"Rupert Murdoch uses eG8 to talk up net's power to transform education
News Corp chairman claims 'Victorian' schools are 'last holdout from digital revolution'
Kim Willsher in Paris
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 24 May 2011 18.10 BST
Rupert Murdoch, the News Corporation founder and chairman, used his address to the eG8 Forum in Paris on Tuesday to call for more investment in education and "unlocking the potential" of the world's children.
Murdoch said it was not a question of putting a computer in every school, but concentrating on opening up opportunities for youngsters to flourish by using targeted and tailored software.
News Corp moved into the $500bn (£310bn) US education sector in late 2010, paying about $360m in cash for 90% of technology company Wireless Generation, which provides mobile and web software to enable teachers to use data to assess student progress and deliver personalised learning."
We've had Ely Broad, Bill Gates, and a host of other billionaires (even George Lucas) attempting to "fix" our education system. They're not doing so well. What is so interesting to me about Murdoch, despite his pirate-like business practices, is that he sees what I think is the real direction for the future of education.
Oddly unlike his right-wing colleagues, he's not pushing for vouchers or more school privatization. Unlike the technocrats, he's not pushing for more and more computers in schools. He sees the solution to our schooling problems as "targeted and tailored software."
Many (maybe most) countries, including the U.S., lack the political will as societies to fix education the way that Finland did. Software is the other path.
Much discussion today centers around the platform. Will we use smart phones or e-tablets or netbooks? Will we see $1 apiece apps as the learning modules or cloud-based solutions? Will our new learning software run on iOS or Android? All of that is window dressing and barely worthy of discussion.
For me, Murdoch hit the nail on the head. We have too little software "targeted and tailored" to education or, at least, too little highly professional quality software.
Errh yes about Murdoch pushing "targeted and tailored software" , Harry. But see also: "News Corp moved into the $500bn (£310bn) US education sector in late 2010, paying about $360m in cash for 90% of technology company Wireless Generation, which provides mobile and web software to enable teachers to use data to assess student progress and deliver personalised learning."
So he is doing at software level what Microsoft etc were doing at hardware - and at times software - level: promoting his wares in a very juicy market.
We've had "targeted and tailored to education" software for decades, now: LMSs, addons to office suites, etc. Some good, some bad. The problem with software that is targeted and tailored to education is that it is a) often boring; b) perforce based on an abstract general idea of education; c) often remote from what gets used outside school.
Would it not be better to train teachers in adapting whatever software is generally available, be it desktop or on the cloud, to fit their and their specific students' needs?
My point is simply that Murdoch gets it. His motives don't have to be pure for us all to benefit from the light he's shining on educational technology.
Regarding the software, your points are well-taken. However, one extra qualification must be added. The software must be "good." That means it must avoid the problems you list.
"Would it not be better to train teachers in adapting whatever software is generally available, be it desktop or on the cloud, to fit their and their specific students' needs?'
I disagree with this analysis. Software not created for educational purposes will only adapt so far. It is, for example, word processing substituting for paper and pencil. That's worthy of doing but really makes no difference in instruction.
When software is created specifically for learning, it can reach much more deeply into the learning processes. It's not just peripheral but central to learning. You can adapt lots of software to education in lots of ways, and I've read of many very clever adaptations. Almost all could be done without the use of a computer, albeit somewhat less efficiently but nonetheless effectively.
I read Murdoch's call, which echoes something I've been saying for many years, as meaning that we have to build software that answers the necessities of learning. We don't have much today.
Taking up your example of word processing as substitute for pen and pencil , Harry: true, and that's what I retorted in the late 1990's to a digitalophobe academic, when we met about the Italian translation of one of his books, and he boasted of having got a letter from a publisher saying he was their last author to deliver typescripts on paper and not as a digital file. I pointed out that cut and paste, copy and paste (the things he particularly hated the ease of in digital media) existed in the real world looooooong before computers, let alone PCs, let alone the Web.
And yet... in 2007 I was asked to set up at very short notice an intensive preliminary French workshop for participants in a master course in intercultural studies: though in Lugano, the course was to be in French and English. I asked for access to the Moodle for the course, to store course materials there etc. The organizers refused: "The Moodle will only be explained to the students in the first week of the course proper".
The idea that graduate students needed to have a Moodle explained to them in 2007 seemed peregrine, but rather than arguing, I set up a for-free wiki instead.
At our first meeting, the students asked why we weren't using the Moodle, I repeated the official explanation, they laughed and got the hang of the wiki immediately. Then, for reading comprehension, they chose one of the assigned texts for the course: a longish book chapter they had received by e-mail as a grayish PDF based on a low-resolution scan, based on a reduced photocopy to make 2 pages fit on an A4 sheet: i.e. with no margin to take notes on.
So we printed the PDF, separated the pages with scissors, pasted the separate pages with glue sticks on new A4 sheets, to get wider margins to write in. And then we made a wiki page for it, copied in it the subheadings, between which the students, added the notes they were taking, working in groups on the new paper version. Result: http://micusif.wikispaces.com/Vinsonneau
setting tone of exploration and discovery, extremes, benefiting "all mankind"
Note parallels to Victor F's purposes and experiment. Image of scientific discovery as a northern passage Compare to history, obsessions and loss of associated with the Northwest Passage ~ for that matter, bear in mind the Columbus was search for a passage to the East.
Explorations = the history of unintended consequences
discovering a passage near the pole
to those countries
oh Shelley, self-elected and unacknowledged legislator of the world (see Defence of Poetry)
my failure
Six years have passed since I resolved on my present undertaking. I
can, even now, remember the hour from which I dedicated myself to this
great enterprise.
Letter 2
Archangel, 28th March, 17—
To Mrs. Saville, England
How slowly the time passes here, encompassed as I am by frost and snow
I have one want
I
have no friend
I
shall commit my thoughts to paper, it is true; but that is a poor
medium for the communication of feeling. I desire the company of a man
who could sympathize with me
it is a still greater evil to me that I
am self-educated
My lieutenant, for instance, is a man of
wonderful courage and enterprise; he is madly desirous of glory, or
rather, to word my phrase more characteristically, of advancement in
his profession.
I heard of a mariner equally noted for his
kindliness of heart and the respect and obedience paid to him by his
crew, I felt myself peculiarly fortunate in being able to secure his
services
"What a noble fellow!" you will exclaim. He is
so; but then he is wholly uneducated: he is as silent as a Turk, and a
kind of ignorant carelessness attends him, which, while it renders his
conduct the more astonishing, detracts from the interest and sympathy
which otherwise he would command.
I cannot describe to you my sensations on the near prospect of my
undertaking. It is impossible to communicate to you a conception of
the trembling sensation, half pleasurable and half fearful, with which
I am preparing to depart. I am going to unexplored regions
I shall kill no albatross; therefore do not
be alarmed for my safety or if I should come back to you as worn and
woeful as the "Ancient Mariner."
Continue for the present to write to me by every opportunity:
I may receive your letters on some occasions when I need them
Letter 3
July 7th, 17—
To Mrs. Saville, England
I write a few lines in haste to say that I am safe—and well advanced
on my voyage. This letter will reach England by a merchantman now on
its homeward voyage from Archangel
No incidents have hitherto befallen us that would make a figure in a
letter
Adieu, my dear Margaret
Letter 4
August 5th, 17—
To Mrs. Saville, England
So strange an accident has happened to us that I cannot forbear
recording it, although it is very probable that you will see me before
these papers can come into your possession.
we were nearly surrounded by ice, which closed
in the ship on all sides
we beheld, stretched out
in every direction, vast and irregular plains of ice, which seemed to
have no end.
a strange sight suddenly
attracted our attention and diverted our solicitude from our own
situation
a
being which had the shape of a man, but apparently of gigantic stature,
sat in the sledge and guided the dogs
talking to someone in the sea. It was, in fact, a sledge, like that we
had seen before, which had drifted towards us in the night on a large
fragment of ice. Only one dog remained alive; but there was a human
being within it
1st appearance of Victor Frankenstein, in futile pursuit of his creation / criado
will
you have the kindness to inform me whither you are bound?"
His limbs were
nearly frozen, and his body dreadfully emaciated by fatigue and
suffering. I never saw a man in so wretched a condition
Two days passed in this manner before he was able to speak, and I often
feared that his sufferings had deprived him of understanding.
I never saw a more
interesting creature: his eyes have generally an expression of
wildness, and even madness, but there are moments when, if anyone
performs an act of kindness towards him or does him any the most
trifling service, his whole countenance is lighted up, as it were, with
a beam of benevolence
generally melancholy and despairing, and sometimes he gnashes his
teeth
He must
have been a noble creature in his better days,
attractive and amiable
How can I see so
noble a creature destroyed by misery without feeling the most poignant
grief?
One man's life or death were but a small
price to pay for the acquirement of the knowledge which I sought, for
the dominion I should acquire and transmit over the elemental foes of
our race.
"we are unfashioned creatures, but half made up,
if one wiser, better, dearer than ourselves—such a friend ought to
be—do not lend his aid to perfectionate our weak and faulty natures. I
once had a friend, the most noble of human creatures, and am entitled,
therefore, to judge respecting friendship.
You seek for
knowledge and wisdom, as I once did; and I ardently hope that the
gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine
has been.
the stranger said to me,
exposing yourself to the same dangers which have rendered me
what I am, I imagine that you may deduce an apt moral from my tale,
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