Experts' comments

 

Comment by Barbara Jones:
Thank you Michael for that l contribution, which reminds us of the complexity of the environment we are talking about.
Comment by Teemu Leinonen:
I think you are quite right, but I think that this idea, that technology is value free serves the markets and all the good designers know, that it’s not. When you design technology, you also design the user. You have the conception of the user and the situation the user is living in. And for that proposition, good designers have methods. There is participatory design which is for instance done with the users in a community where the technology is implemented.
Comment by Nick Kearney:
I think the point in question is not just about getting into other organisations, but very often, just today hearing different peoples experience. Hearing for example talking about the two years down the line in Norway. I don’t think that’s the same in Spain. I think in Spain it’s six or seven years down the line and I still have people saying to me. Latin people don’t use computers. I think that’s nonsense, but I think some people really like talking and on the other side what I’m saying, the take up for transfer is a cultural issue as well and it’s about looking at the specific environment of the place you want to transfer it to and contextualise the innovation. This needs a serious analysis that they aren’t used to do.
Comment by Michael Kuhn:
We had a really fascinating communication tool in one of our projects and we had a technology freak who was perfect. You could communicate just what you did with anybody at any time and it is fascinating, but you know what happened in our project? Nobody was talking to anybody, not because they were too stupid to use the technology, they didn’t want it, because they didn’t know what they should talk about. So why should I ask a question to that guy in England? Because I don’t know what to talk about. You can use this incredible communication tool and you can even call him on the toilet, but if you don’t want to ask him anything, the communication stays quite poor. And that’s what happened in this project. We have invested 10.000 Euro for the technology. I always said stop that nonsense, but I couldn’t, because the technology freaks were stronger. Because it was so fascinating and then, at the end, it was really waste of 10.000 Euro for nothing, because people didn’t know what to talk about. And after that they realised that there wont be an interesting point to talk about.
Comment by Barbara Jones:
If you just take a simple technology the email. Email is great, people send emails to each other, but usually they are not very reflective. For me, it doesn’t substitute for the benefit of sitting together or working on a document together. This is my experience, interesting or not? In the Delphi project, we send lots of emails between our selves, but the truth is our best feedback is when we meet together.
Comment by Eva Lisa Ahnström:
Sending an email is so easy, it’s that person and that person you really want comments from, but it’s so easy that you send it to everyone. All the persons in the world and then perhaps you don’t get the feedback from the two persons or they don’t see the mail because they are overloaded. So that is more of a way of learning how to use that media. Before perhaps you sent a letter instead with an article that you wanted someone to comment. A letter in paper. So that’s because we have this tons of emails. I think it’s more a matter of that we are still learning how to use it properly.
Comment by Wim van Petegem:
I’m not sure if I can agree with your comment on email. From the student point of view, I’m not sure if email is not a better communication tool than for instance oral communication. And if you use email in a proper way, then you have students to reflect about. And they formulate their thoughts. So in such a way that I’m sure that if you use it the right way, email can bring added value to the communication between students and teachers. So I wouldn’t exaggerate too much about the bad use of email. Also if it is in an international context, for instance, and you need to communicate, or students need to communicate with other students in other countries and in another language then the difficulties are lower by using email communication than other oral communication because they can sit back and think how to formulate a message. So we have seen a lot of interesting use of email communication in the international context. I completely agree, it’s not an substitute, but it can bring added value in the communication.
Comment by Michael Kuhn:
But that is not the argument. The argument is not if it’s good or bad, the argument was that the in fact fascinating options of this technology is contained. It is not necessarily something that is really useful for certain uses. That was the argument.
Comment by Mario Barajas:
But in practice it’s complicated to decide. I mean in terms of history there are lot of examples what the needs are of the users and what is really needed. I recall this anecdote of people using telephones at the beginning of the twentieth century. There were very few people in the cities starting using this stuff and people were laughing about them. “what are these people doing, using those stupid things etc.” So many things have been built by technology and by real need on the other hand. There is almost a balance between what is emerging in society and what the real cultural needs of the people are.
Comment by Michael Kuhn:
The thing I was worried is as you say it is a bit more complex in between different factors and I just wanted to be a little bit annoying here, by saying: Selling technologies with its fascinating technology or technological options. Is one point, but you should not be surprised if that fails, because there are other aspects.
Comment by Andrew Haldane:
I think if we talk about the socio economic impact of EU investment on elearning, . I know for certain that there are very large scale, very interesting projects going on in the central England at the moment. I know for sure that, as sure as anyone can be, that those projects wouldn’t have happened if the Economic Development department of Birmingham city council hadn’t been a partner in the 4th framework project called Domitel.
Now there isn’t anybody actually active in those two quite large initiatives now. If anybody went to those two quite large projects and said, where did the ideas come from, what convinced people, sort of two stages about down the chain, you have to put budgets together and make investments, but this sort of things should go ahead and nobody would trace it back, but it’s down to people who are budget holders actually seeing the excitement in the faces of some quite small groups of learners of people who are coming back to learning and being exited by new ways of learning. Somewhere down the line, budgets are set aside, there are models that have been passed of one to another. And it’s just a little example of what you can trace. And I’ve learned from being there.
Comment by Atle Lokken:
I learn from being here but I believe that we need to abandon some technology because we need to play around with this technology. The SMS wasn’t invented by the users. The SMS was a technology that was actually invented by some technicians in the lab and they didn’t know what to use it for. But it was employed by the needers or whoever and they had a market perspective that was quite surprising. They didn’t even know that there was a market on technology. So I believe we need to abandon some technology. Lots of stuff you are drawing out of this, I think it’s great and I don’t see the use here and now, but if its sustainable, someone will find a use for it. Our forefathers had it for the telephone, the steam engine or the new technologies. They are the same, exactly the same discussion. People even believed that to go riding on a steam engine you will die because of the speed.
Comment by Michael Kuhn:
To be honest I mentioned all the other things, but you know the steam engine is a bit tricky example, because we all know it has played an important role, but you could mention all the other things that disappeared.
Comment by Atle Lokken:
I think we need to abandon some technology and we can point at some technologies in the later years that don’t exist anymore like the beeper for instance, anyone using a beeper today?
Eva Lisa Ahnström:
Yes I do….
Comment by Atle Lokken:
Well, it’s a dying technology. But when it comes to email, I think its true. Its just a matter of finding the use. I actually use a lot of email and I come from the industry myself, just last years I have been working for the university. In the project work I use always emails, I don’t like using telephone, because the email is traceable and we work with clients. Its actually legally binding what’s communicated in the email. So I said my client: don’t call me, mail me!
Someone:
Can’t you record it ?
Comment by Atle Lokken:
Yes, like the insurance companies. If you call an insurance company they tape your phone call ,but I don’t do that with my phones and that’s why I prefer email. And there is another reason, which is actually one of the characteristic of the internet. That’s the independence on time and space. You shouldn’t forget that. You don’t have that in any other media, independence of time and space. If you use technology in the right way, then you also see the potential, but if you try to copy what you are doing here then probably the technology will fail. Its something new. You have the use for something new.
Comment by Peter Scott:
I just wanted to say that what we are talking here about are a lot of things. We ended up talking about things like email and power point and we are supposed to be talking about innovation. What innovation is about is about change. About changing something that exists into something else that should be better, but it is also about risk, because there is also the risk that it isn’t better or that the thing you are trying to innovate with, wont do what it says on the box. Innovation is about changing something and I don’t think, you can change a system that isn’t ready to change in some way. And it’s not the technology that really changes, it’s the systems change, users change and if you got partners in an EU project and you don’t know what to say to each other, you need to change partners, because its not the technology that doesn’t make you talk to each other. If they have nothing to say, that’s the problem not the technology. There are really interesting studies on this. We did a huge study in a hospital where we put in a whole slew of innovative technologies for nurses to use and to become knowledge workers. And it failed miserably. The technology was brilliant but the nurses simply didn’t want to. They were not prepared to do this. We know the technologies are brilliant because we did exactly the same thing with a bunch of midwives in exactly the same hospital. Nurses versus midwifes. And the midwifes really wanted it. It completely changed everything they did. Which is a marvellous result. The culture is ready for change, the culture is hungry for change, the culture wants change if it’s ready. You give it to another culture that doesn’t want the change, you are wasting your time. You need to get the culture. Culture has to be right here. Just to say: maybe the innovations we look here aren’t the right ones, not because they are not the right technology, the culture is not right.
Comment by Mario Barajas:
I think email is an innovation, I mean its an old technology. We write our students ourselves etc. Of course its not a real innovation anymore. I wanted just to say something about email. The academic world and the business world is absolutely dependent and you say that you use emails because its bounding. Messages are administrable etc. Somebody in my university told me the system he uses to manage his email. He never ever reads his email. Only when the people who sent him an email ring him, does he realise that there is an important message that he received by email. So it is a very cultural way to see technology.
Comment by Peter Mirski:
I just want to add something to what Peter Scott said and this is also a kind of understanding the Delphi project. We are looking to things which are alive not at innovations as such, because I do believe there is no innovation as such, but it is in the real setting. I wouldn’t say email is an innovation or not. There are settings in which email is an innovation, because it happens something across them and there are a lot of settings where email doesn’t work, so its not innovation as such. That’s what we were looking when we were evaluating the projects, not for the innovations as such.
Comment by Peter Scott:
I don’t think email is very innovative, there is no innovation left in email in a sense of changing cultural practices. SMS is an unexploited technology. There is a whole slew of places where SMS is actually not being used. Its very tough for old people to use it, for some reasons that I can’t explain. And we are not leveraging the kids in using them effectively. So we were trying to get kids with SMS who are excluded from school. The change is not the technology because the technology is fine. They are very good at it, they SMS each other all the time. The change we have to get is the local authority to accept an assignment from a child by SMS. This means this is like a very few words, but this is from a child excluded from school who has never written a word on a piece of paper ever. But they can do assignments by SMSing them from the workplace placement which is the other place where to put some of these children. The change is with the local authorities to say, yes that counts as an assignment. Those words you sent me count as an assignment. Not only that, the best assignment will pay mobile phone credits to you to incentive you to write a few more words
Comment by Eleni Malliou:
We had some activities in the school with mobile learning, usually with phones in order to introduce them into lessons. At the beginning we were very afraid, and we said: Is it going to be successful, are children going to accept it? But the children were more ready then we were. They enjoyed it a lot and the lessons were successful. After that we begun asking children, what are you doing with your mobile phones? And we were so surprised. We couldn’t imagine what they were doing. Of course they send SMS, they live through their mobile phones. Its different. I remember that we used to collect CD’s or discs or music but now, they have everything in their mobile phone. They are learning , they are playing, they are communicating, they are doing everything. So if we think that in order to have innovation we need to change, if we think at learning, we have to keep in mind that children are ready to use technology because they are really interested in. And from what I see in the school is that most of the times teachers are not ready, but not students. Students are ready and prepared and they understand. The hard part is to make teachers use them, not students.
Question:
Do they use mobiles?
Comment by Eleni Malliou:
Everything, computer, mobiles everything. They take music from the computer, put it in the mobile, send it. They cheat when they write examination with their mobile phones. We said to them to tell us the truth and nobody will punish you and we were amazed about the things they are doing in the school. But we have to take advantage of all this things, because if we want to motivate students, then we have to take advantage of the things that motivate them, not to be afraid.