tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34807045403096596772024-03-06T04:23:09.129+00:00Digital Futures ~ Martin HamiltonMartin Hamiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12640838667301026751noreply@blogger.comBlogger120125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480704540309659677.post-71940355234392223862011-08-02T12:41:00.002+01:002017-09-28T09:42:54.063+01:00My #iwmw11 Takeaway<a href="http://vimeo.com/27125990" target="_video"><img alt="" src="http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/files/2011/08/Screen-Shot-2011-08-01-at-16.02.41.png" height="240" width="416" /></a><br />
<a href="http://mh.lboro.ac.uk/talks/iwmw11/" target="_slides"><img alt="" src="http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/files/2011/07/Screen-Shot-2011-07-27-at-23.13.01.png" height="380" width="483" /></a><br />
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I thought it would be interesting and fun to make my plenary session at IWMW11 a bit more interactive than simply <a href="http://connectpro52594655.adobeconnect.com/p8fgknd1e0g/">me standing up and waffling</a> in front of <a href="http://mh.lboro.ac.uk/talks/iwmw11/">a bunch of slides</a>. Here's a few words about what I did and how I did it, plus some feedback from the interactive parts of the talk, and a few observations about this year's IWMW event.<br />
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<strong>What's with those slides?</strong><br />
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In the interest of open standards and interoperability I'll also just take the opportunity to note that my slides are an HTML5 document. This works very nicely in Chrome, Safari and Firefox but has problems with Internet Explorer. In fact, on the lectern PC at IWMW (running IE7) it rendered as a blank screen... I would have expected IE9 to work OK, and this leads me to suspect that my HTML is a bit, well, suspect.<br />
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I've found that my presentation style has increasingly been shifting from tools like PowerPoint (and Prezi) to showcasing web material. The upshot of this has been that a typical presentation from me has often consisted of me running through a series of browser tabs to illustrate some general point or demonstrate some new facility. Like many of you reading this I came across the html5rocks.com site (now part of <a href="https://developers.google.com/web/" target="_blank">Google's Web Fundamentals Program</a>), and thought "hey, this could be quite a nice way of adding a bit of structure". It also has the added attraction of packaging up my collection of hyperlinks into a vaguely coherent whole.<br />
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If the idea of writing your presentation in HTML makes you think back to the likes of LaTeX (or even SliTeX), then don't despair - it's not that hard. For example, here is some HTML:<br />
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<a href="http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/files/2011/07/Screen-Shot-2011-07-27-at-23.20.00.png"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-559" src="http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/files/2011/07/Screen-Shot-2011-07-27-at-23.20.00.png" height="185" width="676" /></a>And here is the end result:<br />
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<a href="http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/files/2011/07/Screen-Shot-2011-07-27-at-23.19.43.png"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-557" src="http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/files/2011/07/Screen-Shot-2011-07-27-at-23.19.43.png" height="421" width="541" /></a><br />
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If you want to dig a bit deeper, Digital.com has a nice <a href="https://digital.com/tools/html-cheatsheet/" target="_blank">HTML cheatsheet</a> that shows you how all of those DIVs, IMGs and so on actually work.<br />
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I have to apologise in advance for my choice of styles etc - deep down inside I'm a Web 1.0 kind of guy. It's actually over 18 years since I put up my first web server, which is in some ways quite an alarming thought.<br />
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<strong>Interaction via Twitter</strong><br />
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When you are speaking in front of a group of 168 people as at IWMW, it's difficult to have a dialogue. This is something I do occasionally when speaking at conferences and workshops, and I have a great deal of sympathy for University lecturers trying to work with groups of as many as 250 students on a routine basis.<br />
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Like many people, at Loughborough we have been experimenting with technology like the excellent <a href="http://blog.lboro.ac.uk/elearning/?cat=35" target="_blank">voting handsets from Turning Point</a>. Whilst the voting handsets are pretty neat, I suspect that the most tractable approach to engaging with large groups is through the technology that everyone already carries around with them, smartphones in particular.<br />
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In the IWMW context it was clear that the vast majority of delegates were using Twitter already. Delegates typically had one or two Internet capable devices on their persons - in some cases significantly more! So, I thought it would be interesting to experiment with a polling approach with results embedded live on my slides, and using Twitter to share the URL of the poll site. Several such services exist, and TwtPoll seemed particularly well suited for my purposes.<br />
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To ensure that there would be something for people to see when I initially ran through my slides (and to avoid the embarrassment of a poll with no responses) I publicised the polls before the day of the talk. As Twitter aficionados will know, a <a href="http://blog.martinh.net/2011/01/amplifying-google-apps-user-group.html" target="_blank">carefully chosen hash tag</a> can be helpful to stimulate a dialgue both before and after an event, and this was invaluable for the "amplified" event I organized earlier this year, the <a href="http://guug11.lboro.ac.uk/" target="_blank">Google Apps for Education UK User Group</a> (guug11).<br />
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So here's the result of my first TwtPoll. This asked people whether their organization had a Web 2.0 policy:<br />
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<a href="http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/files/2011/07/Screen-Shot-2011-07-27-at-22.22.40.png"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-553" src="http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/files/2011/07/Screen-Shot-2011-07-27-at-22.22.40.png" height="288" width="620" /></a><br />
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In the IWMW context it was particularly interesting to me that some attendees didn't know the answer to this question, and some were "rigorously enforcing" theirs. I followed this up, only to discover that rigorous enforcement in practice meant sitting down for a cup of tea with the person who had transgressed - not quite the Spanish Inquisition that I had pictured.<br />
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Should I be disappointed that only 28 out of 168 delegates (17%) bothered to vote? I don't think so - that's a whole lot more engagement than we would have had otherwise, and the nuanced results would be difficult to gauge from a simple show of hands. More importantly, it also stimulated some discussion and broke up what might otherwise have been a much duller presentation!<br />
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I also asked people who curated their institutional presence on Twitter, Facebook etc - and in particular what would happen if someone replied to an institutional Tweet. Here are the results from that poll:<br />
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<img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-552" src="http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/files/2011/07/Screen-Shot-2011-07-27-at-22.23.05.png" height="255" width="647" /><br />
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Again I was particularly interested in the outlying cases, although it was notable that all the respondents indicated that they had some form of institutional presence on Twitter. In the current climate of "downsizing" and in some cases redundancies, I wondered how many institutions had a single person in the invidious position of having to handle any queries that might come in from parents, prospective students, and so on. It's easy to see how this could cause problems (holidays, sick leave etc), and that "me" could quickly turn into "nobody".<br />
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<strong>Leading by Example</strong><br />
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In my IWMW talk I presented some examples of areas where we have working to gather examples of good/best practice of Web 2.0 at Loughborough. This will include a range of services, such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. My aim is that this work will also take in institutional use, use by departments and research groups, and personal use - e.g. by academics to promote their research and teaching activities.<br />
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We are hoping to capture both examples of tricks and techniques that have worked for people, and the lessons that they have learned from the experience. I expect that there will be a mixture of positive and negative feedback. Here are a few indicative examples, some more prosaic than others:<br />
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<li>Don't make "friends" with all your students on Facebook!</li>
<li>Remember that Twitter replies are public!</li>
<li>Decide whether you are using the service in a personal capacity (e.g. <a href="http://martinh.net/" target="_blank">my blog at martinh.net</a>) or an institutional capacity - very relevant now that we have institutional Live@edu and Google Apps accounts</li>
<li>Know where you stand regarding Intellectual Property rights to any material that you would like to share openly on the Internet</li>
<li>Be sure to check the provenance of any Internet sourced material that you would like to use in your teaching - e.g. <a href="http://search.creativecommons.org/" target="_blank">Creative Commons licensed content</a> and Open Educational Resources from <a href="http://open.jorum.ac.uk/" target="_blank">JorumOpen</a> and <a href="http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/xpert/" target="_blank">Xpert</a> are of particular interest here</li>
<li>Budget for "freemium" type services, and anticipate future expenditure - e.g. <a href="http://www.leveltendesign.com/blog/colin/reading-between-lines-ning-freemium-model" target="_blank">Ning subscription model</a></li>
<li>Have an exit strategy in the event that the site or service you plan to use ceases to trade, e.g. downloading SCORM objects from <a href="http://www.kineo.com/authoring-tools/udutu-e-learning.html" target="_blank">myUdutu</a></li>
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As we trial Google Apps for staff at Loughborough, the distinction between personal use of the service and an institutionally supported version of the service is very interesting to me. Picking up the earlier example, our staff users are now able to use all 60-odd "consumer" Google services including Blogger and Picasa with their institutional identities. This is exceedingly convenient, however an individual (say) blogging in a personal capacity might well prefer to use a service that wasn't too closely tied to any one institution.<br />
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This is a topic that I'll return to as we gather feedback from staff on their use of Google Apps - check out the <a href="http://blog.martinh.net/search/label/googleapps" target="_blank">Google Apps section of my blog</a>, or come to my talk at <a href="http://www.alt.ac.uk/alt-conference/alt-c-2011/about" target="_blank">ALT-C 2011</a> to hear more.<br />
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<strong>my.Lboro</strong><br />
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I'm also pleased that our student portal site, <a href="http://blog.martinh.net/search/label/my.Lboro" target="_blank">my.Lboro</a>, has been well received by students, with some 600 users since we soft launched earlier this Summer. my.Lboro aims to pull together a range of information relevant to students in their everyday existence at Loughborough that was previously hard to find or even inaccessible online.<br />
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We are starting from something of a "green field" because Loughborough's previous portal work has been quite limited in scale and quite domain focused. As a byproduct, we have been able to take advantage of the best of Web 2.0 technologies. Here's what the my.Lboro site looks like, for anyone who's interested (click to enlarge):<br />
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<a href="http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/files/2011/08/Screen-Shot-2011-07-29-at-14.57.321.png"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-619" src="http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/files/2011/08/Screen-Shot-2011-07-29-at-14.57.321-811x1024.png" height="808" width="640" /></a><br />
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A lot of what we are doing with this site is actually driven by RSS - as we progress in our implementation of the Terminal Four Site Manager CMS, each of the University's departments, research groups, support services etc has the opportunity to curate its own RSS feeds. A few of the existing feeds (including general student notices, Students Union News and Events, Library and IT Services news) are gathered together on the my.Lboro site to form a default set of newsfeeds for students:<br />
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<a href="http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/files/2011/08/Screen-Shot-2011-07-24-at-23.44.59.png"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-620" src="http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/files/2011/08/Screen-Shot-2011-07-24-at-23.44.59.png" height="281" width="632" /></a><br />
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I expect that over time we will end up with a range of widgets that display individual RSS feeds in slightly different ways, so that there is some opportunity for differentiation. Here is an early example of another RSS powered widget that we have developed to highlight Professional Development training courses. This one will be particularly relevant as we come to trial my.Lboro with staff later this year:<br />
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<a href="http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/files/2011/08/Screen-Shot-2011-07-24-at-23.44.49.png"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-622" src="http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/files/2011/08/Screen-Shot-2011-07-24-at-23.44.49.png" height="365" width="317" /></a><br />
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We have also developed widgets using the APIs provided by third party services including Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Google - you may have noticed the Google Docs widget on the full size screen dump above. Here's a sample of the sort of output you will see via our Twitter widget:<br />
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<a href="http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/files/2011/08/Screen-Shot-2011-07-26-at-11.41.59.png"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-623" src="http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/files/2011/08/Screen-Shot-2011-07-26-at-11.41.59.png" height="417" width="313" /></a><br />
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If this interests you, keep an eye on my blog for <a href="http://blog.martinh.net/search/label/my.Lboro" target="_blank">further updates on my.Lboro</a>.<br />
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<strong>"The Takeaway"</strong><br />
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So far, so good - but what did I personally take away from IWMW11?<br />
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I have a particular interest in digital literacy (and would note in passing that JISC are starting up a major new activity in this area), and I find it interesting to consider the extent to which technologies that technologists take for granted have permeated into institutional culture. As I said at the start of my talk, my intuition is that most institutions are still feeling their way with "Web 2.0", and that this is par for the course for any technology that is only a few years old.<br />
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I'm also fascinated to see the extent to which the neophiles and early adopters amongst us take up a new technology. In my talk I quote Bill Gross, one of the Twitterati, noting that in a month he has acquired as many Google+ followers as he did in four years on Twitter. Are these people all early adopters? Would they have jumped onto any new bandwagon?<br />
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In the context I asked IWMW delegates about their use of Google+, with the results shown below. As Sid quickly spotted, this emphasis also helped to make my talk seem bang up to date! This poll had the best response rate, with 38 votes out of 168 (23%), and people clearly valued the ability to share in a granular way. Interestingly, when I repeated this poll on Google+ there was a tie between question E (apprecation of sharing granularity) and F ("but I mostly post public stuff anyway"), so we may be deceiving ourselves to an extent.<br />
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Where Google+ is concerned, neophytes might not have been aware that "Circles" are for personal use only - i.e. you can't create an "IWMW" Circle which other people are then able to use. I hope that Google's new found emphasis on social features means that they are able to provide enough glue to link Google Groups with Google+ as a sharing destination. We'll see what happens about that...<br />
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<a href="http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/files/2011/07/Screen-Shot-2011-07-27-at-22.23.18.png"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-551" src="http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/files/2011/07/Screen-Shot-2011-07-27-at-22.23.18.png" height="483" width="566" /></a><br />
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<a href="http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/files/2011/07/Screen-Shot-2011-07-27-at-22.23.48.png"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-550" src="http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/files/2011/07/Screen-Shot-2011-07-27-at-22.23.48.png" height="562" width="453" /></a><br />
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Alarmingly, my prediction that Google+ Hangouts would turn into ChatRoulette has <a href="http://www.plusroulette.com/" target="_blank">already been validated</a> by PlusRoulette.<br />
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Outside of my own immediate interests I was very taken by Brian Kelly's demonstration of Bambuser as a way of very <a href="http://bambuser.com/channel/briankelly" target="_blank">cheaply amplifying an event</a> by live streaming using ordinary consumer grade mobile phone technology. See below for a demo produced using Brian's Android phone, which we passed around the room as he talked. I particularly liked the way that the Bambuser video was live streamed, but also available to view after the event. Very nice!<br />
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<a href="http://bambuser.com/channel/briankelly/broadcast/1848850"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-629" src="http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/files/2011/08/Screen-Shot-2011-08-01-at-22.10.04.png" height="378" width="474" /></a><br />
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At Loughborough we have a full strength <a href="http://blog.lboro.ac.uk/elearning/?page_id=498" target="_blank">lecture capture system</a> ("ReVIEW", based on Echo360), and have also been active participants in the <a href="http://www.steeple.org.uk/" target="_blank">Steeple community</a>, which is working with the <a href="http://www.opencastproject.org/project/matterhorn" target="_blank">Opencast Matterhorn</a> project to develop an open source lecture capture system. I've often thought that it would be interesting to complement this by encouraging students to record their own take on lectures, and Bambuser makes this sort of thing laughably simple. Caveat emptor, though, and do be sure to check out the sound quality on this recording...<br />
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If I had to pick one other highlight from a very exciting and diverse programme, it would be the contributions from Chris Gutteridge and Dave Challis on open data. This is of particular interest to me because of our JISC <a href="http://kit-catalogue.lboro.ac.uk/project/" target="_blank">Kit-Catalogue project</a>, which is developing a system that institutions can use to catalogue and provide an open data feed of their equipment and facilities.<br />
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Kit-Catalogue is part of the JISC <a href="http://greenict.jiscinvolve.org/wp/" target="_blank">Greening ICT</a> initiative, although something of an unusual project - the more typical activities are around data centre power and cooling, power management in PC labs, and suchlike. There has been quite a bit of interest both nationally and internationally in Kit-Catalogue, and from some of our strategic partners - who we already share facilities and equipment with. It will be very exciting to see the new possibilities that emerge as a byproduct of this awareness raising, and whether we are able to save money by sharing facilities on (say) a local or regional basis.<br />
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I have to leave the last word to Chris, though, and his excellent exposition on finding cookies at the University of Southampton via the <a href="https://github.com/cgutteridge/Grinder" target="_blank">Grinder software</a> - and note that I'm not talking about <a href="http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/2011/07/29/plenary-3-using-activity-data-to-support-your-users/" target="_blank">the EU Directive on Cookies</a> here!<br />
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<a href="http://vimeo.com/27136997"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-630" src="http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/files/2011/08/Screen-Shot-2011-08-01-at-22.47.25-300x169.png" height="169" width="300" /></a><br />
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PS You'll need to skip 35 minutes into the videoMartin Hamiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12640838667301026751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480704540309659677.post-73946063753519658252015-10-07T22:46:00.002+01:002015-10-07T22:46:32.828+01:00What does the future of cloud computing hold?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMTk6wBJ7y5VvQPT52q_XjA4sjVR_3XAK_idxQgZ_I0G3i6wP2avetWRPQ0EbUMec9pTqVM3oH75yNtifjaahTSdSGuWUKarhp1yZIu4iCv-j72-opZCW7NMO6efsjF5ic6VslY2z3sQ8/s1600/9287370881_84eb6092fe_k.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMTk6wBJ7y5VvQPT52q_XjA4sjVR_3XAK_idxQgZ_I0G3i6wP2avetWRPQ0EbUMec9pTqVM3oH75yNtifjaahTSdSGuWUKarhp1yZIu4iCv-j72-opZCW7NMO6efsjF5ic6VslY2z3sQ8/s400/9287370881_84eb6092fe_k.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Earlier this summer our technology forum surveyed heads of IT in further and higher education to </span><a href="https://www.jisc.ac.uk/news/uk-education-divided-in-its-adoption-of-the-cloud-14-jul-2015" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">find out more about the state of cloud adoption</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. It was quite a mixed picture - whilst 45% of respondees were using cloud services for business applications such as payroll processing, 31% had no plans to move to cloud for these applications. It was clear from the survey that many people were discouraged from using public cloud providers like </span><a href="http://aws.amazon.com/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Amazon Web Services</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and </span><a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Microsoft Azure</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> because of a perception that costs would be difficult to anticipate and contain. 61% of respondents said that financial issues were a major concern for them. We thought it was timely to do some further work in this area, and have just released a </span><a href="https://www.jisc.ac.uk/reports/the-future-of-cloud-computing" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">report exploring the future and potential of cloud computing</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> for our community.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[Image credit: CC-BY Flickr user Barta IV]</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We’ve seen a lot of interest in the </span><a href="https://www.google.com/edu/products/productivity-tools/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Google Apps for Education</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and </span><a href="http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/academic/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Microsoft Office365</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> collaboration suites, which are widely used for student email, but by less than half of institutions for staff. These services have a host of other features beyond email that are relevant for teaching and learning and research, such as collaborative document editing and file sharing. Not only are these services free to use for education institutions, but Microsoft and Google have recently made </span><a href="http://www.engadget.com/2014/09/30/google-drive-for-education/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">unlimited file storage</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> available as part of their services.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Whilst some institutions have approached them principally as “email replacements”, we believe that these services have huge potential beyond this core use case. But it must be said that we have heard from some institutions that have saved significant sums of money through moving to the Google and Microsoft suites - for example, the University of Westminster estimates that it </span><a href="http://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/univofwestminster.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">saved £1 million on infrastructure costs</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> through moving to Google Apps. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Of course these apps are free, which creates its own momentum and dynamic. Cloud computing infrastructure and platform services such as Amazon Web Services most certainly aren’t free, but can be very cost effective if used thoughtfully. For example, for just under £200 a researcher could create a cloud supercomputer with 500 processor cores and 750GB of memory for a few hours to carry out a computation. However, leave that system up and running and the bill would come to around £10,000 a month. At Jisc we run a lot of our services on Amazon and Microsoft’s Azure cloud, having carefully calculated our running costs, and we estimate that this has saved us over £100,000 a year compared with refreshing our old in-house infrastructure.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We see a lot of interest from the research community in complementing in-house high performance computing facilities with cloud capacity, and the report highlights a few high impact examples from the UK and elsewhere. For example, </span><a href="http://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/mt-sinai/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mount Sinai hospital</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in the US uses cloud services to process around 100 terabytes of data for the Cancer Genome Atlas project, and </span><a href="http://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/philips/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Philips HealthCare</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> manages a cloud based database of 15 petabytes of patient data from 390 million medical imaging studies. These examples, plus the UK’s own adoption of cloud technologies for government departments and the houses of parliament, prompt us to question the suspicion with which some people regard cloud technology.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Support from Jisc to move to the cloud</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At Jisc we have been working for some time to help institutions to pick up cloud technologies. We have done things like put dedicated peerings in with the likes of Microsoft, Google and Amazon. We have created an </span><a href="https://www.jisc.ac.uk/amazon-web-services" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">institutional portal onto Amazon Web Services</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, which provides a consolidated view of institutional spending, delegated budgets for departments and research groups, and supports volume discounts. We also </span><a href="https://www.jisc.ac.uk/network/cloud" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">brokered national deals</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> for the Microsoft Office365 and Google Apps for Education products.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Next steps</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When we speak with the community there are a few key themes that keep coming up again and again - people are nervous about the potential costs of “getting it wrong” in moving to cloud services, and about being locked in to any one vendor. If we can find a way to reduce the friction of switching cloud providers and getting people the best possible deal, a bit like the </span><a href="http://www.uswitch.com/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">uSwitch</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> website, then it seems there will be a lot of interest in this.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We also hear that there is a substantial amount of interest in using technologies like </span><a href="http://www.docker.io/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Docker</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> containers to reduce the amount of duplication of effort that takes place right now - perhaps in the future we can just package up applications once and then share them across the sector?</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">However the flip side of all of this is that cloud gives us a whole new lexicon and new technologies that we need to properly understand if we are to effectively exploit them. This is a journey we are all on together, and perhaps we can find ways to more effectively share what we learn along the way. This could be analogous to the way that we are supporting institutions in </span><a href="https://www.jisc.ac.uk/rd/projects/building-digital-capability" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">building digital literacy and digital leadership</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We are floating a few ideas in this report that we have heard from our stakeholders are important to them. What we would like to do next is have an open dialogue with the community about blockers and enablers and the potential that you see for cloud. We’ll be monitoring the </span><a href="https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&q=jiscfutures&src=typd" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">#jiscfutures</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> hash tag, and holding a webinar on 12th October as an open forum on the future of cloud for the sector. We’ll then work with stakeholders, cloud experts and cloud providers to develop a vision for cloud that can feed into Jisc strategy. We’d love to hear from you!</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You can read the </span><a href="https://www.jisc.ac.uk/reports/the-future-of-cloud-computing" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">future of cloud computing report</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> online, and sign up to our </span><a href="https://www.jisc.ac.uk/events/horizon-scan-the-future-of-cloud-computing-12-oct-2015" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">webinar on 12 October</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
Martin Hamiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12640838667301026751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480704540309659677.post-5278610377235826202015-09-01T14:45:00.002+01:002015-09-01T14:45:45.058+01:00We can be (Digital) Heroes<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVY-pGJgdD12XpKsj0Ad2uDtTB7Wi_ggGsWspThjP_IbW-g40DsCFBnIyrvIflQFmho5O2FIsnYzlDyzPjXpFHuLsYjly07T9J_WvVu5CAfExP-1eTKZluuCql7OxzqpadMElUuqEHbXM/s1600/CM31q_8WUAAtE_P.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVY-pGJgdD12XpKsj0Ad2uDtTB7Wi_ggGsWspThjP_IbW-g40DsCFBnIyrvIflQFmho5O2FIsnYzlDyzPjXpFHuLsYjly07T9J_WvVu5CAfExP-1eTKZluuCql7OxzqpadMElUuqEHbXM/s400/CM31q_8WUAAtE_P.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo credit: Hardware hacking at Interact Labs, picture courtesy Sean Clark</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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[<a href="https://audioboom.com/boos/3514564-we-can-be-digital-heroes" rel="nofollow" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #8c68cb; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Listen to the interview as a podcast</a>]</div>
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I’ve been joined by two of the nominees in the Talk Talk Digital Heroes Awards 2015, Sean Clark and Brian Negus. The Digital Heroes Awards recognise inspirational people who are using digital technologies and the Internet to bring about positive social change.</div>
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Who are you, and what do you do?</blockquote>
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<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="left" data-loading-tracked="true" height="197" src="https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/shrinknp_200_200/AAEAAQAAAAAAAAT_AAAAJDU5ZDYzM2ZhLTgyNDEtNGUzOS1iZWU0LTc1N2E0YTllZmQyNw.png" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; float: left; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: auto; line-height: inherit; margin: 30px 30px 30px 0px; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="191" /></strong></div>
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<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Sean</strong>: My name is Sean Clark. I do a number of things - we are currently in my office in Loughborough for a company I run called Cuttlefish. We’re a web design and mobile phone app developer. I also do a lot of work in Leicester, and that’s typically based around my arts and technology interests, where I run a space called Interact Labs which is located at the Phoenix Cinema. That’s an experimental space for people wanting to explore technology from a creative angle. We encourage artists and technologists to come in, work together and explore things - make artworks, have experiments, and that sort of thing. I’ve worked in multimedia, new technology and digital arts for probably over twenty years now.</div>
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<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="left" data-loading-tracked="true" height="190" src="https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/shrinknp_200_200/AAEAAQAAAAAAAAZZAAAAJDVlODE0MmVhLWYxMGMtNGQxNS1iNTI1LTk5YmI0ZTIxYzI1NQ.jpg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; float: left; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: auto; line-height: inherit; margin: 30px 30px 30px 0px; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="190" />Brian</strong>: I’m Brian Negus, and I’m a retired IT director. I’m registered blind and have been for a long time. I’ve been really fortunate that as I’ve lost my sight, I’ve been able to exploit technology to help me stay in employment and do something useful. Now I’m retired, I’m particularly passionate to help others have that same advantage. I’m working in partnership with Vista, which is the local sight loss charity for Leicestershire and Rutland. Vista have limited funds but can occasionally fund someone on a low income for a piece of technology.</div>
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What kinds of tech skills do you work with Vista to help blind people to pick up?</blockquote>
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<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Brian</strong>: They provided a totally blind guy with an iPad. I then went in and met him and we are now on a course of training. But what really made me so happy was that this guy has never used any IT before in his life. He’s a retired truck driver - retired because he went blind, of course. By the end of the first session, he had sent his very first email. That is just so good. You really can make huge differences - we were talking about exclusion, and before he was totally excluded from the world of IT. From Facebook, from Twitter, from email. Now he is 100% included. Another of my examples is my totally blind friend with his guide dog, now also using his iPhone as a pedestrian satellite navigation tool. I wouldn’t recommend it to a totally blind person without a guide dog, as it’s not ever so good at finding safe places to cross the road, but you can see that combination working, can’t you. That’s totally brilliant.</div>
<blockquote style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.85098); font-family: Georgia; font-size: 24px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: italic; line-height: 38px; margin: 50px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 80px; position: relative; quotes: none; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">
How does Interact Labs help to bring technology and the arts together?</blockquote>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #232629; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 32px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Sean</strong>: I was running a workshop yesterday at Phoenix, and we were doing simple circuits and LED lighting. A lot of the youngsters who came along were well under ten. They were primary school age. First of all, they’re fascinated by it - they want to make things, and put wires together and make lights light up. I was showing some of the more advanced ones how to control lights using Arduinos. There was a ten year old boy there who after seeing what I had done took my circuit apart, re-assembled it and made a sound to light unit - you tap on a microphone and make lights go on. He was just ten years old. I’m thinking one of the problems with what we teach kids at school is that many of them will go beyond what the teachers can do, and at a much earlier age than you might expect. This ten year old, none of his teachers could really support him in developing his IT skills because they weren’t IT specialists themselves. So Scratch is great, but how do you support people to go beyond that, the more able if you like, who want to do serious programming yet they’re still at primary school. I think there’s a big problem there.</div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #232629; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 32px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Sean</strong>: I’m an artist myself, I create digital artworks. I also believe that artists are amongst the best people to innovate with technology, because they have a thing they want to do, and that thing isn’t constrained by design requirements. Typically design has requirements, and as an artist you set your own requirements when it comes to an artwork. You have boundaries and limitations, but you set them - so an artist can be a great explorer of technology. If we look at the history of technology from photography, cinema, through computing and so on - it’s often been the artists that push it forward. I’ve seen examples of artworks created on 1950s computers, and on the whole the only people who had access to those computers were computer programmers, but the artists snuck in there and started experimenting with it.</div>
<blockquote style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.85098); font-family: Georgia; font-size: 24px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: italic; line-height: 38px; margin: 50px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 80px; position: relative; quotes: none; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">
What opportunities for a career working in digital technologies do you see emerging for the iPad generation?</blockquote>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #232629; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 32px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Sean</strong>: I think a really interesting thing over recent years is that it is now possible to be a bedroom programmer and publish stuff that can be downloaded and looked at by millions.</div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #232629; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 32px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Brian</strong>: And some of the apps that I am using were written precisely by such people.</div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #232629; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 32px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Sean</strong>: I remember as a child there were bedroom programmers who released their software on cassette tape, and they could do everything - they wrote the program, did the graphics, put it onto tape and sold it. They did the lot. And we lost that for a while. There was a period of maybe twenty years where any programming job seemed to require a huge team, and you were always like a little cog in a big machine. And then with apps, and things you can exchange over the Internet, you can now do that again. You can become a complete programmer, sell a product, sell an app - and maybe even make some money out of it.</div>
<blockquote style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.85098); font-family: Georgia; font-size: 24px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: italic; line-height: 38px; margin: 50px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 80px; position: relative; quotes: none; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">
What one key message would you draw from your work on digital skills and digital inclusion?</blockquote>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #232629; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 32px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Brian</strong>: The only way that these skills can be passed on is by creating a network of, I hope, mainly blind and partially sighted trainers but with obviously some sighted helpers in there as well. The notion of blind and partially sighted people helping themselves is so good and so rewarding for the people who go out there and do the training. I have to say I’ve had an enormous amount of fun out of it, and I’m sure you have too Sean. It’s enormously rewarding, and I just want to help more and more people to get that same reward.</div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #232629; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 32px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Sean</strong>: Another really important thing is to remind people that whatever their skills are, they’re valuable - it’s not just because you know the latest piece of technology inside out and therefore you have a particularly valuable skill. At the hackspace it’s not just about the latest technology. There are people with knitting machines, there are people who turn up knowing about a piece of kit that hasn’t been sold for thirty years but is still interesting. It’s reminding people that these skills, whatever they are, are valuable skills and you can share them. You don’t have to just be a technologist.</div>
<blockquote style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.85098); font-family: Georgia; font-size: 24px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: italic; line-height: 38px; margin: 50px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 80px; position: relative; quotes: none; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">
Thanks!</blockquote>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #232629; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 32px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Many thanks to Brian Negus and Sean Clark for all their fascinating and thought provoking contributions. You can find out more about their work by visiting <a href="https://digitalheroes.talktalk.co.uk/" rel="nofollow" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #8c68cb; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">digitalheroes.talktalk.co.uk</a> (don't forget to vote!), or follow <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=digitalheroes&src=typd" rel="nofollow" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #8c68cb; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">#digitalheroes</a> on social media.</div>
Martin Hamiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12640838667301026751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480704540309659677.post-74183754685775488632013-02-28T01:04:00.000+00:002015-08-08T09:02:48.124+01:00Hacking the Chromebook for Fun and Profit<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3i6slywCDs3bbeQidADUCJJwt3y_skEa_wqRiGHi-jTWL3_8shUezPxhaHXZmZbkTumgpQg5oZGUwnOvaOHU_0Le1NLZeTOzDn_1LnIJhVVMPQ3PXS3lqT4BGQabIfuV0pcl3aO0P31I/s1600/Screenshot+2013-02-27+at+23.13.57.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3i6slywCDs3bbeQidADUCJJwt3y_skEa_wqRiGHi-jTWL3_8shUezPxhaHXZmZbkTumgpQg5oZGUwnOvaOHU_0Le1NLZeTOzDn_1LnIJhVVMPQ3PXS3lqT4BGQabIfuV0pcl3aO0P31I/s640/Screenshot+2013-02-27+at+23.13.57.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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You may recall me noting that the Chromebook has been Amazon's top selling laptop for the whole of Q4 2012. There are now a lot of Chromebooks out there - so what can we do with them? Let's see...<br />
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<a name='more'></a><b>Enter Developer Mode</b><br />
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Conveniently, Chromebooks have a developer mode, which lets you bypass all the normal checks and balances that Google use to ensure that rogue software does not run on ChromeOS devices. After you have switched into developer mode your Chromebook will run whatever you want it to, and you can open up a Linux shell in a browser tab (Chromebooks are running a cut down Linux distribution after all) simply by hitting Ctrl-Alt-T.<br />
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This is important to me with my IT manager's hat on, because there are still a few rough edges to the ChromeOS product that make it awkward in my environment. Two particular bugbears for me are that we use the Cisco AnyConnect VPN system and VMware View for our Virtual Desktop Environment for legacy Windows apps. Both of these are supported by open source clients, but these haven't been integrated with ChromiumOS yet.<br />
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There are also the fun and profit elements, of course... If you have hacker tendencies, then hopefully this post will give you some interesting insights along the former theme. See the end of this post for more on the latter.<br />
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Now, how do we get the <a href="http://www.infradead.org/openconnect/" target="_blank">OpenConnect</a> package onto our Chromebook, to provide a free workalike for Cisco's AnyConnect? (Cisco also have a packaged Linux client, but if we can make the open source client work then it is more likely to be embedded in ChromiumOS and thence ChromeOS)<br />
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<b>Crouton to the Rescue</b><br />
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Google's Dave Schneider has helpfully produced <a href="https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton" target="_blank">Crouton</a>, the "Chromium OS Ubuntu Chroot Environment" (there are other examples out there using Tinycore and Arch Linux), which lets us run a full copy of Ubuntu Linux via chroot. It's absolutely trivial to install, although you should note that the Chromebook's Aura window manager doesn't know what to do with windows spawned by random applications - hence Dave recommends that you start a new X session with a conventional window manager/desktop like Xfce.<br />
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So now we can enter our chroot environment (which is actually encrypted by default, using a key requested from the user as part of the Crouton setup process - so perhaps not as insecure as I may have implied), and start installing and even building packages just as we would on a normal Ubuntu Linux distribution. However, many Chromebooks come with quite small SSDs, so watch out when pulling in additional software!<br />
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Here we are adding some useful additional packages to our test Chromebook using apt-get, just as we might on any other Ubuntu system...<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgco91GHelShTLrriVQ6nD1Bu-bGsh-n1W4yIoxVXLMIpd986zXmWr7zDTEyzALbA37zRBECZgI6wZOSuzeXnbi0jkEAJilh5lV1u6uq9v7pm49ZQCFQbxWAiwsFICa8tnvdN2ImKI7VMk/s1600/Screenshot+2013-02-27+at+23.47.13.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgco91GHelShTLrriVQ6nD1Bu-bGsh-n1W4yIoxVXLMIpd986zXmWr7zDTEyzALbA37zRBECZgI6wZOSuzeXnbi0jkEAJilh5lV1u6uq9v7pm49ZQCFQbxWAiwsFICa8tnvdN2ImKI7VMk/s640/Screenshot+2013-02-27+at+23.47.13.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<b>OpenConnect</b><br />
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Now, we can install OpenConnect in a similar fashion - in fact, we'll need to <b>apt-get install openconnect uml-utilities</b> in order to also get a tunnel device management utility we need called <b>tunctl</b>. However, note that there is a little fancy footwork involved in actually using OpenConnect, because our chroot environment is essentially an entire Linux filesystem - with its own /etc, and so on and so forth. We may be happy running OpenConnect inside the chroot environment, but for eventual integration with the core product it will need to be able to run in the "host" ChromiumOS too.<br />
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Now we can create tunnel devices to use for the VPN tunnel back to base, like so:<br />
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<x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;">root@localhost:~# tunctl -t tun0 -f /dev/net/tun</x-row><x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;">Set 'tun0' persistent and owned by uid 0</x-row><br />
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In my testing I sometimes found that I had to create not just tun0, but also tun1, and then OpenConnect would magically create and use tun2 for me, like so:<br />
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<x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;">root@localhost:~# ifconfig tun2</x-row><x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;">tun2 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00 </x-row><x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;"> inet addr:131.231.153.69 P-t-P:131.231.153.69 Mask:255.255.255.255</x-row><x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;"> UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST MTU:1406 Metric:1</x-row><x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;"> RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0</x-row><x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;"> TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0</x-row><x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;"> collisions:0 txqueuelen:500 </x-row><x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;"> RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)</x-row><br />
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This merits some further investigation...</div>
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However, the upshot is that we can now happily make a VPN connection back to our home institution using OpenConnect:</div>
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<x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;">root@localhost:~# openconnect --disable-ipv6 -u XXXX --script /etc/vpnc/vpnc-script vpn.lboro.ac.uk</x-row><x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;">Attempting to connect to 193.62.24.109:443</x-row><x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;">SSL negotiation with vpn.lboro.ac.uk</x-row><x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;">Connected to HTTPS on vpn.lboro.ac.uk</x-row><x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;">GET https://vpn.lboro.ac.uk/</x-row><x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;">Got HTTP response: HTTP/1.0 302 Object Moved</x-row><x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;">SSL negotiation with vpn.lboro.ac.uk</x-row><x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;">Connected to HTTPS on vpn.lboro.ac.uk</x-row><x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;">GET https://vpn.lboro.ac.uk/+webvpn+/index.html</x-row><x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;">Please enter your username and password.</x-row><x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;">Password:</x-row><x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;">POST https://vpn.lboro.ac.uk/+webvpn+/index.html</x-row><x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;">Got CONNECT response: HTTP/1.1 200 OK</x-row><x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;">CSTP connected. DPD 30, Keepalive 20</x-row><x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;">/etc/resolvconf/update.d/libc: Warning: /etc/resolv.conf is not a symbolic link to /run/resolvconf/resolv.conf</x-row><x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;">Connected tun3 as 131.231.153.66, using SSL</x-row><x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;">Established DTLS connection</x-row></div>
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<div>
The <b>vpnc-script</b> file is a <a href="http://www.infradead.org/openconnect/vpnc-script.html" target="_blank">separate download</a>, and consists of some code which tries to manage your <b>/etc/resolv.conf</b> (DNS resolver details) and default route automatically. This is a bit of a mixed bag under Crouton because we have two copies of a number of interesting files such as <b>resolv.conf</b>, and in practice you might need to zap your old default route like so:</div>
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<span style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre;">root@localhost:~# route del -net default gw 192.168.1.1</span></div>
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...and manually update your <b>/etc/resolv.conf</b>. However, now you are VPNing:</div>
<div>
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<div>
<x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;">root@localhost:~# traceroute -n 158.125.1.100</x-row><x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;">traceroute to 158.125.1.100 (158.125.1.100), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets</x-row><x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;"> 1 131.231.13.18 20.726 ms 20.121 ms 26.874 ms</x-row><x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;"> 2 10.100.255.37 27.818 ms * *</x-row><x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;"> 3 158.125.1.100 27.023 ms 27.102 ms 27.152 ms</x-row></div>
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(for a non-VPN connection this traceroute would normally include multiple ISP and JANET routers)</div>
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<b>VMware View</b></div>
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VMware have helpfully led the <a href="https://code.google.com/p/vmware-view-open-client/" target="_blank">VMware View Open Client</a> project, which has released a nice open source VMware View client package that we can use. Installing it is simply a matter of <b>apt-get install vmware-view-open-client.</b> However, if you try to use it from a Linux shell running inside Chrome (rather than a separate X session for Ubuntu) you will see a message in your log file to the effect that:</div>
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<x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;">oot@localhost:~# more /tmp/vmware-root/vmware-view-32091.log </x-row><x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;">Feb 28 00:31:32.989: vmware-view| Log for VMware View Open Client pid=32091 version=4.5.0 build-297975 build=build</x-row><x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;">-297975 option=Release</x-row><x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;">Feb 28 00:31:32.989: vmware-view| Host codepage=UTF-8 encoding=UTF-8</x-row><x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;">Feb 28 00:31:32.990: vmware-view| Using locale directory /usr/share/locale</x-row><x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;">Feb 28 00:31:33.001: vmware-view| Command line: vmware-view </x-row><x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;">Feb 28 00:31:33.001: vmware-view| Using gtk+ version 2.24.10</x-row><x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;">Feb 28 00:31:33.008: vmware-view| Gtk: cannot open display: </x-row></div>
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This is because your chroot'd Ubuntu session doesn't know about the X session that you are running. You can fix this by setting <b>$DISPLAY</b> in your environment:</div>
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<x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;">root@localhost:~# export DISPLAY=:0</x-row><x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;">root@localhost:~# vmware-view </x-row></div>
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...but you will also need to open up a non-chroot Linux shell session and give yourself permission to connect to the X server, e.g. via <b>xhost</b> or <b>.Xauthority</b>:</div>
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<x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;"><span style="color: #ef2929; font-weight: bold;">localhost</span><span style="color: #729fcf; font-weight: bold;"> / #</span> /usr/local/chroots/precise/usr/bin/xhost +localhost</x-row></div>
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Success! (as shown below...) However, your VMware View session will by default take over the entire display (remember my comment about Aura not managing windows from apps that it doesn't know about), and is a little messy to shut down again afterwards. This is where a separate dedicated X session for Ubuntu would be a lot simpler.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKTJKrlC73oMjr0LAluSCmgq2dTLm3OsTt7edKvml_wSV_a2FiJ0xj2kGAh59AFcmLjIAio1jXflWMDnJSxdvgzi8rBMZyJXMgln1hl8ZHrk8FcOXvRiuE2kOw7fenrw-3qyAeV6fuZLk/s1600/Screenshot+2013-02-28+at+00.40.23.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKTJKrlC73oMjr0LAluSCmgq2dTLm3OsTt7edKvml_wSV_a2FiJ0xj2kGAh59AFcmLjIAio1jXflWMDnJSxdvgzi8rBMZyJXMgln1hl8ZHrk8FcOXvRiuE2kOw7fenrw-3qyAeV6fuZLk/s640/Screenshot+2013-02-28+at+00.40.23.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<b>Wrapping Up</b><br />
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So, with a little bit of hacking we have taken our £199 device (actually my experiments have been with the old Samsung Series 5 Chromebook that I was given by Google a while ago) and a) turned it into a general purpose Linux box, b) integrated our corporate VPN, and c) integrated our legacy Windows apps via VMware View. OK, so it's a little rough around the edges, but these are solveable problems.<br />
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To make the additional OpenConnect and VMware View Open Client packages more properly part of ChromiumOS (so that we could avoid having to hack things around) there are probably quite a few dependencies around library versions that would need to be resolved. But what actually are they? Well...<br />
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If you don't mind twisting your brain a little, you can experiment with merging the chroot environment and the normal ChromeOS Linux environment through tweaking the <b>$LD_LIBRARY_PATH</b> environment variable, which governs where Linux picks up its shared liibraries from. The key point here is that <b>/usr/local/chroots/precise</b> directory I referenced above. This is the root of the chroot filesystem.<br />
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We could create a file somewhere that contained the necessary shell commands to prep our environment to use the library files on the chroot side, as shown in the screenshot below...<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpv0m-Rnc32HuXsaNPoOpgjqHgfvX2LkXriyjMzZrct_kozQZ-4Ar-2pwY3oIWsy-EPQ_N-5bcPFH03wwkw3NuFelPqDScQA3R1ZVFDs_9iHG91kyVTwoKMM_vzkj9PYOf_V-7wBQ5jk8/s1600/Screenshot+2013-02-28+at+00.53.05.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpv0m-Rnc32HuXsaNPoOpgjqHgfvX2LkXriyjMzZrct_kozQZ-4Ar-2pwY3oIWsy-EPQ_N-5bcPFH03wwkw3NuFelPqDScQA3R1ZVFDs_9iHG91kyVTwoKMM_vzkj9PYOf_V-7wBQ5jk8/s640/Screenshot+2013-02-28+at+00.53.05.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<b>The Profit Bit</b><br />
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Remember that £199 laptop. Perhaps you thought that it was in some way less of a computer by virtue of being "underpowered" and so on, and incompatible with your enterprise software and systems. In this post I have shown you how it could be quite a nifty thin client to your corporate virtual desktop service, or a full Linux box in its own right. And these things were already flying off the shelves because normal people (not geeks reading blog posts about Linux hacking ;-) were happy to spend £199 on a laptop that would "only browse the web".<br />
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I hope we will see OpenConnect and VMware View Open Client properly integrated with ChromeOS, and that this blog post has provided a few pointers in the right direction. My ideal scenario would be to open remote VMware apps or a full desktop as a Chrome tab, like we can with the Linux shell sessions. Why? Imagine if we could make web links to all our key student software available as part of our Virtual Learning Environment - click and Matlab appears in a browser tab, for any of our students, anywhere in the world. That's the money shot :-)<br />
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[Update August 2015: Cisco have just released an early adopter preview of their AnyConnect VPN client for ChromeOS, available from the <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cisco-anyconnect/jacdijibdjifphcecdielmekkmfdpgee" target="_blank">Chrome Web Store</a>]<br />
<b><br /></b>Martin Hamiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12640838667301026751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480704540309659677.post-25718508232036159722013-07-19T00:38:00.001+01:002015-08-03T15:51:38.694+01:00How to be a Hacker: Code Poets, Technocamps, and the IT Skills Crisis<div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1ouNTXERkLKEXFBNMlW5L8vV58Gmdu0o0niaUYzpY4DoGch1BZvpmS5u-Hg9fYKE_BAoj5qkm2RgeQYQC6UJCH1_az4M-uGiB1G_j1DeCb275TzNbqQMOoMnTawZmC2Na8THWpUOU2nw/s1600/20130531_135848.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1ouNTXERkLKEXFBNMlW5L8vV58Gmdu0o0niaUYzpY4DoGch1BZvpmS5u-Hg9fYKE_BAoj5qkm2RgeQYQC6UJCH1_az4M-uGiB1G_j1DeCb275TzNbqQMOoMnTawZmC2Na8THWpUOU2nw/s400/20130531_135848.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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It's starting to feel like we are really living in the 21st century at last: Elon Musk's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop" target="_blank">Hyperloop</a>, <a href="http://singularityhub.com/2013/05/22/you-can-now-place-your-order-for-a-burger-grown-entirely-in-a-lab/" target="_blank">vat-grown artificial meat</a>, <a href="http://singularityhub.com/2013/06/07/youll-be-able-to-buy-a-3d-printer-at-staples-by-the-end-of-june/" target="_blank">3D printing hitting the high streets</a> (and we're now <a href="http://qz.com/78877/how-soon-will-we-be-able-to-3-d-print-entire-human-organs-sooner-than-you-think/" target="_blank">3D printing human organs</a>) and <a href="http://www.wired.com/business/2012/08/ff_wallstreet_trading/all/" target="_blank">hedge funds are beaming neutrinos through the Earth's core</a> in a bid to accelerate high frequency trading. The <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/12/health-scanner-scanadu-scout-breaks-indiegogos-crowdfunding-record/" target="_blank">Star Trek tricorder will shortly be a reality too</a>. But, this is just one side of the story. <a href="http://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Industrys-moral-obligation-to-young-people" target="_blank">Quoting Ian Livingstone</a>, Co-Founder of Games Workshop and CEO of Eidos: "Something is wrong when you have one million young people unemployed and 100,000 jobs vacant in IT".<br />
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<a name='more'></a>[Photo: MakerBot 3D printer from Software Alliance Wales IT Employability Expo]<br />
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<b>Scale of the Problem</b><br />
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Here are some key facts from a recent presentation to the House of Lords by Yva Thakurdas, CEO of 1st Grosvenor Consultants, later picked up on by <a href="http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/it-downtime-blog/2013/05/shurely-shome-mishtake.html" target="_blank">Lord Empey</a>:<br />
<ul>
<li>A steady decline at all levels in the standard of the computer science educational curriculum over the past 15-20 years </li>
<li>UK university applications to study computer science falling by more than 60% since 2002 </li>
<li>A decrease in numbers of computer science graduates by more than 25% since 2002 </li>
<li>Some university curricula not being aligned to industry requirements </li>
<li>A 50% fall in the number of students striving for jobs in industry since 2002 </li>
<li>An explosion in the growth of the IT sector over the corresponding period </li>
</ul>
If you have a few minutes to spare, watch this sobering video that Yva has put together:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/H1dIyqNk3N4" width="560"></iframe>
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<b>We Need More Electricians</b><br />
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If data is the new oil, then we could say that code (as in computer programs) is the new electricity, and we desperately need more electricians. Without code we are unable to process our data except in very simple ways where the coding has already largely been done for us, such as Excel spreadsheets. Perhaps we shouldn't be too quick to dismiss Excel, which we hear anecdotally is used to run some Fortune 500 companies and even the odd national economy. However, there have been some <a href="http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2013/04/17/rogoff-reinhart-excel-errors/" target="_blank">high profile Excel disasters</a>, not least of which is the infamous case of <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2013/04/the-rogoff-and-reinhart-controversy-a-summing-up.html" target="_blank">Rogoff and Reinhart</a> and the bogus justification for the current "austerity" fad.<br />
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So where does code come from? It's not a natural resource, and (machine learning aside) it isn't really a byproduct of our online activities. For the most part code is consciously designed and created by computer programmers, also known as software engineers, or as I prefer to call them: <b>Hackers</b>.<br />
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I have a real problem with the way that the media have appropriated and demonized this word. Hacker is a term now used almost exclusively in a pejorative sense, but we don't have to look too far back to rediscover the grand and noble tradition of <a href="http://hacks.mit.edu/" target="_blank">MIT hacks</a>. Here' s a nice little video summarising the history and ethos of the hacking tradition at MIT:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="281" mozallowfullscreen="" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/60429796" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="500"></iframe><br />
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<a href="http://vimeo.com/60429796">MIT Hacks</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/reelmatt">Matt Thomas</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.</div>
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Hacks and hacking used to mean something very different from the sense in which these words are typically used now, both within the IT industry and by civilians. Cool hacks are celebrated on a number of websites, including my personal favourite <a href="http://hackaday.com/" target="_blank">Hackaday</a>.<br />
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<b>Celebrating Great Hackers</b><br />
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Great hackers (or "code poets") have invented new programming languages, networking hardware and network protocols, and often the hardware itself - like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Wozniak" target="_blank">Steve Wozniak with the Apple I and II</a>. My favorite example of a great hacker is the late <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart" target="_blank">Doug Englebart</a>, who in the famous "Mother of all Demos" from 1968 showed the world the computer interface that would take until the 21st century to fully become a reality for most people - mouse, icons, windows, graphical display, copy and paste, collaborative editing and hypermedia. All this was delivered remotely using video conferencing. Doug and his group were literally generations ahead of their time.<br />
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At the dawn of the mass Internet we had envisaged that it would be a system of loosely coupled decentralised services, with everyone running their own email system, website and so on. However, the dynamic of the Internet era has ended up being very much about winner takes all, and in many cases hacker CEOs have ended up as the biggest winners of all.<br />
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Some examples will be familiar to everyone, like Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Google's Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Others are perhaps less well known outside the technical community, e.g. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Shuttleworth" target="_blank">Mark Shuttleworth</a> (Thawte SSL certificates and Ubuntu Linux) and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk" target="_blank">Elon Musk</a> (Paypal, Tesla Motors and SpaceX). Forget pop stars and footballers, here are your new role models.<br />
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<b>How to be a Hacker</b><br />
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But most hackers are cut from humbler cloth, like the thousands of contributors to the Linux kernel, which now powers nearly a billion tablets and smartphones worldwide, 94% of the Top 500 supercomputers, and most "embedded" devices such wireless routers, smart TVs and so on. If you are curious and want to find out more, I've written about the irresistible rise of Linux in <a href="http://blog.martinh.net/2012/12/march-of-penguins.html" target="_blank">March of the Penguins</a>.<br />
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What drives people to become hackers, and how do we ensure that this is a career opportunity open to all those who would like to pursue it? This was the subject of my recent invited talk at the University of Bangor for <a href="http://softwarealliancewales.com/" target="_blank">Software Alliance Wales</a>. You can view my slides embedded below:<br />
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<strong> <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/comth/how-to-be-a-hacker-sut-i-fod-yn-haciwr" target="_blank" title="How to be a Hacker (Sut i fod yn Haciwr)">How to be a Hacker (Sut i fod yn Haciwr)</a> </strong> from <strong><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/comth" target="_blank">Martin Hamilton</a></strong> </div>
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This topic and location have a particular resonance for me because I grew up in North Wales, not far from Bangor. Back in my day the idea that the fledgling public Internet might one day provide high bandwidth connections to remote rural communities was just so much science fiction. If you aspired to work in a high tech industry you simply had to leave - if not the country then certainly the area.<br />
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Now things are very different, and I was delighted to be able to meet and talk with folk from a vibrant community of tech start-ups and spinouts, and to help judge the final years projects from the latest batch of Bangor computer science finalists. Here's my favourite poster (and the winning entry) from the finalist projects, Natalie Hutchinson's adaptive real-time facial expression recognition system:<br />
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<b>The Next Generation</b><br />
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So where is the next Natalie going to come from, given the precipitous decline in interest in Computer Science that I highlighted at the top of this post?<br />
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On my visit to Bangor I was particularly struck by the <a href="http://www.technocamps.com/" target="_blank">Technocamps</a> programme, which organizes "boot camps" in Welsh schools to expose pupils to coding at a range of different levels, from first principles with MIT Scratch right through to app development with Xcode. We saw some brilliant demonstrations of robots built by schoolchildren who had been participating in three day boot camps, and I particularly enjoyed the Lego Mindstorms robots.</div>
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I think this is a very pragmatic way of increasing awareness of Computer Science, coding and yes - hacking, in the truest sense of the word! Can we really expect ICT teachers across the UK to turn into code poets overnight? No, but there is potentially a huge amount that can be achieved through schools working together with their local Universities and Colleges.<br />
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The Technocamps initiative has been funded through the EU's Convergence Social Fund, and exists principally to service the Welsh <a href="http://wefo.wales.gov.uk/programmes/convergence/?skip=1&lang=en" target="_blank">Convergence Area</a>. What is the analogous situation in the rest of the UK, where this same economic stimulus does not exist? It is direct government investment across the board, or a mixture of community engagement by institutions already well serviced by the FE/HE sector, plus government intervention in more remote/rural areas? Is there a specific case to be made for maintaining and sustaining the core Technocamps activity with further central funding, to use it as a template and bring in the group's expertise more widely around the UK? I think so.<br />
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At Loughborough we already put a lot of effort into outreach activities like <a href="http://www.lboro.ac.uk/nsew/" target="_blank">National Science and Engineering Week (NSEW)</a>, and it's clear that this is a valued personal development opportunity for our undergraduates and graduate students. I can see them making natural Technocamps ambassadors!</div>
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Martin Hamiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12640838667301026751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480704540309659677.post-38921572304776487392014-01-30T10:18:00.001+00:002015-08-03T15:33:46.259+01:00Wake Up Sleepy Head - The Internet of Things That Go Bump In the Night<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This post takes us from the Quantified Self to the Quantified Driver, and the Internet of Things to the Botnet of Fridges. We've been hearing a lot about the Quantified Self movement, and how in years to come our gadgets (that other thing we hear a lot about - the Internet of Things) will be quietly collecting information about us to help us plan our routines, sleep, diets, exercise regimes, and so on. A <a href="http://quantifiedself.com/2012/03/the-computational-quantified-self-a-qa-with-stephen-wolfram/" target="_blank">landmark interview with Stephen Wolfram</a> a couple of years ago put this onto a lot of people's agendas. This might sound like science fiction, but we can get a glimpse of that future right now if we know where to look, particularly around fitness tracking and what I suspect my Californian readers would describe as wellness monitoring. In this post I'll look at some of the tech which is out there now, including some surprisingly well established systems, and give you my own tale from the edge…<br />
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(Apologies to Charlie Stross for borrowing his meme for the title of this post!)<br />
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<b>Passive vs Active Data Gathering</b><br />
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Gadgets in this space have already had some low key successes, like the Nike FuelBand, the Fitbit, the Moto Actv (see my blog post: <a href="http://blog.martinh.net/2013/05/hacking-google-smartwatch.html" target="_blank">Tiny Robots: Hacking the Google Smartwatch</a>) and the Jawbone UP. It's quite inspiring to see just how much can be achieved with the combination of a few sensors and the phone/tablet tech you already carry around with you every day. Here's a nice marketing video from the Jawbone folk that will be quite eye opening if you weren't already into this stuff:<br />
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But the devil is in the detail, as always - gadgets like the Jawbone and the Fitbit don't know what the ingredients were in that artisanal sandwich you had for dinner, for example. If you want to track this sort of info then you will have to keep updating the app with the details of your meals by hand. It would be nice if upcoming gadgets like the <a href="http://www.hapi.com/products-hapifork.asp" target="_blank">HapiFork</a> could do this, or the <a href="http://www.beamtoothbrush.com/toothbrush/" target="_blank">Beam</a> or <a href="http://www.kolibree.com/" target="_blank">Kolibree</a> smart toothbrushes could automatically detect cavities. Not yet. The <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrWfLAh2T3k" target="_blank">OrCam</a> promises a lot in this area (perhaps too much?) whilst being pitched principally as assistive technology.<br />
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Another impressive gadget that requires a bit less interaction is the Withings Smart Body Analyser. On the surface this is "just" a pair of connected weighing scales, but then you realise that it is automatically checking your heart rate, indoor air quality, calculating your Body Mass Index (easy if you know someone's height, admittedly), and even "knows" which member of the family just stepped on the scales...<br />
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<b>Wake Up Sleepy Head</b><br />
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But this post is really about what happens when your journey into the realm of the quantified self is a bit more... involuntary. A couple of weeks ago I was diagnosed with sleep apnoea (or apnea for my American readers), which is when you briefly stop breathing during your sleep, typically due to your airway collapsing. This results in you not getting enough sleep, feeling run down and generally requiring industrial strength doses of food and drink to get you up and running in the morning – only to be followed by you nodding off on the sofa, during meetings, and so on. The symptoms can seem comical to a bystander, but the clue is in the collapsing part - if untreated, sleep apnoea is a major risk factor in heart attacks and strokes.<br />
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The usual treatment for sleep apnoea is a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine, which has a mask that fits over your nose or whole face while you sleep, and sucks air in to maintain target pressure and keep you breathing normally. I was fortunate that CPAP units are provided to apnoea sufferers at no cost through the NHS, although there are signs that this will all be changing as we move to a US style medical insurance regime in the coming years.<br />
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So it turns out that the ResMed CPAP machine I was issued with has a built in data logger, which writes to an SD card in the <a href="http://www.edfplus.info/" target="_blank">EDF+</a> standard format. Some enterprising coders have built a program called <a href="http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/sleepyhead/index.php?title=Main_Page" target="_blank">SleepyHead</a> which reads this data in and provides some nice stats graphing of the events the machine records, and also shows you trends over time. At the top of this post is an example of my worst night’s stats, with 55 apnoea and hypopnea events. The flow rate graph shows these quite nicely as vertical bars:<br />
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And here’s an example of one of my best night’s stats, with just three events:<br />
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Trends (shown in the graph below) are probably the most interesting part of this, because you quickly start to think in terms of gaming the system to get the best possible score. In this case that means changing sleeping positions, pillows and so on in an effort to make the apnoea–hypopnoea index (AHI) figure as low as possible. My initial AHI on starting CPAP was 41, then with CPAP I have managed to get it well below 5, which is regarded as normal. Now that I am feeling more energised, time to shift a few more kilos and see if I can make the apnoea go away!<br />
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<b>Help! My Fridge Just Joined a Botnet!</b><br />
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Now, it would be melodramatic to say that the ResMed machine was keeping me alive - although it does drastically reduce the risk of some rather serious medical conditions developing in the future. In particular, if the power to the machine fails, I will still be able to breathe, as face mask has an anti asphyxia valve. But what if correct working of that gadget really was a matter of life and death?<br />
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This is where I see a very sinister side to the Internet of Things. We have already seen instances of connected <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/it-pro/security-it/cyber-attack-that-sent-750k-malicious-emails-traced-to-hacked-refrigerator-tvs-and-home-routers-20140120-hv96q.html" target="_blank">household appliances being compromised and turned into spam bots</a>, and there are assertions that <a href="http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18570737" target="_blank">government agencies may have inserted backdoors</a> into popular consumer hardware. What if our smart meters, connected thermostats and <a href="http://www.kwikset.com/Kevo/default.aspx?utm_source=buffer&utm_campaign=Buffer&utm_content=buffer18fe2&utm_medium=twitter#.UuwDBfZvBbw" target="_blank">smart locks</a> are all fair game, and medical hardware is (via Bluetooth, ANT, NFC, ZigBee, WiFi, ...) just a step away.<br />
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By way of a parting shot, something that had completely passed me by until the other day is that by law all modern cars have an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On-board_diagnostics" target="_blank">On Board Diagnostics</a> (OBD-II) connector, and that there is a thriving community of petrolheads ("Quantified Drivers") who use inexpensive wired and Bluetooth dongles plugged into their car's OBD-II socket to monitor their car, together with apps like <a href="http://torque-bhp.com/" target="_blank">Torque</a>. Here's a great video from Internet startup Dash, which has developed an app that plugs this data into a much grander vision not far removed from those wellness trackers we saw earlier:<br />
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So far so good, but here's the sting in the tail - some of those OBD dongles remain active even when the car's ignition is switched off, keys are out, and the doors are locked. Hard-coded PINs and no-security models abound, and OBD access has been implicated in recent <a href="http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/132526-hack-the-diagnostics-connector-steal-yourself-a-bmw-in-3-minutes" target="_blank">key cloning</a> and car theft exploits. You should also note at this point, as Bruce Schneier observes, that t<a href="https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/07/hacking_bmws_re.html" target="_blank">he OBD offers a read-write interface</a>...<br />
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Sleep well!<br />
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PS Budding quantified drivers may be interested in the <a href="http://theksmith.com/technology/hack-vehicle-bus-cheap-easy-part-1/" target="_blank">Complete Guide to Hacking Your Vehicle Bus</a>, and this Hackaday post on <a href="http://hackaday.com/2013/04/28/odb-ii-hacking-using-an-android-tablet/" target="_blank">OBD-II Hacking using an Android Tablet</a>.<br />
<br />Martin Hamiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12640838667301026751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480704540309659677.post-10548579158737653352013-07-17T00:50:00.002+01:002015-08-03T14:18:41.262+01:00Peak Data - Fracking Knowledge from the Digital Exhaust<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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If data is the new oil, then how do we go about extracting and refining it? And will it come out easily, or will we need to resort to "data fracking"? I'll talk here about my favourite idea that came out of the recent Jisc think tank meeting on Big Data and Analytics, which is all about setting up mechanisms for data and potentially code sharing across academia, government and industry. I'm also setting you up to find out more about the literal Digital Exhaust.<br />
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[Picture credits Rob Englebright, reproduced with permission]<br />
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<b>Peak Data</b><br />
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First off, the data as oil analogy is somewhat flawed as open data is presently still in relatively short supply. Furthermore, organizations aren't always attuned to the possibilities that accrue from strategic use of open data. Hence extraction can be problematic - cue those fracking comparisons. But in many ways we are building up to Peak Data, whereas the petrochemical industry is (we are told) already starting to contract after Peak Oil (shale gas notwithstanding).<br />
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We may envisage a world where data is more widely available. This might arise as a byproduct of government funded projects and agencies routinely sharing their data holdings - encouraged in recent policy statements from RCUK and other funders in the UK. I have written about these changes in <a href="http://blog.martinh.net/2012/10/suddenly-everything-has-changed.html" target="_blank">Suddenly, Everything has Changed</a> and <a href="http://blog.martinh.net/2012/12/describing-elephant-adventures-in.html" target="_blank">Describing the Elephant</a>. But this is a very education sector centric view - industry also releases open data and enters into (more restrictive but still...) collaborative agreements with peers, supply chain partners and even competitors.<br />
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If that last point sounds unrealistic, consider the <a href="http://www.etriks.org/" target="_blank">eTRIKS project</a>. This brings together a number of University partners with most of the big pharma firms including Roche, Janssen, GlaxoSmithKline, Bayer, Pfizer and Merck. The goal of this work is to build a common platform for <b>pre-competitive</b> translational research around the open source <a href="http://www.transmartproject.org/" target="_blank">tranSMART</a> software. For a whistlestop tour of eTRIKS, please see this presentation from AstraZeneca's Ian Dix:<br />
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<strong> <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/etriksconsortium/2013-0410-etriks-overview" target="_blank" title="2013 04-10 eTRIKS overview">2013 04-10 eTRIKS overview</a> </strong> from <strong><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/etriksconsortium" target="_blank">etriksconsortium</a></strong> </div>
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Another notable example is the <a href="http://www.cfms.org.uk/" target="_blank">CFMS</a> HPC facility in Bristol, started up by a consortium of major firms including Airbus, BAe Systems, Rolls Royce and Williams F1. Could everyone come together to agree on a common supercomputing platform? Eight years on and CFMS is going strong - and has been in many ways an inspiration for the work that we are now doing with the <a href="http://hpc-midlands.ac.uk/" target="_blank">HPC Midlands supercomputing shared service</a>. Here are a few slides on CFMS from their former General Manager, Michael Davies:<br />
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<strong> <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/MichaelDavies5/cfms-project-asrc" target="_blank" title="Cfms project (asrc)">Cfms project (asrc)</a> </strong> from <strong><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/MichaelDavies5" target="_blank">Michael Davies</a></strong></div>
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Whilst both eTRIKS and CFMS have benefitted from some public funding, it is easy to see that the firms involved already have the resources to collaborate. Are they simply taking advantage of the opportunity to cream some money off the taxpayer, as a cynic might say, or are there genuine opportunities for the education sector to act as a catalyst? I believe the answer is very much the latter, if we are prepared to rethink our existing mental models and embrace these wider collaborations - codified here at Loughborough as <a href="http://www.lboro.ac.uk/annual-review/research/" target="_blank">Research that Matters</a>.<br />
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<b>The Digital Exhaust</b><br />
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As a former networking researcher (described in <a href="http://blog.martinh.net/2011/05/back-to-future-resource-discovery.html?" target="_blank">Back to the Future - Resource Discovery, Revisited</a>) I was often stymied by the difficulty of getting access to raw data to test my hypotheses. Ironically, I ended up becoming an infrastructure geek largely as a byproduct of this desire to "get the data", but then found that infrastructure work simply expands to fill all the available time, and then some more again.<br />
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Picking a data point at random from one of the firms I have already mentioned, how likely is it that Rolls Royce are able to effectively analyse all of the <a href="http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/rr-trent-1000-absolutely-ready-for-787-first-flight-336006/" target="_blank">ACARS digital telemetry</a> from their recent engines? We have heard a lot about the Digital Exhaust, but this is the real thing. Are there opportunities here to improve engine performance, provide feedback to pilots on flying styles, and to ground service engineers on optimal settings? You bet.<br />
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There has been a somewhat febrile atmosphere recently around whether we view (say) jet engine telemetry, GP patient records, the 100K Genomes from <a href="http://www.genomicsengland.co.uk/" target="_blank">Genomics England</a> or even institutional Virtual Learning Environment click trails as "Big Data". In truth, all of these things are part of our wider digital exhaust, a mixture of public and private data - open, closed, and "semi-open" through the likes of Twitter's <a href="http://mashable.com/2012/09/05/twitter-api-rss/" target="_blank">recent API changes</a> which now require authentication and all API applications to be centrally registered.<br />
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Should I reasonably expect to be able to mash up my genome, records of GP and hospital consultant visits and results of blood based biomarker tests against interventions and outcomes with the larger UK population, environmental test readings and other epidemiological information from my community? Absolutely. How do we go about that? This is where I think Jisc is uniquely placed...<br />
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<b>Jisc as Innovation Catalyst</b><br />
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What can Jisc add to the mix? There are some particular angles that being a national cross sector organization adds. Jisc is particularly well placed to provide a stimulus to encourage the wider sharing of data about learning journeys and outcomes beyond that required by central government for statistical purposes like Key Information Sets, but I think it also has a broader role through using its status and reputation to bring key players to the table. More on this later.<br />
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First, though a Key question: To what extent do top down initiatives like KIS produce data that is actually useful and used by prospective students? What if we were going to enormous lengths to collect the wrong data, as <a href="http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/iwmw2013/talks/sidhu/" target="_blank">Ranjit Sidhu asserted in his talk for IWMW 2013</a>? By pure chance, <a href="https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/event/7239717189" target="_blank">this week's ODIfridays lecture at the Open Data Institute</a> covers exactly this ground, so do go along if you are in London and free over lunch. [For readers from the future, the date in question is July 19th 2013]<br />
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There is a broader context, which follows from the HESA/HEFCE <a href="http://landscape.hesa.ac.uk/" target="_blank">HE Information Landscape</a> work: institutions don't just have to produce the KIS return. In fact many Universities have several hundred statistical returns to complete every year. These include numerous statutory returns, and a wealth of data required for certifications by professional bodies. The diagram below, taken from the Information Landscape study final report, shows how these requirements break down:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg93DoHAq2-DzZosMD5T3Ir4uXkMwdwUbo0Cb8UEzqjkAkASc3ozHet8EktpcyMtuseNMa5RQKZqhvuIvfhFG5ei7m6hjR4wFmtz6MRGaGaTRnqtCQtQzgRurQxGhKQ7q1htNub4fagUw8/s1600/Screen+Shot+2013-07-17+at+00.22.52.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="231" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg93DoHAq2-DzZosMD5T3Ir4uXkMwdwUbo0Cb8UEzqjkAkASc3ozHet8EktpcyMtuseNMa5RQKZqhvuIvfhFG5ei7m6hjR4wFmtz6MRGaGaTRnqtCQtQzgRurQxGhKQ7q1htNub4fagUw8/s400/Screen+Shot+2013-07-17+at+00.22.52.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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Jisc is ideally placed here to get the relevant stakeholders around the table to thrash our a smaller set of statistical returns, if not core HE and FE sets. This would potentially save the sector many millions of pounds per year through the reduced cost to institutions of compliance.<br />
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Jisc can also add value around the negotiation of sector wide agreements such as the work done recently on the JANET Cloud Brokerage, <a href="https://www.ja.net/products-services/janet-cloud-services" target="_blank">model agreements for cloud services</a>, and peerings with industry giants like Google, Microsoft and Amazon - and in the future hopefully the likes of our collaborators E.ON and Rolls Royce.<br />
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Does it also make sense to be thinking about procuring shared services on behalf of the sector? You might think that Universities and Colleges have a whole host of unique requirements that would frustrate this, but the reality is that over 50% of the HE sector have independently chosen the same timetabling system, student records system, and so on. See the <a href="http://www.ucisa.ac.uk/bestpractice/surveys/cis.aspx" target="_blank">UCISA CIS Survey</a> for the full results - I've excerpted a couple of examples below.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijtM8FPq4kbNGGnDkORISfs8vhR3VEKgnSpOuL0XNrqFertOJ0YTRdBqi6urtG7CPgHAcgNif8Qf-s8K9u6CqYJi3xeCZhe2kmMr3Vs6q2CHoj0YnUThKf7QhraojlI4js_PoPgb6uxBI/s1600/Screen+Shot+2013-07-17+at+00.33.00.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="337" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijtM8FPq4kbNGGnDkORISfs8vhR3VEKgnSpOuL0XNrqFertOJ0YTRdBqi6urtG7CPgHAcgNif8Qf-s8K9u6CqYJi3xeCZhe2kmMr3Vs6q2CHoj0YnUThKf7QhraojlI4js_PoPgb6uxBI/s400/Screen+Shot+2013-07-17+at+00.33.00.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8fBmwwH63_k4q2p5K5ZNxwZfeJxHyzFD50Y1qc_xOC8TlB406EmbfPcEGXDYMJIpPfU5EiZrv7smRpkspwazTEh76aUZfh4AmYPuOC3EitWONGj4PQLvocLoJL9xQghqhuKwEsIxQBLE/s1600/Screen+Shot+2013-07-17+at+00.32.46.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="340" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8fBmwwH63_k4q2p5K5ZNxwZfeJxHyzFD50Y1qc_xOC8TlB406EmbfPcEGXDYMJIpPfU5EiZrv7smRpkspwazTEh76aUZfh4AmYPuOC3EitWONGj4PQLvocLoJL9xQghqhuKwEsIxQBLE/s400/Screen+Shot+2013-07-17+at+00.32.46.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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Does this have the potential to save individual institutions and the sector overall a significant sum of money through reduced operating costs? You bet. Would suppliers be interested in participating? quite possibility - each OJEU scale procurement costs them tends of thousands of pounds to respond to. Might this proposal encounter significant institutional level resistance and require intervention from HEFCE, BIS etc to drive forward? Quite likely!<br />
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I've also touched in the past on a lighter touch version of this, in my <a href="http://blog.martinh.net/2012/02/codeacuk-bounty-hunt-my-jisc-elevator.html">Elevator Pitch for code.ac.uk</a> - the concept here is that Jisc puts relatively small amounts of money into encouraging institutions to clean up, document and share their code for interfacing key corporate systems. You could think of it as a cheap and cheerful stepping stone to the Enterprise Service Bus being developed as part of the <a href="http://www.nexus.ac.uk/">JISC Advance Nexus</a> project. I don't see this happening without some sort of contractual relationship in place.<br />
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<b>Playing Devil's Advocate</b><br />
So we can see a role for Jisc around negotiating sector wide deals for the likes of metadata schemas for statistical returns and procuring or developing shared systems and services. These activities might seem to be something of a departure from the activities of the old JISC, which tended to take a "thousand flowers bloom" approach to innovation. However, we could ask ourselves to what extent should Jisc be undertaking "research"? We have research councils for that, after all...<br />
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Of the areas I've discussed, analytics in particular is a hard nut to crack, because there are now a number of products on the market around business intelligence, key performance indicators, and especially teaching and learning - including our own Co-Tutor student relationship management system (of which more anon), and offerings from the likes of Blackboard and Ellucian (Course Signals).<br />
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I would dearly like to see Jisc using its thought leadership role to act as a catalyst in discussions that bring academia, government and industry together, such as those taking place around the <a href="http://www.biginnovationcentre.com/" target="_blank">Big Innovation Centre</a>. However, I would also ask a litmus test question for any proposed projects and programmes: <b>Will it happen anyway?</b> (and if so, how would Jisc involvement accelerate the process?)<br />
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<br />Martin Hamiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12640838667301026751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480704540309659677.post-20388812324922784152013-05-05T22:19:00.002+01:002015-08-03T13:58:12.095+01:00Tiny Robots: Hacking the Google Smartwatch<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDFySYaYVFE73_w-x0slIznxRhyBkLXfaD8M4wu1REZURSR9LhZmcEHHlsQOLlY8cZSuX29SNDCxqqbvgOsUsIpbPa2XwLwXvJShhpBPgMt_M24h8h9uP0IWO12upZEbU6lVdXFQ28On4/s1600/20130505_202250.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDFySYaYVFE73_w-x0slIznxRhyBkLXfaD8M4wu1REZURSR9LhZmcEHHlsQOLlY8cZSuX29SNDCxqqbvgOsUsIpbPa2XwLwXvJShhpBPgMt_M24h8h9uP0IWO12upZEbU6lVdXFQ28On4/s400/20130505_202250.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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We've heard a lot lately about how 2013 will be the <a href="http://uk.ign.com/articles/2013/04/19/the-year-of-the-smartwatch-wave-of-the-future-or-flash-in-the-pan" target="_blank">year of the smartwatch</a>, with upcoming products rumoured from a host of sources. But hey, guess what - it turns out that Google are already selling an Android powered smartwatch, through their purchase of Motorola Mobility. This is the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motoactv" target="_blank">Moto Actv</a>, which probably isn't on a lot of people's radar because it's sold as a sports accessory. In this post we'll learn how to hack the Google smartwatch and install a full Android distribution on it, and see some examples of what we can do with it.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>Oh, and did I mention that the Moto Actv has been on sale since late 2011? (and was rooted shortly after its initial release) Year of the smartwatch indeed... (and some of its competitors turned out not to be <a href="http://www.cmw.me/?q=node/59" target="_blank">not too smart after all</a>) Anyway, here's Motorola's vision for how you will use your Moto Actv:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/q2RKm8A1Xr0" width="560"></iframe><br />
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Looks interesting, doesn't it. Let's take a quick run through the specs (from the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motoactv" target="_blank">Moto Actv Wikipedia page</a>):<br />
<ul>
<li>600 MHz OMAP3 (3630) ARMv7 CPU supporting ARM extensions thumb, vfp, vfpv3, edsp and neon.</li>
<li>256MB of RAM and 8GB of NAND Flash Memory</li>
<li>802.11B/G/N</li>
<li>Bluetooth 4.0 (low-power mode)</li>
<li>ANT+ for connectivity to fitness sensors (heart rate, etc.)</li>
<li>FM Tuner (w/RDS for station & song identification)</li>
<li>PowerVR GPU</li>
<li>1.6" 220x176 capacitive multitouch LCD display</li>
<li>5 additional hardware buttons on the side [Start, Music, Volume +, Volume -, Standby]</li>
<li>1 additional capacitive button on the front for Back</li>
</ul>
Oh yes, and it's got GPS too - but no mic, speakers or camera built in.<br />
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Shortly after the Moto Actv was released, an <a href="http://www.cmw.me/?q=node/55" target="_blank">enterprising hacker</a> figured out how to break out of the locked down environment shipped by Motorola into full-blown Android, and subsequently there have been a number of <a href="http://motoactv.wikispaces.com/" target="_blank">alternative ROMs</a> produced by the community. If you already have the Android developer tools loaded on your machine, then reflashing the default firmware is a matter of backing up the original system image...</div>
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<pre class="alt2" dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; border: 1px inset; color: #222225; font-size: 13.600000381469727px; height: 90px; overflow: auto; padding: 6px; width: 640px;"> bash$ adb shell
# dd if=/dev/block/mmcblk1p18 of=/sdcard/system.img bs=1024 count=159616
^D
bash$ adb pull /sdcard/system.img system.img
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Then pushing out the alternative firmware...</div>
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<pre class="alt2" dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; border: 1px inset; color: #222225; font-size: 13.600000381469727px; height: 114px; overflow: auto; padding: 6px; width: 640px;"> bash$ fastboot -w
bash$ fastboot flash boot boot.img
bash$ fastboot flash system system.img
bash$ fastboot flash preinstall preinstall.img
bash$ fastboot -w
bash$ fastboot reboot</pre>
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Now you can enjoy a miniaturised version of the full Android experience, as shown in the screenshots below:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpJAPlhSfmJpiMQY4-Qi9hSkl8xYpfnWDsUCF6C4FDHL3kXNWK6j1pSV5sNrJ6tQ3vb1dP-TP1hj1pSFtPOiBkP9xx22e5KqhyVpIrCS5nI-0s4lwtfAGSBssWAnMvmodChWMXbu2tDqs/s1600/2013_05_04_15.43.31.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpJAPlhSfmJpiMQY4-Qi9hSkl8xYpfnWDsUCF6C4FDHL3kXNWK6j1pSV5sNrJ6tQ3vb1dP-TP1hj1pSFtPOiBkP9xx22e5KqhyVpIrCS5nI-0s4lwtfAGSBssWAnMvmodChWMXbu2tDqs/s1600/2013_05_04_15.43.31.png" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIgfQyutiNBOFPuZyxshzcdMxk9iCCqXYoare_7m3p_9XBhGX1XivSzbjAWskkZz-xzRngLFXj_oiF7-UvINIkK7HyyrTn3y-ceeNbfndvKjDVTZNf1FAS7FGVOfsl33-iESAItUt4WGo/s1600/2013_05_04_17.24.10.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIgfQyutiNBOFPuZyxshzcdMxk9iCCqXYoare_7m3p_9XBhGX1XivSzbjAWskkZz-xzRngLFXj_oiF7-UvINIkK7HyyrTn3y-ceeNbfndvKjDVTZNf1FAS7FGVOfsl33-iESAItUt4WGo/s1600/2013_05_04_17.24.10.png" /></a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoYUIe2HoWZUu1_Jmm5zfr__Q8TLnz8QHSgNfsmgZjiQfOIHHEqUWqW35keK4NsdhM_qp2mJG-jQpn4C7VTyu-F5IuYIIInWt9IALIasJxpmQepVGfM4ISLRDOgK9hE8bsbOqgWKVVezA/s1600/2013_05_04_15.44.29.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoYUIe2HoWZUu1_Jmm5zfr__Q8TLnz8QHSgNfsmgZjiQfOIHHEqUWqW35keK4NsdhM_qp2mJG-jQpn4C7VTyu-F5IuYIIInWt9IALIasJxpmQepVGfM4ISLRDOgK9hE8bsbOqgWKVVezA/s1600/2013_05_04_15.44.29.png" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggHxlRsjigKjfFZ_ZG03BEvX-LxvgF2sJkBYlhGh-VkdPqy9qyBiymt9IpqZ5uMncqi-kSV2cj1HE9n4GmZpsUjKYPEYq9bHRAQ0YdqQo4msdX6xHTBTIyaA1drpS5aR0nGfKQSsP8Fsw/s1600/2013_05_04_15.56.39.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggHxlRsjigKjfFZ_ZG03BEvX-LxvgF2sJkBYlhGh-VkdPqy9qyBiymt9IpqZ5uMncqi-kSV2cj1HE9n4GmZpsUjKYPEYq9bHRAQ0YdqQo4msdX6xHTBTIyaA1drpS5aR0nGfKQSsP8Fsw/s1600/2013_05_04_15.56.39.png" /></a><br />
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So far, so good - but why on earth would you want a smartwatch anyway? Perhaps there are more use cases than you might expect at first. I've included a few examples below that may help to illustrate the benefits of carrying a tiny Linux box around on your wrist.</div>
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<b>Where are we now?</b></div>
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Let's kick off with Google Maps and Street View - very handy when navigating around an unfamiliar destination. And yes, you can have turn by turn navigation on your watch, using headphones or a bluetooth headset for audible directions.</div>
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<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5YtP1yUeFOzDxaHKPHgEjSa7xpVf2CHg3VmSzEwKpQHuVHCPC78YZWGowpwDiIS5lREkmSkJV-1mdYLBaCGWe3dZcnQg3jmZuoW758CHLckNGDKPwHpsbspq-7ULQpU4-CImXHi7aBCg/s1600/2013_05_04_15.46.28.png" style="text-align: center;" /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5BN8FSagn_a4ZbuY3qIArk8Tefcegfz80QAcfLzl8aXO4niqFFRpflILZt1pewMmi4kiOOqrkrk1FE2BOd43uHcEY2b9Kgtwe5d4VhhE_JMUCXInn2GCcbui0Fm5xfIfQCIz63PEivzw/s1600/2013_05_04_15.48.59.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5BN8FSagn_a4ZbuY3qIArk8Tefcegfz80QAcfLzl8aXO4niqFFRpflILZt1pewMmi4kiOOqrkrk1FE2BOd43uHcEY2b9Kgtwe5d4VhhE_JMUCXInn2GCcbui0Fm5xfIfQCIz63PEivzw/s1600/2013_05_04_15.48.59.png" /></a></div>
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Of course all your Google Drive files (and indeed Google Music collection) are accessible through account sync. Your mileage may vary when you come to read documents, due to the low resolution and small screen size of the Moto Actv's display. Here's an example showing Barry Foley's talk from <a href="http://geug12.port.ac.uk/" target="_blank">GEUG12</a>:</div>
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<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSbD-Ks0yXDY8aMXzAdSn6daw4FZHIj_Tr147zoDwvnm9Jxb_UZmZftM9Zb0Psn72kUauB3yS_qVNz-h9-QT0pSp_RxnxyP1cH2QPWcTASUBOKvQtt5TjzfLM95cHkrRP-g5do4u3fQyk/s1600/2013_05_04_15.51.02.png" style="text-align: center;" /><span style="text-align: center;"> </span><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWMTsTRbdx9CKQ_ddlkpPgazH9CJwrhYDSoAstRI3mHyAIIz963hLk7hBXSL8iXtGWJgwT1bEJ0hyphenhyphenc1WK2TVg_x46-YnoYZvDs557xsxq3HbZvplyWY2DCbN4UGxt98_LAW4u0yXDWp3w/s1600/2013_05_04_15.51.47.png" /></div>
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And if you're used to running Android at HD resolution, be prepared for a few disappointments, as there are a lot of apps out there that either don't resize usefully on smaller screens or take up huge amounts of the very limited screen real estate. Here are a couple of examples from the built-in News & Weather app, and the official Twitter client:<br />
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<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXMX0l-uAHMBfyMLQCCHQqCQUfrQlqcrP4x9rEBLhzaEaLFW6lSxt5r3tV3-1R_gV9iEd8QRf6Rp09RBU9ryhWFgyutwfck7WYB0hwfI-QAR8ym_ECTZA2tTnp6Jh3uV7PFPTpQigydfo/s1600/2013_05_04_17.28.10.png" style="text-align: center;" /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKut8nnWi1JRKaNqzUGm0pbUThb8fmeVIYsnuZ-9Euqo_vpYfSvAOnU1zoWDEPuVpEWuYyQnPb8De4n89dyFHaFj_ez-wB_jd32161fbWcESe0uRjN7ifPiuSvdb99CHHG5l1XiM29NIE/s1600/2013_05_04_16.03.08.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKut8nnWi1JRKaNqzUGm0pbUThb8fmeVIYsnuZ-9Euqo_vpYfSvAOnU1zoWDEPuVpEWuYyQnPb8De4n89dyFHaFj_ez-wB_jd32161fbWcESe0uRjN7ifPiuSvdb99CHHG5l1XiM29NIE/s1600/2013_05_04_16.03.08.png" /></a><br />
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It would be easy to dismiss the Moto Actv as a general purpose device, but do recall that it wasn't conceived with this in mind. There are a number of use cases where it really shines, such as real time travel information, as shown in the Underground and National Rail app screenshots below:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5BEJcE9OSSh6JHBQiLLBS-vR98ArX6h495SJ-bPsveILtVaoVEUAKFLqrNzJECNWsWWEnI7uOMsanZAldi9SGvnDZZJw0IboOqaEeMSMu-5Z65QOkJM4o9EuN9g75j-taqnlZl-RL6-w/s1600/2013_05_04_16.35.47.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5BEJcE9OSSh6JHBQiLLBS-vR98ArX6h495SJ-bPsveILtVaoVEUAKFLqrNzJECNWsWWEnI7uOMsanZAldi9SGvnDZZJw0IboOqaEeMSMu-5Z65QOkJM4o9EuN9g75j-taqnlZl-RL6-w/s1600/2013_05_04_16.35.47.png" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNzflCj9nSAfD8tQbAtWANSEEbiosBDjIomtueK8MhRHSgQwjVDpxWILBH0lwk9Y9fYdKBhGoVOy_TZOwkxCV1GY7qLXeyv-eCf_SlDaWiLeAwtREZ2OG01_U8arw7f9alMQXFNMkAkvQ/s1600/2013_05_04_16.37.10.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNzflCj9nSAfD8tQbAtWANSEEbiosBDjIomtueK8MhRHSgQwjVDpxWILBH0lwk9Y9fYdKBhGoVOy_TZOwkxCV1GY7qLXeyv-eCf_SlDaWiLeAwtREZ2OG01_U8arw7f9alMQXFNMkAkvQ/s1600/2013_05_04_16.37.10.png" /></a><br />
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(the National Rail app insists on running in portrait mode whatever your device)<br />
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To get an idea about the sort of experience and information density that really works when all you have is a 220x176 display, look no further than the bundled Motorola fitness apps. These are truly gorgeous, e.g. take a look at the clock app shown below.<br />
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<span style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbJX6fdfxUlSE2PxKnaCBGhIfAm1kKNrR9OHcgkfmOgBPdE20SYLkY2RgXmj-un_rpXaWeNp0jpbo7CFqAA_h_bRkSZpKPmttEL4BwsHGRAK3tUBL3-kExur7iKR03-Ox52TrJk6jE-BM/s1600/2013_05_04_16.11.26.png" /></span><span style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;">If all this has piqued your curiosity, you can pick the Moto Actv up on eBay for around £100 (US$155).</span><br />
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Martin Hamiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12640838667301026751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480704540309659677.post-38368526565065692902015-07-30T21:39:00.003+01:002015-08-02T20:12:31.204+01:00Coming together to change the future of education at Google’s Moonshot Summit<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6n80B5UZUSsNm5l82hhEj5fHhkH5VvH1Blm_lvGqEnMaTONggflAKX6nAL-ev7PsET4uP30ofYdJdmkKUE_hcgsalX5wVqKASnz74fgeXJR8pcTHA1oISYDBgNKsG5TpjKboimevwoY4/s1600/google-summit-postits.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6n80B5UZUSsNm5l82hhEj5fHhkH5VvH1Blm_lvGqEnMaTONggflAKX6nAL-ev7PsET4uP30ofYdJdmkKUE_hcgsalX5wVqKASnz74fgeXJR8pcTHA1oISYDBgNKsG5TpjKboimevwoY4/s1600/google-summit-postits.jpg" /></a></div>
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If you could change anything in the education system, what would your 'moonshot' be? This was the question asked of 40 educators, edtech innovators and entrepreneurs from around the world who were invited to <a href="http://moonshotsummit.org/" target="_blank">Google's Moonshot for Education Summit</a> in Amsterdam last week, which I was delighted to be able to attend representing Jisc.</div>
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For those unfamiliar with the term 'moonshot', when President Kennedy announced the Apollo programme in 1961 space exploration was just beginning, but by 1969 the first people walked on the surface of the moon - a seemingly unthinkable achievement less than a decade before. Examples of modern day moonshots include <a href="http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2015/06/30/google-driverless-cars/" target="_blank">driverless cars</a>, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-david-samadi/conquering-cancer-personalized-medicine-is-the-future_b_7585544.html" target="_blank">personal genomics and personalised medicine</a>, and <a href="http://www.mse.ucr.edu/graphene.pdf" target="_blank">new materials like graphene</a>.
Some of the most innovative of these new technologies are being developed by Google, such as <a href="http://www.google.com/loon/" target="_blank">Project Loon</a>, which uses high altitude balloons to provide internet service to rural and hard to reach areas (we've just heard that <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0d39ff20-367c-11e5-b05b-b01debd57852.html#axzz3hMIppl5A" target="_blank">Google will be connecting the whole of Sri Lanka</a> to the internet using Loon). The video below explains Google's own approach to moonshot thinking:</div>
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As Google chief executive Larry Page stated in a <a href="http://www.wired.com/2013/01/ff-qa-larry-page/" target="_blank">2013 interview with Wired</a>: "It's not easy coming up with moonshots. Where would I go to school to learn what kind of technological programs I should work on? You'd probably need a pretty broad technical education and some knowledge about organisation and entrepreneurship. There's no degree for that." To which we could add one word: yet.
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<b>Moonshots in education</b></div>
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So what do we mean by a moonshot in education? In an era when all of human knowledge is freely available online, and the nature of work is fundamentally changing, we have to ask ourselves how the education system needs to evolve to reflect our new realities. This is particularly important when we look at the tech skills required for the digital economy.</div>
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A <a href="http://www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/pages/press-releases/articles/deloitte-one-third-of-jobs-in-the-uk-at-risk-from-automation.html" target="_blank">recent study by Deloitte and the University of Oxford</a> found that "35% of existing jobs in the UK are at high risk from automation over the next two decades, with jobs paying less than £30,000 a year nearly five times more likely to be replaced by automation than jobs paying over £100,000." Meanwhile, the European Commission projects <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/grand-coalition-digital-jobs-0" target="_blank">there will be almost a million unfilled tech vacancies across Europe by 2020</a>.</div>
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Which brings us to the Moonshot Summit. Our hosts for the summit were Esther Wojcicki and the <a href="https://www.edtechteam.com/" target="_blank">EdTechTeam</a>. Esther is an award-winning teacher from Palo Alto High School in California, vice chair of Creative Commons, and consultant to Google's Education team.
Esther has embraced technology in education as a way of liberating and empowering teachers and pupils, as described in her book <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-magid/a-conversation-with-esthe_b_6728222.html" target="_blank">Moonshots in Education</a>. Esther's approach to moonshot thinking in education is nicely summed up in this video interview, Educating for the Unforeseen Jobs of the New Economy:</div>
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<b>What if...?</b></div>
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In a <a href="http://blog.ted.com/a-school-in-the-cloud-sugata-mitra-accepts-the-ted-prize-at-ted2013/" target="_blank">2013 interview on the TED blog</a>, Jisc Digital Festival keynote speaker Sugata Mitra says: "It's quite fashionable to say the education system is broken. It's not. It's wonderfully constructed - it's just that we don't need it anymore. It's outdated." This was a commonly held view amongst the teachers who attended the Moonshot Summit, and we began the event by exploring the delegates' big ideas for transformative change in education.<br />
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Here are just a few of the 'what ifs' to come out of those discussions:</div>
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<li style="text-align: left;">What will the <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/comth/here-comes-the-ipad-generation-future-of-higher-education-2015" target="_blank">iPad generation</a> need and expect from college or university?</li>
<li style="text-align: left;">What if children were grouped by ability rather than their date of birth?</li>
<li style="text-align: left;">What if learning was as addictive as Candy Crush or Flappy Bird?</li>
<li style="text-align: left;">What if we eliminated the constant cycle of assessment?</li>
<li style="text-align: left;">What if my (other?) teacher was a robot, or an algorithm?</li>
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And the big one...</div>
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<li style="text-align: left;">What if there were no schools?</li>
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It was telling for me that educators attending the Moonshot Summit largely felt that whilst a quantum leap was required in education, this was not principally about technology - in many ways the technology we already have is 'good enough', and we are not fully exploiting it. However, there were some examples cited of new technologies that could have a genuinely transformative effect.</div>
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While we might not see the anthropomorphic robots of 1950s science fiction gliding around the corridors of our schools and colleges any time soon, apps like <a href="http://www.abcya.com/math_bingo.htm" target="_blank">MathBingo</a> and <a href="http://www.duolingo.com/" target="_blank">DuoLingo's free language learning platform</a> - which now has over 100 million users worldwide, with examples of how it can be used for <a href="http://www.jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk/infokit/Gamification/gamification-home" target="_blank">gamification of learning</a> - show how technology can be used to augment and enhance contact hours in the classroom and lecture theatre.</div>
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Four key trends emerged from our initial discussions:</div>
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<li style="text-align: left;">Resources and teacher support</li>
<li style="text-align: left;">Innovative assessment</li>
<li style="text-align: left;">Equity and agency</li>
<li style="text-align: left;">Engagement and agency</li>
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The first two themes in particular struck a chord (and correlate well with the recommendations of the UK's <a href="http://etag.report/" target="_blank">Education Technology Action Group</a>). Delegates overwhelmingly felt that teachers needed support and encouragement to transform their approach from 'sage on the stage' to more of a mentoring and coaching role.</div>
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They also felt that education as a whole should move away from a culture of high stakes summative assessment and 'teaching to the test' to a more incremental approach that recognises and credits students' mastery of their study topics. As things stand, learners are often branded as failures simply because they learn at a different pace to their peers or have different aptitudes.</div>
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<b>Ideation</b></div>
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Our facilitators from EdTechTeam then formed groups of like-minded individuals to ideate towards projects around these themes that the participants could take away to work after the Moonshot Summit. We used a 'design sprint' approach for this that would be very familiar to anyone who has participated in <a href="https://www.jisc.ac.uk/rd/how-we-innovate" target="_blank">Jisc's co-design initiative for new R&D projects</a>.</div>
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You can read a detailed description of the Moonshot Summit design sprint in <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/google-moonshot-summit-education-capable-big-hairy-audacious-dayan" target="_blank">Yoni Dayan's post for LinkedIn Pulse</a>, but I will pull out the main ideas here:</div>
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<li style="text-align: left;">Gamifying the curriculum - real problems are generated by institutions or companies, then transformed into playful learning milestones that once attained grant relevant rewards.</li>
<li style="text-align: left;">Dissolving the wall between schools and community by including young people and outsiders such as artists and companies in curriculum design.</li>
<li style="text-align: left;">Creating a platform where students could develop their own learning content and share it, perhaps like a junior <a href="https://www.edx.org/" target="_blank">edX</a>.</li>
<li style="text-align: left;">Crowdsourcing potential problems and solutions in conjunction with teachers and schools.</li>
<li style="text-align: left;">A new holistic approach to education and assessment, based on knowledge co-construction by peers working together.</li>
<li style="text-align: left;">Creating a global learning community for teachers, blending aspects of the likes of <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/" target="_blank">LinkedIn</a>, and the <a href="https://www.khanacademy.org/" target="_blank">Khan Academy</a>.</li>
<li style="text-align: left;">Extending Google's 20% time concept into the classroom, in particular with curriculum co-creation including students, teachers and the community.</li>
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You can also view each of our teams' pitches in the <a href="https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/118XKGuhplzTb9zTXgg4oZgmSAHz7lmMf0CfsP-coSns/edit#slide=id.gc312c5f23_1_0" target="_blank">Moonshot Summit 'Space Walk' slide deck</a>.</div>
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<b>What's next?</b></div>
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The Moonshot Summit is now over, but as participants we are keen to follow up these discussions and explore which of these ideas can usefully be taken forward. While they were largely conceived of with school age learners and school teachers in mind, there are clear parallels with further and higher education and skills - which I am interested in exploring from a Jisc perspective. You can <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=moonshotedu&src=typd&vertical=default&f=tweets" target="_blank">follow #MoonshotEDU</a> on social media to participate in the global dialogue.</div>
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I'd also love to hear your own moonshot ideas - do you agree that education needs a reboot, and do the ideas I've outlined above resonate with you? Will your college or university be ready for the iPad generation? To discuss further, please do <a href="https://www.jisc.ac.uk/staff/martin-hamilton" target="_blank">get in touch with me</a> or leave a comment below.</div>
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Martin Hamiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12640838667301026751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480704540309659677.post-72407749998408117232015-08-02T00:22:00.002+01:002015-08-02T00:41:31.991+01:00Hacking the Chromebook Part 3: ARC Welder meets XiwiBack in February 2013 I wrote <a href="http://blog.martinh.net/2013/02/hacking-chromebook-for-fun-and-profit.html" target="_blank">Hacking the Chromebook for Fun and Profit</a>, little realising that this would become my all time most popular post in five years of blogging, with over 30,000 page views. Two years later and it's time to come back to this and see what has changed.<br />
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In that original post I made the point that while Google's best selling Chromebook family of laptops appears to be a cheap machine that only runs the Chrome browser, it is built on top of Linux, and this means that <a href="https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton" target="_blank">you are only minutes away from having a fully functional Linux distribution</a> running on your Chromebook using the <a href="https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton" target="_blank">Crouton</a> tool from Google's David Schneider.<br />
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<b>Xiwi - X11 in a window</b><br />
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One of the most impressive things that you can do now with Crouton is run native Linux apps, either in a window of their own, or as a browser tab, using <a href="https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton/wiki/crouton-in-a-Chromium-OS-window-(xiwi)" target="_blank">Xiwi</a>. See below for an example - running the GIMP image editor as a browser tab. This is literally as simple as typing "xiwi -t gimp" at the Linux command line, once you have installed the GIMP package:<br />
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<x-row style="background-color: #101010; color: #f0f0f0; display: block; font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Everson Mono', FreeMono, Menlo, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 15px; height: 18px; white-space: pre;"><span style="background-color: transparent;">(precise)martin@localhost:~$</span> xiwi -t gimp</x-row></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZmZEOg92KqF0xszK40y82NhXkVrzYZS8IzWyNaeVyCCjprvXTSXRePP8jx7Qa9JbepZ8sPuzEhwybutxeVRRwbYYg9EBXDEP94GK5RmcFu37eZApvdjRwiqvHwYXvLp0T8haB_jjxHUs/s1600/Screenshot+2015-08-02+at+00.24.00.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZmZEOg92KqF0xszK40y82NhXkVrzYZS8IzWyNaeVyCCjprvXTSXRePP8jx7Qa9JbepZ8sPuzEhwybutxeVRRwbYYg9EBXDEP94GK5RmcFu37eZApvdjRwiqvHwYXvLp0T8haB_jjxHUs/s640/Screenshot+2015-08-02+at+00.24.00.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">GIMP in a browser tab, courtesy of Crouton and Xiwi</span></td></tr>
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And if Google's own offline document editing (yes, they do that now!) isn't quite cutting it for you, why not run LibreOffice in a browser tab?<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJeKan-KTwDezVZGb_qhooWX7S2aQccz0_H5S0Ej9XZMWzHbQf_pdgCpk18i47lsJse1QQyoiH1nm-7PQOxKCiXBrZXiQsi05eqt2z7GjUH59CcnAE6qMtxtrTaN4KeUf0sZHWh_trT14/s1600/Screenshot+2015-08-01+at+23.50.56.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJeKan-KTwDezVZGb_qhooWX7S2aQccz0_H5S0Ej9XZMWzHbQf_pdgCpk18i47lsJse1QQyoiH1nm-7PQOxKCiXBrZXiQsi05eqt2z7GjUH59CcnAE6qMtxtrTaN4KeUf0sZHWh_trT14/s640/Screenshot+2015-08-01+at+23.50.56.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">LibreOffice in a browser tab, courtesy of Crouton and Xiwi</td></tr>
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So far, so good - but we all know that Linux lags behind Windows and OS X in terms of applications. Wouldn't it be good if there was some other source of apps that we could tap into?<br />
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<b>Enter ARC Welder - Android apps on your Chromebook</b><br />
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In March 2013 I wrote about <a href="http://blog.martinh.net/2013/03/hacking-chromebook-part-2-merging.html" target="_blank">merging ChromeOS and Android</a>, and got as far as hacking Android to start up (very, very slowly!) under the QEMU emulator. But this is far from ideal. Wouldn't it be better if we could just run Android apps alongside Chrome browser windows?<br />
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Google's <a href="https://developer.chrome.com/apps/getstarted_arc" target="_blank">ARC (App Runtime for Chrome)</a> does just this - and not just for Chromebooks, either. It's compatible with OS X, Windows and Linux. To use ARC you need to have the <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/arc-welder/emfinbmielocnlhgmfkkmkngdoccbadn" target="_blank">ARC Welder</a> extension installed in Chrome.<br />
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Right now it's bit fiddly to install Android apps, as you can see from the screenshots below - and they don't always work. However, it's not hard to picture a time in the near future where Chrome just "magically" runs all the Android apps your Google accounts has access to.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDAh4EfBZmsUxPq9nS_4PNYDx_mBffQJKWsle7ftimq5PQzQICCaQhwJvJ4Qdok1G2k79xTmWzSdW8YsyGWBLxQXrGvdmqLKjGPfwION1ZiqqiBs0iRI7UFg94o-HIvckdhHiIy3WTqKw/s1600/Screenshot+2015-08-02+at+00.01.28.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDAh4EfBZmsUxPq9nS_4PNYDx_mBffQJKWsle7ftimq5PQzQICCaQhwJvJ4Qdok1G2k79xTmWzSdW8YsyGWBLxQXrGvdmqLKjGPfwION1ZiqqiBs0iRI7UFg94o-HIvckdhHiIy3WTqKw/s400/Screenshot+2015-08-02+at+00.01.28.png" width="216" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Running the ARC Welder Chrome extension</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiagy2GcdSiMyAmDmyC-Rml8eg6-u-8YMfz0qNU5vBxAFcRPzYhDxCyQG86hUxGSa8qnWvg6HCcEmrbW4OtGLX-PNqOEcqjfT8x1MHqMzs0E3cC-tq_6drCvTUBohUN3KcjEwdvo2vt-_8/s1600/Screenshot+2015-08-02+at+00.04.14.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiagy2GcdSiMyAmDmyC-Rml8eg6-u-8YMfz0qNU5vBxAFcRPzYhDxCyQG86hUxGSa8qnWvg6HCcEmrbW4OtGLX-PNqOEcqjfT8x1MHqMzs0E3cC-tq_6drCvTUBohUN3KcjEwdvo2vt-_8/s400/Screenshot+2015-08-02+at+00.04.14.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Choosing an APK to load into ARC Welder</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSdCpkBkh5QYVj3OMqMk8o5gIhGEOuG8jU3yI_UTB9QFPLVWSSdM-XYVnRUyZStx0eoHwk-tZr2j67z2tQ_Ncecz-TOuvfx1MBC18U6j4UiX_4YZqFVOg4CTDX2XMts0PDVc8W7v95teQ/s1600/Screenshot+2015-08-02+at+00.04.41.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSdCpkBkh5QYVj3OMqMk8o5gIhGEOuG8jU3yI_UTB9QFPLVWSSdM-XYVnRUyZStx0eoHwk-tZr2j67z2tQ_Ncecz-TOuvfx1MBC18U6j4UiX_4YZqFVOg4CTDX2XMts0PDVc8W7v95teQ/s400/Screenshot+2015-08-02+at+00.04.41.png" width="216" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The ARC Welder main screen</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzbTgBMRgkAu631Yi-MO6cI9R46tCD5UiIM83oD_pNAfbEBiacUBRjbZQOFlQuxi5rSRiibmz9gowx4lKcM2fUi-jXabr7ErxpO5dVH_ObUQfC8554ItVSHcFW38SuaIx9QJu8hBjWxTE/s1600/Screenshot+2015-08-02+at+00.07.08.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzbTgBMRgkAu631Yi-MO6cI9R46tCD5UiIM83oD_pNAfbEBiacUBRjbZQOFlQuxi5rSRiibmz9gowx4lKcM2fUi-jXabr7ErxpO5dVH_ObUQfC8554ItVSHcFW38SuaIx9QJu8hBjWxTE/s400/Screenshot+2015-08-02+at+00.07.08.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ta-da! Now we have the Android Twitter app running in a window</td></tr>
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If you're not familiar with the term "APK", this is an Android package - the actual file that your phone or tablet downloads when you install or update an app. I would recommend sideloading APKs from your existing devices using <i>adb</i> rather than downloading them from the web. There are quite a few APK search engines out there, but not all of them are trustworthy. If you don't have the <i>adb</i> command, you'll need to install the <i>android-tools-adb</i> and possibly <i>android-tools-fastboot</i> packages, as described in this guide to <a href="http://tomwwolf.com/2013/11/20/howto-android-development-on-chromebook/" target="_blank">doing Android app development on ChromeOS</a>.<br />
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Having run ARC Welder against your APK, it should now be available to Chrome as an extension that you can launch by going to Settings -> More Tools -> Extensions.<br />
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<b>Closing thoughts</b><br />
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Installing Crouton and running native "Linux apps" on your Chromebook is probably always going to be one for the geeks and nerds. The sad truth is that even now with Linux's massive success in Internet infrastructure and embedded systems (including the billions of phones and tablets running Android, which is Linux under the hood), desktop applications are still largely languishing. Also, many Chromebooks don't have enough storage for full strength desktop applications that pull in lots of libraries and frameworks - although SD card expansion is often available.<br />
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ARC on the other hand I can see just being a standard feature of Chrome. Perhaps the question here is whether to expect ARC (and hence anytime anyplace access to all your Android apps) on all platforms, or perhaps just on ChromeOS, as a unique selling point for Chromebooks? Only time will tell...<br />
<br />Martin Hamiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12640838667301026751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480704540309659677.post-88994845416500766412015-04-05T18:03:00.000+01:002015-07-31T18:03:27.852+01:00The Quiet Rise of Google Cardboard<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4b2rW0jR_jtUnlOUg9swxJKnK0ByuJaXgy6AMeTj_UGrK6pRNRVSzvf8YhEray8lkDib_e-we6mGmVvdgr59ZfuBLrr_NCsG-ub1Nz1naSsxDQcrBOlL0RmMvB84dLAzonUMnRi5VOGM/s1600/Screenshot_2015-03-07-23-06-14-168x300.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4b2rW0jR_jtUnlOUg9swxJKnK0ByuJaXgy6AMeTj_UGrK6pRNRVSzvf8YhEray8lkDib_e-we6mGmVvdgr59ZfuBLrr_NCsG-ub1Nz1naSsxDQcrBOlL0RmMvB84dLAzonUMnRi5VOGM/s400/Screenshot_2015-03-07-23-06-14-168x300.png" width="224" /></a></div>
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The tech everyone wanted to try out at the Jisc Digital Festival this year (<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/digifest15" target="_blank">digifest15</a>) didn’t cost hundreds of pounds – instead it was an ultra low cost virtual reality headset based on the <a href="https://www.google.com/get/cardboard/" target="_blank">Google Cardboard</a> design, which you simply slot your Android phone into. Google Cardboard is the successful virtual reality product you might not have heard of – over <a href="http://voicesofvr.com/109-trevor-claiborne-on-google-cardboards-journey-from-20-side-project-to-500000-units-shipped/" target="_blank">500,000 units of Google Cardboard have now been shipped</a> since its launch last year, and there are over 250 Cardboard compatible apps in the Google Play Store.<br />
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Google Cardboard came out of a “20% project” by David Coz and Damien Henry at the Google Cultural Institute in Paris, and launched last summer at Google’s IO developer conference. IO attendees are accustomed to receiving gifts of the latest Google hardware like smartphones, tablets or laptops, so you can imagine that being given a piece of cardboard might initially have been something of a disappointment. Here’s how it unfolded, courtesy of TechCrunch’s Greg Kumparak…<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wZXjoMMigJU" width="560"></iframe>
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Fast forward to early 2015 and Google has quietly turned virtual reality into a paying business by <a href="https://www.google.com/get/cardboard/manufacturers.html" target="_blank">giving away the Cardboard design specs</a>, so anyone can make compatible virtual reality viewers. It also makes <a href="https://developers.google.com/cardboard/?utm_campaign=cardboard-1214" target="_blank">software development kits (SDK) freely available</a> for Android and the popular Unity 3D environment. In turn Google makes money from the sale of Cardboard compatible apps through its commission on Play Store sales.<br />
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What’s really telling about Cardboard is that it shows you actually already had virtually all the hardware you needed for virtual reality – in your pocket. Perhaps the message here is that the smartphone has already usurped the nascent virtual reality viewer product category, as it absorbed much of the market for digital cameras, music players, maps, books etc. And as the screenshot at the top of the post alludes to, perhaps we are finally approaching the world envisaged by William Gibson in his seminal cyberpunk novels.<br />
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Educators and e-learning specialists attending digifest15 told me that they were very excited by Google Cardboard, due to its immediate availability and low cost. What can you see yourself using it for?<br />
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[This piece originally appeared on the Jisc Technology Foresight blog]<br />
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Martin Hamiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12640838667301026751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480704540309659677.post-24757241229616218722014-12-17T17:55:00.000+00:002015-07-31T18:00:29.051+01:00A Digital Dark Age?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLddJoijH5Z2CUtu2Bsxa9avej6RphLGrKsP5cjqs6wIqM-7xiZeslO3I2r-mwIv3u2Ox9oXBgykqaAIQwh4T0AnWi9A2EjSoBW9RZwqb5dJB87R3YXdCzeIxeyzSJsfxn1VeW42oNPCY/s1600/Screen-Shot-2014-12-16-at-23.57.35.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLddJoijH5Z2CUtu2Bsxa9avej6RphLGrKsP5cjqs6wIqM-7xiZeslO3I2r-mwIv3u2Ox9oXBgykqaAIQwh4T0AnWi9A2EjSoBW9RZwqb5dJB87R3YXdCzeIxeyzSJsfxn1VeW42oNPCY/s400/Screen-Shot-2014-12-16-at-23.57.35.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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Most of us now have a cupboard or two’s worth of old media that we’re keeping because one day we might want to go back to it. Floppy disks, old hard drives, audio and video cassettes, CDs and so on. But how many of us no longer posses a device capable of reading/playing that media? There’s a software equivalent too: <b>files that you are no longer able to read</b>. Perhaps the license expired, or the application isn’t compatible with modern hardware or operating systems. And then there are files that were locked into defunct cloud services, with no equivalent of <a href="https://www.google.com/settings/takeout" target="_blank">Google Takeout</a> – or <b>services that simply went away</b> one day.<br />
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So are we entering a new “Digital Dark Age”? This may well be the case if we do not take care to carefully curate our data and metadata. A number of studies show <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_rot" target="_blank">significant link rot in academic publications</a>, but we have also made significant progress through initiatives such as <a href="https://www.datacite.org/" target="_blank">DataCite’s Digital Object Identifiers</a>, and the <a href="http://www.clockss.org/clockss/Home" target="_blank">CLOCKSS archive network</a> for orphaned or abandoned scholarly content. And moving beyond academia, the Internet Archive’s <a href="https://archive.org/details/internetarcade" target="_blank">Internet Arcade</a> provides a great (and fun!) example of what can be done in terms of code and data re-use when enough people are sufficiently motivated – see video above.<br />
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At Jisc we are just kicking off our <a href="http://www.jisc.ac.uk/rd/projects/research-data-spring" target="_blank">Research Data Spring</a> initiative, which is a two year project looking to close any gaps which presently put “research at risk”. Please do take a look at and vote on the ideas people have submitted, and add your own – <b>the first round of Research Data Spring ideation closes on January 12th 2015</b>.<br />
<br />[This piece originally appeared on the Jisc <a href="http://foresight.jiscinvolve.org/">Technology Foresight</a> blog]<br />
<br />Martin Hamiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12640838667301026751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480704540309659677.post-32102328445709953192014-12-21T17:59:00.000+00:002015-07-31T18:00:09.085+01:00The Winner Takes It All<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_4WoRvb0o5kOjp6rKUWbNoQsJMYrMvmrVcfyq7D1FjpGFyr7VgF2eAJHKlB89N-4xDW-jqZxPJCS4PSioKNwkdpceT5ZxgG4WUQr_RQZbT8bkTY9DzyfPWuDy62UeyZVpBrIEStmf3hw/s1600/14697774654_b71f2e78fd_k-198x300.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_4WoRvb0o5kOjp6rKUWbNoQsJMYrMvmrVcfyq7D1FjpGFyr7VgF2eAJHKlB89N-4xDW-jqZxPJCS4PSioKNwkdpceT5ZxgG4WUQr_RQZbT8bkTY9DzyfPWuDy62UeyZVpBrIEStmf3hw/s1600/14697774654_b71f2e78fd_k-198x300.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: 'Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 26.6666679382324px; text-align: start;">Photo credit: CC-BY Flickr user </span><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/slgc/14697774654/in/photolist-ooMWkQ-iVmQ9X-dHmdSV-qgfJ9R-jYeq7B-jYgw2N-j2dKJA-j2b99Z-j2b8T8-pHTeAp-pHWMGk-pHTeAe-q1rGHU-pHYyqE-p4zcbn-pHTeGX-pHVquo-pYdgx5-pHWMDK-dzrSGS-dzmmKe-dzmcLK-dzrF6W-pHVqms-p4zcav-q1iNhD-p4zcgn-q19cdp-pHWMKM-q1rGJW-q19ckZ-pHVqrY-kYxvhn-dzrSwb-dzrT8s-dzrTA3-dzrS4u-dzmncM-dzmohZ-dzrSXC-dzme2z-dzmejP-dzrFC7-dzmdNe-dzmd1P-dzrHd5-dzmbpP-dzmaVP-jj7xqC-nHVy8H" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #9f9f9f; font-family: 'Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 26.6666679382324px; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-align: start; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">slgc</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: 'Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 26.6666679382324px; text-align: start;">.</span></td></tr>
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It’s the Internet’s dirty little secret, and one we ignore at our peril. There’s a reason that every new startup is the Amazon of <i>this</i>, the Facebook of <i>that</i> or the <i>new</i> Uber, Airbnb and so on. That’s because the incremental costs of scaling from a startup to a global concern are very different when you don’t need to take on huge numbers of staff and open bricks and mortar stores, hotels, or taxi offices. And a lot of the major product slots have <b>already gone</b>. These days, Amazon alone really is <a href="http://brad-stone.com/book/" target="_blank">The Everything Store</a> of Brad Stone’s book. Amazon even rents out its own infrastructure as <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/" target="_blank">Amazon Web Services</a>.<br />
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So will we see an <i>Amazon of Education</i>? Will someone crack the successful online “delivery” of “learning”, coupled with robust assessment, and what will that mean for the institution? The last few years have seen quite a few concerted attempts, largely based on replicating the traditional lecture (watch a video, e.g. a <a href="http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/9-things-to-watch-out-for-in-2015/" target="_blank">captured lecture</a>) and tutorial format (discussion in a forum), but these haven’t been hugely successful. We’ve seen <a href="http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/dcs/people/research/csrmaj/daniel_onah_edulearn14.pdf" target="_blank">huge drop out rates</a>, and <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-haber/the-mooc-backlash-udacity_b_4339487.html" target="_blank">pivots</a> from some of the leading lights. It may be telling that the MOOC platforms of recent years bear little relationship with their antecedents, such as the near infamous <a href="http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/ds106-not-course-not-any-mooc" target="_blank">DS106 Digital Storytelling course</a>. And perhaps the future of education will look more like a video game than a lecture. If that seems unlikely, watch the video below from <a href="http://www.duolingo.com/" target="_blank">Duolingo</a> founder and CEO, Luis von Ahn. Right now, more people are learning a language online through Duolingo than the total number of people learning a language at school in the United States.<br />
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If the future of education interests you, why not continue the dialogue with Simon Nelson, the CEO of the UK’s own MOOC platform FutureLearn. <b>Simon will be one of the keynote speakers at Jisc’s Digital Festival 2015 – <a href="http://www.jisc.ac.uk/events/jisc-digital-festival-2015-09-mar-2015" target="_blank">book now</a>, it’s early bird rate until January 5th 2015.</b><br />
<br />[This piece originally appeared on the Jisc <a href="http://foresight.jiscinvolve.org/">Technology Foresight</a> blog]<br />Martin Hamiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12640838667301026751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480704540309659677.post-71290326008925604052014-06-25T17:33:00.000+01:002015-07-31T17:51:33.452+01:00The Day of Forever – Infinite Storage and the Future of Corporate IT<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUlfoiyWoqnV5UQFeYaOzc3Rk9bjU0Yrd1hDoQOQ5MBD9llaGzzOirkbExWdNOAB6hxO9Y9Fa5HIHzKTcO3q7wVzy88OMeT_fZNKtJbWE4LfEGUUYKsSi1Emc6qgWsdYnDqS3lJgDZH0I/s1600/1280px-StoragePod.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUlfoiyWoqnV5UQFeYaOzc3Rk9bjU0Yrd1hDoQOQ5MBD9llaGzzOirkbExWdNOAB6hxO9Y9Fa5HIHzKTcO3q7wVzy88OMeT_fZNKtJbWE4LfEGUUYKsSi1Emc6qgWsdYnDqS3lJgDZH0I/s400/1280px-StoragePod.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Backblaze storage appliance, CC-BY Flickr user ChrisDag</td></tr>
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If anyone remembers June 25th 2014, it will probably be because of <a href="http://theweek.com/article/index/263733/10-things-you-need-to-know-today-june-25-2014" target="_blank">rising tensions in the Ukraine</a>, or footballing incidents. But there’s something else – this was the day that <a href="http://googleforwork.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/unlimit-your-business-with-google-drive.html" target="_blank">Google announced their Drive for Work product</a>, offering unlimited Google Drive storage for a nominal fee to business users via the Google Apps suite. Infinite storage had previously been a unique selling point for a small number of startups with big ambitions, but now one of the Internet’s major firms had legitimized it. In the research and education sector we watched with interest, and sure enough on September 30th 2014 Google followed up with the announcement of <a href="http://googleforeducation.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/announcing-drive-for-education-21st.html" target="_blank">Google Drive for Education</a> – free infinite storage for staff and students. On October 27th 2014 Microsoft announced that they would be <a href="http://blogs.office.com/2014/10/27/onedrive-now-unlimited-storage-office-365-subscribers/" target="_blank">giving all Office365 customers infinite storage</a> too.<br />
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In the UK we have around 100 universities using either the Google Apps or Office365 products, which Jisc has brokered national deals for through our <a href="https://www.ja.net/cloud" target="_blank">cloud services activity</a>. A “decent” Storage Area Network with Fibre Channel, 0.5PB-1PB of mirrored SAS storage [*] and tape backup starts at around £500K, so this potentially represents savings to the sector of as much as £50m. Good news as we head towards Austerity 2.0? But I think we will see much more radical change in the future, as the corporate IT function is increasingly “hollowed out” by these kinds of services. Watch Microsoft’s promo video above for their <a href="https://www.remoteapp.windowsazure.com/" target="_blank">RemoteApp</a> technology and ask yourself whether in the future we will get most of our Windows applications from a corporate instance of the Microsoft Store – with all those nasty software packaging, licensing and billing issues handled for us. Perhaps we have only just started to see the disruptive effect of cloud computing on corporate IT, and in years to come we may find ourselves looking back at June 25th 2014 as the day it all changed.<br />
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[*] Such as you might require to establish a Research Data service, or users’ home drives.<br />
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[This piece originally appeared on the Jisc <a href="http://foresight.jiscinvolve.org/" target="_blank">Technology Foresight</a> blog]<br />
<br />Martin Hamiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12640838667301026751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480704540309659677.post-85516877911715978252014-11-08T17:14:00.000+00:002015-07-31T17:51:14.700+01:00Amazon Echo, and The End of Remembering<div>
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‘Never memorize something that you can look up’ – Albert Einstein.</blockquote>
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Amazon recently announced the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/oc/echo" target="_blank">Echo</a>, a personal digital assistant that you converse with – see the video below for some slightly contrived examples. What the Echo and competing technologies like <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/landing/now/" target="_blank">Google Now</a> really highlight for me is that we are entering an age where the act of remembering is increasingly passé. Not only can you find out almost anything if you can craft your search terms well enough, but information tends to come to you ambiently. You could think of the Internet, via these tools, as a sort of neural prosthesis.<br />
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It goes without saying that this trend has huge implications for the way we teach and learn, but there is a deeper issue that I touched upon in <a href="http://www.jisc.ac.uk/blog/uk-digital-capabilities-mind-the-gap-27-oct-2014" target="_blank">a recent blog post</a> – we either understand how to control these technologies, or we are controlled by them. This is why I am very interested in projects like <a href="https://ello.co/" target="_blank">Ello</a>, <a href="https://ind.ie/" target="_blank">Indie</a> and <a href="https://unhosted.org/" target="_blank">Unhosted</a>, and in Tim Berners-Lee’s <a href="https://webwewant.org/" target="_blank">Web We Want</a> campaign. Is it only through surrendering our personal data to the big firms famously described by Bruce Sterling as <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/12/bruce-sterling-on-why-it-stopped-making-sense-to-talk-about-the-internet-in-2012/266674/" target="_blank">The Stacks</a> that innovation like Echo can arise? What can we achieve through collective action, and retaining control of our data? Let’s take a bold leap into the unknown, and explore this new frontier together.<br />
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[This piece originally appeared on the Jisc <a href="http://foresight.jiscinvolve.org/" target="_blank">Technology Foresight</a> blog]</div>
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Martin Hamiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12640838667301026751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480704540309659677.post-39118099546312833552014-11-22T17:41:00.000+00:002015-07-31T17:50:59.502+01:00Google Knows What Makes Your Heart Beat Faster<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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Motorola Moto 360 smartwatch running Google's Android Wear operating system</div>
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“He sees you when you’re sleeping<br />
He knows when you’re awake<br />
He knows if you’ve been bad or good<br />
So be good for goodness sake”<br />
– from Santa Claus is Coming to Town,<br />
by Haven Gillespie / J. Fred Coots<br />
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Stephen Wolfram made headlines back in 2012 when he revealed that <a href="http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2012/03/the-personal-analytics-of-my-life/" target="_blank">he had been “life logging” for over twenty years</a>. But by now many of us are doing this almost incidentally, through wearable sensors from the likes of <a href="http://www.fitbit.com/" target="_blank">Fitbit</a> and <a href="https://jawbone.com/" target="_blank">Jawbone</a> and smartwatches with health features like Motorola’s Moto360 with its heart rate monitor and pedometer – see photo above. And by dint of knowing where you are and where you’ve been, Google were able to <a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/view/508656/google-now-becomes-a-fitbit-competitor-by-tracking-exercise/" target="_blank">add an activity summary card to Google Now</a> that attempts to guess (with varying degrees of accuracy) how much walking or cycling you have been doing.<br />
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And here we find ourselves on the horns of a dilemma – by aggregating and applying machine learning to health and activity data (really, as much data as possible) and medical records, we can suggest interventions and lifestyle changes and monitor their effectiveness, potentially across a huge population – think of those billions of Android users. Marry this with cheap $99 next generation gene sequencing <a href="https://www.23andme.com/" target="_blank">from the likes of 23andMe</a> and we are really heading for a step change in public health from a move to a more proactive approach to medicine. However, the potential for abuse is massive, as we’ve recently seen in relation to <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/uber-executive-suggests-digging-up-dirt-on-journalists" target="_blank">alleged improprieties at Uber</a>. As one commentator put it: “Deleting Uber? Uber won’t delete you.”<br />
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[This piece originally appeared on the Jisc <a href="http://foresight.jiscinvolve.org/" target="_blank">Technology Foresight</a> blog]<br />
<br />Martin Hamiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12640838667301026751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480704540309659677.post-37510980119291424062014-12-05T17:46:00.000+00:002015-07-31T17:48:42.998+01:00Where Does the Self-Driving Car Leave the Taxi Driver?As service users or consumers, we love that the Internet removes intermediaries. Just think: one click to buy and download a new book or album, everyone now able to “publish” their thoughts and ideas to a potentially global audience, the rise of the citizen journalist and citizen science, crowdsourcing and crowdfunding, and so on. Future generations will undoubtedly look back at this time in human existence and recognise it as a phase change – suddenly the friction of a whole lot of stuff that people want to do was drastically reduced.<br />
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But of course there is a downside – <b>what if that intermediary is you?</b> We have just about gotten used to the changes wrought by the first wave of Internet based disintermediation – though do you still miss your local book shop or record shop? It’s becoming clear that there are huge areas where machine learning, cloud computing and robotics will come together and wreak even greater changes. Consider Google’s self-driving car video above – it’s hard to suppress a tear as the blind man goes for his first solo car ride. But what will all the taxi drivers do when driverless cars take off? And more importantly, what skills will our children need to learn to find work in a world where any job that can be done by an algorithm will ultimately be automated?<br />
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Martin Hamiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12640838667301026751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480704540309659677.post-85722179633637836622014-10-27T12:45:00.000+00:002015-07-31T17:29:45.513+01:00UK digital capabilities: mind the gap<div style="text-align: left;">
In recent months the UK has seen several landmark reports launched on the ‘digital state of the nation’ – notably the <a href="http://www.techuk.org/insights/reports/item/2099-techuk-manifesto" target="_blank">TechUK Manifesto</a>, the <a href="http://www.labourdigital.org/number-one-in-digital" target="_blank">Number One in Digital</a> report from Labour Digital and the government’s own <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/government-digital-inclusion-strategy/government-digital-inclusion-strategy" target="_blank">Digital Inclusion Strategy</a>.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The techUK manifesto for growth and jobs 2015-2020</td></tr>
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[This piece originally appeared on the <a href="https://www.jisc.ac.uk/blog/uk-digital-capabilities-mind-the-gap-27-oct-2014" target="_blank">Jisc blog</a> in October 2014]</div>
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There are three common themes that keep coming up time and again, and I think are particularly relevant to education and research:</div>
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<b>Connectivity: from superfast to ultrafast</b></div>
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We might once have chuckled at talk of the 'information superhighway' but it’s no exaggeration to say that network connectivity, bandwidth and latency is the 21st century’s road, river and rail.</div>
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While all of the reports voiced aspirations for the UK to become one of the world’s most technologically advanced nations, the reality is that we still sometimes struggle with even basic connectivity. This is particularly apparent if you live outside an urban area, where the economics of broadband and mobile delivery weigh heavily against you.</div>
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<b>The reality is that we still sometimes struggle with even basic connectivity</b></div>
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The basic connectivity gap is currently being addressed by the government through <a href="https://www.gov.uk/broadband-delivery-uk" target="_blank">Broadband Delivery UK</a>, which aims to reach 95% coverage at superfast speeds (tens of megabits per second) by 2017. It’s an effective leveller – but what comes next? How do we then go from ‘super’ to ‘ultra’ fast and give the UK a competitive edge?</div>
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One way that further and higher education institutions are finding they can extend the reach of superfast connectivity is by teaming up with tech-intensive firms, science parks and incubators.</div>
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From my own experiences with the <a href="http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/" target="_blank">Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council’s (EPSRC)</a> <a href="http://hpc-midlands.ac.uk/" target="_blank">HPC Midlands</a>, a supercomputing centre designed to drive innovation in research and industry, I know that connectivity speeds can make a huge difference.</div>
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More partnerships between institutions and public and private organisations – like those we’re facilitating through our<a href="https://www.ja.net/products-services/janet-connect/janet-connections/business-and-community-engagement" target="_blank"> business and community engagement</a> programme – will further help this cause and strengthen the UK’s economic prospects.</div>
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<b>One big idea: Gigabit connectivity is a must for the next generation of data intensive spinouts and startups. Extending the government’s <a href="https://www.connectionvouchers.co.uk/" target="_blank">Connection Vouchers</a> as part of its <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/policies/transforming-uk-broadband/supporting-pages/investing-in-super-connected-cities" target="_blank">super-connected cities</a> programme to include ultrafast gigabit broadband is the next logical step.</b></div>
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<b>Capability: building the skills base</b></div>
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There are now a whole host of initiatives to help the estimated 6.5m UK citizens who lack basic digital skills or have trouble getting online. These include <a href="http://digitalskills.com/">DigitalSkills.com</a>, which provides resources for teaching digital skills, a national network of over 5,000 <a href="http://www.ukonlinecentres.com/" target="_blank">UK online centres</a> and <a href="http://www.getonlineathome.org/" target="_blank">Get Online @ Home</a>, an initiative supported by <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/default.aspx" target="_blank">Microsoft</a> to provide affordable, internet-ready computers to eligible people.</div>
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However, there is still a huge amount of work to be done if we want to make the UK a nation of digital experts, and hold on to our leading position. As Google's <a href="https://plus.google.com/+EricSchmidt/posts" target="_blank">Eric Schmidt</a> said in his <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14683133" target="_blank">well-received MacTaggart lecture</a>, the UK “invented computing both in principle and in practice” but our “track record isn’t great".</div>
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<b>There is still a huge amount of work to be done if we want to make the UK a nation of digital experts</b></div>
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Institutions often have the knowledge, expertise and clout to lead positive change at a local level. For example, <a href="http://www.the-awards.co.uk/" target="_blank">Times Higher Awards</a> nominee IT4Free saw <a href="http://www.dmu.ac.uk/home.aspx" target="_blank">De Montfort University</a> work with local employers, <a href="http://www.leics.gov.uk/" target="_blank">Leicestershire County Council</a> and information technology company <a href="http://www8.hp.com/uk/en/home.html" target="_blank">HP</a>.</div>
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They used redundant buildings, donated hardware and student volunteers to create community IT suites in areas where less than 40% of the population had access to a computer. It is a great example of how ‘town and gown’ can come together to support the digitally disenfranchised.</div>
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<b>One big idea: A skills ‘booster jab’ that helps people build their knowledge. It could expand on the current <a href="http://www.cityandguilds.com/qualifications-and-apprenticeships/it/it-user/4249-start-it-for-it-users#tab=information" target="_blank">City & Guilds Online Basics</a> assessment, which offers a basic introduction for the digitally excluded, and be delivered through the kinds of partnerships that we have seen with IT4Free.</b></div>
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<b>Catalysts: supporting innovation</b></div>
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Many of the great technologies we take for granted today actually originated in the UK or are British inventions - such as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packet_switching" target="_blank">packet switched networking</a> by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Davies" target="_blank">Donald Davies</a>, the world wide web by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee" target="_blank">Tim Berners-Lee</a>, and of course the role of Brits like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing" target="_blank">Alan Turing</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Flowers" target="_blank">Tommy Flowers</a> in the invention of the computer itself.</div>
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If the UK wants to remain at the forefront of new technologies – including the Internet of Things, 3D printing and bioelectronics – we need to understand how we can best support new digital businesses as they start up or spin out.</div>
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<b>We need to understand how we can best support new digital businesses as they start up or spin out</b></div>
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We’ve been working with the <a href="https://cde.catapult.org.uk/" target="_blank">Connected Digital Economy Catapult</a> (<i>aka</i> the Digital Catapult) and <a href="https://www.innovateuk.org/" target="_blank">Innovate UK</a> to try and answer this question and figure out the role institutions can play.</div>
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As well as enhanced connectivity, universities and colleges often have access to expensive specialised equipment and expertise that some businesses might find difficult to purchase or operate themselves. This ranges from wind tunnels and anechoic chambers to mass spectrometers and supercomputers. Opening up collaboration between business and education and research institutions can help support these sorts of innovations.</div>
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<b>One big idea: Institutions and industry should routinely share information with each other about their high value equipment, and devise ways of brokering access.</b></div>
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This last one is something that we at Jisc think we can play a catalytic role. This autumn we are kicking off an equipment sharing pilot with ten universities for <a href="http://www.kit-catalogue.com/" target="_blank">Kit-Catalogue</a>, an online system allowing organisations to catalogue, record and locate their equipment.</div>
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We are also working with leading high performance computing (HPC) centres to make the research community’s supercomputing facilities available to industry and other institutions through a common contractual framework. You can find out more about both of these initiatives at the <a href="https://www.events.ukti.gov.uk/tsb-innovate/" target="_blank">Innovate UK conference</a> from 5-6 November 2014.</div>
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I’d love to hear your thoughts about these ideas and initiatives, and whether there are any others you think we at Jisc should be looking at. Please do leave a comment and let me know what you think.</div>
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Martin Hamiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12640838667301026751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480704540309659677.post-65285032400176537272014-11-28T12:30:00.000+00:002015-07-31T17:15:46.487+01:00Celebrating outstanding ICT in UK higher educationLast night saw the sector come together in London for the <a href="http://www.the-awards.co.uk/" target="_blank">2014 Times Higher Education (THE) Awards</a>. One of the most eagerly awaited categories was the Jisc-sponsored Outstanding ICT Initiative of the Year - celebrating the use of innovative and strategic digital technologies in universities, with The <a href="http://www.open.ac.uk/" target="_blank">Open University</a>'s <a href="http://www.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/open-science/" target="_blank">OpenScience Laboratory</a> announced as the very deserving winner.<br />
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[This piece originally appeared on the <a href="https://www.jisc.ac.uk/blog/celebrating-outstanding-ict-in-uk-higher-education-28-nov-2014" target="_blank">Jisc blog</a> in November 2014]<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small; text-align: start;">Jack Dee and Jisc CEO Martyn Harrow with THE Awards winners 2014,<br />picture courtesy of Times Higher Education</span></td></tr>
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As one of the judges of the THE awards, I wanted to take a moment to celebrate the shortlisted institutions and their projects in this category. I will start with the winner, and go on to give attention to each of entries, which I think epitomise some of the excellent digital work that's being done in UK higher education.<br />
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<b>Open University</b><br />
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The OpenScience Laboratory from the Open University and <a href="http://www.wolfson.org.uk/" target="_blank">Wolfson Foundation</a> gives distance learners the closest possible experience to studying in a real lab by allowing them to conduct 'virtual' experiments using real data.<br />
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<b><i>allowing distance learners to conduct 'virtual' experiments using real data</i></b></div>
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It strategically supports distance learning at a variety of education levels, providing resources through open access to a wide range of potential audiences. Crucially, it promotes STEM subjects by providing a glimpse of the world and work of the scientist which really engages the learner - you can see its success by the fact it has been accessed by over 10,000 informal learners, which is in addition to the more than 2,000 registered users studying on Open University courses.<br />
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The panel felt that it was a genuinely exciting project within an ambitious overall programme with a great roadmap for further development. The project clearly demonstrates the power that technology has to enable people in higher education to perform at the forefront of international practice - which is precisely our mission at Jisc.<br />
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<b>University of Aberdeen and partners</b><br />
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The <a href="http://www.abdn.ac.uk/news/4845/" target="_blank">North East of Scotland Shared Data Centre</a> (NESSDC) is a £1.2m joint project to create a shared data centre for regional higher and further education institutions, led by the <a href="http://www.abdn.ac.uk/" target="_blank">University of Aberdeen</a>.<br />
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<b><i>creating a shared data centre for regional higher and further education institutions</i></b></div>
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Recognising that their existing data centres were environmentally unfriendly and unsustainable for future growth requirements, four institutions - the University of Aberdeen, <a href="http://www.rgu.ac.uk/" target="_blank">Robert Gordon University</a>, <a href="http://www.abcol.ac.uk/" target="_blank">Aberdeen College</a> and <a href="http://www.nescol.ac.uk/banffandbuchancollege" target="_blank">Banff & Buchan College</a> - came together to create a new state of the art facility where they could share services. The new data centre will save the participating institutions a six figure sum every year whilst also helping them to drastically reduce their carbon emissions.<br />
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<b>Bournemouth University</b><br />
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The team at <a href="https://www1.bournemouth.ac.uk/" target="_blank">Bournemouth University</a> and <a href="https://www.poole.nhs.uk/" target="_blank">Poole NHS Trust</a> wanted to support staff and enhance healthcare delivery during epidurals. Together, they created a fully integrated <a href="http://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/newsandevents/News/2013/apr/ne08-bu-helps-create-epidural-simulator.html" target="_blank">wireless prototype</a> to guide surgical staff administering injections by determining the position of the needle. They have also developed a training package to help users monitor progress.<br />
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<b><i>supporting staff and enhancing healthcare delivery during epidurals</i></b></div>
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This project could have huge societal benefits given that complications associated with epidural injections during labour are estimated to affect around 365,000 women and cost the NHS some £15m every year. The team at Bournemouth is now working with <a href="http://www.nisw.co.uk/" target="_blank">NHS Innovations South West</a>, who commercialise new inventions.<br />
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<b>De Montfort University</b><br />
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<a href="http://www.dmu.ac.uk/home.aspx" target="_blank">De Montfort University</a>'s IT4Free project from its <a href="https://dmusquaremile.our.dmu.ac.uk/" target="_blank">Square Mile</a> community engagement initiative is targeted at maximising digital inclusion in Leicestershire. It aims to close the digital divide through free community IT suites and training.<br />
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<b><i>closing the digital divide through free community IT suites and training</i></b></div>
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Working in partnership with a number of public and private sector bodies, including <a href="http://www8.hp.com/uk/en/home.html" target="_blank">HP</a>, the <a href="http://www.nhs.uk/Pages/HomePage.aspx" target="_blank">NHS</a> and <a href="http://www.princes-trust.org.uk/default.aspx" target="_blank">The Prince's Trust</a>, a team of academics and 50 student volunteers have given their time to make the project a success, with the students also gaining valuable skills and confidence.<br />
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<b>International State Crime Initiative</b><br />
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The <a href="http://www.law.qmul.ac.uk/research/centres/isci/index.html" target="_blank">International State Crime Initiative</a> is an e-testimony project from <a href="http://www.qmul.ac.uk/" target="_blank">Queen Mary University of London</a>, <a href="http://www.ulster.ac.uk/" target="_blank">University of Ulster</a> and <a href="http://www.kcl.ac.uk/index.aspx" target="_blank">King's College London</a>. It is an online casebook that provides material about criminal state practices, including eye witness testimonies in the form of interviews, film, photographs and other imagery, that is available to those interested in studying these events.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><i>an online casebook that provides material about criminal state practices,<br />including eye witness testimonies</i></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
The results of the project have been widely taken up and used in teaching in the UK, US and Australia, as well as by non-governmental organisations.<br />
<br />
<b>University of Leeds</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
Patients admitted to hospital with acute illness need to receive prompt, effective treatment if their condition gets worse. <a href="http://rrapid.leeds.ac.uk/" target="_blank">Recognising and Responding to Acute Patient Illness and Deterioration</a> (RRAPID) from the University of Leeds is a programme that uses technology in a subtle way to support trainee doctors in reacting to emergency situations.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><i>using technology to support trainee doctors in reacting to emergency situations</i></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><i><br /></i></b></div>
A suite of interactive resources have been created to support the RRAPID approach including a multimedia e-book that features video demonstrations and photographs and a diagnostic app covering a range of commonly occurring acute scenarios.<br />
<br />
The app gives students the ability to self-test how they would respond to a given emergency, and a log book to record their experiences. This approach has had a transformational effect at Leeds and is now integrated into all five years of its medical degree training.<br />
<br />
<b>Outstanding practice</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
The jury was hugely impressed by the quality of the entries, which gave a great snapshot of the kind of innovations in ICT taking place in UK higher education. Of course only one institution can take home the trophy, but all of the institutions shortlisted and the individuals involved in these projects should feel justifiably proud of their achievements.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
Martin Hamiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12640838667301026751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480704540309659677.post-45971596614339688572015-02-17T00:12:00.000+00:002015-07-31T00:13:29.139+01:00Sharing made easy – Jisc support for equipment sharingFrom anechoic chambers to wind tunnels, mass spectrometers to supercomputers, institutions are increasingly looking to share high value items of research equipment. Martin Hamilton outlines how Jisc is working with a variety of partners to help embed and accelerate asset sharing.<br />
<br />
[This piece originally appeared on <a href="http://www.efficiencyexchange.ac.uk/6234/sharing-made-easy-jisc-support-for-equipment-sharing/">Efficiency Exchange</a> in February 2015]<br />
<br />
In this article I will look at three areas where <a href="http://www.jisc.ac.uk/">Jisc</a>, with partners including <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-business-innovation-skills">BIS</a>, the <a href="http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/">Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council</a> (EPSRC), <a href="http://www.efficiencyexchange.ac.uk/network/hefce/">HEFCE</a> and <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/innovate-uk">Innovate UK</a>, is helping to reduce the friction of asset sharing, between institutions and also with industry.<br />
<br />
We are doing this by:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Working with EPSRC to make the details of more than £200m worth of high value equipment available for sharing between institutions and with industry.</li>
<li>Piloting standard terms and conditions for access to £60m of publicly funded supercomputing facilities and expertise.</li>
<li>Providing support for industrial connectivity to the <a href="http://www.efficiencyexchange.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/Janet-case-study-21.pdf">Janet network</a> at speeds of up to 10 Gigabits/second for collaborative R&D projects.</li>
</ul>
<br />
<b>Kit-Catalogue - your "one stop shop" for equipment data</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<a href="http://www.efficiencyexchange.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/KitCat_casestudy_ee_Feb15.pdf">Kit-Catalogue</a> is a piece of free software that lets an institution quickly and easily set up its own equipment database, and also provides a data feed of shared items into the EPSRC funded national portal <a href="http://equipment.data.ac.uk/">equipment.data.ac.uk</a>.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7pTnK6Jaot3gTi6PQR2Em-zEDSIW3S_JlEa8H3kR52SMpDiAuHylzduICRndfJmdwM5CMD_3o6jESGrod5pfgszjfnatXSdTpoPatUFThjaN0dwgEbhSQXM8jmzAWik6bnXvwLs9kyDc/s1600/KitCat.jpg.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="470" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7pTnK6Jaot3gTi6PQR2Em-zEDSIW3S_JlEa8H3kR52SMpDiAuHylzduICRndfJmdwM5CMD_3o6jESGrod5pfgszjfnatXSdTpoPatUFThjaN0dwgEbhSQXM8jmzAWik6bnXvwLs9kyDc/s640/KitCat.jpg.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small; text-align: start;">An example of a typical Kit-Catalogue page from University College London - here showing the one-of-a-kind Lighting Simulator at The Bartlett, UCL's Faculty for the Built Environment.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Jisc and EPSRC originally funded the development of the Kit-Catalogue software, and I am delighted that we are once again working with the Kit-Catalogue team to explore its potential as a Jisc service, including gathering data on running costs and institutional benefits that will help to inform the business case.<br />
<br />
With support from HEFCE, we are piloting Kit-Catalogue with ten institutions over a two-year period and also supporting the continued development of the software as part of this initiative.<br />
<br />
One particular new development that I am very pleased with is our <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.ac.jisc.kitcat&hl=en_GB">Kit-Catalogue app, available from the Google Play Store for Android devices</a>.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqkc4ndNXeA0bTlof3KcGVfXLd5ct2Tj_zwlMR-xDh17yv8rT-s3u8dPVGME-H3K-_aaE_sKF4WPi0Ufoz9z5c92VUZ6LBOoPdhrpf7Wvt7EMRNt0Y-yWEzM2k2J9y577_kRnnFYzIvE8/s1600/KitCat5+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="567" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqkc4ndNXeA0bTlof3KcGVfXLd5ct2Tj_zwlMR-xDh17yv8rT-s3u8dPVGME-H3K-_aaE_sKF4WPi0Ufoz9z5c92VUZ6LBOoPdhrpf7Wvt7EMRNt0Y-yWEzM2k2J9y577_kRnnFYzIvE8/s640/KitCat5+%25281%2529.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small; text-align: start;">Two screenshots from the Kit-Catalogue Android app</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
The output from Kit-Catalogue contributes (along with other data sources) to the national equipment sharing portal, <a href="http://equipment.data.ac.uk/">equipment.data</a>, which makes the details of some 10,000 items of high value research equipment available for sharing. With an conservative average value of £20K-£25K per item, then the total value of equipment being shared is at least £200m. Newcastle University alone is sharing more than 814 items of equipment valued at £20K or above, with a combined value of more than £16m.<br />
<br />
<b>Frictionless supercomputing - £60m of public investment in HPC</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
Before joining Jisc, I set up and then ran EPSRC's <a href="http://hpc-midlands.ac.uk/">HPC Midlands</a> regional supercomputing centre of excellence, a collaboration between Loughborough University and the University of Leicester.<br />
<br />
During the course of this work it became increasingly apparent that businesses - and also many higher education institutions - were keen to explore a pay-as-you-go model for access to high performance computing and big data facilities, but required formal contractual assurances around service provision. Information security and protection of intellectual property was a key concern. For example, HPC Midlands industrial users required that we destroy any failed disk drives rather than returning to the vendor for replacement.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bKfmX2sda2M" width="560"></iframe>
<br />
To address these requirements, we worked with Rolls Royce to develop a standardised contract and pro forma covering data security and information assurance, aligned with ISO 27001 standards. I brought this with me to Jisc and with support from HEFCE we subsequently reached agreement with HPC Midlands, <a href="http://www.hpcwales.co.uk/">HPC Wales</a>, <a href="http://www.n8hpc.org.uk/">N8 HPC</a> and <a href="http://www.dirac.ac.uk/">STFC DiRAC</a> that they would offer their services under this basis. This landmark agreement opens up £60m of publicly funding supercomputing facilities for institutions and industry to access as shared services. I hope that we will be able to extend this approach to other classes of equipment, building on both this work and the <a href="https://www.arma.ac.uk/resources/brunswick-agreements">Brunswick Agreements</a>.<br />
<br />
Here is a powerful example from HPC Midlands customers E.ON of the potential that industry access to academic facilities and expertise can have:<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
"We ran the gas turbine simulation with a number of different parameter sets and observed speed-ups of between 30 and 145 times the performance of the in-house system based on workstation class PC" - Lionel Mazzella, E.ON New Build & Technology</div>
<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYUSvaf9WmdElhyZRNgrsPhvqWIUzokU5Pv7i8GcoDPX3HvTc_J2dale_3YYfl88fAMkqbMaw5cmdkN9c6SxROEzPDVuB7r6B91WyoIytMY2Qy-JC4qdq1vh5pWnzPHfc9E_xQeEvSjr0/s1600/kitcat4.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="434" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYUSvaf9WmdElhyZRNgrsPhvqWIUzokU5Pv7i8GcoDPX3HvTc_J2dale_3YYfl88fAMkqbMaw5cmdkN9c6SxROEzPDVuB7r6B91WyoIytMY2Qy-JC4qdq1vh5pWnzPHfc9E_xQeEvSjr0/s640/kitcat4.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: start;">Gas turbine simulation, CC BY-NC-SA E.ON UK Plc</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<b>Janet Reach - ultrafast connectivity to the Janet network for industry</b><br />
<br />
Most of today's research equipment is data intensive, none more so than supercomputing and big data applications. Back in my days of running a supercomputer centre it was not unusual for customers to bring their data over on a hard drive, because connectivity was poor or non-existent between industry and the research and education sector. Whilst this worked well for local firms, and provided a useful opportunity to catch up over a coffee, there was clearly no way that this approach could scale.<br />
<br />
In parallel, Jisc has received £4m as part of a package of e-Infrastructure funding from the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) to support greater interaction between businesses and academia in the e-Infrastructure environment. One component of this is a scheme, Janet Reach, to support high-capacity business connections to the Janet Network in the context of innovative R&D collaboration with academic partners to exploit the e-Infrastructure resources they host and manage.<br />
<br />
This is another area where I believe that we can act together to give today's data-driven businesses a significant leap forward in capability. Just think what a high-capacity connection at up to 10 Gigabits/second to Janet could do to accelerate your R&D collaborations.<br />
<br />
Details of the first awards under Janet reach will be made available shortly, but from what I am hearing, I think we will see a good spread of connections from startups and micro-SMEs to major UK firms.<br />
<br />
The Janet Reach scheme runs until August 2015 as a series of calls modelled on the Innovate UK competition process. The latest call for proposals deadline is 28th February 2015 - we'd love to hear from you.<br />
<br />
<b>Find out more</b><br />
<br />
Jisc's Kit-Catalogue pilot and frictionless supercomputing initiative are part of our <a href="http://www.jisc.ac.uk/rd/projects/equipment-sharing-made-easy">R&D programme</a>. Martin Hamilton will also be appearing at University UK's annual <a href="http://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/events/Pages/EfficiencyinHE.aspx">Efficiency Conference on 25 March</a> in a workshop on equipment sharing.<br />
<br />
To learn more about the Reach scheme and industrial connectivity to Janet more broadly, please see the <a href="http://www.ja.net/janet-reach">Janet Reach homepage</a>.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
Martin Hamiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12640838667301026751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480704540309659677.post-43611305270784805582015-02-11T12:00:00.000+00:002015-07-30T23:58:15.626+01:00A shot in the ARM: Catapults give UK tech a boostUniversities and colleges have a vast amount of equipment at their disposal and rich seams of talent and expertise that can be mined. Sharing those resources with other institutions and with business opens up new opportunities to boost the UK's technology sectors.<br />
<br />
[This piece originally appeared on the <a href="https://www.jisc.ac.uk/blog/a-shot-in-the-arm-catapults-give-uk-tech-a-boost-11-feb-2015" target="_blank">Jisc blog</a> in February 2015]<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhihIXid6GBvXLVCPvAzkxL5Q3ndnhErRJCMXfTR0wICIV1HqNYQ4wUhjQHOyb9ytGJc5tuJ5KbQRSktNnEKVYWSPzlJlI_-IfESTEkmcJUPbArAr0i40S82UajXn1vBX8FgMXh4YI7g-s/s1600/digital-catapult.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="315" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhihIXid6GBvXLVCPvAzkxL5Q3ndnhErRJCMXfTR0wICIV1HqNYQ4wUhjQHOyb9ytGJc5tuJ5KbQRSktNnEKVYWSPzlJlI_-IfESTEkmcJUPbArAr0i40S82UajXn1vBX8FgMXh4YI7g-s/s640/digital-catapult.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small; text-align: start;">CrowdEmotion demo their emotion recognition software at the Digital Catapult launch,<br />CC-BY Paul Clarke for the Digital Catapult</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
If like me you are a child of the 1970s and 80s, you probably grew up surrounded by the first wave of the tech revolution - personal computers, video games consoles, and all sorts of other home electronics. But then something went horribly wrong, and those promising ideas and the firms behind them largely disappeared. Of course what happened was <a href="http://www.ibm.com/uk/en/" target="_blank">IBM's</a> PC and <a href="https://www.apple.com/uk/mac/" target="_blank">Apple's Macintosh</a>, which quickly gathered a global momentum that many of the early pioneers were unable to compete with.<br />
<br />
But how does a promising new invention go from the research labs at a college or a university into full production and shipping? All too often the answer in the UK has been that it doesn't hence the popular view of us as a nation of inventors who allow other people to realise our ideas. But it doesn't have to be that way as counter-examples <a href="http://www.dyson.co.uk/" target="_blank">Dyson</a> and <a href="http://www.arm.com/" target="_blank">ARM</a> prove.<br />
<br />
<b>Lend me your ARM</b><br />
<br />
In 2010 the then Secretary of State Peter Mandelson commissioned <a href="http://acorncomputers.com/" target="_blank">Acorn</a> and ARM co-founder, Dr Hermann Hauser to advise the government on ways to support the commercialisation of UK research. Hauser <a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20121212135622/http:/www.bis.gov.uk/assets/biscore/innovation/docs/10-843-role-of-technology-innovation-centres-hauser-review" target="_blank">recommended the establishment of Technology and Innovation Centres</a> to bring academia and industry together in a similar way to Germany's <a href="http://www.fraunhofer.de/en.html" target="_blank">Fraunhofer Institutes</a>.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><i>Catapult Centres (are) a physical base for R&D collaborations between businesses and academia, equipped with state of the art facilities and expertise</i></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
The recommendations have subsequently been acted on through the coalition government's Catapult Centres, a physical base for R&D collaborations between businesses and academia, equipped with state of the art facilities and expertise.<br />
<br />
An initial seven <a href="https://www.catapult.org.uk/" target="_blank">Catapult Centres</a> were set up under the auspices of <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/innovate-uk" target="_blank">Innovate UK</a>, with two more set to launch this year:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="https://ct.catapult.org.uk/" target="_blank">Cell Therapy Catapult</a> - at <a href="http://www.guysandstthomas.nhs.uk/Home.aspx" target="_blank">Guy's Hospital</a>, London</li>
<li><a href="http://www.digitalcatapultcentre.org.uk/" target="_blank">Digital Catapult</a> - London, with a number of hubs around the UK</li>
<li><a href="https://futurecities.catapult.org.uk/" target="_blank">Future Cities Catapult</a> - London</li>
<li><a href="https://hvm.catapult.org.uk/" target="_blank">High Value Manufacturing Catapult</a> - Solihull, with a number of centres around the UK</li>
<li><a href="https://ore.catapult.org.uk/" target="_blank">Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult</a> - Glasgow</li>
<li><a href="https://sa.catapult.org.uk/" target="_blank">Satellite Applications Catapult</a> - at <a href="http://harwellcampus.com/" target="_blank">Harwell Science and Innovation Campus</a> </li>
<li><a href="https://ts.catapult.org.uk/" target="_blank">Transport Systems Catapult</a> - Milton Keynes</li>
<li><a href="https://www.catapult.org.uk/energy-systems" target="_blank">Energy Systems Catapult</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.catapult.org.uk/precision-medicine" target="_blank">Precision Medicine Catapult</a></li>
</ul>
<br />
<b></b><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b><b>Pooling resources to maximise the benefits</b></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
My own involvement with Innovate UK and the Catapult network began back in 2012 when I set up the <a href="http://hpc-midlands.ac.uk/" target="_blank">HPC Midlands</a> regional supercomputer centre for the <a href="http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/" target="_blank">Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council</a> (EPSRC).<br />
<br />
I found that computer-based modelling and simulation was already either an essential part of the workflow for many businesses, or something they had identified as a key future requirement. But often, the most advanced computing capability that the firm had was a high specification workstation that might take days or even weeks to complete a routine task.<br />
<br />
For me the defining moment came in working with <a href="https://www.eonenergy.com/" target="_blank">E.ON</a>, which had a powerful in-house workstation cluster of its own. We determined that use of our facilities could speed up E.ON's modelling and simulation jobs, such as the gas turbine simulation pictured, by a factor of 30 to 145.<br />
<br />
Working with more and more businesses, we found that this kind of dramatic reduction in "time to solution" was often possible. In some cases firms found that the impact on their bottom line was so significant that they were prepared to move their entire simulation workload onto our supercomputer.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
Thus began my work exploring how to make facilities like HPC Midlands </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
more accessible to industry.</div>
<br />
<b><i>There is a wide range of equipment held by universities and colleges that is also of value to business</i></b><br />
<br />
When we are talking about a small island like the UK, it makes sense for us to take a serious look at pooling our resources. There is a wide range of equipment held by universities and colleges that is also of value to business.<br />
<br />
Say you're designing a new turbine blade. Once you have tested virtual models of your design, the next stage might be to use additive manufacturing like 3D printing to create a physical prototype, and then carry out wind tunnel tests. And when the first pre-production models arrive, you might want to use a mass spectrometer for materials characterisation and verify the integrity of the manufacturing process.<br />
<br />
The combination of the facility plus the expert skills to operate it and interpret the results can make a huge difference.<br />
<br />
<b><i>On joining Jisc I realised that we are in an ideal position to complement the work of the Catapults</i></b><br />
<b><i><br /></i></b>
On joining Jisc I realised that we are in an ideal position to complement the work of the Catapults by making equipment held by colleges and universities easier to find, and by reducing the friction of sharing those facilities and that expertise.<br />
<br />
<b>What are we doing already?</b><br />
<br />
And so to our work. We are brokering common terms and conditions for access to HPC facilities. We now have four major HPC centres offering their services through our common terms and conditions - HPC Midlands, <a href="http://hpcwales.co.uk/" target="_blank">HPC Wales</a>, <a href="http://www.n8hpc.org.uk/" target="_blank">N8 HPC</a> and <a href="http://dirac.ac.uk/" target="_blank">STFC DiRAC</a>. Together, these represent £60m of public investment in supercomputing, for institutions to share and industry to access.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><i>We now have four major HPC centres offering their services through</i></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><i>our common terms and conditions</i></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Looking to the future we are also piloting <a href="http://www.kit-catalogue.com/" target="_blank">Kit-Catalogue</a>, a piece of software that lets an institution quickly and easily put up a database of the equipment that it holds, as a simple sharing idea.<br />
<br />
Our ten pilot sites are feeding into EPSRC's one stop shop for equipment sharing, <a href="http://equipment.data.ac.uk/">equipment.data</a>, which holds the details of some 10,000 items of high value equipment. <a href="http://www.ncl.ac.uk/">Newcastle University</a> alone is sharing over 814 items valued at £20,000 or more, with a combined value of over £16m, and we estimate the total value of publicly funded equipment being shared by the sector at over £200m.<br />
<br />
<b>Find out more</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
For more on these initiatives visit the <a href="https://www.jisc.ac.uk/rd/projects/equipment-sharing-made-easy">project page on equipment sharing</a>, watch our <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKfmX2sda2M">video</a> or <a href="https://www.jisc.ac.uk/staff/martin-hamilton" target="_blank">contact me</a>.<br />
<br />
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<br />Martin Hamiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12640838667301026751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480704540309659677.post-75453096373941632015-01-23T15:30:00.000+00:002015-07-30T23:26:14.132+01:00ETAG - a good BETT for UK education?<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">ETAG's vision for 2025, CC-BY Bryan Mathers</td></tr>
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A couple of months ago my daughter came home from school with an interesting new project: everyone in her year group was being asked to imagine what the classroom of the future might be like.<br />
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[This piece originally appeared on the <a href="https://www.jisc.ac.uk/blog/etag-a-good-bett-for-uk-education-23-jan-2015" target="_blank">Jisc blog</a> in January 2015]<br />
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After a few weeks of frantic activity, parents were invited to school to view the children's creations. There were models made of papier-mache and Lego, and even shoe boxes and old loo roll holders. My daughter decided to make an entire model school in Minecraft on her iPad.<br />
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Fast forward to late January 2015 and all eyes were on <a href="http://www.bettshow.com/Content/About-Bett-2015" target="_blank">Bett 2015</a> this week, opened by education secretary Nicky Morgan - who also happens to be my constituency MP. In her speech, Nicky launched the <a href="http://etag.report/" target="_blank">report</a> of the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-education" target="_blank">Department for Education</a>'s independent think tank the <a href="http://etag.report/" target="_blank">Education Technology Action Group</a> (ETAG).<br />
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ETAG, chaired by <a href="https://www1.bournemouth.ac.uk/" target="_blank">Bournemouth University</a>'s Professor Stephen Heppell, has also been imagining the classroom of the future. In this blog post I thought it would be interesting to compare their conclusions.<br />
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<b>ETAG's view of the learning landscape</b><br />
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The graphic above by ETAG member Bryan Mathers from <a href="http://www.cityandguilds.com/" target="_blank">City and Guilds</a> summarises the group's perspective on what the learning landscape of 2025 (or perhaps even 2020) will look like.<br />
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The ETAG report makes 19 pragmatic recommendations that the group believes will help us to prepare for this new reality. Some of these are principally about establishing a level playing field in terms of core infrastructure services, eg high speed internet connectivity and a safe, secure and resilient organisation-wide wireless network. These could be viewed as potential capital projects to ensure equitable provision across schools, colleges and universities.<br />
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<i><b>The ETAG report makes 19 pragmatic recommendations that the group</b></i></div>
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<i><b>believes will help us to prepare for this new reality</b></i></div>
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Alongside the pure technology plays, ETAG also make a number of recommendations that are about developing digital skills. For example: a 'digital <a href="http://www.dofe.org/" target="_blank">Duke of Edinburgh Award</a>' scheme to inspire learners and enhance employability outcomes, and a programme of continuous professional development for staff which would showcase, reward and celebrate innovation in digital technologies.<br />
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The group felt strongly that the voice of the learner should feature in all of this, such as <a href="http://firstmonday.org/article/view/3171/3049" target="_blank">digital residents</a> from what they called the 'iPad generation'.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The school of the future - in Minecraft</td></tr>
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Talking to my own digital resident, I was struck by the fact that she had constructed a school which was practically a self-contained community, with technology seamlessly woven into its very fabric. Her school scored well on sustainability, with wind turbines and solar panels for power, and composting toilets. It had practically every wall usable as a screen, and of course all the children had tablets and computers at hand when required.<br />
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At the same time the school also featured its own farm, growing vegetables and farming animals for the children to look after. At break time the children would collect eggs from the school chickens to give to the cook, and after some practice (and a few hints and tips) even I eventually learned how to dye a sheep in Minecraft - a vital skill that would sit nicely on any LinkedIn profile.<br />
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<b><i>The key message of the ETAG report is all about bringing the technology</i></b></div>
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<b><i>we now use every day into the classroom and lecture theatre</i></b></div>
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As my daughter and I discussed her project, I was reminded of our <a href="https://www.jisc.ac.uk/digifest" target="_blank">Jisc Digital Festival</a>, and last's year's <a href="https://www.jisc.ac.uk/events/jisc-digital-festival-2014-11-mar-2014/keynote-speakers" target="_blank">keynote speaker</a> Sugata Mitra's <a href="https://www.theschoolinthecloud.org/" target="_blank">School in the Cloud</a> initiative, which is all about giving children just the right amount of encouragement to support their own self-directed learning. In a world where technology is ambient and ever present, learners can potentially range far and wide beyond the narrow boundaries of the material that is present in the school or college library, set texts and so on.<br />
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For me the key message of the ETAG report is all about bringing the technology we now use every day into the classroom and lecture theatre. Albert Einstein once said "never memorize something you can look up", and there is a real sense in which today's digital technologies may well mark "the end of remembering", as I recently suggested in Jisc's <a href="http://foresight.jiscinvolve.org/wp/amazon-echo-and-the-end-of-remembering/" target="_blank">technology foresight and horizon scanning activity</a>.<br />
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<b>Technology access for all</b><br />
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However, there is a big but here: many learners do not have home broadband and access to a device of their own. I was therefore particularly pleased to see the ETAG report reference the Open University's <a href="http://www.yots.org.uk/" target="_blank">Your Own Technology Survey</a> (YOTS) project, which is aimed at giving schools a snapshot of the technology that their pupils have access to - including whether they are allowed to bring their own device to school.<br />
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<b><i>Many learners do not have home broadband and access to a device of their own</i></b></div>
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YOTS is aimed at schools, but is just as relevant to colleges and universities. I hope to use it in the near future in collaboration with the <a href="http://www.fesussex.org.uk/" target="_blank">FE Sussex</a> college consortium to explore their options in connection with implementing the government's targets for online delivery following last year's <a href="http://feltag.org.uk/" target="_blank">FELTAG recommendations</a>.<br />
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<b>How might it work?</b><br />
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I recently visited the <a href="http://www.perrybeechesii.co.uk/" target="_blank">Perry Beeches II Free School</a> in Birmingham, and learned from pupils that they were able to use the school facilities for long periods outside of formal school hours. This gave them access to a comfortable and safe working space with state of the art facilities in what is one of the most deprived boroughs in the UK, and I was delighted that Perry Beeches was recently rated outstanding in all categories by Ofsted, with a 97% pass rate at A level.<br />
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<b>Assessment and accountability</b><br />
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The ETAG report also looks at assessment, accountability and issues around collection of learner data and the uses to which it is put. This became a hot button topic after the <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-05-01/inbloom-shuts-down-amid-privacy-fears-over-student-data-tracking" target="_blank">failure of analytics firm InBloom</a>. The scandal around InBloom led to the development of the <a href="http://studentprivacypledge.org/" target="_blank">Student Privacy Pledge</a>, which now has 91 signatories including the likes of Apple, Google, and Microsoft, and the support of President Obama. I should mention in passing here that we recently launched a Jisc <a href="http://analytics.jiscinvolve.org/wp/" target="_blank">code of practice for learning analytics</a> as part of our learning analytics co-design challenge.<br />
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<b>Looking ahead</b><br />
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So there we are - do <a href="http://etag.report/" target="_blank">take a look at the ETAG report</a>, and let us know what you think about its recommendations. As Stephen Heppell says in the foreword "this is not a time to stand still or to simply finesse the past", but at the same time we have to square our enthusiasm for progress and continuous improvement with the realisation that it could easily mean ever-increasing workloads for teachers, lecturers and administrators.<br />
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<b><i>We have to square our enthusiasm for progress with the realisation</i></b></div>
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<b><i>that it could mean ever-increasing workloads</i></b></div>
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I will close by reiterating the report's key messages about access and inclusion, much which could be facilitated centrally by a supporting agency, and bringing everyday technologies into the classroom and lecture theatre.<br />
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As my daughter and her friends say when I ask them a tricky question, "just Google it, Daddy!"<br />
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Martin Hamiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12640838667301026751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480704540309659677.post-76601979047750038322015-06-10T23:06:00.000+01:002015-07-30T23:06:36.632+01:00What's next in wearable tech for research and education?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhunN3Lsl-VQUFv3miR-bfiiDbAgCghuzujAWefwW7zbZvtgjKYzaz2AElRViwfXGeOwofeGw-fk2X6BaedXmfeRivrh739Zi0VNFdfug7fwC_xbK9dRll-pDLTx3tHunWYrAEs9tcG3JA/s1600/hamilton-figure7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhunN3Lsl-VQUFv3miR-bfiiDbAgCghuzujAWefwW7zbZvtgjKYzaz2AElRViwfXGeOwofeGw-fk2X6BaedXmfeRivrh739Zi0VNFdfug7fwC_xbK9dRll-pDLTx3tHunWYrAEs9tcG3JA/s1600/hamilton-figure7.jpg" /></a><br />
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At <a href="https://events.google.com/io2015/" target="_blank">Google's I/O conference</a> developers got a sneak preview of some projects they're working on. For me the most interesting was <a href="https://www.google.com/atap/project-jacquard/" target="_blank">Project Jacquard</a>, which is all about sewing circuitry into clothing and accessories. Just think, instead of interacting with a tiny touch screen on a phone or a watch, you could your whole jacket sleeve into a control surface or even buy a touch panel 'legwarmer'? And what fascinates me is the use of this type of technology in education.<br />
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[This piece originally appeared in Education Technology, June 2015 edition]<br />
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<b>Wearable tech for teaching</b><br />
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If you had mentioned wearable computers a couple of years ago, the buzz would have been about <a href="http://www.google.com/glass/start/" target="_blank">Google Glass</a>. If you believed the hype, Glass was all set to become the dominant computing paradigm for the early 21st century. However, it was clear from beta testers' feedback and society's reaction that Glass was not quite ready for prime time. But, Google didn't give up on the idea, Tony Fadell's Team, who famously produced the iPod for Apple, are now continuing development.<br />
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There are interesting examples of Google Glass being used in teaching for example, <a href="http://hitconsultant.net/2014/03/19/can-google-glass-transform-medical-education/" target="_blank">doctors recording surgical procedures for med school training</a>. Originally Glass had built-in support for Hangouts, so your students could not only see what you were doing - through your own eyes, or near enough, but you could also interact with them. It turned out that this was hard to do well given the limited hardware and battery life of the Glass Explorer units, but we will probably see this reappear in Glass 3.0.<br />
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I think Glass has promise in a range of industrial scenarios where it is necessary or preferable to keep your hands free. Many of the potential scenarios for <a href="https://developers.google.com/glass/distribute/glass-at-work" target="_blank">Glass at Work</a> are quite relevant to vocational and skills based training, e.g. the mechanic who can call up diagrams and documentation for the car they are working on (hands free) whilst actually carrying out the work.<br />
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Similarly it seems to me that Glass could be very helpful for the researcher working in the field - picture <a href="https://saraperry.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">a digital archaeologist, like the University of York's Sara Perry</a>, taking pictures on her finds in situ as centuries of dust and dirt is brushed away. In an increasingly connected world wouldn't you like to hang out in real time with archaeologists?<br />
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<b>What's next?</b><br />
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However, only a few items of wearable technology have made it out of the labs and into anything like mass circulation. You might be expecting me to mention smartwatches, but actually I would go much further back in time to the invention of glasses and hearing aids. These technologies took a long time to emerge from the labs to reach the ubiquity they now enjoy.<br />
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We might look at today's largely disappointing smartwatches and fitness trackers, and think that this is as good as it gets - but the lesson from those early 'wearables' is that it might be decades before they reach their full potential. What we can see, however, is a direction of travel - the guts of a smartphone can now be reduced to something that will fit on your wrist, and other more specialised devices can be shrunk even further. For example <a href="http://www.proteus.com/" target="_blank">Proteus Digital Health</a>'s ingestible scanner pill, which allows us to take pictures of the intestine without exploratory surgery.<br />
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What is clear is that we can now assume that small connected devices studded with sensors are a given and start to ask ourselves where they might be useful. What objects around the home, office or public spaces could usefully be given an IP address and hooked up to the global internet? How could student use these in the classroom or could they be used to improved international collaboration?<br />
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Martin Hamiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12640838667301026751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480704540309659677.post-30468153119090090652015-06-08T22:56:00.000+01:002015-07-30T22:57:35.258+01:00A Year of Living in the FutureMy name is Martin Hamilton, and I work for <a href="http://www.jisc.ac.uk/">Jisc</a> in London as its resident futurist, a position I've held for just over a year. EDUCAUSE Review kindly invited me to explain my work and what it entails. I thought a good way of doing this would be by keeping a diary for a week. Read on for a glimpse of my typical schedule and duties.<br />
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[This piece originally appeared in <a href="http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/year-living-future" target="_blank">EDUCAUSE Review</a> in June 2015]<br />
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<b>Thursday, May 14: London</b><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: start;">Figure 1. Bloomberg terminal at London City Airport</span></td></tr>
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Today I was in London for a meeting of our horizon-scan group. Later in 2015 and into 2016 we plan to publish a series of reports covering tech trends and new technologies, looking at what Jisc could do to help accelerate (or ameliorate) their impact. Today's was one of a series of meetings to discuss topics to cover and compare notes on progress. Our first horizon-scan report will explore how we can achieve the potential of cloud computing in research and education. We've already had some useful input from Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, and conducted a sector-wide survey to help establish where our sector is with cloud. The early draft looks promising, and we'll soon have a version ready to share with a few critical friends for feedback.<br />
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After our meeting finished I flew up to Edinburgh - my first trip from London City Airport. The airport's target demographic was instantly clear from the ubiquitous Bloomberg terminals and giant screens showing stock tickers (figure 1), and I felt a little out of place.<br />
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On arrival I took my first trip on the Edinburgh trams (figure 2), which opened for business around a year ago. I generally travel within the UK by train, but London to Edinburgh is a journey of around four and a half hours, against an hour and a quarter by plane. I stayed in a budget hotel just off Princes Street, incongruously right above the Edinburgh Apple Store. It had some quite impressive decor and views for an inexpensive hotel (figure 3).<br />
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<b>Friday, May 15: Edinburgh</b><br />
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I co-chair something called the Project Directors Group (PDG), which brings together the heads of scientific computing from the UK's national e-infrastructure projects and services. This includes representatives from the <a href="http://www.crick.ac.uk/" target="_blank">Francis Crick Institute,</a> the <a href="http://www.sanger.ac.uk/" target="_blank">Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute</a>, <a href="http://www.tgac.ac.uk/" target="_blank">The Genome Analysis Centre</a> (TGAC), <a href="http://www.gridpp.ac.uk/" target="_blank">GridPP</a> (the UK's Tier 1 and 2 sites for the Large Hadron Collider), <a href="http://www.dirac.ac.uk/" target="_blank">STFC DiRAC</a> (high-performance computing for particle physics and cosmology), and other major initiatives. We are trying to establish core common technical standards and procedures so that researchers can more readily collaborate across disciplines, share facilities, and avoid reinventing the wheel wherever possible. This should make it easier for new initiatives, such as the recently announced <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/dec/04/alan-turing-institute-big-data-knowledge-quarter-london" target="_blank">Alan Turing Institute</a>, to get off the ground.<br />
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The PDG is busy right now with a number of activities, including work to explore public and hybrid cloud for research, and our annual inventory of high-performance computing and big data facilities and expertise - the National e-Infrastructure (NeI) Survey. The <a href="http://hpc-sig.org/publications/" target="_blank">2014 NeI Survey report</a> informed the <a href="http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/" target="_blank">Research Councils UK</a> (RCUK) national <a href="https://www.epsrc.ac.uk/newsevents/pubs/e-infrastructure-roadmap/" target="_blank">e-Infrastructure Roadmap</a>. I'm delighted to be presenting the results of the 2015 NeI Survey at a joint UK/US HPC workshop later this summer, organized by the UK's <a href="http://www.hpc-sig.org/" target="_blank">High Performance Computing Special Internet Group</a> (HPC-SIG) and the US <a href="https://www.blogger.com/"><span id="goog_1964809979"></span>Coalition for Academic Scientific Computing<span id="goog_1964809980"></span></a> (CASC).<br />
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Our workshop today at the <a href="http://www.epcc.ed.ac.uk/" target="_blank">Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre</a> (EPCC) specifically targeted the potential transferability of a piece of software that EPCC had developed to manage accounting, reporting, and usage monitoring for the UK's national supercomputer facilities. In an ideal world this would be a "middleware" service that facilities and projects could simply pick up and reuse. Despite many unanswered questions, we saw promising signs from successful reuse of the EPCC software with STFC's <a href="http://www.stfc.ac.uk/hartree" target="_blank">Hartree Centre</a> and DiRAC service.<br />
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After the workshop I flew back to my home in Loughborough, Leicestershire for the weekend. It provides a convenient base to work from, practically in the dead center of England and close to major road and rail links. It's also just a short drive from Nottingham East Midlands Airport, which has a good range of national and international flights.<br />
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<b>Monday May 18: Working from Home</b><br />
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Today I worked from home, catching up and preparing for an internal presentation on potential applications of wearable technologies the following day. I find it invaluable to work from home a day or two a week, as this gives me the time and space to work through ideas undisturbed. It's also great to spend time with my kids, particularly walking, scooting, and cycling with them to and from school.
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCj-dw1zL0behk-QFhlbHfCE2VgImnHUjEksNwjpDQsK6V4hlxWLbNdJZadkNfrbIVY2thJWylY4SMEUOsuL8gXbF4k4YynHVlWrRzWL1rOdd5PJ6PaH5X6KK7gqyABwP7Kyiu_7tEx1M/s1600/hamilton-figure4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCj-dw1zL0behk-QFhlbHfCE2VgImnHUjEksNwjpDQsK6V4hlxWLbNdJZadkNfrbIVY2thJWylY4SMEUOsuL8gXbF4k4YynHVlWrRzWL1rOdd5PJ6PaH5X6KK7gqyABwP7Kyiu_7tEx1M/s1600/hamilton-figure4.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: start;">Figure 4. My daughter's vision of the (Minecraft-based) school of the future</span></td></tr>
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I find it fascinating to think about the world that children like mine are growing up in - <a href="http://www.jisc.ac.uk/blog/etag-a-good-bett-for-uk-education-23-jan-2015" target="_blank">the iPad generation are now at school</a>, as I wrote in a recent piece for the Jisc website (see figure 4 for a teaser). What will post-compulsory education look like for the first generation in history that has had open access to the sum total of human knowledge? Will our traditional campus-based models of education seem increasingly irrelevant to someone used to "binge watching" whole TV series over a weekend?<br />
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We need to recognise that we now inhabit a world where you can go off and learn all about a subject from open online educational resources (OERs), including material from world-leading institutions like MIT, Harvard, Oxford, and Cambridge. Missing until recently, though, was the ability to be assessed on this self-paced, self-directed learning. With developments such as the UK's <a href="http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/mooc-test-agreement-between-futurelearn-and-pearson/2020145.article" target="_blank">FutureLearn partnering with Pearson</a> to assess tests, I think we will start to see that potential alternative education model.<br />
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<b>Tuesday, May 19: London</b><br />
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Today I travelled into London to attend our quarterly Digital Futures (R&D) team meeting. We tend to alternate these meetings between Bristol and London, as most of our staff report to one of these two offices. London works very well for me - it's a short bike ride to the train station, then I can generally catch a fast train and do the 113 mile journey in around 75 minutes. In US terms this is comparable to travelling from San Francisco to Monterey. The journey time will drop as the line is electrified over the next couple of years; sadly, there is no Hyperloop on the cards for the UK as yet.<br />
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It's increasingly common to have Wi-Fi in trains, buses, and even the Edinburgh trams, and soon it will be free on most public transport. I remember bringing my laptop on the train years ago and feeling like a total nerd; it's fascinating to see how completely this has reversed - anyone not staring at a screen now stands out. We also generally have power outlets on intercity trains, although never enough for all the gadgets. Figures 5 and 6 show lifelogging of my travel.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzANlCj7mZhyVNKEYEW2PC6q6K-rCQzO9hXhaJ7yQnvKhzeYHWCradRHWOWf-u2xsPCgWIWfp-ZaFE5oYcwnyyHri-A7WxG-W11yvpCBpDrveodMPZsRJbOT-Gv8ZTP6ErCQ8YUCrZ4C4/s1600/hamilton-figure5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzANlCj7mZhyVNKEYEW2PC6q6K-rCQzO9hXhaJ7yQnvKhzeYHWCradRHWOWf-u2xsPCgWIWfp-ZaFE5oYcwnyyHri-A7WxG-W11yvpCBpDrveodMPZsRJbOT-Gv8ZTP6ErCQ8YUCrZ4C4/s320/hamilton-figure5.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: start;">Figure 5. Lifelogging the cycle ride to Loughborough train station</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWyI3HGcut8FBPdy3xGlQS81CWlOnKaC78jBTNGDe3ARU3jI4bx9pXNSfvzZXz4O-p3erYhhJkBTPjArrv8sTtHgJNo_e1ppG7JKrNzcDh-D3mfHrQ726XqXeYzsNfamwZ6qSv3sMES3E/s1600/xhamilton-figure6.jpg.pagespeed.ic.p-jTzKzTVl.webp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWyI3HGcut8FBPdy3xGlQS81CWlOnKaC78jBTNGDe3ARU3jI4bx9pXNSfvzZXz4O-p3erYhhJkBTPjArrv8sTtHgJNo_e1ppG7JKrNzcDh-D3mfHrQ726XqXeYzsNfamwZ6qSv3sMES3E/s320/xhamilton-figure6.jpg.pagespeed.ic.p-jTzKzTVl.webp" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: start;">Figure 6. Lifelogging the train journey to London</span></td></tr>
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Many of our staff travel a lot and hot desk when in the office rather than having a traditional desk or cubicle. It's helpful to gather quarterly for a show and tell session, coupled with briefings on important developments. We recognized a while back that quarterly meetings can't be the only way of sharing knowledge and information, so most weeks we have a stand-up meeting using Blackboard Collaborate. Staff members share their plans for the week and any breaking news that will help others plan their work. The notes from these meetings are e-mailed around as a quick information burst for those people who couldn't attend. We also use collaboration tools like Yammer and Basecamp extensively for internal communication and planning, Jisc's own Vscene conferencing and telepresence tool (based on Vidyo), and social media. I've curated a <a href="https://twitter.com/martin_hamilton/lists/jisc-digital-futures" target="_blank">Twitter list of Digital Futures team members</a> that you might want to follow.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyWeDeVHOhY0JqtePDFC49mfa3yBMQNxuvfrF_38G7IdePpAedomp7bGrNmSy96HbUU9Lmi58bK-PnaNT8CuXAQNC1mWqj8TNBvIQ845A-ZYEtj0kyk0WNBrFthUhL-wfYaxhsTr4b1GU/s1600/hamilton-figure7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyWeDeVHOhY0JqtePDFC49mfa3yBMQNxuvfrF_38G7IdePpAedomp7bGrNmSy96HbUU9Lmi58bK-PnaNT8CuXAQNC1mWqj8TNBvIQ845A-ZYEtj0kyk0WNBrFthUhL-wfYaxhsTr4b1GU/s1600/hamilton-figure7.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: start;">Figure 7. Google wearable tech</span></td></tr>
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At today's meeting I led a session on wearables with my colleague Lawrie Phipps. We talked about research and education applications for the major types of wearable in general circulation (loosely speaking, smart watches and health trackers - e.g. see figure 7), along with emerging technologies such as smart tattoos and implantable or ingestible devices. The <a href="http://rogers.matse.illinois.edu/" target="_blank">Rogers Research Group</a> at the University of Illinois and <a href="http://www.proteus.com/" target="_blank">Proteus Digital Health</a> have some particularly interesting examples in the latter category. It's quite a fascinating exercise to project ahead what jobs will be required in the future, and hence what our institutions should prepare to train people for. Consider that, unless <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_harvesting" target="_blank">energy harvesting</a> takes off, there might well be significant demand for people to work in areas like "Internet of Things power engineering" - if only to go around replacing batteries in iBeacons and sensor networks. We also spent some time talking about the ethical issues around personal data and where it can end up - <a href="http://foresight.jiscinvolve.org/wp/google-knows-what-makes-your-heart-beat-faster/" target="_blank">Google knows what makes your heart beat faster</a>, as I wrote in a piece for our technology foresight blog.<br />
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<b>Wednesday, May 20: London</b><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO5wlXHfB4tik_09vvoNjZuCIW6_xXuCsnlcbDcvrZlP3V8nhAVdQjVU7mwVBWbCMaCwNqm6OxczFtyCdFgeFCVKRiDNgMhSNFh_A1eJKPXHpgIdVVdsJPgBzHGw_2kBzLcLWi1X1TlUs/s1600/hamilton-figure8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO5wlXHfB4tik_09vvoNjZuCIW6_xXuCsnlcbDcvrZlP3V8nhAVdQjVU7mwVBWbCMaCwNqm6OxczFtyCdFgeFCVKRiDNgMhSNFh_A1eJKPXHpgIdVVdsJPgBzHGw_2kBzLcLWi1X1TlUs/s320/hamilton-figure8.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: start;">Figure 8. London St Pancras Station</span></td></tr>
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Today I was back in London for the second of three visits this week. As my meetings didn't start until lunchtime, I was able to take the kids in to school, and then catch a cheaper off-peak train and work en route (on this article, among other things) using the Internet via the train's Wi-Fi service. As soon as I arrived at London St Pancras station (see figure 8), it was time to duck into a coffee shop to talk to one of my colleagues about next steps sharing and processing the results of some of the survey and market research work described above. We often use Skype for these quick chats, but today the technology let us down; luckily we still have mobile phones, for now! At Jisc we increasingly use Tableau software for this sort of stats processing and visualization, and we are working with the UK's Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) to create a facility whereby institutions can combine public data such as statistical returns with their private institutional data - you could think of this as business intelligence as a service. (Find out more on our <a href="http://www.jisc.ac.uk/rd/projects/business-intelligence-project" target="_blank">Business Intelligence project page</a>.)<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvSNwQmYcXnGcNoO125u7XQdn-LrJMoo937skuK__9SB0GhjtV1GVucrmkh0tdP-bmVL-2c1P85Zy2I8lxdoWlmcKYQqKvMkSGQIhbn8RzWCMa27nY90ZFcyDITHjvV6zS70P0029N-xQ/s1600/hamilton-figure9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvSNwQmYcXnGcNoO125u7XQdn-LrJMoo937skuK__9SB0GhjtV1GVucrmkh0tdP-bmVL-2c1P85Zy2I8lxdoWlmcKYQqKvMkSGQIhbn8RzWCMa27nY90ZFcyDITHjvV6zS70P0029N-xQ/s320/hamilton-figure9.jpg" width="238" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: start;">Figure 9. Cafe in Covent Garden market</span></td></tr>
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After we finished, I caught the Underground Piccadilly line down to Covent Garden (see figure 9), for the short walk across the Strand to Jisc's London offices at Brettenham House, just next to Waterloo Bridge and Somerset House. This is where most London-based Jisc staff work. We also have an adjoining meeting room suite that is heavily used both for internal meetings and by our stakeholders and partners. My first meeting of the day was a one-to-one session with my boss, Jisc Chief Innovation Officer Phil Richards. Phil and I sit down together or meet online at least once a month to check on progress against my objectives and agree on next steps. This time around we principally discussed the horizon scan and PDG activities I've already described, and followed up on some work that we have done to <a href="http://www.jisc.ac.uk/rd/projects/equipment-sharing-made-easy" target="_blank">accelerate equipment sharing between institutions and with industry</a>. This initiative has led to over 10,000 items of publicly funded research equipment worth over £200m being made available for sharing, including some £60m of publicly funded supercomputing facilities and expertise. We have some exciting news in this area that we will share in the coming weeks, but I can't talk about it right now!<br />
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Next I met with a venture capitalist and an edtech accelerator based in London. We have been talking to a number of VCs, accelerators, and incubators about how best to take new ideas forward and turn them into products and services. This multifaceted problem includes standards (core Application Programming Interfaces, micro services, and data formats), procedural aspects (e.g. procurement), and also finding ways for institutions to trial new services and solutions that Jisc could potentially underwrite.<br />
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<b>Thursday, May 21: London</b><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhirJLm38YBBmUzgtGkav5a3p5kJjdHQt7_mPfdJOfD62AgaIC_J-XiMUXL3wacD-LQ3U0Hv0RVx1EmMcKdiJreVdUpFzS8zk13OQ8056mHTauEwjHuIw1XeSIPvfsYtI_x87_NtB0Ah4w/s1600/xhamilton-figure10.png.pagespeed.ic.oszKklDdtN.webp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhirJLm38YBBmUzgtGkav5a3p5kJjdHQt7_mPfdJOfD62AgaIC_J-XiMUXL3wacD-LQ3U0Hv0RVx1EmMcKdiJreVdUpFzS8zk13OQ8056mHTauEwjHuIw1XeSIPvfsYtI_x87_NtB0Ah4w/s320/xhamilton-figure10.png.pagespeed.ic.oszKklDdtN.webp" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: start;">Figure 10. The Innovate UK "Class of 2015"</span></td></tr>
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Today I was in London for my third visit of the week, attending an Innovate UK event to celebrate the success of its <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/learning-technologies-design-for-impact-2015" target="_blank">Learning Technologies - Design for Impact</a> program. Innovate UK is a sister organization to Jisc, funded by the UK government to accelerate the translation of R&D into products and services. This is principally done through a competition process, after identifying a gap in the market in a particular area. Last year Innovate UK issued its first call for learning technologies, offering projects seed funding of up to £80K out of a pot of£1.1m. The call was massively oversubscribed, with 297 submissions received and 15 projects selected to receive funding.<br />
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All of the successful projects were on hand at a celebratory gathering today to present short explanations of their work (figure 10), with a number of product demos available for visitors to experience (figures 11 and 12). As one might expect with an edtech event, there was a lively conversation both online and offline, of which I <a href="https://storify.com/martin_hamilton/cn15learningtech?utm_medium=sfy.co-twitter&awesm=sfy.co_f0cA8&utm_content=storify-pingback&utm_source=t.co&utm_campaign=" target="_blank">captured the highlights using Storify</a>. I also took the opportunity to use Periscope for the first time to stream the product pitches to my followers online - it was interesting to see from Twitter Analytics that my tweets from the event were viewed nearly 9,000 times, which is a lot for a comparatively niche subject area.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4lEtBbZgAqxPY5HjjHYM2dip1dTryMhizj-JNJUzYaFQN6TSLVcqnUZtoabNc7ZHPh3EHqwfjXCUP0lviyt13Qo7TwBGsp0O_CSNX1cM0Vo1toBdoqT4-JqwU2O1adxXqMn635xaBJnQ/s1600/xhamilton-figure11.jpg.pagespeed.ic.nLFXdaz01B.webp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4lEtBbZgAqxPY5HjjHYM2dip1dTryMhizj-JNJUzYaFQN6TSLVcqnUZtoabNc7ZHPh3EHqwfjXCUP0lviyt13Qo7TwBGsp0O_CSNX1cM0Vo1toBdoqT4-JqwU2O1adxXqMn635xaBJnQ/s320/xhamilton-figure11.jpg.pagespeed.ic.nLFXdaz01B.webp" width="238" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: start;">Figure 11. Maker Club and Seeper Innovate UK exhibits </span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdrDpRDsl1Nv7IIXorfSzKIsVehNFaxMGNd-H80SnQ0ZL9SvFKMDtgJCQcKtWbruL2XMGYvOLTsAZmAv6ZQaYjfGjWEbKfXNFpu5yutiVvjQH8Wq8vawibQ7cL9COhVBged1p2ZtjVKrs/s1600/hamilton-figure12.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdrDpRDsl1Nv7IIXorfSzKIsVehNFaxMGNd-H80SnQ0ZL9SvFKMDtgJCQcKtWbruL2XMGYvOLTsAZmAv6ZQaYjfGjWEbKfXNFpu5yutiVvjQH8Wq8vawibQ7cL9COhVBged1p2ZtjVKrs/s320/hamilton-figure12.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: start;">Figure 12. Anarkik3D Innovate UK exhibit</span></td></tr>
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A big thrust of Jisc's work over the last couple of years has been to help institutions understand both what it means to be a <a href="http://www.jisc.ac.uk/rd/projects/digital-student" target="_blank">digital student</a> in terms of expectations and student experience, and how lecturers can best exploit modern digital technologies in teaching and learning, research, and enterprise. In the UK we are teaching a whole generation coding and computational thinking at school. Today's college students are adept at using the technology, but have only a hazy idea of how it functions. Tomorrow's students will be <a href="http://www.nesta.org.uk/publications/young-digital-makers" target="_blank">young digital makers</a>, in the words of a recent <a href="http://www.nesta.org.uk/" target="_blank">Nesta</a> report. I was delighted that Nesta's Oliver Quinlan was able to present at the Innovate UK event - his statistics on young peoples' views and experiences of digital technology were a particular highlight and set the whole day in context for me.<br />
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Every year Jisc holds a <a href="http://www.jisc.ac.uk/news/students-encouraged-to-pitch-ideas-as-jisc-launches-summer-of-student-innovation-2015" target="_blank">Summer of Student Innovation competition</a>, which offers further education, higher education (FE and HE), and work-based-learning students the chance to create solutions that could change the education landscape forever. Students submit their ideas for improving the student experience and changing the education landscape. EDUCAUSE Review readers may have come across some of our "graduates" who have achieved international success, such as <a href="https://www.callforparticipants.com/" target="_blank">Call for Participants</a>.<br />
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<b>Friday, May 22: Working from Home</b><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3LZ48s5V9h1zkgBrmV2P9VsT_CJ-EAU6NAEOnmMP3YqI4T7-NZguiFQMo54tlTIc_6ofxd3-GTcCR2amhx7p4-LawfkDqxdQAzyLWxxJfFzVtvbFRDw65qo2grp29_6hPg11GJ2kheG0/s1600/hamilton-figure13.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3LZ48s5V9h1zkgBrmV2P9VsT_CJ-EAU6NAEOnmMP3YqI4T7-NZguiFQMo54tlTIc_6ofxd3-GTcCR2amhx7p4-LawfkDqxdQAzyLWxxJfFzVtvbFRDw65qo2grp29_6hPg11GJ2kheG0/s320/hamilton-figure13.jpg" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: start;">Figure 13. Mars holiday poster courtesy of SpaceX (public domain)</span></td></tr>
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After a hectic few days, today I am working from home again and preparing for an invited keynote speech next week at a conference in Warsaw, Poland: <a href="http://ord2015.pon.edu.pl/conference/program/" target="_blank">Open Research Data - Implications for Science and Society</a>. I'll be looking back from 2030 in an "open science retrospective" on the potential impact of the decisions we are making today around open working practices such as open lab notebooks and sharing research data and software. One of my slightly tongue-in-cheek scenarios is that in 2030 the six sons of Elon Musk become the first humans to set foot on Mars. Musk's <a href="http://www.spacex.com/" target="_blank">SpaceX</a> looks set to transform the sector by making most rocket components reusable, thereby vastly lowering the cost of space travel. Key in this is their current work to successfully land and reuse the first-stage booster rocket. This might ultimately lead to people taking the holiday of a lifetime on Mars, as the fictional travel poster in figure 13 shows.<br />
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For me this joining up between public and private is absolutely crucial to our work at Jisc. It is vital that researchers and educators maintain good links to the industries that would employ our students, or build products based on our ideas and inventions. I hope this diary has given you a glimpse of how we are working with these diverse communities to accelerate innovation, and I would be delighted to discuss this further with EDUCAUSE Review readers. Let's go back to Elon Musk for one last observation: It's particularly telling for me that Musk has chosen to freely share a vast bank of patentable ideas and inventions across his activities in the space, energy, and transport sectors. In years to come I think we may come to regard this legitimization of sharing as his greatest legacy. It's time to see what we can do when we all come together around grand challenges like the race for Mars.Martin Hamiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12640838667301026751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480704540309659677.post-16211614526201617502014-10-15T23:16:00.000+01:002014-10-15T23:18:56.689+01:00Defeating Internet Censorship with a Tweet - The Curious Case of TeenTech.com<br />
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This is a story about Internet censorship. Well, kind of. It's also a story about Twitter's <a href="https://analytics.twitter.com/" target="_blank">Analytics product</a>, which recently went on general release. And most importantly - a plug for Maggie Philbin's <a href="http://www.teentech.com/" target="_blank">TeenTech</a> charity, which works with schools, employers and young people to promote STEM based careers. All this, and sinister giant jelly babies. Read on to find out more...</div>
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Our story begins (as so many do these days) with a fateful tweet - Maggie Philbin announcing that TeenTech's 2015 awards are officially open. Note the reply to my retweet from Simon Thomson:</div>
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Yes, Sky's Broadband Shield product really was blocking the teentech.com website in the "dating" category. Dates of events for teens - sounds an awful lot like a teen dating site, right?</div>
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For my non-UK readers, this is all part of what has been dubbed the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jan/08/david-cameron-great-firewall" target="_blank">Great Firewall of the UK</a> - the link is to an excellent article by Cory Doctorow. Whilst the intentions behind the Great Firewall were undoubtedly good, the reality is that the Internet is a slippery beast, and algorithms are no substitute for parental supervision.</div>
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Unfortunately in this case the Sky Broadband block is potentially quite a big deal, because 20% of UK households get their Internet connection through Sky - we don't know how many people have <a href="http://helpforum.sky.com/t5/Sky-Broadband/Broadband-Shield-FAQ-s/ta-p/1486183" target="_blank">turned off Sky Broadband Shield</a>, though.</div>
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I thought this was a shame and wondered how much work it would be to get it unblocked. So, I logged a case with Sky tech support, and also tweeted a screenshot (see below) from the rather wonderful <a href="https://www.blocked.org.uk/" target="_blank">blocked.org.uk website</a>. Blocked.org.uk, from the <a href="https://www.openrightsgroup.org/" target="_blank">Open Rights Group</a>, lets you punch in a URL to check whether it is blocked by various fixed and mobile providers. The Great Firewall, you see, is really a fiction - there are actually multiple block lists maintained by various parties and used in various combinations by different providers. </div>
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What you'll also see in that picture is the Twitter Analytics stats for my tweet. Until quite recently this information was only available to a select few, but as of August 2014 everyone can see these stats. Here's a <a href="http://simplymeasured.com/blog/2014/08/28/twitters-analytics-dashboard-is-now-available-to-all-users/" target="_blank">nice guide to Twitter Analytics</a> from Simply Measured. Note that you have to sign into Twitter Analytics before Twitter will start to collect stats for your activity.<br />
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Historically you would have seen only replies, retweets and favourites. Now with Twitter Analytics you can see just how many times your tweet has been viewed - and other forms of interaction such as viewing a photo or playing an embedded video. It was a revelation for me to see how my Twitter network amplified this message.<br />
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I should also note that the reality of my Twitter stats is actually pretty mundane - it's quite unusual to get as many impressions as this. Twitter Analytics helpfully summarises these for you too:<br />
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So what makes a tweet worthy of amplifying? In this case there was an implicit call to arms to spread the word. There may be a lesson here in terms of another arguably more worthy pursuit - blogging.<br />
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In eight years of blogging I have yet to reach 300,000 page views (see graph below). Looking back I see that most of my posts are long and discursive, without an obvious call to action like "let's get the teentech.com block removed".<br />
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But there is also the sneaking suspicion that people nowadays find it increasingly difficult to read more than 140 characters ;-)<br />
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The contrast with Twitter stats couldn't be more profound:<br />
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In case anyone is wondering, the 24K impressions peak in early October was due almost entirely to the <a href="http://fote-conference.com/" target="_blank">Future of Technology in Education</a> conference, which amongst other things featured a sinister giant jelly baby:<br />
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And finally, the good news bit - I received an email from Sky tech support earlier today confirming that they were unblocking TeenTech.com. Did all those RTs help? I like to think so. And if they do it again, I will send the <a href="http://www.maurojellybabies.co.uk/" target="_blank">sinister jelly babies</a> round...<br />
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<br />Martin Hamiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12640838667301026751noreply@blogger.com0