Friday 29 November 2013

Essays, capitalism and feminist critiques of MOOCs

Imagine marking 100 years of essays

Contrary to stereotype, writing by students has improved in the digital age--or so claims research by a Stanford prof reported in the Globe.  Recent essays in comparison to a sample of essays from a century ago are longer and more sophisticated.  Students get more writing practice--mostly on smartphones--and even a mini-keyboard is a lot easier to use than a fountain pen was, the researcher suggests.

Reasons for the improvements suggested:  Authentic audience.  When students write to communicate with friends or online, possibly global, acquaintances, they care more about what they say and how.  Writing for the teacher alone is just an exercise, not an authentic communication.

Who says capitalism is good for the poor?

The Fraser Institute is in the midst of new initiatives on the education front.  Its annual school rankings have spread to several provinces, and now they are hitting out on new fronts--technology, merit pay and student workshops.

The cover of their take on technology ("Technology and Education: A primer") sends a mixed message.  It shows a smiling young girl holding a tablet.  The content of the tablet is "1-5 Times Table Chart."  Why would you need a digital tablet to simply show that 1x1+1?

A school opening release calling for teacher merit pay hardly registered in the mainstream press, outside of a business editor and the National Post.

The Fraser folks also target teachers--offering workshops like "Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?" and lesson plans for using their global map of "economic freedom."  They offer to pay for substitutes and travel funds for teachers to attend.

Students are directly targeted as well with day-long infusions of "Why Do People Behave the Way They Do? An Introduction to Economic Reasoning."  These are "free, fun, one-day seminars consist of a mix of short lectures, games and activities that introduce economic principles," with separate programs for junior and senior secondary students.

Feminist challenge to MOOCs

MOOCs are the newest "solution" to provide access to post-secondary education.  The acronym stands for Massive Open Online Courses.  They can draw tens of thousands of participants.  At least, thousands sign up but few complete them.

Enthusiasts claim these will open up education on a global basis, overcoming barriers of access for millions. Critics are skeptical. The developers are trying to figure out the revenue stream and the path to an IPO.
A group of feminist faculty members have created an alternative approach to the centralized expertise approach of MOOCs.  They are calling it a DOCC, "distributed open collaborative course."
 
Anne Balsamo, a co-facilitator of the first DOCC says "It recognizes that, based on deep feminist pedagogical commitments, is distributed throughout all the participants in a learning activity."  It does no just reside with one or two individuals.

The problem with "Designed in California"

Apple ran a huge ad campaign that promoted its products as "Designed in California."  Critics identified the immediate problem.  Its message really is that the production of its products is outsourced to exploited workers in Asia, while its profits are hidden in company revenues reported in other countries to avoid taxation in the U.S.  All that is left for California is designing products.

You might think Apple would at least give a break to schools in California.
 
When the Los Angeles school district decided to spend $1 billion to give iPads to students and install broadband in all the schools, they didn't think about keyboards.  They now need to spend $38 million more to buy wifi keyboards.

Why do they need keyboards?  A new set of standardized tests is being introduced in California and keyboards will be used by other students taking the exams.  The touch screen keyboard on the iPad could obscure part of questions which students using other machines would be able to see.


This was originally published in the Fall 2013 issue of Our Schools, Our Selves, the education journal of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Wednesday 13 November 2013

Random Thoughts--Microsoft and Pearson

Who ever heard of Nokia?  Kenya has

How soon we forget in the digital age.  Nokia was a pioneer in the spread of cell phones only a few years ago.  Now it has nearly disappeared from the smartphone kiosks in the local shopping centre.  It fell behind in the iPhone age.

But they haven't disappeared.  In fact, Microsoft recently bought their handset division and Nokia produces smartphones  using the Windows OS.  And they have been working on education projects in several African countries.  They use Nokia phones that feed material through a cellular connection that can be hooked up to a TV monitor.  Only a few schools are in the project initially, but the potential is great.

In countries where textbooks are expensive and scarce, jumping over the age of hard copy print may open possibilities for much more extensive access to learning resources.  In Kenya, many banking transactions are already carried out over relatively inexpensive cell phones.

Digital is the workhorse of education globalization

Textbook companies are trying to figure out where the future lies.  They have had monopoly positions with schools and individual students having to purchase them.  Prices have grown beyond any other aspect of the book business.  But that age is coming to an end.

"Open resources" are the buzz.  In British Columbia, the province has put free, open source texts online for 15 first-year courses offered in multiple post-secondary institutions.  Tools that make it easy to produce your own books are appearing online. 

The big guys in the textbook business are turning to digital products and projects to capture future profits.  Pearson, in particular, is building a global digital business that includes everything from tests to "analytics."  Digital is making it possible to globally "harmonize," presenting a challenge to maintaining the local and national as central to the education process.  If there is hope, it is that open source offers a future where the direction of education does not rest just with global corporations.

But Pearson is even trying to capture open source as a market.  The run their own "open" educational resources, building on the work that teachers contribute.  And Pearson officials say they "hear customer demand from teachers for us to help them make sense of open educational resources."

Gates dreams on

Bill Gates has spent billions from his foundation on grants to change education.  He is now focused on  teacher evaluation and has decided that teachers have to be involved in the process.  He hardly needed to spend billions to find that out.

Now he wants to bring "accountability" to higher education.  He wants to get students through their programs faster by using technology and "competency-based learning, according to a Washington Post story.  This is to come, in his dreams and everyone else's nightmare, with an accountability system based on testing of post-secondary students.

Second-hand distraction

Multi-tasking does not just affect the student doing it during a class, but the students around them as well, according to a study by McMaster researchers Faria Sana and Tina Weston.

The study was based on students attending a university lecture and then completing a multiple-choice quiz.  Half the students were asked to multi-task on a number of activities and students were seated around them without computers.  They expected the multi-takers to do less well in the test than those not multi-tasking, and that was the result.

However, it turned out that the students surrounded by multi-taskers also did poorly on the test.  They reported that they were not distracted, but the test results indicated that they had been.

Classic essay topic no longer works


A cartoon.  First day of school and the teacher gives a classic assignment:  "Write about 'what I did last summer.'"  Student says, "weren't you following me on Twitter?"

Originally published in the Fall 2013 issue of Our Schools, Our Selves, the education journal of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Sunday 10 November 2013

Some teacher views on online learning

The Future of Distributed Learning:  Some teacher views

By Larry Kuehn and David Comrie

Distributed Learning (DL) has been a fast-growing element of BC's education system over the last decade.  A workshop at the Computer Using Educators specialist association (CUEBC) conference was  conducted as a focus group with two dozen DL teachers. 

Not only have enrolments grown, but DL policies have changed at a rapid pace, with many policies and practices revised from year to year.  To get a look at the future directions, we needed to hear about the significant issues facing DL teachers now.

Here are some of the themes and issues raised by DL teachers:

1.         Numbers of DL students are up and down in different districts

Some reported an increased number of DL students this year, while others declined, significantly.  The Surrey Connect program reported five teachers being reassigned elsewhere because of reduced student numbers.

2.         Growth of private online schools

Surrey has two independent DL programs and the Christian Heritage online school working from the Okanagan has significant enrolment.  These private school programs are offered for free, paid for through public funding.  The independent school funding has been increased to 63 percent of funding for public DL students, while the funding for face-to-face independent schools is 50 percent of that for public schools.
Some private DL schools were reported to offer lower requirements--quick and easy courses and grades.   When signing up for a course, public school students may not be aware that these schools use resources and assignments with religious content.  Students can now a get a Dogwood diploma (high school graduation) from a public school, but with courses from an independent school
.
3.         Compliance audits drive many decisions and are negative

School districts are desperate to not lose funding.  A reduction in funding forces cuts in other areas of educational service--and cuts are retroactive with funding already spent having to be returned.
The required audit trail means significant record-keeping takes up teaching time.  The audit criteria, which change frequently, force DL schools to develop practices based on the criteria.  Some essentially do the paperwork twice, with practice audits, to make sure they are meeting these criteria.

4.         Quality audit experiences have been positive

Several participants worked in DL schools that had gone through a "quality audit" and they universally described it as a positive experience.  The process allows for self-reflection, as well as outside facilitators who help to guide the look at whether the DL school is meeting the quality standards, and what would be improvements.  Unlike the compliance audit, it is supportive rather than punitive.

5.         Distributed Learning is a "cash cow"

Although they can't find out actual expenditures in many cases, DL seems like it is used by school districts as a "cash cow."  By this they mean that the DL program brings more funding to the district than is actually spent on DL.  When DL was offered to all school districts, the policy was that boards should spend 90% of the funding on DL students.  That provision has not been enforced.

The funding limitation for the system as a whole drives districts to find resources where ever they can.

6.         "Blended learning" is the next big thing

Some move toward blended learning was reported by several participants.  No consensus exists on what the term means in practice.  However, all the versions have some mix of student work online and in a face-to-face situation. 

This is a challenge to the organization of DL.  It implies that the student is physically located in a place where they can engage in some face-to-face activities, in contrast to the practice of students signing up for courses whatever district offers them.

7.         DL programs have increasing numbers of students with special needs

The challenge of providing appropriate support for students with special needs is ongoing.  It seems like the number of students with mental health issues is increasing, particularly students  with serious anxiety about being in the school environment.

8.         Course development has many complications

Many  DL teachers develop their own courses, or, at least modify existing courses.  How much can be done is framed by how many courses a person is teaching--which may be anywhere from one course with many students or many different courses with not so many in each course.

The changes in the provincial curriculum will bring to the fore more questions of who develops courses, DL teachers course development built into their teaching load, who owns resources and how they are shared.  Without contract provisions or policy guidelines, this  may produce unfair and unequal situations.

9.         Work/life balance is essential

The balance mentioned included not spending so much time on the work that there is no time for the rest of life.  Also mentioned was the need for balance in the work so that it is not just marking assignments, but also includes time for course development and modification and for professional development.

10.       Big need--training in pedagogical practices for online learning

One participant works in a university education faculty that offers a program for online teaching, but it is a graduate program.  Teaching online has not been an element of teacher education programs for those preparing for a teaching certificate
.
School districts offering DL have signed a contract with the ministry that says they will offer training for DL teachers, but few districts live up to this commitment.

Frustration with lack of TTOCs (Teachers Teaching on Call--substitutes) with online training or experience was noted--without that, the DL teacher gets little relief when they are away from work, with the email and student work just cluttering the screen when they return.

These  themes and issues do not necessarily reflect a consensus of those present, but rather an attempt to find some patterns in the comments made.


Facilitators for the focus group were David Comrie, president of the BCTF Educators for Distributed Learning Provincial Specialist Association and Larry Kuehn, BCTF Director of Research and Technology.  

Sunday 1 September 2013

Beyond BCeSIS--will there be a difference?


Finally the BC Ministry of Education got the message that the student information system, BCeSIS, is inadequate and gets in the way of effective recording and reporting on student development.  Last year the Ministry started a process of buying something new.

The new program has been selected and implementation is to begin.  The Ministry's choice is a new software program, but the same people running it that have been running BCeSIS. 
The new software is called Aspen, and the old--and new--service provider is Fujitsu.  A dozen companies put in proposals, three were asked to provide more detail, and Fujitsu was chosen.

Fujitsu has been in charge of many of the elements of BCeSIS--providing and managing the servers, providing the documentation, responding to the glitches, developing the training, providing support.  They will now be in charge of the same elements of the new system.  Presumably they were able to offer a better financial deal because they already have an infrastructure in place with BCeSIS.
The major change is in the software, moving from "esis" to Aspen.

Few BC  teachers have seen the new software and developed an opinion on whether it will be a satisfactory system.  It has been adopted in a number of states in the U.S., but that isn't necessarily a positive factor.
In the meantime, work is proceeding on an alternative, open-source student information system.  Called OpenStudent, it is being developed by a team in the Saanich school district.  Several school districts have signed on to use this system rather than a new BCeSIS and are piloting it in schools.  Information on this system can be found at openstudent.ca.

 

 

 

 
 

Wednesday 28 August 2013

Breaking NSA security--an inside job


Several years before publishing the Davinci Code, Dan Brown published another book about code called Digital Fortress.
I first read this book several years ago--it was published in 1998, before the events of 9/11 that have been used as an excuse for increased government surveillance.  A reread seemed timely given the information released by Edward Snowden about the National Security Agency and the global snooping it carries out.  The amount of digital information circulating these days is many times that of 1998, and the technology to snoop much more sophisticated and complex, but the story is even more relevant.

The premise of the novel is that a rogue programmer creates software that will cause a meltdown of the security on the NSA's central computer.  This programmer will give the agency the key to stop that action if the agency publicly admits to its massive surveillance.
Much of Digital Fortress is chase scenes--in Spain and the NSA headquarters in the U.S.--typical of his novels.  Also, it centres on relationships of the man and woman who turn out to be the good guys and save the data centre from being opened to the world.  Spoiler alert--the key is knowing about the code that Julius Caesar used to send messages to his generals.

A couple of quotes are as pertinent now as when the book was written--maybe more so.

"Over the past few years, our work here at NSA has gotten harder and harder.  We've faced enemies I never imagined would challenge us.  I'm talking about our own citizens.  The lawyers, the civil rights fanatics, the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation)--they've all played a part, but it's more than that.  It's the people.  They've lost the faith.  They've become paranoid.  They suddenly see us as the enemy.  ...We're eavesdroppers, peeping Tom's, violators of people's rights."  (229)

The rogue programmer's favorite quote was the Latin "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes," roughly translating to "Who will guard the guards?"  Great question!

In the credits, Brown offers "a quiet thank you to the two faceless ex-NSA cryptographers who made invaluable contributions via anonymous remailers.  Without them this book would not have been written."
Brown has one of the characters comment that the danger to the secrecy about what the NSA is doing won't come through a technological break, but rather, from a person on the inside.  Thank you Edward Snowden.

 

 

Friday 16 August 2013

ICT in Education: Workshop on critical perspectives


Fourteen critical issues in technology are identified for a workshop at the BCTF Summer Conference in August 2013
The new technologies raise many educational and social issues as they have become infused in our classrooms and culture. Ursula Franklin says that “every tool shapes the task”—no technology is “just a tool.”
Which are the big technology issues that we should focus on? What should we do on these?

1.         Student information system (beyond BCeSIS)

The ministry has selected a corporation, Fujitsu, to run a new software program to replace BCeSIS. This is the same company that has had the contract to run BCeSIS, but with a new software program.

The ministry-developed system is not the only alternative. The Saanich school district is developing OpenStudent, a open access system for student information.

What are the issues that we should be concerned about?

An analysis of the Ministry’s approach to replacing BCeSIS can be found at http://www.bctf.ca/uploadedFiles/Public/Publications/ResearchReports/RR2013-03.pdf

OpenStudent can be found at http://www.openstudent.ca/

2.         “Bring your own device”


The BC Education Plan assumes that technology will be infused throughout the school—but largely depends on students bringing their own device.
Should students be able to bring their own device (smart phone, tablet, laptop) into the classroom and use it there?
What are the equity implications of this policy?

What policies should apply to students’ use of devices in classrooms? Type of use? Limits on sending photos and videos?

3.         Cyberbullying

This is a big public issue—for good reason. Ethical and safe communication can be taught in the school. But where?
What responsibility does the school have for actions by students outside of the venue of the school building and grounds?

Lots of material on cyberbullying exists on the web—just Google it.

4.         Boundaries


Social media have porous boundaries. A professional relationship with students requires boundaries.
Many of the cases of discipline of teachers dealt with by teacher unions relate to claims of inappropriate professional behaviour related to online communications. Often the digital footprint ends up as evidence in a hearing.

What should the Federation be doing to help members find a balance between effective use of technology with our students and necessary professional boundaries?

5.         The “cloud” and privacy


BC has a privacy law that requires that personal data must be stored on servers in Canada. This is a positive response to the Patriot Act and the pervasive surveillance that we now know is undertaken by the US National Security Agency.
Cloud services of major corporations like Google and Facebook and many others store information in massive server farms in the US and elsewhere.
This places significant restrictions on the ability for teachers and the school system to legally use these services. Waivers signed by parents may permit some use of these cloud services—but with significant cautions. Some teachers believe that the BC government should change the law to eliminate privacy restrictions for educational purposes. What should the BCTF position be on this?

An excellent publication by Julia Hengstler provides lots of resources on these issues, including sample waiver forms to be signed by parents. It is called A K-12 Primer for British Columbia Teachers Posting Students’ Work Online.


6.         Intellectual property and copyright


Do you own what you create—as a teacher, as a student?
When you create a resource for your students, from an individual item up to a full course, do you own it? Or does your employer own it? Who has the right to decide if it can be used, or sold, to another teacher or another district?

What about student-produced material? What permission should a teacher have from a student if the student’s work is to be shared online?
The student developed issues are also covered in Julia Hengstler’s publication.

7.         Distributed Learning


Under what conditions and with which students is Distributed Learning a good option?
The practice of Distributed Learning in BC is largely determined by funding. Districts create programs to ensure they are getting the revenue that follows the student. Compliance audits drive many of the practices, rather than sound pedagogy being the focus.

What should be the future direction of Distributed Learning in BC? How can we define that and influence decisions on appropriate use of DL?

The working conditions of DL teachers have deteriorated as funding pressures and funding decisions have played out in recent years. DL is expressly excluded from class-size limits incorporated in Bill 22, and collective-agreement clauses don’t deal with some issues specific to the DL environment.

The BCTF policy on Distributed Learning can be found on the BCTF website or on the Digicritic blog at http://digicritic.blogspot.ca/2013/08/union-supports-online-learning-with.html

The BCTF has published several research reports on Distributed Learning that can be found under “Technology” in the Research Reports section of the BCTF website: http://www.bctf.ca/publications.aspx?id=5630#Technology

8.         “Blended” or “hybrid” learning


This is the new thing in the edtech world. It’s not really new, of course, but addresses concerns that many have about online learning for K to 12 that is only done online.
The concept is simple. Students are engaged in work online sometimes and in a class setting sometimes. A number of research studies say that this combination is the most effective approach. Although there is little research that tells us much about effectiveness in a field that changes quickly, it seems like common sense.

This does, however, call into question encouraging students to sign up for courses offered in districts other than the one in which they live. Blended learning is place-based, not just cloud-based.

9.         Technology in a capitalist system


The capitalist system is based on ownership and the aggregation of “surplus value” through that ownership. As participants in interactive programs we create that value. Our attention and our participation are what major corporations like Google and Facebook, as well as less pervasive businesses, have to sell.
Are open systems based on sharing viable alternatives? Can we really produce an alternative at least on the margins of a capitalist system?

10.       A surveillance society


We are all being watched, particularly online. Many people guessed that was the case, but we now have confirmation through Edward Snowden’s May 2013 “leak” of information relating to secret government mass surveillance programs, and their acknowledgment by the US.
Easy ways of linking information promotes surveillance. The BC government is planning that all of us have a single card that relates to all services—driver’s license, medical care, social services...everything that relates to government.

One of the areas the ministry included in seeking a replacement for BCeSIS is parent and student access to the database from home to look at what the students and teacher are doing, reflected in the eSIS data. Authentication is to be...by the BC ID card.
The government has announced that there will be consultation with the public this fall about this card—and presumably its use.

This is what the Privacy Commissioner Elizabeth Denham has had to say about the card:

Based on Phase 1 documentation, Information and Privacy Commissioner Elizabeth Denham found privacy and security of the card was designed according to legal requirements. Phase 2 will include potential for data linkages across multiple platforms and the rollout could be jeopardized without building public trust, she wrote.

“The BC Services Card program raises significant concerns regarding misuse of personal data, such as unauthorized access, profiling, and function creep,” Denham wrote in a February 5, 2013 letter to Citizens’ Services deputy minister Kim Henderson. “Solutions that government proposes to address these risks should be subject to scrutiny by both the public at large and by those with technical knowledge in the field.”

11.       Big data and data analytics


“Big data” is the basis of much of the direction of technology. It consists of the mass of digital data that is being produced from data points in many of our personal and business activities. We daily produce more data than was produced over thousands of years of human activity. Making any sense of it requires tools to analyze patterns and display the patterns in a way that can be understood—usually called a dashboard.

One of the visions of education technology is “adaptive” learning based on data analytics. It is the learning machine—constantly providing feedback and new content to lead a student to understanding what has been predetermined to be learned.

How big is big data? 

A great critical analysis of the application of data analytics was written by Phil McRae of the staff of the Alberta Teachers’ Association: http://www.teachers.ab.ca/Publications/ATA%20Magazine/Volume-93/Number-4/Pages/Rebirth-of-the-teaching-machine.aspx

12.       MOOCs


MOOCs are Massive Open Online Courses, the new “best thing” in online education. They are free to take, but without providing formal university (or K-12) credits, although that is changing. 
A person can take the course just out of interest and not produce anything to share. Beyond that, an individual may join a peer group that reads and responds to work done. Another option is an “autograder” that checks answers submitted against the already-determined “right” answer. 

MOOCs started at some of the high prestige universities like Harvard and MIT. Tens of thousands of people sign up as students—or a smaller number. Materials are provided online—that may be lectures, streamed and/or archived, and readings, many available on the web.
Lots of post-secondary faculty have serious concerns about this creating two-tier education, the quality of some of the courses, and the threat to face-to-face learning by an automated form of education. Some developments are spilling over to the K-12 systems.


13.       Open source, including open resources


Open source software has long (in technology time) been an alternative to closed, proprietary software. A movement by techies who have been willing to contribute to building software that is open in the sense that techies get access to the code and can make modifications, but with the requirement that the developments also remain open.
Lots of the software that underlies the operation of the Internet is open source. The software for smart phones and tablets is built on open source, in contrast to the operating systems of the iPhone, Microsoft phone, and Blackberry. These are proprietary, and putting up walls is a key to their model for producing revenue.
Open resources are starting to gain traction at the post-secondary-education level. The Public Knowledge Project and others are pressing a model of academic publishing that is open and free to use, in contrast to the expensive and profitable journals for which university libraries pay and researchers provide content.
Open textbooks are also a growing phenomenon. Free, open textbooks have been developed for some post-secondary courses in BC, helping to reduce the cost of an expensive part of education. This approach to textbooks and other e-books will make a significant difference to access to reading resources in less-developed countries that have few publishing options and currently little access to books except by elites.

What are the implications for K-12 education?

The Public Knowledge Project can be found at http://pkp.sfu.ca/

The BC Open Textbook project can be found at http://open.bccampus.ca/

14.       Not enough stuff


Transformation of education using technology?

Not if teachers don’t have the goods to do it. What is needed?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2013-08-16

LK:cep/af:tfeu


Thursday 15 August 2013

Union Supports Distributed (online) Learning--with Conditions

Teacher unions in Canada have had concerns about developments in online learning, but have generally been supportive if they have felt conditions were appropriate. Most provinces have relatively small numbers of students in online programs and they are integrated into the schools with face-to-face programs.  The Nova Scotia Teachers’ Union has provisions in the collective agreement that make working conditions for teachers in online programs equivalent to those in face-to-face classrooms.

In the U.S., most of the online programs are run as Charter Schools and the staffs are not unionized.  In fact, online learning has been seen by opponents of unions as a way of breaking unionization in education.

The British Columbia Teachers’ Federation adopted policy at the Annual Meeting of 2001 that supported DL—if conditions are appropriate.  This was at the beginning of the expansion of the number of students in DL programs from 2200 to about 80,000 last year.  (That is the number of students taking at least one course—many are taking only one.)

Unfortunately, many of the conditions for success identified in the BCTF policy do not exist in practice.  Limited funding in the school system as a whole has led to districts finding resources by squeezing staffing in the DL programs, leading to deteriorating working conditions for DL teachers.  When the BC government legislated class size limits for face-to-face programs, they explicitly excluded DL from limits.

This is the BCTF policy adopted in 2001 and still in place.

51.11 - Distributed Learning

That BCTF policy on distributed learning be:

1.      Distributed learning remains a positive offering within the BC public school system when fully supported by adequate staffing, funding and resources within provincial guidelines.

2.      Distributed learning should not be used in place of sufficient staffing or adequate facilities.

3.      a. Distributed learning and electronic delivery of public education programs should be delivered under the provision of the collective agreement.
b. Distributed learning programs and courses in BC public schools should be equivalent to other programs and courses in curriculum, assessment and reporting.

4.      Policies on distributed learning should be adopted by any school district that intends to use distributed learning for any of its students, either in its own district, or in conjunction with another district that runs programs:

a.        the teacher local should be involved in the formulation of the policy;

b.       the policy should include criteria and processes for making a decision on whether distributed learning is an appropriate placement;

c.        the policy should consider the social purposes of education, as well as the educational development of individuals.

5.      The school district in which any public school student lives should receive funding for that student. Decisions on requests to place the student in a distributed learning program should be made by the school district according to established criteria and processes. If a school district believes that an out-of-district distributed learning placement is most appropriate, then it should make enrolment and financial arrangements with the other district.

6.      Development of learning resources for distributed learning should be directed by the Ministry of Education, and BCTF members, identified through the BCTF process, should be involved in the development of the resources and compensated according to their rate of pay under the collective agreement provisions that apply in their local.

7.      Distributed learning programs should not include marketing learning materials, courses and programs outside of BC.

8.      There should be no financial or other incentive for parents or school districts to enrol students in one program over another.
(01 AGM, p. 42-43)

9.      That locals should ensure that all distributed learning courses and programs are being offered by qualified teachers who are members of our bargaining unit.

51.13 - That locals be encouraged to develop policies on distributed learning that include a statement of where distributed learning may be used appropriately, the appropriate conditions for the work of teachers using distributed learning and transparency in budgets for distributed learning and that locals use these policies in attempts to influence school district practices.
(Jan./Feb. RA 03 p. 17)

51.15 - 1. That the BCTF opposes allowing Grade 10–12 students in the public schools taking courses in the independent distributed learning programs.

2.      That the BCTF supports legislation and policies that ensure quality public school distributed education programs.

3.      That public education programs, such as distributed learning, should be carried out through public institutions, not private societies.

4.      That distributed learning programs not be promoted as better than classroom-based programs or be used to replace classroom-based programs in schools.

5.      That locals be made aware of the possible implications for staffing, transfers, and layoffs from some distributed learning programs not meeting the ministry conditions by May 31 and thus not able to offer distributed learning programs.
(May 06 Ex., p. 12)

***************************************************************
Research reports on Distributed Learning in BC are available on the BCTF website:   http://www.bctf.ca/publications.aspx?id=5630#Technology

 

Sunday 21 July 2013

"Black Code"--We are all in their sights


The revelations by Edward Snowden should not have been such a surprise to so many.  Much of the story has been out there for anyone who was looking for it--in books, novels and, of course, online.

The fact that there has been no outcry long ago is an indication of a willful ignoring of the dangers of digital technology and "big data" in particular.
As an example, Ronald Deibert's  Black Code:  Inside the battle for cyberspace, points to the dual developments of the new century that changed what is possible and how it is exploited--massive increases in data collected, transmitted and stored and 9/11 as an excuse for mining that data to protect us.

Deibert is a professor at the University of Toronto and heads the Canada Centre for Global Security Studies.  Its mandate is to do research on the "intersection of the Internet, global security and human rights"  and he is an investigator  with the Information Warfare Monitor group.
The National Security Agency (NSA), he reports, has data-mining equipment at key IXPs, Internet Exchange Points that are the key points where Internet data passes between networks.  Being at the exchange points is efficient because so much of the data is streamed through these crucial links.

To better understand what is happening to Canadian date, the IXmaps project at the U of T traced a specific message through its route.  They sent an email from the University of Toronto to the Hockey Hall of Fame, a few block away:  "The email crossed into the United States, was peered at an IXP in Chicago, and was probably exposed to one of the NSA's warrantless surveillance systems rumoured to be located at the facility."

Much of the stream of data in Canada is open to US monitoring.  The data goes through the US because it has 95 of these IXPs and Canada only five. 
Canada, of course, has its own surveillance agency, the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC).  Then Defense Minister Peter McKay in Parliament gave Tom Mulcair assurances that "this program is specifically prohibited from looking at the information of Canadians."

Oh, sure!  The US and Canada--and other countries, as well--claim to be looking only at the information from people who are not their citizens.  In the case of Canada and the US, security agencies share information which inevitably means the assurance is meaningless.

But McKay's assurance isn't genuine in any sense.  Note the weasel words--"looking at the information of Canadians."  One outgrowth of Snowden's leaks is that it makes clear that the metadata--the unseen data that identifies time and places-- is of particular use.  You can find out a great deal without ever looking at the content of the communications.
Surveillance, though, is only one of the battles for cyberspace outlined by Deibert.  "Big data," the collection and storage of massive data and then its analysis is not only used for surveillance, finding supposed terrorist threats.  Corporations use it to target products, as does Google through an algorithm that determines what ads are going to be sent with your Gmail or YouTube videos.

Government's are also anxious to use big data to find out about citizens and shape government programs.  In British Columbia we have the "Government 2.0" plan currently being implemented.  Central to it is seeing citizens as made up of data points that can be stored and mined--still another form of surveillance brought to us by the new technologies. 
The BC Ministry of Education plan for the replacement of BCeSIS is part of a cross-ministry strategy to be able to link education data with other data government collects on individuals.  BCeSIS is the student information system build in the pre-Big Data days.  The common link will be the identity card being rolled out that serves as a driver's license and medical card.

More on that another day.

Reference
Deibert, Ronald.  (2013)  Black Code:  Inside the Battle for Cyberspace.  McClelland and Stewart:  Toronto.