The Auricle

The BBC's podcast pilot with programmes like In Our Time and the Reith Lectures appears to be leading to a broader rollout of this efficient approach to programme distribution. Yesterday's (14 Apr 2005) press release by the BBC states that a further 20 programmes are to be offered for download.

Since I embarked on this podcast production and consumption journey I've found I'm now listening to international programming that I would never have conceived of when previously wedded to the usual media suspects, in my case mainly the BBC. A recent addition to my portfolio of listening pleasure is NPR's 'On the Media'. For the Brits National Public Radio or NPR is roughly the equivalent of the BBC. I say roughly because you're unlikely to find the following at the bottom of a BBC programme web site

“On the Media is funded by The Bydale Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, The John and Annamaria Phillips Foundation and the Overbrook Foundation.”

Having said that wasn't the Naked Scientists the BBC regional radio programme funded by the Royal Society and the University of Cambridge?

Anyway, back to On the Media.

I listened to the 8 April 2005 edition on the way into work and a couple of items particularly caught my attention.

First up was Measure by Measure which described Arbitron's Portable People Meter a really scary way for gathering data about personal viewing/listening habits (and what else?). So don't go near that DVD or television it could contain an audio code below your hearing threshold but which the portable device you're wearing can 'hear' and use to contribute to stats about your behaviour.

Next up was The Chaos Scenario which proposes that the collapse of centralized media production empires is already underway and, for the interim period before the more disaggregated and personalised production model kicks in to replace it, chaos is likely and perhaps necessary. Oh yes? … and Rupert Murdoch, Sony et al will either want a piece of the action or to kill the 'clear and present dangers' (think 'Quick … outlaw peer-to-peer technologies').

I really like the way the On the Media site presents each item from its archive as an individual MP3 download and transcript.

Anyway, check it out if your interested in how our North American cousins approach media criticism and analysis and it might also be worthwhile sampling what else NPR has to offer as well.

Technology determinism at work or what? 🙂

Today, using Skype and Audacity, I recorded an interview with John Dale, Head of Development at the University of Warwick's ELab which developed BlogBuilder, part of the growing e-tools portfolio being developed by Warwick. The more I look at what Warwick's been doing the more impressed I become. These people have really got it. They are providing their staff and students with tools that do discrete jobs and can therefore achieve a level of flexibility that most institutions can only dream of. The challenge here is to learn from, and improve upon, what they have done.

The other honourable mentions in this type of approach are, of course, the University of Washington's Catalyst Tools and the JISC funded e-Tools projects, although the latter are still very much works-in-progress.

Anyway, if you want to listen to the interview just click on the Podcasts button on the right hand menu to download the MP3. Sorry, we got carried away, it's nearly 36 minutes long, but it's well worth the listen.

The Observatory on Borderless Higher Education (subscription service) report on Implications of Enterprise Resource Planning Systems for Universities: An analysis of Benefits and Risks has just been released (issue 30, April 2005) and it needs to go straight on to the essential reading list. The authors Neil Pollock, University of Edinburgh and James Cornford, University of Newcastle upon Tyne are both respected authors in their field so we would be wise to pay attention to what they have to say. Some of the arguments in the OBHE report can also be found in James Cornford's earlier 2000 paper The Virtual University is (paradoxically) the University Made Concrete, but the arguments are even more relevant today.

If I was to summarize the OBHE paper in a sentence it would be as follows.

The introduction of enterprise class management systems into a university tends to result in the institution adapting to the needs of the technology, not vice versa. Or in the language of the report:

“… universities may be increasingly forced to consider institutional changes in order to maintain alignment with the system.” (p13)

Anyone looking for examples of technological determinism?

The OBHE reports seems to indicate that quite draconian expensive and high risk organizational changes can be imposed just so that a 'fit' can be created with whatever system is chosen. Although the OBHE report was focusing on ERP systems on page 14 we find reference to other related systems:

“In terms of overall shaping of universities we found that the adoption of ERP (and other ICTs) does not appear to be favouring the desired enterprise model. Rather they seem to be reinforcing the establishment of a more … corporate form of organisation where both policy formation and policy implementation are far tighter and goals, roles, identities, abstract rules and standard operating procedures are made explicit and formalised. This had a number of implications througout the university in terms of local flexibility and control.”

In my earlier post, Be afraid … be very afraid! (1), I attempted to express my increasing concern with the lemming-like behaviour of institutions which lock themselves into proprietary enterprise class VLEs and then proceed to link with like minded entities, with the whole state of Connecticut in the US undoubtedly providing the uber example of this tendency. So within the OBHE report we find the following, which has done little to reassure me it will all turn out ok in the end:

“… in order to exert pressure on suppliers to build specific modules, institutions have little choice but to procure software as a 'community' or 'sector'. In so doing, adopters will have to negotiate and struggle both with the supplier and with other higher education institutions … These pressures are described as sometimes leading to what organisational sociologists call 'institutional isomorphism' “. (page 13)

When reading the above just substitute ERP systems for MLEs/VLEs/LMSs

To put it in the language of my earlier articles on this theme we end up creating a monoculture. When we eventually wake up the reversal will be horrendously expensive and very very traumatic. And if you've got nascent plans to 'evolve' away from your current enterprise system there are many many interests who can, and will, directly or indirectly impede this.

When I first heard this I thought it must be a joke or I had fallen asleep and was in some weird dream, but then I woke up to find we are actually participating in a surrealistic Kafka fable. A JISCMail discussion list on VLEs has really been suspended because it, and others, are apparently perceived as a 'clear and present danger' to the results of the forthcoming UK election. To quote:

“All services provided by non-departmental public bodies (such as Becta) must comply with the General Election Guidance issued by the Cabinet Office.”

And lest we forget when the election is over here's a screenshot to remind us for posterity.

This type of nonsense needs to be challenged, so do send your comments to the list owner for onward transmission to those who formulate policies that are interpreted in such a rigid way. I would like to send this to the VLE@JISCMAIL.AC.UK, but I of course can't.

Ahh! … the law of unintended consequences.

I'm sure whoever drafted these Cabinent Office 'guidelines' (don't you just love that word) wasn't thinking about Virtual Learning Environments at the time. But what does this say about the ability of citizens to trust their government and quasi government agencies to be reliable and robust service providers if a body like BECTA can suspend free speech on topics completely unrelated to politics (at least they were until they did this) just because there's an election campaign underway?

I agree that BECTA et al need to keep out of politics but, sorry folks, this withdrawal of service was poorly conceived and is itself a highly political act which removed the rights of people to communicate via a service provided specifically for that purpose, and that is unjustified. I'm sure the politicians of all political hues will be happy to declare it's unjustified … won't they?

I do hope this was just a misjudgement. I know politicians and their acolytes like to believe they can control the message and that the internet is a bit difficult to control, but shutting down even a tiny part of the communications network like this is breathtakingly naive. The fact that this mailing list was 'owned' by BECTA should have been irrelevant, but unless they can change their position on this pretty quickly, perhaps we should be asking the question whether they should be the 'owners' of resources like this at all?

Imagine this. I can proudly announce we've negotiated a national license for Blackboard, WebCT, or whatever is your preference. So now I look forward to full integration across the primary, secondary, tertiary and higher education sectors. Couldn't happen? … Oh yes it could. The extract below sets the context for this post.

The Connecticut implementation of WebCT Vista is expected to expand over time to include private institutions and K-12 schools in the state, all of which will be able to leverage the existing contract by participating in a consortial purchase, thereby reducing their costs.

Now for the full story read the April/May 2005 edition of Innovate (free registration required) which includes Ed Klonoski's Cost-Saving Collaboration: Purchasing and Deploying a Statewide Learning Management System.

This contains such gems as:

The current financial pressure that is topic number one in the public sector is leading these same legislatures to pressure their state schools to stop emphasizing their differences when they are purchasing what are essentially expensive commodities. In the end, an ERP system or an LMS exists to solve the same set of problems at whatever institution it is deployed.

Comment: So there you have it. VLEs/LMS' have all now matured to such a point that they are just commodities. Hello? … where have I been? Has something magically happened that's transformed what are still first generation products into mere interchangeable commodities in which all the problems have been solved? Or are the educational institutions involved now being perceived as a potential commodity, so that diversity needs to be eliminated? Or is there some confusion with BB and WebCT now being so similar that some consider them to be expensive commodities; in which case, instead of opting for one of them, why not look beyond these rather limited and expensive choices? Connecticut could have eliminated licensing fees altogether if that had been the primary concern. No, their HEIs were already pretty locked in and so, to some, this was the next logical step. This is a good reason not to get 'locked in' in the first place because, if you do, someone at some time in the future is going to make the conceptual leap based on the argument that 'since we are this far along the road anyway we might as well go the whole hog'. And then your next door neighbour (or state, or region) then says to themselves 'well if they've gone the whole hog it must be ok so why don't we?'; which might work wonders for the value of your supplier but eventually, if not challenged, results in a monoculture. Just in case you think I'm being a bit Eyorish here's an extract from WebCT's own site which states “We look forward to supporting the success of Connecticut’s new e-learning initiative, and watching other states and regions follow suit“.

Ed's article then goes on to state:

… collaboration ideally allows for a realignment of costs and benefits that can work to the shared advantage of different educational sectors.

Comment: Notice that word ideally. The trouble with ideally is it's just so well … ideal.

So a real question emerges about whether advanced LMS systems should be a hallmark of academic distinction for select campuses or institutions…

Comment: So if you've got WebCT or Blackboard it's a hallmark of distinction? … oh come off it! … you're just yet another institution with WebCT or Blackboard. On the contrary, the hallmark of distinction now belongs to those who haven't gone down this route.

We also discovered that chief information officers (CIOs) have learned that choosing and deploying enterprise-level software is fraught with career danger. Consequently, there is a real advantage to making such choices in tandem with other systems and users because those choices “belong” to the group, not to individuals.

Comment: So it's ok guys, if we've to this wrong there's strength in numbers. Back to basic organizational psychology folks … study 'risky shift' and 'groupthink'. History is littered with groups (consortia) who've made the most horrendous decisions.

By sharing a single software license for WebCT Vista—which allowed for a greater statewide uniformity in technology architecture, administration, implementation services, and training programs, as well as the future development of a repository of learning objects such as Web pages, media clips, and curricula—the state of Connecticut reduced the costs of deployment by more than $250,000.

So what do I think?

Just think what these savings on those nice Japanese motor cycles did for the native motorcycle industries and then say after me: 'Monopolies are bad and state-sponsored monopolies are even worse'.

Follow that with a re-read of my 2004 ALT-C paper E-Learning Frameworks and Tools: Is it too late? and then revisit Scott Wilson's The VLE of the Future? and his later supplement to the original post Future VLE: the Visual Version.

Where then e-tools? Where then syndication? Where then distributed systems and aggregation? Where then portals?

Connecticut offers us the best example of 'lock-in' we are ever likely to see. What a fine case study they are going to be. The problem is they see it as a solution not a problem. They may think they are making savings but the costs may be greater and different in nature than they think. And do remember that once you are so dependent on your monopoly supplier it's theoretically possible to change horses but, in practice, all but impossible … and, oh yes, when your supplier decides to eventually boost your annual fees then I hope the negotiations go well (if not go back to the start of this sentence).

My advice, for what's it's worth is to these other states which are apparently expressing interest is to leave it for 4-5 years so that the negative consequences have a chance to show themselves.

So folks enjoy what the good ship WebCT allows you to do and remember that one of the advantages of diversity is that small failures are survivable, but when you make this kind of commitment, particularly when the Connecticut initiative is expected to expand over time to include private institutions and K-12 schools in the state, then the emerging e-learning monoculture has taken another step forward.

Do you want to join? … well do you? … it's just so much simpler than having to worry about 'career danger' isn't it? … And do remember that 'hallmark of distinction' argument which, along with saving costs, was the rationale for joining.

There was an interesting presentation about Confidence Based Marking at the Shock of the Old 2005 conference (Oxford 7 Apr 2005). Tony Gardner-Medwin from University College London illustrated how CBM could be used as part of an approach to Computer Assisted Assessment which moves away from testing just surface learning and which enables CAA to test for knowledge, uncertainty, ignorance, misconception and delusion. At risk of a gross simplification of the concept, the principle seems to be declaring a high confidence but selecting the wrong answer costs you big time, so students only tend to do this when they really know, or when they are delusional:) If you want to know more the visit Tony's LAPT site.

I gave the opening keynote yesterday (7 Apr 2005) at this year's Shock of the Old conference at Oxford University's Said Business School. It was a really good, informative event with the theme of implementing innovation. It had first rate inputs from other speakers from both the higher and further education sectors. Shock of the Old has managed to carve itself a niche in the otherwise increasingly crowded e-learning conference circuit. I found it well worthwhile attending. Here's a summary and link to the slides of my particular input. [Slides 1 and 2]
My keynote was initially titled 'Lottsa Innovation … But where's the change?' but I decided to expand this slightly into 'Lottsa Innovation …. But where's the change coming from?'

[Slides 3-17]
I took, what I hope was, a fairly light hearted approach but with a pretty serious message. But first I needed to set the context for, what I see as, some pretty difficult questions that some in the sector may find increasingly uncomfortable.

As a starting point I used Alan Turing's seminal typology of systems (machines), i.e. organised, disorganised, self-organising [Slide 4]. The idea here was to provide a frame of reference to the 'systems' we were familiar and perhaps less familar with. I also provided, what some may see as, a tenuous link to David Wiley's writings on self-organizing learning systems.

I then moved on to consider the situation circa 2000 when we all optimistically piled into e-learning with the belief that whatever our favourite brand of proprietary VLE/LMS was would somehow work miracles for us [Slides 5-6]. Open source alternatives like Colloquia and COSE were perhaps the 'good guys' who were pedagogically and not content driven but were, in the main, perceived to be a minority sport. As a result HE and FE enthusiastically adopted the mainstream proprietary solutions.

But it's now 2005 and we've now learned some pretty tough lessons and have a lot more options to consider [Slide 8]. Undisputably in the 'tough lessons' category was the rise and fall of UKeU whose demise, I argued, will continue to impact upon the UK HE/FE online learning sector. Ironically, perhaps, I suggested that the negative experience may have had, and will continue to have, some positive influences upon future funding and other policies. Either way, the 'ghost' of UKeU will continue to be with us for perhaps longer than some would like.

But there's a lot more in Slide 8 than UKeU. There are the for profit and 'free' technical and social infrastructures now being built. The technologies and services represented here range from from broadband to iPods, mobile phones to Blackberries, from IMS to BitTorrent. The emergence of the 'open' movement and technologies as represented by SourceForge, MIT Courseware, Wikipedia etc was of particular note. Also, of particular note is the meteoric rise of social networking software and services where user-generated content and metadata (folksonomies) take precedence, e.g. Weblogs, Flickr, RSS/Atom et al. At the other end of the spectrum is the construction of the Semantic Web and a focus on Taxonomies. I suggested that there are now so many opportunities and services arising 'out there' that it's perfectly feasible that if institutions are found wanting in their future IT/e-learning infrastructure and services provision that the teachers and students will migrate to systems and services about which institutions have no knowledge and over which they certainly will not be able to establish any control. There are other risks for users of course in this approach, e.g. sudden loss of a 'free' service which has been embedded within a 'course'.

Slide 9 took a little diversion but. neverthless. it was related to the previous points about the growth and increasing importance of social networking software and services. Here I highlighted David Wiley's contention that:

The further up Bloom’s taxonomy a desired learning outcome is, the more important social interaction will be in promoting student achievement of the outcome.

If Wiley's correct, and I suspect he is, we are mostly paddling around in the knowledge, comprehension and application shallows but are failing to move into the deeper learning waters of analysis, synthesis and evaluation. As we know, if you don't learn to swim you drown when you enter deep water 🙂

Slides 10-16 try to provide some hard figures to the growth of particular technologies and services. In particular I used some of the data available which attempts to illustrate the growth in the use of weblogs and syndicated feeds via RSS and Atom. I also considered the incredible growth of MP3 players as illustrative of users desire for personal multimedia entertainment, communication and information devices.

[Slides 18-63]
Now to the 'Difficult Questions' section of my keynote. First I reused my original pasteboard of services, issues, and technologies [Slide 8] but posed the question 'Knowing what we know now would we make the same decisions again?'. I then moved on to consider whether we were all technological determinists [Slide 22-26] and reminded everyone that this is usually a term of abuse from social scientists:) This was also an opportunity to promote this years BBC Radio 4 Reith Lectures which have The Triumph of Technology as their theme [Slide 26].

I used slides 28 and 29 as an anchor to suggest that the often used assertion that the VLE is but a Trojan Horse for other organizational development is but a comforting myth. A myth based more on hope than reality. The reality is that solutions like proprietary VLEs have merely provided a more efficient way for pushing content online and yet again supporting and indeed magnifying the knowledge transfer model [Slides 30-32] instead of the myriad of alternative and richer, but, arguably, harder to understand and implement) options [Slides 34-37].

In slide 39 I suggest that the time has come to think beyond the VLE and, what I called, the 'walled garden' but there's a lot that can and will inhibit this move. Slides 41-45 attempt to outline as least some of these inhibitory factors (mainly people). I also suggested that, ironically, that it may well be the original change agents some of who now form the existing e-learning cadre within institutions who may, understandably, be the biggest resistors to any change. Why should this be so? Simply because they have considerable intellectual and emotional investments in earlier decisions and it's they who stand to be in the frontline of any fire arising from any signficant change of direction within their institutions.

From Slide 48 onwards I considered what we perhaps now need to do to think beyond the VLE and the walled garden. In slides 49-51 we considered some of the statements and policies arising from the JISC, particularly the ELearning Framework (ELF) and the Information Environment. In slide 52 I quote some of the views arising from within the teams working on implementing the JISC ELF vision (although I believe the timescales to VLE death will be considerably longer than they think) and in slides 53-55 I highlight CETIS' Scott Wilson's recent contribution to the Future VLE debate. In Slides 56-57 I offer two, what I consider, exemplary models, i.e. the University of Washington's Catalyst Tools and the University of Warwick's ELab Web Tools recently supplemented by their BlogBuilder tool. The latter was particularly of note because the speaker following me was from Warwick.

I finished off with a consideration of the 'filling station' model of e-learning. Users have demonstrated their preference for downloads into their personal, and highly portable, multimedia devices. I included the 'usual suspects' like Apple's iPod and other MP3 type devices but also highlighted how some of the major commercial stakeholders are now beginning to move into this media download space [Slides 58-60].

I concluded with a final alert that we, the learning technology types, whether at strategic or operational level, will have to be careful that we don't become perceived as impeding necessary change. We need to do exactly the opposite and become the initiators. It's likely to be a 'challenging' ride over the next 5-10 years (the period of the HEFCE strategy) but one thing will become increasingly clear, i.e. the status quo is, and should be, up for grabs. It would be an absolute tragedy if, in 10 years, time all we've got to show for all this effort is still a load of unexciting textual content plus a few quizzes embedded in a proprietary VLE purporting to be e-learning, online learning, enhanced learning or whatever terminology has currency at the time.

Here is the slide set (PDF 2.62MB)

In November 2004 I posted an Auricle item entitled A 'Filling Station' Model of eLearning supplemented, in the interim, by a few additional items on podcasting etc. Into the fray now comes Sony's Play Station Portable (PSP) with which it hopes to gain back its dominant position in the portable device market, a position so cruelly taken by that usurper Apple with its iPod. So how well does their PSP device mesh with the 'filling station' model? It's no understatement to say that Sony's Walkman series of products basically created the market for personal media devices. Sony's dominant position in this arena appeared secure until in from left field came Apple with their now ubiquitous iPod. Suddenly the Walkman series of products was looking like yesterday's technology. While Apple still has a long way to go to match the total number of Walkmans sold they claim to have now passed the 10 million sales mark and with the potential market for MP3 players alone projected to rise from 36,800,000 in 2004 to 131,963,000 by 2009 then there's going to be a lot of activity and development in this portable devices arena (Source: Digitimes 16 March 2005 citing the iSuppli Consumer Platforms Topical Report - Q1 2005 Portable MP3 Players: Booming Market Looks for New Twist.

My only interest in market trends such as the above is as indicators of what people are finding genuinely useful and what technologies they are prepared to absorb into their normal patterns of life. I don't even own an iPod although I do have frequently use a much more robust and smaller flash memory based multifiunction device, i.e. MP3 playing/recording, voice recording, radio. Anyway, enough of my foibles, let's get back to the iPod and then move on to consider the relevance of the new Sony device which hasn't even been released in the UK yet, but there sure is a lot written about it 'out there'.

Let's consider for a moment some of the reasons for the iPod's and other iPod like devices phenomenal success. First, they're small, don't weigh very much and have a significant storage capacity (with flash memory based devices having less capacity but being more robust for those who like to listen whilst trying to be an athlete). Second, they can be connected to services or other sources which can then automatically or manually download new content to the device. Apple's iTunes download service is but one notable example of such a paid-for service. Whilst the Apple iTunes service constrains reuse of the content by embedding digital rights management within the download, other sources of content are DRM free, e.g.via the podcast community. Third, users can organize that content into playlists and folders that match the genres they are interested in, so they feel in control. Fourth, it's perhaps stating the obvious, but, because the iPod et al are personal audio devices people can be doing something else while they are listening. They don't have to be sitting still. They don't need a table. The moment a device, even a portable one like the 7 inch x 3 inch PSP, requires multiple senses and motor skills to be engaged then, to varying degrees, that limits the environments and other activities the user can engage in.

So there we have it, the ingredients for success are: personal; small; genuinely useful; uses up only part of your human processing power; plus lots of alternative sources for content, some paid-for, some not. It's perhaps a bit unfair to compare the PSP to the Apple iPod et al. The latter do one thing fairly well, the PSP, however, is a multifunction mutimedia device that does more than play audio, but that means it also needs to be flexible/extensible

So how does Sony's PSP match up?

First let's not kid ourselves that the PSP is meant to be just a console games machine for children. It's not. It's a ~7 inch x~3 inch handheld personal multifunction multimedia device aimed squarely at the adult market. It's got a 4.3 inch TFT display for its 16:9 widescreen 480×272 resolution graphics. It's got WiFi and USB2.0 so it's got potential network and computer connectivity. It's got a Sony Memory Stick Duo for storage of data so you can store and play your MP3s. And it can play movies. So what fantastic potential! I can see lecture rooms and University libraries throughout the world full of Sony PSPs … but wait! … what's this I don't see?

Where's the hard disk? You mean there isn't one? And what do you mean if I want to view a movie that I have to use a new type of proprietary media called Universal Media Disc (UMD is like a minature DVD with a caddy/or like a MiniDisc which holds 1.8GB of data)? Only available from guess who? of course.

So how am I going to produce my own UMD productions?

The USB connection does mean that you can connect your computer to the Sony PSP but the only read/write capability is that Memory Stick Duo … remember no hard disk. However, as standard only a measly 32MB Memory Stick is supplied. Also there's a current 4GB ceiling on Memory Sticks. And Memory Sticks ain't cheap at the equivalent of GBP 440 for 4GB, GBP 230 for 2GB, and GBP 155 for 1GB. So you ain't economically going to be storing lots of your own productions on your Memory Sticks. At these prices, the Memory Stick feature will be used for storing game status data, MP3s and static photos. For video and other perhaps other really rich media Sony wants you locked to their proprietary and highly rights protected and region coded UMD format.

With the PSP Sony's Janus head really shows through. In one face there's the part of the empire that's the innovative creator of new sexy portable technologies which appear to liberate users. In the other face there's the media interests (particularly music and film) that's concerned with rights and control.

One of the reasons Sony's began to lose it's grip of the audio device market was because of its insistence that users used its proprietary ATRAC format instead of the now ubiquitous MP3. Users were buying portable MP3 players in their droves and so it should be gratifying to find that the Sony PSP handles MP3 natively. However, that read only proprietary UMD format for video could, and should, be a big own goal for Sony. By adopting UMD and forcing users to rely on the proprietary Memory Stick, which is a relatively expensive read/write media with limited storage capacity seems to be missing a trick. If the PSP is aimed at the adult market then a games machine that can only play movies via yet another proprietary format seems, well, too limited. And as an MP3 player? Well there are many other devices that are considerably smaller and cheaper that can fulfil this function admirably.

I suppose it is possible to imagine the user on a long train or plane journey who whips out their PSP to listen to play a game (perhaps collaboratively … remember that WiFi), slip in a UMD disk (at say GBP10-20 a time) and watch a movie, or who will listen to a few MP3 files on their expensive Memory Stick storage. But watch that 3.5 hours of useful battery life; a spare battery will be a 'must have' for long journeys.

Technically, the Sony PSP appears to be a marvel … but think what could have been.

The Apple iPod et al succeeded not just because of triumph of marketing, but because it integrated relatively high capacity storage of content which the users could refresh with ease and with, arguably, relatively low cost or for free from linked services or sources. The PSP, however, is a neat device which, at the moment, appears to be based on a classical 'lock in' model. Just as the iPod et al gives users potential access to multiple Gigabytes of data Sony seems to be heading in the other direction and has chosen to seriously limit the proportion of the PSP devoted to user controlled content, specifically video-based content.

The Sony PSP is, however, just the sort of device I had in mind when I wrote my original 'Filling Station Model of eLearning' article. But, at the moment, I don't think this iteration is it, but I could be wrong:)

It isn't hard to imagine a PSP type device that does all that the current PSP does but which has significant, and relatively cheap, user-data storage capacity which can be linked to paid-for or free services and other sources. Which can act as an ebook and which uses the WiFi capability to connect and communicate with other devices as well as browse the Web (sounds a bit like a PDA or really small laptop). Now Sony could decide to do that by establishing UMD as a read/write format so suddenly users could be playing, and God forbid 'sharing', their content. But with hard disks getting smaller and of increasing capacity one wonders why they would do that. No, the absence of a hard disk and the emphasis on the Memory Stick reeks of 'control the users' dominating current thinking. So perhaps it's back to really well specified PDA or really small lightweight laptop thinking; but they don't cost the GBP ~200 of a PSP and even the smallest lightest laptop is going to be much heavier than the 280g PSP.

As a portable games device the PSP will undoubtedly succeed but it's meant to be more than that. And keep in mind the intended adult target group. Sony will either have to change its mind about its intended audience and what its PSP is meant to be. Do the spotty adolescents await?

From my current perspective, at the moment, it appears that the dead hand of digital rights management is producing devices which are like cars that can only 'fill up' with designated expensive brands of fuel from designated expensive 'filling stations' … Pity that!