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Month: February 2012
Innovation Island?
From Slugger O’Toole It seems we in Northern Ireland aren’t doing so well when it comes to innovation, at least according to InterTrade Ireland. Simon Hamilton tweeted this announcement from one of his fellow ministers yesterday: “Arlene Foster reveals only 1 of 18 nominations in InterTradeIreland awards from NI & this is a trend. Does … Continue reading “Innovation Island?”
From Slugger O’Toole
It seems we in Northern Ireland aren’t doing so well when it comes to innovation, at least according to InterTrade Ireland. Simon Hamilton tweeted this announcement from one of his fellow ministers yesterday:
“Arlene Foster reveals only 1 of 18 nominations in InterTradeIreland awards from NI & this is a trend. Does ROI have monopoly on innovation?”
I do wonder what “innovation” has to do being represented in an awards show. Does a panel from IntertradeIreland actively search for innovation and inspiration or is this yet another nomination exercise? Someone, maybe even the MD of the business, fills in a form, tells a story and enters a dog’n’pony show?
And shame on our ministers for making a big deal of it. Obviously we’d all love to win an award, parade around with a few suits, have my picture taken (obviously proffering an iPad or laptop towards the camera) and get our pictures into a local advertising aggregator web site. That would be a real measure of innovation in our region.
According to the Technology Strategy Board, Northern Ireland companies do not respond to their competitions as much as they should (based on population). NESTA say that Northern Ireland has a poor rate of response to their programmes. Channel 4 “4IP” told me that they got very few applications from Northern Ireland, much lower than expected. Is it just that we don’t play well with others?
Looking south of the border, they have their own sovereign nation which is an advantage as they have their own controls over corporation tax and other economic drivers. While they were holding out their hands to Europe for a national bailout, they were spending like mad to encourage enterprise. They realised that you have to invest your way out of a recession. We initiate a game development pilot, they copy it but boost the numbers by 10. We have been arguing for a publicly supported incubator, they have about ten of them. We’re playing catchup, yes, but it’s not the private sector who needs to wake up and smell the coffee.
All my life has been in a divided nation. As a vaguely union-supporting post-graduate professional from a middle class catholic background, I have very little national identity of any form and quite literally I am not involved in the politics of the region; I have not voted in years. I feel no loyalty to our political parties because I don’t feel like any of them have any loyalty to me.
Northern Ireland is the most isolated region in the British Isles. We’re the only region of the UK which shares a land border with another sovereign nation; a nation which uses a different currency, offers extremely competitive corporation tax rates and didn’t really suffer thirty years of civil war. We’re separated from the rest of the UK by one of the most expensive stretches of water in the world and due to decades of mismanagement, our pointless little country can only survive in handouts from the UK government. When the block grant goes (and it will), we will have to deal with some very hard questions. Either that or revitalise our previously successful crime and terrorism industry.
It aggravates me when Invest Northern Ireland hands back £50m of their budget to the DFP and blames the private sector for not investing. It makes me ask questions about their ability to forecast when a third of their budget goes unspent. It makes me wonder if they are even aware of recession economics – most businesses I talk to are unable to spend days filling out forms for grants because they are paying the bills and when they’re not working their butts off to pay the bills, they’re trying to build the next big thing on their own time; time, according to Invest Northern Ireland, is worthless.
I have started three businesses in Northern Ireland and I am currently working on starting my fourth. I have never taken a single penny of grant aid from Invest Northern Ireland. The job I’m currently doing means I am supping from the public teat and it can be argued whether or not I would be better off doing my own thing or continuing in this line. I feel that I signed up to a duty of care for the digital sector in Northern Ireland when I took this job and right now I wonder whether I’ve taken on too much responsibility and whether I care too much about the outcomes. Being part of the process of helping our startups has somewhat overtaken my life.
So, in short, no, obviously, the ROI does not have a monopoly on innovation. And yes, our programmes in place are not adequately supporting our startups. And no, it’s not the startups fault.
BYOD: The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.
Yesterday, the Guardian published a story on iPads being useful as cookbooks and this makes me hark back to a previous blog post: In a time where the sum total of books held in a library can fit on a device that can fit in your coat, what exactly is the function of a library … Continue reading “BYOD: The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.”
Yesterday, the Guardian published a story on iPads being useful as cookbooks and this makes me hark back to a previous blog post:
Never has this concept been so adequately realised than with the iPad. Meeting with Wallace High School yesterday illustrated to me not only how far we had come but also the differences in the thought process between someone who thinks they know what a school needs and someone who has experienced what a school needs. The team at Wallace are not just thinking about what is needed, they’re implementing it while the rest of us dally. I was struck by their attitude, a confident step forward with the knowledge they are doing the right thing for their charges.
I wonder what the response will be from our government. They’ve recently awarded the next generation EN(NI) [Education Network for Northern Ireland] contract to the company who had previously managed the C2K network which has drawn ire from teachers, pupils and parents for over a decade. My own personal experience with the C2K network (and managing technicians), in assisting the delivery of C2K-approved projects and assisting specialist schools with their own infrastructure was frustrating at best and deliberately obstructive at worst. We would come into a Specialist school to troubleshoot a login and network issue and find that a technician has unplugged all of the specialist computers at the switch and charged the school for the privilege. We would end up re-plugging them and not once did we charge the school for the visit because, ultimately, it wasn’t their fault. The contract was flawed, obstructive and stacked the odds heavily against the school, the pupil and against learning.
The new ICT investment will bring schools the benefits of cloud computing while ensuring students and teachers are secure online. The new Education Cloud provides the ability to scale computing resources to meet the needs of schools both today and in the future. Schools will access a range of applications and educational resources through Northgate’s My-School learning portal.
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The new infrastructure will also offer greater device connectivity – allowing teachers and students to gain access to the network and resources securely via personal devices such as smart phones, IPads, tablet PCs and laptops. Broadband provision will be improved with schools being provided with up to 200Mb. This contract will see Northgate take responsibility for the Wide Area Network, Local Area Network and Telecoms.
The only issue I see here is one of control. This press release does not seem to include the concept of BYOD but rather just the issue of diversity of devices. BYOD is, to my mind, a deliberate relaxing of control in favour of access. Enabling rather than regulating. The spirit of BYOD is epitomised by Ayn Rand:
The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.
If you do not open access, people will find other ways. And if you require me to add some weird software to MY device to access your network, you’re an idiot. The tide has turned. Children are bringing devices into school that are more capable than the laptop and desktop PCs installed by the preferred supplier. And is the preferred supplier going to prevent future engaged learners from accessing resources as they have for the last decade?
Teachers will work around any blockages by not using the network. Most schools in Northern Ireland retained their “legacy” networks and were glad they did. And if draconian controls are placed on devices then, surprise surprise, teachers and pupils will avoid them. They will install their own access points, install their own wiring and switches, install their own broadband links and internet filters – utterly duplicating the infrastructure we, as taxpayers, have been paying for. We’ve seen it over the art decade, I don’t expect that to change.
I also spent part of last night listening to the #niedchat Twitter meeting. What struck me was not the suitability of the iPad but the main thrust was how would we standardise on such a device when there are such inequalities in our society. The topic of iBooks Author came up and it seemed that textbooks are not an issue because most teachers already deliver most of the content in the form of worksheets they have devised themselves.
So, in the face of all of this change, and the realisation that iPad is already the present of educational ICT resources, what does a school of the future look like?
iPad growth curve: I have run out of superlatives
Lovely visualisation by Horace Dediu @asymco It’s hard to appreciate how popular the iPad is until you see it compared to its peers. In the same time frame, the iPad has completely obliterated the amazing success of the iPod and the fantastic success of the iPhone. At this point, I have run out of superlatives. … Continue reading “iPad growth curve: I have run out of superlatives”
Lovely visualisation by Horace Dediu @asymco
It’s hard to appreciate how popular the iPad is until you see it compared to its peers. In the same time frame, the iPad has completely obliterated the amazing success of the iPod and the fantastic success of the iPhone. At this point, I have run out of superlatives.