Will Knott

Today is Yesterday was (this post got stuck in draft) the day that the Leaving Certificate English paper 2 didn’t happen. The cause, this is really for my non-Irish reader (waves at Aunt Mary); a steward running the exam on Wednesday opened and put out paper 2 instead of paper 1 by accident in a school in County Louth.

This error has effected 51,800 students, and cost the steward his job. Admittedly, no one died. Only study plans are disrupted.

The funny thing is that this isn’t the first time such an error has happened. But this year the consequences are that the second paper is being sat on Saturday with a back-up English exam.

What occurred is a perfect storm of events…

Firstly, the timetable of exams changed. Until recently English papers 1 and 2 were sat on the same day (morning and afternoon). Since both exams are, well, tough and require a lot of writing it was felt that spreading the exam over two days would be easier on the students hands, if not on the students themselves.

If the error had occurred in the past, only the 15 students who received the wrong paper would have been effected.  True they could have informed fellow students that the paper featured “macbeth, deception, bishop, keats, walcot, larkin …” to quote the tweet, but most (lets face it, there is going to be a little comfort cramming between exams at least) of the study would have been completed long before the exam. Having a full day between exams meant that the important information could get out there and get spread widely.

Secondly there is the nature of the exam itself. Paper two of the Leaving Certificate is regarded as one of the toughest tests in the pre-university examination system. In out system exam marks mean points, and points mean University places. The English syllabus means that the students have to study eight poets and guess as to which two or three would be on the paper.

Had this been the Mathematics exam, then the information would be harder to spread. After all knowing the type of maths question does not limit the study as much as dropping 6 out of 8 poets. Equally has this not been one of the “big three” exams of English, Irish and Maths, the reason to spread the information would have decreased.

So you have a high pressure exam, which most if not all the leaving certificate students will be sitting, where the important details of which can be summed up in three or four words; the names of the poets. Words which quiet easily fit in the space of a single SMS message. Or a tweet. So a small amount of information can cause a huge amount of damage.

The third part of this is the fact that social media played a part. And yes I’m counting the leaving certificate discussion section of Boards.ie as social media. In fact it appears that the public dissemination began on Boards.

The timing is interesting here. Boards only started seeing this information close to 4pm. This implies that the information only started leaking around then. What is likely is that those 15 students started passing the information as soon as the afternoon exam (home economics as it happens) was over. Given that the steward reported the loss of confidentially around 4pm, when parents of the children informed him, this sound about right. Even if the steward had reported the breach immediately (and maybe kept his job over it) the spreading of the information would have followed the exact same time line.

Or to put it another way, the Department of Education found out the same time that everyone else did. Posibbly a short while earlier.

At least one, mostly likely two or three of the children waited until they got home, and got internet access to talk to each other. This spread the word. Needless to say, it spread very quickly amongst a number of interested students. Then wider.

Now a lot of students cut back on social computer use (e.g games) during the exams. After all its only two to three very important weeks for which they have worked two years for. Discussion was rife.

And the department of education picked it up very quickly.

There is a backup exam in case of leaks. Normally what would happen is that effected schools would get the backup paper. For a single school a delay is tolerable as the second exam of the day could be delayed by the same amount. In this case, because of social media and the internet, every school in the country (and beyond, the leaving certificate is not only limited to Irish schools, but I can’t think of any places that use it) was effected. The issue changed from containing the problem to distributing the exams to all the test centres.

So the exam was rescheduled. Not everyone was in the loop. I’ve heard stories of students studying for the English paper after it had been rescheduled. Which probably means that they had shut down all connections for study reasons.

What does this mean for the Department of Education.

1) All leaks are now national leaks. Unless the leak is a mistiming (exam starts and ends early) then assume all the information is out there. Students can only be quarantined in special circumstances, for example the Jewish students who cannot sit the exam on the Saturday for religious reasons.

2) Different colour coding for papers. All the morning exams have a different colour cover from all the evening exams. When both papers were on the same day, there wasn’t an issue, the colours were different. When the exam because consecutive mornings, then it became an issue again. Using more colours, maybe 4 colours with alternating colours for different mornings and evenings. A quicker, cheaper fix might be have the second paper being on the following afternoon. Or the following week. One would make mistakes unlikely, the other would give more recovery time.

3) Sign-off. The steward needed to get two students to sign-off the opening of the paper. Firstly these students are not disinterested parties, assuming malice, they would want this information. Secondly, these student have no training on the proper procedure. If the head of your exam asks you to sign something so the paper can be passed out, you’ll sign it. I know I signed off an exam (only 2 of us sat the paper) so I didn’t realise that I was signing a procedural document at the time.

In short, the current “the procedures have been followed” process have absolutely no purpose. Insisting that a teacher or someone equally fire-able by the Department sign off would at least make the checks viable.

So is this going to happen again?

Yes. You see, human error is likely. The consequences differ widely every time, in this case a lot of inconvenience for all the students this year. Next year, it could be something small.

Annoying, yes, but stuff happens all the time. Next ear we will all year about the steps taken to avoid this from happening again. Or at least, the steps to make if less likely.

And the odd on winning the lotto are?

take care,
Will Knott

Related articles by Zemanta

• Exam leak sparks chaos for Irish pupils (guardian.co.uk)

“So what position did you play?” asked the good doctor.

“I’ve never played” I replied, and I could see a twinge of pity in his face.

I never went to a rugby school. I didn’t pay attention to the sport during college. The funny thing is that I only really got to appreciate rugby when I moved to Cork. When I moved to Munster.

On the Wikipedia entry for Munster Rugby says “Munster is known for its fan support and game day atmosphere”.

And while there I got to see just how loved the team are. The streets filled with red rugby shirts on a match day (and yes I have one). The roar of the crowd. I’ve seen the furious passion of the fans when in a Limerick hotel, and the bride delays her reception so she and her family can watch the match in the hotel bar’s big screen. And due to the coincidence of sharing the same gym as the Cork Constitution team, I’ve even met chunk of the team (best described as loud).

I mention this because the Tuesday Push this time around is for MyMunster a social network for Munster Rugby supporters. There you to chat and share views with other Munster rugby supporters, view club photos and videos, get the latest news.  Fans can buy credits to enter competitions for Munster goodies and match tickets – they also say that buying credits helps support rugby development in the province.

Not only be part of that army of fans, but support the team at the grass roots too.

You can also follow MyMunster on Twitter too.

The questions that crop up are, why have a niche social network like this when the all encompassing FaceBook could do something similar? Well, I think some things can start on facebook, but if you have a vary large following, it will support itself with the mass of the interest generated. Sign up and its only Munster without any vampires or sheep (but maybe a few trolls).

And Munster has an army of fans to raise it higher.

Enter lift off?
Will Knott

p.s. Puddleducks has embedded the video of the Haka performed by the New Zealand members of the Munster team during the Munster vs. All Blacks match in Thomond Park last November. Its worth watching (just remember Mowvember was still in play, it explains the moustaches)

I think the Media Virgins put it succinctly. “Before you fully commit yourself to a social networking site I think that it is a good idea to listen in on what is being said. The same idea goes when you are deciding which people to follow.”

And so it is with IGOPeople.com, the latest company being promoted in the revamped “Tuesday Push“.

The I, G and O of IGOPeople stands for Individuals, Groups and Organisations. The idea is that this is a network for real people. Not the social media elite (both of them) nor is it aimed at the youth market. The idea behind this site is that it allows individuals to contact organisations (mostly businesses, but there are a few charities in there too) and have the feed back in the public domain. It also allows for groups to form.

Groups like the proposed OpenCoffee Kilkenny. Groups like the DellCamp project to get things going in Limerick (and surrounds again).

Of the companies in there, its not just the technical ones like Blacknight and Eircom nor those using social media in other aspects like FBD and Vodaphone (who are running free top up offers) but accountants, recruitment companies and sellers of waterproof childrens clothing (who have their own special offer on IGOPeople).

This Irish company is paying attention to its users. Thy will take and act on suggestions. Its a tightly wel run (and threaded messaged) ship.

I joined it very early on, but I’m still listening. I’ve said this to the founder, Campbell Scott, I can see the appeal, but I just don’t get it.

Yet.

I’m still listening,

Will Knott

Meet Iain Dodsworth, the creator of Tweetdeck. Tweetdeck is, to be honest, my favourite twitter client (and I tried out a bunch).

Christian Payne (aka Documentally) recorded a video conversation with Iain on Friday January 9th.

Talking With TweetDeck from Documentally on Vimeo.

In the video he talks about his focus and why its different from all the other Twitter clients (hint, its MEANT to be in-your-face rather than the usual quiet updates in the corner),  and about taking hints from users.

So Iain, can I have a portableapps version for Tweetdeck?

take care,

Will Knott

Related articles by Zemanta

• Tweetdeck to become the no. 1 Twitter desktop app?
• DestroyTwitter (via Google Reader)
• TweetDeck: Just What Twitter Needs

The way we interact with technology changes from year to year (and on occasion, something comes along and changes an interface overnight, like TwitterFone). Given that one of the creators of Twitterfone, namely Pat Phelan, posed the question “Have we over innovated?“, its surprising.

Image via Wikipedia

The answer is no. I think that Robin Blandford, Damien Mulley and Alexia Golez all agree that we have more innovating to do. Part of the perceived problem is that the innovators produce something for the general person; but the general person doesn’t want it. The bleeding edge early adopters might love it, but not their less technology loving friends and relatives. The early innovations tend to be the “engineering model” with a few unfinished features, bugs and complicated instructions. A remote control which has an individual button for every function the device can do is not the most user friendly of interfaces. The early adopters will flock to it and understand it. But if it isn’t obvious and fast and easy to use, I know my Mum will hate it, and the chances are that the device won’t survive to a second model. Its an innovators dilemma.

The true irony of this dilemma is that its caused by a mixtre of a lack of communication, and too much. After all, some innovations were things that the users didn’t know that they wanted. An “unknown unknowns” sort of thing. This is a want, which is so convenient that it rapidly becomes a need. Sometimes this is generational (e.g. mobile phone uptake), sometimes this just swoops in out of the blue and everyone joins in (grandparents and grandchildren on the Wii). But sometimes they are consigned to the “ideas before their time” bin. Being able to “vote out” unnecessary parts of the solution, means that the idea has less of a problem.

The other type of solutions is the “What if?” caused by the “Why not?”. The “Why doesn’t this exist yet?” type problems. Which is usually what is thought about when people talk about a lack of innovation. The slow incremental kind where the steps seems obvious only after the product comes to market. And these steps are being sped up due to communication.

Now an idea or observation can become a idle tweet, which sparks another’s blog post, which sparks a small blog storm, which sparks a business plan, which sparks a gathering of minds and ideas, which sparks improved ideas and a flurry of research work, which (might) spark a business plan but is more likely to spark a business start-up first. And each step in an itteration of the idea, refining the initial notion with practicalities and possibilities. Due to the wonder of social networking at it’s finest, this allows people who know brightsparks to become involved in an interesting idea and produce something. Because ideas are easy, but the skills to do something specialised are, well, specialised, and few people have them. But knowing someone who knows someone who might be able to help you is a practical possibility due to the sped up communication of social networks. Then your idea moves from notion to production.

But you have to produce something which enables others to know some of your ideas. You have to give in order to get. You have to spend time or talent to get attention. To get communication. And you have to join the conversations, otherwise you are considered the unwelcome gatecrasher that will be ignored. But if that gatecrasher helps out, then he or she is no longer an unwelcome gatecrasher, but a welcomed guest. And this new guest may point out that part of the solution yo are trying to make already exists, so there is no need to reinvent that wheel (or how to avoid being sued by that wheel’s inventor).

Open source projects and wikipedia works this way. Individuals who may never physically meet work on a project in their spare time. And it works for businesses, where one entrepreneur meets another on line, or a third party brings them together virtually and then physically. Perinatal ideas get defined through this virtual iteration and idea refinement so that not only is a full bodied idea born, but the creation process creates a bit of interest in the idea itself. Enough interest, and there might be interested funders.

Can we over-innovate? Only if we are willing to accept it as (science) fiction, but science fiction frequently sparks the research to become science fact. Is innovation over? Not as long as others can spark ideas and collaboration. As for a visual representation of this collaboration, see the video below.

take care,
Will Knott

According to Jyri Engeström, while wearing his anthropologist hat, all social networks are based around objects. Not necessarily a physical object, but a focus. Flikr for example, is based around photographs and locations. Networks built around people have a problem; for a while it is all about “how-has-the-most-friends” but that game stops being interesting fairly quickly. (Of course a network built around, ahem, dating has a focus, just a very different one. You might get photographs but…).

But what about a network build around a person?

I’ve been reading reports that Kylie Minogue (of the music charts, Neighbours and Dr. Who) is setting up her own social network called Kylie Konnect.

Now I don’t know how well it will work out for anyone, but I can see the appeal.

You have a fan club where all the fans can talk to each other. Pick up the opinions of the fans and sell the music directly to them thus by-passing the record label (if you want to, this site is being run by EMI). Inspired or a silly idea. Add to the mix that it’s a dot mobi, which means it might be a source of ring-tones and other gphone-ish goodness. Or use an Open Social API so that they can leverage the fans in other networks, from their own hub here.

At least that’s what I think is the idea. If its just to replicate another social network, then its going to quickly have digital tumble weeds on it’s site.

take care,
Will

tags : Jyri Engeström, social network, Kylie Minogue, Kylie Konnect, EMI