Ian G. Kennedy

Convergence and emerging technologies: Issues faced by the regulator

Convergence is taking place in the telecommunications, broadcasting and information technology industries. Services that in the past were offered only on one platform are now offered on any platform by the three industries. The evolution of convergence has led to an increased demand for access to services and content. This, in turn, has led to the development of new technologies that offer high throughput to the end user. The regulator is now faced with the challenge of regulating the converging environment and dealing with spectrum management issues that arise due to the emerging technologies. This article reviews the issues faced by the regulator due to convergence and emerging technologies.

Pedaglue teaching for life-long learners: rapid development by post-graduates of a PG course with modern content

In developing countries, students are sensitive to the cost of education and lecturers do not have much support. We present a new, constructivist technique for educators in developing countries, of lifelong benefit to their students. Course materials are often incoherent to students until a lecturer does an analysis and provides the pedagogical links or glue. So we taught a class how to provide pedagogical links themselves, a technique we call the Teaching of PedaGlue. We teach the processes that lecturers perform on material to make it suitable for students: how to access, process, create, share, and apply knowledge. Systematically and intentionally we teach students how to do this didactisizing (pedagogical process) themselves, and thereby rapidly develop new, modern, dynamic instructional reference material. They developed a large, comprehensive, annotated, organised corpus of recent, relevant references that is now published. Success factors included the prior teaching of research methods, and resources, key keywords, and a template for critical reviewing.

The Literature Review

This chapter explores the plethora of literature on teachers’ 21st century skills. The authors explore two broad paradigms found in the literature. The first and most prominent advocate educational reform; formulating ways to better the existing systems and provide teachers with new skills to teach. The second seek to replace the existing systems in order to provide teachers with far greater autonomy to re-imagine education holistically for the future.

Results of Thematic Analysis

The posts from an online global exchange were categorised into themes that revealed a comprehensive picture of new and pre-existing 21st century skills. Central to the required skills that the educators’ addressed were critical thinking, problem-solving, collaborative learning, learner-centred teaching and digital literacy.

Comparative Analysis Findings

In this Qualitative Comparative Analysis, the ideas of posters in a global online exchange are compared to a group of Big Thinkers in 21st century education. The analysis reveals many commonalities in their desire for urgent and radical change. Both groups are in agreement that a new paradigm of education is required, providing far more autonomy to teachers. In order for education to move towards innovation, creativity and cooperative problem-solving, the current and enduring tensions between this radical change and the prevailing standardisation discourse need to be resolved. There are opportunities for further research and action.

Using revolution, evolution, randomness and dead-ends in Educational Design

To think about how educational design will evolve in the future, we need to first analyse its previous evolution. The paper draws lessons for progress in the continuing educational design of successful courseware. Educational design is here the ongoing analysis of educational needs and the systematic development and refinement of educational courseware. The paper considers what irritants make courseware successful. To do so it analyses the irritants at work in producing courses that have been successful in that they have survived and are in international demand. It analyses the development and refinement of successful courseware as being directed by the irritant mechanisms of revolution, evolution, randomness and dead-ends. Educational design of courseware has progressed via these four irritants. Revolutions in the process of educational design have included the introduction of new paradigms, hardware and software. Evolutionary pressures have included catering to students feedback and catering to the needs of diverse students. Random factors included the different educational environments in which the courses were presented. Progress has also been made through the discarding of dead-end tools. The paper reviews the current development tools that survived and hints at those to come. The author takes the safe viewpoint that future tools will be similar but more advanced in producing tomorrows tools for educational design. The paper recommends that universities adopt best-practice development, which includes using evolution, revolution, randomness and eliminating dead-ends to succeed in the future production of high quality courseware of international standard. Universities must allow time, space, money and other resources for experimenting, feedback, buffeting, simmering, expansion and future best-practice