Learning with the Fang

Not quite the live blogging I had planned - having packed my Nokia N80 and bluetooth keyboard (more on why later in the post). First the good news:

UPDATE:

Since Stephen Downes linked to this post (and hilighted my fruity language) I feel I need to offer a little in the way of explanation. Firstly, my writing style was even more ’scatty’ than usual because I was exhausted at the end of a frustrating day and really wanted to get some coverage of the event before it ended. Secondly, I was genuinely ‘fired up’ by the provocative nature of Gerry’s keynote and having spent the day being blocked at every turn that should have led to some impressive demonstrations of what is possible in OPEN networks.

I will try to re-iterate my key points in a more considered reflection (and with less fruity language so that more of you will feel comfortable in extending this important conversation). First, I want to listen to Stephen’s audio from his keynote at the conference today and incorporate some great input from podcasts I’ve listened to recently.

STOP PRESS: Too funny - look at the screen grab at the bottom of THIS POST from Graham Wegner (who attended Stephen’s ‘virtual keynote’ today).

Gerry White’s keynote was inspirational and bang on the money! Gerry clearly spent a lot of time digging for facts that back up my experience and intuition and presented them in his own inimitable stlyle (complete with a self deprecating disclaimer about his views which I wish I could remember!!).

OPEN is the key word that has lodged deeply in my brain. An OPEN approach to everything from internet access to IP/CopyRight laws are required to equip our kids for the future. OPEN, ubiquitous, reliable, affordable internet access is an absolute requrement for dealing with the rapid proliferation of devices and exponential growth in content.

Gerry finished his talk with a little ‘report card’ for our education system. If my kids brought home a report card like that I would kick myself up the arse for being a lousy parent. Thanks Gerry for the wake-up call (and sorry I had to rush off and prepare my workshop instead of a chat over coffee).

There were some great presentations, workshops and corridor conversations. The final presso of the day by Peter Simmonds also requires some comment here. He posed the question ‘what schools might look like if…’ (and tried to get us thinking about a vision for post-industrialised education). His opening remarks about the efficiency based origins of much that we do with groups of 30 students in age-graded rows and columns were underscored by a 1950’s propaganda piece on a school of the future (complete with lathes, typewriters and kitchens) that would have been hilarious if it didn’t carry strong echos of what was being shown by vendors in the ‘trade show’ exhibits downstairs. Peter then took us through several popular youtube videos including ’shift happens’ and some leading edge experiments from the UK. I think our vision for the future needs to go a long way past the heavily funded top down efforts of the poms.

Which brings me to the bad news:

I spent 80% of the day fecking with the wi-fi connection offered at the venue, then wrestling with the hapless state government firewall and proxy shambles. My plan was to jump on the net via wi-fi, connect up my bluetooth keyboard and twitter, flickr and live blog my little heart out - then show off fring for free Voip calls with IM presence awareness. Thanks to the preparation done by my fellow net2blazers I knew there was good wifi coverage, a wep key was made available (and there was even a special username and password with special clearance for many web2.0 sites normally blocked in schools).

What happened illustrates the validity of Gerry’s call for OPEN networks (which would have provided seamless web access to my unexpectedly cool device that I had bought to school for the day).

- just before Gerry’s keynote began I was given the WEP key and a verbal indication of the proxy server name

- it took me 15minutes to successfully connect using the (very long) WEP key

- I spent the rest of the keynote fiddling for the UI to configure proxy with no success

- comparing notes with the IT staff and trying three combinations of proxy address did not work

- the coffee break was spent copying the configuration from a working PC (still no success)

- when we arrived in our workshop room there were written instructions including two different IP addresses for a proxy server (on nonstandard ports) - the second worked!

- as soon as my browser fired up I was prompted for proxy authentication (which I got right on the third try)

- half way through our workshop I managed to navigate to twitter and post a ‘tweet’

- I took a photo but it failed to upload via e/mail

- ten minutes more fudging to upload the photo via flickr mobile web UI (ugly)

- the only two web sites I could access were twitter and flickr

- gmail and google reader giving unpredictable results

- e/mail send not working

- fring could not login (has no UI for proxy or its authentication, doesnt seem to share credentials established in browser).

So my scorecard: two twitter ‘tweets’ and a single photo upload during my workshop. three twitter tweets and a second photo upload for the rest of the day (after a battery change and second charge). Woeful. Even worse when we face up to the fact that it is impossible to blacklist enough sites to make the web safe for kids, and impossible to whitelist enough to make it interesting for progressive users. All the CLOSED approach to the web achieves is a little arse coverage for management and a whole lot of grief for educators, students and supporters - and elimination of any pleasant unforseen benefits from emerging technology like cheap mobile phones with wifi!!!

My vision for the future would be fuelled by a ‘front foot’ approach to remedies for what I have described above. My school would agressively pursue open wireless networks with unfettered internet connectivity within highly visible areas of the school grounds - in exchange for open publication of my browsing history.

Fang - Mike Seyfang

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