Building Britain’s Analogue Future

Posted on March 22, 2010 by wabson

I tried to catch up on Gordon Brown’s surprise appearance today on Number10.gov.uk exclaiming the virtues of ‘superfast’ broadband and the semantic web, but sadly I was disappointed.

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Reading the transcript, perhaps I needn’t have bothered anyway. Aside from the release of the DfT NaPTAN data (which was made available to OSM some time ago) via data.gov.uk, and a promise to force transport operators to open up their timetabling information when their franchises come up (every 10-20 years) there wasn’t much news on the open data front.

Further justification for releasing data in this way probably wasn’t needed to convince most of the audience, but to illustrate how open data can be used to push the boundaries of innovation, Brown picked a New Labour favourite.

…Independent developers are using the information we’ve published for innovative new websites and mobile phone applications such as ‘asborometer’ – built by one person in just five days. It finds your position using GPS and tells you how many people have been served with an asbo in that area.

ASBOs? Seriously? Surely there must be better examples out there of how citizens have re-used public data to increase transparency, accountability and participation in government?

There was an announcement that @timberners_lee and @Nigel_Shadbolt will he heading up a new institute to study emerging web technologies, although no explanation of why our universities aren’t able to do this themselves (lack of funds, perhaps?). Also a new Digital Public Services Unit is being formed to advise departments on how to ‘transform’ their services for the web, with @Marthalanefox at the helm. Fortunately for her, she gets to keep the word ‘Champion’ in her job title.

The Digital Economy Bill was mentioned only once, in a section defending the 50p phone line tax and emphasising the importance of maintaining a strong regulatory presence in the form of Ofcom, the two parts of the bill most opposed by the Tories. So more electioneering than setting out a future policy vision.

There was no mention of the crippling effect of Clauses 17 and 18 of the bill, which threaten to cut off users and censor free speech on the Internet. The Government can invest as much as it likes in Public Services 2.0, but if individuals, families and businesses are unable to access them because their connection has been blocked then that investment is effectively useless.

So if like the Labour government of the past, you believe that digital inclusion is more important than the BPI increasing album sales in 2011, write to your MP, contact your local paper or make your voice heard at this Wednesday’s protest.

Marthalanefox

My Digital Economy Letter

Posted on March 19, 2010 by wabson

Turning into a political week, this one. With the Digital Economy Bill threatening to to take us back to an analogue age (oh, the irony), I’ve penned a letter to my MP highlighting the widely-held concerns that the Government look set to try to ram the thing through during wash-up.

If you’re reading this and you wish to continue using an open Internet where freedom of speech is not threatened, I would strongly urge you to do the same.

Virendra Sharma MP
Ealing, Southall

Friday 19 March 2010

Dear Mr Sharma,

I am writing to you concerning the Government’s Digital Economy Bill, which had it’s first reading in the House of Commons this week.

I have been following the passage of this Bill as it has progressed through its various stages in the Lords, and as a technologist myself I am mindful of the significance of the Bill in it’s potential to improve the way in which Britain uses information technology to it’s best advantage in an increasingly global and competitive age.

Like many others who work in the profession however, I have been alarmed by some of the clauses in the Bill, which seek to impose penalties on Internet users who are alleged to have engaged in copyright-infringing activities, with no legal recourse or right of appeal through the courts. This is especially concerning as recent cases in the news have highlighted the inaccuracy of methods used to identify wrongdoers.

Although there are many legitimate concerns around issues such as copyright and intellectual property which the Bill rightly seeks to address, in it’s current form the Bill risks damaging our economy by imposing unnecessary additional monitoring burdens on organisations as diverse as hotels, libraries and universities who provide Internet access, as well as the Internet Service Providers themselves.

As the member for Ealing Southall I hope you will appreciate the deep divide in access to technology that exists within our constituency. The Government has declared it’s intention to tackle such inequalities, but many of the provisions of the Digital Economy Bill will only hinder this, by increasing the cost of Internet access for families as ISPs seek to recoup the costs of monitoring users’ on-line activities, and others choose to stop providing public access altogether.

Further debate and scrutiny of the bill is required within Parliament to ensure that innocent families are not targeted or feel threatened by a flawed identification process, and that the cost of accessing information technology is not driven up unnecessarily in the current economic climate.

I would urge you to resist efforts by the Government to rush through this legislation before the General Election without the full oversight and scrutiny of the normal Parliamentary process, and in particular to vote against Clauses 17 and 18, which threaten to take us backwards, rather than forwards in our use of technology to improve the lives of local people.

Yours Sincerely,
Will Abson

Ordnance Survey Consultation

Posted on March 18, 2010 by wabson

I finally got round to completing some responses to the Ordnance Survey Free consultation being run by DCLG, which closed yesterday. Not that I like to leave things to the last minute, of course.

When I first signed up to the data.go.uk beta last year it was a pretty basic site and was password-protected. There’s been some amazing progress since then, but there is still work to be done in persuading public bodies like OS that they should provide their data on equivalent terms to the datasets already released.

I got an out-of-office auto-reply, which apparently constitutes acknowledgement that I’ve officially had my say.

Question 1: What are your views or comments on the policy drivers for this consultation?

As the Cambridge Study shows there are clear social drivers for releasing many of the ‘unrefined’ products. As noted, there is clearly a cost associated with making this information more widely available and in order to ensure that benefits are maximised it is essential that the OS engages with external stakeholders before determining the format and licensing applied to released data.

I strongly disagree with the suggestion that contributors to the mapping data should be charged in order to update geographical data, since this may act as a disincentive for providing this data which is so valuable for ensuring OS maps are up-to-date.

Question 2: What are your views on how the market for geographic information has evolved recently and is likely to develop over the next 5-10 years?

The arrival of the Internet as a mass distribution channel has fundamentally changed the way mapping information is accessed and has the potential to greatly increase accessibility to this data for a wider variety of purposes at a low cost. Therefore the changes that have occurred in the last few years have changed the way in which mapping data is consumed.

Although this trend is expected to continue as licensing changes accelerate the usage of data, the next 5-10 years will see bigger changes in the way mapping data is collected as the Internet moves from a model of mass publishing and consumption to a more collaborative model. This second model is generally referred to as Web 2.0 and heralds significant changes for any organisation involved in the collection and publishing of information.

Groups such as OpenStreetMap (OSM) provide a good example of this model in a cartographic context. OS should increasingly look to leverage external groups and individuals such as this in the collection of data if it is to lower the cost of data collection, which could offset any short-term loss of revenue caused by the proposed licensing changes.

The goal of OS from it’s conception was to provide a comprehensive set of mapping data for the United Kingdom and crowd-sourcing models such as this have the potential to significantly widen this coverage to cover the entire globe. Such a database would not be possible for a single organisation to put together, but the distributed nature of contributors in OSM has allowed previously poorly-mapped countries such as Haiti to be surveyed to the level of detail required to conduct relief operations, at zero cost.

However, in order to allow contributions from diverse organisations to sit alongside each other in harmony, changes are needed to allow a more permissive licensing arrangement.

Question 3: What are your views on the appropriate pricing model for Ordnance Survey products and services?

Generally, the existence of any price-based model for providing access to OS products acts as an inhibitor to innovation and maximising the use of those resources, since it not only limits their availability to those with the necessary financial capital, but also (even where a low price is charged) places additional restrictions on the reuse of products in order to ensure that future revenue streams to OS are not compromised.

The dilemma presented is therefore how to provide free access to OS data on reasonable terms, while continuing to retain a profit-making function in order to recoup the substantial costs of maintaining that data. Therefore in the short term at least a differential pricing model may provide the best way forward for all parties involved. Such an arrangement might perhaps provide free access to certain ‘raw’ datasets while continuing to charge for others, providing free data to any non-commercial entity while continuing to charge profit-making entities, or a combination of the two approaches.

Question 4: What are your views and comments on public sector information regulation and policy, and the concepts of public task and good governance as they apply to Ordnance Survey?

The regulations outlined provide a broad overview of the legislation affecting public sector bodies such as Ordnance Survey who produce data in the course of their day-to-day activities.

Increasingly regulations such as the IFTS are focussing on how maximum benefit can be obtained from this data through re-use by others. Since this affects data which has been collected using finances from the public purse, in my view this even places a moral duty on OS to make the collected data available to the entire public audience on a non-discriminatory basis, regardless of their ability to pay or otherwise. But the clear pragmatic argument is also made that wider re-use will produce larger incomes as innovative uses of data allow new businesses to succeed, who will in turn pay their own taxes and business rates.

On the question of Governance, a larger role in driving OS policy should be given to external stakeholders in the organisation such as those using the data. This could take the form of an elected advisory council, who are able to make their own recommendations to the board.

Question 5: What are your views on and comments on the products under consideration for release for free re-use and the rationale for their inclusion?

Providing access to gazetteer, boundary and postcode data is essential as no authoritative nationwide database exists at present to provide this information on an unrestricted basis for re-use by others.

Raster data should be provided at the outline level, as given the many different ways in which raster views may be generated from different data sets and layers, it may be preferable for OS to leave the diversity of such content to be defined to the marketplace. Provided that the raw data is available, others will be able to produce their own raster versions as required.

Question 6: How much do you think government should commit to funding the free product set? How might this be achieved?

In the short term, Government should commit to the necessary capital required to compensate for any short term fall in licensing revenue from Central or Local government departments. This can be justified by the reasoning that the extra costs are being offset by savings within those departments, and due to the reduction in administrative overheads would likely provide a net saving overall.

Government should also, as the sponsor of these changes, commit to providing any required funding to aid with the transitory period, such as new IT systems required to host the data.

Given the current economic situation, any costs met by Government should be costs that can be demonstrated will be paid back later down the line, either in savings in other departments, or as efficiency savings within OS itself.

Question 7: What are your views on how free data from Ordnance Survey should be delivered?

It is essential that the data is made available in open formats as electronic files in order to allow re-use by the widest range of individuals and organisations. Where a choice exists between providing information in a widely-used proprietary format and a lesser-used but open format, the open format should be chosen since it represents a lower risk to the publisher and ultimately will enable greater choice on the part of the consumer.

Data may also be made available in other formats such as DVD and a reasonable charge could be made for such formats.

As stated, it is essential that the OS engages with external stakeholders before determining the format and licensing applied to released data.

Question 8: What are your views on the impact Ordnance Survey Free will have on the market?

Providing some or all of OS’s data under a free license may affect other suppliers who have previously relied on such data being available at a premium only. However, Ordnance Survey, although still the dominant supplier in the UK market, is not the only supplier and other lower-cost or free data sources such as Google Maps, Bing and OpenStreetMap are already ushering in these changes and will continue to do so, regardless of what action OS may take itself.

Question 9: What are your comments on the proposal for a single National Address Register and suggestions for mechanisms to deliver it?

A single National Address Register is currently needed in order to ensure level access to address data by all individuals and organisations. Address data is becoming fundamental to many localised services being delivered via the Internet and many of these services do not have the means to pay for the currently available commercial alternatives.

At present access to this data is available only from a single commercial supplier and significant limitations are places on it’s re-use. It is not appropriate for such a valuable asset to be in the sole control of a single commercial entity with few safeguards to ensure that access is made available on reasonable terms.

Question 10: What are your views on the options outlined in this consultation?

A wide variety of options have been presented, but it is disappointing that no consideration has been given to the benefits to OS of making data more widely available, such as the increased ability for local residents to report changes to the physical landscape in their area or even to modify features themselves.

Question 11: For local authorities: What will be the balance of impact of these proposals on your costs and revenues?

N/A

Question 12: Will these proposals have any impact on race, gender or disability equalities?

N/A

Share Custom Actions in a JAR

Posted on February 28, 2010 by wabson

Update, 4th May 2011: The Backup action is now part of Share Extras and documentation and downloads are now available on the Custom Backup Action page.
Since the ability to package Share extensions was added in the HEAD codeline some weeks ago, both Kev and myself have demonstrated how you can package up dashlets in a JAR file for deployment into Share.
The example we both used was my Site Tags dashlet that we showed at the Alfresco Meetups last year, but at the Madrid meetup we also showed an example of how Share’s Document Library can be extended with a custom ‘backup’ action.

Document Library actions have no web-tier webscripts, but hook into the client-side actions framework using a bit of custom JavaScript. Each action has a small 16×16 icon and a bit of CSS code to apply this image, one or more text labels (which should of course be externalised for i18n goodness) and a bit of config to hook them into the app. Lastly, since most actions by their nature do something, it’s likely that they will make a RESTful call back to the repository to perform their work, which may require a custom webscript there.
That’s quite a few files, but fortunately we can use the JAR extension mechanism to package everything up nicely.
Just like the Site Tags dashlet, I set this up in Eclipse using a standard project layout and my share extensions build script (with a couple of minor changes) to build the JAR file.
To make it easy to copy this structure, I’ve uploaded a ZIP of the project directory, containing the following files

build.xml – the extensions build script
config/alfresco/messages/slingshot-custom-backup-action.properties – contains the strings used for the action label and confirmation/failure messages
config/alfresco/templates/webscripts – contains the repository-tier webscript used to create a back-up copy of the file
config/org/springframework/extensions/surf/slingshot-custom-backup-action-context.xml – Spring config used to initialise the i18n messages
config/spring-surf-config-custom.xml – not used at present, but could define additional Surf endpoints for calling third-party RESTful services
web – contains all client-side resources used by the action

It should be relatively easy to copy this structure to define your own custom action, following the custom action wiki document to understand what each file does. This will help you to build other actions that call back to the repository via a web script, but actions aren’t limited to calling Alfresco services only. For some examples, take a look at my own list of Share action ideas.
Once you have your structure you can build the JAR file using Ant, e.g.

ant -Djar.name=share-backup-action.jar

The JAR file can then be dropped into Tomcat’s shared/lib directory, and all that remains is to configure the document actions web scripts to pull in the action definition. This is the slightly fiddly bit.
Firstly, copy the web script configuration file WEB-INF/classes/alfresco/site-webscripts/org/alfresco/components/documentlibrary/documentlist.get.config.xml from the Share webapp into the directory alfresco/web-extension/site-webscripts/org/alfresco/components/documentlibrary in Tomcat’s shared/classes to override it. You should see a section <actionSet id="document"> which defines all the actions shown for a normal document in the document list view.
To add the backup action to this list, add the following line just before the </actionset> element for that block.

<action type="action-link" id="onActionBackup" permission="" label="actions.document.backup" />

If you also want the action to show up in the document details view, you need to copy the file WEB-INF/classes/alfresco/site-webscripts/org/alfresco/components/document-details/document-actions.get.config.xml into alfresco/web-extension/site-webscripts/org/alfresco/components/document-details in shared/classes in the same way.
Lastly, we need to ensure that the client-side JS and CSS assets get pulled into the UI as unfortunately the config files do not allow us to specify these dependencies.
To do this, we must override the file WEB-INF/classes/alfresco/site-webscripts/org/alfresco/components/documentlibrary/actions-common.get.head.ftl. Again, copy this into the corresponding directory in shared/classes/alfresco/web-extension and add the following lines at the bottom of the file.

<@link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="${page.url.context}/res/components/documentlibrary/backup-action.css" />
<@script type="text/javascript" src="${page.url.context}/res/components/documentlibrary/backup-action.js"></@script>

That’s it. Now you can restart Tomcat and you should see the ‘Backup’ action – complete with UI labels and icon – in the Document Library.
Downloads

Adding Custom Aspect Support in Alfresco Share

Posted on February 25, 2010 by wabson

Since Alfresco 3.2 introduced the ability to configure the metadata forms used in the Document Library, there have been several good articles published on how to add support for custom document types.
One of the first questions people often ask when they see Share is how they can easily extend the metadata fields that are stored against a document. Whilst this can be done using custom document types, aspects often provide a more agile solution.
So this article should explain how Share can be easily extended to support custom aspects using good practice techniques, specifically

Ensuring all extended configuration is placed outside of the share webapp, so protecting it from upgrades and redeployments, and
Using i18n labels for all text strings that appear in the UI, thus allowing translation of the labels.

The example provides a number of files, all of which should be placed below the tomcat/shared/classes directory of your Alfresco installation. If you are not using the Alfresco-bundled version of Tomcat then you may need to create this directory yourself and configure Tomcat’s shared classloader to use it.
First you will need to configure the repository with your custom model definition. In my case I am using a simple knowledge base model that defines a single aspect kb:referencable. The aspect adds a new text property that allows a unique KB reference number to be added to documents.
First, the Spring configuration defined in alfresco/extension/kb-model-context.xml

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<!DOCTYPE beans PUBLIC '-//SPRING//DTD BEAN//EN' 'http://www.springframework.org/dtd/spring-beans.dtd'>
<beans>
    <!-- Registration of new models -->
    <bean id="extension.kb.dictionaryBootstrap" parent="dictionaryModelBootstrap" depends-on="dictionaryBootstrap">
        <property name="models">
            <list>
                <value>alfresco/extension/kb-model.xml</value>
            </list>
        </property>
    </bean>
     <bean id="extension.kb.resourceBundle" class="org.alfresco.i18n.ResourceBundleBootstrapComponent">
       <property name="resourceBundles">
          <list>
             <value>alfresco.messages.knowledgebase</value>
          </list>
       </property>
    </bean>
</beans>

Then, define the model itself in alfresco/extension/kb-model.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!-- Definition of Knowledge Base Model -->
<model name="kb:knowledgebase" xmlns="http://www.alfresco.org/model/dictionary/1.0">
   <!-- Optional meta-data about the model -->
   <description>Knowledge Base Model</description>
   <author>Will Abson</author>
   <version>1.0</version>
   <!-- Imports are required to allow references to definitions in other models -->
   <imports>
      <!-- Import Alfresco Dictionary Definitions -->
      <import uri="http://www.alfresco.org/model/dictionary/1.0" prefix="d"/>
      <!-- Import Alfresco Content Domain Model Definitions -->
      <import uri="http://www.alfresco.org/model/content/1.0" prefix="cm"/>
   </imports>
   <!-- Introduction of new namespaces defined by this model -->
   <namespaces>
      <namespace uri="http://www.alfresco.com/model/knowledgebase/1.0" prefix="kb"/>
   </namespaces>
    <aspects>
      <!-- Definition of new Content Aspect: Knowledge Base Document -->
      <aspect name="kb:referencable">
         <title>Knowledge Base Referencable</title>
         <properties>
            <property name="kb:documentRef">
               <type>d:text</type>
            </property>
         </properties>
      </aspect>
   </aspects>
</model>

The last file in our model definition adds some i18n labels for the aspect and property names. Add the following content to the file alfresco/messages/knowledgebase.properties.

# Custom knowledge base messages
kb_knowledgebase.property.kb_documentRef.title=KB Reference
kb_knowledgebase.aspect.kb_referencable.title=Knowledge Base Referencable
aspect.kb_referencable=Knowledge Base Referencable

With the model added the repository should start up without errors and will know about the new aspect. In order to use it, we need to configure Share to show this aspect in the Manage Aspects dialogue and to display the KB Reference field in forms, when a node has the aspect applied.
The file alfresco/web-extension/share-config-custom.xml can be used to do both these things.

<alfresco-config>
   <!-- Document Library config section -->
   <config evaluator="string-compare" condition="DocumentLibrary">
      <!--
         Used by the "Manage Aspects" action
         For custom aspects, remember to also add the relevant i18n string(s)
            cm_myaspect=My Aspect
      -->
      <aspects>
         <!-- Aspects that a user can see -->
         <visible>
            <aspect name="cm:generalclassifiable" />
            <aspect name="cm:complianceable" />
            <aspect name="cm:dublincore" />
            <aspect name="cm:effectivity" />
            <aspect name="cm:summarizable" />
            <aspect name="cm:versionable" />
            <aspect name="cm:templatable" />
            <aspect name="cm:emailed" />
            <aspect name="emailserver:aliasable" />
            <aspect name="cm:taggable" />
            <aspect name="app:inlineeditable" />
            <aspect name="kb:referencable" />
         </visible>
         <!-- Aspects that a user can add. Same as "visible" if left empty -->
         <addable>
         </addable>
         <!-- Aspects that a user can remove. Same as "visible" if left empty -->
         <removeable>
         </removeable>
      </aspects>
   </config>
   <!-- cm:content type (existing nodes) -->
   <config  evaluator="node-type" condition="cm:content">
      <forms>
         <!-- Default form configuration used on the document details and edit metadata pages -->
         <form>
            <field-visibility>
               <show id="kb:documentRef" />
            </field-visibility>
         </form>
         <!-- Document Library pop-up Edit Metadata form -->
         <form id="doclib-simple-metadata">
            <field-visibility>
               <show id="kb:documentRef" />
            </field-visibility>
            <edit-form template="../documentlibrary/forms/doclib-simple-metadata.ftl" />
         </form>
         <!-- Document Library Inline Edit form -->
         <form id="doclib-inline-edit">
            <field-visibility>
               <show id="kb:documentRef" />
            </field-visibility>
         </form>
      </forms>
   </config>
</alfresco-config>

This configuration will add the KB reference field at the bottom of the main Edit Metadata form, the pop-up edit form used in the document list view and lastly the in-line edit form used for HTML, text and XML content (introduced in Alfresco 3.3).
Note: More advanced control is possible over the placement of the field within the form, but this requires copying over the full form definitions for the cm:content type from the file alfresco/web-framework-config-commons.xml (or alfresco/share-form-config.xml in 3.3 onwards) inside the Share webapp and adding the attribute replace="true" on the <config> element.
Now that you’ve configured Share, you must restart Tomcat so that the changes are picked up. The application should start up and you should be able to add the aspect to some content and see the document reference field appear in forms.
The last thing to do is to add an i18n label for the Knowledge Base aspect in the Manage Aspects dialogue. To do this we need to define a small bit of Spring configuration in the file alfresco/web-extension/custom-slingshot-application-context.xml, which will wire the knowledgebase.properties file we created earlier into Share.

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<!DOCTYPE beans PUBLIC '-//SPRING//DTD BEAN//EN' 'http://www.springframework.org/dtd/spring-beans.dtd'>
<beans>
   <!-- Add Knowledge Base messages -->
   <bean id="webscripts.kb.resources" class="org.springframework.extensions.surf.util.ResourceBundleBootstrapComponent">
      <property name="resourceBundles">
         <list>
            <value>alfresco.messages.knowledgebase</value>
         </list>
      </property>
   </bean>
</beans>

In versions prior to Alfresco 3.3 (when some changes were made to the Share resource bundle classes) the following configuration must be used instead (note the different class name)

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<!DOCTYPE beans PUBLIC '-//SPRING//DTD BEAN//EN' 'http://www.springframework.org/dtd/spring-beans.dtd'>
<beans>
   <!-- Add Knowledge Base messages -->
   <bean id="webscripts.kb.resources" class="org.alfresco.i18n.ResourceBundleBootstrapComponent">
      <property name="resourceBundles">
         <list>
            <value>alfresco.messages.knowledgebase</value>
         </list>
      </property>
   </bean>
</beans>

This configuration tells Share to look in the file knowledgebase.properties for aspect labels, in addition to the core message bundles.
With that file added you should be able to restart Tomcat again and see the correct label in the Manage Aspects dialogue. You’ve now fully-customised Alfresco Share to support additional custom aspects.
Update: Thanks to Brian Ochs, who pointed out that the additional message aspect.kb_referencable is also required in knowledgebase.properties.
~~Update: The configuration files in this tutorial can now be downloaded in ZIP format. To use them directly extract the archive into tomcat/shared/classes and restart the server.~~ Please do not use these files, which are now outdated.

What are we educating for?

Posted on February 19, 2010 by wabson

The other night I went to my first real unashamedly political event, a session organised by the “progressive conservative” bright blue (so new they’re yet to appear on Google) at the British Library, discussing the role of education in 21st century Britain.

The event deliberately went back to first principles on education, focussing on why we bother to send people to school/college/university in the first place, then going on to look at how we need to change our current approach. Hence the title, above.

The speakers really made the event for me, especially as Toby Young’s presence on Newsnight last week had motivated me to put down my own thoughts on the matter.

It must be said that Anthony Seddon generally out-shone Young in terms of stage presence, but the former came across much more so as someone who really wants to make a difference, rather than one who simply offers a critique of current policy.

The two were united in their criticism however, with Young pointing to various studies which have shown how measures such as social mobility (which, if nothing else, education should surely aim to improve?) have painted a worsening picture over the previous 50 years, and Seddon lambasting targets and exams in encouraging a sort of herd-like behaviour, where all effort is focussed on the short-term goal of achieving the best score, rather than in maximising purer academic performance.

As the arguments were developed further, the point was made that the education system focuses too heavily on teaching children to recall facts, rather than to develop the sort of critical thinking and logical reasoning required in today’s fast-moving world. PSE in particular was noted as form of indoctrination, where pupils are taught item-by-item what is right and wrong, rather than being given the chance to decide this for themselves.

There were disagreements between audience members and the panel and at times between the two speakers themselves over how best to formulate an overall educational policy and how to measure it’s outcomes, but there was almost universal agreement that the current system which has served us so well for the previous century is now looking increasingly out-dated, and that despite the personal interest of two PMs and many more high-profile education ministers, the massive investment made over the last few years have not delivered the improvements hoped-for.

The argument was therefore presented that another approach is needed. Seddon was particularly critical of policy for deliberately excluding parents from the education process, arguing that schools and parents must be in line with each other and that a failure to bring the two sides together causes alienation reduces the sense of belonging. Young’s school, if successful, could change this.

As Seddon surmised at the end, we are all common stakeholders in the process of education. We have all been educated, and many people have or may in the future have children who will go through the same process. Current circumstances provide a once-in-a-generation chance to get things right this time, and so now is the time to act.

http://www.brightblueonline.com/

Can Sweden teach us a lesson?

Posted on February 9, 2010 by wabson

Interesting report on last night’s Newsnight over Tory “dreams” to bring a Swedish-style schools system to the UK, with independent groups receiving funding to operate within the state sector to increase competition and choice.

Radio 4 covered the same topic recently, interviewing actor Toby Young about why he wants to set up a new school here in Ealing. According to Young,

“Our parent group, which is about 250-strong, would apply to be the main sponsor of a new academy… Ours would be the first parent-sponsored academy.”

Doing a bit more digging, it seems Young kicked things off last year with an opinion piece in the Observer. The Ealing Gazette picked this up shortly afterwards and put a local twist on it and more recently, the Guardian and Newsnight re-opened the debate with their own further coverage on the subject.

Labour have taken us so far down the academies route, and (perhaps surprisingly) the juggernaut shows no sign of stopping.

But this is a scheme dreamt up in the heady days of the boom years. Underlying the academies scheme is a belief that the state (in combination with suitably wealthy donors) can play a central role in tearing down the old and replacing it with shiny new facilities, with scant regard for what is there already. Academies have done for the education system what the 1960s did for urban planning, to the extent that bodies like English Heritage now feel compelled to issue warnings.

In Education as in IT, the days of the all-enabling state are well-and-truly over. People have lost patience and the system has run out of money.

As Young’s example shows there are a huge number of people on the ground who think they can do it better and are motivated to do so. These are parents, teachers and others in the community who want to take back some of the control that’s been taken away from them over the last 60 years, first by central government and the LEAs and more recently by the academies. As Antony Seldon says in the Radio 4 piece:

“We’ve had a pretty state-run system for the last 100 years where schools have been run from the centre… and parents have been marched off to go to this school and it’s been pretty ordinary… We need to abandon the factory schools that served us so well in the 20th century and move towards a much more individualised system…”

The Newsnight report shows that the Swedish example is not perfect. Standards must be enforced (this being an ideal role for the state) and non-profit status should be required for any organisation wanting to set up a new school, but bearing these in mind we can surely do things better by opening the process up further and allowing “individuals and organisations to flourish”.

A Limited Revolution

Posted on February 8, 2010 by wabson

I’ve spent the last couple of days catching up on recent news, including some of the iPad stuff from the other week.

A few blog posts have pointed out that the people talking about it are probably not the target market for the device, and in any case they’re likely to already own a half-decent laptop/desktop and probably an iPhone too.

But the separation is not just about geeks versus non-geeks, it’s about creators and consumers.

Consumers in the classic sense will love the iPad. It’s designed for browsing the web, reading e-books, listening to music and watching movies. Though iTunes, Apple already makes plenty of dollars from these people and will likely be even more successful with a larger device. A bigger screen means more pixels, and HD means more money.

But for those of us who like to think of ourselves as creators the iPad, with it’s locked-down OS and lack of third party app store support, is not such a good thing. Nor is it helpful if we want to provide the next generation with the tools they need to think creatively and independently, and to encourage them to hack at and mash-up software, services and content.

The iPad may well transform home computing, but that will be as far as the revolution goes. We need more open platforms that we can build on if we’re going to carry on innovating, not another device to lock us further into Apple’s walled garden, and their vision of how computing should be.

Opportunistic Alfresco

Posted on February 6, 2010 by wabson

Great post from Jono at Ubuntu on making the Ubuntu platform better suited to opportunistic development, basically helping people who want to ‘scratch an itch’ but don’t have the time or commitment to write an application in the traditional sense.
This is the first time I’ve come across a term for this sort of activity, but it describes very well what Apple have done so well with their app store, and what many of us hope Google may be about to do better.
The faster development cycle afforded with open source means that such an environment is much better suited in theory to rapid application development than proprietary platforms, but it does require the necessary infrastructure to be in place.
I’ve been having thoughts recently on how we could better support this type of development within Alfresco. Like the iPhone and like Ubuntu, Alfresco is much more than just a product, it’s a solid platform for others to develop on.
In our case the building blocks are the web scripts and Surf frameworks that we recently fed back up into Spring, and the delivery mechanism could easily be provided by the Share UI.
Share already allows developers to define self-contained bits of functionality as dashlets, and also provides mechanisms to manage the configuration and display of these dashlets within the application. That’s 90% of our intrastructure already there.
The missing 10% is a mechanism by which developers can publish these extensions to make them available for others, basically a distibution channel, or if you must, an app store.
This is why I’ve started spec’ing out what I’m tentatively calling Share Components, to provide a directory of Share extensions and an easy mechanism for users to query such directories (note, plural) and install components from them onto their own Alfresco systems.
I’m making it very clear that this is a proposed feature for Share but nonetheless it’s one that I firmly believe is critical to ensuring that others – including our partners and others in the wider community – are able to join up their opportunistic dots using the Alfresco platfom.

wabson

part three of the ever-exciting adventure

Author Archives: wabson