Tama’s eLearning Blog

As outlined in an article from Electronic Frontiers Australia, the Australian Federal Government’s proposed mandatory internet filtering system in Australia is bad news indeed (via Sky):

Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) today expressed alarm at the news that the Government’s “Clean Feed” Internet censorship plan will not allow Australian adults to opt-out. The filter, which will be mandatory for all Australians, was initially touted as a “cyber-safety” measure for homes with children. However, recent comments by experts have revealed the existence of a second, secret black list, that would apply even to homes that managed to opt out of the child-safe filtering scheme. “The news for Australian Internet users just keeps getting worse,” said EFA spokesperson Colin Jacobs. “We have legitimate concerns with the creeping scope of this unprecedented interference in our communications infrastructure. It’s starting to look like nothing less than a comprehensive program of real-time Internet censorship.” … Most worrying of all is the ever-increasing scope of the filtering scheme. “The definition of inappropriate material has never been well defined,” said Jacobs. “With Government-mandated software monitoring each Internet connection, we expect the scope to expand further as time goes by. How will the Government resist pressure by Family First or other special interest groups to permanently block material considered by some to be harmful?” [via Sky]

Thankfully the protests are coming in loud and clear. From the No Internet Censorship for Australia page, here are the six main reasons why “filtering” (ie censoring) the Australian internet en masse is a bad idea:

• Most Australians don’t want the filter. Support for this overly broad policy is virtually non-existent, even from child-protection organisations. A recent survey shows that 51.5% of Australian net user strongly oppose the plan, while only 2.9% strongly support it.⁶
• One size doesn’t fit all. A single filter list can’t deliver results that are appropriate for all parents, teens and children, with no way to modify the filter for your household.
• The protection for children is minor at best, an illusion at worst. The filter does nothing to protect children from real threats like cyber-bullying, online sexual predators, viruses, or the theft of personal information. It may provide a false sense of security to parents, reducing effective monitoring of their children’s online activities.
• The money is better spent elsewhere. The filter will cost tens of millions of dollars to attempt. Yet the Government’s own studies admit education is more effective than filtering in protecting children, and that "content risks" are less dangerous than other risks.⁷
• No other democracy has such a scheme. Comparable systems in Europe only filter a handful of illegal sites, and then only to prevent accidental access. ⁸
• Those that want filtering already have it. The Government already offers filtering software to any home that requests it, free of charge.

Darren Pauli also has a good article in Computerworld about why internet censorship in Australia is a bad move [via]:

Australians will be unable to opt-out of the government’s pending Internet content filtering scheme, and will instead be placed on a watered-down blacklist, experts say. Under the government’s $125.8 million Plan for Cyber-Safety, users can switch between two blacklists which block content inappropriate for children, and a separate list which blocks illegal material. Pundits say consumers have been lulled into believing the opt-out proviso would remove content filtering altogether. … A spokesman for Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said the filters will be mandatory for all Australians. … Internet Service Providers (ISPs) contacted by Computerworld say blanket content filtering will cripple Internet speeds because the technology is not up to scratch. Online libertarians claim the blacklists could be expanded to censor material such as euthanasia, drugs and protest.

And for me, as I watch my 8-day old son sleeping in his pram next to me, I’m certain I want his early experiences of the internet to be ones with his parents.  We’ll help him make informed choices about what to see, and we’ll help him learn the critical skills to evaluate and understand the information out there – good and bad.  We won’t try and tell him everything he needs to know is inside this safe, filtered, contained black box or walled off internet, because if we start down that path where would it really end?  Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of things I hope my son doesn’t see during his childhood, but I want to help him choose to avoid certain things, I don’t want him living in a country that takes those choices away even from his parents!

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Typos can really ruin almost anything if you let them.  As they say, a picture paints a thousand words …

In the midst of the blog-storm — and increasingly, the mainstream media storm — over cyberbullying and far worse threats made against ‘A-List’ blogger Kathy Sierra, Andy Carvin has taken the initiative and declared today – Friday 30 March – Stop Cyberbullying Day. While Sierra’s situation is horrid and complicated in the same breath, the general principle that any bullying is bad, and cyberbullying seems increase the tendency to be really nasty given supposed anonymity, I think Carvin’s idea is a great one, so I am declaring my absolute for Stop Cyberbullying Day – and my ongoing disdain for bullying in any form, be it cyber or otherwise.

I wish I had more time to write a more detailed and thoughtful post, but as I have no time at all, please have a look at my links post for 28 March points to Kathy Sierra’s post which announced the ongoing threats she received to the blogosphere, and it also contains a number of the initial responses including those from Robert Scoble (who is not blogging this week, in solidarity), danah boyd (who tells her own story about bullying while decrying the abuse of Kathy Sierra) and Doc Searls (who knows a lot of the people said to be involved in abusing Kathy and seems to be doing a pretty balanced job of trying to get to the bottom of it all). Then read and use these if you can:

[X] Abc7News: Cyber Threats Against Well-Known Blogger has a brief overview of the threats Kathy Sierra received; it also has an unedited audio interview with Kathy Sierra about those threats – it’s well worth listening to.
[X] Andy Carvin’s Stop Cyberbullying Ning (a mini social network for discussing these problems, and work on solutions).
[X] Scott McLeod has created a some images you can use to show your support for Stop Cyberbullying Day (the image at the top of this post is one of Scott’s).
[X] Read and comment on current blog posts in support of Stop Cyberbullying Day.
[X] And, finally, please make your own blog post or other show of support if you can. Bullying hurts everyone.

[Cross-posted from my main blog.]

As James Farmer has been busy upgrading edublogs to the spiffy new full-version of Wordpress-Mu (finally at 1.0), I thought I’d take the opportunity to upgrade the look of this blog as well. Ever since I posted my wonderful graduation iPhinished iPod silhouette I’ve wanted to get around to doing a custom header, so I’ve swapped to the more dynamic Regulus theme, minimised the many links in the blogroll, created a header-image I’m happy with and with any luck will carve out a little more time to blog here in the near future.

The only thing that I couldn’t do (which is a limitation of a mulitple-blog installation like Mu) is edit the template so I could put my Creative Commons license details in the footer. However, I think the ‘Some Rights Reserved’ page-link as part of the header is a reasonable work-around for now.

Also, I realised today that four days ago, Tama’s eLearning Blog celebrated its first birthday! I should really rename this my Flexible Delivery or Mixed Mode blog, but I think I’ll stick with eLearning for now since it sums up where I was coming from in my thinking when the blog started. It’s been a fun journey so far …

Did I mention that my graduation ceremony was the other day? Here’s the picture I’ve wanted to see for some time …

I’m very pleased with the way that turned out! (Yes, that’s me.)

Way back in November last year I got excited about the prospect of the increased recording quality allowed by the software in the (then) new 5G Video iPods. With three different microphone plugins fairly quickly announced, but more than half a year later, Belkin’s page for the TuneTalk Stereo has been up for months, but still displays the disclaimer “Coming soon. Please check back for updates on availability”, while Griffin Technology haven’t even got an official page yet for their upcoming iTalkPro. Thankfully, the first microphone plugin to hit the market, the XtremeMac MicroMemo has arrived!

At first glance this is actually a pretty impressive little device. The MicroMemo plugs straight into the iPod Video (5G) with no fuss, and instantly the record menu pops up. There are two quality settings (16-bit audio at 22 kHz and 44 kHz) which can easily be toggled between and recording starts at the press of a button. Unlike past iPod mics, the MicroMemo has a microphone on a flexible lead, so it can be positioned easily for recording either one person or two in an interview setting (although, it should be noted, the recordings are not in stereo). The MicroMemo also has a switch to allow you to record line-in from any mini-jack (the bundled microphone can be unplugged, unlike the design of the iTalkPro or the TuneTalk). There is also an embedded speaker that’s by no means loud, but is adequate to check that your recordings are working properly (this can be toggled on or off by holding how the single button on the front of the device). Even though it records in uncompressed WAV, with a 30Gb iPod as the lowest usable size, you can record more than the average interview (and far longer in low quality). The only major drawback is that the while recording the iPod’s harddrive continuously spins, so the battery life is only a few hours for continuous recording (and, annoyingly, you can’t charge while using the MicroMemo). That said, in usability terms, it’s pretty smoothly designed and straight-forward to use.

In order to check the quality of the recordings, I conducted four tests of the MicroMemo with the microphone very close to my face (about 10 -15cm away) and also with the mic about 50cm away (which is the more likely distance if it was on a desk during an interview or similar circumstances). I recorded for roughly thirty seconds at both distances on the High Quality setting and the Low Quality. You can judge with your own ears, as I’ve posted these four tests, completely unedited (in their original recorded WAV formats) here:

[1] MicroMemo Audio Quality Test – Low Quality – Close to Face (1.5Mb)

[2] MicroMemo Audio Quality Test – Low Quality – Mic 50cm from Face (1.4 MB)

[3] MicroMemo Audio Quality Test – High Quality – Mic Close to Face (6.1 MB)

[4] MicroMemo Audio Quality Test – High Quality – Mic 50cm from Face (5.9 MB)

While there was a notable difference in the volume moving the MicroMemo away even to 50cm, a quick tweak with Audacity or any other audio editor to increase the volume finds pretty decent sound quality. The low quality is a lot smaller in size, but more than adequate for playback and for most podcasting recording (unless working to professional production values). For more detailed tests of the MicroMemo, check out reviews at both iLoungeand The iPod Observer.

In a nutshell, I wanted to know if the MicroMemo would be a useful device for student podcasts, recording interviews and other audio production citizen media rather than professional media in nature. I think the MicroMemo is more than up the the task and I hope with all the iPod projects going on in universities across the world, this little plugin will make student podcasts (not just lecture recordings or coursecasts!) a more sizable part of university curricula. My only major gripe is that the MicroMemo can’t record directly to a compressed format like mp3 – that functionality would really make this device ideal!

Sometimes career prospects start to look up, as today when Higher Ed reports Academic shortage looms as the boomers retire en masse and a new generation of academic jobs open up in Australia. Then, of course, things stop looking promising as on the same page of the paper we find “Career paths closed to humanities postgraduates” which includes the all too true point that Paul Arthur makes: “jobs [are] scarce because universities tended not to replace senior retirements across humanities and social sciences”.

This Thursday (30th March), I’m participating in a panel and seminar at Fremantle’s Film and Television Institute (92 Adelaide Street, Fremantle) so any local readers of this blog who might be interested, please come along (it costs $18/ $9 FTI Members … worth being a member for, methinks!). The outline:

Understanding Cross Platform and New Media Want to find out about the latest trends in new media and cross platform development? Want to gain a greater understanding of how the use of broadband internet is already changing the way documentaries, television and films are being created, developed and distributed? Don’t miss this exciting seminar at FTI on Thursday 30th March at 7pm. Our panel of presenters will discover, discuss and debate what the world of the filmmaker of tomorrow will be like. Guest speakers include Tama Leaver from UWA, Arron Kennedy from the award winning innovative animation company Raging Pixel and Alison Wright from the ABC. To find out more contact FTI on 9431 6700 or email ftitraining@fti.asn.au

Anyone who knows my thoughts on cross platform media will be unsurprised to hear that in my bit I’m rather likely to mention both Battlestar Galactica (especially their use of blogs, podcasts, etc.) and RocketBoom (vlog extraordinaire!).

[Cross-posted from Ponderance.]

Although I’ve taught and talked a lot about the idea of constructivism in higher education, I’ve never quite made the obvious jump in terminology to Social Constructivisim (even though talking about constructivisim goes hand-in-hand with flagging the importance about making links with the existing knowledge and everyday experience of learners. Leigh Blackall summed it all up rather neatly in his post on “Learner generated content, or the best way to learn is to teach“:

There are 2 key things I think are an important for teaching and learning today:

1. To learn through the production of content = constructionism
2. To learn through engagement with real and existing communities of practice = social constructivism

So a teacher today, or should I say facilitator is someone who focuses on building and maintaining a strong learning network around their topic, and assigning learners to create content based on what their learning, to feed back into that network.

Leigh’s thoughts were, in turn, partially built on Will Richardson’s thoughts which directly link to my usual themes of blogging and podcasting as participatory pedagogy:

One of the themes that’s been running through my brain a lot of late is the idea that with blogs and podcasts and screencasts and others we really have an opportunity to ask our students to become more than just receivers of knowledge. They can become transmitters of that knowledge, teachers of it in easy, meaningful ways.

Student podcasts, as I’ve said before, are one of our most cutting edge tools for social constructivism, using the ubiquity of iPodness and the iGeneration to built learning and teaching strategies for and with a new generation of university learners.