Hey Dude, Where’s My Data

From Bazaar Wiki

Bazaar Seminar series : Barcelona

Date: October 25th, 2006

Contents 1 The Topic 2 Starting Points 3 Position Papers 4 Aims of the seminar 5 Possible outcomes 6 Plan and Method 7 Starting positions 8 Scoping the issues 9 Scenarios for the future 10 Understanding implications and identifying actions

The Topic

With Web 2.0, more and more people have their documents, products, personal details and photos stashed all over the internet – what issues does this raise for education?

The rise of commercial services:

With the use of free, commercial, centrally hosted, social software services rising in education some important issues arise; Who controls this data? Do users care that commercial services are mining their usage patterns and selling this to marketing companies? Is the nature of these ‘free’ services understood – yes users can come in and use the base system for free but often, in return, they are bombarded with advertising and their details/usage habits sold. However, does anyone really care? Perhaps convenience of service outweighs the perceived downsides.

As Bill Fitzgerald points out: "This type of commercial activity is sneaky – it is not apparently obvious to the user what is happening to their data and usage patterns, so often they will not thing about this."

Is it wise to build up learning environments around these free-to-use tools? While it is unlikely some of the bigger services, such as | Flickr, will shutdown – the terms of usage could certainly change, what happens if learners suddenly have to pay to access their content?

As Graham Atwell points out: "Yes Web 2 is great for allowing mash ups and integrating services to produce rich and interactive web sites. But the reliance on external services from mostly commercial companies does raise a whole series of issues. Can we trust these people with our data? will we still have access to this data in the future.? What is to stop them data mining for their own purposes?"

Is there an alternative?

Open Standards

Surely the way to approach this is to build educational tools based on open standards, not specific, commercial, services? This will remove any reliance on services like flickr or | del.icio.us. Then again, who would be responsible for building and maintaining these tools? Should institutions and perhaps government be responsible?

Open Source

The same issues arise - who is responsible for building, maintaining and paying for the service?

Where to store my data:

With the rise in popularity of ePortfolios many have asked; what happens to an ePortfolio after the student has left the institution? What happens to this content – where are learners supposed to store it? Can they still access it?

At least one UK university is considering charging alumni for continued access to their ePortfolio – is this the correct approach?

Starting Points

To get you started here are some rough questions:

• Data mining on commercial services, is this a problem?

• Should institutions using commercial services worry about the user data being sold to advertising and marketing companies?

• Is it not a risky strategy to rely on commercial services keeping their services ‘free’?

• Does anyone really care? Some of these services are excellent so perhaps we should accept that their might be some downsides and instead concentrate on the pedagogical benefit they can offer?

• Who would pay for something if it was not commercial service providers – the government? Would we trust that more? Would the services actually be as good?

• What role should governments play, if any at all?

• What is the role of institutions?

• Security issues?

• Ownership issues?

Position Papers

Participants in the seminar were invited to produce a short position paper for the seminar:

1. George Bekiaridis's position paper
2. Graham Attwell's position paper
3. Ismael Pena-Lopez's position paper
4. Ramón Ovelar Beltrán's position paper
5. Stuart Yeates's position paper
6. Dai Griffiths's position paper
7. Núria Ferran's position paper
8. Ben Werdmuller's position paper

Aims of the seminar

The aims of the seminar were:

• To explore the issues arising from the implementation of web 2.0 and the the development of web services.
• To examine the nature of dispersed personal data and what it means for the future.
• To discuss the implications of these development for education.
• To look at possible future scenarios. To consider possible responses at individual, institutional and policy level

Possible outcomes

Possible outcomes were:

• scoping of issues
• identifications of possible and alternative scenarios for future
• identification of implications for individuals. institutions and policy development
• recommendations
• identification of issues for further research and exploration

Plan and Method

Rather than organise a seminar based purely on paper presentations, it was intended to use the seminar as a space for discourse and for developing and taking forward ideas.

This included a series of group and plenary activities based on the following sequence:

• Starting positions
• Scoping the issues
• Future gazing
• Scenario setting
• Understanding implications
• Identifying actions

Starting positions

Starting positions were explored through brief introductions to the position papers. the following key points were made in the presentations (these points and some of the subsequent report are taken from Ismael Peña-López’s live blog of the event)

Dai Griffiths

• the (educational) institution is years behind the practice (of the student)
• the ease of installing new Virtual Learning Environments… what impact would this have in institutions?
• what happens with the institution if everything goes virtual?

Stuart Yeates:

• big concern with intellectual property rights
• who spends the money to store data?

John Smith

• students are already playing with data and institutions are not
• conflict among security (technical and legal) vs. flexibility

George Bekiaridis

• Why people/students use web 2.0 apps? Quick, cheap, powerful. Can (educational) institutions provide such services?
• maybe small (personal?) servers, connected in sort of a P2P network would be a solution

Núria Ferran

• Libraries could play an important role in keeping data as a public service… as they have always done with knowledge in general

Ismael Peña-López

• focus on people rather than data: digital identities
• A data store is much more than a tool, as a house is much more than bricks. We need a data home, not a data house
• Long life learning: long life e-portfolio, such as Scott Wilson’s personal learning environment
• Difference among stock data (what do I want to keep that defines my digital persona) vs. flow data (data I exchange and can be erased once the communication is over)
• “I’d rather trackback than comment”

Graham Attwell

• Not “where’s my data” but “what’s my data”. What’s important to keep?

Scoping the issues

The participants split into four different groups, each of which produced a flipchart outlining their discussions.

Following the presentation of the results a number of further issues emerged:

• Where do I publish my data? in my server or the Institution’s?
• Whose is the data produced during the process of learning? mine (student or faculty) or the institution’s?
• How to balance the ways of accessing content which usually are (a) control (i.e. institutional repositories) (b) shortcuts (web 2.0 apps)?
• How to manage a needed degree of (creative) anarchy within the institution with the need to correctly assess to get your degree?
• Is it impossible/too hard to reinvent the educational institutions as the web 2.0 seems to be asking for?
• Will the University get sidelined by other institutions?
• What happens to quality of content? and quality in the use/application of content?
• Is there a place for some kind of clearing house services to intermediate between individuals and institutions and the different ways to store their data?

Scenarios for the future

Participants were invited to consider possible future scenarios for the use of technology in education.

Ideas were generated by participants writing down ‘newspaper headlines of the future’. These were summarised on cards and placed on a time continuum - 1007-8, 2009, 2010 and 2011-15.

This was followed by an exercise in which participants first rated the different headlines according to likelihood and then attempted to group possible future developments and draw out trends.

Four trends drew particular attention.

Universities losing power

There was a general consensus that informal learning would become more important. Learners could utilize a wealth of publicly available information and knowledge. On-line communities would become more important for learning. At the same time employers would be more interested in the learning and working history of potential employees, rather than traditional accreditation. Universities and the would lose their ‘monopoly on learning’. However universities might have a new role in offering accreditation and certification of informal and work based learning.

Content providers and private institutions to issue degrees

Whilst traditional universities were seen as losing influence, there was seen to be the likelihood to new content providers and private organizations offering qualifications. On-line portfolios might well be provided by social software start up companies. Large companies were already establishing their own corporate universities. Google was seen as a potential for entry into the content and qualification market. Another participant wondered at the possibility of wikipedia becoming a source of qualifications.

Data privacy concerns

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the focus of the seminar, participants remained concerned with data security. This situation was expected to worsen in the coming period.

ePortfolio to win weight in job market

There was general consensus that despite the slow development and implementation of ePortfolios, they were a coming technology. ePortfolios were seen as key to the development of lifelong learning. ePortfolios were seen as a replacement for traditional qualifications as a method of recruitment by employers, although it w ill take some time for employers to become aware of the potential of the portfolio.

Understanding implications and identifying actions

Once more, this work was undertaken in groups with the different groups reporting back in a final plenary session. Participants were asked to consider the implications of the issues identified in earlier sessions and to formulate draft recommendations for policy. these could be grouped under the following headings:

• implications for learners
• implications for teachers
• implications for institutions
• implications for technology development

The reports can be viewed on photos of the flip-charts.

They are summarised here.

Learners

• Learners should become more critical of security and privacy issues
• Learners will become more sophisticated - users expectations of Information Technology will increase
• There will be a widening gap between learners with strong information technology support and those without
• The key divide is between kids who have savvy parents and those who do not
• Learners will access a wider range of materials or at least a more flexible range
• Learners will have more responsibility for sorting and storing data
• Learners will need a lifelong record of achievement
• Learners must learn to discriminate and evaluate different sources of information

Institutions

• Institutions should adopt standards based software
• Institutions should offer storage space for each student
• More flexibility is needed in assessment and accreditation and curriculum
• We need non prescriptive software tools
• There is a need to redefine the relationship between institution and its graduates
• Institutions should promote the faster adoption of changes (technology)
• Institutions should become user centred rather that content business centred
• Prescribing resources will increase its importance (rollyo.com)
• Institutions should teach privacy awareness in primary school
• There should be a stronger audit trail of contact time
• Institutions should become less geographically centred and more subject specific
• Accreditation data will be held by institutiona or at state level
• Supervisors of HE need to recognise that work of teachers in elearning are not technicians

Curriculum

• We need to teach internet privacy, critical research skills, security
• The curriculum should reflect change in data sources
• There should be a shift to social constuctivism
• The curriculum should support education into Intellectual Property Rights

Policy

• There should be provision for accreditation for e-learning publications and tools
• The EU should develop a specialist centre on on-line social communities
• The EU should develop a Collaborative library

Technology

• Should support Open standards
• Should support interoperability
• Should be based on simple standards
• Developers should take existing ideas - give them an educational focus
• All software should have social aspects

One group approached the issue slightly differently - developing a series of recommendations variously aimed at teachers, policy makers, research, institutions and learners.

• Institutions / Policy Makers / Curriculum - raise level of awareness of privacy and security issues
• Research - Red-amber-green systems for privacy (development)
• Funders - fund no walled garden systems
• Teachers plus institution - Don’t try to freeze technology plus curriculum
• Teacher and institutions - Institutionalise groups of early adopters - support and recognise and assess
• Teachers / Policy makers / learners - use it in your normal life
• Teachers / PCM / Institutions - develop a strategy - it won’t go away