like-minded readers, isolated from the wiki so that the wiki refuses to accept any further edits from these rogues, and the maverick changes made by these fraudsters are quickly unwound.
The consequence is that the community of bona-fide contributors work together to make the wiki better and better, capturing the best inputs from everyone, and discarding the weaker edits. The system becomes Darwinian - in the view of a specific community, the best survives for that community, and the weakest is dropped. A wiki thus captures the "wisdom of a crowd" - the collective wisdom of a particular community of readers and contributors.
Social networking sites - such as Facebook, LinkedIn and others facilitate loosely coupled communities to evolve. Communities of people with common interests can quickly emerge.
Is it not possible to think of online newspapers evolving to become social newsworking ? A (potentially large) group of people with common interests and ethos could share their reflections on society and the world at large using technology derived from the current generation of wiki support and of social networking. Different social newsworks would of course emerge, reflecting the diverse opinions across societies. Each social newswork would combine - as today's paper based newspapers do - reporting of news and events, including of an investigative nature, with analysis and comment. But unlike a newspaper of today, a social newswork can reflect the wisdom of an entire community of like-minded individuals, rather than just of its editor, its staff and its contributors to its letters pages.
Social newsworking as a concept is not novel. Apart from user contributed newsites such as Reddit and Digg, one of the most interesting from the my perspective is Newsvine. Anyone can write articles, and discuss items submitted by anyone, including by professional journalists, but unlike a wiki cannot update in place previously submitted text. But in my view and as I understand it, Newsvine just aggregates and links articles together, but does not merge and synthesise. Some newspapers - such as The Washington Post and The New York Times - also actively link to internet articles outside of their own web site, and thus attempt to aggregate: but there is no merge and synthesis.
Wikinews is another social newsworking site, and does allow users to edit and update the text of others, just as for Wikipedia encyclopedia entries. However Wikinews itself aspires to offer a neutral perspective, and to be even handed.
My own view is that social newsworking can only succeed if each site in fact does not try to be even handed and neutral, but instead biased towards the ethos and philosophy of its community! Misinformation and sensationalism arguably thrive on sites such as Digg and Reddit because anyone can post, and anyone or small group can contrive to vote specific postings up or down the popularity charts. On the other hand, wiki technology could be used by a group of like minded individuals to ensure that only postings which match their ethos survive the evolutionary editing process. Rather than trying to be all things to all people and thus neutral - such as wikinews - it is probably more pragmatic to instead focus a social newsworking site around a community of like minded people who can reinforce their particular beliefs. After all, in my view, that's what our current newspapers already try to do.
A social newsworking site can of course be a free service to its community. However, an online community of like minded souls is more likely to be a successful opportunity for targeted advertisements, which raises the possibility of an effective and focussed business model. Perhaps the advertisements themselves could even become wiki based, and thus allow the content of an advertisement itself to be updated and edited by the community of its consumers. A social newsworking site could, in my view, have a viable business model if so desired, despite competition from majors such as Google or even Craigslist.
Laurence Knox, the first editor of the Irish Times, saw in 1859 - perhaps pretentiously - that his newspaper would represent a particular section of Irish society, distinguishing itself from others sets of opinions already available in the Irish press, and perhaps severely limiting his market (!):
Social newsworking has the intriguing possibility to combine focussed audiences with a wider democratic reflection on the presentation and analysis of news, than can today's newspapers which are hampered by advertising based and subscription business models and in almost all cases, their shareholder returns to their owners.
"The appearance of another Journal in the field on Irish politics demands a brief explanation from its projectors. It will be asked - Where is the room for this new competitor for public favour ? Is there any definite set of opinions which is not already represented in the Irish Press ? From the silly Radicalism of the Phoenix Club to the dense Toryism of the Orange lodge, what doctrine lacks an exponent, what party an organ ? If no deficiency be felt, is the multiplication of newspapers a good, per se, that the proprietors of the Irish Times think fit to add one voice more the existing Babel ?"
The editor, Laurence Knox - who personally signed the inaugural edition - goes on to justify the appearance of the new newspaper as a voice independent of politics or partisismship. Reminiscent of Deng's famous assertion a century later - "No matter if it is a white cat or a black cat; as long as it can catch mice, it is a good cat" - Knox goes on to assert "Every year sees a larger and larger proportion of our population indifferent to the manoeuvres of faction...They are anxious for good government, but care little in whose hands the government may be placed".
The contemporary Irish Times commentator Fintan O'Toole recently wrote an excellent assessment of the then national context in which the Irish Times was launched. He believes that Knox's aspirations were perhaps a heroic denial of the political climate, but that from the lengthy perspective of 150 years later, Knox was perhaps not as naive as first imagined.
Ironically the same issue of the Irish Times (on 28th March 2009) also contained a topical assessment of the newspaper industry, from the paper's America based correspondent Denis Staunton. He discussed Maryland's Senator Ben Cardin's initiative to use tax policy to try and save what is left of the US newspaper industry. Cardin is of the view that it is in the US national interest, for good governance and for democracy, that at least some newspapers survive.
Devoting the entire front page to advertising may have worked well in 1859, but with advertising revenue now under immense pressure and readers migrating to free global news sources on the internet, something has to change. Web based newspaper subscriptions in general have not been particularly successful. Web based advertising is a challenging model for newspapers, in the face of Google.
What can be the future of the Irish Times, and newspapers like it ? Perhaps tongue in cheek, last January I responded to a request from the Irish Times for some crystal ball gazing - what was the company to watch in 2009 - by identifying the Irish Times itself! Will the Irish Times, and newspapers worldwide like it, survive in its current form by January 2010 ?
In my view, there are three major aspects of the essential content of a newspaper: reporting, investigation, and commentary.
The role of reporting news and events would seem well fulfilled by the density of the web itself. Timely notification of events can be reported almost by anyone: the use of Twitter by Jim Hanran, an ordinary member of the public, to first report on the crash landing of US Airways 1549 in the Hudson is an obvious example. What therefore does the traditional news reporter bring to the web ? The general answer should surely be honesty: readers are generally attracted to reputable reporting, despite occasional reporters such as The News York Times' Jayson Blair. Honesty on the web is always difficult to certify, but other web based systems leverage reputable participation - eBay auctions come to mind, perhaps also Wikipedia's consensus mechanism. However honest and reputable reporting on the web certainly is not the sole domain of newspaper reporters.
What about investigative reporting ? Most democracies can point to occasions when an investigative reporter brought malpractice to light. The Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's exposure of the Watergate scandal is possiby the most renowned. Here in Ireland we still mourn the Sunday Independent's Veronica Guerin, assassinated for her investigative reporting of drug trafficking.
Investigative reporting surely serves the public good. Will our democracies come under threat if there is no longer a business model for newspapers to exploit, and thus no money for investigative reporting ? This thinking seems to overlook the integrity of most members of the public: ethical employees can be appalled by what they see in their organisations, and can and do speak out. Sherron Watkins at Enron blew the whistle on her employer's malpractice. In Ireland, James Gogarty's whistleblowing led to the Mahon tribunal to investigate payments to corrupt politicians. With the internet, whistleblowers can quickly bring concerns to global public attention - India now has several public web sites (eg corruption in india, and whistleblowers) devoted to whistleblowing, particularly following the murder of Sri Satyendra Dubey. Democracy and accountability is probably best supported by well considered whistleblowing processes, which both protect a valid whistleblower but also protect an organisation from inaccurate allegations. Democracy need not rely on the finances of newspapers to underwrite investigative reporters.
Commentary, opinion and analysis is perhaps where great newspapers add most value, separate the significant from the trivial, and correlate patterns to extract observations. But there appears no inherent reason why articulate observation should just be the preserve of a newspaper: the online community and bloggers can equally serve society at large.
Clay Shirky recently blogged that the current business model of newspapers seems doomed, and replacement models have yet - if ever - to appear. Jeff Jarvis argued back in 2005 that saving newspapers is not the same as saving newspaper jobs. Perhaps it really is time to confront the unthinkable: the newspaper, as we know it, may be doomed.
Does the internet really signify the demise of the newspaper ?
Most newspapers do serve the public good. Senator Ben Cardin's Newspaper Revitalisation Act would enable US newspapers, if they so chose, to become not-for-profit organisations, thus benefitting from tax exempt advertising and subscription revenue. Members of the public could make tax deductible contributions to their favourite newspapers. I understand that public service broadcasting is similarly tax exempt in the US. Using the tax code in this way may be an approach, but I do wonder how effective newspapers may be able to operate if they come to rely on regular voluntary donations from their reading public to cover their costs of distribution and of professional staffing.
Are there any other different business models for those online newspapers which do serve the public good ? In Ireland, we have a national license which every TV set owner is supposed to pay to the Government, which in turn is used to support public service broadcasting. Could there be an online tax for public service newspapers ? Perhaps a Government could impose a tax on all internet service providers nationally, since they represent the national access points by the public to the internet: then directly, or via a neutral third party agency - use the money collected to allocate to online public service newspapers. An interesting thought perhaps, but I'm unsure the economics would really work: would internet users really accept what would amount to a personal daily tax of several euros just to support online newspapers ?
Some have given thought to a micropayment model for individual newspaper contributions. This would presumably operate something akin to iTunes: individual newspaper articles could be disaggregated - like tracks from a music CD - and made individually readable and paid for. But a musical track is a marketing teaser to promote itself: if you hear a piece of music and like it, you'll want to hear it again (and perhaps again and again) and so may be tempted to buy it from an online store. A newspaper article is typically by contrast a singular experience: having read it, you are unlikely in most cases to seek to read that particular article again.
As I reflected on the demise of the newspaper, I also reminded myself that a newspaper is a mirror held up to reflect society and the world to the eyes of its readership. It informs its readers about what is happening, and tells them something about themselves and their community, in the terms and ways to which they relate. If newspapers were to disappear due to the impact of the internet on their business model, what could be done on the internet to replace these lost mirrors on society and the world ?
In a newspaper, a selected few contribute articles and news, with feedback from ordinary members of the public filtered through the letters to the editor page. In the internet world, everyone can openly contribute. We can read posts and comments and blogs and emails and tweets from anyone. We can use Google to try and find interesting items, but even then it is easy to get lost in the morass, and perhaps miss what we ourselves find particularly interesting and significant. The specific newspapers we buy by contrast in general do a good job in only presenting articles which we ourselves find interesting and significant, filtering out the mundane, and presenting information and comment which in general match our own particular ethos and values. Any online replacement of a newspaper is going to have to do something similar.
In my view, wiki technology already provides the basis. A wiki is a web site in which not only can anyone read its content, but anyone can also edit the content, as result of Ward Cunningham's work in the 1990. At first this sounds extraordinary - what prevents somebody from editing accurate content and defacing it ? In fact, the answer is nothing, and defacement happens - however, the wiki keeps a record of who edited what, and what was the previous version (and the previous version to that and so on). Anarchists and political pundits can quickly be identified by the community of like-minded readers, isolated from the wiki so that the wiki refuses to accept any further edits from these rogues, and the maverick changes made by these fraudsters are quickly unwound.
The consequence is that the community of bona-fide contributors work together to make the wiki better and better, capturing the best inputs from everyone, and discarding the weaker edits. The system becomes Darwinian - in the view of a specific community, the best survives for that community, and the weakest is dropped. A wiki thus captures the "wisdom of a crowd" - the collective wisdom of a particular community of readers and contributors.
Social networking sites - such as Facebook, LinkedIn and others facilitate loosely coupled communities to evolve. Communities of people with common interests can quickly emerge.
Is it not possible to think of online newspapers evolving to become social newsworking ? A (potentially large) group of people with common interests and ethos could share their reflections on society and the world at large using technology derived from the current generation of wiki support and of social networking. Different social newsworks would of course emerge, reflecting the diverse opinions across societies. Each social newswork would combine - as today's paper based newspapers do - reporting of news and events, including of an investigative nature, with analysis and comment. But unlike a newspaper of today, a social newswork can reflect the wisdom of an entire community of like-minded individuals, rather than just of its editor, its staff and its contributors to its letters pages.
Social newsworking as a concept is not novel. Apart from user contributed newsites such as Reddit and Digg, one of the most interesting from the my perspective is Newsvine. Anyone can write articles, and discuss items submitted by anyone, including by professional journalists, but unlike a wiki cannot update in place previously submitted text. But in my view and as I understand it, Newsvine just aggregates and links articles together, but does not merge and synthesise. Some newspapers - such as The Washington Post and The New York Times - also actively link to internet articles outside of their own web site, and thus attempt to aggregate: but there is no merge and synthesis.
Wikinews is another social newsworking site, and does allow users to edit and update the text of others, just as for Wikipedia encyclopedia entries. However Wikinews itself aspires to offer a neutral perspective, and to be even handed.
My own view is that social newsworking can only succeed if each site in fact does not try to be even handed and neutral, but instead biased towards the ethos and philosophy of its community! Misinformation and sensationalism arguably thrive on sites such as Digg and Reddit because anyone can post, and anyone or small group can contrive to vote specific postings up or down the popularity charts. On the other hand, wiki technology could be used by a group of like minded individuals to ensure that only postings which match their ethos survive the evolutionary editing process. Rather than trying to be all things to all people and thus neutral - such as wikinews - it is probably more pragmatic to instead focus a social newsworking site around a community of like minded people who can reinforce their particular beliefs. After all, in my view, that's what our current newspapers already try to do.
A social newsworking site can of course be a free service to its community. However, an online community of like minded souls is more likely to be a successful opportunity for targeted advertisements, which raises the possibility of an effective and focussed business model. Perhaps the advertisements themselves could even become wiki based, and thus allow the content of an advertisement itself to be updated and edited by the community of its consumers. A social newsworking site could, in my view, have a viable business model if so desired, despite competition from majors such as Google or even Craigslist.
Laurence Knox, the first editor of the Irish Times, saw in 1859 - perhaps pretentiously - that his newspaper would represent a particular section of Irish society, distinguishing itself from others sets of opinions already available in the Irish press, and perhaps severely limiting his market (!):
"On intention, in short, is to make the Irish Times a first rate Irish newspaper, complete in its details, sagacious and consistent in its policy, and faithfully reflecting the opinions of the most independent, intelligent, and truly progressive portion of Irish society."
Social newsworking has the intriguing possibility to combine focussed audiences with a wider democratic reflection on the presentation and analysis of news, than can today's newspapers which are hampered by advertising based and subscription business models and in almost all cases, their shareholder returns to their owners.
Friday 13 March 2009
TCD-UCD Innovation Partnership: a cottage industry perhaps ?
The Times Higher Education/QS World University Rankings, published in last October, showed Trinity College Dublin breaking into the global top 50 universities, ranked at 49 - up from 53. TCD became the first Irish third-level institution to make it into the elite global top-50 group. The rankings also delivered very good news for University College Dublin (UCD), now ranked 108 worldwide, and up from 177 last year.
Last wednesday, both universities announced an intention to further enhance their world class positioning, by integrating together their fourth level (ie postgraduate) activities, and merging the activities of their respective technology licensing offices into a single unit. The text of the press release is here.
The most significant aspect of the announcement, in my view, is the focus on innovation as an equal core part of their mission as universities alongside both research and education. They have set themselves an ambitious target of creating at least 300 new companies of scale, and of high value, by 2019. They will jointly offer new facilities for pre-competitive research and design, prototyping and process innovation - to help harness and commercialise new ideas, knowledge and inventions. They also promise to prioritise the establishment of a wider support framework of educational, legal, financial, technical, management and marketing capabilities and support needed to set good new business ideas on their way.
I strongly believe that an overall national policy objective should primarily be fostering dynamic young companies based in Ireland. While I believe that foreign multinational investments into Ireland have served us extremely well over the last forty years or so, I fervently believe that sustainable wealth and employment should be based on a vigorous breeding ground of young companies. Perhaps in the past, there has been an over-dependence on relatively rapid creation of employment by major multinational investment, and a sense that our indigenous companies were "not playing at Croker". There was a sense perhaps that the multinationals were the "A" team, and the indigenous technology companies were just a "cottage industry".
In fact, I think that's absolutely right: the indigenous technology sector in Ireland has been pretty much a cottage industry, and long may it continue to be so. We need many many more "cottages". In my view, the indigenous technology sector in Silicon Valley is also in effect a cottage industry. A vibrant community of innovative small companies, each with a relatively short life-cycle, but with re-cycling of its engineers and business leaders, is actually the foundation of Silicon Valley.
If the TCD-UCD partnership is to succeed, I believe it should do so by creating many small innovative companies. I hope most of them don't last too long: a few years each, and certainly less than a decade each. Most of these companies should exit and be bought out, and then both the human capital and financial capital re-cycled into replacement new ventures. By re-cycling, competence, expertise, wisdom, capability, and wealth are all nurtured and grown. A few of these companies may perhaps emerge to become global champions, but fostering global champions should not in itself, in my view, be a primary national strategy. Rather global champions are a by-product of a successful innovation environment.
Its perhaps ironic that an Irish Green Party Minister is in Silicon Valley this week and currently positioning Ireland as the potential Silicon Valley of Europe: I wonder does he agree with me that re-cycling (not of materials, but of human and fiscal capital) is at the core of the Valley's success.
Technology advances, and so a company founded on one exciting new technical development has only a limited window in time to be successful: it - the people and the capital behind it - should then move on. A company which overgrows itself can find itself limited in its strategic options: too small to be a sustainable global top ten player, but too big to be easily acquired.
Stating that our national technology enterprise policy should be akin to a vibrant cottage industry is probably heresy to some! But I believe that it is precisely because of the large number of small, relatively short lived, companies in Silicon Valley that giants of the Valley like HP, Oracle, Google, eBay and Cisco have emerged. These larger companies have emerged for a number of reasons: there are bounteous estate of dynamic young companies to acquire; R&D can be augmented by acquisition; emerging markets can be pump-primed by dynamic young start ups; experienced human capital can be sourced who have lived through at least one successful business expansion; and seed and investment capital can demonstrably work.
One danger inherent in the TCD-UCD announcement is the public perception that innovation is primarily the outcome of University led research. Ordinary mere mortals - not the elite fourth level and PhD types - might not expected to produce new companies of value. There is a further danger that there may be a public perception that a major - no, the major - reason for tax payers funding the universities is precisely to create new companies and new employment.
On the contrary, I believe that in principal anyone can be innovative. In my view, the primary source for innovation is intelligent insight into a market opportunity. Thus innovation is primarily (not solely of course) led by market intelligence: a deep understanding of a market opportunity that in general leads to an evolution from where the market already is today, rather than a complete revolution. In general, revolutionary new ideas take considerable marketing investment and muscle to become successful; incremental step forwards from what the market already understands are in general easier to introduce and commercialise.
Being successful in the global marketplace requires a careful holistic orchestration of various activities: market and opportunity analysis; technology assembly and integration; field testing and early, reference, customers; go-to-market capability and channel reach; funding; and leadership. I refer to this orchestration as an "innovation score", in the same sense that a musical score synchronises concurrent orchestral activities into an overall harmonious effect.
The technology underpinning innovation need not always be developed in Ireland: innovation scoring requires technology assembly and integration, identifying and selecting the correct technologies, regardless of their global origin. Tax payer funded Irish based science may as a result not be exploited in Ireland: equally, successful young Irish companies should not limit their source of technology to Irish based science. Most of all, a successful innovation may simply bring together pieces of technology which already exist, but which have never been put together before in such an innovative way.
At a recent event in the Science Gallery, a composite map of the world was shown at night. It clearly shows the industrialised world against the darkness of the third world.
The presenters, the Lebone group (pronounced "le-bone-nay"), met as undergraduate engineers at Harvard University. They observed that the coupling of two existing technologies - microbial fuel cells and standard high efficient light emitting devices (LEDs) - could provide light in rural Africa. The same technology can also be used to re-charge mobile phones. Their product is used by simply inserting two wires into rotting compost or dung, and the microbes bio-electrochemically generate small amounts of direct current which is then used to power highly efficient LEDs, or to re-charge mobiles. The product has been field-tested in Tanzania over several months, and the project is now supported by the World Bank.
This example shows how an innovative, pragmatic solution was derived by understanding a market problem (off-the-grid power generation throughout much of the third world), identifying existing technologies (microbial fuel cells and new generation LEDs) invented and researched elsewhere, bringing these technologies together into a new product, field testing and then initiating a new business venture. The successful innovation score did not require extensive scientific research to be carried out by the innovators.
Technology can come from latent and unexploited intellectual property within major corporations. As just one example, Hewlett Packard has just closed their second global call for their Innovation Research Programme, in which they requested proposals from innovators outside of HP anywhere on the planet, to license specific intellectual property from HP in areas such as analytics, cloud computing, intelligent infrastructure, digital commercial print and so on. This enables HP to test new emerging technology markets via young dynamic partner companies.
In the current global economic climate, it is not unusual for major corporations to in effect out-source their R&D. Acquiring young companies who are each proving that a new innovation is successful in an early stage market, but which do not have the global channel reach, may be a less expensive way to enhance their product portfolio and innovate, than funding internal R&D and product teams. As a further consequence, internal R&D and product development teams have increasing difficulty getting internal budget, increasing the possibility of spin-outs from the corporation, and increasing the possibility of licensing intellectual property out of the corporation. HP has completed 116 acquisitions in its life time: it is now actively licensing intellectual property out of HP.
An insightful understanding of the current state of a market can come from emerging global industry standards, particularly when there is end user pull. IONA Technologies was successful precisely because we personally participated in such an initiative. For a time IONA was able finesse the global industry by using global end user feedback and experience of IONA products to improve these standards, creating global industry leadership and a "catch-up" game for other global vendors.
I've probably written enough in this blog article. In summary, I very much welcome the TCD-UCD link up, and fervently hope that it results in more commercial research being attracted. But I also fervently hope that we can create a small company culture, with reasonably frequent re-cycling of human and financial capital, and from which a small number of larger companies may eventually emerge. I also fervently hope that we can foster "innovation scores" in which anyone with insight, skill and sheer determination can build a great company, whether or not they happened to gain a PhD from UCD-TCD (or anywhere else).
Last wednesday, both universities announced an intention to further enhance their world class positioning, by integrating together their fourth level (ie postgraduate) activities, and merging the activities of their respective technology licensing offices into a single unit. The text of the press release is here.
The most significant aspect of the announcement, in my view, is the focus on innovation as an equal core part of their mission as universities alongside both research and education. They have set themselves an ambitious target of creating at least 300 new companies of scale, and of high value, by 2019. They will jointly offer new facilities for pre-competitive research and design, prototyping and process innovation - to help harness and commercialise new ideas, knowledge and inventions. They also promise to prioritise the establishment of a wider support framework of educational, legal, financial, technical, management and marketing capabilities and support needed to set good new business ideas on their way.
I strongly believe that an overall national policy objective should primarily be fostering dynamic young companies based in Ireland. While I believe that foreign multinational investments into Ireland have served us extremely well over the last forty years or so, I fervently believe that sustainable wealth and employment should be based on a vigorous breeding ground of young companies. Perhaps in the past, there has been an over-dependence on relatively rapid creation of employment by major multinational investment, and a sense that our indigenous companies were "not playing at Croker". There was a sense perhaps that the multinationals were the "A" team, and the indigenous technology companies were just a "cottage industry".
In fact, I think that's absolutely right: the indigenous technology sector in Ireland has been pretty much a cottage industry, and long may it continue to be so. We need many many more "cottages". In my view, the indigenous technology sector in Silicon Valley is also in effect a cottage industry. A vibrant community of innovative small companies, each with a relatively short life-cycle, but with re-cycling of its engineers and business leaders, is actually the foundation of Silicon Valley.
If the TCD-UCD partnership is to succeed, I believe it should do so by creating many small innovative companies. I hope most of them don't last too long: a few years each, and certainly less than a decade each. Most of these companies should exit and be bought out, and then both the human capital and financial capital re-cycled into replacement new ventures. By re-cycling, competence, expertise, wisdom, capability, and wealth are all nurtured and grown. A few of these companies may perhaps emerge to become global champions, but fostering global champions should not in itself, in my view, be a primary national strategy. Rather global champions are a by-product of a successful innovation environment.
Its perhaps ironic that an Irish Green Party Minister is in Silicon Valley this week and currently positioning Ireland as the potential Silicon Valley of Europe: I wonder does he agree with me that re-cycling (not of materials, but of human and fiscal capital) is at the core of the Valley's success.
Technology advances, and so a company founded on one exciting new technical development has only a limited window in time to be successful: it - the people and the capital behind it - should then move on. A company which overgrows itself can find itself limited in its strategic options: too small to be a sustainable global top ten player, but too big to be easily acquired.
Stating that our national technology enterprise policy should be akin to a vibrant cottage industry is probably heresy to some! But I believe that it is precisely because of the large number of small, relatively short lived, companies in Silicon Valley that giants of the Valley like HP, Oracle, Google, eBay and Cisco have emerged. These larger companies have emerged for a number of reasons: there are bounteous estate of dynamic young companies to acquire; R&D can be augmented by acquisition; emerging markets can be pump-primed by dynamic young start ups; experienced human capital can be sourced who have lived through at least one successful business expansion; and seed and investment capital can demonstrably work.
One danger inherent in the TCD-UCD announcement is the public perception that innovation is primarily the outcome of University led research. Ordinary mere mortals - not the elite fourth level and PhD types - might not expected to produce new companies of value. There is a further danger that there may be a public perception that a major - no, the major - reason for tax payers funding the universities is precisely to create new companies and new employment.
On the contrary, I believe that in principal anyone can be innovative. In my view, the primary source for innovation is intelligent insight into a market opportunity. Thus innovation is primarily (not solely of course) led by market intelligence: a deep understanding of a market opportunity that in general leads to an evolution from where the market already is today, rather than a complete revolution. In general, revolutionary new ideas take considerable marketing investment and muscle to become successful; incremental step forwards from what the market already understands are in general easier to introduce and commercialise.
Being successful in the global marketplace requires a careful holistic orchestration of various activities: market and opportunity analysis; technology assembly and integration; field testing and early, reference, customers; go-to-market capability and channel reach; funding; and leadership. I refer to this orchestration as an "innovation score", in the same sense that a musical score synchronises concurrent orchestral activities into an overall harmonious effect.
The technology underpinning innovation need not always be developed in Ireland: innovation scoring requires technology assembly and integration, identifying and selecting the correct technologies, regardless of their global origin. Tax payer funded Irish based science may as a result not be exploited in Ireland: equally, successful young Irish companies should not limit their source of technology to Irish based science. Most of all, a successful innovation may simply bring together pieces of technology which already exist, but which have never been put together before in such an innovative way.
At a recent event in the Science Gallery, a composite map of the world was shown at night. It clearly shows the industrialised world against the darkness of the third world.
The presenters, the Lebone group (pronounced "le-bone-nay"), met as undergraduate engineers at Harvard University. They observed that the coupling of two existing technologies - microbial fuel cells and standard high efficient light emitting devices (LEDs) - could provide light in rural Africa. The same technology can also be used to re-charge mobile phones. Their product is used by simply inserting two wires into rotting compost or dung, and the microbes bio-electrochemically generate small amounts of direct current which is then used to power highly efficient LEDs, or to re-charge mobiles. The product has been field-tested in Tanzania over several months, and the project is now supported by the World Bank.
This example shows how an innovative, pragmatic solution was derived by understanding a market problem (off-the-grid power generation throughout much of the third world), identifying existing technologies (microbial fuel cells and new generation LEDs) invented and researched elsewhere, bringing these technologies together into a new product, field testing and then initiating a new business venture. The successful innovation score did not require extensive scientific research to be carried out by the innovators.
Technology can come from latent and unexploited intellectual property within major corporations. As just one example, Hewlett Packard has just closed their second global call for their Innovation Research Programme, in which they requested proposals from innovators outside of HP anywhere on the planet, to license specific intellectual property from HP in areas such as analytics, cloud computing, intelligent infrastructure, digital commercial print and so on. This enables HP to test new emerging technology markets via young dynamic partner companies.
In the current global economic climate, it is not unusual for major corporations to in effect out-source their R&D. Acquiring young companies who are each proving that a new innovation is successful in an early stage market, but which do not have the global channel reach, may be a less expensive way to enhance their product portfolio and innovate, than funding internal R&D and product teams. As a further consequence, internal R&D and product development teams have increasing difficulty getting internal budget, increasing the possibility of spin-outs from the corporation, and increasing the possibility of licensing intellectual property out of the corporation. HP has completed 116 acquisitions in its life time: it is now actively licensing intellectual property out of HP.
An insightful understanding of the current state of a market can come from emerging global industry standards, particularly when there is end user pull. IONA Technologies was successful precisely because we personally participated in such an initiative. For a time IONA was able finesse the global industry by using global end user feedback and experience of IONA products to improve these standards, creating global industry leadership and a "catch-up" game for other global vendors.
I've probably written enough in this blog article. In summary, I very much welcome the TCD-UCD link up, and fervently hope that it results in more commercial research being attracted. But I also fervently hope that we can create a small company culture, with reasonably frequent re-cycling of human and financial capital, and from which a small number of larger companies may eventually emerge. I also fervently hope that we can foster "innovation scores" in which anyone with insight, skill and sheer determination can build a great company, whether or not they happened to gain a PhD from UCD-TCD (or anywhere else).
Thursday 5 March 2009
Educators and Technologists: how can we best change Ireland ?
The text below is an invited talk that I gave this morning to a symposium organised by the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals - the heads of primary and secondary (high) schools of Ireland, and their deputies.
My goal was to encourage the teaching profession in Ireland to seize the initiative, and help themselves to help their colleagues. In these very challenging fiscal times in Ireland, it seems clear to me that our Department of Education and Science will not have the fiscal capability to lead, and so leadership must be bottom-up, indigenous and community based - which, in my mind, is at the core of the ethos of the internet.
If you are a technologist yourself, please forgive my poetic license below in categorising some web sites and technologies - I am trying to explain essential characteristics in laymens', non-technical, terms.
----
"The ancient Masters didn't try to educate the people, but patiently taught them to not-know. When they think they know the answers, people are difficult to guide. When they know that they don't know, people can then find their way"--- from Lao Tzu's "Tao Te Ching" - the Book of the Way.
Teaching is about not-knowing. Educating is about fostering self-awareness. Learning is about finding.
Being an educator is one of the most privileged professions. In knowing herself, an educator imprints on the next generation a way to understand themselves and thus to find their way.
I went to Newpark Comprehensive in Blackrock, finishing in 1974. John Harris, who introduced the Transition year project to Ireland, was my Mathematics teacher throughout my time in secondary school. Derek West likewise taught me in English classes for six years. Dr John de Courcy Ireland taught me History, and also French. I was so fortunate to have many further fine teachers - Derek Langran, Chris Sealy, Roy Rohu, Bob Weatherill and many others. And I believe in every case, all those years ago, I viewed each of these teachers as a prime source of information and knowledge. They knew, and I didn't.
Today, I think many of us accept that the situation has irrevocably changed. Teachers are of course still fine people, but many students no longer accept their teachers as the prime source of information and knowledge. The internet, and in particular Google, is now the primary way to find out and learn. Wikipedia - an online encyclopedia, to which I will later return - is a chief reference and authority. Twitter - an online headline broadcast service - is a rapid access to what's happening. Facebook and Bebo - online social communities - are a quick way to find and share what's cool. Youtube - an online video clip service - is a quick way to humour. iTunes - an online music and "podcasting" service - is a quick way to music and interesting interviews.
Ten years ago, I used to worry about the 'digital divide' -- that the wealthy had access to the internet, and those of limited means did not. I remember the Ennis Information Age project in which we asked ourselves what would happen if an entire community was trained on how to use a PC and had access to the internet. Over the last decade I believe that, in Ireland at least, there is considerably greater uptake and affordable access to the internet, compared to some of those countries I have experienced through my work with UNICEF. There are of course still digitally impoverished communities in Ireland, but the situation is improving. The convergence of mobile phone technology with broadband internet access, is a further catalyst.
Now I worry, maybe unnecessarily, about the digital divide of the generations. Most of us know how to book an airline seat online. Most of us know how to send an email, or access our bank account. But how many of us know how to upload a video to Youtube, or to make a podcast, or how to contribute to the wisdom of the crowd ? Meanwhile, for the younger generation there is no divide between virtual reality and the real world: for them this would be an unnecessary and unnatural distinction, and for them the internet is an intrinsic part of the real world as much as the telephone, the radio or even the weather.
Therefore today, what role should a teacher and educator now play ? It's now clear to many students that their teachers don't know as much about their chosen subject as Google does. It's also clear to many students that traditional classroom teaching isn't particularly interesting or stimulating. Instead, on the internet, you can quickly browse from headline to headline, quickly learn, quickly find out what's happening, quickly participate and quickly share with your friends and community. It's not that today's students have attention deficit, and are incapable of absorption or focus: on the contrary, they immerse themselves deeply - for hours sometimes - in what they find interesting, such as specific games and challenges. The difference today is that students have found a way - the internet - to so much more easily quickly find out what is really interesting, and to rapidly filter out and discard what is mundane.
So, as educators and technologists, what should we do ? How together can we change Ireland ?
One thing we must of course continue to do is to challenge students' understanding - the old "compare and contrast" technique which Derek West drummed into me. No single source of information should be taken as definitive, including Wikipedia. How easy it is today for example to instantly compare the front pages of the Irish Times and the Irish Independent, but also for example the Sydney Morning Herald, the South China Morning Post and the Los Angeles Times!
One thing I personally strongly believe that we cannot do, is wait and expect our Government and the apparatus of the State to help us. From where we stand today, it is pretty clear that the State has a rapidly diminishing capability to invest in education. With a ballooning national budget deficit, the worst thing we can now do is to fold our arms, sit back, and wait for some fiscally impotent Minister of Education to put together some study on what on earth should be done; then perhaps sometime put a computer and broadband link in front of every single student in every classroom; ensure that there is support and maintenance for all those machines; and put all of our educators through continued professional education on computer use. Ladies and Gentlemen, from where I stand, this just isn't going to happen anytime soon.
So, we have two challenges: (1) how to get all of our professional teachers conversant and confident with the latest internet technologies; (2) even if we achieve the first challenge, how do we make teaching relevant in today's internet world where the teacher in general knows little and Google knows everything ? Let me address both challenges with the same solution.
One of the key points about the internet is that it is self-creating and self-sustaining. It is bottom-up, a community phenomenon. In the early days of the internet, you could connect your computer for free to the mesh of computers already in the network, but only if you were then prepared to let others - even strangers - use your computer to in turn connect theirs into the mesh. The world wide web came about by a bunch of physicists devising their own way to better share their scientific results, and then sharing their new way with anyone else interested. The ethos of the internet is sharing, "bottom-up". So let me talk to you about the technology underpinning wikipedia.
Perhaps some of you have a jaundiced view of wikipedia. It has replaced the Encyclopedia Britannica - which my parents encouraged me to consult in Blackrock library as the definitive source of knowledge. But some educators, and I do understand, question its accuracy and are concerned that students may place an unnecessary over-reliance on its authority. We should always compare and contrast.
But allow me to distinguish between wikipedia - the web site - and a wiki - the technology on which wikipedia is based. Wikipedia is but one example of a wiki, and there are many others. The basic technology of a wiki is free - zero cost - as result of Ward Cunningham's work in the 1990s. A wiki is a web site in which not only can anyone read its content, but anyone can also edit the content. At first this sounds extraordinary - what prevents somebody from editing accurate content and defacing it ? In fact, the answer is nothing, and defacement happens - however, the wiki keeps a record of who edited what, and what was the previous version (and the previous version to that and so on). Anarchists and political pundits can quickly be identified by the community of readers, isolated from the wiki so that the wiki refuses to accept any further edits from these rogues, and the maverick changes made by these fraudsters are quickly unwound.
The consequence is that the community of bona-fide contributors work together to make the wiki better and better, capturing the best inputs from everyone, and discarding the weaker edits. The system becomes Darwinian - the best survives, the weakest is dropped. A wiki thus captures the "wisdom of the crowd" - the collective wisdom of a community of readers and contributors.
If you Google on the topic of wikis and teaching, you will see some articles about how some teachers elsewhere in the world (I couldn't find any from Ireland) are experimenting with the use of wikis within the classroom, to encourage a class of students to work together on group projects. We can of course adopt this idea here in Ireland, but I have a broader suggestion to make to you.
Ladies and Gentlemen, you are a community. Your professional teaching colleagues are another larger community, to which you also belong. Why not use wiki technology to address the two challenges - digital confidence amongst your community, and enhanced teaching ?
I do make the assumption that the vast majority of you and your teaching colleagues already have access to the internet (not necessarily in your schools but at home or elsewhere), and know the rudimentaries for example on how to book an airline ticket online. To contribute to, or to just read, a wiki you do not need needlessly complicated tools like Microsoft Word or Powerpoint or some such. Instead, you use any internet browser: editting is done using the browser itself and very simple controls. In fact, by examining a wiki, you can quickly see how other contributors have achieved the layout and presentation of the wiki, and simply copy their styling. If you know how to start a computer, connect to the internet and launch an internet browser, then you really need only learn very little more to be able to read and to contribute to a wiki.
I then envisage a new wiki (not Wikipedia!) created by some of you and your teaching colleagues which starts to capture the wisdom inherent in the national community of teachers in Ireland on how to get the best out of the internet, and out of internet trends (such as podcasting..), for teaching students in Irish schools. Such a wiki would then potentially help every teacher in Ireland. I envisage another new wiki that some of you, and/or some of your teaching colleagues, create on experiences, and best practice, of engaging classroom experiences in Irish schools. Such a wiki would then further help every teacher in Ireland.
I envisage another wiki, created by some of your mathematics teachers, on each topic within the Higher Level Leaving Certificate Mathematics syllabus, not only explaining each such topic but illustrating it from real world examples from applications in society and science as to how that particular mathematical technique can be beneficially used. I envisage another wiki, created by some of our Irish history teaching colleagues, on each topic within the Junior Certificate History syllabus, not only laying out each such topic but explaining its consequences on Irish society and culture.
I envisage many wikis, one for each syllabus in Irish schools, through which both experienced and neophyte teachers alike of that syllabus can share with each other nationwide the best ideas and experiences.
Ladies and Gentlemen, my proposition to you is that in todays fiscal environment, it is unrealistic to expect much help anymore from the State. Instead there is a huge wealth of competence and wisdom within your own community, and it really would not take very much for you to work together to help all of your interests.
In the business world of global companies, such as IONA was, great emphasis is placed on team work, and ensuring that every member of a global organisation contributes to and benefits from the collective wisdom of the staff: domain experts share their knowledge and skills so as the whole company benefits. The commercial world for which we are preparing the vast bulk of our young people is one in which team work abounds. In the world of education, perhaps the current fiscal position of our State can be a catalyst for change, an impetus to encourage sharing amongst education professionals what is the very best.
A wiki is a community self-help tool. Best of all, a wiki can be created by anyone, by any small group of like-minded professionals, at any time. It does not require a mandate from a Government, a Minister, a Trade Union, or even the NAPD! It is a "bottom-up" tool, deep from within the community itself. A wiki can just emerge pretty much overnight, and regardless of any national agenda and policy: it just needs bona fide like-minded professionals.
Be wary of educating people, but instead teach them to not-know and hence to find out. When people think they already know the answers, they become difficult to guide. When people know that they don't know, they can find their way. One of the best ways is to ask and share with others. That is what the internet is all about.
My goal was to encourage the teaching profession in Ireland to seize the initiative, and help themselves to help their colleagues. In these very challenging fiscal times in Ireland, it seems clear to me that our Department of Education and Science will not have the fiscal capability to lead, and so leadership must be bottom-up, indigenous and community based - which, in my mind, is at the core of the ethos of the internet.
If you are a technologist yourself, please forgive my poetic license below in categorising some web sites and technologies - I am trying to explain essential characteristics in laymens', non-technical, terms.
----
"The ancient Masters didn't try to educate the people, but patiently taught them to not-know. When they think they know the answers, people are difficult to guide. When they know that they don't know, people can then find their way"--- from Lao Tzu's "Tao Te Ching" - the Book of the Way.
Teaching is about not-knowing. Educating is about fostering self-awareness. Learning is about finding.
Being an educator is one of the most privileged professions. In knowing herself, an educator imprints on the next generation a way to understand themselves and thus to find their way.
I went to Newpark Comprehensive in Blackrock, finishing in 1974. John Harris, who introduced the Transition year project to Ireland, was my Mathematics teacher throughout my time in secondary school. Derek West likewise taught me in English classes for six years. Dr John de Courcy Ireland taught me History, and also French. I was so fortunate to have many further fine teachers - Derek Langran, Chris Sealy, Roy Rohu, Bob Weatherill and many others. And I believe in every case, all those years ago, I viewed each of these teachers as a prime source of information and knowledge. They knew, and I didn't.
Today, I think many of us accept that the situation has irrevocably changed. Teachers are of course still fine people, but many students no longer accept their teachers as the prime source of information and knowledge. The internet, and in particular Google, is now the primary way to find out and learn. Wikipedia - an online encyclopedia, to which I will later return - is a chief reference and authority. Twitter - an online headline broadcast service - is a rapid access to what's happening. Facebook and Bebo - online social communities - are a quick way to find and share what's cool. Youtube - an online video clip service - is a quick way to humour. iTunes - an online music and "podcasting" service - is a quick way to music and interesting interviews.
Ten years ago, I used to worry about the 'digital divide' -- that the wealthy had access to the internet, and those of limited means did not. I remember the Ennis Information Age project in which we asked ourselves what would happen if an entire community was trained on how to use a PC and had access to the internet. Over the last decade I believe that, in Ireland at least, there is considerably greater uptake and affordable access to the internet, compared to some of those countries I have experienced through my work with UNICEF. There are of course still digitally impoverished communities in Ireland, but the situation is improving. The convergence of mobile phone technology with broadband internet access, is a further catalyst.
Now I worry, maybe unnecessarily, about the digital divide of the generations. Most of us know how to book an airline seat online. Most of us know how to send an email, or access our bank account. But how many of us know how to upload a video to Youtube, or to make a podcast, or how to contribute to the wisdom of the crowd ? Meanwhile, for the younger generation there is no divide between virtual reality and the real world: for them this would be an unnecessary and unnatural distinction, and for them the internet is an intrinsic part of the real world as much as the telephone, the radio or even the weather.
Therefore today, what role should a teacher and educator now play ? It's now clear to many students that their teachers don't know as much about their chosen subject as Google does. It's also clear to many students that traditional classroom teaching isn't particularly interesting or stimulating. Instead, on the internet, you can quickly browse from headline to headline, quickly learn, quickly find out what's happening, quickly participate and quickly share with your friends and community. It's not that today's students have attention deficit, and are incapable of absorption or focus: on the contrary, they immerse themselves deeply - for hours sometimes - in what they find interesting, such as specific games and challenges. The difference today is that students have found a way - the internet - to so much more easily quickly find out what is really interesting, and to rapidly filter out and discard what is mundane.
So, as educators and technologists, what should we do ? How together can we change Ireland ?
One thing we must of course continue to do is to challenge students' understanding - the old "compare and contrast" technique which Derek West drummed into me. No single source of information should be taken as definitive, including Wikipedia. How easy it is today for example to instantly compare the front pages of the Irish Times and the Irish Independent, but also for example the Sydney Morning Herald, the South China Morning Post and the Los Angeles Times!
One thing I personally strongly believe that we cannot do, is wait and expect our Government and the apparatus of the State to help us. From where we stand today, it is pretty clear that the State has a rapidly diminishing capability to invest in education. With a ballooning national budget deficit, the worst thing we can now do is to fold our arms, sit back, and wait for some fiscally impotent Minister of Education to put together some study on what on earth should be done; then perhaps sometime put a computer and broadband link in front of every single student in every classroom; ensure that there is support and maintenance for all those machines; and put all of our educators through continued professional education on computer use. Ladies and Gentlemen, from where I stand, this just isn't going to happen anytime soon.
So, we have two challenges: (1) how to get all of our professional teachers conversant and confident with the latest internet technologies; (2) even if we achieve the first challenge, how do we make teaching relevant in today's internet world where the teacher in general knows little and Google knows everything ? Let me address both challenges with the same solution.
One of the key points about the internet is that it is self-creating and self-sustaining. It is bottom-up, a community phenomenon. In the early days of the internet, you could connect your computer for free to the mesh of computers already in the network, but only if you were then prepared to let others - even strangers - use your computer to in turn connect theirs into the mesh. The world wide web came about by a bunch of physicists devising their own way to better share their scientific results, and then sharing their new way with anyone else interested. The ethos of the internet is sharing, "bottom-up". So let me talk to you about the technology underpinning wikipedia.
Perhaps some of you have a jaundiced view of wikipedia. It has replaced the Encyclopedia Britannica - which my parents encouraged me to consult in Blackrock library as the definitive source of knowledge. But some educators, and I do understand, question its accuracy and are concerned that students may place an unnecessary over-reliance on its authority. We should always compare and contrast.
But allow me to distinguish between wikipedia - the web site - and a wiki - the technology on which wikipedia is based. Wikipedia is but one example of a wiki, and there are many others. The basic technology of a wiki is free - zero cost - as result of Ward Cunningham's work in the 1990s. A wiki is a web site in which not only can anyone read its content, but anyone can also edit the content. At first this sounds extraordinary - what prevents somebody from editing accurate content and defacing it ? In fact, the answer is nothing, and defacement happens - however, the wiki keeps a record of who edited what, and what was the previous version (and the previous version to that and so on). Anarchists and political pundits can quickly be identified by the community of readers, isolated from the wiki so that the wiki refuses to accept any further edits from these rogues, and the maverick changes made by these fraudsters are quickly unwound.
The consequence is that the community of bona-fide contributors work together to make the wiki better and better, capturing the best inputs from everyone, and discarding the weaker edits. The system becomes Darwinian - the best survives, the weakest is dropped. A wiki thus captures the "wisdom of the crowd" - the collective wisdom of a community of readers and contributors.
If you Google on the topic of wikis and teaching, you will see some articles about how some teachers elsewhere in the world (I couldn't find any from Ireland) are experimenting with the use of wikis within the classroom, to encourage a class of students to work together on group projects. We can of course adopt this idea here in Ireland, but I have a broader suggestion to make to you.
Ladies and Gentlemen, you are a community. Your professional teaching colleagues are another larger community, to which you also belong. Why not use wiki technology to address the two challenges - digital confidence amongst your community, and enhanced teaching ?
I do make the assumption that the vast majority of you and your teaching colleagues already have access to the internet (not necessarily in your schools but at home or elsewhere), and know the rudimentaries for example on how to book an airline ticket online. To contribute to, or to just read, a wiki you do not need needlessly complicated tools like Microsoft Word or Powerpoint or some such. Instead, you use any internet browser: editting is done using the browser itself and very simple controls. In fact, by examining a wiki, you can quickly see how other contributors have achieved the layout and presentation of the wiki, and simply copy their styling. If you know how to start a computer, connect to the internet and launch an internet browser, then you really need only learn very little more to be able to read and to contribute to a wiki.
I then envisage a new wiki (not Wikipedia!) created by some of you and your teaching colleagues which starts to capture the wisdom inherent in the national community of teachers in Ireland on how to get the best out of the internet, and out of internet trends (such as podcasting..), for teaching students in Irish schools. Such a wiki would then potentially help every teacher in Ireland. I envisage another new wiki that some of you, and/or some of your teaching colleagues, create on experiences, and best practice, of engaging classroom experiences in Irish schools. Such a wiki would then further help every teacher in Ireland.
I envisage another wiki, created by some of your mathematics teachers, on each topic within the Higher Level Leaving Certificate Mathematics syllabus, not only explaining each such topic but illustrating it from real world examples from applications in society and science as to how that particular mathematical technique can be beneficially used. I envisage another wiki, created by some of our Irish history teaching colleagues, on each topic within the Junior Certificate History syllabus, not only laying out each such topic but explaining its consequences on Irish society and culture.
I envisage many wikis, one for each syllabus in Irish schools, through which both experienced and neophyte teachers alike of that syllabus can share with each other nationwide the best ideas and experiences.
Ladies and Gentlemen, my proposition to you is that in todays fiscal environment, it is unrealistic to expect much help anymore from the State. Instead there is a huge wealth of competence and wisdom within your own community, and it really would not take very much for you to work together to help all of your interests.
In the business world of global companies, such as IONA was, great emphasis is placed on team work, and ensuring that every member of a global organisation contributes to and benefits from the collective wisdom of the staff: domain experts share their knowledge and skills so as the whole company benefits. The commercial world for which we are preparing the vast bulk of our young people is one in which team work abounds. In the world of education, perhaps the current fiscal position of our State can be a catalyst for change, an impetus to encourage sharing amongst education professionals what is the very best.
A wiki is a community self-help tool. Best of all, a wiki can be created by anyone, by any small group of like-minded professionals, at any time. It does not require a mandate from a Government, a Minister, a Trade Union, or even the NAPD! It is a "bottom-up" tool, deep from within the community itself. A wiki can just emerge pretty much overnight, and regardless of any national agenda and policy: it just needs bona fide like-minded professionals.
Be wary of educating people, but instead teach them to not-know and hence to find out. When people think they already know the answers, they become difficult to guide. When people know that they don't know, they can find their way. One of the best ways is to ask and share with others. That is what the internet is all about.
Friday 30 January 2009
Core skills, not "up skills"
There's some considerable debate here in Ireland about the need to "up skill" our economy, in the light of loss of jobs to lower cost economies. I however contend that there is not so much a need to "up skill", but to "core skill" - to get back to fundamentals and thus ensure that we have a solid foundation of lifetime skills.
One of the key attractions which as a nation have used to attract and retain our comparatively high levels of foreign direct investment in Ireland has been the availability of a talented, well educated and technically oriented workforce. If we in Ireland aspire to build a future for our own young people as a leading nation for innovation; with high value services; succeeding as a knowledge-fuelled economy; having good, stable and well paid jobs; and with the ability to afford high quality social support for the weaker members of our society, then education in core intellectual skills are inextricably intertwined with our future.
Our young people should be able to reason, to deduce and derive, to correlate and spot patterns, to explore and to be inquisitive, and to be articulate and confident. In my humble view, these are more life centric skills than learning facts and perspectives by rote: knowing something off by heart, but not understanding why, why not, and so what. Skills taught in schools should be for life. There are many things which can be learnt during adulthood, but some skills which are difficult to learn without a solid foundation during the teens and 20s.
Without these skills, we will have little to offer the 21st century global economy. If our young people are weak in core skills, many of them may not find well paid careers in Ireland nor overseas: these jobs will go to other nationals in other economies.
In my view, and I admit as an elderly grey traditionalist, mathematics is a critical catalyst to careful reasoning and deduction. Mathematics is too vast to be learnt by rote and instead requires insightful thinking and intellectual clarity. Taught well, it enables core intellectual skills for life. It also makes learning easier, not just for mathematics, but many other subjects, since understanding comes from reasoning, rather than learning by rote.
The decline in the Irish attainment of mathematics and core sciences has been gradual. It has perhaps gone unnoticed by many, but major employers across a range of business sectors of strategic importance to Ireland are seriously concerned to see substantial decreases in the number of our students taking technology courses, and in particular the fall off in those taking mathematics. If we all aspire to build a future for our young people as outlined above, then competence in mathematics is a cornerstone. Competence in mathematics underpins not just engineering and the physical sciences, but also sectors such as alternative energy and green systems, financial services, medical research, and cross disciplinary areas such as bio-engineering. For so many areas of our potential national prosperity and quality of society, competence in mathematics is critical.
With further government budget cuts imminent, there is a very serious risk that teaching in mathematics and the core sciences will dramatically suffer further. This is especially so at secondary school (high school, in Ireland) level, since these subjects are perceived as resource intensive and difficult to teach. The Principals of eleven secondary schools of one Irish county have recently jointly written an open letter to all the parents of all their students stating that in view of Government cutbacks, they may no longer be in a position to teach honours mathematics and sciences at all in their schools. There is further anecdotal evidence of schools consciously cutting their teaching programmes in areas which are nevertheless critical to the future of our nation, as their way of meeting newly imposed budgetary constraints.
Incredibly, almost 20% of our schools no longer offer honours mathematics to their students. In 2007, only 14% of Irish university applicants to honours degrees had achieved honours mathematics capability in school.
It is also widely accepted that several factors need to be urgently and collectively addressed to resolve this issue: the professional development and inspiration of mathematics teachers; the teaching and examination methods of honours Mathematics; and other implicit disincentives to students such as points, grading and curriculum factors.
Points, in particular, deserve mention. In Ireland, we have a highly unfortunate and ill-conceived national system of awarding points in our school examinations for grades obtained, regardless of the intellectual difficulty of any particular subject. Earning points by studying honours mathematics is widely projected as overly difficult when equivalent points could be earned for less effort elsewhere. Students are in some cases explicitly advised by some teachers and advisers to take a cluster of subjects which together may overlap in content and collectively make points accumulation easier, regardless of career aspirations. Students who score particularly high totals of points, are under considerable pressure to undertake university degrees which require high numbers of points to apply, regardless of their career aspirations: "don't waste your points". University courses with limited places (due to resource constraints) usually require high levels of points. Courses which offer wonderful career opportunities do not necessarily require extremely high points, and high scoring students usually as a result do not take them.
Examinations are ill constructed. Substantial question choice enables teachers to omit major sections of a course syllabus, thus focussing students on a more limited syllabus which is likely to be sufficient to earn examination points. I'm aware of university professors aghast that some first year university students, ostensibly with high numbers of points, arrive into technology degree courses without any knowledge, for example, of trigonometry: some teachers omit trigonometry from their teaching, correctly believing that high points can still be achieved by filtering out questions during an examination.
In my view, our economy can no longer afford to be impartial in the content of its educational services. Some topics available at our schools can be learnt at any stage in life: others are much more difficult to do so.
Teachers should be encouraged to foster reasoning, deduction, derivation, correlation, exploration and curiosity, intellectual clarity and insight, fluency and confidence. Mathematics and the core sciences are clear catalysts. Teachers who achieve consistent success in their students in these subjects should not only be acclaimed but also receive fiscal reward - if this cannot be done through Government pay, it may be possible to do via industry sponsored competitions. Teachers whose own core skills are weak should be offered re-skilling and professional development. Considerably more use should be made of the web - including podcasts and vidcasts to complement the music on students' personal players - to cultivate dynamic, current, interesting course material: social free educational networking can compensate to some extent weaknesses in any specific teacher in a particular school.
Our country needs to get back to basics: core skills taught well, rather than nebulous "up skills". Mathematics and the core sciences are one critical foundation.
One of the key attractions which as a nation have used to attract and retain our comparatively high levels of foreign direct investment in Ireland has been the availability of a talented, well educated and technically oriented workforce. If we in Ireland aspire to build a future for our own young people as a leading nation for innovation; with high value services; succeeding as a knowledge-fuelled economy; having good, stable and well paid jobs; and with the ability to afford high quality social support for the weaker members of our society, then education in core intellectual skills are inextricably intertwined with our future.
Our young people should be able to reason, to deduce and derive, to correlate and spot patterns, to explore and to be inquisitive, and to be articulate and confident. In my humble view, these are more life centric skills than learning facts and perspectives by rote: knowing something off by heart, but not understanding why, why not, and so what. Skills taught in schools should be for life. There are many things which can be learnt during adulthood, but some skills which are difficult to learn without a solid foundation during the teens and 20s.
Without these skills, we will have little to offer the 21st century global economy. If our young people are weak in core skills, many of them may not find well paid careers in Ireland nor overseas: these jobs will go to other nationals in other economies.
In my view, and I admit as an elderly grey traditionalist, mathematics is a critical catalyst to careful reasoning and deduction. Mathematics is too vast to be learnt by rote and instead requires insightful thinking and intellectual clarity. Taught well, it enables core intellectual skills for life. It also makes learning easier, not just for mathematics, but many other subjects, since understanding comes from reasoning, rather than learning by rote.
The decline in the Irish attainment of mathematics and core sciences has been gradual. It has perhaps gone unnoticed by many, but major employers across a range of business sectors of strategic importance to Ireland are seriously concerned to see substantial decreases in the number of our students taking technology courses, and in particular the fall off in those taking mathematics. If we all aspire to build a future for our young people as outlined above, then competence in mathematics is a cornerstone. Competence in mathematics underpins not just engineering and the physical sciences, but also sectors such as alternative energy and green systems, financial services, medical research, and cross disciplinary areas such as bio-engineering. For so many areas of our potential national prosperity and quality of society, competence in mathematics is critical.
With further government budget cuts imminent, there is a very serious risk that teaching in mathematics and the core sciences will dramatically suffer further. This is especially so at secondary school (high school, in Ireland) level, since these subjects are perceived as resource intensive and difficult to teach. The Principals of eleven secondary schools of one Irish county have recently jointly written an open letter to all the parents of all their students stating that in view of Government cutbacks, they may no longer be in a position to teach honours mathematics and sciences at all in their schools. There is further anecdotal evidence of schools consciously cutting their teaching programmes in areas which are nevertheless critical to the future of our nation, as their way of meeting newly imposed budgetary constraints.
Incredibly, almost 20% of our schools no longer offer honours mathematics to their students. In 2007, only 14% of Irish university applicants to honours degrees had achieved honours mathematics capability in school.
It is also widely accepted that several factors need to be urgently and collectively addressed to resolve this issue: the professional development and inspiration of mathematics teachers; the teaching and examination methods of honours Mathematics; and other implicit disincentives to students such as points, grading and curriculum factors.
Points, in particular, deserve mention. In Ireland, we have a highly unfortunate and ill-conceived national system of awarding points in our school examinations for grades obtained, regardless of the intellectual difficulty of any particular subject. Earning points by studying honours mathematics is widely projected as overly difficult when equivalent points could be earned for less effort elsewhere. Students are in some cases explicitly advised by some teachers and advisers to take a cluster of subjects which together may overlap in content and collectively make points accumulation easier, regardless of career aspirations. Students who score particularly high totals of points, are under considerable pressure to undertake university degrees which require high numbers of points to apply, regardless of their career aspirations: "don't waste your points". University courses with limited places (due to resource constraints) usually require high levels of points. Courses which offer wonderful career opportunities do not necessarily require extremely high points, and high scoring students usually as a result do not take them.
Examinations are ill constructed. Substantial question choice enables teachers to omit major sections of a course syllabus, thus focussing students on a more limited syllabus which is likely to be sufficient to earn examination points. I'm aware of university professors aghast that some first year university students, ostensibly with high numbers of points, arrive into technology degree courses without any knowledge, for example, of trigonometry: some teachers omit trigonometry from their teaching, correctly believing that high points can still be achieved by filtering out questions during an examination.
In my view, our economy can no longer afford to be impartial in the content of its educational services. Some topics available at our schools can be learnt at any stage in life: others are much more difficult to do so.
Teachers should be encouraged to foster reasoning, deduction, derivation, correlation, exploration and curiosity, intellectual clarity and insight, fluency and confidence. Mathematics and the core sciences are clear catalysts. Teachers who achieve consistent success in their students in these subjects should not only be acclaimed but also receive fiscal reward - if this cannot be done through Government pay, it may be possible to do via industry sponsored competitions. Teachers whose own core skills are weak should be offered re-skilling and professional development. Considerably more use should be made of the web - including podcasts and vidcasts to complement the music on students' personal players - to cultivate dynamic, current, interesting course material: social free educational networking can compensate to some extent weaknesses in any specific teacher in a particular school.
Our country needs to get back to basics: core skills taught well, rather than nebulous "up skills". Mathematics and the core sciences are one critical foundation.
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