The Ed Techie

Gordon Brown is the Steve McLaren of politics

I don't 'do politics' in this blog usually, but really, the analogy is too good to pass up. Look at the similarities:

• Both were second in commands
• Both took over from someone who had been in post for a long time.
• Both of their predecessors left on a wave of unpopularity
• Both enjoyed brief periods of (unexpected) success.
• Both then made a series of strategic errors

I think the foot and mouth outbreak was Gordon's draw with Macedonia, the election that never was his away defeat to Croatia, and this week's armed forces attack his away defeat to Russia. If the analogy is to be played out in full, that means by my reckoning he only has a catastrophic home defeat to Croatia left before they start looking for a successor. Wonder what it could be?

Now, that's security

Chip and Kerching
Originally uploaded by Auntie P

My wife went off in the car yesterday, with my wallet. I needed to get some stuff so she told me to use her card. The good thing about chip n pin is nobody looks at the name, you insert the card yourself. So I was able to spend happily in Toys R Us, BP, Threshers and then I went to Tesco. I needed to get some fireworks which were available from a special stand. To my discomfort they printed the receipt out and asked me to sign, no chip n pin. I tried to forge my wife's signature and made a poor effort.
'The signature doesn't match', the assistant told me.
'No,' I mumbled, rather embarrassed.
Then.... nothing. She just handed the bag over and I left with the goods. There's no getting past that level of security eh?

In Sydney

I'm in Sydney at the moment, working with James Dalziel at MELCOE, Macquarie University. We're having some good discussions around web 2.0, learning design, open educational resources and the implications for higher education, which I will work up in to a paper (and blog posts). I'll be concentrating on the learning design aspect for a presentation at the LAMS conference (which by virtue of bad timing will be when I'm back in the UK, so will be via Skype).

But all of this is really an excuse for me to show you my view:

All together now: Correlation does not imply causation

I've moaned about this before, and I agree with D'Arcy Norman who rants that it should be taught to every child. So when on the radio yesterday I heard a BBC reporter talking about a new report that looks at marriage, cohabiting and single parents in the UK, it inevitably got another airing. One of the findings was that children of married couples were more likely to stay on in education. 'So,' the reporter concluded, 'it seems that being married has benefits for the children over just cohabiting.'

No, no, no - there will undoubtedly be a number of other factors here. For example, maybe married couples are more conformist and thus their children more likely to succeed or enjoy education. I'm not suggesting this is a factor, who knows? There could be a thousand such factors at work (I think they controlled for socio-economic factors, so we could rule the obvious ones out). But it would be unlikely that marriage causes children to stay on in higher education. The danger of such lazy reporting and interpretation is that daft politicians (stand up David Cameron) start making policy on the back of such 'evidence'.

I'm married so this isn't a personal defence of cohabitation, just another example of the correlation error, which seems particularly prevalent in research around families. Nearly all of the guides to good parenting are based on this error - 'Parents who are X with their children have children who turn out to be X in later life. Therefore being X causes all children to be this way.' Where X is any attribute or habit, good or bad (gentle, loud, aggressive, kind, patient, etc). This becomes advice on how to parent, ignoring the very obvious genetic influence ('Parents who are X will tend to have children who are X also').

I think I'll have it on my tombstone 'Correlation does not imply causation - except in this case.'

What I don't get about fashion

Watching TV last night they were interviewing up and coming Welsh fashion designer Ross Jenkins. They mentioned, rather casually, that his last collection was 'based on the holocaust'. I spluttered my tea at this point as they showed skinny models in stylishly distressed black and grey robes. And no-one seemed to think there was anything wrong with this. I see now he is claiming it is a 'tribute'. Oh yeah, of course. It's a tribute in the same way an Auschwitz inspired breakfast cereal would be a tribute, and in no way insulting, shallow and disrespectful. It leads to such deep analysis as: "Ross Jenkins' moth eaten brogues are refreshing and although he used the Holocaust as his theme, there are some unscary high-waisted trousers and fabulous knits which drape around the body."

If Clive James were to use this in a novel we'd accuse him of taking parody too far. And this is the thing I just don't get about fashion - nothing matters, absolutely nothing,except self-adoration. And this is a world so many of our youth aspire to. I mean, come on. It's not just me that finds this appalling is it? Yet I couldn't find any criticism of it anywhere.

A couple of Gaping Void goodies

I liked these two from Hugh MacLeod recently. The first will resonate with all my Apple fan friends:

And this one seems true of everything from the McCann case to children's vaccinations:

The new morning routine

I have a morning routine now, which has evolved over the past year or so. It's remarkably different from even a couple of years ago, largely as a result of becoming a blogger I think. Here it is:

After the school run I sit at the laptop with a cup of tea and bowl of muesli (if I'm indulging - marmite on toast).

1. Firstly, I check email, delete all the spam messages, do any quick responses, and mark any more detailed ones for later.
2. I check messages in the student forum for the course I run.
3. So far, so 1990s. Next I go to my blog, check stats, and comments and respond on any comments.
4. Then I pop in to Facebook, check my news feed, update status and look at any messages or notifications.
5. By this time Twitteroo is loaded so I catch up on all the tweets from the US or Canada of the people I am following. I follow any urls that have been twitted and look interesting.
6. Lastly, to Google Reader to look at any new blog posts of the 112 blogs I subscribe to. I will scan most of these, ignore a few, read some, and respond to maybe one or two.
7. Now I'm ready to start work.

And here's some thought on what this routine reveals:

• It's a mixture of social and professional. Most of my Facebook friends, blogs and Tweeters are professional peers but what they post is often a mix of social updates and relevant resources.
• I'm more connected to what is happening in my field than I was before. I didn't used to start every day by reading an academic journal, but I will usually find one academically interesting post or resource before I've finished my cup of tea.
• It's expanding. Since being a blogger I have had the additional burden/privilege of tending one's own blog garden, but also I have become a much more active blog reader, so now have a lot of posts to get through in my aggregator. And then I added Facebook in to the mix, and more recently Twitter. I don't seem to have dropped anything though. At this rate my morning routine will be my all day routine.
• I'm developing new skills in scanning, interpreting, reading and writing. Given the expansionist desires of my morning routine, I have developed further skills in information processing - I'm not on a par with ultra bloggers, but I can scan my Google reader list quickly, and determine which posts to follow. It may not be always reliable, but it is reliable enough. I know how to get in to Facebook, get what I want and get out quickly. I am currently trying to develop my Twitter voice (more on this in a later post).

Any other activities that should form part of a connected morning routine?

Prof in ICT post at the OU

I've been asked to flush out any candidates for a Professor of ICT here at the OU, in the newly formed department. Details here: http://www3.open.ac.uk/employment/job-details.asp?id=3263&ref=ext If you're of Professorial quality (I know you're thinking - if you're one, how hard can it be?) come and join us, there's lots of interesting people here (and me). Don't contact me for any further info though - I don't know any more than is here.

Dylan viral marketing

(Hat tip: Stuart Brown) As you may know, I'm a sucker for viral marketing - it's like normal marketing but fun. To promote the new Dylan Greatest Hits, they created a make your own Bob video site. You can add the text in. Here is my one:

Shaming yourself in to action

I like this: in an attempt to shame himself into losing weight, Kerry Buckley has a Big Visible Belly graph showing on his blog, which shows his fluctuation around his ideal weight - over and it records in red and under it shows in green.

This use of the blog to expose some aspect of yourself to the audience and thus force action got me thinking. What else could you use it for? I would probably like to record my running, with a weekly target. But anything you procrastinate over would be a contender - you could go for study hours, progress through Remembrance of Things Past, number of alcohol units consumed (depending on whether you wanted to drink more or less), blog posts even.

I think the visual element is important - you get an instant nudge if it's largely red. So is the pressure from the audience - this only needs to be perceived, none of your audience actually needs to care or comment, but the fact that it is public is sufficient. Another Facebook app maybe?