It’s time to flip education – who will be first?

Michael Moore-Jones, a student at Scots College, nails it:

“I’m a massive fan of the Khan Academy. I use it daily to learn content for a large number of my subjects. And I completely buy into the Khan Academy goal of “flipping the classroom” – ie. letting people learn the content of the subject from video lectures at home, then doing “homework” in class where they can engage with the teacher and get help. A lot of students I know are trying to take it into their own hands and use this method, but they then have teachers re-teaching them things and not letting them do their homework in class. To effectively work, schools will have to buy into it as well.”

Read the rest.

It’s great to see students take control of their learning, and how I envy the students of today. But how can we help students make this change?

We need to make sure, of course, that schools and homes have the necessary infrastructure (decent internet) and that students and teachers have the the computers and other tools they need. There are programs in place to get much of this.

But Michael raises the toughest point of all – how do we help teachers change decades, centuries even, of tradition?

The answer is that this will come student by student, teacher by teacher, school by school.

With large businesses it can be very effective to trigger transformational change by starting small, helping one or two teams achieve great success, and then letting the process and results spread. I’ve been part of and helped lead change using this approach. It’s much harder, though you might get more press, to mandate change from above and try to force behaviour change.

Real change happens only when we want it, and the motivation that comes from seeing your fellow students, teachers or schools achieve astonishing results. Those results will eventually spread to the next classroom, the next school and throughout the country and world.

Some schools will be incubators, encouraging and welcoming change, and delivering those astonishing results more quickly. Students will want to attend those schools, and the best teachers will want to teach there.

It’s time to move on. It’s time to flip education – who is first? What about it Scots?

2011 InternetNZ Council Elections

About this time last year I stood for the Council for Internet NZ. The field was large – 12 candidates from memory, and all members had to go on were the candidates personal statements – and what we could find on Google.

This year, so far, we have 6 candidates. Four of them are current councillors, and I endorse them all. The Council, under the leadership of Frank March, has been an increasingly well performing group. It helps that we have a strong CEO in Vikram, and it helps a lot more that NetHui was such a success, following on from a year of important work on issues ranging from Copyright to IPv6.

We now look towards an uncertain future where the number of top level domains (gTLDs) will expand, presenting potential problems and opportunities for the curators of dot nz. We stand on firm ground with very well running institutions, but ahead are certainly interesting times.

So – on to the candidates for 2011.

First up we have Donald Clark, current head of REANNZ who I’m afraid I cannot recommend as I’m conflicted from doing so due well-known on-going negotiations between Pacific Fibre and REANNZ. Sorry Donald – but here you can read Donald’s statement.

Next there is Dave Moskovitz, from WebFund in Wellington and a certified geek and business guy. He’s been on the Council for as long as I have, and we are currently heads down trying to figure out investment strategies so we don’t squander the pre-payments assets on finance companies (we won’t). Dave is a pleasure to have on the council and understands the challenges ahead.

Nat Torkington, Foo camp convener and the only councillor mentioned by name by Hon Bill English at NetHui, should be well known to most. Clearly Bill is still chuffed at being invited to Foo two years ago, even if he didn’t make the list last year. The grapevine whispers that Nat was also the person who reached out to Larry Lessig, who was outstanding at NetHui. Nat’s been his usual insightful and direct self on the council, and we are lucky to have him.

Michael Wallmannsberger is the InternetNZ representative on the NZRS and is a Councillor for  Standards New Zealand. He has all sorts of psychology degrees, works for ASB and is a security consultant. Gulp – I never put all that together before. He’s been around for a while and is very sharp – and is an important player as we grapple with what to do with TLDs.

Richard Orzecki would bring his Ngati Raukawa ki te tonga iwi heritage to the table, and Maori representation is something the council lacks. Richard is Chairman of that iwi and has been on several other boards for iwi and social-based organisations. He has a career as a programmer and was on the NetHui advisory board.

Dave Mill is the other new contender. Dave is an NZNog fan and an ISPANZ member – so he’s offering a technical orientation to the council. He works for Manawatu ISP Inspire.net.nz as “an internet geek”, and so will know a lot about IPv6 – indeed he is part of a couple of groups driving for change.

Still pondering? As I was writing this I marvelled at how many distinctive names (Wallmannsberger, Orzecki etc) we have. So purely in the interests of science, and as I was Googling the new folks anyway, here is the ranking of internet presence for each person:

So by this measure Nat, Donald, Richard and DaveM would make the cut for the four positions available. However I’m not shocked at how little presence that, say, Dave Mill and Michael Wallmannsberger have managed to have, as I suspect that this isn’t unplanned. Many people have significant activity under different handles, especially when it is from the early days.

Now your method of selecting who to vote for may be quite different, as I suspect mine will be. Hopefully by now you have spent your $21 and joined InternetNZ, but the bad news is that only people who joined at least three months ago are eligible to vote. There is some entertaining (in retrospect) history  behind this rule.

But wait – there is more. It’s only early June and nominations are taken up until the 26th. We don’t have any women candidates yet and nor do we have any lawyers – either on the council or standing. We don’t have anyone from big Telco either. We do have geeks and business people, and combinations thereof, and we do have representatives from ISPs, from government, business, education and of course end users. But if you want to stand, then please do read on.

If you are considering standing then read the job description, have a look at the business plan and scan the inputs and outputs from recent Council meetings to see the sort of stuff covered. Then talk to others, and find out how the council works in practice. You can even hunt down audio recordings, if that’s your thing. Get nominated and write a great election statement that covers who you are, what you will bring to the table and why we should vote for you.

What we, and every board or council needs, are a healthy mix people that can bring different perspectives, that can run at the same speed, operate professionally, understand enough of the technical, business, accounting and legal issues to contribute and who have a strategic outlook. The Council has some good challenges ahead this year, but the institutions of InternetNZ are strong. Please support us by standing, voting or joining.

NetHui 2011 – my top 10 takeaways

Here’s my take on the top 10 things I learned from the excellent last three days at NetHui. Your take may be quite different, so please comment.

1: There is general alignment on the important issues

While the participants at NetHui from diverse backgrounds, and had diverse agendas, the basic and strong alignment was compelling. We want the Internet, and we want more of it. We want copyright legislation that works to help creators earn income, and yet is fair and reasonable to society. We want governance processes that are more open, more online and easier to engage with. And so on.

2: We need to hear from the main carriers

They were absent at NetHui, and much that is discussed relies on them continuing to ramp up their provision of high speed internet with caps, if any that are very high. It would have been great to hear from them, to understand their concerns (loss of telephony revenue for example) and to see them immersed in some of the key messages from the other stakeholders.

3: We have made tremendous progress

We have made tremendous strides in the last few years. The UFB and RBI programs, while we may disagree on the process or  implementation,  are now set in place. The industry can now get on with the task of delivering fibre to the premise.

The Copyright Commissioner led a session where it became clear that Open Data is now the default for national Government (small n, big G), and increasingly so for local government. Open Government is increasingly a catch-phrase and there is wider general acceptance of the concept. These are tremendous changes from two years ago when advocates were struggling to be heard.

The S92A and rest of the copyright law is in place, and nobody is happy with it- which is perhaps a good sign. There is also, however, recognition that it needs to be revisited in the next few years, and increasing understanding of the implications of restrictive laws and that creators need to be able to earn a decent return. Why not engage Laurence Lessig to help draft those Copyright 2.0 laws?

We in NZ are recognised for our functioning democratic process, by Lawrence Lessig no less, and the presence of so many MPs at NetHui was good evidence of that. We are able to engage with lawmakers and law writers easily, in public and in private, and there is plenty of evidence that they listen. Above all we have a process that prioritises good and sustainable outcomes for New Zealand and we use logic and reason to get there. We may squabble at the margins, but the main thrust of change is towards a common goal.

4: We have unlimited potential

We are a tiny country, and so we have to look outwards. Our free trade addressable market is about 2 billion people strong, we have a wealth of talent, both here and offshore and we top the rankings on both lack of corruption and ease of doing business. People like us and trust us, and our diaspora is quietly influential across the world, pushing our values through their behavior rather than through preaching. Our internet infrastructure might have issues but we are making tremendous progress towards that. The internet brings us closer to the rest of the world, and the future has huge possibilities.

5: The focus for change has moved to the next tier

While we may not be universally happy with UFB, Copyright and open data progress, those battles are fought, and we are moving on to the next layer. The focus is now on helping Government procurement save money for the country, deliver better value for the country and help our own companies start and grow. It’s also moving towards how we wire up houses and schools to take advantage of the fibre, and on how we ensure teachers are use the connectivity to create transformation in and out of the classroom. There is more unsolved, not the least the low data caps, and we need to keep the pressure on all of these processes.

6: Change is coming and constant – so let’s plan for it

The community at NetHui recognises, as Larry Lessig so eloquently pointed out, that the Internet drives continuous change and places pressure on existing institutions. We can’t be sure of what is coming, but we should support and nudge new endeavours, nudging them in the right direction rather than taking a negative stance.

The continuous change has implications for our lawmakers and enforcers, who must structure and implement laws that are practical and enduring.

7: Things are better when there is genuine multiparty engagement

NetHui itself worked well as the sessions were interactive, with the session leader being a facilitator rather than a lecturer. This resulted in a genuine exchange of views, work towards alignment and mutual respect.

It’s that same with crafting laws, starting and growing businesses,  ensuring equal accessibility and with creating content.

The more people that are genuinely engaged, that more companies we have attacked the gaps in the market, the more we participate the better the outcomes.

8: The market should be the first answer – but not necessarily sufficient

A Government’s role is a custodian, but not the owner of, amongst other things, an economy and people. That means that they should monitor and intervene only where there are unfair or inefficient outcomes. The UFB program addressed a market failure, but as Minister Joyce said the backhaul market is being monitored but no Government action is happening – yet. It means helping monopoly situations turn into competitive ones, and a constant focus on the best outcomes for New Zealand.

The New Zealand Government is increasingly aware of this – from most parties it seems – and the start-up ecosystem is thriving. The Commerce Commission and the FMA  approach otherwise get out of the way, make sure it’s fair, comcom teeth, transparency so we can see that it’s fair

The Government can also support industry and individuals with targeted policy and spending. The REANNZ international capacity commitment, announced about a month ago, is a good example of something that has been genuinely helpful to Pacific Fibre, and creates tremendous value for the research, educational and innovation communities. The future work on procurement promises much.

9: We care about the internet, and it’s incredibly important

NetHui attracted a high quality participant list – and this was a conference that was open to anyone. We saw several school age people, the occasional aging walrus, MPs, technologists, business people, educators, NGO representatives and more. We were united by a single cause – and all agree that internet is vital infrastructure and that the access, skills and technology required to take advantage of it are crucial.

10: Internet NZ has played a central facilitator role

NetHui was a genuine meeting of the Internet ecosystem, and a genuine success. Credit goes in particular to Vikram Kumar for driving the effort, one that I confess as a Councillor I was initially sceptical of. It helped that the name was changed from Internet Governance Forum to NetHui (Vikram’s idea). It also helped that we gained valuable sponsorship from Google, FX Networks, Trade Me, Scoop Media Cartel, Alcatel-Lucent, TelstraClear, CatalystIT, Citylink and webdrive.

But it was the considerable support from Internet NZ that allowed us to drop the entry price to a level that everyone could afford. The Council were aggressive and unanimous in its stance around the entry price, and the team delivered a fantastic outcome. InternetNZ is a relatively small organisation, membership wise, but we do have a steady income from the dot nz mandate. I would encourage all NetHui attendees to join, to take part in the policy and member conversations and to  stand for Council if that’s your thing.

Supporting NetHui was an excellent use of our income – and for sure we’ll be doing this again.

We are using the wrong broadband statistics

TrueNet is a New Zealand company that measures actual internet speeds from the premise to both local and international addresses. Pacific Fibre asked them to pull together from their data a chart showing the difference between local and international traffic speeds at peak times. (If there is an Australian company offering this service then please get in touch)

The left hand column reflects the speed from residences to a domestic NZ address. It’s this statistic (perhaps averaged out over the day, and measured from the server rather than the premise) that local and international surveys report when comparing Australia and New Zealand to the rest of the world. Akamai, Net Index, and Cisco for example, report on speeds from the premises to a local (inside NZ or Australia) server.

The right hand side column shows the effective speed from NZ premises to a server in Dallas, and thus includes the international link.

If we believe industry estimates over 80%+ of traffic to the home comes from offshore. Thus from the end user perspective the effective speed of the internet is generally much closer to the bar on the right hand side.

In the USA the left hand and right hand columns are one – as the vast majority of traffic is domestic. Similarly in Japan, Korea and, I take it, European countries like France – where the language dictates that most of the traffic is domestic. However when we compare average US speeds to speeds in Australia and New Zealand then the only fair way to do so is to use a measure of effective speed. That means we should be much lower in the international rankings, and thus should sound alarm bells.

Starter notes for NetHui Session on Media and Innovation

I’m facilitating a discussion at NetHui today on Media and Innovation. Here’s the blurb:

Content is king but someone has to pay for it. In the days of media convergence traditional content distribution is challenged.

Copyright law has stepped in to protect these legacy distribution models but is this an enduring solution

what alternative models should be explored and what are the implication for business?

 We’ll kick this off with comments from three people, representing Big media, Internet media and end users. Each gets 90 seconds to put their case for what we want the media/content world to look like in 5 years – from their perspective.

Julie Starr will represent big media – she’s a newsroom of the future expert. Bernard Hickey, from interest.co.nz will put the case for small media and I’ll put the case for the end user. I hope Bernard and Julie read this before hand – but then again they both know this stuff cold.

Here’s my take on the desired end user future – In five years we should see three things

  • All media is legally available in NZ, and at a fair price or free. That means US movies, Russian TV programs and French music is easy to access, purchase and consume
  • Content is consumable across countless platforms. This means pay once, consume in many ways. The Wall Street Journal just realised this, opening up their iPad app to existing online or print subscribers.
  • Quality content will drive results. Whether created for free by individuals, by large media organisations building on years of experience and standards, or by PR companies we will migrate to the best content. ‘Best’ mght men the DailyMail.co.uk, but while gossip news may not be highbrow, it’s the quality of that gossip news that counts.

After the quick intros we will open it to the floor to answer four questions – all at once.

1: What mediums should we expect to see in 5 years? (e.g. phones, iPads, big TVs – what else?)

2: What content should we expect to see in 5 years? Who provides it, what are we reading, viewing

3: What content creators should we expect to see in 5 years?

4: What revenue models should we expect to see in 5 years? (free, subs, ads, etc)

And then let’s change tack, and focus on the real question:

What do we need to do to get there? What are the barriers NZ has between now and the content future that we want? What can we do to break them down in order to get the future we want?

Some of those issues I see are:

  • Unobtainable content – purchasable offshore only
  • Unobtainable content – out of publication
  • Unobtainable content – DRMed to heck and thus unusable
  • Unobtainable content – Secret/too expensive
  • Difficult content – held offshore and too big to download easily

And related to the answer to these – how do we balance societal and creator/owner benefits?

  • What do creators and copyright owners want?
  • What does public/consumers want?
  • How do we treat the various types of content?
  • What does copyright 2.0 law look like?
  • Where does the money flow under copyright 2.0?

NZ’s 79% renewable electricity generation

The March edition of the excellent New Zealand Energy Quarterly is out. Here are the top 3 findings from my perspective.

1: NZ electricity was 79% from renewable sources last quarter. While this share will drop as winter kicks in and the more expensive forms of power increase in use to deliver the demand, it’s a superb result from the industry. It’s the highest since 1996 and the seventh quarter over 70%.

 

2: Coal is dying out in NZ – largely, I believe, because Huntly can now be gas-fired. We also see enough Wind power to make a difference, and investment in Geothermal plants is paying off.

3: Emissions from electricity generation have plummeted as coal is replaced by everything else. While Geothermal does emit, it is very small versus the other emitting sources.

A few more reasons to use Powershop – the fine print

Powershop just upgraded their terms and conditions. Here’s a change that stuck out:

We will use our best endeavours to answer calls within one minute and to respond to online help enquiries within 2 business days.  If for some reason we don’t comply with these timeframes you can contact us again or lodge a complaint.

How many other firms use “best endeavours” to answer your call within 60 seconds? Best endeavours is a legal code-phrase, which means they will do everything they can to get that phone answered. It’s a lot stronger than “reasonable endeavours” or “reasonable commercial endeavours” – it means that answering that phone is a core business priority.

 

There are some other reasons to switch from the FAQ

Is there a bond or other charge to switch to Powershop?
No, we don’t require a bond

How does the direct debit set up process work?
<paraphrased> It just does – and without any paper, ever.

Do you send out paper bills in the mail?

No we don’t send out paper bills. You can go online at anytime to view and print your account history.

Will I be charged extra if I pay by credit card?

No you won’t be charged extra, there are no credit card transaction or convenience fees.

Whisky and More delivers

I wrote about Whisky and More earlier, as their online store was a wonderful shopping experience. Purely in the interests of retail research, and perhaps also because the store and products were so wonderful, I decided to purchase a few products for testing purposes.

The email arrived at 8:48am on the day after the order, and with it another wonderful bit of prose:

Prose is prose – but the timely delivery of single malts is what was always going to count.

So I was impressed when the box containing said malts arrived at the shipping destination later the same day.

While the external packing was fairly rough:


The boxes of liquor were all in great shape..

..and the bottles seem appropriately filled with the correct amounts of amber liquid.

The next step is, of course, to determine whether or not the quality of said liquid is as expected. This phase of the testing could take quite some time.

Overall a highly recommended store, and one where I encourage every reader to experience by participating in the purchasing process – purely for benchmarking purposes of course.

That 104 km limit and no fatalities

Natalie writes on Simple and Loveable about the excellent zero road fatality result last weekend, and says credit should go to the Police for a good campaign. I agree – and here’s what I wrote in reply:

I covered about 4000 Km over the weekend and before (for the Brass Monkey). I noticed a lot more police, but they were often not really enforcing, but just providing a visible presence. There was, for example, the officer walking next to his Police ute on the road between Reefton and Murchison and the one a few corners after the long straight on the road between Murchison and Blenheim. They were not trying to catch anyone, but were just letting us know that we should be safe. I’m not even sure whether they had radar or were even able to do anything if they did see an offense.

The emphasis of the campaign was stated to be one of visibility – that every journey we would see at least three police officers. On the way to and from the Brass Monkey we certainly saw a lot more than that, and it’s that constant visibility that helped remind everyone that speed and safety was important.

However let’s also remember that the weather was the mildest it has been for a long time. Last year we saw deep snow all over the South, and ice in the passes North and South. While we saw a decent rainstorm, when riding on the road afterwards I remarked that it had simply served to clean the oil off the roads and make the traction more sure.

We’ve also see continuous improvements in road infrastructure, though we have a long way to go. While they are lethal to motorbikers, those wire rope separators I’m sure are saving some serious car accidents from becoming fatal.

Meanwhile there’s a recession and an increase in the motorcycle registration of over $500. Some folks have placed their bikes on hold for the winter (and some did that and, illegally, came anyway), or just did not come. We saw less bikes on the road regardless.

All of these factors, the police included, served to reduce the likelihood of a fatal accident.

However while the number of fatal accidents is a function of the number of serious accidents and the risk of a serious accident turning into a fatality, they are also a function of randomness – luck if you will. We had a good dose of luck one last weekend, but we also have improvement on all the other parameters. We create our own luck, and we should bank the result but keep striving to improve.

I do enjoy it though when I see emphasis based on helping us be safer rather than penalising. Visible police presence without a speed gun is much better than the reverse. A quiet flashing of the lights or chat is more effective than an us-and-them penalty approach. Let’s accelerate  efforts to distrbute hi-viz clothing to bikers and cyclists, and even pedestrians. Let’s all get better at telling fellow motorists (and there were a few) when a headlight is burned out. And let’s work with the police and have the police work with us so that we can all be safer.

Oh – and no, the change in limit didn’t really affect my behaviour, though one chap got caught as he had assumed his speedo was 10km too slow. We tend as a group to ride pretty much on the speed limit.

But the news that hit me in the weekend was the entirely preventable industrial fatality in Auckland. There are huge numbers of fatalities in industry, and they are much more easily preventable than the road accidents, which have been worked on for years. Let’s see more emphasis on creating lasting safety cultures in work environments.

Why we need NBN, UFB and Pacific Fibre

Ben Kepes stirs the pot over at Diversity, questioning why we need fibre the home. It seems he’s happy with 1 Mbit/s. He questions the benefits of broadband, and references the MOTU report, without referencing the considerable body of work done by the NZ Institute. Both studies are flawed. The MOTU report tries to find productivity changes in companies who adopt broadband, but with a methodology that would fail to fond productivity improvements with the arrival of the PC. If they truly believe this then perhaps MOTU staff would like to ensure that their office and all of their homes are connected with dial-up.

Frankly I had thought the time for these sorts of arguments had long past – the MOTU report was back in 2009 and the Australian election, which was won on the commitment to the NBN project, shows that most people understand. To hear someone like Ben, who is a cloud computing advocate, try to reason that 1 Mbit/s is enough for anyone was a bit shocking.

So here was my reply to his post.

Imagine a bell curve. At one end is your ‘Grandma’, still on dial-up and perhaps just migrating to broadband now so that she can maintain a low resolution Skype chat with your children. Also on that end are families that cannot afford broadband connections, and so their kids are unable to properly join the online world. (Perhaps those kids are lucky, and are at somewhere like Pt England school where they give every kid a laptop for $15 per month and connect to the KAREN network to provide decent connectivity.)

At the other end of the bell curve are people that consume vast amounts of data at high speeds. They might need it for media consumption (of increasingly high definition video), for work (I’m using Dropbox as I write this to transfer large files) or for Skyping their grandkids on high definition. Or perhaps they are creating a business that requires those services. Or perhaps it’s like the majority of Christchurch schools who want to get HD video connections so that students from one school can attend classes over video conferencing with teachers and students from another school, saving us money and increasing the knowledge of our kids. That’s happening right now, thanks to some tireless workers and the support of Enable’s fibre to the schools project.

But regardless of where we are on that curve, that entire bell curve moves each day, as the carriers deliver and we require higher and higher speeds, and as we increasingly accept always-on high speed internet as a requirement. Sadly NZ and Australia are well behind the rest of the developed world on this, while the definition of developed world itself expands as countries like South Korea invest in fibre (and other areas) and leapfrog their economy over ours.

In the future it will be normal to have some of your kid’s classes conducted remotely at school or even to your home. Teaching material such as Khan academy will become the norm and for the video resolution of everything to be such that it’s ‘just like being there’.

It’s the same for work. Skype may work for start-ups, but for dealing with corporates we need high quality vide conferencing that is not only increasingly higher in resolution, but also never drops out and just works. That’s not Skype, and it’s incredibly expensive to deliver right now.

It’s critical that we all understand that what’s sufficient today is insufficient tomorrow. Just as we all laugh now at Bill Gate’s assertion at 640 Kbytes should be enough for anybody, we in the technology and business communities also natively understand that in 5 or 10 years time 1 Mbit/s is going to be ludicrously slow. Imagine trying to load the homepage of Stuff (over 1Mbyte) on a 9.6 kpbs connection. Imagine trying to watch SHDTV emergency alerts about the latest ChCh earthquake over a 1 Mbit/s connection.

Fibre, copper and wireless are all bound by physical limits. Proponents of each show that the capacity that can be delivered over each keeps rising, and that’s true. However it’s also consistently true that fibre is the technology that can deliver the most capacity, and by quite a margin. It’s expensive to deploy, but once in the ground it’s relatively cheap to upgrade. Meanwhile in New Zealand the copper network to the home is most often ductless – and thus exposed to be corroded and difficult to maintain. There’s a place for wireless, be it networks generated in the home or business, or cellular networks that cover the populated country or, via satellite, an entire hemisphere.

The UFB and NBN programs are not abut 2011, nor even about 2015. They are long term focussed and are ensuring that the necessary infrastructure is in place. Copper just won’t cut it in 2020, but fibre will still be working and expanding in 2050 and beyond. Consider that the base case for Pacific Fibre is 2.56 Tbits/sec for a fibre pair on a 10000 km+ fibre leg, and we can see that the potential for the link from the exchange to the home is huge.

Consider also that what I regard as pretty conservative externally commissioned projections show Australasia running out of international capacity before 2020. A project like Pacific Fibre takes a long time to set up, and a long time to build, but like the NBN and UFB we’ll all be glad it is there in 2020.

 

Vodafone’s new website

I just got the heads up that Vodafone NZ has a new website. On first glance it looks better, and I like the front and center placing of the signature product – the iPhone. I don’t understand why the iPhone does not feature in the middle phone selector section though, especially on the business page.

I like the overall retail customer focusses nature of the homepage. I’m a Vodafone customer for home broadband, and I recommend them as the signup process and ongoing processes required no paper at all. The transition was fast and the service just works.
I also have a Vodafone stick, and used to have a Vodafone mobile account before shifting the number across to XT. I’d like to see a more seamless experience, with the two active accoiunts automatically linked. As it is there isn’t really a need for me to login to the website that often, and the last time clearly predates my transition to 1Password which has solved everything. I am stuck in a horrible password loop with a poor message, no ‘forgot password’ action and a 30 second response time for far too long.
Eventually I found a forgot-password link for home broadband users. Unfortunately the result was not a new password, but my old password emailed to me in the clear. That is completely unacceptable today, where email accounts are easily hacked and passwords are often similar across a range of sites. However it’s just as unacceptable that the password emailed to me along with the address it was emailed to didn’t actually work.
So still some work to do, but pleasing to see that the company that touches perhaps the most number of customers in NZ has moved firmly in the right direction.

Are we seeing lower numbers of great teachers?

A remarkably insightful quote from the Agenda for American Education Reform paper.

“In fact, there is reason to believe that the problem with the American teaching force is not that it has long been of low quality and must now be raised, but rather that the United States greatly benefitted for the better part of a century from having a teaching force largely made up of college-educated women whose choice of career was largely limited to nursing, secretarial work and teaching, and some minorities whose career choices were similarly constrained. Many women chose teaching because it would allow them to be home when their children came home from school. Because career choices were so limited, the American public reaped the twin blessings of a highly capable teaching force willing to work for below-market wages under poor working conditions. Those who accepted that deal are now leaving the workforce in droves. There are now more women than men in the professional schools preparing young people for many of the most prestigious professions and they are taking advantage of those opportunities. The United States is now about to get the least capable candidates applying to our education schools when we need the best.”

A lot of the paper’s findings can be directly applied to New Zealand, and there is considerable food for thought.

A bit further on is a personal bugbear:

In Shanghai, a new teacher is expected to spend the first year of employment as a teacher under the intense supervision of a master teacher. Their master teachers are relieved of all or most of their classroom responsibilities to allow them to play this role. These master teachers often sit in on every lesson taught by the new teacher, providing intense coaching. And the new teacher will also observe the master teaching many lessons, too.

The best way to assess performance and help teachers improve is by a peer or senior teacher spending  significant time in the classroom observing, giving feedback after the session. It’s something that I believe should continue throughout a career – be it teaching or otherwise.