We had a great workshop on PDPs (professional) personal development planning this afternoon, attended by staff from across the University, with presentations from Janet Strivens from Liverpool University and
Conway Morgan from Newport's School of Art, Media and Design.
We've got lot of great practice in this area in the University, and our challenge in the IT department is to workout how to support this with appropriate systems or support.
After hearing how people are using PDP it seems to me there are a three different ways forward:
1) Install specific PDP software. Pros:
It will provide a consistent, structured way of supporting PDPs
It should be relatively easy to train and support staff and students in the use of a single package.
Cons:
It could impose a rigid PDP framework, which wouldn't suit all PDP practice.
There a no real PDP technical standards, so we unless we offer PDP's for life, students would lose access to their PDPs when they leave.
2) Make use of existing University tools (eg blogs, web enabled file storage, forums etc) to support PDP activities.
Pros:
Flexible, so could adapt to different discipline's requirements.
Could add additional general purpose tools such as Elgg to provide an even richer toolset.
Cons:
Staff and students would need much deeper understanding of the technology in order to make best use of it.
Again, students could lose access to their PDPs when they leave.
3) Make use of non-University tools (eg files, forms, images etc using exiting non-web tools, Web 2.0 apps like Facebook, Blogger)
Pros:
Could be a much friendly environment of technical proficient students.
Flexible
Wouldn't be lost when student left.
Cons:
May require an even deeper understanding of technology from both staff and students to make best use of available tools.
Don't take that as any sort of indept analysis! Just my initial thoughts.
Out next step is to investigate some of the specific PDP Tools. Possibilities include:
MyStuff - we haven't managed to get it working yet though!
PebblePad - can be hosted which may be good. Need to investigate functionality and cost.
Mahara - on a practical level, the developers recommend using the PostGreSQL database server, and I'm not sure about the viablility of supporting another database server on top of our exisitng Oracle, MS SQL and MySQL servers.
If anyone has any good or bad experience of any of these (or others) then let me know.
Just a thought, but how big are computer monitors going to get before they've reached their maximum practical size?
Is 20 inches about the limit?
Let's look at the iMac line over the last 5 years as an example:
2003 - Min Size 15inches
2005 - Min Size 17inches
2007 - Min Size 20inches
i.e. 3 inches every two years!
Not exactly
Moore's Law, but still, where is this going?
If you are wonder why I'm thinking about this, it's because we are looking at the design of our new City Centre Campus, and I've been considering how much space we'll need to allocate to computers in the future.
Let me know your opinions!
Becta have now released the full version of their report into Microsoft Vista and Office 2007. The report is aimed at schools, FE and local authorities rather than Universities, but still makes interesting general reading, even if the actual findings aren't that relevant to Universities.
The report can be downloaded here:
http://publications.becta.org.uk/display.cfm?resID=35275It's a fairly lengthly report, essentially advising against the deployment of Office 2007 and Vista for the time being, on the grounds that Vista deployment is expense and doesn't add much, and that, amongst other things, the new Office 2007 file format lacks interoperability with other applications. One concern is that this interoperability issue could lead to a digital divide.
The report initially feels like more pro-Open Source 'Microsoft Bashing', but on reflection it's comments on a digital divide are really important, and it's very easy for us in IT to continue the status quo without really giving this much thought. After all, with our
Campus Agreements and 'Work at Home Rights' (allowing home us of MS software for very low costs) we are pretty well catered for by Microsoft.
Before I go any further, its worth saying that in this post I'm not going to discuss the technical merits of Office 2007/Vista. However just in case you think this is more MS bashing, for the record, I think some MS products, eg Office 2007, Exchange, Sharepoint, and Visual Studio are great.
The report got my thinking about how much education's commitment to MS on the desktop (particularly at school level) is contributing to some sort of a digital divide. Firstly, I don't think access to software is the major issue - access to broadband is far more important. I know quite a few people with reasonable computers (a one-off cost, second hand, or a gift), but they can't afford ongoing broadband payments. As dialup is no longer really viable these people are really excluded from internet access.
After that though, how much is access to software an issue? After all, PCs all come with an MS OS anyway. Access to Office software is a problem though. Standard student Office 2007 is
£75 from Amazon - that's a hefty increase on say a £300 PC, let alone a £75 second hand PC from ebay. So are they any real alternatives? I'm fairly sure there are. OpenOffice.org, for example, really is a viable alternative, and I think the Becta report is absolutely doing the right thing and trying to put this on the agenda.
What I'm not saying is the Universities should switch to open source desktop software (I think we get too much value from the interaction with our backend systems, and this will only increase).
I thought I'd just relay a couple of personal experience. Firstly, my (retired) parents bought a new PC - no bundled Office, but they do a far amount of admin work for their local footballl club, so needed something. I put Open Office, saved them about £100, and they've not complained once about it in about 6 months.
Secondly, my 10 year old son's XP installation broken on his 5 year old PC. Microsoft really don't make things easy for home users! The restore CD no longer worked, and even if it did it would have wiped everything, so, faced with trying to extract a new PC from the suppliers' 60p a min help line I thought we'd try Linux. I've never used this before, so this was an interesting experience, and almost impossibly daunting for a non-IT person. For those not familiar with installing Linux - first you have to choose a version or 'distro'. This come as downloadable disk images than can include a range of software. It's not obvious which is best - I tried Ubuntu, Freespire, PCLinuxOS and DSL after Googling the forums.
The installation process was very easy - stick the CD in, click install, and 10 minutes later you get an (almost) fully working Linux PC with great Office software all for free.
We ended up choosing PCLinuxOS as the most friendly for a 10 year old, but we couldn't get our Wireless USB adaptor working with any off them. It works first time with Windows. We then had to use an online software distrubtion mechanism -
Synaptic to help install more software (apparently you usually just run an installer as with Windows) via a cabling ethernet connection. This worked well, and within half an our we'd added a bunch of great applications - music software, a Visual Basic-like programming environment, some science applications and a few games.
So what to learn from the experience? Linux hardware support is patchy compared to Windows, and that will put most people off, as will that lack of any obvious starting point as to which version of Linux to choose. Lots of Linux software has really geeky names, and that's a barrier. But...if you can get things going, it really is free, the OS interfaces are pretty good (a little rough round the edges compared to Windows), and Open Office really is a viable MS Office for home users. My son is more than happy with it at the moment so we'll be sticking with it.
So what's the point on trying to make? Basically I think that Becta are right to pose awkward questions about Schools IT strategies, and that maybe by providing better support, guidance and interoperability strategies we could actually widen access to IT.