We hope this document provides a good reference and summary of what happened on the day and as always welcome comments and feedback.

Planning for FOTE10 is already underway and we hope to put on another great conference. If you want to get in touch about speaking at this year’s event, have a topic in mind we should shed some light on or want to get involved as a sponsor please email us and we will be in touch.

Best wishes

Tim & Frank

Additionally, we are currently thinking of ways that we can continue to add value leading up to the next conference and keep the dialogue around the future of technology in education progressing. Information will be available soon, so watch this space…

Tim Marshall

We have invited Tim Marshall, CEO at JANET(UK), to chair the cloud computing panel. Tim started life in data processing as an computer operator and programmer at Cranfield and then the Open University. He moved into TV, becoming Head of Events and Assistant Head of Sports and Events Group at the BBC. Following the BBC he became Senior Vice-President and MD of Buena Vista Productions at Walt Disney, where he was responsible for all international production of TV including a wide variety of educational, factual and fiction content.

He thinks that “Cloud computing stands little chance of gaining traction where senior management is paranoid of their data residing outside the perimeter fence of their organisation.”

Martin King

But security of data is not the only question when it comes to cloud computing. We collected a few questions for our panel on Twitter – and you can still submit your question, simply hashtag #fote09cc and fire away – and the common themes so far are: security, data protection, effect on choice and de-skilling in the educational sector.

On our pro cloud computing ‘team’ we will have Martin King, Head of IT at Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College (EHWLC) who sees cloud computing “as naturally emergent at this time, from cultural – technical developments such as mobility, social media and consumer IT”.

He will be joined by Miles Metcalfe, Head of IT Research & Development at Ravensbourne, whose buzz word compliant ‘Campus of the Future‘ presentation at FOTE08 was as entertaining as it was thought provoking.

Miles Metcalfe

Despite Miles thinking of “cloud computing as an unhelpful marketing term that is hard to pin down and of limited use for thinking about IT Strategy” he believes there are “is confluence of important (and potentially ‘game-changing’) trends in computing.”

Not too convinced by cloud computing and its rosy promises of a better future for everyone are Andrew Charlesworth, Director of the Centre of Law and IT at University of Bristol and Jason Kneen, Director at The Escape, a digital agency in Hampshire.

Andrew Charlesworth

Andrew believes “you should always look gift horses in the mouth and be aware of geeks baring gifts because there are legal implications to be considered.”

He has undertaken research and consultancy in legal issues arising from a range of subjects such as institutional repositories, e-Portfolios and VLEs to name a few and recently added cloud computing to that list.

Jason, a devoted father and husband, who – like some of us – spends to much time on Twitter would be lost without his iPhone, has more practical concerns which I believe us Londoners tend to overlook.

Jason Kneen

“I’m not against cloud computing as a concept. I just don’t see how it can be a considered a viable option when we still don’t have a reliable, high-speed network that is required to properly support it.”

FOTE09 in Second Life

We teamed up with Virtually-Linked, a Second Life solutions provider and consultant who have worked with Daily Mail and General Trust, The Telegraph and London Metropolitan University.  They will help us stream the event live into the virtual world, where you can immerse yourself inside a virtual replica of the Royal Geographic Society theatre and follow all the presentations.

This is a great chance for everyone who couldn’t make it, be it because of ticket availability, work commitments or geographical location.  But following the conference in SL – I’m keeping up with the acronyms – doesn’t keep you from actively joining the debate.  You will be able to submit questions to the speakers after each block of presentations as well as taking part in on our virtual worlds and cloud computing panel discussions.

But let’s get to the nitty gritty how-to part of following FOTE09 in Second Life.  Thanks to Deborah at Virtually-Linked for helping me out with this.  You will need to sign up to Second Life – that can be done directly through the Virtually-Linked web site. (Please do this before the event, as you will need to download the software that enables you to use Second Life).

• Go to the Virtually-Linked website
• When you register through Virtually-Linked, you will automatically create a default avatar. Important: make a note of the SL first and last name you’ve chosen
  
• Download the Second Life Browser
• You will need to login before 9.00am on Friday October 2nd, however it will be useful to have a trial run beforehand.
• You will arrive in “Hyde Park” from where you can teleport to the virtual FOTE09 theatre
  
• Use your mouse to click on the doors – this will take you inside the theatre
• When inside the theatre, use the direction keys on your keyboard to move around
• Please select a seat by clicking on it with your left mouse button
• To see the live streamed video, click on the arrow next to the video icon on the bottom menu to the right hand side of the screen
• If you have difficulty, please contact Debs at Virtually Linked

I had a trial with this last night and it’s all pretty straight forward. My only problem was not writing down my usernames (you need to enter a SL first and last name) and password, as I was expecting an email with my login credentials.

Apart from that it all worked very well and it will be interesting to see if FOTE09 will be as successful in the virtual world as it has been in the real one.

I’m looking forward to sharing our experience of using Google Apps Education Edition at Leeds Met. On a broader note, the cloud and its impact on Leeds Met and the wider educational sector are starting to come on to our agenda.

There’s a feeling that the cloud could be as disruptive (positive and negative) as the original PC was. We realise that we need to be developing our understanding of the risks and opportunities that will present themselves, and considering how we can respond through changes to structures, skills, processes and technologies within Leeds Met and across the educational sector.

We are already seeing internal business functions trialling SaaS for non-critical niche applications. Like a PC it can superficially be very easy to purchase and engage with – and often at a price and speed of engagement that the IT Department cannot match.Trying to stop this is unlikely to be as fruitful, so how should we best respond ?

Perhaps the function of the IT Department will change from service provider to service broker / accreditor. We can undertake due diligence on cloud infrastructure, platform and service providers, almost providing a stamp of approval for those providers that meet our criteria – with the carrot that we will support interfaces to these services. An exciting challenge for sure !

What is UC ? – Unified Communications technology provides business-class IP telephony combined with presence, instant messaging, video calling and remote shared desktop.

Institutions utilise a single comms infrastructure for data & voice, which means there is no need for a premises-based PBX. An institutions existing JANET Connection is simply used which negates the need for costly ISDN lines.

Available with softphones or physical handsets, hassle-free Institution administration (no special telecoms or vendor skills required, easy ‘moves, adds and changes’) and pay-as-you-use cost inclusive of 24 x 7 x 365 Support, UC makes for a user friendly and cost effective telephony solution.

Additionally, UC provides reliable communications continuity in the event of site disasters and area incidents. Reductions in an institutions carbon footprint can also be significant.

To learn more, chat to Anton Murphy on the Intechnology stand at FOTE09, and in the meantime, listen to our Audio Podcast: “IP Telephony – Coming of Age” at: http://www.intechnology.co.uk/MainPage.aspx?ID=357

Harold Fricker

This year’s conference features two for/against panel sessions discussing virtual worlds and cloud computing.

Chairing the virtual world panel will be Harold Fricker, a past speaker at FOTE08, eLearning Adviser for HE with the JISC RSC South East and Innovator, Entrepreneur, Broker and Train Spotter with a can-do attitude.

The question Harold will be discussing with our panelist is: “Are Virtual Worlds a legitimate vehicle for learning and teaching?”  There has been some chatter already on Twitter, search for #fote09vw to catch up with the latest developments.

Pauline Randall

David & Corro

Fighting the virtual worlds corner will be Pauline Randall, Managing Director of virtual-e Ltd and past speaker at FOTE08.  Pauline is a listed Second Life Solution Provider and has carried out virtual world developments for several organisations including a market research company in Florida, the Wales Museums and Libraries (CyMAL) and Imperial College London and on-going projects for Ashridge Business School and the University of Hawaii.

Joining her in the defense of virtual worlds is David Burden, who founded Daden, a Virtual Worlds and Virtual Character Consultancy in 2004 to help businesses and organisations explore the social, educational and commercial potential of virtual worlds.  David has a keen interest in artificial intelligence and Daden have an AI platform for use both in SL and on the web.

Dr Alan J Cann

Questioning the use and purpose of virtual worlds is Dr Alan J. Cann, a senior lecturer at the University of Leicester. Alan certainly threw down the gauntlet with his recent blog post “Virtually Useless” in which he counts the reasons why he hates Second Life and leaves no doubt about which side of the fence he’s standing on.

It seems Harold will have his work cut out, but he’s up for the challenge.

“I’ve primed the panelists to fight their corner and address pedagogical outcomes. Don’t miss the skirmish! This debate is not for the faint-hearted. Please do not try this at home!”

This promises to be a great debate and if you have any further questions our panelist should answer, please tweet them with the #fote09vw hashtag to us @FOTiE.

Follow the panel members Harold, Pauline, Alan on Twitter

Which collaboration tools do you currently use?

A recent ULCC survey (Collaboration & Cloud Computing in Education, 2009) showed that 95% of educational institutions rely on e-mail for collaboration.  Ouch.  So what’s wrong with this?  Well, for a start nobody enjoys receiving large file attachments in their e-mail inbox, it’s a sure-fire way to make yourself unpopular with anyone working remotely and having to download the file you just sent them.  And once you’ve sent a file to several people for them to contribute to or review, you’ve lost all control.

How do you check that the recipients have actually looked at the file, or track their responses?  Tracking responses via e-mail can be a real headache, especially if you need contributions from several people.  Scrolling through your in-box and chasing people to meet deadlines you’ve set is time consuming and inefficient.

Then there’s the issue of ensuring everyone is working off the same version of a document.  There’s nothing more frustrating than making amendments to a document only to realise you’re working on an old version.  Or worse still, assuming it is the final version and using it when it contains out of date and inaccurate information; in e-research this is particularly critical.

So, how does Huddle fit in?  Well, using an online collaboration tool makes sense for lots of reasons.  Many users use e-mail for document collaboration because that’s all they have and they know how to use it.  But just because it’s there, doesn’t mean it’s going to be good!  Online document collaboration works.  It allows people to access files anytime, anywhere and on any device. It gives control back to teams so they can ensure everyone is only ever working off the same version of the document.  It allows users to assign approvals to team members so they can be sure that everyone that needs to sign a document off before it’s finalised does so.

Of course there are other online collaboration tools out there besides Huddle.  But remember, we’re sponsoring the drinks reception at FOTE09, we’re UK based and jolly nice people.

For anyone who doesn’t know Huddle, you soon will!  Huddle is a UK based start-up that does online collaboration.  We’re winning accolades from all quarters and tipped to be ‘the next Google’ by Business Week magazine.  We’re doubling the number of users we have every four months.  And since May 2009, we’ve had a dedicated resource (that would be me!) focussed on the education sector.  A web 2.0 company with specific focus on education – great!

At FOTE09, we’ll be talking about how educational institutions use Web 2.0 technologies.  Come and talk to us and if you can’t make the event, then we’re holding a webinar so you can learn more about Huddle on Monday 12th October 2009 at 3pm.  Please e-mail me if you would like to join this and we’ll send you joining instructions.


Pauline Yau, Sales Manager Education & Charities, Huddle.net

Follow Pauline on Twitter: @pollyy

Find out more about Huddle.net

I was intrigued, so I had a poke around. It didn’t look like a vibrant healthy community to me. The most popular featured videos had all been added over a year ago and there was nothing at all within the last 30 days. I then played a few clips. Each video started with a banner “Attention! The Soapbox service will be discontinued as of 31st August 2009!”.

No surprise then that Community Clips has the aura of a ghost town. Soapbox launched in 2006 as Microsoft’s equivalent to YouTube, and it powered Community Clips. On July 21 2009, MS announced the demise of Soapbox, and on 31st August it will vanish.

A sad story, but despite many such examples I’m sure that collaborative, social Web 2.0 services are here to stay. I expect the audience for this blog will agree with me, but many people within HE remain unconvinced by Web 2.0. If asked I point them at Facebook. Some thought (still think?) it is a passing fad. The hype may have peaked, but at Bristol our student IT survey 2009 shows that more students are using it than in 2007.

Ah, they say, but we did that once. Our organisation tried a project with this social software thing, and it flopped. So it’s all a bit pointless isn’t it? Well no. Most social software experiments don’t work out. I’ve launched one or two of them myself (so long ResNet Chat!). Suw Charman-Anderson has a great piece explaining why most social software doesn’t work out, why this is the normal state of affairs, and not necessarily a problem.

For every success like Facebook, Flickr or Youtube there are another dozen similar ventures that flopped. Why do some fail and others succeed? If you can understand why then you have the best chance of stopping your service becoming another Soapbox.

This fell into place for me through reading Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirkey. Two examples Clay gives are Linux and Wikipedia, and he draws out three rules for social software: the plausible promise, the effective tool, and the acceptable bargain.

Linux and Wikipedia were both announced to a relevant mailing list of like-minded people who might well contribute. They were intruigued by what the project offered, it gave them a plausible promise – something they wanted, but wasn’t too ambitious.

Here is Linus’ original Linux announcement from 1991:

I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and
professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones.  This has been brewing
since april, and is starting to get ready.  I'd like any feedback on
things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat
(same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons)
among other things).

I've currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work.
This implies that I'll get something practical within a few months, and
I'd like to know what features most people would want.  Any suggestions
are welcome, but I won't promise I'll implement them  

So what’s the connection between this passion for our customers/new technologies and the FOTE conference? Well, in in brief, we wanted to join these two passions together in order to give something back to the community, and FOTE seemed like the ideal way to achieve this.