“The Revolution will not be Televised”….(but you can watch it on YouTube)

Girl, minus car phone (image courtesy of parenttalktoday.com)

A recent report by the International Telecommunications Union has revealed that over 2 billion people throughout the world will be online by the end of this year, and that around 90% of the population will have access to mobile networks (with 143 countries providing 3G services).

I remember the days when my Dad had a car phone- “for business use only, Kate, it’s expensive, no you can’t prank order a pizza to next-door”- and I used to think it was dead posh. So posh, that when we were caught in traffic on the way to my ballet class, I used to hold it against my ear and pretend to be chatting to some other equally as precocious ten-year-old on the other end.  I’ve always been a trend-setter.

How interesting is it to see monks with mobiles on travels round Cambodia and Thailand? It’s great to notice these signs of the times. (And they make for killer holiday snaps….)

'Scuse me Sir, could you stand just to the right a little.... (courtesy of flickr)

Technology is taking over, but people generally seem to be happy about the invasion. A poll for BBC World Service shows that almost four out of five people believe that access to the internet is a fundamental human right. But does this mean unrestricted access, without filters or government control? (And if so, where does this leave countries like China with their heavy handed censorship?)

The possibilities are endless with handsfree (image courtesy of creativebusinessadventures.com)

The survey goes on to predict that the world will have collaboratively sent nearly 6.1trillion text messages by the end of 2010.  That’s an awful lot of thumb action. In developed countries, there is an average of 116 mobile phone subscriptions per 100 people, meaning of course that a considerable number of people may have 2 or 3 mobile phone subscriptions, (like business people, or drug dealers).

By the end of the year, 71% of developed countries will be online, compared to just 21% of the population of developing countries. The report recognised that the growth in mobile phone networks in lower income countries was a catalyst for growth and marks a positive progression. Developing countries are certainly embracing a boom in mobile phones. Smarthouse magazine quotes the ITU’s Sami Al Basheer, who underlines the positive feeling: “Mobile phone penetration in developing countries now stands at 68 percent — higher than any other technology before. These countries have been innovative in adapting mobile technology to their particular needs and will be able to draw even greater benefits from broadband once adequate and affordable access is available.”

The future looks bright.

If feels like it won’t be long before we turn into the Jetsons; but ah well, they seemed happy enough.

We're turning into the Jetsons... but at least we'll be happy! (image courtesy of herospy.com)

The Pen is Mightier than the ‘board.

These days we are swamped with new technology and even the most cynical amongst us has caved in to embrace the new era. My Mum is always on about ‘downloading’ things and even my Gran has a mobile phone, although she hasn’t quite grasped the concept of texting just yet. Quite frankly, I am getting tired of arguments about how the internet is making us lazy; conversely, it has opened up access to so many things we never had, and liberated us beyond our wildest dreams. Our reading habits may have altered to adapt to reading on screen, but this in itself has equipped us with a great new skill; we have become expert sifters, scanners, and connoisseurs of accessing what we want when we want it. Web writing reflects this. We need chunks, links, colour, image, video. Mundane blocks of text have had their day. Modern life just doesn’t leave us with the time to sit and digest other peoples’ waffle; unless it’s smothered in maple syrup, bananas and cream.

 

Image courtesy of http://www.evolvingcatherine.com

 

So, i’ll get to the point.

I was already shocked to read in the Sydney Morning Herald that ‘Handwriting Proves a Stretch for Computer-savvy Students.’ Then I noticed that the students in question were in Year 12. I couldn’t believe that a perfectly capable 16yr old would be so immersed in the tech-revolution, that she would have lost the ability to wield a pen with any gusto. The article is not talking about students who suffer from learning difficulties either. Plans for NSW students to sit a ‘limited number of exams online’ in 2012 marks the cumulative move to the digital age in schools; I don’t have a problem with that, (the very nature of a particular subject may lend itself to computer based assessment, but I am very glad to see that they are holding fire in subjects such as English). It really is a disgrace that positive progressions, like the ability to provide laptops to every student, are counterbalanced by the need to regress back to lessons in something as basic as handwriting. It certainly turns the good will of schemes such as ‘One Laptop Per Child’ in on itself. I am not discrediting OLPC, as it is a fantastic scheme, but students need to know the basics before they are given a laptop.

 

image courtesy of http://tools.atozteacherstuff.com

 

Teaching students to write fluently, spell, use grammar properly and understand syntax should be at the very core of any education system. Year 12 is too late. The core subjects should never be compromised in any age; of course it is important to educate students about technology, but you have to walk before you can run. It is a tragedy that a school in NSW had to employ occupational therapists to ensure that students’ writing was legible by the time they reached Year 12. I can’t even begin to imagine what sort of lesson plans are going to be constructed for teenagers handwriting practice; i’m sure they will need more to hold their attention than a quick brown fox and a lazy dog, (and I think that the majority will empathise with the latter rather than the former).

 

This is what my classroom would look like if I was a teacher (image courtesy of museumsincornwall.org.uk)

 

My handwriting is awful- not as in a doctor’s writing, which is illegible in an intelligent-scrolly way-  no… my handwriting is unabashedly curly and girly. I sometimes regree to that terrible habit I cultivated in my teens to dot my i’s with a circle when i’m writing really quickly. Despite this, I am quite sure that you would have no problems reading my writing. Just imagining 1000 students in a sports hall bashing away at 1000 keyboards under exam conditions gives me a headache already.  Literacy, alongside maths and science, should be an integral part of the curriculum before anything else. It is time that education systems went back to the basics.

“Now get back to your desk before I call your parents!”

Let’s Face the Music and Dance….

Can you remember life before Facebook…. way back in the dusty portals of time, where you carefully selected photos of your travels to add to meticulously constructed group emails, and if you wanted to ‘make friends’ with someone, you would meet them in the pub for a glass of Sauv Blanc and a bowl of chips? Facebook is guilty of introducing new, unnecessary dilemmas to modern life; do I accept my boyfriend’s Mother on Facebook?- (answer: no) is it really wise to tag everyone getting up to no good in the Parklife photos? (answer: also no) and should you really confess to the world on your status that you ‘can’t believe how good the weather is in Tahiti‘ when you are Facebook friends with half the office, and your boss thinks you are laid up in bed with a lesser strain of dengue fever? (answer: oh come on, I shouldn’t really have to tell you….)

Really, Facebook is an insipid pit of voyeurism. It has exacerbated the human desire to catalogue the very minutaie of trivial life and created a platform from which others can snoop and pry, safe in the knowledge that their identity is kept a secret by the anonymity of the web. Gossip has been dredged, affairs have been uncovered, jobs have been lost, relationships have been terminated. Facebook is a panoptican eye; you forget who reads your late night ramblings, you  forget that you accepted the friends requests of Auntie Ivy and Hugh from accounts. And then there is the problem of the impromtu status update. What may have seemed like a wise witticism at 5am pales into self-indulgent melancholia in the harsh light of a hungover day. Like big brother, Facebook’s unblinking eye is always watching. The private is made public- neon light public. Everyone can see the colour of your dirty underwear.

Mark Zuckerberg, the man who unleashed the beast, understands that his evil offspring is somewhat flawed, and he has responded to the identity crisis this week by introducing the Groups function, which allows users to control who has access to what information; protecting you from data related incrimination and allowing, in theory, only the people who you want to see images, status updates and late night lyricism. This addresses the problem of what Zuckerberg sees as the biggest issue in social networking, finding a way to translate the way we organise our social lives in real life online- (e.g the ability to call screen, ‘accidentally’ lose phone numbers or the free will to simply not call someone)… Various problems have been encountered concerning the effectiveness of the Groups function along with further questions of integrity. The Groups function seems to be more of a band-aid solution to the growing problem. Zuckerberg is still far from being the most trusted man in the universe.Nobody knows where they stand with Facebook, the rules about privacy settings are not laid out clearly enough and they are always changing without users’ consent.Perhaps the Groups feature will work to alleviate the problem, but it will never completely solve it.

Another problem is that when personal data was uploaded to Facebook in the old model, it became locked into the website and the user was unable to port it elsewhere. This is really unreasonable. Who is this guy anyway? What does he want with all of our information and what in the hell does he do with it? This week’s Facebook revamp has seen Zuckerberg formulate another ‘remedy’ in the not-so-snappily named ‘Download your Information’ tool, which does exactly what it says on the tin.  Zuckerberg has finally conceded that ‘It is not our information. It is people’s information….. and they should be allowed to take it away if they want.’ Why did this not happen earlier?

I wonder if British Princess Eugenie of York has taken advantage of the privacy setting on the new Groups feature after the recent Facebook fiasco which embarrasingly revealed her to be ‘single and available’ and looking for ‘random play.’ She must make her parents so proud. Pictures of her looking less than regal carrying a packet of fags and looking a little bit worse for wear were recently posted on a friend’s Facebook page. Perhaps it was her somewhat influential grandmother that ordered Zuckerberg to make the changes. I guess we will never know.