Manifesto for a Networked Nation - ageist

I posted the following to http://raceonline2012.org/ the website for Manifesto for a Networked Nation.

Having looked at the press release for Manifesto for a Networked Nation I see that it talks about "getting everybody of working age" online.

This is pure ageism.

If it had been to get every male online, (with the unstated assumption that females are less worthy of support) it would rightly have been condemned out of hand as sexist - and would probably have been illegal.

But here we have a policy that those over working age are of less importance. There all sorts of reasons why this is socially and economically disastrous besides being discriminatory. I would willingly explain here why this is but I'm doubtful if it is worth my time to do so if the person (people) who put together this site haven't naturally thought about this.

It is perhaps worth noting that the very concept of "working age" is now meaningless. The age at which the state pension is awarded is due to go up, but there many who routinely work beyond that age.

Judging by the number of posts there is very little traffic here, so I'll post this comment elsewhere.

Comment on Anatomy of a PLE

Added this comment to Steve Wheeler's blog on Anatomy of a PLE

I agree that the notion of a PLE is ill-defined, like many such notions in e-learning, so attempts at clarification are useful.

I also agree that the PLE vs VLE dichotomy is not a helpful way of looking at it. A VLE isn't only for content management. It can be, though often isn't, the centre of social interaction for students on a course and staff in a department. All behind a privacy barrier to the outside world. A person's contribution to a VLE should surely be part of their PLE. But those contributions are also needed by the institution, in the case of a student, as it certificates what the student has done.

So while the PLE will certainly include the use of web tools, some of which will be at the behest of the institution, it will also include the use of a VLE. The essential point is that the "personal environment" has to include the whole of the environment in which learning takes place.

On a more practical note I wonder how present PLEs will really support lifelong learning. I still have some books from my (long past) undergraduate days. How long will the present generation of web tools be around?

The Guardian front page - could do much better

I'm afraid I'm still on about the Guardian, with some hopefully what will be perceived as helpful criticism. This time it's the front page of the paper edition.

It is laid out in a way that I find very frustrating. Typically there may be three quite interesting stories, but none of them is complete on the front page. You have to turn to page 2 for the continuation. So to read one front page in its entirety you need to turn to page 2 three times.

It can get worse; you may have to turn to different pages for the continuation of each story.

The edition of Monday the 12th July reached a new low.

Story 1 - continued on page 4.

Story 2 - said "continued on page 6-7" Also a large icon indicated the whole story on 2-3. In fact it was continued on 2-3 and the main story was there.

Story 3 - said "continued on page 2" Also a large icon indicated the whole story on 6-7. In fact it was continued on 6-7 and the main story was there.

So the sub-editors got highly confused as must have been all the readers.

Does the Guardian get it

The Guardian newspaper sees its future in its online, free version. As someone who has bought the paper version for a very long time I thought I would try it out online.

I had something to explore. Specifically I had become very dissatisfied with one aspect of the daily paper - it has a disastrous coverage of the sport I follow which is athletics. A couple of examples: it wasn't able to afford the train fare to Birmingham to send a correspondent to the national championships; it didn't give the team selection for the European Championships. Although it did manage an article on the gender issues of one South African athlete. So I'm a long-term reader with a distinct feeling of being ignored. Should I change my newspaper?

Before I do that how do I get my dissatisfaction across to the people at the Guardian. Just as they didn't understand their readers about the Doonesbury cartoon strip I suspect they also are not in tune with how many readers have got passionate interest in sports other than football. The readers editor is for errors, not about content complaints. A letter for publication would likely to be too long to get published and the people in the sports department (whoever they are - who is the sports editor?) would not read it.

So I turned to the website. Surely I could interact with the sports editors through it? Under one link I found:

"The guardian.co.uk site provides a growing number of opportunities for readers who wish to discuss content we publish or debate more generally."

What this implies, and what comes over through the multifarious pages of guidelines, is that readers can discuss and thus create new content, but the Guardian is not interested in the readers view of how it approaches such issues as the sports it chooses to follow.

I don't expect that the Guardian will be particularly interested in the sense of alienation it has created in this reader.

The real point of this post is that the website reflects an approach in which the Guardian staff are not part of the community they claim to want to foster. It is in this sense that Guardian staff (web site managers? editors?) don't "get" social media. Until they actively invite comment on the whole content of what is being published, they will not fully involve readers.