+ Page 34 + --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ####### ######## ######## ########### ### ### ## ### ## # ### # Interpersonal Computing and ### ### ## ### ## ### Technology: ### ### ## ### ### An Electronic Journal for ### ######## ### ### the 21st Century ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ## ### ISSN: 1064-4326 ### ### ### ## ### January 1996 ####### ### ######## ### Volume 4, Number 1, pp. 34 - 56 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Published by the Department of Education University of Maryland Baltimore County Additional support provided Georgetown University This article is archived as JAMES IPCTV4N1 on LISTSERV@LISTSERV.GEORGETOWN.EDU ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ELECTRONIC PUBLICATION - DOES IT COUNT? Frank James Sacred Heart College Senior School, Adelaide, South Australia Once again, I'm working at a computer keyboard in Adelaide, South Australia, but now I'm writing about what happened after electronic publication of what I was writing a year ago [1], and of what had to get done to make that publication 'count'. When I was writing "Online from Adelaide, South Australia" I was thinking about my experiences here of 'interactive'. This time I'm also seeking global interaction about your experiences there of 'electronic'. I'm working in an archives room, and that seems appropriate. From what I've already learned, my story of electronic publication should begin with electronic archives. This archives room is in Paringa Hall, which is the administration building of Sacred Heart College Senior School, and stands in the center of our campus. Adelaide is the capital city of South Australia, and more than half a million people live here. Our campus is in a quiet suburb less than an hour's drive from the City Centre, and a short distance from the beach at Somerton. It is pleasant to walk or drive along nearby roads lined with trees. This is a nice place to live and work, the climate is mild, and what I was writing 'worked' here and elsewhere, and people made publication of it count. The story of Paringa Hall began in 1882 when publishing was already old, but people were just learning to use electricity. At that time, more than a hundred thousand people lived here in Adelaide, and they already had one University here. The man for whom Paringa Hall was built had access to an early form of interactive global telecommunications. More personally, whether we contemplate the past or the future, in hundreds of years or thousands of years, the people we think about are rather like you and me. In important details, they and we are just like the people that Paringa Hall's cedar staircase was built for. People have used those stairs to ascend from the tiled entrance foyer every day for more than a hundred years, getting better and better informed, and with access to more and more technology, and the tiles hold a message for us to read. + Page 35 + The students on our campus are mostly in post-compulsory education. Of the hundreds of young women and men here, many plan to continue in full time education past grade twelve, perhaps seeking admission to a University. Adelaide now has more than half a million people and three Universities. There are more than a thousand pages in the Adelaide telephone book and I counted a dozen Institutes of Technical and Further Education there. "Technology" had become a major concern for teachers everywhere by 1995 when "Online from Adelaide" appeared in our IPCT-J Interpersonal Computing and Technology (Electronic) Journal. Information Technology and Telecommunications will become more and more important in the future, and I was getting information about technology and teaching from information providers like the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (website) and the Massachusetts Software Council (from the NEIRL gopher server at that time) while I was learning about making electronic publication count, so this article is also about learning to make print publication of material retrieved from various online sources count here on campus, too. The medium of global telecommunications makes getting information seem easy, and there is abundance online. Getting access is straightforward, making it count is complex. For instance, when I asked by electronic mail about copying their online material, Karen Smith, Director of Educational Technology Initiatives of the Massachusetts Software Council replied giving hardcopy permission, encouragement and a suggestion about how to stay current. All this happened in days. Once, just getting permission to make print copies of good material seemed dauntingly complex! Paringa Hall is a fine two-storied mansion with a tower [2], and looking at this building tells us about learning about electricity. It has become a local landmark, and can be floodlit at night. A four-lane highway runs right past the fence, but the trees and lawns surrounding Paringa Hall itself make this a peaceful setting. The entrance driveway is in a side- street, and nearer the building one can make out a lightning arrestor on the tower. Paringa Hall was built in 1882 for a wealthy man, and fittings, fireplaces, and tiles were brought from Europe, as were the craftsmen who did the tiling, or so the story goes. Europe is on the other side of the Earth from Adelaide, and little or no native South Australian timber was suitable for the building, but suitable stone was found in the Adelaide Hills, and stone for the walls was quarried locally. When Paringa Hall was built of stone, and completed with a lightning arrestor, Adelaide was already linked by overland telegraph to Port Darwin. 'Cables' were repeated around the globe to London, and in Adelaide at that time, the morning newspapers carried European news from the day before [3]. Built in 1882, Paringa Hall had gas lighting and a gas generator plant. Thomas Edison had already demonstrated his system of electric lighting in New + Page 36 + York, but even by 1885, when the Adelaide arcade was opened [4], electric lighting was still an unreliable novelty. Lightning strikes don't often cause fires here, and I'm not aware of lightning arrestors being fitted to newer buildings on this campus. "Day after day, ... ...lightning is less mysterious", said a modern researcher quoted in a 1994 press release that I found by searching nexus online. The Australian Associated Press feature [5] says "Benjamin Franklin showed that lightning was electricity, similar to the static charge that builds up when you walk across a carpet and get a shock touching a doorknob. ... ... The French rods have several prongs on top instead of the single tip of a traditional lightning rod... ". We can learn more from closer inspection! Working in Paringa Hall also helps me to preserve my sense of wonder, and I've learned that being in awe of electricity is about preserving ME!. The main lightning arrestor has several prongs, so it isn't 'traditional' and people who work on this building say that many things used in its construction are mysterious today. The ceilings looked painted, but workers found that the plaster itself was colored, and plasterers found it difficult to match, and the function of the tall polished wood 'pipes' built into corners of rooms upstairs AND downstairs remains a mystery to me. If you know where to look in the pattern of floor tiles in the foyer, you can find a contrived 'error' in the pattern seen on the floor, and various interpretations of this 'message' have been advanced. One says that nothing done after the renaissance can be truly excellent while another says the tilers believed that to aspire to perfection in earthly things is to offer offense to the creator. I'd have found it difficult to tell the man for whom Paringa Hall was built about electric refrigeration or microwave ovens, about which today's students here say "It's all different since you were my age!", but I'd have no difficulty telling him about the danger in electricity. He had already had a lightning arrestor built on his house! I value the riddle that has been left in the tiles! It helps me to avoid complacency. Having to look AGAIN to locate the break in the pattern teaches me a lesson in life - humility! Electricity is dangerous and one mustn't become complacent, because lightning is electricity. Those tilers wouldn't have forgotten what Benjamin Franklin knew! Writing for this interactive medium seems good for my sense of wonder. If I ask what 'electronic' has meant to you, will I get responses? Will that give me answers, or more questions? Neither will bring me complacency, and I might find a complete lack of response electrifying! If Mr. Cudmore was here now, what a lot we could tell him about electricity, but he wouldn't need adverts on radio to remind him that electricity is dangerous! My radio thinks I do, does your radio think you do? What should I read in the riddle of the tiles about access to the internet? + Page 37 + During Paringa Hall's first hundred years, technology was advancing. The building was more than thirty years old when the Marist Brothers bought it in 1914 and they shifted in soon after that. The sale was occasioned by the death of J. F. Cudmore for whom it had been built. At that time, property values here were depressed. A 'Great War' was starting in Europe, things were changing, and people around the World were learning about using technology. Since the age of sail this had been a center for 'posts' and at Adelaide airport you can see in its own glass-fronted hangar, the Vickers Vimy airplane which the Sir Ross and Sir Keith Smith flew to Adelaide from London in 1919, only sixteen years after the first powered flight by the Wright brothers at KittyHawk in the USA! [6] Learning about 'electronic' and what it means in communication isn't new here. In "Online from Adelaide", I wrote about Brother Joseph McAteer making early radio broadcasts from Paringa Hall. While not as interactive as electronic publication on the internet, broadcast radio from Paringa Hall in the early days involved interaction, and that's a story in itself. A modern newspaper item about air-mail says "International airmail really started in earnest in the year after World War I, which saw a huge leap forward in manned flights. In less than 12 months from the end of hostilities in 1918, determined and adventurous airmen had bridged the Atlantic and opened up routes from Britain to Egypt, India, the Far East and Australia. ... along Britain's trading routes to the south and east, spreading from Egypt to the Middle East, India, Africa and Australia." [7] Thereafter, air mail gave access to global communications services that were much swifter than the 'mails' ever had been before. At about the same time, radio communications was being developed. More and more people were able to participate. This archives room is busy with preparations to celebrate a centenary that occurs in 1997. We will celebrate the centenary of Marist education in South Australia. The Marist Brothers were founded by Marcellin Champagnat, who lived and worked in France, just after the French revolution. Here in the archives room, I can learn now from his response to the challenge of delivering learning experiences to young people in the conditions he found in France after the French revolution [8], and what has been achieved here in Adelaide over the last hundred years. Online, by way of making this electronic publication count, I hope to learn about a twenty first century response to the challenge of delivering learning experiences to young people in the conditions they'll encounter here after the communications revolution. Rooms illuminated by gas lighting last century could be bright and glare-free, and what was excellent for people then is still excellent now, but few of these rooms had gaslight. Electric lighting is now installed throughout Paringa Hall, and the quality of + Page 38 + illumination at my workstation has been inspected and approved by an industrial health and safety inspector. Ceiling design is a feature of Paringa Hall's architecture, and looking up, I'd say this was one of the rooms that had gas light built in, but Paringa Hall is unique. That was especially true in 1882. In order to learn about the twenty first century and what learning might mean for me and for today's teachers and students, I'm writing about 'electronic' and particularly about 'electronic' and archives. I'm writing amid memorabilia of education from most of the twentieth century, in a building from the century before and learning how that supports the telling of this story! In "Online from Adelaide", I referred to the 1991 'Shaping Organisations, Shaping Technology' IFIP conference held at the Adelaide Convention Centre. From it, I've been re-reading 'An Archivist's View of the Long-Term Management of Electronic Data' by Kathryn Dan of the Australian Archives, and listening as we explore our 'roots'. It seems to me, that development of modern 'electronic' methods in office automation means that educational administration (particularly of archives) will never be the same again! "... and it is essential that considerations regarding the information's likely value are in play at the time the information is created, or more importantly, when the system is first designed or upgraded" [9] So I'm in the right place to learn about electronic publication, and making it count, and archives. And here in Paringa Hall, I can hope to preserve a sense of wonder, also. At first, a few rooms in this unique house were lit at night to modern workplace standards, but now we want such illumination wherever homework or study is being done. Then, a privileged few, members of the owner's family, lived upstairs, and they could climb a further ladder inside the tower and get access to an elevated view of the surrounding district. Now one sees framed visuals on display as one ascends the cedar staircase, and whereas people who lived here in the past might have seen photographs taken from the tower in their day, today our students have seen photographs of planet Earth taken from the Moon, and access to telecommunications enables 'listening in' to people around the globe. A century ago, only people like the man for whom Paringa Hall was built exchanged telegrams with London, but everybody could read news of the previous day in Europe in the morning papers. The 'overland telegraph' line was constructed in the 1870s, and a message that went overland across Australia from Adelaide to Port Darwin, then went on to 'repeater stations' with names like Batavia (now called Jakarta), Singapore, Aden, Suez and Gibralta and eventually to London. In that list, names like Aden and Gibralta remind me of the British Empire, and a view of a wide World, + Page 39 + centered on London. Last century, the British Empire was 'big', and it was global, so people said "the Sun never sets on the British Empire" meaning that at any time of day, some part of the Empire somewhere would have been in sunlight. People who came to Paringa Hall and ascended the cedar staircase then knew that. Paringa Hall's first owner knew global telegraphy, and messages were 'relayed' from station to station. It was interactive, for the time. His guests then read newspapers with cable news of Europe the day before. Recently, the daily "Advertiser" on its education pages, headed 'The age of Information' says "THE rapid worldwide growth in the adoption of information technology, particularly in the booming economies of Asia, has opened a window of opportunity ..."[10], following up on 28th of October, 1995, with a page 3 (metro edition) news item by Greg Kelton, headed "Signing of EDS deal imminent" This century, Brother Joseh and his students participated in broadcasting radio 5AQ from Paringa Hall and today, people who were students then, still talk about it. People in Adelaide then were also aware of air mail and of the romance of air travel. Today, our students have an awareness of space, and of adventure in space, and access to the internet gives opportunities to gain an awareness of what will be possible for the people of the Earth next century, and of what they will be able to, and we want all of our citizens to have access to these learning opportunities, but there this part of the story pauses, if it doesn't end. People like us will ascend stairs like those of Paringa Hall for a long time, but how many of Earth's people are going to experience travel in space? Before the 'space race' that the launch of 'sputnik' started, 'the Earth' seemed BIG, and 'as big as the whole wide world' meant so big that pollution and population couldn't be issues. It meant a World in which wilderness was 'vast' and there was 'plenty' in the ocean. Then a photograph taken by an astronaut on the Moon, looking back toward Earth showed us a blue planet, spaceship Earth, rising above a lunar horizon, and gave us a changed view of our globe! Now, access to the internet for students enables them to listen to what the World's people are saying, which they need to hear while making life decisions, because this generation of students in developed nations cannot automatically expect living conditions better than their parents found. To me now, 'big' is the World telecommunications network, and it enables us to 'listen in' to Listservs, to get 'the big picture' against which to measure plans. This hollow sphere of mesh is the size and shape of the surface of the Earth. It is so large you can calculate what portion of the World's copper reserves are tied up in it. This is the largest man- made construction in the universe and it is also a marketplace, which makes + Page 40 + it the largest marketplace in the universe. The internet enables a student to 'listen in' to learn how an idea of emulating what was done in the past might be no longer acceptable, especially if that involved making windfall profits, or leaving tracks in the wilderness, because the people who live nearby have laws against that, now. In Adelaide, in the century since construction of the overland telegraph, some individuals have had interactive access to global telegraphy, and newspaper readers have been aware of it. Since early this century, there have been radio 'amateurs' and much larger numbers of 'listeners'. Amateur television is almost, but not entirely unknown, and while International Subscriber Dialling (ISD) can be implemented on ordinary telephones, it has to be marketed. Until recent times, interactive access to the internet has been available only to researchers and scholars, typically through tertiary institutions, but that's changing, and now one reads about plans to list electronic mail addresses in the 'phone book, and to enable wideband internet access on the 'cable' that will run down suburban streets. If we are to teach subjects like critical thinking to everybody in regular schooling next century, we must make plans for individual access to services like interactive video on demand, and that represents a lot of change that Paringa Hall will have seen in a little over a century, going from one individual on the property with some sort of access to global telecommunications to hundreds of individuals who can have almost instant access. I heard on the radio, "a fool will lose tomorrow, looking back to yesterday". In this situation, I think we could make it much too easy for young people to lose their roots, and that is just what education is not meant to do! Frankly (pun intended), I think I know how to make publication count, but I need to learn more about making 'electronic' count! Getting responses to electronic publication of "online from Adelaide" has taught me how I have applied old lessons in new and unfamiliar surroundings. Since then, I have also written for publication in printed-on-paper journals, and the experiences differ, especially in archiving (and editing?), so as I write again for an electronic journal, I'm anticipating interactions with others who have written (and edited?) both for publications that were primarily printed-on-paper AND also for publications that were primarily electronic. How do the experiences compare? Will you 'post' your experiences of what 'electronic' means? What if the e-journal had no discussion list, where would you 'post'? + Page 41 + When I have wanted responses to a question, I have viewed IPCT-L as an 'information object' that can 'execute' to produce the electronic journal IPCT-J. I organized information as if preparing for a debate, viewing as target audience what Zane's 'letter from the publisher' [11] described, with likely agenda what the published list of 'Editorial Board' members would suggest. In this model, GMP, editing IPCT-J at the time, was the agent that 'provoked' the list IPCT-L into activity. In fact, I think I remember him describing himself, on the list, as 'agent-provocateur.' As in debating, it is important to make clear what is for debate, and what one sincerely hopes will NOT be seen as 'debatable!' Teaching today involves getting 'electronic publication' to count when what somebody else has done will arrive online as a stream of digital data, and it will only do that on request. Sources that I find valuable have names like OTA, neirl, AskERIC, and the MayaQuest Internet center. Some like k12admin have provided me with information about topics ranging from job interviews to curriculum audit. Others like the Independent School Educators Discussion List (ISED-L) addressed topics which by 1995 had become of major concern to almost every teacher like School Technology planning [12]. I heard on k12admin about the report of the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment "Teachers and Technology: Making the Connection" so I logged on to the South Australian Department of Education and Children's Services 'nexus' computer to use their lynx browser on the OTA website and get it. The report says that helping teachers use technology effectively may be the most important step in assuring the maximum benefit from investments in educational technologies. I found it instructive to use text handling software to 'search' chapter three for the word 'reported' so that I could learn what US teachers reported about experiences using computers there in schools. Like AskERIC's Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) [13] and ISED's Techplans, that are on gopher, the websites of the OTA and Software Council can be accessed on our SHCS Library-Nexus main menu, so they are accessible online to teachers and students asking questions. The Scout Report and EDUPAGE are posted as received (next day) on the administration network. That's my idea of making them count, ensuring that what appears onscreen is not going out of date. Anxiety about technology means this new medium provides new statements of old fears. One can anticipate some, and the medium facilitates getting informed about responses. For people concerned about risk to children, there's "Child Safety on the Information Highway" written by Lawrence J. Magid, a syndicated columnist for the Los Angeles Times. It deals with benefits of the Information Highway, and putting the Issue in perspective, and asks What Are the Risks? Magid writes about Exposure to Inappropriate Material, Physical Molestation, Harassment, and How Parents + Page 42 + Can Reduce the Risks. He also has "Guidelines for Parents". That came from the Independent Schools Educators Discussion List. For people generally concerned about computers at school, there's "Developing a School or District 'Acceptable Use Policy'. Making access to sources of such responses 'count' here will need programs of professional development. What do you find makes them 'count'? I learned that my article "Online from Adelaide, South Australia" had been published electronically in our IPCT Journal when I got the first 'interaction' (by email) one day in January, 1995. The email was about "Where I'm at (using computers)" so that's achievement of an objective - it had started to 'count'. As well, I was able to 'give' copies by email, and I also got responses from near and far, from people I had known since school days, but also from comparative strangers. It was nice, and something of a relief that what I had written really did 'count' in an interactive medium. I have come to see it as showing that years of doing what educators do in educational institutions does support writing for electronic publication, and indeed the whole experience enabled me to learn more than I'd expected, and in any case I expected a lot. In the 'biographical sketch' that accompanied the original article I wrote I had worked with computers and telecommunications in the 60s when I started working at Sacred Heart College Senior School at Somerton Park, a suburb of Adelaide, the capital city of South Australia, within walking distance of the beach. In the thirty years since, I have taught mainly Maths, Science and Religious Education and have been involved extensively in professional development and curriculum development activities and in developing educational technology at the College. I had been learning while I was writing. I'd been drawing on more aspects of those 'development' experiences than I'd expected to, and a lot of what supported me were experiences I thought of as doing chores at the time, and they would be familiar to you - like writing lab notes, worksheets and discussion papers, especially for use by people interacting in groups using 'development project' materials. I came to see the value as personal development of doing tasks that we've all done and that I for one had found burdensome at the time. Here's the abstract of the original article: Where I am in South Australia we do lots of communicating using computers, much like you, and SA'll remain a good place for families as seen by what people in Adelaide do, or what the whales in Gulf Saint Vincent do. I wrote this essay as a 'good read' about what we do where I am, and in the hope of learning in this interactive medium more about what you do where you are. + Page 43 + Some things can be learned in everyday life, and sharing barbecue recipes teaches lessons about not rushing into assumptions about publication. Swapping favorite barbecue recipes works for me; publishing them doesn't! I might like what works for you on your hotplate if I try it at your place, and later it might work for me at my place, and maybe my brother will say he likes it the way I cook it here, but if you've ever tried publishing anything drawn from diverse sources, you'll probably appreciate that the next phase of learning about publishing in this new medium for me is to learn a lot more about what works for you where you are. Personally, I'm still using the idea of a 'sense of agora' that I got from 'listening' to (especially gmp's) posts to IPCT-L - maybe it's also like telling stories at a party, I've done it, now let's hear you do it! Experience in software development teaches that 'you can't judge a book by its cover' and I expected to achieve 'interactive' only after trial and revision of the text against achievement of a range of objectives, keeping 'interactive' included as an ultimate objective. I had been impressed with the (IPCT-L) scholarly discussion list and was expecting writing for the Journal to be a communications challenge, I thought ten iterations might be needed, and I did almost that many. Interaction has taught me to 'recycle' some 'back to the drawing board' experiences seeking lessons. Writing for electronic publication gives access to further learning about topics that would otherwise be regarded as 'ready for publication', or in other words, closed. In the weeks immediately after electronic publication, questions are raised by email, and each question is focussed on an issue raised by the article and drives special interests further. Typically, an email response alerts me to learning I didn't value at the time. It becomes important to make clear about what the writer wants to learn. A movie I made with Film Australia was excellent from my point of view. It said (about resource management in education) just what I thought needed saying, and I was very pleased with it, but when I listened to someone taking discussion groups, I heard "It's not what I want because I don't need the last word on the subject - that movie is a discussion stopper!" I saw 'drill and repetition' *disimprove* test scores! It seemed ideal preparation for a driver's license exam. I can't remember who wrote what, it was so long ago that the program was in the micro-computer language AtariBASIC, and it used a "You are WRONG!" sub-routine, but sub-routines were novel then, and this particular drill turned out to be a lot more fun to get wrong than to get right! A 'right' answer merely incremented the 'score', but a 'wrong' answer set off a most impressive 'son et image' display! People learned to drive *in spite of* that program, and I recall the experience whenever I'm tempted to lighten up on program evaluation. + Page 44 + Presenting a poster session "Using videotex" was a learning experience in itself! My videotex terminal balked at the 'handshake' of the Adelaide Convention Centre's new switchboard until the very last moment, and I had been glad to forget how much work went into preparing for "Using videotex" until a question from Stan East by email from New Mexico reminded me of it. Editing videotex online taught me to evaluate 'interactive' last because editing used the lower of the two 'split' baud rates, so it was slower than 'normal' videotex, and an error meant starting over, conscious at all times that it might *all* need revision if trials showed that users didn't find it 'interactive'. Editing videotex online was how I learned how much work it can take to achieve a truly interactive online presentation. Where there is learning, there is distraction from it. There are always distractors, but one distractor to learning from a 'Using Videotex' rehearsal was memorable! The poster session was scheduled for Monday and we were rehearsing on Sunday. Problems already solved included an equipment crisis on Saturday, a money crisis on Friday, and a personnel crisis on Thursday, but by Sunday we were engaged in the usual pre conference search for the true plan B, the one that would have to save us all when whatever was going to happen online on the day did happen. We were ready to rehearse - I was at the console - I pressed the key, bells started ringing, a siren went off, a red truck rolled up to the convention center and discharged people wearing protective clothing and breathing apparatus. It was a coincidence, an unscheduled emergency drill, but full of sound and color to make a very effective distractor at the time. I wrote "online from Adelaide", after I had responded to a Texas Center for Educational Technology request for information that I 'heard' on the internet discussion list k12admin. I emailed a summary of what experience had taught in education here and it was appreciated on the other side of the Earth. The request concerned getting telephones into classrooms, focussing on "How do you convince the school authorities? Experience here had already shown me that computers can be got to operate safely on long extension electricity leads, and modems can be got to operate reliably on long extension telephone leads, suggesting a more attractive evaluation strategy at acceptable cost. Rather than trying to give educational authorities 'the right answers', one could suggest 'the right questions' about telephones and classrooms and computers, to which they could get answers by observation. I also knew that with the technology working well, one still has 'people' problems, so I responded with practical "Here's how I do it" detail. + Page 45 + My response, along with many others were compiled for electronic publication on k12admin [16] and also print published as a booklet [17]. The booklet is a handsome production that I especially liked because it emphasized one of my favorite gnomic utterances "a computer that's not yet connected to the world telephone network is only achieving part of its potential" and the experience emphasized for me what I'm using now - that what one learns in education on this side of the Earth can prove relevant on the other side of the Earth. It will count, if it can be made to count! There is a block of classrooms on our campus that we call 'The stables', They are North-East of Paringa Hall, and not far from it, and that's where I learned about individuals using computers on long leads here. I don't think these stables ever housed horses, but the original owner of Paringa Hall owned some famous horses, and this corner of the main block of the campus might once have been the site of his stables. I was much happier using the electricity supply from the modern Library-Resource Center nearby, and there are telephone extensions there. I was teaching in 'the stables' and I wanted individual access on demand to online information for my students there, so that was where I had practiced getting computers to operate safely on long extension electricity leads, and getting modems to operate reliably on long extension telephone leads. There's a computer lab near enough and "online from Adelaide" has details of trailing the HyperSACE Navigator' decision Support Software there, but in some lessons, I positively don't want everybody at a keyboard! As the user of information sees it, putting all the computers in one room makes as little sense as putting all the telephones together there. We do it for basically sound reasons, but they're not primarily educational reasons. If beginners using telephones needed assistance as often as beginners using computers do, and if telephones were as easily damaged and affected by viruses as PCs and peripherals are, initially we would put the phones all in one room where they would be under supervision and beginners would have quick access to expert assistance and if telephones were as likely to get stolen as computers are, we'd lock them away. The reasons are basically sound, but only secondarily educational, in that you can't teach or learn much if you're bewildered and help is far away, or thieves have been at work, and the computers have been stolen. Computer teachers are computer users who see the situation differently from the way information users do, and members of the staff of the library resource center often have to try to see both sides. There are very different ways of approaching using computers. I sometimes want one computer on a telephone line in a classroom with me when I'm teaching, just as I want one at home and also when I'm preparing lessons. If I don't want more than one terminal, or I don't want to go to a computer lab, or I'm at + Page 46 + home, for me, the extension cords provide the answer. I first learned that years ago, using videotex at home, and in the classroom, but I expect it to be as usable with newer 'cable' services like interactive video-on-demand and cable television, so I expect extension power leads and extension phone leads will remain vital in making electronic publication count. I've liked the idea of regarding all experiences using computers as 'interpersonal' ever since I talked with our local pinball wizards, and they saw their experiences of it and of computing as 'interpersonal', although some of the persons seemed to be somewhere else, or even dead. I used the "extension lead" telecommunications technology with the household telephone line and the PC that I got rebuilt for connection to it. So when I set out on my exploration, asking "What can this 'interactive' medium do for us?" as I described in "Online from Adelaide", I was putting a familiar technology to work. I was writing then about whales and aboriginal art and decorated airplanes and IT in SA, and about how nice it is to live and work in Adelaide. More recently, the 05 June 1995 Advertiser metro edition, on page 24, had an advertising feature headed "Have a whale of a time" that said "More and more whales are being spotted in South Australian waters, particularly around Encounter Bay between May and September." Actions speak louder than words, and I can learn something real from the actions of the whales, and in the same way, I can learn things to use in the information age from online interactions. Expert advice is invaluable in any field that involves using technology. I try to find someone who has forgotten more than I'll ever wish to know about a field, and to me, that person is 'the expert'. In the first article, I said "Never try to know better than the expert, get to know the expert better". Even before I learned to use IPCT-L to enable me to do that globally, I had heard "When it 'goes' in the home, it will 'go' in the schools." I got that from Ian Camac, who was working for the (SA) education department then, and it works, so that makes him an expert (on driving your a-v dollar further) as I see it, so in my mind it is 'Camac's Law'. When it comes to getting printed-on-paper information to people here where I am at Sacred Heart College Senior School, the name of the expert is Stuart, so I consulted Stuart about electronic publication when the source is elsewhere, like Massachusetts. I said "I can get my article sent online from Washington and capture it onto a disk and then I think that people who use computers here might want a copy each." Stuart's advice would have made that happen, and it would have been good enough, but then Stuart suggested improving it by using that logo! We had agreed it should have a larger more readable font, on colored paper, and it was looking good even though we + Page 47 + left the page numbers in, now marching up successive pages, but looking back on it, I think that what REALLY made the difference was the graphic! After the software baulked at the 'IPCT' heading, Stuart 'pasted' (physically, I mean he used GLUE) a Sacred Heart College crest onto his offset master, and THAT got it read! The result came out looking almost like the hardcopies off my home dot-matrix PC printer that had been around the office but the effect was DIFFERENT! Whereas before people who had published papers before talked to me about it, now EVERYBODY was talking to me about it! So I'll HAVE to upgrade my PC to graphics! 'Technology Words' came from the "Switched-On Classroom", a project of the Massachusetts Software Council's Education Committee contained a Technology Primer and Glossary and information about Technology and Ethics. I got it using internet client server software online to DECS' Angle Park Computing Centre. The Glossary covered words you encounter in education, and the Council gave permission to print copy them. Since I didn't know how each copy would be most useful, I refrained from casting "Technology Words" into the stream of paper through the pigeonholes, and 'launched' it instead! Karen Smith, Director of Educational Technology Initiatives of the Software Council also gave me a suggestion about how to set up our online resources and stay current. I'm working on it - that's about making electronic publication count! Interactivity alerted me to using what I've learned from experience, or I'd not have thought to tell you about it, so I've written a lot about why I wasn't going to remember. That emphasizes the importance to me as a writer of getting responses like Stan East's email from New Mexico asking if we have FAQ at Sacred Heart. I found the internet a place of fables that sound like the stories told by seafarers and travelers of the past. After years in classrooms, my response is predictable - to tell pleasant stories until the noise dies away, and calm prevails, and it becomes 'a good place for youngsters, so I found IPCT suitably scholarly, and I was even able to read a 'scholarly' Moderator's note on IPCT-L about Plato's Phaedrus ending with a dialog on the comparative merits of speech and writing as vehicles for the communication of truth. Multimedia was becoming 'a goer' in SA homes, and I knew that from reading advertisements in 'The Advertiser', so that's also why I expect that delivering multimedia learning experiences will become important in education. Global telecommunications greatly facilitated finding an expert elsewhere on Earth and getting an expert opinion. In this case, the expert I found was GMP, and he had indeed forgotten more than I will ever wish to know about it (if you get and read his whole 'post', and take him literally on the point about forgetting) [18] + Page 48 + Here's what I posted. This is a strategy of managing information as a resource and I think of it as 'ask the right question to get the right answer', and I've copied it as it appears in the archive file, because I arranged it for onscreen effect. Then I was seeking an expert opinion on 'publication', to put with what I had gathered at that time about 'electronic'. Now I am seeking information (from you?) about 'electronic' as it has affected education in other applications. ================================================================== Date: Tue, 4 Apr 1995 19:42:54 -0400 Reply-To: Interpersonal Computing and Technology Sender: Interpersonal Computing and Technology From: Interpersonal Computing and Technology List Subject: WHAT'S NEW IN CMC? From: Nexus User fjames You tell me - Did thoroughly modern Millie get it right? - "Everything old is new again!" I got (from IPCT, I think) the idea that cmc has more to do with talking and listening than with reading and writing and that idea seems very persuasive. The idea that anything to do with computers belongs to time since electric things were developed, strikes me as charmingly simple- minded, but not to be taken seriously. But it reminds me of people who seem committed to the idea that morality is more about sex than about Aesop. I would like eventually to use cmc to support teaching critical thinking. Having tried teaching Kohlberg to less acadenically inclined students, I really don't want to wait until we are forced to recognise that Plato is no more accessible to everyone in K-12 school than Euclid is. When this medium has color and sound and moving pictures with interactivity, it should be quite helpful in teaching that's intended to enable people to apply critical thinking in everyday life. Is this going to be called multimedia? Finally, if there really is something new here, please post and say so! ================================================================== We had called it 'multimedia' when we made 'kits' of slide transparencies, booklets and audio cassette tapes for students to use in resource centres in the 70s. Then we were making excursions count, and excursions are EXPENSIVE, and I had learned just how important objectives and evaluation are, On IPCT-L, this response to 'WHAT'S NEW IN CMC?' came from GMP (Gerald M. Phillips, Ph.D.) on Wednesday, 5 Apr 1995. So I got just the scholarly opinion I needed! "I just reviewed the use of the Greek chorus in the dramas of Aristophanes and Sophocles and found, lo and behold, the Hellenic form of multi-media. When you consider the work of the Rhapsodies and the Dionysian uses of Asian forms in the rhetoric of the Agora during the age of Pericles, you find --- multi-media. In fact, the multi-form doxologies of medieval Catholicism, later amplified by power organ backdrop and simplified by the Gregorians, in clearly --- multimedia. + Page 49 + Multi-media is used for immersion, persuasion through pathetic appeal (as in pathos) and what we are doing now in education is as Roman as the instruction at Quintilian's Academy in first century Rome. What we are doing now is seeking complexity. It is my considered opinion that there is no more complex machine than the human body and we might all do well seeking to orchestrate, integrate and synergize human enterprise rather than to make all living creatures into inanimate objects amused to death (in Postman's terms) by images, stupefied by strings of icons, responding like Pavlov's dogs. The more I see of multi-media, the more I think we have made the pact. I refer you to "Bernie the Faust" by William Tenn, a science fiction story worthy of all multimedia designers." ================================================================== I couldn't have been more pleased - here is indeed 'more than I shall ever wish to know' to be learned about education and drama and computer mediated communication, and it meant I could close my homework book on multimedia for the moment! I knew GMP was researching in the field, but *multimedia* specifically was on the agenda where I am. I gained a lot on that 'virtual excursion'. I was able to convince myself that some lessons learned here in Adelaide could be duplicated elsewhere around the globe, and electronic publication with global telecommunications on the internet could get the story to people elsewhere who would make it count. I got access to materials and I was learning how we might be using computers in the 21st century. Some of the point of seeking answers where the questions arise is that people who have the answers can be found, and the answers can be delivered to the people who need them can using the same medium. But in the archives room, I discovered a problem. Here's a story to illustrate: If you find a bottle with words on it like 'digital' and 'cable', rub the bottle and see if a genie appears. This genie answers to the name 'electronic'. The genie called 'electronic' says "I can grant wishes but I can't tell who you are" and it all seems straightforward until 'electronic' is making dreams come true all around, but there's a problem. Preserving your roots becomes a problem, because 'electronic' takes nothing back to the bottle with him and outside the bottle nothing remains the same, and you are left wondering about your identity. Also, did the bottle that 'electronic' came in have something hastily erased. What was erased? Might it have included words and phrases like 'new and improved', 'disposable' and 'labour- saving'? + Page 50 + When one sets out to learn by using this medium, North-South distance is diminished, but time zones still divide East from West when we use computers to communicate. Using computers, it is like you can communicate easily with people anywhere in the World. Computer mediated communication can seem to be as much about talking and listening as about reading and writing. The critical parameter is 'interactivity.' Between Adelaide and the cities of Asia, computer-mediated Communication is likely to be about talking and listening When it is 08:30 AM in Adelaide, the time isn't very different in Asian cities like Hong Kong and Singapore where it is 07:00 AM, or Seoul where it is 08:00 AM. Even in far away Asian capitals it is (earlier) the same morning. In Tokyo it is 08:00 AM, in Peking the time is 07:00 AM, while in Saigon it is 06:00 AM. On the Australian mainland, in Sydney it is 09:00, and in Perth it is 07:00. For talking on the telephone or video-conferencing on an 'information superhighway', the time of day isn't very different, and it IS the same day! The time difference determines the extent to which communication is 'interactive', and therefore rather like talking. In the cities of Europe, the time is much earlier, and when the time is 08:30 AM in Adelaide, in Paris the time is midnight. London is an hour earlier than Paris, and Moscow is on hour later. When the working day is ending here, it is starting in Europe, but it is THE SAME DAY. But, across the dateline, alignment of the days of the working week matters! At 08:30 AM in Adelaide, it is late afternoon in cities of continental United States. It is 17.00 in Chicago, where the first steel frame building, forerunner to the modern sky scraper was erected in the mid 1880s (after Paringa Hall). It is 18.00 in New York, where Thomas Edison demonstrated his electric lighting system, just before Paringa Hall was built. Canadian cities likewise are across the international date line, so Montreal (18:00) and Vancouver (15:00) times, but both are the day before yesterday in terms of the working week. Across the dateline, browsing education sites on the Web changes from day to day, and 'classroom' websites across the dateline might be better used for professional or personal development, in the same circumstances in which business across a dateline involves travel rather than telephone. I have been browsing the MayaQuest Internet Centre [19] on the other side of the Earth, and getting information [20] about long ago from far away. I am seeking, in a time of 'convergence', the look and feel of learning in the near future. This website is located at the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium across the dateline from me, so browsing it varies on different days of the week. The 'Quest' took place in early 1995, investigating people called 'the Maya', and the 'classic Maya' age dates back to around a.d. 250. I had heard about the ancient Maya before I + Page 51 + heard about MayaQuest on the internet discussion list k12admin. I've forgotten how I first learned of their existence, but I learned about their 'lost cities' in the jungles of South America at the same time. I might have read about them in a 'UFO' book or I might have seen Mayan pyramids or pictures on television in the "Was God an astronaut?" 'debate' that followed the publication of the book "Chariots of the Gods". Following MayaQuest on the internet while monitoring 'World' news in the press and on television for news of the modern maya shows how priorities from the agenda of the World media get imposed on a student's perceptions of learning experiences delivered in the 'global' curriculum. Browsing the website, I also found a study guide, with curriculum information about environmental perspectives, war, creation myths and how the Maya kept track of time and used hieroglyphics. There's also a MayaQuest bibliography and information about Jaguars, Quetzals, and Other Animals of the Rain Forest, and there's links to other areas of interest to anthropologists, and consideration of issues that can arise in conversation now, like regional warfare, environmental mismanagement, deforestation and natural disasters. Some things seem clearer from a distance, in time or in space, and I can use these Just-In-Time information objects to produce like rabbits from a magician's sleeve. Soon similar developments like MayaQuest II and NASA's 'Live from the Stratosphere' will be competing for attention, and I want to be ready, especially as 'globalization' means convergence in the curriculum and the media agenda. Increasing use in education and elsewhere of the modern technology of global telecommunications is making media education increasingly important to teachers and learners everywhere. Almost anyone finds such information useful, and increasing numbers are able to browse a website themselves. Many stakeholders in education fear that being good with computers means being poor at forming community, and responding effectively to the problem in educational institutions of concern about youngsters getting access to obscene or offensive material online requires understanding that computer mediated communication can be about talking and listening as much as about reading and writing. This is the most frequently asked question (FAQ) that I've heard raised in this connection (pun). In my view, one needs a response ready, and the key to developing such a response is realizing that communicating using computers has a lot to do with talking and listening. This is likely to be obvious enough at home where everyone knows that the phone line is 'busy' and parents know about supervising phone use. After all, there are phone numbers you don't want the kids to call, but that doesn't make the telephone less useful. It's not so apparent with computers, but kids interacting online need supervision, more than kids watching television do, but less than a birthday party does, and + Page 52 + some kids need more supervision than others. It's much less obvious at school where people using computers to communicate in the computer lab look as if they're reading and writing or using another application. They'll need supervision, too, some more than others, and it'll help if the school has an 'acceptable use' policy with behavior management procedures a supervisor can use. A school sports coordinator can tell us what works for umpires managing youngsters who might 'mouth off', and this isn't like reading and writing - managing this is like managing a tendency towards foul language and you can't make the problem go away by penalties applied to the source alone. Like bad language on the playing field, it needs management and deterrence! I don't need large bandwidth when I'm using computers to learn, and neither of us uses large bandwidth with IPCT-J (we aren't using wideband now!), although we teachers will probably want it when we are teaching. In particular, I think that multimedia will have a vital role supporting teaching everybody in regular schools when we retain them to year twelve and teach them lessons for life in the 21st century. It'll also be vital in support of professional development for ethical decision-making about abstractions and models. Where I am in Adelaide, there are three Universities and our post-compulsory curriculum reflects that, but we (teachers particularly) realize that learning experiences in schools are delivered to many people who will do a full K-12 schooling but who are not ALL going to go to one of those three Universities. At the same time, that curriculum increasingly contains what has daunted 'academically inclined' students in the past! I've replaced the automobile that I had when I wrote "Online from Adelaide" with one that doesn't have round headlights, but it does have many 'electronic' devices and they perform well. I will need to upgrade my monitor for color graphics soon. That's to enable me to make 'electronic' count when I publish, and I'd like to upgrade my PC to multimedia capability eventually, too. That'll enable me to make 'electronic' count when others publish multimedia, and I want to learn from it. While I was writing "Electronic Publishing - Does it count?", I had by my side a History text [21] that is used in schools here in SACE History studies. If you want something current to access electronically NOW, try browsing the "Guide to Australia" [22] on the website of Charles Sturt University [23]. Syracuse University provided me with valuable resources in their archives of education Listservs, and on AskERIC's 'virtual library' you can find out what has been said on education Listservs like K12ADMIN [24]. Those archives really make that electronic publication count for me! + Page 53 + Being here in Adelaide, what I read about South Australian weather or water or wide open spaces often reminds me of the land in 'Gulliver's Travels' where Gulliver found himself dwarfed, and using global telecommunications I often think of a saying from antiquity about a dwarf standing on a giant's shoulders and seeing further. I doubt that using the internet now enables us to see very much better than using telegraph did for a few people last century, but now we want everybody to have access to global telecommunications, and that's a change! Access to information counts, and with global access, you can make better sense of what you learn. While we say 'actions speak louder than words', one must get meanings in a World of change to 'think globally and act locally'. Government policies get set by central committees, but what you hear loudest where you are, may be the promises that get candidates elected where the marginal seats are. And media information that was gathered globally gets edited and published locally with presentation to sustain circulation or ratings and features to attract passing trade or channel surfers. And at the end of the day, with my feet on the ground floor in Paringa Hall, there's the flaw in the pattern of the tiles on the floor to remind me that when I look at the big picture I don't see everything. I think about that when I'm planning online access that works in 'the stables'. I must ask "What about the occupational health point of view, does an extension cord need a core balance relay now?" That reminds me of the other thing I heard on the radio, "a fool will lose tomorrow, looking back to yesterday". Tell me online about not losing yesterday. The point in publishing in an interactive medium is that I WANT interaction about experiences of what 'electronic' can mean. I said at the outset that I was in an archives room, so why not start with the archives of the discussion list, and read the file that Zane Berge posted on Saturday 22nd of February 1992, about publishing this "scholarly, refereed international journal." [25] Do I know that you can respond? No, I don't know for sure, but I don't think much has changed since Zane's "letter from the publisher" [11] " ... over seventy percent of the persons responding to the question of whether ASCII is adequate state that it was. The respondents to this survey stated mostly (58%) that they read IPCT Journal articles both on screen or printed it out, depending upon many factors. About one quarter read the articles on screen without printing them." So I think you can interact if you want to! One could start working back from here. Now, which issue ... ...? ********************************************************** + Page 54 + REFERENCES: [1] James, F. (1995). Online from Adelaide, South Australia URL: gopher://GUVM.CCF.GEORGETOWN.EDU/00/LISTSERV/ipct-j/ipctv3n1/james.ipctv3n1 [2] The Messenger, 06 Dec 89, page 14 news item headed, "Mansion a reminder of wealthy pioneers", retrieved from Presscom [3] Alan Osterstock, (1974), "South Australia, 1888" National Library of Australia Card Number and ISBN 0 85872 088 4 [4] Philip Pike and Julian Moore, 1983, "Captain Sweet's Adelaide", ISBN 0 959248803 [5] nexus, AAP# 4721, dated 28-Aug-95, headed "US: centre works to unravel mystery of lightning" [6] Peter McMillan and James L. Stanfield, "The Vimy flies again!", National Geographic, Vol. 187, No. 5, May 1995, [7] nexus, AAP # 5379 of 15-Jun-94 headed "Air mail's 75 years old" [8] McMahon, John R., "Educational Vision: A Marist Perspective", Ph.D. Thesis, (1992), University of London Institute of Education, (particularly Chapter 4.2) [9] page 82, proc. Conf. SOST'91 (Eds. Roger Clarke and Julie Cameron), Australian Computer Society Inc., 8-9 October, 1991 ISBN 0 909925 61 5 [10] The Advertiser, 20 Jun 1995, metro edition, on page 29, features, on the education page, headed "the age of INFORMATION" [11] URL: gopher://GUVM.CCF.GEORGETOWN.EDU/00/ LISTSERV/ipct- j/ipctv2n4/contents.ipctv2n4 [12] URL: gopher://gopher.gould.pvt.k12.me.us:70/00c%3a/techplan/techplan.txt [13] URL: gopher://ericir.syr.edu:70/11/FAQ + Page 55 + [14] URL: http://otabbs.ota.gov/E613T128 [15] URL: http://otabbs.ota.gov/E614T128 [16] 'Telephone Lines in Classrooms? YES!' URL: gopher://ericir.syr.edu/0R99637-156321-/Listservs/K12ADMIN List /1994/Oct_1994 [17] Lucas, Larry and Parker, Melody, Communications systems in 21st Century Classrooms, (1994), Texas Centre for Educational Technology. [18] archived as ipct-l.log9504a whose URL is gopher://GUVM.CCF.GEORGETOWN.EDU/00/LISTSERV/ipct l/ipct1995/ipct- l.log9504a The file has 2968 lines, and what I've quoted is on page 33- 35 of 149). [19] URL: http://mayaquest.mecc.com/ [20] URL: http://mayaquest.mecc.com/MayaQuest.Resources.html [21] Gibbs, R. M., "A History of South Australia", (1969), Southern Heritage, ISBN 0 909209 80 2 [22] URL: http://www.csu.edu.au/australia/defat/sa.html [23] URL: http://csu.edu.au [24] URL: gopher://ericir.syr.edu:70/00/Listservs/K12ADMIN-List/README [25] URL: gopher://GUVM.CCF.GEORGETOWN.EDU/00/LISTSERV/ipct- l/ipct1992/ipct-l.log9202d ----------------------------------------------------------------- Appendix A: Pro and Tem Committees I've evaded defining 'electronic publishing', but I can't resist buying into discussion about 'promotion and tenure'? Does electronic publication count there? What we have in Australia seems sufficiently similar so I'll venture an opinion that electronic publication will count as much or as little as electronic publication is made to count, and indeed one could say that about references! There's value to be had there, but it won't just happen! Does that matter? Well, it would matter to me if I was contemplating + Page 56 + working with an organisation and they didn't appear to know about interacting through electronic publication or checking references! I don't think I'd do it, but in a time of change I'd be wary about jumping to conclusions. I'd double-check THEIR references! ================================================================== BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH I had worked with computers and witj telecommunications in the 60s when I started working at Sacred Heart College Senior School at Somerton Park, a suburb of Adelaide, the capital city of South Australia, within walking distance of the beach. In the thirty years since, I have taught mainly Maths, Science and Religious Education and have been involved extensively in professional development and curriculum development activities and in developing educational technology at the College. I have a special interest in this technology. Following a stroke in 1976, and subsequent 'bleeds' in 1979 and 1992, I can read a computer monitor much more readily than I can read print. I walk with the aid of a stick, and find using computers in global telecommunications liberating! ================================================================== ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Interpersonal Computing and Technology: An Electronic Journal for the 21st Century Copyright 1996 University of Maryland Baltimore County. Copyright of individual articles in this publication is retained by the individual authors. Copyright of the compilation as a whole is held by the University of Maryland Baltimore County. It is asked that any republication of this article state that the article was first published in IPCT-J. Contributions to IPCT-J can be submitted by electronic mail in APA style to: Susan Barnes, Editor IPCT-J SBBARNES@PIPLELINE.COM