A Changing Landscape

Spent today at the Higher Education Leadership Summit, organised by the Leadership Foundation in conjunction with JISC and the Open University. The first speaker was Martin bean, Vice Chancellor of the OU, and he gave an excellent opening address on the changing landscape of HE and its relationship to technology.

His three mega themes were:

• Globalisation - needs no explanation really
• Massification - the mass expansion of HE in he world. Currently the world can't provide enough physical Universities to fulfil the demand for HE. We need to move from thinking bricks and mortar to clicks and mortar.
• Privatisation - 1 in 3 students in the world are now studying in a private institution and the private sector will have an increasing role to play in UK HE. They have the expertise in brand, marketing and quality of service and we need to look at partnerships with them

All studies of what students want from their educational experience indicate that their digital lifestyles are worlds apart from our workstyles. He used a description of education given to him by a student - "Going to school's like getting on a plane. The door shuts behind you, you have to trust the guy at the front who you don't know and switch off all electronic devices".

Technology itself is not the answer - people need to be ready, willing and able to accept it, and all underlying processes have to have been put in place to allow technology to be successful. If you haven't got the money for staff development, don't invest in technology. Brainware is just as important as hardware and software.

His view is that Higher Education has to become more learner centric with personalised information feeds, mobile tools and personalised resource archives tagged to the student's preference serving up content they need in a way they want it. This will re-motivate learners and create a greater sense of personal fulfilment.

When asked how this was all going to be affordable, his view was that it doesn't have to funded from within the University. Use partnerships with Google, Microsoft, Apple and do it with someone else's pound. He encouraged everyone there (who were from a wide variety of roles in HE....) to be courageous and work with their IT Department not believe them when they gave you 10 different reasons why it won't work...

Buzzin..

There's a fair amount of buzz around at the moment, as Google announce another new feature. Buzz was only released yesterday, but there are already 2000 news articles about it when I checked a couple of minutes ago. There are those who love it, those who hate it, those who are sceptical, and those who like me are not sure what it could be used for. I've had a quick look as it's being rolled out gradually and I only got it this morning, and to me it seems at first to be a combination of some of the aspects of Facebook, and Twitter, with more use of location services. So, will it take off? Has it got a use in an education environment? Is it just another social networking service, and another inbox? I'm not sure, and am not sure what makes some services take off and other not. You would think that Google would have had a plan, but the last big product - Google Wave - seems to have gone very quiet. So, we'll wait and see. I'll give it a go, like I do most new things, and see what happens!

Edit: Something has been niggling me since I first posted this last night, and I've just realised what it is. The big difference between Buzz and other social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, is that this is based on email - the others are separate. I'm not sure I want them linked. Something also worried me when I first went to look at my profile, which Google had created for me, was that it listed the people I email and chat with most as suggested followers - it was up to me to turn this off, or it would open for everyone to see. I've found a post this morning which puts it better than I could. I'm a big believer in people taking responsibility for their own privacy and security settings and understanding their own electronic footprint, but also believe that service providers have a responsibility to clearly set out the implications of their default settings. I'm not sure that this is the case in this instance. Am I being oversensitive?

Ch-ch-changes

Lots of meetings again today - this morning a meeting to look at change management. We're on the way to implementing ITIL - in a way that suits us - and are mainly looking at problem, incident, change and test management. Some good processes already in place, and we've looked at the sorts and amounts of changes we make by logging them all for a month. Today we were looking at what change management processes to put in place for planned changes and emergency fixes. What changes will be pre-approved, and what will need to go through a CAB (Change Advisory Board). What systems will need more scrutiny than others, and what data changes (rather than configuration changes) won't need approval at all. We also looked at how we will handle emergency fixes out of hours. Lots of heated discussion, and probably more questions than answers, but I'm sure our change manager will make sense of it!

This afternoon I got together with the rest of the Executive Team where we covered a whole range of things - from what titles we're using for staff, to feedback we're received recently about our services, and appointing a new PA to work with us. We also had a good discussion on some of the financial pressures facing all Universities at the moment, and how we might react to them.

Finally we met with a staff development colleague to discuss holding another "World Cafe" event for all staff in the department. This is part of our on going staff development programme, and the feedback on the last one we had was very good. The aim will be to bring all staff together so that they can have a say in how we go forward as a department, particularly in the light of challenges we are all facing in the sector. Hopefully it will produce some good outputs, as well as being an opportunity to network with colleagues, and be fun as well!

Google CAB

Spent the day today at Google's headquarters in London at the inaugural meeting of the European Customer Advisory Board. Very good meeting - and an amazing place - would love to work there! As you might expect, lots of bright colours, open spaces, deckchairs, places for a power nap... And the food - lots of it - unlimited supply of snacks, cereals, smoothies and sweeties. And that's just in the "micro-kitchens". The canteen is something else.

Main business of the day was a look at the road map for the development of Google Apps, especially as it relates to education. Lots of cool things on the way which I can't tell you about because we were there under an NDA. But I was very impressed with some of the development work going on, especiallly around collaboration.

One thing I can tell you about is something that's already live - Google translate for apps. It can translate instantly between 51 languages, and is available for web pages and docs. The most impressive demonstration was it translating live chat - I can see a use for this not only in academic departments, but also in support services. Helping International students with IT problems for example.

We also had a long discussion about data - where is it stored, how secure is it, who has access to it - which are some of the questions we get asked whenever we mention to the possibility of rolling out Google Apps to staff. Answers to most of the questions are already available, but today we got a lot more details and a lot more reassurances especially around security and resilience.

It was good to meet folks from other Universities who have rolled out Google Apps, especially many colleagues from Europe, and I look forward to more such meetings.

So, the meetings over and I'm in my tiny hotel room, about to go out and see Priscilla Queen of the Desert - can't wait. I love a good show - especially one full of drag queens!

Snakes on a lego plane...

Last week I posted that I was disturbed by some aspects of the Digital Economy Bill. This week I added my signature on behalf of UCISA to an open letter sent by a number of organisations to the House of Lords about the provisions for copyright infringement and public access to the internet via institutions. It will be interesting to see what response we get.

Other things I've been doing in the last couple of days include pondering whether Flash will finally be killed off by Apple, and catching up with loads of reports that needed writing. Still not finished them all yet, but have a train journey tomorrow so that should help! Going to the inaugural meeting of the Google Apps Education European Customer Advisory Board, which I hope to be able to post about later this week.

And finally, because this is such a short post, something for you to look at especially if you like lego - a Lego Airbus. Full gallery of pictures here - isn't it great? I especially like the snakes.

Networking

At the end of last week following the UCISA meeting I went to the RUGIT awayday - tortuous travel arrangements between Manchester and Warwick meant that I missed the first couple of hours, but got there in time to hear an extremely good presentation and question and answer session with the Registrar from the University of Warwick. Of course, we concentrated a lot on the financial pressures facing Universities at the moment, and looking at how we are going to have to work together to get through them. Two points I thought were particularly well made were -
- we mustn't allow the government to divide and rule us,
- we have to get involved in the debate and not let others set our future vision and direction.

Other sessions over the two days included a presentation on CampusM (from me - getting good at it now!), the future of desktop computing and the benefits of a centralised IT service as compared to a devolved one. Lots of good discussion, and as always at these events, a lot of very useful networking.

Today, some of us visited the University of York to discuss our approach to collaborative software with them. In particular they were interested in the implementation of our collaboration environment uSpace (based on Jive SBS software). Lots of interesting questions - most of which we knew the answer to. And I even got to do my CampusM presentation again! Again, excellent networking and exchange of ideas.

UCISA Planning

Today was a planning meeting for the UCISA Executive where we look at our activities for the next year, and how we can best serve the interests of our members. As always, lots of events are planned - these take the form of conferences, workshops, training courses, seminars and management days. Topics to be covered this year include Business Intelligence,Research management systems, Business process engineering, VOIP, CCTV, Unified Communications, Mobile Computing, Effective procurement, and Customer relationship management. Although there is an office of full time staff to help with the organisation of these events, much effort comes from the membership of the various groups and is voluntary - it is much appreciated.

We also looked at the top current concerns of our members, and how we might address those over the coming year. Not surprisingly, the top one was funding. We are all going to be faced with spending less, doing more with less, and deciding what we can stop doing. We had a very lively discussion on areas we should be looking at, including more use of shared services, outsourcing and centralisation of services and support. We will be having an event in the next few months to look in more detail at a vision of what IT Services might be like in 5 years time.

The second top concern was the whole area of sustainability and carbon reduction. There are a number of drivers for this - cost savings, climate change, and perhaps not least, carbon reduction targets we've all been given by the funding council and and the subsequent fines if we don't meet them. Another event to cover this area is being planned, together with the collection and publication of a number of good practice case studies. So, lots to keep UCISA occupied over the next year.

iCertainlyWill

I've got round to this really late in the day, and so many people have blogged today about the iPad I nearly didn't bother. But then I decided it would be interesting to put down what I think about it today, so that I could compare with how I feel when I've got my hands on one, and when versions 2, 3, 4 have come out, or when it's followed the same fate as the Newton.

So - initial thoughts watching the launch and subsequent videos were wow - looks like I thought it would, very sleek, beautifully designed, looks like a great interface and screen, very fast, great quality video and photos. Typical Apple attention to quality, design and detail. Not too keen on the name and the subsequent jokes ("does it come with wings?" being my favourite) but that will pass. And yes, I am lusting to get my hands on one.

So - what about the criticisms and disappointments. What's it for? Why hasn't it got this? Or that? Is it supposed to be a big iPhone, or a netbook? The last question to my mind is the easiest, and the key to the previous one. The answer is neither - it isn't a phone (that's why you can't make calls on it - and why would you want to on something that size), and it's not a netbook. A couple of blog posts have summed the issues up for me, the most eloquent being Stephen Fry's - he puts things so much better than I could! The other is a short post from Mashable - I particularly like the thought of an engineer breaking it to Steve Jobs that he forgot to put the camera in....

I personally think it's going to be a great device for consuming content (you can use it to create it, but I don't think it's going to be significant), web browsing and for gaming. The latter is where I can see it really taking off very quickly.

And yes, iCertainlyWill.

I'm disturbed...

...or concerned. Or maybe both. A number of things buzzing round the blogosphere/twitterverse/tinterwebs which are making me uncomfortable.

I'm concerned about the Digital Economy Bill, which is currently working its way through the House of Lords and is the legislative response to the Digital Britain Report. It seems to be to be unduly draconian in its response to copyright and file sharing. I truly believe that the current copyright laws are not appropriate for today's digital age - if you don't believe me, listen to Larry Lessig. This bill does not help, in my opinion, and in fact will only serve to reduce the advantage we should be taking of new technologies, putting undue pressure for example on account holders and holding them responsible for the behaviour of other users. Our own Professor of Law has already written that she fears that it could lead to the demise of free w-ifi networks.

I'm disturbed by the involvement of the police in what seems to be a spat between two bloggers. The BBC correspondent Rory Cellan Jones covered it today, but currently there are many blog posts about it - most expressing support for the blogger who received a visit from the police and subsequently took his blog down. Even more interestingly, it is alleged by the blogger that the police got his personal details from the University where he was a student (not confirmed by the University), and that they "relayed a message from the head of ICT department that I shouldn't be using university property in such ways" - also not confirmed. There are a couple of aspects to this case which disturb me. As a blogger, I'm worried that if I post something that someone else doesn't like they could complain to the police and I might get a visit. As an IT Director I need to question what we would have done in these circumstances. How much information would we have asked for before releasing personal details to the police? What does our code of conduct say about use of University facilities, and what are our views on students posting controversial, but legal, blog posts? Peter Tinson has posted a good summary of the issues for University IT Directors here.

Finally - I am bloody angry about this. Irish blogger posts a fairly innocuous post last November about what it was like being a female air traffic controller when she first started nearly ten years ago. Quite a chatty post, nothing particularly controversial, some comments about how things have changed - that's all. Some (insert suitable adjective here - I can think of plenty) "journalist" called Luke Byrne at the Daily Mail found it and published an article under the heading "The Male Chauvinist Pigs of Irish Air Traffic Control" complete with picture of blogger. She knew nothing about it, wasn't contacted for comment, wasn't asked for permission to have pieces of her blog misquoted, or her picture used. Utterly disgraceful, sloppy, lazy journalism. I wish her all the best and hope she gets some sort of retraction or apology from them.

Re-using labs, and getting rid of paper

Liaison Meeting with the Faculty of Science today- lots on the agenda, including big discussion on teaching space. We're trying to make the best use of our estate, and reduce space if we can - we need to reduce our carbon emissions, like all Universities, and reducing space is one way of contributing to it. In order to reduce space, we have to utilise what we have much better, and we were discussing today ways of doing that. Our common timetabling project should help, but we're also looking at other innovative ideas, such as using laboratories as computer rooms when they're not in use for practical classes. Obvous we can't have hard wired PCs in there, but we could have a stack of laptops using the wireless network that could be brought out when needed. Issues to address obviously such as what applications we can deliver to them, can we cope with 75 simultaneous connections to wifi, have we got the staff to maintain them - but nothing insurmountable. Of course students could also use their own laptops, if we could get the applications to them. Hopeful our new desktop project will solve that one...

Another area where we need to improve our carbon footprint is in printing - and we are currently going in to departments carrying out printing audits to see how we can help them print less, and where they do have to print, do it in a more efficient and carbon friendly way. I'm still amazed by how little people consider the cost (£ and C) of printing. The number of meetings I go to and see people clutching folders of single sided papers, carefully printed out by clerical staff I assume, often with colour banners, and presumeably filed when they get back - despite the fact that nearly all papers are held electronically centrally. Or thrown away, often having never even been referred to in the meeting. Hobby horse of mine I'm afraid!

Finally today we had a long look at our budget, and discussed costs, prioritisation and timing of our capital spending. Very difficult to do when you can't get good cost estimates for projects which are not complete, and will be making decisions about possible changes to technologies and infrastructure. Lots of flexibility needed!

Spotify - banned!

It's always interesting when another University hits the press - and any interest is usually accompanied by a sigh of relief that it's not us. This week it's the turn of Oxford University who have banned the use of Spotify on their campus network, and made it into many papers and web sites, but I think the news first broke on the University Student newspaper site. It interested me for a number of reasons - the first being that I use Spotify a lot, and am often to be heard using it to listen to music while I work. It's legal, only offers up adverts about every 20 minutes, and seems to use very little bandwidth. In fact, although we have nearly 25,000 students and assume many of them use it, it forms a very small part of our traffic - it doesn't even merit its own classification and is lumped into "miscellaneous". The big bandwidth usage comes from flash video and YouTube, and I can't imagine banning them.

So - why have Oxford chosen this application to ban? Well, I assume (although I could be wrong) that as their University Computer Usage Rules state that unauthorised use of peer to peer networking software is forbidden, and as Spotify is classed as peer to peer, it's banned. Were they right to do it? Well, it is obviously their decision and they have to do what's best for their network and users, but I do have my own opinion!

I think University IT departments have to embrace and facilitate the use of new technology - we should no longer be the gatekeepers, banning things because they use our precious resources. We will be fighting a losing battle if we try to do so - new things will always appear to replace the things we ban. How many of us tried to ban Skype because we were worried about the security issues and bandwidth use? Now it's a common way of communicating. Yes there are bandwidth issues with more and more services coming on stream, but with good monitoring and traffic management you can ensure that one type of traffic doesn't degrade the service for others.

I'm always depressed when I speak to people outside of our sector where access to social networking sites and other social media is banned - I really hope Universities never go down that route. The IT department as the department that likes to say "no" should be a thing of the past.

Edit: Just to confirm what I said in this post about Local Authorities...

A laboratory in your pocket

The last session of the Apple Leadership event last week was about mobile computing, and how the smart phone could change the way we deliver content to students. As well as delivering web applications and native apps, lectures and electronic resources, they are starting to be used in scientific experiments and for capturing data. Pasco have developed the Spark app for the iPhone and iPodtouch which offers a variety of experiments, and they have also developed a series of probes and sensors which can be connected to the iPhone to collect real time data. Coupled with some of the mini devices we've been looking at recently such as the pico projectors, students will soon be able to carry a mobile laboratory around with them.

After dashing back from London I went to another strategic liaison meeting - this time with the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health. We talked about a number of new initiatives, and some issues which are particular to that area - links with the NHS networks, access to services for staff that we don't employ, and dealing with students who are away from the campus for much of the time. We also spent quite a lot of time talking about teaching space - especially the types of space they need - flat floored, flexible, IT equipped, good AV facilities, and in particular large enough to cope with the size of classes medicine teaches. The equipment and infrastructure we can provide - but not the spaces.

BETTer technology

Spent most of today at BETT in Olympia, I've never been before so didn't know what to expect. well for a start it's massive - both of Olympia's Halls full, plus both galleries, plus some side rooms. Lots of different areas - Playful Learning, Future Learning Spaces, and Special Education Needs just a few of them. Many hundreds of exhibitors of educational technology.

Some themes/highlights for me included:

• An emphasis on safety and security. Lots of stuff around security - web filtering, safe searching, detection of cyberbullying. Something that's very important in schools.
• Biometrics - a very good demo of a device which recognises the pattern of veins in your fingers (which I didn't even know was unique) to identify you
  
• Facial recognition software - to be used in classes instead of taking registers, and to detect latecomers!!
• Lots of green themes - apparently I saw the only environmentally certified interactive whiteboard in the world!
• Masses of different sorts of displays - huge interactive plasma screens, whiteboards, video walls and even 3D interactive projectors
• Future learning space design with some very exciting use of space with innovative IT and furniture layouts
• Some excellent learning packages, and it was interesting to see how much gaming is having an influence on design. The Playful Learning section was my favourite - even Lego had a stand - we should do more exciting and playful learning in Universities I think!

I spent sometime at the Microsoft stand looking at demos of Office 2010, particularly the web apps which look impressive, and I was initially impressed by the video conferencing app which JANET were promoting, until I was told that it was a windows only app.

The exhibition was definitely worth attending, and certainly opened my eyes to how much great and innovative technology schoolkids are being exposed to, and how that will be influencing their expectations when they come to University. No wonder they think our VLE is clunky!