Graham Davies

MS threatened? I am not convinced that Linux has made the inroads that its supporters claim that it has. I just looked at the visitors' stats for an educational website that I maintain. The stats include info about the browsers and OS used by visitors. The most recent stats, based on around 14000 visitors, break down as follows: OS Win98 45% - I use Win98 2E. It's stable and I see no reason to upgrade it. Win2000 22% WinXP 12% WinNT 6% Win95 6% Mac 2% Others - no significant data Linux: just 100 visitors out of 14000 Browser IE5 47% IE6 38% Netscape4 4% Opera 2% IE4 1% Netscape5 1% Others - no significant data Don't get me wrong. I'm not in love with MS, but Bill Gates seems to be hanging in there. People use whatever most other people use. Betamax was a better system than VHS but most people chose VHS - probably due to the wider choice of recorded materials produced for that system. Macs are better computers than PCs, but they hardly show up in the educational market now. I have concrete evidence from the steadily falling sales of Mac software by my business to schools over the last 10 years - down to around 2% right now. Macs hang on in niche markets, e.g. graphic design and printing because every self-respecting designer and printer uses a Mac. My daughter's graphic design business uses exclusively Macs - and she wishes that school art departments would train kids to use them too as it would save a lot of re-training time.

The basic problem with people who are enthusiastic about ICT - and this includes myself - is that they are unaware that ICT scares the wits out of a substantial proportion of the population. I retired from teaching in 1993 and I hardly ever mix socially with teachers these days - although I regularly contribute to INSET courses in local schools. I spend most of my social life with my neighbours, who belong to a variety of professions: bricklayer, taxi driver, hairdresser, factory worker, landscape gardener, electrician, publican etc. A handful of them use computers at home, mainly for playing games, and I have helped them out on occasions, tidying up their hard disks, installing anti-virus software etc. They all have TV sets and most of them have satellite TV, VCRs and mobile phones. Computers are a low priority. All have children or have had children who have now reached adulthood and are bringing up their own families. I guess I am talking about the "have nots" - not "have nots" in the sense that they don't have money, but "have nots" in the sense that they don't have much knowledge about ICT and are not particularly interested in acquiring it. As Ian says, we don't need cutting-edge technology. We need to get people to use basic ICT technology. The NOF training programme aimed to bring teachers up to scratch in ICT, but what did OFSTED say about the programme? To quote from its April 2002 report: OFSTED Report, April 2002: ICT in schools: effect of government initiatives. See the OFSTED website, http://www.ofsted.gov.uk, where the report can be downloaded in PDF format: http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/publications/docs/19.pdf If ICT training has been that ineffective in schools then we have an awful lot of work to do to get the vast majority of the population to use ICT in a routine way in order to further their children's education. As Ian says: By the way, I am not convinced that Linux has made the inroads that its supporters claim that it has. I just looked at the visitors' stats for an educational website that I maintain. The stats include info about the browsers and OS used by visitors. The most recent stats, based on around 14000 visitors, break down as follows: OS Win98 45% - I use Win98 2E. It's stable and I see no reason to upgrade it. Win2000 22% WinXP 12% WinNT 6% Win95 6% Mac 2% Others - no significant data Linux: just 100 visitors out of 14000 Browser IE5 47% IE6 38% Netscape4 4% Opera 2% IE4 1% Netscape5 1% Others - no significant data Don't get me wrong. I'm not in love with MS, but Bill Gates seems to be hanging in there.

Sorry to disturb the discussion on the merits of various DVD players but the pressure at the moment seem to be for schools to purchase a VLE.

I just bought the cheapest one offered by the the local discount store - bearing a brand name that I recognised. It took me a lot of searching through the manual to find out how to do all the different things, however - there's too much choice. The main problem I find with DVD players is that you have one set of controls that relate to every DVD - i.e. the player controls such as being able to jump to a title/chapter, playing fast forward, freezing frames, etc - and then you have a different set of controls that are related to each individual disc. You thus have a different navigation system for each disc, and this can be very eccentric! I bought the first part of Lord of the Rings at Christmas 2002, and I am still trying to work out its navigation system!

This seems very short-sighted. I have worked as an external examiner for three different UK universities over the last 10 years. All three now require essays submitted by students to be in word-processed format. My subject discipline is Modern Foreign Languages. We recently introduced a module on Computer Aided Assessment at the ICT4LT site: http://www.ict4lt.org/en/en_mod4-1.htm It may be of general interest too. We cover topics such as using Microsoft Word's features to mark students' work, online diagnostic language testing and overcoming problems of plagiarism. One of the advantages of computers is that they offer tremendous scope for autonomous learning. I only ever attended one course in ICT, way back in 1979. It focused exclusively on ICT applications to language and literature - ICT training has to be subject-specific, otherwise it can seem pointless. Since then I have been completely in control of my learning curve, drawing on the expertise of others whenever I needed it, experimenting with different approaches to see if they worked and, more recently, using the Web as a huge research library. Laptops are a vital tool in autonomous learning. What bothers me most about modern approaches to e-learning is that they are often wrapped up in controlled environments. I prefer a much freer approach. When I designed the ICT4LT site I resisted wrapping it up in a controlled environment, preferring instead to offer a variety of materials into which teachers could dip as and when they needed to, addressing questions to experts via a feedback form if necessary. Every module can also be printed and can be used as a support for face-to face training - it is assumed that face-to-face training is essnetial at some stage. I took note of research by experts such as Jakob Nielsen, who found that people read around 25%-30% more slowly from the computer screen and tend to skim rather than read word by word: see "Be Succinct! Writing for the Web", Alertbox for March 15, 1997: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9703b.html

How about the electronic whiteboard? See: http://www.thereviewproject.org http://www.g2fl.greenwich.gov.uk/temp/whiteboards My DVD player - a Philips bought around two years ago - can do all of this and more. I can pinpoint a precise section, slow it down, freeze it, play it backwards, etc, and jump to any scene anywhere on the disk instantly. I can also switch subtitles (translations or closed captions) on and off. Are British schools so well resourced that all students can access a computer every lesson? The site I work at at the moment is encouraging web based lessons, but we have 5 computers for each secondary class of 25 plus. What is OFSTED?

My DVD player - a Philips bought around two years ago - remembers where I left off. I can select Resume from the menu or select a specific scene to jump to. I have retired from teaching. I got fed up with increasing bureaucracy and management interference. My last job was a university language centre director. I accepted an early retirement package in 1993 - a golden handshake and an inflation-related pension for life. Now I just do free-lance ICT training and occasional consultancy work. I manage two websites: http://www.ict4lt.org - ICT training materials for language teachers http://www.camsoftpartners.co.uk - my business partnership My CV at at: http://www.camsoftpartners.co.uk/cvgd.htm I'll be taking a two-week skiing holiday in St Johann in Tirol, Austria, from the end of this week. That's one of the joys of early retirement!

The is a CD-ROM dedicated to Le Petit Prince: The CD-ROM gives an engaging on screen version of the text of this well-known story, complete with St Exupéry’s own illustrations. There are interactive games and a lot of information about the author. The user can also click on passing planets to see and hear characters too. It's listed in Camsoft's online CD-ROM list: http://www.camsoftpartners.co.uk/cdlist.htm

I should perhaps add that most of the recent articles that I have written - mainly on MFL/ICT and ICT training for language teachers - can be accessed via my personal website: http://www.camsoftpartners.co.uk/websites.htm - Click on "G" for "Graham" and you'll find a list of them. I would be flattered if a teacher forwarded any of them to a colleague and I have no objections to multiple printed copies being made for distribution in an educational context, e.g. for training workshops. I would, however, object strongly - and have done on one occasion - if these materials appeared on a public website or Intranet without my permission having been sought. As academic coordinator of the ICT4LT website, I have had a part in the commissioning of original materials that are subject to similar conditions: http://www.ict4lt.org. There are two articles at the ICT4LT website - by Brian McCarthy and Mark Warschauer - that I thought were so useful that I sought the permission of the authors to mirror them at the ICT4LT site. Both authors agreed immediately that this would be OK. It's always worth asking! Sometimes you may make efforts to contact the creator of a work for permission to reproduce it and fail. In such cases you may decide to risk reproducing the work anyway - and I know some publishing houses are prepared to take such a risk and insert an indication that they will "remove and desist" immediately if there is a legal comeback. Technically, however, this is still an infringement of copyright and you would be advised to take legal advice before taking such a step. There is the case of a person who reproduced Gerard Hoffnung's "The Bricklayer's Lament" without seeking permission. He was forced to remove it - some years ago, I believe. The message indicating that it has been removed is still there: http://paul.merton.ox.ac.uk/work/bricklayer.html I understand that Hoffnung's widow keeps a close watch on copyright breaches.

Could be a good idea. Using Internet radio and Internet TV is more or less established practice in MFL. Personally, however, I prefer digital TV and satellite TV – it’s a lot clearer and I can watch it in the comfort of an armchair instead of sitting upright two feet away from a computer screen. Kidon is a useful source of information on international media of all sorts: http://www.kidon.com/media-link/index.shtml Sunset Radio offers links to Internet radio stations all around the world. Foreign language broadcasts and some great music stations too: http://www.sunsetradio.com Adodoc is a collection of exercises and activities centred on French radio and TV broadcasts: http://www.adodoc.net You can even keep up your Latin by listening to and reading the news. This is the website of the Finnish radio station that broadcasts in Latin and maintains a Latin language website with news reports http://www.yleradio1.fi/tiede/nuntii - plus an active discussion list. I have a few other Internet TV links listed at: http://www.camsoftpartners.co.uk/websites.htm

Sorry about that! I thought the warning was worth issuing as over the years I have seen many teachers get themselves into hot water over copyright issues. Unfortunately, it happens all the time! You automatically own copyright on everything original that you produce. Yes, it is a good idea, and you can certainly pass on ideas and links to websites. Copyright on images is jealously guarded by their creators, and they are well protected under copyright law. My daughter is a professional graphic designer and runs her own business. I always seek her advice with regard to images – and the restrictions on using images are both surprising and alarming. If you make an image public you must seek permission from the copyright owner, unless it is stated that it is in the public domain or is declared copyright-free and publishable subject to an acknowledgment of its source. See the Technical Advisory Service for Images (TASI) website: http://www.tasi.ac.uk. You are thereby disseminating a resource without the permission of the copyright owner, and that does not count as Fair Dealing, unless you are making it available to the individual for the purpose of their private study or research. The following BECTA document summarises what you can and cannot do: http://www.ictadvice.org.uk/downloads/guid..._electronic.doc This document contains the following section:

Fair Dealing in the UK excludes dissemination of copyright material, e.g. publishing it on the Web or making it available via a resource centre. You may be able to plead Fair Dealing if, for example, you use copyright material within the confines of your own classroom on the grounds that the economic impact on the copyright owner may be negligible, but the moment you make multiple copies of a work or pass it around to other schools you are asking for trouble. See: http://www.intellectual-property.gov.uk/st.../exceptions.htm http://www.intellectual-property.gov.uk/st...air_dealing.htm Watch out for copyright bounty hunters! I can cite a real case. Regarding the situation in the US, see Myth No. 2 and Myth No. 4 (Re: Fair Use) at Brad Templeton's website: http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html If the work in question is your own creation then you need to protect it. The BECTA ICT Advice site contains at least one document that tells you how to do this.

... and I'll add a shorter description to my "Favourites" list.

Christine writes: I have already indicated in another part of this Forum that setting up a resource bank and sharing resources via the Internet is fraught with problems concerning copyright. If you post a resource on a website or disseminate it by other electronic means you must ensure that it is an original work and does not contain copyright material. For example, if you wish to disseminate a PowerPoint resource that contains images and texts lifted from other sources you must make sure that you have sought permission from their copyright owners – and it makes no difference whether you charge for your resource of offer it for free. Above all, don’t assume that just because something is on the Web you can do what you like with it. All resources on the Web are subject to copyright unless it is explicitly stated otherwise. I manage an MFL-related website that contains a selection of resources donated by teachers: http://www.ict4lt.org. I ask all teachers sending resources to me to endorse a form containing the following statement: "Guarantee of originality: The Author warrants that the Work is an original composition and that it in no way infringes any existing copyright either in whole or in part and that it contains no material which may be considered libellous or defamatory. The Author shall indemnify the Publisher against all actions, proceedings, claims and demands made against the Publisher by reason of anything contained within the Work constituting an infringement of copyright or being libellous or defamatory and against all costs, damages or expenses in respect of such action, proceeding, claim or demand." See the guidelines that I drew up at: http://www.ict4lt.org/en/en_copyright.htm These relate mainly to MFL, but there are links to other sites, including sites that offer advice on specific educational issues and concessions, e.g. the BECTA ICT Advice site, which contains several documents on copyright that explain clearly what you are allowed and not allowed to do.

John makes three very important points: I agree 100%! Absolutely! Hear! Hear! The OU tends to hold off introducing new technologies as a means of delivering its courses - it's a political thing as they don't want to exclude people who don't have access to the new technologies. They therefore tend to wait until a new technology is well established before integrating it into their courses. However, the OU is doing important leading-edge research into e-learning and some interesting experiments are going on, e.g. in the Institute for Educational Technology: http://iet.open.ac.uk. I have contacts in the languages departments who are engaged in exciting research projects that have been presented at EUROCALL conferences: http://www.eurocall-languages.org. The OU is probably the most experienced and most successful distance-learning institution in the world. They have a very practical approach to e-learning and need to be listened to.

I am familar with Blackboard and with WebCT. Frankly, I don't like either environment. I find both environments too cumbersome for the average learner at school. They may be OK in a business environment or a university, however, where the trainees/students have access to good technical support. I favour something much simpler: a bank of resources that can be downloaded and used by teachers in the classroom. These may include worksheets that that can printed off or interactive multimedia materials that can be used either in online or offline mode. The powers-that-be are making e-learning too complicated.

Having been involved in moderating a forum once before (now defunct, I'm afraid), I would exercise a word of caution in setting up a resource bank. Many of the resources that were posted by teachers to the forum that I moderated were clearly in breach in copyright and I therefore had to reject them. Some of the resources posted were PowerPoint presentations that contained images and texts that were clearly lifted from other sources. Once you make such materials available on a public website you are in effect disseminating them, which requires permission from the copyright owners - subject to certain and not necessarily automatic concessions for education - regardless of whether you charge for such materials or offer them for free. I asked all teachers posting materials to the forum to endorse a form containing the following statement: "Guarantee of originality: The Author warrants that the Work is an original composition and that it in no way infringes any existing copyright either in whole or in part and that it contains no material which may be considered libellous or defamatory. The Author shall indemnify the Publisher against all actions, proceedings, claims and demands made against the Publisher by reason of anything contained within the Work constituting an infringement of copyright or being libellous or defamatory and against all costs, damages or expenses in respect of such action, proceeding, claim or demand." See the guidelines I drew up at: http://www.ict4lt.org/en/en_copyright.htm

Icych writes: I believe I am right in saying that there was a case of a university in North America videoing their staff giving lectures and then making the video recordings available via the university's intranet, thereby attempting to make the staff redundant and replace them with technician. I can't remember the name of the university, but the case was brought to my attention by a Canadian colleague, and I understand it resulted in bitter strike action. As for rights issues, there are constant breaches of copyright in education. See the following site for guidance. It relates mainly to MFL, but there are links to more general sites concerning IPR: http://www.ict4lt.org/en/en_copyright.htm A new profession has emerged - the copyright bounty hunter. Do a search under Google using the words "copyright bounty". I just did and found the following more sinister description of the copyright bounty hunter: "I've always had people come up to me with examples of friends or neighbors who have been turned in for using Walt Disney graphics and were fined three to five thousand dollars. Many teachers feel they don't have to bother with the copyright law because the "copyright police" aren't going into their classroom to check on them. However, the most common way that teachers end up in court over copyright violation is when a disgruntled employee turns in the teacher down the hall. The "copyright bounty-hunters" are out in force--and, yes, they may very well be in your school." http://lserver.aea14.k12.ia.us/TechStaffDev/copyright.html I can cite a real case involving my own business, whereby a copyright bounty hunter (probably a parent) reported my local school to the Federation Against Software Theft (FAST) for distributing software produced by my business to pupils at the school. What the bounty hunter did not know, however, was that my business had an agreement with the school, subject to a licence fee, whereby the school was allowed to distribute the software to pupils. I had to write to FAST explaining the situation.

The “e” stands for “electronic”, but it tends to be understood as “electronic” in the narrower sense of ICT rather than including, for example, television, VCRs, DVD-Video players, etc. The DfES in the UK defines e-learning thus: “If someone is learning in a way that uses information and communication technologies (ICTs), they are doing e-learning.” Unfortunately, the “e” has been too closely associated with distance learning rather than using ICT in general. So in some people’s minds e-learning means using the Web in distance learning mode – which is just one of its manifestations. Marco is quite right in saying that many publishers have just translated their textbooks into digital format. This is not what e-learning is all about. As a teacher of modern foreign languages I – like most of my colleagues – have never relied entirely on textbooks. In my earliest days as a language learner in the 1950s I was aware of the importance of audio media: I had access only to a radio, a record player and a reel-to-reel tape recorder at the time, but they were extremely useful. By the time I became a teacher in the 1960s we had TV, VCRs and audio-active-comparative (AAC) tape recorders that were capable of presenting a native speaker model for the learner to respond to, i.e. recording his/her own voice and playing it back without erasing the original audio track. In other words, as a learner and teacher of modern languages I have been a user of multimedia for around 50 years. When affordable microcomputers appeared in the late 1970s they were silent – a frustration for language teachers – and we had to wait around 10 years for proper multimedia computers to appear. Wonderful! All the media that we had used in separate formats were now rolled into one, including AAC facilities (so-called “virtual language labs”). Then in the 1990s the Web appeared – more frustration, as it could not deliver high-quality sound and video. The sound was fuzzy, and the video clips were of postage-stamp size and continually hiccuped. Video on CD-ROM was not much better than video on the Web, but the sound quality on CD-ROM was superb. The big breakthrough in video came with the advent of new formats such as MPEG, and now DVD-Videos and DVD-ROMs offer excellent quality video. Video quality on the Web is still a problem. Language teachers have got used to using high-quality video, drawing on foreign language broadcasts via satellite TV, and now we have DVD-Videos and DVD-ROMs that offer high-quality video with varying possibilities of interaction, including useful facilities such as switching subtitles on and off – an excellent aid for language teachers – and slotting one’s own voice into role-plays. But look at most of the websites that offer video broadcasts, e.g. the BBC, TV5 and Deutsche Welle, and the quality is, frankly, poor. I access BBCi on broadband, and it’s still not up to the standard that I need for teaching. It hiccups at peak times and the screen is too small. Now that I am used to crystal-clear digital TV at home – with an increasing degree of interaction – I expect much better than this. And I still find the Web frustrating insofar as I have not yet seen a website that offers AAC exercises, which are a feature of many CD-ROMs and DVD-ROMs. For examples of what can be done in a Web environment see LeLoup J. & Ponterio R. (2003) "Interactive and multimedia techniques in online language lessons: a sampler", Language Learning and Technology 7, 3: http://llt.msu.edu/vol7num3/net/default.html. It's an interesting collection of materials, but almost everything illustrated here could be implemented better and with more spontaneous interaction in an offline environment, e.g. on CD-ROM or DVD-ROM. To summarise the main point of this little historical excursion, it appears that every technological leap forward has been accompanied by a technological leap backwards. If you embrace the new technology 100% and reject the old you end up making pedagogical compromises. As a teacher, I refuse to make pedagogical compromises. I use those aspects of new technologies that offer something genuinely new and useful and continue to use older technologies until the new technologies catch up. E-learning still has a lot of catching up to do, and the Web is not the panacea.

I'll be there on Thu, 8 Jan, and after that I'm doing something much more sensible, i.e. skiing in Austria for two weeks.

If the focus in e-learning – as it appears to be – is on distance education then we need to look carefully at the experiences of distance-learning institutions. My wife Sally embarked upon an Open University degree course in the 1970s, finishing in the early 1980s with a very respectable degree, having never sat a public examination in the whole of her school career. In those days the OU distance-learning materials dropped through our letter box, backed up by TV and radio broadcasts at very unsocial hours (we didn’t have a VCR, but we did have a tape recorder). What made the whole thing work was the human factor, i.e. the weekly telephone contact with the tutors, the meetings with other students at the local tech college, the one-week residential summer school but, above all, first-class teaching materials. Technology has changed the ways in which materials are presented and delivered, but let us not forget the lessons of the past…

The BBC is an excellent organisation, and I have been involved as a consultant to the BBC in the production on online learning materials. What I found frustrating, however, was the way in which the Web environment chosen by the BBC for the delivery of the materials forced the designers to make compromises that I found pedagogically undesirable. This was partly due to the constraints of the Web itself and partly due to the difficulties of programming in a Web environment. I was involved in the production of a series of CD-ROMs for the universities TELL Consortium in the mid-1990s. When I demonstrate these CD-ROMs to teachers now their reaction is often: “Oh, I didn’t realise that it was possible to do that!” The problem is that most teachers (and many designers) who have got into ICT in the last 10 years have only been exposed to a Web environment and know nothing about the remarkable progress that was made in interactive learning in the 1980s and early 1990s. A lot of expertise and knowledge has now been lost. If the BBC materials in which I was involved were reversioned on CD-ROM they could be improved immeasurably. John writes: I am not sure that this is true. I run a small software development and retailing business in partnership with my wife and daughter. We were not in financial trouble until Curriculum Online came on the scene – it’s delayed launch almost bankrupted us, and now I waste many hours coping with COL bureaucracy that eat into time that could be spent more profitably. Initially, I wanted no part in Curriculum Online, but I was forced to register for the scheme and to register the products that we sell so that schools could use their eLC funding to buy them. I had to sign a 40-plus page agreement and fill in a 9-page electronic “tagging” form for each of our products, making sure that I had not missed one of the hundreds of (often hidden) checkboxes that the form contains. I now have to make a monthly report to the DfES on products that have been purchased with eLC funding and the names and addresses of the schools that have bought them. There is little quality control on products that appear at the COL site. I just complete the tagging form and upload the data to the COL site, and the product is listed there within a few minutes. BECTA carries out random checks, but so far they have only checked one of our products and they did not fully understand what it was about. There are independent product evaluation agencies appointed by the DfES but they charge around 300 pounds to carry out an evaluation for each product – a fee that a small business can ill afford (and which I consider unethical in any case). I have read some of the evaluations. Most of them are not up to scratch and one evaluation that I read conveyed completely the wrong impression. John writes: Yes, Curriculum Online is indeed a disgraceful waste of taxpayers’ money, and the BBC is now tied into the scheme. With all these free materials floating around, small businesses are struggling to survive. Many will go under in the next five years. On the other hand, free is not necessarily good. If you buy a product you expect it to be of good quality. If it’s free you may find it’s not up to scratch and you may find you cannot get technical support if it does not work. One of the problems that I have identified with regard to free materials produced by teachers is that they are often compilations containing copyright material, e.g. PowerPoint presentations containing photographs and sound recordings gleaned from the Web. I found around a dozen compilations of this sort at a college’s public website. I wrote to the site managers, asking them if they were aware of the possible copyright breaches the materials contained. Their reply indicated that they simply hadn’t a clue. I directed them to the CIEL site and to the ICT4LT page for advice (below). They immediately withdrew most of the materials. The CIEL website, University of Southampton: http://ciel.lang.soton.ac.uk/copyright.htm ICT4LT: General guidelines on copyright: http://www.ict4lt.org/en/en_copyright.htm

I agree with most of what John writes. Market distortions are certainly taking place as a result of government interference, small companies are bein hurt, and teachers are not being involved as much as they should be. The term “mad scheme” is entirely appropriate as a description of Curriculum Online. I have my doubts about the future of online learning. There are signs in the USA, for example, that enthusiasm is beginning to pall. Critics of the Web lament the disappearance of traditional educational environments, citing the dubious ethics of those who wish to turn our universities into "Digital Diploma Mills" - the title of a five-part series of articles by David Noble (Noble 1997-2001): “In his classic 1959 study of diploma mills for the American Council on Education, Robert Reid described the typical diploma mill as having the following characteristics: "no classrooms," "faculties are often untrained or non-existent," and "the officers are unethical self-seekers whose qualifications are no better than their offerings." It is an apt description of the digital diploma mills now in the making. Quality higher education will not disappear entirely, but it will soon become the exclusive preserve of the privileged, available only to children of the rich and the powerful. For the rest of us a dismal new era of higher education has dawned. In ten years, we will look upon the wired remains of our once great democratic higher education system and wonder how we let it happen. That is, unless we decide now not to let it happen.” (Noble: ibid. Part I) Other critics include Press & Washburn. The preamble to their article entitled "Digital Diplomas"says it all: “Welcome to the brave new world of higher education, where professors are "content experts," classes are "courseware," and students are customers. But just what is a dot-com degree worth?" (Press & Washburn 2001) Harsh words, but the above authors make some very important points that should not be overlooked in these times of technohype. The Web certainly has its "Dark Side", and evidence is already emerging from North America that online learning may go the same way as some of the early Web businesses that have crashed so spectacularly. Evidence coming out of North America suggests that e-learning courses do not recruit well: “In 1997, facing a projected 50 percent increase in the state's student population over the next decade, Utah governor Mike Leavitt announced the formation of Western Governors University, a cyber-college backed by governors from 19 states that now offers online courses from 40 schools. "We are turning around the old notion that to be educated one had to go somewhere," Leavitt declared in a speech before the U.S. Senate's Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee. "We are going to bring the knowledge and information to the learner," providing students with a high-quality education "while holding costs in check." By January 2000, Western Governors University had enrolled a mere 200 degree-seeking students.” (Press & Washburn 2001) References Noble D. (1997-2001) "Distance Education on the Web", a series of five articles: http://communication.ucsd.edu/dl Press E. & Washburn J. (2001) "Digital Diplomas", Mother Jones Magazine, January/February 2001: http://www.motherjones.com/mother_jones/JF01/diplomas.html

I have reservations about the value of coursework. I have worked in the higher education sector as an external examiner during the last ten years, and I’ve looked at a large volume of coursework. Since the advent of the Web, plagiarism has become a significant problem – sufficiently alarming for the university funding councils in the UK to have set up a project looking at the whole issue. The project website is worth a visit for anyone wishing to find out more about this issue: see the JISC Plagiarism Advisory Service at http://www.jiscpas.ac.uk I was not fully aware of how easy it is to cheat and plagiarise until I began to do research for an article I was writing, namely on the inventor of the Web, Tim Berners-Lee. Among the top ten references that I found on the Web was an essay on "The Birth of the Web", offered for sale by an American university student. Try doing a search with Google using the keywords "essays for sale". Scary, isn't it?

I have grave doubts about the provision of free digital learning materials by the BBC. The materials are not free, of course. We, the public, are paying for them via our annual licence fees. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Furthermore, the leading publishers' associations (the Digital Learning Alliance) have expressed their concerns about the possible damage that will be done to producers of priced commercial products, particularly in view of the aim to distibute the free materials via the Curriculum Online (COL) initiative - which has also been surrounded with controversy. COL got off to a very bad start: its launch was delayed until January 2003, with the result that for a period of several months in 2002 schools were starved of funds for software purchases and stopped spending, almost driving a number of small publishers to the wall. The atmosphere of controversy regarding the BBC's involvement in COL and the threat of court action from the software publishers against the BBC did little to improve things. Tom McMullan describes COL as being a government plan for "backdoor nationalisation of the UK educational content marketplace" (Wired to Learn, Adam Smith Institute): http://www.adamsmith.org/policy/publicatio...ucation-pub.htm The BBC should concentrate on what it's good at, namely producing worldclass TV programmes and providing an excellent news service.