This paper analyses the reliability of the double-blind peer review systems used for submissions to the 2001 and 2002 UK Academy for Information Systems (UKAIS) conferences. The level of reliability found in the first conference was marginally lower than would be expected from a model based on chance. In the second conference the reliability level was significantly better, but still low. The paper explores some of the implications of this for the reviewing system, and suggests a model for assessing the impact of low levels of reliability.
BarbaraHowell B.Howell@rave.ac.uk Innovate with ICT: enhancing learning across the curriculum, by Johannes Ahrenfelt and Neal Watkin, London, Continuum, 2008, 136 pp., £24.99 (paperback), Much has been written about 'digital natives' during the last decade or so. Today's students from school, college through university have spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers, email, the internet, video games, digital music players, mobile phones, and all the other gadgets and applications of the digital age. These 'digital natives' expect to study and work in very different ways to previous generations.When I started to read Innovate with ICT, I was not clear who the target audience was supposed to be. As I worked my way through the chapters, I suspected from the references to students preparing for GCSEs that the main beneficiaries would be secondary school teachers. If an audience of secondary school teachers exists that need to keep pace with these 'digital natives' and as the book suggests teachers have little time to explore and experiment, then Innovate with ICT provides a useful toolkit. However, one can't help thinking that although the book makes reference to some relatively new ICT concepts, a significant proportion of the content may have come a little too late.Innovate with ICT is broken down into two main parts. The first part focuses on how to use a particular tool and the second part expands on how a particular theme, for example assessment, can be enhanced through the use of a particular ICT tool.Part 1 takes gentle steps to move the reader from novice, intermediate to the more experienced ICT user. To support this transition, each of the three sections consists of a set of easily digestible bite-sized chapters, comprising a modest set of instructions to support the use of ICT applications in creative and imaginative ways. These instructions are supported by a 'learning zone' box, which provides an opportunity to extend a particular skill, 'did you know' element, to give the reader a gentle nudge to find out about a particular (potentially unknown) feature and a 'differentiation' box to provide further ideas to stretch the more able and support the weaker student.The novice section helps the reader exploit some fundamentals of Word, PowerPoint, web applications, photos, sound and the Interactive Whiteboard. The intermediate section provides sets of basic instructions to enable the use of software tools, such as Captivate and Wink, build websites, make movies, manipulate Google Earth and employ some of the more advanced features of PowerPoint. The last section in Part 1 moves the reader onto applications such as blogs, wikis, multimedia editing, podcasting, Adobe Flash and additional more sophisticated elements of the Interactive Whiteboard.Part 2 comprises five sections associated to key educational themes. For example, the first section focuses on engagement and delivery, and literacy and numeracy; the second section, assessment and homework; the third section, thinking skills,
Coming attractions: Hollywood, high tech and the future of entertainment, by Philip E. Meza, Palo Alto, CA, Stanford University Press, 2007, 175 pp., US$27.95 (hardback), Even from the very earliest days of cinema, technology has always been the driving force: from the sideshow attraction of the early 1900s to today's multi-billion dollar industry; the means of production, distribution and exhibition have changed the way we engage with the world around us and the world of the imagination. Meza's Coming Attractions outlines recent advances and their impact on today's industry -he writes with assurance and avoids baffling the reader with overly technical references and insider terminology. This is not a crash course in computer-speak, nor is it for geeks; Meza's focus is rather the effect technological change has on the way we, as consumers, engage with visual media.That said, Coming Attractions should rather be seen as a series of articles on a central theme, not a definitive account of technology's march through the media industries. This is not a criticism; it is a fact. Hardly is the print dry on my preview copy when much of what he predicts is already out there and almost immediately usurped by some new incarnation. Format wars rage yet again as Blu-Ray slugs it out with HD, but change happens so quickly and books, sorry to say, can't keep up. Blu-Ray, developed by Sony and a dozen major electronics companies, will be victorious -the format is supported by every major Hollywood studiocapable of huge storage capacity, Blu-Ray will render the DVD obsolete within but a few years.DVD, the supposed saviour of a crippled film industry, will soon be as obscure and passé as the Betamax video. Meza is not to blame for the omission; technology is moving at such a pace that it would be impossible to chart all new developments in book form -that, in essence, says it all -far better load updates onto your iPod, iPhone, Blackberry or Palm Pilot. We live in an age where the most fundamental technology changes almost on a daily basis -paper is sooo last year… For students of recent media history, Coming Attractions is essential reading -it reveals the underlying naiveté of those who should have known better, outlines the brilliant manipulation of the hi-tech companies and champions the individuals and organisations who recognised exactly the shape of things to come.Luddites abound, even in Hollywood; Meza accurately details the techno-fear that allowed new technologies to gain the upper hand: business models that should have been lean and mean, were clunky, unable to adapt quickly enough and left the industry largely unprotected as the pirates and the opportunists cut a swathe through Hollywood profits.Putting one's head in the sand seems incompatible with the notion of Hollywood as a risktaking, ruthless, edge-of-the-seat player -but that was the Hollywood response when faced with a development they didn't understand, didn't want to understand, and only took notice of when it began to eat into their bottom lines. Now fully ...
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