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Do you hand out your handouts?

Powerpoint is my crutch. As a teacher I have long been dependent upon powerpoint*. But I have also been concerned about the way in which it forms the way I teach and the way in which students learn. Increasingly students have an expectation of getting the lecturerâ??s powerpoint slides â?? Preferably in digital form and in advance of the lecture.

Powerpoint Students
What is a lecture? University is filled with them. They are praised by some and reviled by others (this will be the topic for a future post). To the student the lecture almost defines university life. Therefore it is maybe not all good when the lecture has become confined to the square space and bullet point list defined by presentation software.

Most often I do not hand out my handouts, nor do I provide my powerpoint slides in digital or any other form to my students. This is not an attempt to monopolize or capitalize on my knowledge. To understand the purpose of this we must look at the purpose of powerpoint slides.

Slides are used (in my teaching) for two purposes. First, and foremost, the slides are there to keep me on track to help me keep my thoughts in order. Second, the slides are intended to underscore certain more important thoughts or concepts. Thirdly, the slides may provide light entertainment they can help the listeners to keep listening.

As these points show, the slides are not a replacement for the lecture, lecturer, or literature. So in order to make sure that this message gets across: I do not hand out my handouts.

Powerpoint Lecturers
If the student has become used to being fed with powerpoint slides then what about the lecturer. We have (generalization warning!) become dependent upon powerpoint. Planning a lecture begins with the opening of presentation software. The knowledge we want to transfer is confined by our ability to condense it (knowledge) into squares and lists.

By adding features, such as effects, sounds and images we believe that we are somehow helping the students to understand what we have learned through reading, scientific method and experience.

Handicap Warning
Powerpoint can be, for both students and lecturers, an invaluable support. But letâ??s not forget that the same software can be used as a way in which to hide the fact that no transfer of knowledge is taking place. Each student should as him/herself what they hope to see in the handouts and why they are so eager to obtain the handouts â?? at the same time so disinterested in the original.

Lecturers should stop and think before resorting to powerpoint. If powerpoint is necessary then they should stop and think about the content and its presentation. Would the students be equally served by the applying the old adage â??less is moreâ?? to powerpoint?

Did Einstein hand out handouts?

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* the term powerpoint is intented to refer to a generic set of presentation software. The same results are obtained by Open Office presenter, Macâ??s Keynote, or any other such program.

Humor: The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation: Gettysburg Address as a powerpoint presentation http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/index.htm

Recommend Reading
Allan M. Jones. The use and abuse of PowerPoint in Teaching and Learning in the Life Sciences: A Personal Overview, BEE-j Volume 2: November 2003 http://bio.ltsn.ac.uk/journal/vol2/beej-2-3.pdf

David B. Daniel. Using Powerpoint to Ruin a Perfectly Good Lecture. Presented to the 1st Biennial SRCD Teaching of Developmental Science Institute 2005. http://www.srcd.org/biennial_archives/atlanta_2005/documents/daniel.pdf

Greg Jaffe. â??Pentagon cracks down on … PowerPointâ??, The Wall Street Journal Online. http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-502314.html

Jens E. Kjeldsen. â??The Rhetoric of PowerPointâ??, Seminar.net – International journal of media, technology and lifelong learning Vol. 2 â?? Issue 1 â?? 2006. http://www.seminar.net/volume2-issue1-2006/the-rhetoric-of-powerpoint

Jeffrey R. Young. â??When Good Technology Means Bad Teaching: Giving professors gadgets without training can do more harm than good in the classroomâ??, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Vol. 51, Issue 12, November 12, 2004. http://chronicle.com/free/v51/i12/12a03101.htm

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Military Tourism

The first day at the Swedish Armed Forces Academy (at Karlberg Castle) is over and today is the second, and final, day. Yesterday we had a tour of the facilities and also a long open discussion between the project members and the rapporteurs.
Apparently the Swedish military academy is the oldest in the world. The building is filled to the brim with old military nick-nacks which seem to be (almost) spread out at random. The more representative rooms are better arranged but the room we had our discussions in contained two oil portraits of 16th century characters an Admiral and an adviser to the King and two ugly worn down wood and leather sofa’s from the 1970s, the kind that you find in the clubhouse of the local chess of football club  – very postmodern.

The discussions are going well. Interesting topics and interesting people. One side-topic which came up was the notion of military tourism. Military officers traveling to other military units and living their reality for a while. This was particularly interesting when after discussing this modern version we say the names of those fallen in battle in the Karlberg chapel – it was filled with exotic locations and plenty of foreign names.

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Walking on the wild side

If I was in Singapore I would be facing a prison sentence for doing what I am doing now. (Explanation). The hotel has free wifi for its guests and the receptionist gave me the codes but I chose the wrong (?) wireless and the neighbors let me in.  Many swedes leave their wifi networks open and I must say that I have a hard time figuring why this should be wrong. Additionally I also have a hard time figuring out why people in cities who have open networks
should be annoyed that others surf on their infrastructure.

If you don’t want to let others surf the close the network. But unless you experience serious lag due to all you neighbors surfing via your net then why bother?

Actually allowing neighbors to surf your wifi may be in violation of the service agreement between you and your broadband provider. But lets not go there. Just let me mangle Blanche’s line in Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire”: I must say I am grateful for the kindness of strangers.*

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* Real line should be: “Whoever you are, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” but somehow this does not really apply to wifi…

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Spineless Human Rights in Sweden

There was a time when the Swedish government dared to look any power straight in the eye and state loudly and clearly that crimes against humanity were wrong. Maybe our best time for this was when, in the Christmas of 1972, the Prime Minister Olof Palme spoke out against the US bombing of Hanoi comparing it with other great crimes against humanity. A position such as this led to a freeze in diplomatic relations. Since then the relations have been mended but not at the cost of our honour (a dangerous word, I know).

Today we sell whatever we can. And no matter whether the politicians are on the right or left the thought of taking a stand for that which is morally right is nowhere near the agenda.

On the 18 December 2001 Mohammed Alzery an Egyptian national seeking asylum in Sweden was picked up by Swedish Security Police and informed that his application for asylum had been rejected a few hours earlier. He was not allows to communicate with his lawyer or family, and within hours he was transported to Bromma airport. He was then handed over to some ten foreign (US and Egyptian) agents in civilian clothes and hoods and forcibly sent back to Egypt.

All this despite the fact that he had obviously been tortured and had reason to fear for his life.

How could the government do this? Well easy the asked the Egyptians to promise not to torture or kill him. When they agreed (all this in writing). The Swedes washed their hands of the affair.

The Swedes wrote: â??It is further the understanding of the Government of the Kingdom of Sweden that these persons will not be subjected to inhuman treatment or punishment of any kindâ?¦and further that they will not be sentenced to deathâ?¦â??The Egyptian Government responded in writing: â??We herewith assert our full understanding to all items of this memoire, concerning the way of treatment upon repatriate from your government, with full respect to their personal and human rights. This will be done according to what the Egyptian constitution and law stipulates.â??

How civilised. Its bullshit, everyone must have known it was bullshit, but so civilised. Which spineless Swedish civil servant typed this crap? Do you sleep at night? Or do you (I wish I could ask you – whoever you are – these questions in person one day) wake up screaming? You should you know…

Naturally he was tortured. He was then tortured again for telling the world he had been tortured. How can a state write the letter Sweden wrote? Simply by asking a state not to torture a specific individual is an admission that this kind of treatment occurs. Sweden played an active part in the torture – no Swedes actually did the dirty work, we simply outsourced it.

The United Nations Human Rights Committee says Sweden broke the international ban on torture for its actions. The Swedish government had already been criticised for the deportations, including the by the UNâ??s Torture Committee.

We have come a long, long way from when we looked superpowers in the eye armed only with our morality – and won.

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Robot Machine Gun Sentry

Samsung together with Korea university has developed the machine-gun equipped robotic sentry.

It is equipped with two cameras with zooming capabilities one for day time and one for infrared night vision. It has a sophisticated pattern recognition which can detect the difference between humans and trees, and a 5.5mm machine-gun. The robot also has a speaker to warn the intruder to surrender or get a perfect headshot. The robots will go on sale by 2007 for $ 200,000 and will be deployed on the border between North and South Korea. (Gizmondo).

The promotional video reflects a great deal of the lack of reflection among designers and developers – loud music and effects.

A machine is created to kill. No moral dimension – the machine executes commands (sorry bad pun). But what will happen when the software fails? Or even worse when the software works but a situation requiring tact and judgment occurs?

Obviously such a machine will do as it is told. It will be unable to interpret new situations and it will open fire.

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Java under GPL

Sun will release key parts of Java under GPLv2 today! The initial release today will include the HotSpot runtime, javac compiler, JavaHelp, and Sun’s Java ME implementation. The rest of Java will be released under GPLv2 early next year.

The license that GPL Java will be released under includes a classpath exception, which allows linking against the Java class libraries without open sourcing your code, so the GPL licensing will not affect the ability of Java developers to produce closed source applications with Java.

In addition, Sun will offer dual licensing of Java, so there will also be a commercial port still available which is fully certified to be standards compliant.

“This is a milestone for the whole industry,” said Rich Green. “Not only are we making an influential and widely used software platform for the Web available under an open-source license, it also underscores Sun’s commitment to changing the whole industry model for how software is enhanced and developed.”

(via JavaLobby)

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Bolzano day 1 & 2

Day 1

Early mornings in airports are worrying places â?? this impression is enhanced by the people in the bar swigging alcohol before 7 am. Otherwise traveling is fun. Most enjoyable was the train between Verona and Bolzano. It is a 2 hour trip up a valley between high mountains. Every open place seems to be guarded by a fort-like building and every second impregnable hill seems to have a church on top.

Bolzano seems to be a nice northern Italian (oops sorry South Tyrolean) city. A clean, well organised city based upon a medieval model. The main irritation was that I forgot to bring an Italian power adapter but we passed an electrician on the way to the conference â?? problem solved.

Once at the conference it was lots of old and new people to talk to. Its great. Only drawback now is patchy wireless and that the dinner is three hours away…

Day 2

Yesterdays dinner was held on the top of a mountain unfortunately it was dark so there was no view. Dinner was nice – lots of people to talk to. Eventually the bus took us back to the hotel.

Today begins with a workshop on the fellowship smart card (which is used to handle the GPG encryption keys) by Werner Koch.

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Denying Censorship

Georg Greve of the Free Software Foundation Europe is present at the Internet Governance Forum in Athens and he posts daily reports. On the second day of the forum the discussions turned to openness â?? a topic which many states that censor Internet traffic may find embarrassing.

So it was natural to expect hostile reactions towards countries which have a well documented history of Internet censorship. One way of dealing with bad news is simply to deny everything which Mr Yang Xiokun of the Chinese mission in Geneva did.
He stated that China has no access restrictions â?? at all.

Here is Georg Greve report of the exchange:

NIK GOWING:  Could I — may I ask you a question?  How would you define, for those who are not familiar with your government’s policy and the detail of it, what is the principle on restrictions of openness in China?

YANG XIAOKUN:  We do not have restriction at all.

Lets not forget that China is not alone in censoring the Internet. Organisations like the Reporters without Borders publish a list of â??15 Enemies of the Internetâ?? and many (most? all?) enlightened (?) European/Western countries intimidate, censor or limit access to information through alternative means – but at the same time it is almost impressive to be able to deny everything.

For more information about China and Internet censorship read the Open Net Initiative report on Internet Censorship in China between 2004-2005.

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Software Eco-Systems

Say ecosystem* and most of us will think of something delicate and finely balanced. We have been taught to understand that the environment is made up of systems which hang together and that disturbances in one part will created unintended and in our experience sad consequences.

Say Microsoft, Adobe or General Motors and we tend to think of corporate bohemoths hardly the delicate flowers in need of protection, but more often a cause of some destruction within their particular ecosystem.

A letter (pdf here) to the European Commission has recently come to light (it was leaked). The letter shows the extent which the anti-Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) lobby is prepared to go in order to maintain control of their dominant business model for the production of software.

The letter was sent in response to a recent EU report on the role of open-source software in the European economy. The letter warns of against encouraging the FOSS movement. The letter states that the actions taken by the European Commission could “disrupt the entire software eco-system” and the report itself was biased and looked “more like a marketing document than a serious survey”.

The letter comes from The Initiative for Software Choice (ISC). A name which inspires one to think of openness and freedom. Yet the group is a lobby group funded by proprietary software manufacturers – this, in itself, may be seen as a contradiction in terms.
According to Techworld the ISC was created to oppose government efforts to give preference to open-source or open standards-based systems. According to critics such as Bruce Perens, the ISC largely pursues a pro-Microsoft agenda, though the group itself emphasises that it has more than 300 members.

The letter is full of artful uses of language and leaves the unsuspecting reader with an impression that the writer is concerned about the welfare of the European Union and its development. At the same time the message is hammered home – with the subtly of a rhino with a headache – do not change anything. The system works as it is.

Naturally the concerns of the manufacturers of proprietary software should and must be taken into consideration but this letter is a masterful peice of dubbletalk and rhetoric (in the worst way).

Read the letter and LEARN from it.

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* An ecosystem refers to the collection of components and processes that comprise, and govern the behavior of, some defined subset of the biosphere. The term is generally understood to refer to all biotic and abiotic components, and their interactions with each other, in some defined area, with no conceptual restrictions on how large or small that area can be. To many, ecosystems, like any other system, are governed by the rules of systems science and cybernetics, as applied specifically to collections of organisms and relevant abiotic components. To others, ecosystems are primarily governed by stochastic events, the reactions they provoke on non-living materials and the corresponding responses by organisms. (Wikipedia)

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