Fortnightly Mailing

Machine Translation: Google's Franz Josef Och discusses the launch of eleven more languages at translate.google.com

Amended 6/10/2008

Eleven more languages are available* for translation by Google: Catalan, Filipino, Hebrew, Indonesian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese. This increases the number of languages from 23 to 34, and more than doubles the number of language pairs available to well over one thousand. Franz Josef Och Google's Lead Research Scientist in Machine Translation explains.

You may also be interested in this informative, if slightly tense, 28 minute "round table" in which Franz Josef Och and Mike Cohen, Manager - Speech Technology, talk about their work. Expect machine translation to be built into specific products before too long, in particular, email.

* Or are about to be? On 30/9/2008 6/10/2008 from the UK the additional languages are not yet available at Google Language Tools.

Android: phones are PCs, only smaller and with more stuff on them

Source: Google/Android web site

This What is Android? page gives you a feel for the complexity and power of the Android Open Source phone operating system, and shows clearly how minor the "phone" component of a modern phone will be, from a software and capability point of view. Inevitably, the "human computer interface" and usability side of the design of handheld devices will be centre-stage. And Android is a case in point of something "generative" rather than "tethered". For more on this, see The future of the Internet and how to stop it, and John Naughton's Google's Android could smash iPhone's locked gateway.

e-learning in UK Higher Education - summative report from large-scale benchmarking process

77 UK Higher Education Institutions took part in the Higher Education Academy/JISC Benchmarking and Pathfinder Programme between 2005 and 2008. The Academy has just published the summative Challenges and Realisations from the Higher Education Academy/JISC Benchmarking and Pathfinder Programme: An End of Programme Review by the Higher Education Academy, Evaluation and Dissemination Support Team. The Review is available from the Academy's web site [54 page 200 kB PDF].

Donald Clark on David Crystal's txtng (the gr8 db8)

Here is a detailed review by Donald Clark of David Crystal's txtng (the gr8 db8), published earlier this year by the Oxford University Press. The review (and the book, by the tone of the review) is a strong counter to those who claim that the spread of texting degrades language rather than improves texters' writing (and other) capabilities. Crystal's blog is worth keeping an eye on.

mySociety - travel time / house price interactive maps

Impressive interactive maps by mySociety, showing house prices and travel time to the Olympic site, and to the BBC. A similar map for central London, along with others comparing car, cycle, and public transport times, is available if you scroll down here. These maps build on the work of the late Chris Lightfoot.

BBC - Learning and Teaching Scotland reports that use of Brain Training on a Nintendo DS boosts maths scores

The BBC reports on a study just published by Learning and Teaching Scotland that "a daily dose of computer games can boost maths attainment". Here is an extract of a report on the research from the LTS web site (is there an equivalent resource for England?):

"Three Primary 6 classes from schools in Dundee took part in a Consolarium project to show how computer games can impact on and enhance learning in classrooms in a practical, accessible and manageable way."

"The project involved the use of a game for the Nintendo DS called Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training. This is a collection of mini-games such as number bond challenges, reading tests, problem-solving exercises and memory puzzles."

"The main rationale underpinning the game is that the problems and challenges are designed to ‘exercise the brain’ by increasing blood flow to the pre-frontal cortex."

"We felt that Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training had a rationale similar to that of Brain Gym and we were very keen to compare and contrast both approaches to see if any gains could be made, particularly in relation to mental maths and how children perceive themselves as learners (academic self-concept)."

"Our results have shown that a small, cleverly designed handheld game can significantly enhance learner performance in mental maths as well as having a positive impact on other aspects of classroom life. Our research methodology used only four of the 25 available Brain Gym activities, and the children from the Brain Gym group spent less than half the time using the movements than did the children playing the Nintendo game. Despite this lack of parity in both approaches, the limited Brain Gym intervention did significantly improve the children's performance in maths, although not by as much as did the more extensive use of the Nintendo game."

John Seely Brown's talk at the OU's 2007 OpenLearn conference

In 2000 I was much influenced by John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid's 1999 The Social Life of Information. You can watch and listen to a web-cast of John Seeley Brown's talk at last year's Open University OpenLearn conference from this page on the OU web site.

Seely Brown's focus in his talk is on the nature of learning, and the nature of professional development, and on the impact of i) human networks and ii) the widespread availability of open (one way or another) content on learning methods.

EU beginning to see broadband Internet access as a universal entitlement

In the EU, if the majority of citizens are using a telecoms service, explains this BBC News article "EC call for 'universal' broadband", the EC rules - known as the Universal Service Obligations - dictate that the service must be available for all.Thus wherever you live in the EU you can get a fixed phone line, and such phone lines must be of sufficient quality to "permit functional Internet access", which, in the UK is taken to mean a dial-up speed of 28.8 kilobits per second. (The Universal Service Obligations also provide for things like production of a telephone directory and the availability of pay-phones.)

Now that such a high proportion of EU citizens have broadband the EU is reviewing the Universal Service Obligations to see if "functional Internet access" should now mean access to broadband.  Conceivably the Obligations may change in 2010. The push from this seems to be coming from Viviane Reading, EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media, who gave quite an on-the-ball speech today on social networking sites and their economic and societal importance.

e-learning in the Ofsted "Handbook for inspecting colleges"

Ofsted has published a revised version of its Handbook for inspecting colleges.

"This version of the handbook has been updated following the formation of the new Ofsted, which incorporates the former Adult Learning Inspectorate and the former Ofsted. It also reflects the outcomes of the consultation on the future of further education inspections conducted in January 2007. The supplement (September 2006) to the previous version of the handbook (May 2006) has been integrated into this document."

Here is the short section relating to e-learning, unchanged since at least 2006:

"E-learning

257. E-learning is learning facilitated and supported through the use of technology. It may involve the use of computers, interactive whiteboards, digital cameras, the internet, the college intranet, virtual learning environments and electronic communication tools such as email, discussion boards, chat facilities and video conferencing. E-learning should form part of the overall teaching and learning strategy for courses. There should be appropriate references to e-learning in schemes of work, lesson plans, assignments, course reviews and staff development plans. An overall strategy for e-learning should be supported by senior managers. Effective e-learning should:

• improve learners’ understanding of topics or activities that are part of their academic or vocational programme;
• improve their skills and their knowledge of the technology being used;
• help to maintain their interest in their programme.

258. In particular, inspectors will evaluate whether:

• staff and learners have the relevant IT skills to make good use of e-learning facilities;
• there are adequate resources for e-learning;
• the quality and effectiveness of e-learning is well monitored;
• there are appropriate opportunities for learners to use e-learning facilities outside scheduled lessons."

There is a pretty striking mismatch between what inspectors will evaluate (in paragraph 258) and how e-learning is described (in paragraph 257); and I'd love to read an explanation of how, in formal terms, inspectors "evaluate whether the quality and effectiveness of e-learning is well monitored". Finally, there is a traditional emphasis on "IT skills", alongside silence on anything like "Internet literacy".

[With thanks to Marion Green of St Helen's College for highlighting this.]

Educational Technology Allowance - to help disadvantaged children get access to the Internet

The Times (and the BBC) report that on 23/9/2008 Gordon Brown is expected to announce a new Educational Technology Allowance:

"The Prime Minister is to announce proposals to ensure that all schoolchildren in Britain[*] have access to the internet. There are 1.4 million school-age children who live in households with no internet connections.

Under a scheme that will cost £300 million over three years Mr Brown will unveil an educational technology allowance, by which those households will be given vouchers of up to £700 to pay for broadband connections, technical support and computer equipment. The money will come from the schools and families department’s existing budget and mainly from efficiency savings.

Ministers say that lack of internet access at home disadvantages children when doing their homework and in acquiring computer skills, now needed for 90 per cent of new jobs. It would also help parents to keep in touch with schools and learn more about their children’s performance from the e-mails sent out by teachers."

* the scheme will apply in England only.

For some background to the Educational Technology Allowance, see this May 2008 Update on the Home Access Taskforce [44 kB PDF - 5 pages] report on the Becta web site, along with some January 2007 commentary here in Fortnightly Mailing.

Fostering Learning in the Networked World: The Cyberlearning Opportunity and Challenge, A 21st Century Agenda for the National Science Foundation

The US National Science Foundation's Fostering Learning in the Networked World: The Cyberlearning Opportunity and Challenge, A 21st Century Agenda for the National Science Foundation [1.5 MB PDF - 62 pages], was published in June 2008, but it passed me by. Its authors include Hal Abelson, Clifford A. Lynch, and Diana G. Oblinger.

I dislike the term "cyberlearning", defined in the report as "learning that is mediated by networked computing and communications technologies", but the report's recommendations have plenty of ambitious, we-do-not-do-anything-by-halves, bite.  (I've included them in full in the continuation post below. )

The striking thing for me is the report's recognition, which echoes the US National Academy of Engineering's selection of "advance personalized learning" as a Grand Engineering Challenge, that there is plenty of hard development and research to be done in the learning technology field. This contrasts with a view that is quite prevalent in the UK that with a bit more determination (discipline?) amongst teachers, the right kind of institutional leadership, and some improved coordination between agencies, the benefits of technology in learning will be easily realised.

How colleges improve - new Ofsted review document

Amended 19/9/2008

Ofsted inspects and regulates a whole swathe of English public sector education including schools, colleges, and work-based learning provision. How colleges improve [150 kB PDF, 32 pages], published on 12/9/2008, lists the characteristics of further education colleges that improved their performance between the first and second cycle Ofsted inspections, and describes the factors impeding change in those colleges judged by Ofsted to be satisfactory but not improving in second cycle inspections. Some of the descriptions of specific college weaknesses (and strengths) are instructive and authentic. There is one reference to personalisation (serving to show maybe that policy priorities flow slowly around the system), and the treatment of ICT, e-learning, and online learning, is very limited. (The latter is probably a consequence either of ICT in learning not really being on the radar of Ofsted or its inspectors, or of ICT in learning being too specific an issue to reach into a general review of this kind.) 

Paul Andrew's classy e-learning resources web site

Learning technologist Paul Andrews has made a classy, simple, public web site with links to free on-line services that in Paul's estimation are relevant or useful. You can stay updated with the site's RSS feed.

Peoples-uni: Building Public Health capacity using Internet-based e-learning

Peoples-uni has a new web site and is beginning to enrol students for six four-month on-line course modules starting in October:

• Foundation Sciences of Public Health: Introduction to Epidemiology Research Methods, Biostatistics, Evidence Based Practice
• Public Health Problems: Maternal Mortality, Preventing Child Mortality, Disaster Management and Emergency Planning

All of the modules, which are accredited by the UK Royal Society for Public Health, use Open Educational Resources. The cost per person per module in the current intake is USD50.

For more on Peoples-uni, see this November 2007 Guest Contribution by Dick Heller.

FreeMyFeed - a simple way to subscribe to an authenticated feed

I'm involved in project with a username and password protected web site. The project web site (provided by BaseCamp) has an RSS feed which enables users easily to keep up with changes to the site. The snag is that the feed is authenticated, which means that my preferred feed reader (Google Reader) cannot display the feed. FreeMyFeed solves this problem, by providing an alternative URL for the BaseCamp RSS feed, which Google Reader can display. FreeMyFeed has a promising looking approach to privacy:

"Usernames, passwords, feed URLs and feeds are never stored on the server. Usernames, passwords and feed URLs are only parsed from the alternate URL to retrieve your RSS feed on the fly from the original source and then are discarded."

With thanks to Neil Smith of Knowledge Integration for telling me about this solution.