I have previously “blogged” about, what I see as, often poorly informed and quite “Draconian” policies regarding internet usage within FE colleges including, for example the wholesale blocking of students’ internet access to social networking sites. It’s easy and too simplistic to suggest that this is resolved solely by increased knowledge amongst administrators, education, or by a more sophisticated understanding of ICT by those responsible for policy. There are major issues at the policy level, which Colleges are obliged to deal with.

There is some discussion as to what level of technical understanding should senior Management in institutions have. Lawrie Phipps, JISC programme Manager “blogged” about this very subject earlier this week. And he raises some important issues and questions.

What has prompted my current thinking on this situation are recent guidelines produced by Ofsted in structuring grades for College Assessment within the Leadership and Management effectiveness. Two of the criteria “Safeguarding” and “Equality and Diversity” are what are termed as Limiting grades; which in effect means should a college receive an “ineffective” grade on one of these criteria it is unlikely that overall effectiveness of the college would be assessed as anything but “inadequate” which in turn triggers a series of requirements of the college.

Whilst these two criteria are clearly extremely important the emphasis of college’s maybe, understandably, concentrated on these criteria. Quality of provision, which falls within the teaching, learning, and Assessment criteria, could be compromised. Whilst Ofsted recognizes the need to equip students with the skills necessary to navigate the digital space safely; the balance is precarious.

Clearly any college that blocks access to all sensitive sites and social networking sites is “effective” with its safeguarding policy but would, in my view, be quite inadequate with its teaching, Learning and assessment provision. The former however carries much greater weight.

I’m sure there is good practice in dealing with this in the FE sector but it does present a real challenge to senior Management

http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Amazons-Wireless-Reading-Device/dp/B000FI73MA

So why the storm ? well its Digital Rights Management again . Amazon have invested heavily in this technology and consequently have built in a sphisticated DRM system which prevents users form “openly sharing content”. Educators are begining to use the technology in educational settings and emerging are two distinct viewpoints, use and support the technology issue and the DRM issue will be resolved by user presssure, or boycot the technology completely and Amazon will “cave in under consumer pressure”.
It is of course a small part of a much larger discussion relating to open access and digital rights management and content publishers attempts to forge new business models in the digital age. It will be interesting to see what evolves………..

For the uninitiated LETSI is an international organisation that is currently being formed by several international partners , supported by ADL to, amongst a wider remit, provide governance for SCORM (Shareable Content Object Reference Model) standard and other learning technology specifications and standards.The organisation was born out of ADL’s desire for SCORM in the future to be self sustaining managed governed and developed by a community of users. JISC CETIS has monitored the development of the organisation and contributed to the intial start up meeting earlier this year.

The Organisation was officially launched last week in the United States by Wayne Hodgins at an event in Orlando Florida and without comment or endorsement the video of this launch is available at the link below.

We here at JISC CETIS will continue to monitor developments in this area, representing the needs of the UK HE and FE communities.

LETSI Link