ICTlogy

The World Economic Forum’s Global Information Technology Report 2007-2008 is out. In my opinion, it does not bring any surprises, but reinforces some trends that we’ve been seeing lately:

• The increasing strength and importance of wireless technologies to get connected to the Network
• A gradual shift of the research focus from quantitative/economic impact analysis towards more qualitative/social impact analysis
• Hence, the realization that ICTs are much more than (information) productivity tools, and they have a role in socialization (through communication), mediated by digital literacy

Part of the Global Information Technology Report gets its data from the World Economic Forum’s Executive Opinion Survey, which, conducted annually, captures the perceptions of the leading business and investment decision-makers worldwide (many of whom represent the Forum’s member companies). As a qualitative survey, and based on perceptions, all conclusions arising from it might be taken with tons of caution. Nevertheless, there are some findings that, even if taken with caution, are worth deserving a thoughtspan:

[click to enlarge]

As the chart shows, there is a clear relationship between quality of an educational system (at the aggregate country level) and the existence of not computers but Internet access in schools. As said, while Internet access in schools is measured quantitatively after surveys sent to sample schools in every country, the Quality of the Educational System is a variable measured through a qualitative, subjective indicator after asking the 8,000 interviewees of the Executive Opinion Survey. In the survey, the respondents range the educational system from 0 to 7 whether the Educational system
[serves the] needs of competitive economy.

Depending on how you agree with the definition of “quality” for a national educational system, and how you’d like the reality to fit your beliefs, different interpretations arise:

• The more straightforward: Internet access increases the quality of the educational system. The more Internet access, the better education.
• Inversely, we can say that high quality educational systems are more eager to introduce the Internet in schools than lower quality ones. The more quality of the system, the more (awareness in) the use of Internet.
• There’s a relationship between educational quality (as understood by the Executive Opinion Survey) and Internet access in schools, but we do not know which is the cause and which the consequence: they just happen to go hand in hand.

Even if some of the previous statements are sweet music for cyberoptimists (like me), I wouldn’t strongly stand for any of it: there are too many loose ends to be axiomatic.

But one thing is absolutely clear: even if we cannot establish (yet) any causality between quality and educational Internet access, the perception is that some degree of relationship does exist. And if this perception is widely shared at both the decision-taker and policy-maker levels, some consequences in the short run would be likely to be expected:

1. Firms would be more likely to hire candidates with strong digital competences, as it looks like Internet and quality go together, and quality means a more competitive economy (i.e. firm).
2. Stress would then be put in teaching digital skills in the design of educational strategies, along with the introduction of the Internet in the school
3. If the Internet — this huge information silo — enters the classroom, the role of the educator should change, and shift from an information holder to a knowledge acquisition enabler or facilitator
4. Open educational resources should be coming in and out of the classroom both as input and output
5. This abundance of (educational) material would require more and better reputation systems and information assessment systems, all of them based in more and better digital skills
6. And back to #1

In the most conservative scenario, I see this as the perception of inflation: regardless whether there is not the slightest chance for inflation to happen, if citizens believe so, there’ll be inflation. The sensation is now that digital skills matter and that we are going to evaluate education under this light. Schools must not just let themselves go along with the current (i.e. the cyberhype), but neither swimming against it.

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The Canadian Institute of Distance Education Research, University of Athabasca, has invited me to impart a seminar in the framework of the CIDER Sessions about my digressions around The Personal Research Portal. The focus here will be on the educator, as I did in my article El portal personal del profesor: El claustro virtual o la red tras las aulas [The Personal Research Portal: The Virtual Faculty or the Net behind the Classroom].

The seminar will take place online — using Elluminate — on Friday 11th April 2008, at 17:00h GMT (in English).

Relevant info

• Materials for the seminar (browse and download)
• Link to Presentation (click to log in 30min prior to the start of the presentation)
• CIDER Sessions home page

Update:
Recording of the Presentation (, 15 Mb)

Abstract

Instructional technology has suffered, in our opinion, two revolutions and a half during the last decades. The first one was, there is no doubt, the introduction of the personal computer in the educational environment. The second one, the appearance of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in a broader sense – that implied, among other things, connecting the PC to the network – and their use in teaching. The “half” left, as it actually is a corollary of the latter, the one brought by the so called Web 2.0, thus giving birth to what has been dubbed as Education 2.0.

Notwithstanding, the emphasis has been put, most of the times, in how these technologies impact the relationship between teacher and student or how these technologies whether and how enhance the learning process and its results: how can ICTs be used to improve education administration, how can they help teaching in a classroom, applications in distance learning, etc.

Our aim in this seminar is to shift out of the spotlight and focus on the “hidden” practices of education, to stress on all the tasks that happen outside the classroom – be it of bricks and mortar or virtual – before or when designing a subject or teaching it to the students, what happens after that teaching, etc. in this necessary phase of reflection and redefinition of concepts, syllabuses, practices and so on… but without students. We want to make some proposals on how educators can use ICTs in their more open, participative and social side to build themselves a place on the net, to weave their own network of colleagues, to share resources, exchange experiences or suggest doubts and questions to the rest of education professionals.

Our ultimate goal would be to highlight that we think it is possible to build a virtual faculty based on their personal portals built with Web 2.0 tools, way beyond teacher spaces inside virtual learning environments or other corporate tools from educational institutions, thus leaving room for individual initiative and, most important, digital presence and digital identity.

Acknowledgements

Sincerest thanks go to Lynn Anderson for the proposal, all the e-mailing that we’ve been having through the last weeks and the support in preparing the seminar.

I have been invited to create some materials and impart a workshop on content assessment systems. The idea is comparing the traditional academic system of double blind peer review with other systems emerging on the Information Society to assess content in online communities, like the ones used in Wikipedia, Slashdot or Digg. But without using computers: everything off-line, analogue.

A project within the framework of the Bank of Common Knowledge, the idea is to help communities — online or offline, whatever — to evaluate their incoming content in order to assess its suitability for their purposes. To do so, we created a workshop were the rudiments of several systems (three, so far) were explained, compared and practiced in simulations of situations where such content had to be evaluated — in no more than an hour.

Adapting online systems for offline use — no computers used — has been quite a challenge and, of course, not all features of online systems could be included, for both reasons of time or feasibility. One of this (sadly) missing features is all the karma system which, in some way, is the core reputation system — explicit or implicit — of many online communities, the problem being that karma is cumulative along time and requires lots of interaction, direct or indirect voting on the user and his contributions, etc., something the workshop just cannot aim at achieving. In other words: content and reputation of the user creating or promoting this content are becoming, as time passes, two sides of the same coin, something that not necessarily has been this was in analogue systems like the scientific peer review, where double blindness is usually a must.

After a beta testing that took place in February, the last version of the workshop will be officially presented today at 20:00 at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona [Center for Contemporary Culture], as an scheduled activity at the NOW – Meetings in the Present Continuous biennial platform.

I’m in terrible debt with the Platoniq collective (especially Olivier Schulbaum and Susana Noguero) for inviting me (and putting up together such a terrific project like the Bank of Common Knowledge), the beta testers that provided much valuable feedback unselfishly, and Pau Alsina for his networking aptitudes.

More info

• Sistemas de evaluación de contenidos (, 482.59 Kb), materials for the workshop (Spanish)
• Short video presentation about the Bank of Common Knowledge (English, dubbed in Spanish)
• Another short video presentation about the Bank of Common Knowledge (Spanish)
• Benkler, Y. (2006). The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. New Haven: Yale University Press. — a good reading (more or less) related to this subject