The Use of Technology in Teaching and Learning -- Application Patterns

Discussion for EA874 Topic 1 > Stack Overview
Post # 3

Education as a national public enterprise demands that government provide the essential facilities to all constituents of the learning public, and should be tasked  to  address knowledge and thinking skills development of the citizenry at large in order to promote the health of  the country's  human capital towards a truly sustainable economy in the long-term. Such demands pose heightened challenges particularly for developing countries with deeply limited budgets for education, as they find solutions to bring quality education at the lowest costs possible.

When reviewing the introductory notes of the course for the section of Application Patterns, I cannot help but think of the large task ahead of those responsible for architecting solutions to enable educational reforms.  This particular domain for education is undergoing its own revolution as educators and education policy makers think hard in how technology can best be applied to advance the mission of education. We have seen the explosion of online learning and the introduction of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), and how it is transforming the landscape for higher education. Alongside these developments, MOOCs applications are being developed geared towards primary and secondary education environments.

The article posted by the U.S. Department of Education regarding technology use hints at the emerging application patterns applicable to this domain: School of One in New York, has a math-based program which uses technology to develop a unique learning path for each student and to provide individualized and differentiated instruction. The program uses data from student assessments to identify the skills that each student needs to work on. A computer algorithm uses each student’s demonstrated mathematics skills and his or her learning preferences to generate individual “playlists” of appropriate learning activities. Quest to Learn is another school which makes use of games and other forms of digital media to provide students with a curriculum that is design-led and inquiry-based. This model promotes development as problem solvers and critical thinkers. Khan Academy started out as a youtube channel and is now a not-for-profit organization providing digital learning resources, including an extensive video library, practice exercises, and assessments. These resources focus on K-12 math and science topics, but also includes finance and history.

Thus online learning -- or learning with the aid of available low-cost technologies in general,  can really be a game-changer, with the potential of  improving educational productivity by accelerating the rate of learning, taking advantage of learning time outside of school hours, reducing the cost of instructional materials, and better utilizing teacher time. As such these strategies can be particularly useful in rural areas here in the U.S. but more so in cash-strapped developing countries.

Reference:

U.S. Department of Education.(n.d.) Use of Technology in Teaching and Learning. Retrieved from http://www.ed.gov/oii-news/use-technology-teaching-and-learning.

The Storage Pillar

Discussion for EA874 Topic 1 > Stack Overview
Post # 2

Cameron (2008) presents to us Van Sickle et al’s five pillars of infomation technology, i.e.  databases, networking, software applications, operating systems, and storage. Further, Cameron argues convincingly for the importance of the storage pillar. As a technology practitioner in the domain of database infrastructure, I can only agree on the need for more curriculum to promote training and education on the finer details of database storage engineering and management. Indeed, Information storage and management has evolved from what was lowly perceived as mere back-office operations to an area of architectural and strategic importance.

As innovations for computer and communication technologies continue to grow and advance, the rate of data generation and sharing has increased in an explosive way. The growth of digital data can be attributed to the following: 1.) More powerful data-processing capabilities. As Moore's law predicted, we now see the  increase in processing and storage capabilities. This processing power has enabled the conversion of various types of content and media from conventional forms to digital formats i.e. we now see highly usable digital video, audio applications, and incredible virtual reality technologies.  2.) The cost of digital storage has dropped dramatically: Technology advances in miniturized economies have now provided low-cost storage solutions. Not surprisingly, this cost benefit has increased the rate at which digital data is generated and stored. 3.) Affordable and faster communication technologies: Given the new cellular capabilities for increased transmission quality and bandwidth, the rate of sharing digital data is now much faster than a decade ago with amazing multi-media capabilities. 4.) With the growing market for these new Information and Communication Technologies (ICT's), the growth and proliferation of applications and smart devices was enabled: The ubiquitous personal smartphones, tablets, and newer digital devices, along with social media applications such as Facebook and Twitter, have significantly contributed to the generation of digital content.

Interestingly however, storage capabilities are not only implemented on the hardware infrastructure side, but also with new innovations on the application side such as Google's Map-Reduce algorithms. As Mellor has pointed out in his article, with the size and scale of google data available for searches (5 petabytes in 2010), we might think that the company is using something close to massive sophisticated Cray servers.  As an interesting study of innovation and creativity,  it's important to note that  the world's largest search company does use networked storage but in the form of networked clusters of Linux servers, cheap racks of x86 servers with one or two internal drives. I would think that studying all the Google innovations in the area of storage can provide a great course syllabus in itself.

References:

Cameron, B. (2008). Enterprise systems education: New directions & challenges for the future. Paper presented at the 119-126. doi:10.1145/1355238.1355269

Mellor, Chris. (2010 Apr 6). Google's storage strategy. Retrieved from http://www.techworld.com/storage/googles-storage-strategy-467/

Fine-Tuning the view of the Technology Architecture Stack against Business Architecture

Discussion for EA874 Topic 1 > Stack Overview
Post # 1

While we understand that this course will focus on the Technology stack, Lesson 1's set of overview notes was good to point out the caveat on quickly dismissing Business Architecture as just one quarter of the significance in the context of Enterprise Architecture - i.e. based on the 4 or 5 layers depicted in the diagram for EA elements.  As was noted,  this delineation for practice areas are useful for conducting enterprise analysis,  but reminds us that EA needs to be treated as a business issue, and not a technology issue -- as clarified by Gartner: “the primary purpose of describing the architecture of an enterprise is to improve the effectiveness or efficiency of the business itself. This includes innovations in the structure of an organization; the centralization or federation of business processes, the quality and timeliness of business information, or ensuring that money spent on information technology (IT) can be justified.”

Clearly, the practice area for Business Architecture is not that simple to begin with, and perhaps should be visualized as the "other half" of the EA equation, with the other half taken up by all other EA practice areas constituting the technology stack.  The diagram below reminds us that the concerns of Business Architecture is equally multi-dimensional and complex.

Image source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_architecture

The article from the BA Institute provides an interesting discussion on the evolution of the BA practice and what it identifies as four dimensions of concerns: 1.) The functional groups and each groups unique processes, 2.) The cross-functional processes which cut across functional lines, 3.) The processes which interact with Customers and Suppliers, and 4.) The dimension of time to market which creates the competitive drive.

Clearly from that discussion, building an architecture of the business is a significant endeavor.  Moreover, it argues in support of understanding business architecture not only using business function process analysis, but also those cross-functional processes with the dimensions of customers, suppliers, and time to market. This is essentially consistent with James Martin's notion of value streams.  It does make sense that the added dimensions of customer and time will provide more insightful analysis of the enterprise blueprint, and identify opportunities for enterprise wide performance improvement towards promoting competitive advantage.

I think if we, as EA practitioners, adopt this extended view of how the business architecture layer is juxtaposed with the other technology layers for EA, the better we can position EA value within the business organization. Enterprise Architects should master how the appropriate application of the technology stack can best serve the business needs and mission of the enterprise.

References:

BA Institute. (n.d.) The Four Dimensions of the Business Architecture. Retrieved from http://www.bainstitute.org/resources/articles/four-dimensions-business-architecture

Wikipedia. (n.d.) Business architecture. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_architecture