A Touch of Humanity

It is a sad but incontrovertible fact that one of the unfortunate effects of technology is that it provides some people with the excuse they need to abrogate all sense of personal responsibility or discretion. Note that I don't say the rise of technology causes people to behave in particular ways, just that it creates conditions in which such people can thrive.

This was epitomised and satirised by the Little Britain sketches on the theme of 'The computer says 'no'!" (See below for an example.)

Automated menus are another manifestation of this phenomenon. The worst ones are the ones where you end up in a sort of closed time loop, in which, after ten minutes of increasingly 'niche' destinations you end up in the same menu you started at.

Possibly the absolute worst one was the one which, after ten minutes getting me to the extension I wanted, announced that the office was now closed and that I should try again in the morning. I quite like the automated answering machine script in this context.

The Oyster CardYesterday I raced for a bus and placed my Oyster Card against the automated reader. The Oyster Card is a kind of cashless travel ticket that stores details of all your journeys on the Transport for London system. It probably also stores how many cups of coffee you've consumed, the point you're at on your circadian rhythm cycle and details of your DNA.

The wretched machine bleeped twice.

"What does that mean?", I asked.

"It means you haven't got any money left on the card", came the response.

"OK, how much is it then?"

"Two pounds."

"Two pounds?!" I exclaimed. "Good grief."

I rummaged around for some money, but found just a few loose coins.

"Can you change a ten pound note?" I asked.

"Where are you going?"

"The station".

"Forget it", said the driver.

"Really?", I said. "You are a gentleman, Sir."

In times gone by I would have written to the bus company, giving the time and route on which I was travelling, to thank them for such commendable service. If I did that now, he'd probably lose his job for not following some set of rules to the letter.

But it was a pleasant experience to meet someone who could exercise a bit of judgement, and show a touch of humanity.

You mean, there wasn't ALWAYS IM?

This cartoon made me smile because it reminded me of a 13 year old in one of my classes who looked utterly incredulous when I mentioned how nice it was to be able to record TV programmes while you were out and watch them when you came home, or at the weekend.

"Wait!", she said. "Wasn't there always video recorders?"

And she was serious!

Cartoons by Andertoons

The Online Information Conference and other news

In this video I talk about the Online Information Conference. If you're in London and you see this in time (it finishes on 4th December 2009) you might like to get along, for reasons I describe.

If you can't get there, it's worth checking out the website for information and podcasts.

I've also included a short video I shot with a pocket video recorder called the Kodak Zi8, which I'm quite impressed with.

Other items mentioned include the next issue of Computers in Classrooms, which includes several book reviews, two reviews of the same website, current legislation in the works, elevator speeches and coping with inspection. That will be out very soon.

Plus information about the Web 2.0 Projects Book I'm working on, and my two presentations at BETT, which are:

Driving Your ICT Vision: how might advanced motoring techniques help us achieve our ICT goals?

Amazing Web 2.0 Projects: Real projects in real classrooms with real kids!

How I started teaching ICT

Image by Terry Freedman via Flickr

Sometimes people ask me how I made the transition from teaching Economics to teaching ICT. In case you're interested, here's (part of) the story.

In 1986 I was working as what was called a Permanent Unattached teacher in London. Basically, it was supply teaching with a difference. In fact, with two differences. Firstly, it was for at least one term at a time in a particular school, to cover long-term absence. Secondly, it was (in theory, at least), subject-specific. In other words, I was covering lessons in my own subject specialisms.

Although I loved teaching Economics, I was starting to have doubts as to future job prospects in that field. It seemed to me that fewer and fewer schools were offering it as an option, and more and more schools were looking at vocational and business studies courses. I'm not sure if the then government's half-baked notion of teaching economic literacy across the curriculum was a help or a hindrance in the prognosis for Economics. (It's interesting to me, as an aside, how Economics has suddenly become very popular in the mainstream.)

The school I was in at the time was quite forward thinking. It had a suite of computers in the business studies department, which taught word processing. A senior teacher used a computer spreadsheet for helping him work out the timetable.

Now, I had used computers in one form or another since starting my teaching career, but I had used them as a means of enhancing my lessons in Economics (a topic for another article), not as a tool in their own right. Thus I didn't know how to use a word processor or a spreadsheet.

(The school also had a computer club for female staff to learn how to do computer programming. In an appalling act of sexism I was not allowed to join that group. That, too, is a subject for another article.)

You have to bear in mind that in those days the computer programs were not WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get). To make a word bold you had to put a control code before and after it. To centre a paragraph or a heading you had to put a code in the margin. It wasn't exactly intuitive, and you could never be completely sure you'd got it right until you'd printed it off.

The Head of Business Studies, Jane, taught me how to word process. Tony, the Senior Teacher, taught me how to use the spreadsheet. Thanks to them, I learnt enough about using the software to talk my way into my next job, Head of Business Studies and Information Technology.

Eleven years later I was working as an ICT advisor in the same borough. One day, my boss asked me to go down to the school where I'd cut my teeth on word processing and spreadsheets. Apparently, the Deputy Headteacher was trying to devise a spreadsheet that would enable him to analyse and correlate examination results with attendance records and that sort of thing.

I made an appointment through the school secretary, and turned up the next morning. I was shown into the Deputy Head's office. He had his back to me while he desperately tried to clear some papers so I could sit down.

"It's very good of you to come at such short notice, Terry", he said. "Can I get you a cup of tea?"

He turned round to face me and we shook hands.

"Good morning, Tony", I said.

Reduce, re-use, recycle: 3 steps towards the paperless office

I wonder what 'visionary' came up with the concept of the paperless office? This is an idea that could have been born only in the days before personal computer technology was ubiquitous, at a time when it was peripheral to our everyday lives.

Paperless office?Quite apart from our natural tendency to prefer something tangible to something which, in a physical sense, seems not to exist at all, we are just not designed to do lots of reading on a screen. Eye strain and other computer-related ailments are all too easily acquired when people try to achieve what is, when all said and done, impossible.

Reading on a screen is a different experience to reading on  paper. That's why several studies have shown that people skim text on screens more than they do text in print,and why a whole industry has grown up advising people how to write specifically for the web. (A good summary may be found here: http://www.paperhat.net/articles/how_do_people_read_on_screen/.) It will be interesting to see whether the same reading limitations will hold true, in the long run, for ebook readers, even the ones whose screens purport to emulate paper.

Yet every so often I visit a school which prides itself on having a virtually paperless environment. I find that hard to believe, but more importantly, as it's such a difficult goal to attain, why not be pragmatic and adopt the green lobby's mantra of 'reduce, re-use, recycle' as their motto?

Here in the Freedman household we strive to abide by these principles. We reduce our use of paper by only printing out stuff when it's absolutely necessary, and then using both sides of the paper when we do.

We re-use the paper by using the blank side, when there is one, for things like shopping lists and telephone messages. We have attempted to re-use paper by putting it back in the printer's paper tray.
The trouble with this though is that at least fifty percent of the time it screws the paper up, which results not only in wasted time but in even more paper being used. But worse still is the embarrassment of turning up at a meeting with a sensible breakdown of costs on one side of a sheet of paper, and some political blogger's rant on the other. It hasn't actually happened to me yet, but give it time.

More often than not, I forget or don't realise that there is used paper in the printer. I set it to print a 30 page report while I go off and pummell a cat (everybody needs a hobby), only to return to a completely useless stack of paper, and the need to use even more.

We're especially good at the recycling bit. We shred a lot of our paper in order to safeguard ourselves against identity theft. The shreddings find their way either into the cats' litter tray, or to our compost heap. The rest goes into a recycling box which is collected once a week.

Of course, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and one must always be alert to the possibility of unintended consequences. Like the time I set out recycling sacks in the computer suites in order to encourage the pupils to put discarded print-outs in them rather than the waste paper baskets. The volume of printing increased dramatically overnight, which I could only summise was due to the fact that the pupils thought it no longer mattered since they would recycle unwanted results. I was right: as soon as I removed the bags, from the pupils' sight at least, printing returned to its normal level.

I'd be interested in hearing your views on all this. Do you strive towards being completely paperless, for instance? What do you do?