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Wednesday, October 31, 2012
It is estimated that getting on for half of all internet traffic is file sharing. Something like a quarter of a billion users in 2012 used BitTorrent technology (at any one time, this is more than YouTube and Facebook combined). So has this revolutionary technology, of connection not collection, also to hit the world of learning?
Disruptive network
The internet is actually a huge distribution network, with a clever failsafe structure. If one part of the network fails, the rest will get the data to its destination. This idea was developed as a protective device against possible nuclear attack. Of course, this structure also allowed file sharing and peer file sharing software to flourish, with massively disruptive consequences for the music, movie, TV and newspaper industry.
Digital genie
It was 1999, just as the dot-com bubble burst, when this new kid appeared on the block – peer-to-peer computing. And it was literally a new kid on the block, the 19 year old Shawn Fanning, who wrote a piece of file sharing software, for MP3 music files, in just three months that was to change the media world forever. It was an immediate success and campus bandwidth was eaten up as fast as it could be built. The digital genie was out of the bottle and it was an immediate threat to billion dollar media companies. Free shared music, and eventually films and other media were now available on the web.
File sharing wasn't entirely new. A few years earlier Ian Clarke, a University of Edinburgh research student, has written Freenet, a pure file exchange system, with no central repository (Napster had a central server for indexing and identification). The Seti project had been using shared processing power for some time. Napster, however, captured the headlines and imagination. It spawned hundreds of imitations. Gnutella released in 2000 was the first completely decentralised file sharing system, with no central server. Kazaa used supernodes to increase effectiveness. The BitTorrent protocol, written by Bram Cohen, was to take file sharing even higher, using a swarm of hosts to download and upload across networks.
Interestingly P2P services don't really rely on altruism. You contribute by simply participating. When you download a file, your files are exposed for download by others. Consumers become involuntary producers. This is not new. The telephone, like its predecessor the telegraph, used peer-to-peer systems. What is new is tha massive increase in productivity file sharing provides and viral distribution.
P2P and learning
When I saw Kevin Kelly speak about Napster at TechLearn in the US over ten years ago , we pitched an idea to the organisation responsible for innovation in Local Authorities, and built a P2P system for authoring and sharing learning content across the Local Authorities in England and Wales. Rather than develop a huge repository of content, we wanted to allow people to freely build and share content, using a Napster-like file sharing approach, with a central repository, for searching and identification of learning content. HTML, PowerPoint, PDF and Word files were tagged with mandatory and optional information and shared. The project ran for some time but was eventually sold and has gone back to a Moodle-based service run a private company delivering content to the public sector, who are still loyal to the principle of shared content. This is what happened in the Napsterisation of learning. The principle of free, shared content became embedded in the culture of learning, through Wikipedia and OER.
Democratisation, decentralisation and disintermediation of learning
Graham Brown martin argues that Naspster paved the way for Apple's iPhone and iPad and he's right, as it led to disintermediation in the music industry. Does this apply to the learning industry?
The Napsterisation of learning can be used literally, as the use of file sharing software to enable learning. In the wider sense it can be used to describe the democratisation of learning towards learners and away from reliance on middle-ground institutions, companies and teachers. Millions, daily, access Wikipedia, Google Scholar and dozens of other sources without the mediation of teachers or librarians. Decentralisation. away from centralised institutions, such as schools, colleges, universities, libraries, publishers and companies, down to actual learners, through web-based services has certainly occurred and is accelerating. But the real shift would disintermediation. Cutting out the middlemen, especially over-expensive institutions. There are signs that this is happening. Peter Thiel's description of HE as an over-inflated bubble has taken root. Content providers also have much to worry about, as their content is easily pirated.
It remains to be seen if the education and training world will be as deeply challenged and changed as the music or newspaper industry. It is certainly as vulnerable.
Napsterisation of content
Wikipedia has already Napsterised the encyclopedia business with a product that's bigger, better, faster and free. The whole canon of western literature is largely available free online from sites such as Project Gutenberg. TED, YouTube and other video services have disintermediated video companies. Open Education Resources grow in quantity and quality by the day.
Napsterisation of software and courses
Moodle has bitten deeply into the commercial VLE market and Totara is doing similar things in the corporate market. Why pay top dollar for an LMS or VLE when you can get one for free. Courses are unlikely to be file shared but MOOCs certainly promise to reduce the cost with their focus on online delivery and volume. Skillsoft and other courses are available on pirate sites if you look around. There is absolutely no doubt that this is rife in Asia and China.
Napsterisation of eTextbooks
One example of this vulnerability is the rise of eBooks and eTextbooks, we have already seen signs of Napsterification of textbooks, which are often too expensive to buy, especially for learners in developing countries. There is now a large number of file sharing sites that had got round the DRM and other restrictions that eBook publishers use. This is one of the reasons educational publishers have been reluctant to enter the eBook market. We may yet see the Napsterification of learning in this market.
Publishers have learned (maybe not) from the music industry and come down hard on eBook file sharing sites. Library.nu and ifile.it (based in Ireland) had distributed hundreds of thousands of eBooks before being shut down, making millions from advertising and donations. This year (2012) seventeen publishers across seven countries issued legal action against a rack of eBook file sharing sites, but as soon as one closes another crop pops up. This is likely to continue.
The technology of Napster and BitTorrent file sharing has had some effect on learning. However, it has had a profound effect on the way media files are shared and, as a consequence, attitudes and behaviours on the web. It's specific technical influence on learning has been confined to e few isolated projects and lots of eBook file sharing sites, but the Napsterisation of learning in the conceptual sense, where learners do it for themselves and disintermediate teachers and institutions has been profound.
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Twitter: in learning less is more
In the psychology of learning 'less is more'. The learning industry, education and training, is plagued by overlong manuals, powerpoints, papers, books, talks and lectures. Cognitive overload is the norm, forgetting and failure the consequence. This, I suspect, is why twitter is so damn popular. It's short and sweet.
If the internet has taught learning professionals anything, it's the fact that most of what we do is unnaturally long-winded. In all media, the internet has acted like a massive experiment, where real people have shown their preference for information in shorter pieces. Why - because that's how real human communication and learning works. If you sat down next to someone in a plane, asked them a question, and they replied with a 50 minute lecture, no matter how knowledgeable they were, you'd want to strangle them. So the internet has spawned media such as Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, Wikis and YouTube, all of which have brevity as a virtue. And none are as brief as Twitter.
Who would have thought?
Who would have predicted the rise of a social networking site based on short 140 character posts? People were, and many still are, baffled by the success and popularity of Twitter. Yet it was really a confluence of two already successful technologies, txting and posting on social media. It combined 160 character txting (shaving 20 characters off) with the continuous posting flow of social networking (followers as friends). You follow people you respect and they follow you. More promiscuous than Facebook or blogging, it's like having lots of small encounters with people from all over the country or world on a daily basis. So what use is it in learning?
Twitter and learning
Twitter can be used at a number of levels in learning; personal, at events, within formal classes/courses and inside organisations. Its use as a networking and knowledge sharing tool for learning professionals is clear, as is its virtual expansion of events such as conferences, where the backchannel enhances the event for attendees and non-attendees. However, it is not at all clear that it is useful as a structured learning tool in schools and classrooms, where the effort taken to plan and execute Twitter-based learning experiences are often forced, a little artificial even shallow. However, even here, it is early days and things may emerge that prove useful.
Twitter and professional network
As Twitter use has exploded so has its adoption by academics and experts in all sorts of fields. Following experts gives you all sorts of useful ideas and links for research and assignments. In this context, tweets often have links to deeper content that allow you to connect things and deepen your knowledge and exploration. These links often lead to blog posts, articles, papers and events. It is often forgotten that twitter signposts up and coming events in the real world. Sometimes they signpost conferences, lectures, talks that are happening at that moment. Indeed, most tweets from learning professionals point towards something interesting they've found. In this sense, Twitter is like a recommendation engine, supplying you with contemporary ideas on your subject or profession.
Twitter as backchannel
At a major educational conference I attended in Doha, Qatar, a huge slide went up asking all delegates to switch off their mobile devices. We took a photo of the slide and tweeted it (tweetpic), saying "don't be stupid, the sign should say the opposite". The next day the chair confirmed that we were right. A Twitter backchannel is a virtual extension of a real event and allows participants, both at the event and beyond, to observe, communicate and share ideas. It greatly enhances the event and can be fed back into the live event, either on a screen or as questions for speakers, discussion etc.
A hashtag (#) is a collective link that collects tweets around a specific event. Many find it useful to tune into a hashtag to get the gist of a talk, key concepts, quotes and comments, without having to attend the conference. Tweeting pictures can also be useful, especially key or summary slides in presentations. Given the 140 character restriction, this is a way to get more detailed information across. We all know that talks and lectures are padded out, so this can be a useful way of getting the crystalised thoughts of the speaker.
Beyond this many tweet points of agreement and disagreement, so that critical thought and discussion becomes part of the experience. This can develop into short dialogue using Reply function). Hashtags can also be used for questions to speakers, lecturers and teachers. I've answered tweeted questions during, at the end and after talks. This widens the opportunity for questions to those beyond the room, as well as allowing more introverted attendees to ask questions. Some make such Tweets visible on a big screen which encourages self-moderation and gets the debate out on the floor.
So, going back to my Doha example, announce your hashtag at the start of a conference or event (It is amazing how rare this is) or several may arise, causing confusion. Then encourage tweeting. They are honest and provide a blow-by-blow account of the event. People also Tweet at the end of a conference which is also useful. So why not harvest these instead or as a useful, evaluative supplement or replacement to your happy sheets. My guess is that the tweets would be far more detailed and useful.
Twitter & courses/classes
Lots of teachers/lecturers/trainers have used Twitter to enthuse learners. Some, have students Tweet as characters, fictional and historic. The discipline of 140 characters teaches you to construct concise and sharp sentences. In language learning Tweeting short sentences can get students going in the actual use of a language. Following famous people who Tweet in the language you're learning gives you a steady stream of relevant and realistic comments to try to translate. Or you can follow people directly and tweet in your target language. Pass the Tweet is a creative game where one person comes up with the title, the next the opening sentence and so on around the class, good fun, highly creative and a great writing task. You can go one step further and set up an account for your class. I've also seen teachers open up their class to outside Tweeters, by inviting tweets from the outside. Twitter chats are pre-defined periods where a question is posed and the contributors tweet answers in reply. This can be used to connect students within a class, across different classes, schools, even countries. Trips are always more interesting when photographs and comments are made along the way. So, on trips to museums, art galleries and especially journeys and field trips, encourage tweeting from mobiles.
Twitter & workplace learning
Whether it's a project, initiative, launch or change management problem, lots of organisational activities will benefit from being tweeted, if only to keep people informed but also for inviting suggestions and feedback.
https://www.yammer.com/ is a Twitter clone that you can use privately, within a company or organisation to access experts, ask questions, organise events, poll or private message. Benefits reported a dramatic reduction in email and increased productivity.
One could also argue, that it's often introduced as a bit of a gimmick and wastes more time than it saves. Twitter's strength is its almost organic growth and use. As soon as it starts to be used in a formal classroom or training context it can seem a little forced or fake. Its strength is as an informal personal learning tool or as a backchannel at events. As a formal learning tool it's unproven.
Twitter can also be a distraction among learners leading to rude tweckling (heckling using Twitter) and inattention. Your Twitter stream can be flooded with automated feeds from your other social media. You also have the problem of inclusion, namely two groups, one Tweeting, the other having no idea what's happening on Twitter. It can also be more impressionistic and less coherent, than say a blog post about a talk or conference, with poor searchability.
Twitter has been boosted by the rise in mobile, social networking. This has taken it into cafes, onto trains and into conferences, lectures and classrooms. At first sight, Twitter seems an unpromising candidate for learning. Yet once we grasp its fit with the psychology of learning, its multiplicity of uses and popularity, it seems entirely relevant, as long as we don't force it into inappropriate formal contexts.
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Blogs: vastly underused teaching and learning tool
You're reading this on a blog. As a blogger since 2006, I can only say that it has been one of the most important learning experiences in my life. I don't go on courses or attend an educational institution but I do write blog pieces and read oodles of stuff on other blogs.
For me, a blog is more than a diary. It is a place for honest expression, a bit of reflection, and some sharing and collaboration. You learn from putting yourself to the test, by writing a piece that is readable by others, but also benefit from the comments that come back, challenging or supporting your view. A blog is an invitation for dialogue. So what's its contribution to learning?
Blogs benefits
As a learning experience the benefits are clear. The act of writing forces you to précis your thoughts, reflect on experiences and come to some conclusions. The problem with much education and training is that written analysis is either too short (multiple choice or word/phrase answers) or too long (long-form essays in higher education). Blogs provide a far more useful format. A blog post shouldn't be too short or too long. Some topics require no more than a paragraph or two, others a more considered couple of pages of detailed argument. Like good journalism blogs should be concise and compelling. Blogs force you to be concise but substantial. They are a useful alternative to essays in schools and Universities. Blogs reinforce learning, increase writing and communications skills and (often forgotten) increases retention. They build confidence, self-expression and autonomous learning. Even the shyest students can find a voice.
Blogs and memory
Another great advantage of regular blogging is that the act of writing a clear post involves deep processing in memory that results in better retention. I have a much better memory for the topics, exhibitions, books, films, events and journeys I've blogged. The very act of blogging not only boosts memory but acts as an aide memoire. I often go back to my blog posts when I have to give a talk or need to respond to a query on a specific topic.
Blogs and sharing
It is important to remember that blogging is an open invitation to converse with others on a topic. In some cases, such as my critical posts on NLP, I've had acerbic, personal attacks. It's all good and I rather like the idea that the blogosphere is a bit rough and tumble. More importantly, I've often had good examples, new perspectives and arguments I hadn't considered before.
Blog and 'voice'
Good blogs have a 'voice'. In fact blogging allows you to find your voice. The best blogs are written by those who do it for themselves and find in themselves the joy of writing. I am so glad I've blogged for all these years as I feel I've produced material that would have been lost to my mind and memory. As you can probably guess I'm not a fan of blogs from organisations – no real voice and too much direct marketing for my taste.
Teacher blogs
The admirable Millie Watts, the social networking teacher, had a blog 'What I taught this week'. This was obviously useful for her students. Most teachers leave no trace at all of their lessons, yet we know with absolute certainty that learners need repeated access to knowledge to learn. A teacher's blog can summarise what was covered in lessons, included media content such as diagrams, photographs and video. It can also link to useful external resources. As a resources for learners who may have found the lesson to difficult, were off ill, have English as a second language it can be a useful safety net. In doing homework or revision, it is a useful resource for all.
In many ways it is almost odd that a teacher, lecturer, trainer, instructor does not blog. They are in the business of imparting knowledge and this is a simple way to do precisely that, and it's easy to use and free!
Similar arguments apply to leaders and senior managers in organisations. Many CEOs and other senior managers and experts within organisations blog. This humanises the organisation, gives people a voice and a chance for others in the organisation to get to know that person better.
Convincing teachers can come through arguments for deep learning, reflection and retention.
Convincing teachers can come through arguments for deep learning, reflection and retention.
Learner blogs
Benefits of blogs for learners include summarising their experience and better retention. Useful notes for revision are also created for reinforcement and revision. The blog format not only improves writing and communication skills, it is a powerful form of preparation for exams that demand reflection and good written answers. It can also be used as a form of peer-to-peer learning, where other learners are encouraged to comment on each other's posts. This can be left open or done formally.
David Mitchel is a huge evangelist for pupil blogging. He didn't set one piece of homework all year, yet his pupils worked producing 70,000 words+ on their blogs from home. His primary school has also shown measurable improvements in writing skills. Millie Watts encouraged her students to write 'What I learned this week' blogs. Blogs encourage students to write the right way, not over-long essays but short, sharp pieces that communicates ideas. Get them to blog for a specific target audience. Oh and don't call blogging homework, a hideous word that turns it into a chore.Blogs and assessment
A learner blog gives a running account of what the learner is learning. It acts as a form of continuous formative assessment. There is an argument for replacing the drudgery of homework with learner generated blogs that force the learner to reflect on what they've learned. There's a degree of honesty and substance in a learner blogs that one is unlikely to find in formal testing.
Informal blogs
There are millions of bloggers who have been energised to blog on almost every imaginable subject. The blogosphere has, in effect, become a source of knowledge sharing in all professions and all subjects. No matter what subject interests you, enthusiasts are no longer tied to the narrow-cast journals or trade magazines. The blogosphere is a rolling wave of knowledge leaving a useful archive in its wake. For me it is perhaps the most tangible evidence for the health of informal, lifelong learning.
Blogs and politics
At another level, that of political engagement, blogs have played a significant role, not only in stable democracies but perhaps more relevantly in repressive regimes and most notably in the Arab Spring. Bloggers have written about corruption, presented alternatives and galvanised people around causes and real events. To be absolutely clear here, for some naive commentators have dismissed this activity, bloggers have been murdered, imprisoned, tortured and harassed in many countries.
Blogs and publishing
Finally, it has to be recognised that the blogosphere is a publishing medium in its own right, as well as a source for authors, columnists and journalists who can emerge in a meritocratic fashion, to publish their own work. Entire works of fiction and non-fiction were blogs or have emerged from blogs.
Blogs are a potent and vastly underused teaching and learning tool. The habit of regular writing as a method of reflection, synthesis, argument and reinforcement is suited to the learning process. Blogs encourage bolder, independent, critical thinking, as opposed to mere note taking. For teachers they crystallise and amplify what you have to teach. For learners, they force you to really learn. A last word for those bloggers who have been jailed, flogged and killed, maybe we owe it to them to do this.
Saturday, October 27, 2012
Do the maths: 7 reasons why the obsession with maths doesn't add up
FAIL 1 Numeracy not maths
There is persistent exaggeration in the size of the so-called maths problem. This is caused by people shooting arrows, drawing a chalk circle around the arrow and calling it a bulls eye. Typical is the recently formed National Numeracy charity, which claims we have 17 million (nearly half the working population) with poor numeracy. They do this by relying on one 'survey' and conflating numeracy with maths, as their definitions are based on GCSE achievement.
This exaggeration is endemic and a simple failure in statistics. The actual needs in the real world match what we call 'functional maths': basic numeracy, use of a calculator, some understanding of statistics etc. This is not congruent with what is actually taught in GCSE maths. If they were represented as sets there would be a small overlap. When employers talk about poor maths, they are largely talking about poor numeracy. These are two different things. In fact, almost invariably people conflate and confuse maths with numeracy (or functional maths). A simple Venn diagram is all that's needed to make this clear.
FAIL 2 Most maths quantifiably irrelevant
What's the quadratic equation? What's a surd? When was the last time you divided two fractions? When did you last use algebra? Ask a large audience these questions, as I often do, and you'll be lucky to get one or two hands raised. The recent report into the teaching of maths confirmed, yet again, that the curriculum is largely irrelevant to most students, as they are unlikely to use much of it in later life. They rightly recommend a new qualification in functional maths. If taught GCSE maths were a pie chart, most of it will not be used in later life. In any case, if we do need the more complex stuff, we can learn it later. Do the maths. It doesn't add up.
FAIL 3 Maths is easy to test
Rather than test what really matters in problem solving and real life, we've stuck to a lazy and often irrelevant method of testing that puts maths at the top of the tree. Why because it's easy to test. Maths problems have single solutions and are therefore easy to test. Actually they don't and this is why a real understanding of maths is difficult to test. Nevertheless, problems, largely of calculation, are perceived as being a good test of one's ability in a general sense. This is nonsense. Maths problems are rarely realistic. Nobody goes around using maths to share marbles, split up pizzas, share out cakes at parties or dilute orange juice. There is a critical failure to 'bridge' between the real world and its representation in mathematical language. But in an age of perpetual testing, maths is an easy, read lazy, option.
Fail 4 Maths a transferable skill
If knowing maths teaches you to think clearly, how come the world has been plunged into a financial crisis by people who are good at maths but couldn't see the problems they were causing. The answer to this problem was identified by Thorndike over a century ago. 'Transfer', the degree to which learning transfers to actual performance in the real world is still a largely misunderstood or ignored issue in education. Learning is largely (not always) a means to an end, namely the application of that knowledge or skills, yet few educators know or care much about transfer. They assume it exists where it doesn't (for example in maths and Latin) and make little effort to make sure it happens. Thorndike showed that transfer depends on the similarity of the situations or domains. This principle of 'identical elements' led him to recommend problem solving and practice in real-world contexts, so that the learning tasks and context matched the real world. Has this lesson been leant in the teaching of maths, or Latin? No.
FAIL 5 Calculators calculate
Almost everyone has a calculator in their pocket, as it's a native app on almost every mobile phone and computer. Yet we insist on teaching people how to 'calculate' as opposed to useful, functional numeracy. Experts, like Wolfram and others, have pointed to the crude culture of 'calculation' in school maths, at the expense of real, functional and conceptual maths. Richard Norris has shown that maths in the workplace is intimately tied up with computers, spreadsheets and others forms of software. Yet maths and ICT are treated as two separate subjects. Isolating 'maths' in this way presents it as a purely abstract and often irrelevant subject.
FAIL 6 Miscalculation on teachers
Statistically, your child was, is or will be, almost certainly taught by someone whose knowledge of maths is rather poor. We know, with mathematical certainty, that primary school teachers have poor maths skills. The recommendation of the recent Government report into Maths teaching is a minimum B pass in GCSE before you're allowed to teach the subject. This sounds like a bad joke until you realise that our children are being taught by largely primary school teachers with an absurdly low competence in maths. It claims that, "Almost all of those on primary PGCE courses gave up studying mathematics at age 16. So, by the time they taught their first classes, they had not studied mathematics to any meaningful level for at least six years." Only about 2% of primary school teachers have a degree in science or any STEM subject. Another shocker is the fact that in secondary schools, "24% of all children in secondary schools are not taught by specialist mathematics teachers". Read that again. Most maths is not taught by maths teachers or even by teachers with a solid grasp of the subject.
FAIL 7 PISA 'standards'
The PISA results show plummeting performance in maths by our young people. The Chinese have screamed to the top. We'll be an economy the equivalent of Bangladesh in a few years if we don't get our maths scores up. None of these sentences are true, yet the leaning tower of PISA, many claim, show a badly built edifice with weak foundations that will eventually topple. This is all baloney. A more detailed analysis of why PISA is wrong.
This is a common mathematical problem among politicians, employers, even so called experts in education. Our performance has remained stable. There is no 'drop' in standards. If you construct a league table, you can, mathematically, rise and fall in that table while remaining the same in terms of competence. That's the problem with league tables – they create the illusion of winners and losers.
Gove is an English graduate with scant knowledge of maths and science. I know because I challenged him on a shared platform at the Tory Party Conference in Blackpool when he claimed that all schoolchildren should know that the orbit of an electron relies on the same force as the orbit of the planets around the sun! There were guffaws from the audience, so I suggested he needed a new example as the forces at work here couldn't be more different (true story). He went apeshit but he was still hopelessly wrong. His EBacc has all the hallmarks of a PISA-led curriculum, far too academic, and exclusive. His greatest crime is to have moved the goalposts after goals have been scored. If you change the goalposts so dramatically and quickly, you simply condemn 85% of students as failures (only 15% currently meet the Ebacc standard). What's worse, Gove is applying the measure retrospectively. This is like moving the goalposts at the end of the game and disallowing goals scored. It's madness. Do the maths. You can have schools with high achievement in Maths and English plummet down the new league tables from near the top to near the bottom, as they haven't focused on humanities or languages. One weird consequence is that a student who does Latin and Ancient History will be judged above those who do Business Studies, Engineering, psychology, a third science and lots of other subjects. It's worse than bad, it's perverse. I'm glad my kids are leaving secondary education, as it descends into this backward looking nonsense.
We don't actually live in a more mathematical world. We live in a world where most maths is done by calculators, computers and machines, or a relatively small number of experts. The vast majority of us need little actual maths, other than 'functional maths'. To funnel all young people into a path that demands a mostly irrelevant, maths curriculum is to turn them off school and learning. This obsession with maths may, mathematically, be the very things that lowers our general educational attainment.
Thursday, October 25, 2012
3D printers: gimmick or game changer? Next big thing or expensive way to produce lots of 'small, useless, plastic things'?
OK, if you have a spare grand or so for a 3D printer. Are they the 'next big thing' or merely an expensive way to produce lots of 'small, useless, plastic things'? Apart from adding considerably to planetary waste, what impact will 3D printers have in learning?
Not a game changer
Technology is unpredictable. When Gutenberg produced his 2D printing press it led to massive social and political changes, and a shift towards putting learning literally in the hands of learners. This was to drive a religious reformation, scientific revolution and a rich cultural life based around writing and reading. In education, books and text remain the mainstay in most subjects.
Could the 3D printing press have a similar result? Well no. Books had been around for 12 centuries in learning prior to being printed. Little plastic objects have also been around for a long time but are not used that much in learning. Sure, there will be some applications in learning but this may not be a game changer.
What's available?
Technology starts out expensive, experiments with formats, then prices plummet as the technology settles and becomes an affordable product. Laser printers, when invented 1969, were $20,0000but are now around 0.5% of that price, $100. This already happening with 3D printers. Sure, you can buy a $20,000 professional HP 3D printer but a $1200 3D printer is already available.
First came Cupcake and Thing-o-matic then Makerbot Replicator with a single or dual head so that two colours or two different materials can be used in one object. Repraps such as Prusa, Mendel, Darwin etc are hacker designed using open source. Ultimaker, originally a student Msc project in Holland is now a viable $1194 machine. Makerbot, has had $10m VC funding, and its Replicator2 comes in a box. The market is still young, with a wide price range, different types of technology, using different materials producing different levels of quality.
How do they work?
Depends. Some squirt molten plastic or resin from a nozzle in layer after layer as both a table and nozzle move in three dimensions. Others use powder, ceramics even metal. Formlab's laser plus resin is $3000 but resin is expensive $150 a litre, three times the price of plastic. Plastic around $50 per kilo but you can make hundreds of objects
Printers can print themselves
This is exaggerated, but it is true that some of these printers can print off some of their own components. The more they can print the cheaper they will be to replicate in other locales. More interesting is that the technology has benefited from the open source movement, in both software, hardware and the sharing of3D objects.
What do you do with them?
You can clone, create, prototype, share and replicate objects. Clone objects using a 3D scanner then print as many off as you wish. This has already happened in Metropolitan Museum of Art hackathon, where exhibits were scanned and cloned. Greek statuary from the British Museum has also been 3D printed. Create new objects, anything from new art to practical devices. Prototype objects, so that they can be refined, tested ergonomically and aesthetically, even presented to raise funds. Share objects, as they are all ultimately, relatively small packets of data, that can be shared, uploaded and download like any text, audio, image or video music file. Tens of thousands of 25000 objects can be downloaded from sites such as thingiverse.com and grabcad.com. Replicate objects on site or closer to their point of sale. Why ship objects when they can be manufactured on demand? It gives a whole new meaning to just-in-time production.
Long tail attached to one large beast?
This is a Chris Anderson, long-tail product that caters for all sorts of small batch, even one off objects for design development and actual delivery. This is interesting for a retailer, such as Amazon, where you can satisfy long tail demand in books. However, it's likely the Amazon model will prevail, namely domination by a major player. For example, a new factory was opened this year in New York, the Mayor opened it with a pair of 3D printed scissors. This factory will 3D print any object you want in whatever colours and numbers, prototypes or finished products. It prints 3D 50 industrial printers.
How can they be used in learning?
Isn't it odd, however, that we teach and learn people about the 3D world largely in 2D? Yes, but how often do you actually need a 3D object to learn or understand something?
Art & design
Museums are already using these printers to replicate some of their objects. The creative possibilities are endless, where students create forms and prototypes for sculptures, jewellery etc. It is likely to spawn new art in itself.
Archaeology in 3D is revolutionising the copying of bones of early. Louise Leakey's African fossils. But other rare objects such as cuneiform tablets, coins, almost anything we pull out of the ground can be replicated on demand.
Unfortunately, we in the UK have started with the rather cumbersome £6m research centre Engineering and Physics research Council, which says it is working with industry. What this lacks is real entrepreneurial push. However, it is clear that 3D design, prototyping and testing will benefit from this relatively cheap technology.
Maths & physics
Maths can be visualised, from simple geometric shapes, volumes, surface areas, intersections, to sophisticated topographies. In general it offers huge opportunities to teach maths using real maths problems with real object creation as the goal. This could surely add a welcome boost in motivation for students who fail to see the connection between abstract maths and real world applications. The physicality of the process has been shown to instil curiosity and understanding. Interesting paper on this.
In medicine, there are niche applications, such as anatomy, rare physiological conditions etc. However, it is likely that the real practice of medicine has more to gain than learning such as customised hearing aids, dental implants and so on.. Prosthetics can be created anywhere at anytime in remote places, customised legs, arms, hand etc. What's more, with a scan of your existing leg an exact mirror copy from the digital file can be created.
More ambitiously, Professor Lee Cronin at the University of Glasgow has been working on models downloadable chemistry sets that can make complex drugs. The3D printer created the chambers and tubes which you fill with the correct, commonly found ingredients, and out pops a drug.
Bioprinting uses bioink (cells) to build layer upon layer to create tissue. Ultimately it is hoped that entire organs, heart valves or bone implants could be created this way. In the short term a 3D printer could print skin cells directly on to a wound. Printed meat could also be used by pharmaceutical companies for testing, saving huge amounts of money.
The real world is in 3D (well maybe more but let's put esoteric maths and physics aside until 6D printers come along) yet science is taught in 2D, largely in print or from 2D PowerPoint presentations. Molecules in chemistry, organic forms in biology, planets and comets in astronomy the list is endless…..
You can even print your own flute! See this video. Other instruments are also possible.
Fun stuff
You can even print your own flute! See this video. Other instruments are also possible.
Fun stuff
The Cube is a Chinese 3D plug and play printer for kids/families which can produce small toys, such as figures, robots, dinosaurs etc. in many colours for $1299. You buy cartridges just like a normal printer. You can print off clothes and accessories, such a bikinis, plastic shoes and purses. Rather worryingly, you can create replica keys really easily and a 22 calibre handgun has already been created! I feel a film script coming on…
Serious stuff
This is exciting, 3D objects for the developing world. Water pumps, frames for eye glasses (which break more often than the lenses), replacement parts on vital machines, such as sewing machines etc. are all possible. The problem with poor and remote economies is that the cost of shipping is often prohibitively expensive. By simply shipping the software, objects can now be printed at the point of need.
Every educational institution could have a 3D printer that can create objects across the curriculum, on demand. STEM subjects are often the first port of call, but many other subjects can benefit, especially art and design. While it is true that the potential of a technology is often realised once people start to use it in anger, 3D printers are in danger of being the 'next big thing' when they are, in fact, just expensive machines that churn out 'lots of useless small things', more gimmick than game changer. Time will tell. What is clear is that 3D printing is a game changer in the real world outside of learning.
Thanks to Carlo at the wonderful International Centre of Theoretical Physics for his excellent recorded seminar on this topic that can be found here.
Thanks to Carlo at the wonderful International Centre of Theoretical Physics for his excellent recorded seminar on this topic that can be found here.
Monday, October 22, 2012
Values as 'crap acronyms'?
I was on a conference panel last week, when someone flaunted their 'values' approach to training. Now whenever values and training collide inside the 'round and round the table' Hadron collider of HR, the net result is usually a 'crap acronym'.
Bacronyms: values created to fit word
Chances are that some wag in HR or training has shoehorned some abstract nouns into a word that sounds vaguely positive, completely losing sight of the original intention. Are they telling me that their values 'just happened to fall into this acronym'? Actually, what happens is that at least some of the values emerge from the acronym.
How about this for banality from a Cheshire voluntary group: FLUID: Freedom 2 Love Ur Identity. Or another real example of a crap acronym: VALUE: This HR person went online as she could only think of Value Added….. and wanted others to fill it out! They did, and she was delighted with, Value Added Local, User friendly Experience. What a load of guff. When values are created to fit a word you want to say – shove your course….
Using middle, lower case letter in acronym
PEOPLE: Positive Spirit and Fun, HonEsty and Integrity, Opportunties Based on Merit, Putting the Team first, Lasting value for Clients and People, Excellence through Professionlism. One overlong, impossible to remember acronym with eleven nouns, and I love the way they have to use the 'E' in the middle of HonEsty to make it work! This, by the way, is from an HR consultancy.
AAAA (Association Against Acronym Abuse)
It's not that I don't like acronyms (Abbreviated Coded Rendition Of Name Yielding Meaning). They're great as memorable cues. For example, I rather like ABC (Airways, Breathing, Circulation) in first aid and the customer care acronym GREAT, as an aide memoire, where five simple things can be recalled on the job:
Greet all customers & make them feel comfortable
Respect cultural & other personal differences
Evaluate how your customers want to be served
Adjust your approach to match your customer's needs
Thank your customers for their business.
I also have a soft spot for funny acronyms, such as ALITALIA (Airplane Lands In Turin And Luggage In Ancona), BAAPS (British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeon) unbelievably a real organisation and DIMWIT (Don't Interrupt Me While I'm Talking).
…it's just that I'm a fully paid up member of AAAA, the Association Against Acronym Abuse.
This type of 'affective' training is delivered by sincere people who don't know the slightest thing about how people learn, so we get poor presentation-driven pedagogy. Values need to be believed and felt emotionally. You need pretty sophisticated experiential training, through scenarios or fist-person-thinker simulations to do this well. It can be done and one of the best I've seen was for Apple, which was seriously scenario-led.
Injecting values into an organisation is hard and most often fails. It failed in the banks (catastrophically), it failed with politicians (expenses, morals, snobbery etc.), it failed in journalism (watch Levinson). I have a confession, I've delivered a fair number of these programmes into banks and similar organisations. They're always the same, some fatuous acronym and values that stand no chance of widespread adoption through training. Why? You can't teach values from a flipchart of PowerPoint. The acronym is usually a flipchart and PowerPoint gimmick. A list of abstract nouns is not a list of values. People see through the artificiality of this stuff as it doesn't relate to them personally.
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Clickers: formative feedback key to better learning
Earlier, we saw how Victorian slates were used as whole class feedback devices, when students were asked to complete a writing task and hold the slates up in the air for perusal by the teacher. Clickers perform the same function electronically. It is a profoundly learner-centric piece of technology, which also happens to be an effective device for shaping teaching. They can be used for polling, whole class assessment, individual assessment, answering multiple choice questions, short answers, peer assessment even mood measurement.
Teacher feedback
Schools suffer from one major drawback, class size. Teaching is largely a one-to-many activity and it is difficult for even experienced teachers to know what is going on in the minds of so many students. Black & William claims that this feedback failure is a major problem in poor teaching. He recommends 'hinge' questions that allow teachers to assess whether what they've taught has hit home.
Clickers allow the teacher to poll students or ask key questions to get anonymous or identifiable feedback. This feedback is important as it allows the teacher to identify whether actual understanding is taking place, before moving on. Failure can be a destructive force in learning wen learners are exposed to embarrassment even ridicule.
Learner feedback
From the learners' perspective, this type of interaction is challenging and forces them; first, to raise attention; second, to reflect on the topic; third, assess themselves; fourth, see how the class as a whole is doing; fifth, get some help. Anonymity can be a virtue here.
Mazur – peer instruction
Eric Mazur, who teaches physics at Harvard has been using clickers to improve his teaching for many years. Rather than deliver long lectures, without interruption, he stops at key points and asks diagnostic questions. These questions tend to be natural language questions that really test the underlying principles of physics, rather than the application of formulas. If the histogram shows that many of the class have not understood the point, he arranges them into groups so that peer-to-peer learning can take place, asks the question again, then moves on. The data he's gathered suggests that this approach has led to significant increases in attainment and many universities have since adopted this approach. Note that it is the feedback process that is important. Mazur claims that coloured cards work just as well.
Mobile devices as clickers
Web-based response systems link teacher and students across the web and allow them all to set questions and see the results. Several systems now exist for using student mobile devices. These can be used to poll or answer like other clickers but SMS messages can also be sent giving another more detailed level of feedback. Forums can also be added that allow peer-to-peer comments and answers to questions. With the increasing availability of wi-fi, browser-based solutions are easy to access and use. These systems are obviously far superior to Bluetooth, infrared or radio frequency systems.
A dedicated hashtag (#)allows students to answer/comment, as people often do now in conference sessions or on courses. This can be used with closed systems such as Yammer.
This simple piece of technology is one of the few technologies that were designed to inject interactivity into the classroom, a one-to-many teaching environment. Its usefulness, proved by the likes of Eric Mazur, has meant further development across a range of technologies. Profoundly learner-centric, it provides a feedback loop that allows the teacher/lecturer to dynamically assess the effect of their teaching. Given the low cost, ease of use and pedagogic power of this simple piece of technology, it is a wonder that so much money has been spent on whiteboard technology, when audience response technology is available?
Tuesday, October 09, 2012
Calculators: Education stuck in pre-calculator age
Archaeological evidence for an abacus goes back to 5th century BC Greece, however, there is indirect evidence of their use in Mesopotamia, Egypt and Persia. It is still widely used in Asia. The humble electronic calculator was the first computer to impact teaching and learning. It quickly replaced mechanical slide rules and mechanical calculators in the 1970s. Calculators now include scientific, algebraic, trigonometric and graphing functions.
Education is still stuck in pre-calculator age
Everyone's miserable about maths: employers, politicians, teachers and especially learners, many who fail and hate the subject with a passion. Indeed, governments have become obsessed with the subject, largely on the hysteria surrounding the PISA rankings.
One issue that is receiving intense attention is 'calculation', which is kicking up a storm in maths education. The ubiquity of calculators has led some to question the way we teach maths in schools. They claim that the world has changed from analogue to digital and the teaching of maths needs to respond accordingly.
Some argue that calculators have led to a reduction in numeracy and maths skills. They recommend not using calculators in schools until a certain level of competence in mental arithmetic is reached. Others argue that the traditional focus on 'calculation' needs to be replaced by a more sophisticated curriculum of solving problems using maths. Why teach long division, when you are unlikely to ever use it in real life? Calculators can also be used to do the necessary calculation spadework on algebra, trigonometry and graphics.
Maths need exaggerated
Some, like Roger Schank, believe that the need to learn maths is grossly exaggerated as only a tiny proportion of adults will use the maths that is taught, beyond basic arithmetic. His point is that most of what is taught, especially algebra, is of no real practical use and does not help people to think logically. He often asks highly educated audiences to tell him the quadratic formula – few ever answer. Sure, some will need maths in their later career, so says Roger, let them learn it later. Roger has traced this obsession with maths back to early 19th century curriculum choices and claims that this is a historical problem, fuelled by the fact that maths is easy to test, especially 'calculation'
Too much calculation
Conrad Wolfram decries the focus on 'calculation' in school maths. We spend most of our time teaching calculations by hand, which any calculator and computer can do better than any human. Practical, mental arithmetic is fine, but what are these numeracy basics? Automation pushes the user towards using the tools in more sophisticated ways. Maths is not calculation and over the last thirty years calculation has been automated by calculators. Education is still stuck in a pre-calculator age.
Far better to understand what you're trying to achieve. He recommends that programming is a better way to do maths. It makes maths more practical and academic at the same time. He goes further and argues that the obsession with calculation in maths kills off the initiative, intuition and perseverance that maths needs. In other words we're turned off maths by maths. Students learn to look for and apply formula, which they then proceed to calculate. Text books are full of primitive, dry, exercises that seem like chores. Many now argue that real life problems should stimulate mathematical enquiry through the use of more word based problems.
Calculators and computers
A calculator is pretty standard as a native application on PCs, Macs and mobile devices. Tills automatically calculate the correct change for customers. Calculators are therefore embedded in newer forms of technology making them more readily available. This is one potential use of mobile devices in schools that teachers should consider.
Maths is forced, by law, upon people who see it as lacking relevance and don't want to learn it, taught by people who, because they're good at maths, often don't know how to teach it. Yet the curriculum is aimed, largely at those very few who will use high-level maths professionally.
Monday, October 08, 2012
TV: from Goggle box to Google
Since its inception TV has been used to educate. Indeed the first TV company in the world, the BBC, still has 'educate' in its mission statement. As a mass-broadcast medium with almost full penetration in the population, it has the ability to reach very large numbers of people. For many it is the most popular activity, after work and sleeping, yet few would see television as a truly educational technology and many see it as working against the education of children and adults. Sedentary, couch potato television is certainly not seen as an educational medium.
Goggle box
Television's main educational genres are:
· formal course material
· documentaries
· children's TV
· drama
· adverts
Some of these, like formal Open University or PBS lectures for courses and adverts on public safety and health are direct. Others, such as documentaries are a bit less direct and often rely on the entertainment and production values of television for their effect. Others still, such as teledramas, children's TV, such as Sesame Street, and drama are a lot less direct, even indirect in their intention. So TV has number of formats spread across the formal to informal spectrum.
The rather unpopular term 'edutainment' sums up the dilemma that television faces in education. Its primary function as a one-to-many entertainment medium can aid but just as often hinders its power as an educational medium.
TV and formal learning
The UKs Open University has had a long standing relationship with the BBC. It is not entirely clear that this has been money well spent. The early broadcasts were neither powerful 'lectures' nor good TV programmes. These course-based TV programmes, famous for their wooden presenters, beards and kipper ties, were commissioned from 1971 onwards, and finally canned in 2006, as newer technology was cheaper and better.
Unfortunately, the tradition has continued with the trite History of the World (backed by the OU), presented by political journalist, Andrew Marr. The current strapline is "The Open University and the BBC: bringing learning to life". With this series it is killing it stone dead. TV proved to be a poor partner in formal learning.
A great many excellent documentaries have been made on almost every imaginable subject. History has a slew of its own channels but there seems to be a curious skew towards the history of war that betrays TVs populist appeal. Nevertheless, science is well represented as is the natural world, although again there seems to be a skew towards predators and more bizarre sides of nature. There are also dedicated arts channels.
TV's allure, on the surface its greatest strength is actually its greatest weakness in learning. The flood of beautifully shot images and steady narration sweep the learner along but at a cost. There's no rest for reflection, little time for critical thought and much sinks and is forgotten behind this bore wave of presentation. You are forced to go at the pace of the narrator, and before the ability to record, stop and rewind, have no chance of recapping things you may have missed. In many ways TV was like the ancient scroll that simply rolled by at a steady pace, without page or chapter breaks.
Children's TV
Most children's TV attempts to be directly or indirectly educational. Sesame Street is perhaps the most famous example but there are plenty of others.
Critics point to the dangers of using TV as a babysitter, the passive viewing and impact of advertising targeted at children. A wider argument still rages over the role of TV in robbing our children of their childhood, obesity, isolation and brain development. Much of this debate has shifted to online activity by children, but the arguments are similar. The 'goggle box' has been blamed for encouraging sedentary activity and passive viewing in young children, as well as promoting violence.
Fictional drama, especially telenovelas in Latin America, has been used to indirectly educate viewers on topics such as literacy and family planning. Soap operas have also deliberately included social themes into the scriptwriting, in an attempt to raise awareness in the specific target audiences that watch these programmes.
This approach is parasitic in the sense of relying on sedentary soap opera watching to get to an audience entranced by television. It's a Trojan horse approach.
The University of Industry advertised around prime TV spots to reach learners who had disengaged with education and successfully got 3.5 million learners on board. Others have used adverts to get students into their courses and universities. This is perhaps one of the more successful uses of TV in education.
Governments have also used television to get educational messages across, especially about health and road safety. Political parties have also used the medium as a platform for advertising their politicians and policies. There's also televised political debates and current affairs programmes.
The downside is the blatant consumerism of advertising of non-nutritious food and toys, especially to young children, at inappropriate times. Again, TV is Janus-faced as it relies on this direct blanket advertising to pay for the very programmes it sees as educational.
TV formats restrictive
Most educational TV is slotted into existing TV schedules that started on the hour or half past the hour. This is why TV largely conforms to the half hour or one hour format. You have to schedule programmes at predictable times which people can remember. This is fine for long-form documentaries but, as we have seen with video on the web, most useful instructional video needs to be a lot shorter. There is no ideal length, indeed, the rule could be that it need only be as long as it needs to be, and no longer. This generally means a few minutes, rather than a full hour. Only very expensive documentaries can sustain audience attention in this long format.
Amusement is not learning
In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman warns us against mistaking the rhetoric of a broadcast medium for learning. Stripped of dialogue, the flow of film and television strips us of our ability to reflect, think, deduce and resolve issues. It stops us learning. However, his main argument is that teaching, as a form of dialogue, is being replaced by entertainment or amusement. Video is also difficult to index and search, another pedagogic drawback.
Technology carryover
Technology has a tendency to carry over its ethos and methods into newer emerging technology. Early printing mimicked manuscripts. The typewriter locked us into the QWERTTY keyboard and so on. TV has also had a limiting effect on online learning. Too many projects, especially public funded projects, were in trawl to TV and disastrous projects, such as BBC Jam wasted tens of millions with little or no output. More worryingly, is the broadcast mentality that forces overlong video sequences and high cost production on content, with little advantage in terms of learning and retention.
TV has educated millions, largely informally, through news, documentaries and drama. It has also helped reach people through advertising to get them into education. In this sense it has been a social good and served us as best it could. However, the downside is that it has always been a one-way, overlong and inflexible broadcast medium. While still a force in informal learning, through the documentary format, its role in formal education and deep learning proved to be short-lived, as it has been shown to be inferior to online delivery.
Sunday, October 07, 2012
Radio education: huge and hugely underestimated
For over 80 years it's been quietly delivering formal and informal learning to millions worldwide, especially the poor and marginalised. Far from being an old technology it is now transforming itself through podcasts, digital and internet radio.
Formal learning
Radio is a broadcast medium and so has several practical, educational advantages:
· has huge geographic reach
· reaches very large numbers of people
· audio is cheap to produce
· audio is cheap to transmit
· radios are cheap
· local languages can be used
· can be self-sustaining
Formal learning, where radio is used on its own or is integral to a blend of distance learning materials that deliver formal courses, has been delivered for many decades. Unsurprisingly, it has long been used In large, sparsely populated rural areas, where schooling is difficult to organise, such as Australia and in most developing countries. Radio remains the most popular and accessible form of educational technology in Africa.
International Educational Systems has taken radio into marginal populations, such as refugees, nomads and those who simply cannot afford to go to school. Women have also been reached in some societies, where schooling is impossible or difficult, for example the Somalia Distance Education Literacy Programme (Somdel) supported by the BBC Worldwide Education Trust, where 70% of those who passed the course were women.
However, much radio in rural areas is used directly by schools, as it can deliver consistent and high quality content. Radio has been of particular use in health education, especially HIV/AIDS. Farming and food distribution has been taught in 39 African countries through Farm Radio International.
There has been radio delivered teacher training in Mali and training for health and education stakeholders in Sudan. One of the features of many of these initiatives is their delivery in local languages and their sensitivity to local cultures. In some cases, such as the Sudan Radio Services, radio time has been sold to pay for the educational services making it truly sustainable.
However, one of the criticisms of radio education is its focus on outside originated content, abstracts life skills and a lack of practical vocation content, especially farming, as the majority of children are the sons and daughters of farmers. Cheap wind-up or solar powered radios are now widely available from developers such as The Freeplay Foundation. This gives radio a real edge over TV and computer technology. Typical target audiences are in the tens or hundreds of thousands, some in their millions.
Audio and learning
Audio also has several cognitive advantages in learning:
· listening is a universal skill
· note taking is easy
· imagination has to be used
· great for visually impaired
· easy to deliver in multiple languages
· good in language learning
· obviously essential for music
The use of the imagination is a fascinating point as it has been argued that this leads to deeper processing and higher retention in some subjects. The obvious downside is the lack of images and the fact that broadcast media are not under the control of the learner. The lack of control has been remedied by recording and podcasts have significantly improved the power of radio to teach and inform at the learner's own pace.
A whole culture has developed around radio learning to include 'listening groups' and support materials such as comics and workbooks. In Australia, short-wave radio was used to transmit and receive between farmsteads and therefore among groups of teachers and learners, sometimes mimicking traditional teacher-classroom arrangements. Increasingly, for example in Zambia, we have seen radio's power amplified by the supplementary use of iPods and mobile phones.
Informal learning
Radio is still used to educate in formally. The BBC's R4 has over 10 million listeners a week and purely educational broadcasts, such as the highly academic 'In Our Time' have been running for years with many hundreds of podcasts now free on iTunes, covering science, philosophy and history. Radio has also been used, by the likes of the Open University and others for successful local advertising.
Radio and propaganda
Of course educational radio is not always worthy as it has also been used for propaganda. Major and minor powers still use radio as a form of educational colonialism. The Nazis were the first to see the totalitarian power of radio with Goebbels claim that, "radio will be to the twentieth century what the press was to the nineteenth". The Japanese used 'Tokyo Rose' and the North Vietnamese "Hanoi Hannah" against US troops and the Nazis Lord Haw-haw, against the British. The US has used radio for propaganda against many countries including Panama, Cuba and Iraq.
Radio and new media
Podcasting is the true heir to radio. To timeshift an audio experience and put it in the hands of the learner, gives them is convenience and control. Internet radio has given many access to distant radio stations and led to growth in stations with a very specific focus. Far from being a dead or dying medium it is finding new purposes and new channels.
Radio is scalable, in the broadcasting sense. It's low cost and reach have seen widespread use, not only in the developing world but in developed countries like the UK, where radio has long been respected as a source of high quality educational content. Video is very far from killing the radio star.
Friday, October 05, 2012
Typewriter: relic that left us with QWERTY, carriage return, backspace and shift
Terms such as carriage return, backspace and shift, as well as the QWERTY keyboard layout, remain as hangovers from typewriter technology.
Older than you think
There is evidence of an early typewriter having been patented and built in 1714, but the modern version is recognised as having been Invented in the 1860s. Interestingly many early versions were attempts to build a machine that could allow the blind to type. The first commercially successful machine was sold in 1868 and had the now famous QWERTY keyboard.
The typewriter used the hardware of moveable type combined with the software of a small alphabet, to produce a popular and relatively efficient mechanical, writing machine. Until then, writing was handwritten using pens and pencils. The problem with written text is the legibility (or not) of the writer. The characters are literally propelled onto the paper to leave indelible marks. The other innovation was the moving cartridge that provided accurate lines and letter spacing. Carbon paper could also provide copies.
Typewriter and writers
Typewriter technology literally put typesetting into the hands of writers. Neat books, papers, articles and letters could be written in a format close to what looked like a printed version, almost ready for publishing. Early adopters included Nietzsche and Mark Twain. Kerouac famously typed his entire novel On The Road on a single roll of paper. Even in the age of word processors, authors such as Will Self and Cormac McCarthy continue to use typewriters.
Boon to bureaucracy
Curiously, the first typewriters were marketed as machines at which female 'typists' would take dictation from male managers. Indeed, the term, 'typist' was a standard job description for decades and the 'typing pool' a sizeable department. Although they do not require power or batteries (unless a later electric model) prone to jams and failure, require ribbons and make text difficult to erase, so are not conducive to editing and redrafting, typing was also a boon to bureaucracy. I have visited the Stasi headquarters in East Germany where thousands of typewriters were used to type over 100 kilometers of files on its own citizens. I know this, as a friend of mine, a major Stasi spy, was outed when these files were seized in 1989.
Technology locks in practice
Technology is not always as liberating as we imagine. It invariably has limits and downsides that are not always apparent. The mechanical nature of the typewriter meant that the writer had to be slowed down, as the keys would clash and jam. The solution was the QWERTY keyboard, where letters are deliberately spaced far apart to slow typing down. This keyboard format, a relic from the mechanical past, still dominates the digital future. The word 'typewriter' it is sad, is the longest word you can type from one row of letters on a QWERTY keyboard.
This has become a major debate in the online world where several savvy commentators have researched the degree to which Google, Apple and others lock users into their algorithmic model, giving the illusion of openness. Jared Lanier in We Are Not All Gadgets is a strong critic of 'lock-in' technologies.
Typewriter technology was a temporary bridge from handwritten writing to word processing. Unfortunately it has become the most famous example of technology locking in a bad and inefficient practice, the QWERTY keyboard. Made rapidly redundant by word processing, with its superior ability on editing and producing digital files, it is now no more than a curious historical relic, a lesson in how quickly human habits can change.


text:
No longer closing, Bailey still enthusiastic
Righty determined to show he can be durable, effective in setup role
FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Andrew Bailey arrived at Spring Training as a non-closer for the first time in years, but that hasn't taken away any of his self-assurance or enthusiasm as he enters his second season with the Red Sox.
If anything, there is a quiet determination within the right-hander to prove that he can be durable and effective -- two things he wasn't in 2012.
After receiving the phone call from new manager John Farrell just after Christmas that he was relinquishing the closer's role to Joel Hanrahan, Bailey looked at the matter realistically rather than emotionally.
"When I first heard about it, I definitely understood," said Bailey. "I'm not naive enough to think that my health the last two years has been crystal clean. I definitely understood it, and it definitely makes us better. We have four or five closers down there -- or potential closers.
"It makes us that much better. At first, all relievers want to be a closer. I don't think my closing days are done, and I hope they're not done in Boston. That being said, going into the season with such a strong 'pen will give us that edge, at least early on."
More than anything, Bailey wants to win. He came to the Red Sox to do that, only to see his former team -- the Athletics -- thrive in his first year away from Oakland. Bailey and the Red Sox finished last.
Though Spring Training doesn't officially start for the Red Sox until Tuesday, Bailey was one of several players on the field at JetBlue Park on Friday. There's no better way to wipe the slate clean from a thoroughly disappointing season than to start anew.
"All I can say is that if I'm doing my job and [Hanrahan's] doing his job, we're going to win a lot of ballgames. That's what we're about," Bailey said. "Last year was a disaster for me personally and very frustrating as a team. I think everyone is out to do what they're capable of doing, and if we put that together, we should be getting to the playoffs and World Series. That's the end goal."
The one thing nearly every contending team has had in recent years is a dominant setup man. Bailey hopes he can be that guy in 2013.
"In my mind, just the inning changes," said Bailey. "For me, it's the same role -- it's just in a different inning. I've still got to put up a zero and get the ball to the next guy. There's no different preparation -- just a different job description."
While managers never look forward to having the type of conversation Farrell had with Bailey in late December, the reliever made it as comfortable as possible.
"Just talking with those who have been around him in the past and those that were here last year with him, I don't think anyone can say enough about who he is as a teammate and a guy," said Farrell. "The fact is this was something that was completely out of his control, going back to the injury and the addition of Joel in that trade. He's had a great attitude toward it. The way he has handled himself in this situation will speak volumes to his teammates."
It's hard to really take anything away from Bailey's 2012 season. He injured his right thumb in a seemingly innocuous collision in an early Grapefruit League game and didn't pitch for Boston until August -- at which time the season was already slipping away.
"For me, it was kind of getting my feet wet, getting ready and I competed as hard as I could, and the numbers are what they are," said Bailey, who posted a 7.04 ERA in 19 games. "I know I'm way better than that. Coming here healthy, I have a good offseason under my belt, getting ready for a full season. I'm excited for what's going to come."
Farrell, who was managing the Blue Jays last season, hasn't made any judgments on Bailey based on what transpired in 2012.
"For any player, when you miss that amount of time in a given year, you're always trying to play catch-up, and maybe coming in at the end of the year and forcing some things and not pitching or playing up to your previous levels," said Farrell. "That's normal. Last year, you almost look at as a mulligan year -- unfortunately -- with the way things transpired. But he's going to be a valuable guy for us late in the game."
While Bailey had a strong winter of preparation, he also made good use of his time off the field.
A resident of Connecticut, Bailey joined teammate Craig Breslow and former manager Bobby Valentine a couple of weeks ago at a youth baseball clinic in Newtown, Conn., a town heartbroken by the tragic shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
"Just living in Connecticut, it was so close to home," Bailey said. "I'm 40 minutes from there, and not to say if I was in Massachusetts or somewhere else I wouldn't have gone, but just being in that area and just knowing, seeing the different news channels and following the stories a little bit, I just couldn't imagine what those kids are going through. It was nice to go up there and see the kids in such good spirits and meeting a lot of the kids who were at the elementary school. For me, it was just doing my part of what I could to help those kids kind of ease away from that memory."
Bailey hopes to cross paths with some Newtown families again once the season starts.
"Hopefully we can do something to maybe have them up to a game [at Fenway Park] during the season," Bailey said. "I think that would be nice to get some of the families out. We'll see -- whatever we can do for them."

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Janjgir Champa is the is a District of Chhattisgarh state, India. Chhattisgarh is a state in Central India. It is the 10th largest state in India. Chhattisgarh is one of the fastest developing states in India. Raipur is the capital of the state. Chhattisgarh's success factors in achieving high growth rate are growth in agriculture and industrial production.
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Loopsize: 25mmNickle-free. The buckles have been tested and manages to be opened and closed 1000 times without breaking in accordance with the Swedish safety standard SS EN 12586. No part of the buckle has a diameter of 3,2 cm or more and they pass the Swedish Consumer Agency's "small parts cylindertest". The shape of the buckle is open with airholes.When you make a holder for a pacifier it is important to think about all aspects of safety. In brief this means that the ribbon should not be able to make a loop around the childs neck. Strings, chains or ribbons used shall not be longer then 22 cm and no parts should be able to come loose. The recommendation from the Swedish Consumer Agency is that the child should not sleep with a pacifier attached to a pacifierholder.
Frequently control all parts of the pacifierholder so that nothing is broken and no aspect of function is compromised.
The text, layouts, graphics, and logos at this site are protected by EU copyright, trademark, service mark or other proprietary rights and laws3exter is a registered company with a Swedish VAT number.


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- hoopla eMusic
- Access newly released popular music albums with portable devices including smartphones and tablets as well as conventional computers. Check our FAQ for software requirements and other details.
- Alexander Street Press Music Databases
Enjoy an incredible variety of music with the Alexander St. Press music databases.


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The Change Number feature allows you to change the phone number associated with your WhatsApp account on the same phone. This feature is intended to be used before you verify your new number.
If you have a new phone number and a new phone, please read this article.
Using the Change Number feature in WhatsApp will:
If you use our Change Number feature, your chat history will continue to be available on your phone with the new phone number as long as you continue using the same phone.
Note: When you change your WhatsApp phone number, your contacts won't be individually informed of the change. Only participants that share group chats with you will see that you changed your number. For a seamless messaging experience, notify your contacts that your number will be changing before you begin this process.
To change your phone number within WhatsApp, follow these steps:


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- home
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State approves grants for 4,590 new jobs, $1B in business expansions
LANSING — State officials say they have approved incentives for 14 business expansions that could generate more than $1 billion in investments and about 4,600 jobs in Michigan — including hundreds in West Michigan.
Gov. Rick Snyder announced Wednesday the Michigan Strategic Fund approved the performance-based grants for projects across the Lower Peninsula.
Highlights include expansions by Japanese auto parts supplier Denso Corp. It plans to invest about $150 million in its operations in Battle Creek and the Detroit suburb of Southfield to create about 440 jobs total.
The state says Benton Harbor-based Whirlpool Corp. plans to relocate refrigeration research and development operations to a former Whirlpool plant in the city from Evansville, Ind., and create 180 jobs.
Perrigo plans to add infrastructure and equipment to its site in Allegan and a new facility and new equipment in Holland Charter Township, investing an additional $242 million and creating 650 jobs to support a tablet expansion for its over-the-counter business, according to the Michigan Economic Development Corporation.
As a result of the Perrigo expansion, the Michigan Strategic Fund approved an increase in the maximum allowance for qualified new jobs on the company's MEGA tax credit from 400 to 1,050. Holland Charter Township and the city of Allegan have offered property tax abatements in support of the project.
Cosma International, an operating unit of Magna International, plans to open an automotive casting components and systems facility in Battle Creek, subject to completing all necessary commercial arrangements and receiving necessary approvals, according to MEDC.
Once established, the facility will be known as Cosma Casting Michigan and is expected to create up to 572 new jobs based on investment of up to $162 million.
As a result, the company has been awarded a $1.6 million Michigan Business Development Program performance-based grant.
Michigan was chosen over competing sites for the Cosma facility. The city of Battle Creek has offered support to the project in the form of property tax abatements.
Fair Oaks Farms Brands plans to manufacture nutritionally enhanced liquid milk products at a newly constructed facility in Coopersville, according to MEDC. The applicant expects to invest $127 million and create 133 jobs, resulting in a $900,000 Michigan Business Development Program performance-based grant.
Michigan was chosen for the Fair Oaks facility over competing sites in New York, Pennsylvania and Indiana. The city of Coopersville has offered support in the form of 12-year property tax abatements.
Snyder says he's excited by the "strong foreign investment" and significant boosts to the recovering automotive industry.


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Click here for more photos of the exclusive merchandise
Vancouver's one per cent have a new place to spend their millions.
Launching today, Colton's Personal Couture is the most exclusive, and possibly only, private shopping club ever to hit Vancouver.
Wealthy members will pay $25,000 upfront to shop the couture brands by appointment in a private showroom stocked with their favourite luxury labels. Of the annual fee, $7,500 goes to membership dues, and the $17,500 balance is store credit. "Fashion confidantes" will guide them toward clothes and accessories that look classy and tasteful, and that suit their lifestyle.
More than 400 people, culled from the client lists of private bankers and luxury car dealers, have already expressed interest in the concept. But at first, the club will only accept 200 clients, gradually increasing to 400 as they iron out new-business kinks.
Owner Howard Colton expects to attract clients from West Vancouver and Shaughnessy who can use the club's personal limousine service to travel and from the showroom.
It will primarily cater to the Asian population which, as Colton said, love brands and love to shop, but can benefit from the guidance of fashion experts.
Even the super-rich need help navigating trends and putting together a personal style, Colton said, adding that he believes $25,000 isn't a barrier for the clientele he will serve.
The establishment of the club in Vancouver indicates the changing retail landscape of the city. Twenty-five years ago, Leone was the only luxury brand store in Metro Vancouver. But in recent years, Tiffany, Coach, Hermès and The Room at the Bay have opened to cater to the high-end consumer.
As the principle partner and luxury Italian supplier of the online retailer BlueFly.com, Colton has well-established connections to European design houses. But this is not another BlueFly.com, he said. He wanted to create a new business that has a more personal touch.
"I wanted to do it in a more bespoke kind of way," he said, emphasizing that this is not a typical retail shopping experience.
"We don't want 5,000 people to come through every day like Holt Renfrew, Leone or Boboli. We want one-on-one. And that we should become their fashion confidantes."
Colton also understands that even the very rich love a deal. So his mark-up is lower than usual. He'll make his money on the membership fees.
The club is in a Richmond penthouse that Colton has transformed into a luxurious personal fashion showroom. Chandeliers adorn every room and it boasts over $500,000 in merchandise, including unique Alexander McQueen clutches and a $50,000 handbag by Hermès.
Wearing his limited edition $60,000 Frank Muller watch, jeans and patent red shoes, Colton proudly showed off his space. He pointed out the zebra wood cabinet in the men's department in which all the drawers are lined with suede and Tom Ford and Etro hang on the custom-made hangers. The women's area boasts a small shoe section and lots of wonderful bags by Miu Miu, Prada, Gucci and Balenciaga. The clothing range will expand as they come to know their clients' sizes and preferences, he said. When a client visits, his or her preferred brands will be displayed.
"We dress the showroom according to the preferences of the client but we will try to nudge them a little sideways."
Most of the cast of the Real Housewives of Vancouver are coming to tonight's launch party and Mary Zilba has already shopped there, although that isn't a bragging point for Colton.
Yvette Cartier, a resident of New York and Montreal, heard about the club from a friend. An investment banker, she describes herself as a "big shopper who likes select merchandise."
"I am not a Holt Renfrew shopper," she said. "I shop abroad to buy every season, but it can be difficult because sometimes what I want is sold out."
She said she was very impressed with the merchandise she saw at Colton's. "It was very edited and very beautiful." Cartier spent her full store credit in one visit and said she would do it again. She doesn't care if she gets a discount. She just wants the goods.


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TORONTO - WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange may be holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, but he's very present at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Opening this year's festival on Thursday was the premiere of Bill Condon's dramatization of Assange and WikiLeaks, "The Fifth Estate" - a film with which Assange refused to cooperate. It's the only movie at Toronto that has the distinction of being called "a massive propaganda attack" by its primary subject.
That was the opinion Assange dished out on the film in a video link in January in which he waved a supposed copy of the film's script. He has also called it the "anti-WikiLeaks movie."
But the film, which stars Benedict Cumberbatch as the Australian activist, is far from the character assassination Assange feared, but rather a layered, complicated portrait of him and his whistleblower website as laudatory as it is critical.
"When we tried to actually make contact - Benedict made the most overt gestures - we were rebuffed," director Bill Condon said in a recent interview. "He has the sense of it being something very different than what it is."
The film's screenplay by Josh Singer was partly based on "Inside WikiLeaks: My Time With Julian Assange and the World's Most Dangerous Website," by Daniel Domscheit-Berg, an early WikiLeaks collaborator who publicly and bitterly fell out with Assange; and "WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy," by British journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding. Both are books Assange disapproves of.
The point of view of "The Fifth Estate" is thus largely from the perspective of Domscheit-Berg (Daniel Bruhl). Assange, played meticulously by Cumberbatch in one of the finest leading performances by the British actor, is portrayed as a visionary with democratic ideals for information and altruistic motives for whistleblowers, and alternatively, as a lying, reckless revolutionary (perhaps justifiably) consumed by paranoia, who ultimately sabotages his own creation by his refusal to consider the lives of revealed sources in published documents.
"You change your mind about him many, many times during the course of the movie," says Condon, the director of both parts of "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn" and "Dreamgirls." `'The idea was to present this incredibly complicated and, as we can see, relevant issue of the struggle in this age between privacy and transparency in all of its complication. And in a similar way, present him in all his complexity."
"The Fifth Estate," which Disney will release Oct. 18, debuts in Toronto with great currency since so much of the WikiLeaks story is unfinished.
Assange is still, as he has been for more than a year, taking asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden over facing questioning about a sexual assault charge. WikiLeaks' greatest source, Chelsea Manning (the Army private formerly known as Bradley Manning who famously leaked the trove of military documents known as the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs, as well as the cables of U.S. diplomats), was just weeks ago found guilty of espionage and other crimes. She recently appealed for a presidential pardon. Meanwhile, Edward Snowden, the leaker of NSA documents, has undergone an asylum drama similar Assange's, eventually being granted a year's stay by Russia.
"This is ongoing history and people's interests are at stake," says Kristinn Hrafnsson, a representative for WikiLeaks. Judging from a copy of the screenplay, he calls the film "a fiction that tries to present itself as a reflection of reality."
"It portrays wrongfully that people were put in harm's way as a result of those leaks and the publications by WikiLeaks," says Hrafnsson. "That is, of course, in line with the talking points of the Pentagon. But not even the prosecution in the Private Manning trial was able to introduce those things."
While Condon laments for Cumberbatch's sake that the actor wasn't able to meet with Assange to study his behavior, he sees some advantage to making a film about Assange without his input.
"There's so much in him that I admire. At a certain point, I thought it was an advantage not to spend time with him," says Condon. "So much has been written and recorded, I felt from what I knew about him that it would either be an attempt at manipulation on his part or that there would be things that would make me like him less than I actually do."
The film openly acknowledges its potential bias and includes a playful, fictional rebuttal from Assange, cobbled together from his tweets and interviews. In a way, "The Fifth Estate" gives Assange the last word. However, when Assange does eventually see the film, he's likely to have a few more to say, too.


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|Upland, Calif.
|High School:
|Damien HS
UC Santa Barbara
Vowels competed in the 100m, 200m and 400m throughout the season…Posted a best time of 50.18 in the 400m at Stanford Invitational…Was a member of the 4x100m relay at Big West Championships.
Competed in the 100m, 200m, and 4x100m relay events this season...Ran a personal best time in the 100m at the Cal/Nevada Championship clocking in a time of 10.81...Placed 12th at the Bryan Clay Invite where he ran a personal best time fo 21.97...Assisted the men's 4x100m relay team to a fourth place finish at the Big West Conference Championship with a personal best relay time of 41.35.
High School
Vowels was the school record holder in the 4x100m relay team...Sierra League Champion in 2009 and 2010...Captained the track team in 2010...Recipient of the Richard Miller Scholarship...Made Honor Roll all four years in high school.
Majoring in History...Parents are Catherine and George Vowels...Has one brother Braden and one sister Krista...Chose UCSB for the team spirit and location...In his free time Vowels enjoys riding longboards, playing Ping Pong, bodyboarding and hanging out with the team and friends...Favorite movie is "Snatch"...Listens to Third Eye Blind...Favorite books are "The Odyssey", "It's Not About the Bike"..."Chariots of the Gods"...Favorite athlete is Lance
Collegiate Career Bests
100m - 10.81 (Cal/Nevada Championship, 3/26/2011)
200m - 21.97 (Bryan Clay Invite, 4/15/2011)


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WORCESTER — Anyone looking for an early Mother's Day gift may find one from an unlikely source this weekend.
The state's Unclaimed Property Division will place 100 items, collected from unclaimed or abandoned bank safe deposit boxes, on eBay at noon Saturday.
After this weekend, the state Treasury will roll out an estimated 1,200 more items over the next eight weeks through the Mass.State.Treasury eBay account.
A selection of the items going out to bid will be displayed for preview from noon to 5 p.m. Friday at the state Lottery office, 151 West Boylston Drive, Worcester.
The pieces include standard safe deposit box contents such as collectable coins, silver, gold, jewelry and watches to some Beatles trading cards.
"We used to do live auctions a number of years ago," said state Treasurer Steve Grossman, but in 2005, under then-Treasurer Timothy Cahill, the state tried to broaden its reach via the Internet.
Last year, eBay, with its expanded reach over live auctions, helped the state net $540,000 in cash for use in the General Fund.
"It's clearly been a home run for the commonwealth," Mr. Grossman said.
All items come from deposit boxes that have gone unclaimed or ignored for nine years, he said.
The state holds on to the items for one year in a secure warehouse in Chelsea, then gets them appraised in preparation for placement on eBay.
"We figure our No. 1 responsibility is to get unclaimed property back into the hands of rightful owners," Mr. Grossman said.
But when that fails, the state takes advantage of the available revenue. Proven owners or heirs of property sold online will be compensated with the item's sale price.
While the state has put a statute of limitations of sorts on safety deposit box contents, Mr. Grossman said, the state does not recoup or absorb unclaimed monetary property in the forms of stock, insurance payments and bank accounts.
More than 600,000 people — or nearly one-10th of the state's population — have $2.4 billion waiting to be claimed from the state's Treasury, he said.
The state has a searchable website, www.findmassmoney.com, and phone number (888) 344-6277, where people can find out if they have a claim to any of this money.


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It ain't a Superbird, but hell, at least the new car's got a wing. Yeah, we know, it's still NASCAR, but whatevs, maybe today's race with the new Car o' Tomorrow will be more crash-tacular. We'll see. The race begins at 1:30 EST today at Bristol...I think it's the fast Food City 500 or something.
Photo By: Rusty Jarrett / Getty Images Sport
Car of Tomorrow debuts today [Freep]
Welcome To The NASCAR "Car Of Tomorrow-ow-ow"; Sports Illustrated Weighs in on the Car of Tomorrow [internal]


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From the vantage point of a physicist and the kind of problems he would like a computer program to solve, what are the essential programming languages that a physicist should know.
I know C++ and I have worked in ROOT. I have also found Mathematica quiet essential, however since shifting to a linux machine I've been trying Sage which is also good, though not quiet at the same level right now. I have found C++ to be really fast, efficient, and best suited for stuff like Monte Carlo simulations. However, it appears that scimpy is also quiet popular. Would it be worthwhile to invest time in learning python, i.e would it have significant gains?
I also find the concept of functional programming languages much appealing. I think physicists unlike many programmers are more inclined to think this way rather than iteratively. Haskell sounds like a good candidate and I've also heard that it is ideal for simulating quantum algorithms on classical machines. Is anyone familiar with it?
Also what about scripting languages? I do not know any of those, except basic directory navigation in bash. Is there any utility in Perl and whatever is out there (I know little about these)


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SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — The Broncos have not given up on Elvis Dumervil.
The team has been in talks with Dumervil's new agent, Tom Condon in hopes of bringing back their right defensive end who had 20 ½ sacks the previous two seasons.
The Broncos aren't the only team interested in Dumervil, though. The Baltimore Ravens are also negotiating with Condon. Other teams that showed at least initial interest after Dumervil was released Friday to free agency were New England, San Diego, Pittsburgh and Houston showed some interest initially.
The Broncos and Ravens seem to be the frontrunners.
Dumervil became a free agent when his revised, three-year, $30 million contract with the Broncos that included a reduction in his 2013 salary from $12 million to $8 million failed to get faxed in time to beat a 2 p.m. Friday deadline with the NFL office in New York.
Faced with having Dumervil's $12 million salary become fully guaranteed, the team released Dumervil to free agency.
After the fax fiasco, Dumervil fired fired his agent and hired Condon. One of Condon's first acts on Dumervil's behalf was to approach the NFL to see if the previous agreement between the two parties could be honored.
But the league denied Condon, as it did the Broncos a few days earlier.
"All contracts are reviewed by our office," said NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. "If there is something significant they'll bring it to my attention, but those are done as a matter of course."


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EIKO 40362 1816 13V .33A/T3-1/4 Mini Bay Base
Eiko 40362 - 1816
13V .33A/T3-1/4 Mini Bay Base
13V .33A/T3-1/4 Mini Bay Base
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150W BT15 Halogen Light Bulb - White Coated, 1,500 Life Hours, 120V - EIKO 81141 150BT15/H/W
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Size: 30x19mm
Pack Size: 10
Foiled: No
Swarovski Factory Packs Information: Please note we do not hold stock of this item. Please allow 2 to 4 working days for processing. We are not able to accept open factory packs for return.
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