Paul Budde's article
today on Business Spectator could not have been better timed, given
Netflix's announcement of its long-awaited entry into the Australian
market. Last mile bandwidth isn't the only challenge facing
high-bandwidth players such as Netflix but at the moment in the
Australian context, it is the biggest and one that is not likely to be
solved any time soon.
So too, are the peering arrangements between
content suppliers and ISPs and how those costs are passed on to
consumers. And all this in the context of recent announcements with
respect to Net Neutrality in the US, an issue which has attracted scant
attention in the local market.
Wednesday, 19 November 2014
Tuesday, 28 October 2014
Transport - accessible access to accessible transport
Looks like Transport4NSW is looking to improve access to accessibility information for its networks. Not just providing accessibility information available through apps but doing it using accessible technology.There's money attached too...
Moving NAPLAN online
Minister Pyne's weekend announcement of funding to move the NAPLAN testing program online is welcome. However it raises a number of questions - many more than it provides answers. The biggest of these is the readiness of schools, around 10,000 of them around the country, to be able to deliver the online tests in such a way as to be reliable, fair and equitable, while delivering the benefits that online delivery offers over the present paper tests.
The benefits are clear - the ability to deliver results to students and more importantly, their teachers, much sooner than is the case at the moment. The sooner teachers have access to those results, the sooner they can do something with them.The other key benefit of online assessment is the ability to tailor the test to suit the ability of each student. A computer-based test can assess the student's performance throughout the test and rather than deliver the same test to every single student, it can adapt to the ability of the student. Students that are struggling to answer questions won't be fed a whole lot more questions that they can't answer but rather, would be diverted to more diagnostic questions that are designed to provide useful information to their teacher as to which learning areas need focus. Conversely, gifted students are branched to more difficult questions which will challenge them and extend them.
So much for the benefits; the challenge of course is to deliver it, and these challenges fall upon our shoulders technology experts. The Minister has announced funding for a delivery system but in reality, that is just the "head-end" piece - the engine. Delivering that to enough devices for over a million kids, studying in 10,000 schools - government, independent and Catholic - in eight states and territories, is going to be no mean feat.
And herein lies the biggest challenge - what are those devices, and how does the data get from the servers, the head-end, the engine, to each of those devices? OK, it's not a million devices - we are a long way from a 1:1 device ratio. But it's still a lot. A big lot. And devices are increasingly not owned by the school but by the student (or their parents). Maintaining a fleet of current technology for students is a cost that most schools simply cannot afford and the broader trend to BYOD has provided an opportunity for schools to relieve themselves of at least the hardware costs of devices.
Those devices - laptops and desktops in the main; phones are too small to do any meaningful assessment - need to offer students a consistent enough experience that the results from the test are comparable. Those devices could be anything from a 7" iPad Mini right up to a 24" screen on a desktop PC owned by the school. Not to mention the difference in typing speed between a full laptop or desktop keyboard and the on-screen substitute on a tablet. And the assessment experience has to be consistent across all of those.
I think I'll leave the network challenges for another time. That poses a completely different set of challenges - the inequity of access speeds, the huge differences in latency between landline and satellite connections, not to mention the reliability of connection. How do you test a school where the whole town is offline because a flood took out the bridge over which also carried the only fibre into town?
While it's great to see some leadership on this, it remains to be seen whether schools can be ready in time.
The benefits are clear - the ability to deliver results to students and more importantly, their teachers, much sooner than is the case at the moment. The sooner teachers have access to those results, the sooner they can do something with them.The other key benefit of online assessment is the ability to tailor the test to suit the ability of each student. A computer-based test can assess the student's performance throughout the test and rather than deliver the same test to every single student, it can adapt to the ability of the student. Students that are struggling to answer questions won't be fed a whole lot more questions that they can't answer but rather, would be diverted to more diagnostic questions that are designed to provide useful information to their teacher as to which learning areas need focus. Conversely, gifted students are branched to more difficult questions which will challenge them and extend them.
So much for the benefits; the challenge of course is to deliver it, and these challenges fall upon our shoulders technology experts. The Minister has announced funding for a delivery system but in reality, that is just the "head-end" piece - the engine. Delivering that to enough devices for over a million kids, studying in 10,000 schools - government, independent and Catholic - in eight states and territories, is going to be no mean feat.
And herein lies the biggest challenge - what are those devices, and how does the data get from the servers, the head-end, the engine, to each of those devices? OK, it's not a million devices - we are a long way from a 1:1 device ratio. But it's still a lot. A big lot. And devices are increasingly not owned by the school but by the student (or their parents). Maintaining a fleet of current technology for students is a cost that most schools simply cannot afford and the broader trend to BYOD has provided an opportunity for schools to relieve themselves of at least the hardware costs of devices.
Those devices - laptops and desktops in the main; phones are too small to do any meaningful assessment - need to offer students a consistent enough experience that the results from the test are comparable. Those devices could be anything from a 7" iPad Mini right up to a 24" screen on a desktop PC owned by the school. Not to mention the difference in typing speed between a full laptop or desktop keyboard and the on-screen substitute on a tablet. And the assessment experience has to be consistent across all of those.
I think I'll leave the network challenges for another time. That poses a completely different set of challenges - the inequity of access speeds, the huge differences in latency between landline and satellite connections, not to mention the reliability of connection. How do you test a school where the whole town is offline because a flood took out the bridge over which also carried the only fibre into town?
While it's great to see some leadership on this, it remains to be seen whether schools can be ready in time.
Monday, 13 October 2014
Windows version...next
Business Spectator's article by Paul Wallbank titled "Microsoft's
legacy liabilities" misses the mark on three fronts. I don't mean to
single out Paul or Business Spectator on this - recent reporting on
Microsoft in many media outlets has taken a similarly narrow view: Business Spectator
First of all, it focuses entirely on the consumer market and misses the point of the back-office connection. This has been a key part of Microsoft's strategy for many years. Witness the vertical integration it offers, from OS (both on devices and infrastructure) right up through the stack. On the device side, the Office suite is probably the best example. Back-end, look at the BI suite and the end-to-end integration it has, from the OS right through the SQL Server suite, via SharePoint, to Excel on the device. Various players have bits of the puzzle in place, but few have the whole stack.
Secondly, the article talks about mobility. Microsoft has taken a different approach to Apple and Google here, being one of a common platform across mobile devices and well, those devices less mobile (laptops and desktops). Apple's and Google's approach have both been to follow separate development streams for these two. In the case of Google, with completely separate support and deployment models. Microsoft on the other hand, has taken a unified-platform approach, having already tried the alternative (remember Windows CE?). Time will tell which approach works.
Finally is the reference to avoiding "9" as the next Windows version and the author's obvious misunderstanding of how software interacts with other software. Any resemblance between the marketed version number and the version reported by the operating system to any applications which care to ask, is purely coincidental. Windows 7 reports as version 6.1, Windows 8 is 6.3; XP is 5.1, 3.1 is, well, 3.1. You can pull up a more comprehensive list of reported versions easily, if you're curious. Naming the next Windows as Windows 10 is a marketing move. Nothing more, nothing less.
First of all, it focuses entirely on the consumer market and misses the point of the back-office connection. This has been a key part of Microsoft's strategy for many years. Witness the vertical integration it offers, from OS (both on devices and infrastructure) right up through the stack. On the device side, the Office suite is probably the best example. Back-end, look at the BI suite and the end-to-end integration it has, from the OS right through the SQL Server suite, via SharePoint, to Excel on the device. Various players have bits of the puzzle in place, but few have the whole stack.
Secondly, the article talks about mobility. Microsoft has taken a different approach to Apple and Google here, being one of a common platform across mobile devices and well, those devices less mobile (laptops and desktops). Apple's and Google's approach have both been to follow separate development streams for these two. In the case of Google, with completely separate support and deployment models. Microsoft on the other hand, has taken a unified-platform approach, having already tried the alternative (remember Windows CE?). Time will tell which approach works.
Finally is the reference to avoiding "9" as the next Windows version and the author's obvious misunderstanding of how software interacts with other software. Any resemblance between the marketed version number and the version reported by the operating system to any applications which care to ask, is purely coincidental. Windows 7 reports as version 6.1, Windows 8 is 6.3; XP is 5.1, 3.1 is, well, 3.1. You can pull up a more comprehensive list of reported versions easily, if you're curious. Naming the next Windows as Windows 10 is a marketing move. Nothing more, nothing less.
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