sue watling – Page 46 – digital soapbox

banned!

Sue Watling / August 7, 2009August 8, 2009 / Uncategorized

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Sarah’s Story is a 90 second video designed for television and banned by Clearcast, the television watchdog, as containing images that were ‘too distressing’. The aim of the advert was to raise awareness of Motor Neuron Disease. Thankfully, by banning it, Clearcast have increased publicity of both MND and the MND Association. Its wrong when the reality of disease, deformity and disablement is considered ‘too distressing’ and something we should be protected from. It should be the other way around. Every application of the label disability involves a person and these attitudes both devalue and diminish status. For more information about the ban see the Telegraph 25/07/09 and the Transcript from You and Yours, Radio 4 30/07/09

digital data = digital divide

Sue Watling / August 1, 2009August 1, 2009 / digital divide, visual impairment

I take the point raised in a comment on a previous post about digitisation and have been wondering if there’s a chicken and egg situation here. Which came first? The digital data or the means to distribute it? Let me give an example of where I’m coming from when I say digital data is increasing the digital divide.

A Yahoo user group has uploaded a pdf file (single format, no Adobe Reader, another issue) and sent out a group email with a link to the document. To access it the blind user has to go through a process of identifying the link, saving the link, then opening the link, which only then takes them to the login page for the group but that involves logging into Yahoo. A blind person has problems joining a Yahoo group in the first place because that involves a captcha and they can’t see it – or hear it – so someone else has to set it up for them – but when they’re on their own they don’t know their login details – as sighted people we can’t always remember our login details – and they can’t read them – and you can’t multi task with this screen reader so even if you had them stored on an email then to get back to that, then back to the Yahoo login page, would be a lengthy process (and in our fast mouse-click world an incredibly tortuous one). They want to read this file; the email has made it sound interesting and relevant and the whole nature of the group is about self help and empowerment but they can’t access it. The result is ever increasing levels of frustration at being excluded and being dependent on others. I agree that digitisation should be increasing access to the written word, like the printing press revolutionised access to text; but on an individual level that was only so long as you could read the appropriate language. We operate independently in a sighted world but visual impairment (VI) takes away that independence and while digitisation should be widening participation, the reality for VI is that access is hidden behind multiple layers of technology and you can’t separate the two. Chicken or Egg? Which was my point in saying “increasing digitisation of text is also increasing the digital divide and putting in place yet more barriers to participation”.

e-book readers

Sue Watling / July 30, 2009August 13, 2009 / digital divide

In June I blogged about the barriers ebooks present for visually impaired users. This post focuses on e-book readers. The synergy should be obvious. Download an e-book onto an e-book reader and listen. But no, no, no… it simply doesn’t work like that.

Amazon have a vested interest in cornering the digital text market; their first e-book reader, Kindle, came out in 2008. There was no text-to-speech facility but Kindle2, launched in February 2009, put this right. So far, so good.

Then, in an astonishing act of discrimination, the Author’s Guild declared this was infringment of copyright unless the copyright holder had specifically granted permission. Amazon’s response was a modification allowing authors and the six publishers supplying books to Kindle to have the text-to-speech turned off. The Reading Rights Coalition (RRC), the National Federation of the Blind, the Author’s Guild and Amazon became locked in battle over an issue that should never have arisen in the first place. Plus not only was there the issue over copyright, ut problems for blind people with using the e-reader independently suggested Amazon failed to test their product with equality and diversity in mind.

The Amazon US Kindle site currently says: “Read-to-Me: With the new text-to-speech feature, Kindle can read every newspaper, magazine, blog, and book out loud to you, unless the book’s rights holder made the feature unavailable.”

In the UK there are a number of e-book readers currently on the market, but none that seem to address this issue. Please correct me if I’m wrong. I looked on Sony’s e-book site and could find no mention of listening to text should you be unable to see it. The digital divide seems to be going in totally the wrong direction; further away than ever from ensuring the rights of the visually impaired to have equal access to digital data.

mahara

Sue Watling / July 23, 2009July 23, 2009 / CERD

my mahara profile a time-consuming occupation but I can see the benefits plus it demonstrates competence with the technology that is our toolbox; we need to engage in creating online identities that support our work even if we have less interest in using them for non-work purposes.

redundancy consultation process

Sue Watling / July 22, 2009July 22, 2009 / CERD

At the moment it’s difficult to think about anything other than being in a consultation period for redundancy. This is underpinned by knowing that across the sector Teaching and Learning Development Units/Offices are being devolved into faculties and libraries or dissolved as the reality of the end of the TQEF means there is no longer a ring fenced budget to support the enhancement of Teaching and Learning. Does teaching and learning suddenly not matter anymore? Why isn’t the Teaching Enhancement and Student Success (TESS) fund not ring fenced in a similar way? Teaching and learning is integral to the future of higher education, to student success, to widening participation and to retention.

At a time where there is recognition across the sector of the changing nature of higher education and student demographics, the need to ensure that virtual learning is not seen as a quick fix, cheap solution has never been more crucial. In my department we support the use of educational technology to enable and enhance the delivery of high quality, interactive online content and have extensive experience of supporting successful distance learning provision. There are substantial costs involved with the development of effective virtual learning and we believe we are well placed to offer appropriate and meaningful advice. Redundancy may represent a threat to the teaching and learning development work we carry out across the university and in particular the pedagogical support of Blackboard, our virtual learning environment. Feeling at risk is a scary and lonely place to be.

LibraryThing

Sue Watling / July 19, 2009July 19, 2009 / Uncategorized

I’m intrigued by LibraryThing – are there also facilities for virtual collections of cds and dvds or even vinyls? I use Delicious for creating lists of websites I want to go back to – but spending time creating digital collections of my non-digital life – should I be excited or just plain scared? Or is it just an extension of putting my photographs online – which I already do.

The site promotes the idea of community – for example

LibraryThing connects you to people who read what you do
Find people with eerily similar tastes.
Many social connections thrive at the site

How much does this emphasis on finding other people who share your interests tap into real-world isolation and loneliness? Participation in the construction of online identity does involve a fairly intensive relationship between you and your laptop. This I know – the laptop bit not the loneliness I hasten to add. This made me think of Second Life. I can’t remember when I last logged on and both the media and the education sector seem to have gone quiet on the subject and I wonder if Internet addicts are migrating back to the construction of text and image based avatars rather than 3D virtual worlds?

Back to LibraryThing and with my gender head on I note that of the 22 profile images on offer only six are female. Ignoring the obvious US–centricism, I found the preference for Jane Austen over the Brontes, George Eliot or Virginia Woolfe says much about the representation of women writers in the western world. Instead there is Emily Dickinson (clever with words but not a poet) and Helena Blavatsky (wasn’t all her text channelled anyway?) Soujourner Truth (activist rather than writer) and Sappho (most of whose poetry is lost). I’m guessing you need to be dead to be on this list which may excuse the omission of Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, and not by your own hand, which leaves out Sylvia Plath or Anne Sexton. We are left with Edith Wharton – no lack of respect intended but and how many of her books are you familiar with?

blogging has rules

Sue Watling / July 16, 2009July 17, 2009 / Uncategorized

Last night I posted a blog in which I reflected on my shock at how in less than 24 hours words like voluntary and compulsory redundancy, consultation procedures and union representation had become part of my working vocabulary. I felt that blogging might help make some sense of the craziness of a situation where colleagues are facing the potential prospect of competing with each other – regardless of contractual status (fixed or permanent) or source of funding (core or external) for a lesser number of posts. I asked questions about how the end of the TQEF and the lack of ring fencing of the TESS might impact on the provision of teaching and learning development and I reflected on the reality of a finance driven strategy.

Today I was advised by a colleague that being critical of the university’s senior management in a public forum and using a system supported by the university within the lincoln.ac.uk domain could easily be interpreted as a disciplinary offence. Not wanting to make my current situation any worse, and not having any real intention other than trying to make sense of it all, I took down the blog.

Since then I’ve tried to rewrite it but the moment has passed. It stood as it was or not at all. However, it has taken me back to the recurring theme in these posts – what is blogging all about? What do we risk by posting part of ourselves online? I was using this forum to work through my own thoughts and reactions. Clearly blogging needs to be more measured than this. I was using a ‘work’ area for ‘work’ reflections but obviously stepped beyond the boundaries of what is considered to be appropriate content. Like anything else, blogging clearly has rules and risks of its own and we all need to be aware of them.

How many online identities do I need?

Sue Watling / July 13, 2009July 13, 2009 / Uncategorized

Personally I’m reaching the point where I think one may be enough. In the same way that I use Netvibes to pull together all my rss feeds into one place, I’m starting to want a single point of reference for my digital self. It’s difficult to find the time to keep up with my Netvibes and even harder to maintain multiple instances of myself online.

The Internet is like a black hole; it sucks you in. Before you know it an hour has passed, then two or three and the day is gone. I think I want more of a non-digital life. I can’t break completely free because my work revolves around virtual learning and assistive technology and don’t get me wrong – I believe internet literacy is important; it shows you have competence with ICT and that is very much a feature of 21st century life. In terms of employability and communication it’s essential criteria. But there are other things I would rather be doing instead of being hooked up to my laptop.

The impetus for this is revisiting the idea of e-portfolios as electronic CVs and liking the thought of having just one digital area to maintain. Although if I’m going to look for the most appropriate software with which to create my single online identity then I’ll have to stay hooked up for just a little bit longer…

ICICTE 2009

Sue Watling / July 13, 2009July 13, 2009 / conference

The International Conference on Information Communication Technologies in Education (ICICTE) was held in Corfu 9-11 July and focused on the changing nature of higher education and the implications of this for students and staff. I was half expecting a ‘techie’ based conference but found presentations and workshops embedded in pedagogical frameworks and my paper on the design of learning for distance delivery was well aligned with the conference keynote and themes. The challenge of blogging a conference is to be succinct so here is my blog summary.

Themes

the changing nature of the student – student as ‘consumer’ with increasing numbers entering H.E. students are the new drivers for change
the changing role of staff from deliverers of ‘knowledge’ to guides for internet browsing and inquiry based learning
the changing nature of the H.E. institution as validator and mediator of knowledge rather than the gate-keeper
the ‘commodification’ of H.E. as academic capital; ivory towers changing into golden arches as university’s become service industries/providers
international vision of senior management that ICT is a cost effective solution for delivering H.E. to a widening participation audience
increased demand for H.E. is happening alongside mass reduction in funding

Implications

costs associated with ICT are higher in terms of finance and resources than traditional face to face delivery but senior management still see ICT as quick fix solution.
increased use of ICT raises digital literacy and digital competency issues for both students and staff
changing location of knowledge – no longer esoteric and behind campus doors but increasingly freely available – raises issues of management of mass electronic library resources and critical digital literacy abilities

Conclusions

Shift happens – higher education is changing and its future is online – the tide of education technology is unstoppable.
Bridges must be built between the technology and pedagogy if traditional H.E. qualities of critical thinking by independent self-aware individuals is not to be lost
The role of students in providing support digital confidence and competence should not be underestimated
Staff have to engage with virtual learning – CPD through PDP could provide initial steps if senior management recognise the need for strategic direction
Higher Education will continue to be an exciting, rewarding environment in which to work

I’ve come away with my head spinning as usual with the wider international picture; networking with educators from different countries reinforces how the UK is seen as exemplifying all that is relevant and important about higher education.

I’ve gained increased awareness of the potential role of eportfolios and the importance of digital identity for everyone and personally I like the idea of a virtual one-stop-shop, that can say more about you than a CV ever can. The question is one of choice – WordPress, FaceBook, Mahara – realistically one area is enough to maintain –which one you choose is becoming the question – not whether or not you do it in the first place. Like it or not, online identity is fast becoming non-negotiable.

The conference website is here and the organisers have a produced a CD-ROM containing all the peer reviewed presentation papers; light, portable, saves trees and is transferable from one environment to another – the future is indeed online!