House of cards

Our first keynote speaker this morning had a very appropriate title for his talk, given the unseasonable wet weather we've been experiencing here in Brisbane. In 'Bringing the Cloud down to Earth' Nick Carr - author of The Shallows, and controversially, an article entitled "Is Google making us stupid? What the Internet is doing to our brains.''- raised a number of issues about technological change and agency, and tracked the history of similar innovations through history. Ironically, one of his illustrations was a picture of one of Google's data centres. Carr's declaration that Cloud computing is the most important innovation since personal computing was not challenged. 'PCs put the power of computing on your desk' he said, 'and cloud computing has put the power of a data centre in your hand'. And it's true. Businesses are in the process of seceding their data and computing resources to the care of centralised, remote services, in much the same way businesses did with their energy needs when the first big centralised power stations began to draw in their customers. By implication, education is also in the throes of surrendering its content and connections to the Cloud. Carr discussed the risks and the benefits. He convinced most of us that the benefits outweighed the risks. If we are in the mind set iof lease, buy and manage, he said, then working remains fragmented. As a disruptive technology, he promised, the Cloud will easily outstrip any previous technology and quickly take its place. Fragmented working has had it's day, and the Cloud is replacing it as companies and institutes outsource all their computing power. The Cloud is here to stay, and as Bruce Hornsby put it, 'that's just the way it is'.

The second keynote of the day came from Sir John Daniel, whom I had bumped into as he emerged, slightly confused, from the lift earlier in the day. He smiled when he recognised me, and after a few pleasantries, then asked if he was on the correct floor for the convention centre. I showed him the way, and then, in his keynote, he reciprocated by showing all of us the way. In a brilliant, erudite and critical evaluation of a number of school computer projects, he posed the question; 'Computers for Secondary School Children: A busted flush?' Daniel pointed out in his opening gambit that around 400 million children between the ages of 11-17 years have never been to secondary school, and don;t stand a chance of ever doing so. Primary school is the only mandatory schooling for many emerging nations. When secondary specialities need to be taught, they are often found to be too expensive for the state funds of most poor countries, so children past the age of 11 don't get the opportunity unless their parents can pay.

But, he asked, do initiatives aimed at trying to provide computers for such children to offer escape routes from this poverty trap actually help? Well, yes and no, was Sir John's answer. No, in the case of Nick Negroponte's One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project, which was aimed at an ambitious 150 million, only 1 million have actually been distributed. Yes, in the case of 'Slum Dog Professor' Sugata Mitra's hole in the wall project. The difference between the them, said Sir John, lay in the concept and theory behind the two projects. OLPC was premised on the theory of constructivism, where the child, as a solo explorer, could use his laptop to learn independently. Mitra's project on the other hand, discovered that children actually learn best (and even teach themselves) when they are in small groups. Minimally invasive education has been shown to be better than direct instruction for promoting intellectual maturity. Thus, said Sir John, social connectivism trumps constructivism for third world child learning. Oh, and by the way a busted flush is not a leaky toilet - in a card game it's a seemingly good thing which fails to reach its full potential.

More reporting from the World Computer Congress tomorrow.

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