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POPSLess HE students likely over next 15 years Of course, that is not necessarily true, as it depends on immigration and emigration. But if we assume for the moment that those will balance each other out, the 18-21yr old band is set to shrink dramatically over the next 15 years in the UK. Of course, there is also the issue of all those pensioners - life expectancies are rising fairly rapidly, so there is a good chance that we will have increasing numbers of pensioners, in good health, kicking their heels looking for something to do. As their pensions will probably allow them to afford, say, a nice pack of rich tea biscuits once a fortnight, they may well want to go to university to cross skill so they can get some sort of exciting and stimulating job to help them afford the ever rising energy bills. If they are allowed to retire, that is.
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POPSThe trouble with radio... The trouble with radio, the instantness of it - too many politicians make themselves twits. Instantness... I assume he means immediacy? The good thing about Twitter, as opposed to, say, a live interview on the radio, is that you can think about a tweet before you make it, without anyone really noticing. This is true of all the non-voice, non-video means of communication available on the net (unless I am missing something which forces you to write before you are ready?). Indeed, the fact it allows for considered communication is what places it far and away above the old media (including f2f) in my view. And it was nice of David Cameron to illustrate that point so, ahem, eloquently.
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POPSShould Unis avoid Freshers gatherings? So, the RCGP don't think so - because if sick people follow the advice, they won't go to the gatherings. But there is a serious flaw in the logic here (as there seems to be with many of the RCGP views which I see on the BBC news site) - in this case it is ignoring the asymptomatic flu sufferers who, although less infectious, are still able to pass the disease on. So they won't know they have it, unless they are psychic, and so the large gatherings would appear to be rather foolish. Coupled with the point that Freshers events "are an important induction into university life" - and the chances are any border line cases will want to enjoy their first week of freedom just like the healthy ones. So - the RCGP advice is, as far as I can see "risk spreading the influenza". Nice one. Fortunately, it does appear to be remaining mild at the moment - let us hope it stays that way.
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POPSCourse notes available under FoI
Personally, I am rather pleased to see this FoI ruling. It looks as though the Uni in question tried all the expected wrigglings to try to get out of providing the information, but the Commissioner has been very clear in his decision. One thing I suspect universities will try to challenge is the conclusion that they do not have a commercial interest in Higher Education. I would certainly argue that they shouldn't have, but university managements across the country seem, to me, to be firmly entrenched in the idea that they are progressing towards being commercial providers of education. It is good to see an official ruling pointing out that this is not the case, but I fear that there may be a lot of rumbling before it really gets finally decided one way or another. So - wouldn't it just be so much easier to publish all your course materials (which don't involve breaches of confidentiality) as electronic resources? Preferably as Creative Commons so that other people can build
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POPSWill search become redundant? First answer: Wrong (imho) - you need search when you want to be able to stay up to date, rather than relying on outdated resources or single sources of information with vested interests. If you did know where to find eveything? Well, that would be called being omnipotent, and, as a God you probably wouldn't waste time on the internet. Social networks - yes, but which one will you look on? Or will you go through them one by one? Why do market comparison sites work again? Ah yes, convenience. Almost all the other examples are trivially answered with - no, no I wouldn't. I would use my search engine du jour (currently Google) and it would tend to put the same answers as the slow manual way suggested here near the top, but also give me alternative perspectives. Now, I am not saying we should rely on Google (or any other search engine), and I do make use of crowd-sourced search via the lovely people I know and follow on Twitter. But this article seems, to me, to lack under
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POPSBBC shows education still in great demand OK, I know I could make some useful comments about the age changes, the increase in part time academics or the gender gap, but I couldn't really base them on this piece of reporting... Given the figures for the number of male and female employees in academia, dear BBC, I think you will find there are 35% more men than women 100*(100,355-74,590)/74,590 was the sum you were looking for. There are 25% fewer women than men in academia.
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POPSID cards... still It continues to amaze me that the government even thinks this is still a good idea. The idea of getting high street retailers involved just makes it all the more ridiculous in my opinion. Still, at least it should make it much less tiresome for people who want to get hold of somebody else's ID or who want a fake one for themselves, so that's a plus. Right?
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POPSWhich which is which in Windows? Like Pankaj, I have always missed having 'which' in Windows. I have a feeling I found something before which (sorry) worked, but his implementation is dead simple, and works beautifully. Thanks Pankaj!
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POPSHow can reporting be so very wrong? A ridiculous piece of reporting, to my mind. Apart from the fact the 'journalist' has decided to focus on UK population when the story is clearly about global population (nicely commented on by various respondents) the bit that eally got me was the paragraph I have clipped. It is like saying "We might be in a car accelerating towards a cliff, but let's not worry about it because we will find out later". Just plain dumb.
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POPSDI... I am, apparently, the chosen 'persona' of a transexual(?) changeling character. So someone plays a character who has chosen to be me! I didn't know about this, until I did a search on Google today for '"Pat Parslow" crazy' to see what effect adding diffeent search terms has when looking fo my name ;-)
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POPSPaperless... I do have to wonder how many pintouts the IT students made though... Hopefully, they didn't make many, but that would be unlike the vast majority of students I know, who seem to only be able to survive if they have printed copies. It is one of their three majorfood groups, I think - Beer, Pizza and Paper. It seems to be all they need to be able to survive... I am in favour of paperless working. Mind you, if the paper is from sustainable forests, and the electicity is from renewable, green, sources, there isn't much problem with having a high consumption (in fact, it may even help tap more CO2 if done properly).
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POPSFolksonomy/Taxonomy Clay Shirky highlights a difference between a tagging approach and a metadata approach. Metadata on Amazon is contributed by publishers and Amazon themselves - and it seems that it is rather inconsistent, with some editions of books falling into the 'Gay', 'Erotica' types of classification whilst other editions of the same book don't. Customers can tag products with words of thei own choosing. Amazon appears to have decided to remove some classifications, based on the metadata, from their sales ranking mechanism. An email they sent to Mark Probst suggested that this was a policy decision to protect their customer base. Classifications which have been affected include feminist literature, classics, LGBT literature and books on sex and disability. Amazon have apparently subsequently said that this is due to a glitch - a story people on Twitter are not believing. So, Amazon has a problem - de-ranking products based on their classification system is causing annoyance (to put it
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POPSCompulsory volunteering Apart from the small issue that clearly this Scotsman doesn't speak English terribly well (although he also probably believes in the concept of honest politicians or intelligent government), the general concept of encouraging people to do some community service is good. Apart from a couple of issues - people who insist others should do some community work should, and I really mean should, do at least as much comunity work first to prove they aren't just seeing it as a means of gaining cheap labour. The entirity of our political system should do at least 50 hours community work before they pass this bill. The other thing is that "community service" is a well established punishment. How would you feel if JohhnyX, 21, down the road got sentenced to 30 hours community service for some misdemeanour, whilst you as an innodent, fresh faced young 17yr old suddenly got sentenced to 50 hours because some idiot in Government thought it would bring in a few votes?
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POPSCan't log in via TweetDeck? I have had this problem before, but then I was playing with a hand-rolled client, so I put it down to me being a numptie. On this occasion, though, I only had TweetDeck as an interface between me and Twitter... ...when "Not authorised". Hmm odd. So I tried to log in via the Twitter web site. "Sorry we have blocked your account because of too many failed log in attempts" (or words to that effect). ...Wait a while... and try again. Still blocked, so wait again... aaaand finally, still blocked. Go to raise a ticket, only to find out you have to be logged in, so ever the optimist, tried logging in there instead. Success! But TweetDeck still a no go. OK, so from previous experience I changed my password and tried again. Still no joy. When I got the Tweet below from @TraciKnoppe, I thought I may as well try the same thing again - and this time, it worked. I guess something in Tweetdeck got screwed up, but I can't really imagine what - and I would be surprised if it ke
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POPSRecession will last ... Now, I hate to say 'I told you so'... - I know that I only mentioned the US one in my Tweet, but I was also thinking UK at the time. In light of the 'Respected think tank' agreeing with me, I am wondering whether I need to update my prediction... but for the time being I am sticking with late 2012 to start crawling out of recession. Anyway, just so you know where you read it first (or could have done, if you were reading my tweets in February and reading my mind to know I also meant the UK economy!)
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POPSGreen Budget This, on the face of it, sounds like good news. It is, of course, good news which we should have heard a decade ago, but better late than never. Now - where can one find an electric vehicle at a sensible price (capital is an issue, sadly) and which has a decent range? Anyone seen one commercially available which has solar panels to trickle charge?
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POPSUbiquity + amplify = spoof heaven This is, I have to say, a spoof I thew together using two excellent tools - Ubiquity (a Firefox plugin which lets you edit web pages and save them so that is the version you see on your local machine) and Amplify. Mischief may ensue... but personally I will always give a disclaimer! Clicking the links on the clip below should take you to the real story.
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POPSemail connections to be stored Personally, I think there is a relatively simple solution to this. Email youself as many times a day as possible. Each record will have to be stored, and the Government has apparently said it will recompense ISPs for the extra storage. As they are willing to bail out failed bankers, I see no reason why they shouldn't be *ahem* encouraged to support ISPs. Once it has cost enough, the rule will be revoked, and the ISPs will have a glut of disk storage they can lease out at low prices to the users. Cunning eh?
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POPSLiving through momentum The only reason I think Google may avoid the sort of death described here is that it has financial momentum on its side. It seems to me that it is big enough (and ugly enough?!) to continue despite the challenges. It has the capacity to include social networking aspects in its searches, and already benefits from being able to crawl content provided by networks created under other platforms. Twitter tends to be competing with it for my searches now, although only in those areas where my network is likely to have an interest. I am more likely to continue using Google (or other engines, depending on my whim) for areas outside my community's specific domain of interest.
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POPSConnectivism, and navigating the learning landscape Joe posted this video, and it reminded me of a piece I had written at brains.parslow.net about the learning landscape and ways to help you navigate it. The teacher becomes the guide, who educates you how to educate yourself - how to access and assess learning resources, and gives guidance on the route you should take to get to your learning goals.
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POPSWe need banks to live This snippet caught my eye and made me wonder, "Why?" Most people work for firms that make money. It makes life easier to have banks, certainly, but why can't the company hold on to ou funds for us if we don't want to keep it under the mattress. They should be able to pay a nominal amount of interest on what we entrust them with, and if we don't trust our employers with our money perhaps we shouldn't be working for them. Banks exist because they lend money. They intrinsically lead to a debt fuelled economy, which, frankly, makes very little sense. I know capitalism has this whole idea of making money by lending it, but surely in its purest form it should be about those with money actually investing it in new businesses themselves, not just lending it out to other people and stinging them for interest. I'm also quite sure people lived before there were banks. And I don't believe that the advent of banks changed things to the extent that without them we would all die. So I
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POPSWhy we need automatic ePortfolio assistants? One benefit of having an automated assistant which can sit and update you ePortfolio for you as you work is that it should make it much easier to go back and see what it is you have eally done. I have every sympathy with Grainne here - I can often barely remember what I have achieved during the day, let alone during a lifetime of work. Perhaps that is just me... But if I had a system which keeps track of what I have been working on, and even better if it could produce a summary showing achievements it would be great. Extrapolating slightly, perhaps it could project ahead from the trajectory of my writing and reading through 'concept space' and see where my career might be heading - now that would be really useful. Obviously I might not want to take its recommendations, but then it would give me the opportunity to pick a goal, and plan out a route to get there. This should also work for individual learning goals. Still not sure how to do it, but it seems like something to wo
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POPSVERA gets her foot in the door.. The JISC conference has been awash with brilliant sessions, although sadly I have only been able to attend virtually. We are starting a new JISC project in April - LinkSphere - based on the work done on the VERA project. OdinLab is contributing a social network to the mix, to allow researchers to share materials privately in groups when appropriate as well as with the wider academic community and the public.
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POPSCapitalism 1) I spent most of 2002 and 2003 arguing with my fried Dani - I held the view that the banking system was hopelessly overextended and that capitalism without serious regulation was doomed to fail. 2) I sold my house in 2001 expecting the housing market to fall dramatically. I was a little premature in my estimates, but I suspect the fall will end up being greater than even I anticipated. 1992 levels are likely, I suspect. 3) The BBC and others were highlighting the fraudulent practices being used to secure people mortgages so they could buy houses at ridiculously inflated prices back at the beginning of the millenium, so it is surprising nobody realised the risks... The whole system has been based on fraud and dishonesty for so long, it is hardly surprising that it is 're-adjusting'. The failure of the 'authorities' to see it was going to happen is merely an indication of the problems inherent in political and business practices. Power and money are used to run things, and
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POPSLifehacker on Plinky - and the comments I have amplified this more because of the comments than for the piece itself. Why haven't I clipped the comments? Because I wouldn't want to specifically give any of them the idea that I think what they are saying - or how they are saying it - is worthy of being directly reported! They are perfectly valid points of view; although I think there is an answer to the 'if you don't have anything to say, why not shut up' line of reasoning - it is called social grooming. If you only ever micro-blog (or blog) treendously worthy, pithy, insightful stuff there is a danger of people seeing you more as a corporate brand than a person. Online social community may not be everyone's cup of tea, but for those who like, or have, to engage with communities they are part of through oline media, the day to day chit-chat is actually a fairly strong bonding mechanism. And, as someone pointed out, they are leaving comments on a blog post - don't they have anything better to do?
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POPSColleges caught with their buildings half up This is a ridiculous situation. As the clip suggests, this would be a much more sensible thing for the UK government to invest in to help combat the recession than throwing good money after bad into the baking sector, in my view.
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POPSTimbl on profiling software, via BBC news There is a balancing act to be done with the issue of software which profiles your habits and provides content based on them. Well, more than one balancing act, to be honest. Privacy Obviously, there are privacy issues. I know some people say that if you don't do anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about - but they fail to take into account the prodigous rate at which governments make up fanciful new laws making things which seemed perfectly reasonable illegal. Even without potentially dodgy behaviour being a problem, if a service keeps information on when you were using, say, the internet from your home machine, once that becomes compromised it is probably relatively easy to deduce when you go to work, and hence when you house may be vulnerable to burglary. Although it may be that 'between 9 and 5' is the simple answer in the vast majority of cases, if you have been visiting travel agents sites, it may be possible to get an idea of when you will be away for a longer pe
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POPSTwitter backchannel for radio show I missed the show, but from the frenzy of comments under the #goodradioclub tag on Twitter, it looks like it was thought provoking (and contentious in places ;-))
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POPSDisruptive tweets and clips I am pleased to have thought of an unexpected use of Amplify. It is a little odd in a way, extracting a Tweet to a clog (clip blog) to allow a conversation to build around it - after all, conversations build around Tweets on Twitter perfectly happily. But one benefit is that you can extract specific tweets, and comment on them, in the context of your blog (a type of narrative). I am hoping there is no great problem with copyright issues. I must confess, though, that I haven't checked whether the tweets I have clipped so far are from people who have protected updates, and this is something where the technology could provide support, offering a BIG FAT warning if I try to clip and publish something the author had protected...
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POPSFake Digital Britain report Not so much Fake as Emergent. It would be good if some more people contributed to this. It is nice to see it got a mention from the Guardian, but it could do with more input from more people really. My bits are on a federated ePortfolio based on trust networks to help everyone benefit from being able to demonstrate their skills to potential employers (and possibly educational institutions too) and a brief bit on identity literacy.
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POPS#tags take too much space Amplify may give alternative route for tagging tweets and having a dialogue on them... erm... OK, I know, I know, but somehow I still like the idea!
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