Thursday, June 19, 2008

More about wifi in Exeter and this week

I have written in the "wifi Exeter" blog about Victor Keegan and the mobile phone company coverage of the UK.

Round about now, things I have been supporting and proposing seem to be happening anyway. Maybe not in Exeter or even the UK, but somewhere.

The Guardian is gradually coming to terms with digital forms of the book. An editorial this week offered some scope for e-books etc. However I am not sure they recognise how much text and image exists already. The Saturday Review seems to be going in reverse. The bloggers have been banished even from the inside back page.

So the implications for newspaper publishing may not be reported so clearly. There is still not much discussion of citizen journalism. Well, actually none I can remember from this year.

But the editorial "bookmarking the future" shows some sort of moment when things shift.

Sadly the Web is not well linked in to the Education bit. There was a supplement on "stealth learning" this week but this cannot be found online. Please correct me if this is a wrong statement. Sponsored by Futurelab so maybe this is not regarded as part of the longterm archive. But I found the content more interesting than the article on adult education which was fair enough about the cuts and soforth but failed to mention that adults now use the web for hobbies and learning. The formal educational system has not got much of an offer in certain respects but the Web is stronger than ever. Where is this reported? Is there such a thing as "stealth learning for grown-ups".

Doing a Google to try to find the Futurelab content I discovered a blog where "stealth learning" is being developed as a new academic subject. Yes, really. So something like this will make the Guardian website eventually.