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Owen Daily

Introduction to Computer Ethics - 0 views

  • Fritz H. Grupe, Timothy Garcia-Jay, and William Kuechler identified the following selected ethical bases for IT decision making:
    • Owen Daily
       
      Everytihng between yellow sections
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    "Code of Ethics Canons. Protect society, the commonwealth, and the infrastructure Promote and preserve public trust and confidence in information and systems. Promote the understanding and acceptance of prudent information security measures Preserve and strengthen the integrity of the public infrastructure. Discourage unsafe practice. Act honorably, honestly, justly, responsibly, and legally Tell the truth; make all stakeholders aware of your actions on a timely basis. Observe all contracts and agreements, express or implied. Treat all constituents fairly. In resolving conflicts, consider public safety and duties to principals, individuals, and the profession in that order. Give prudent advice; avoid raising unnecessary alarm or giving unwarranted comfort. Take care to be truthful, objective, cautious, and within your competence. When resolving differing laws in different jurisdictions, give preference to the laws of the jurisdiction in which you render your service. Provide diligent and competent service to principals Preserve the value of their systems, applications, and information. Respect their trust and the privileges that they grant you. Avoid conflicts of interest or the appearance thereof. Render only those services for which you are fully competent and qualified. Advance and protect the profession Sponsor for professional advancement those best qualified. All other things equal, prefer those who are certified and who adhere to these canons. Avoid professional association with those whose practices or reputation might diminish the profession. Take care not to injure the reputation of other professionals through malice or indifference. Maintain your competence; keep your skills and knowledge current. Give generously of your time and knowledge in training others. Organizational Ethics Plan of Action Peter S. Tippett has written extensively on computer ethics. He provided the fol
David McGavock

Users for Sale: Has Digital Illiteracy Turned Us Into Social Commodities? - 1 views

  • “The dot com boom failed because people didn’t want to buy shit online. They were just talking to each other,” said Douglas Rushkoff in a recent keynote speech at the WebVisions conference in Portland. “Content was never king. Contact was always king.”
  • We spoke to Rushkoff about the current state of web culture and his crusade to encourage programming literacy.
  • You argue that users are not the true customers of social networks like Facebook. What are the ramifications of this?
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  • We understand that the job of the person working in the Gap is to sell us clothes.“Usually, the people paying are the customers. So on Facebook, the people paying are marketers.”But we don’t apply this same very basic logic to online spaces. The easiest way to figure out who the customer is in an online space is to figure out who is paying for the thing. Usually, the people paying are the customers.
  • We are more likely to use our Facebook profile as a mirror, chalking up its deficiencies to the technology itself. We don’t consider that the ways in which Facebook screws with the way we see ourselves is its function, rather than some random artifact of social networking.
  • s this different from TV networks selling commercials against popular shows that they deliver over the airwaves for free?
  • But imagine what it would be like if you didn’t know that the evening news was funded primarily by Big Pharma. You would actually believe the stuff that they’re saying. You might even think those are the stories that matter.
  • When (if ever) are these free technologies worth trading a bit of privacy for?
  • The only thing standing between you and total surveillance is the fact that they don’t yet have the processing capability to mine their data effectively.
  • In answer to your question, engaging with people costs us privacy. It always has. I think the only way to behave is as if nothing is private. And then fight to make what you care about legal and acceptable.
  • You warn against the dangers of “selling our friends” by connecting our social graphs to various networks and apps. How does this damage our relationships, even if we’re doing it unwittingly?
  • Unwittingly, well, it’s more like when your friends keep inviting you to FarmVille or LinkedIn. When they unwittingly turn over their address book to one of these companies that’s really just in the business of swelling their subscriptions so that they can go have an IPO.
  • You advocate “programming literacy” in the online platforms we use every day. How much can the average web user be expected to understand?
  • I don’t think the average web users of this century will achieve basic programming literacy.
  • If they don’t know how to make the programs, then I’d at least want them to know what the programs they are using are for. It makes it so much more purposeful. You get much more predictable results using the right technologies for the right jobs.
  • I want people to be able to ask themselves, “What does this website want me to do? Who owns it? What is it for?”
  • You note how our traditional social contracts (e.g. I can steal anything I want, but I won’t do it out of shame, fear, etc.) break down due to the anonymity and distance of the web. How can we change this and still maintain an open online culture?
  • We have an economic operating system based in scarcity — that’s how we create markets — so we don’t have a great way yet of sharing abundant resources.
  • It’s a problem of imagination, not reality. We have imaginary boundaries.
  • rather than getting people to use the web responsibly and intelligently, it may be easier to build networks that treat the humans more responsibly and intelligently. Those of us who do build stuff, those of us who are responsible for how these technologies are deployed, we have the opportunity and obligation to build technologies that are intrinsically liberating — programs that reveal their intentions, and that submit to the intentions of their users.
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    We've finally figured out how to monetize social interaction, and Rushkoff, an award-winning author and media theorist who writes and speaks regularly on these topics, has reservations.
David McGavock

A Brief History of the Habits of Mind | Institute For Habits of Mind - 1 views

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    "A Brief History of the Habits of Mind HABITS OF MIND ARE・….dispositions that are skillfully and mindfully employed by characteristically intelligent, successful people when they are confronted with problems, the solutions to which are not immediately apparent. The Habits of Mind were derived from studies of effective, skillful problem-solvers and decision makers from, many walks of life. They are synthesized from the works of such leaders from the fields of education, philosophy, psychology and the arts as Alan Glatthorn and Jonathan Baron[i], Reuven Feuerstein[ii], Edward de Bono[iii], Robert Ennis[iv] Arthur Whimbey[v], Robert Sternberg, [vi] and David Perkins[vii]. While each of these authors have different labels for describing the characteristics of thinking, their intentions were similar: to describe how people behave intelligently by becoming more flexible and open in thinking, monitoring one's own thoughts, being curious and having a questioning attitude. Gradually these studies were synthesized by Arthur Costa into what was originally titled, "Intelligent Behaviors" and described 7 behaviors. With further reading and research, the list expanded from the original 7 to 12 then 14 and now 16 and there could be more."
David McGavock

Digital Introspection and the Importance of Self-Knowledge - James Fallows - Technology... - 4 views

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    Digital Introspection and the Importance of Self-Knowledge MAR 18 2011, 11:00 AM ET By Shelley Hayduk As the world changes, for better or worse, we continue to assimilate new experiences and ideas that define who we are. With the advent of new social networking tools, we can join the web of digitized relationships to connect with people and share these views. But in addition to connecting outward we also need to turn inward to reflect on our ideas and the relationships that we hold implicitly in our own minds. The connections we make in our head are unique to every individual. It's a fascinating journey to try and understand what they are. So how do we examine ourselves -- our thoughts and experiences? One method is introspection, and it's going digital. SELF-ANALYSIS THROUGH LANGUAGE Language and writing are key vehicles for introspection. Many people keep diaries of their thoughts and experiences to get to know themselves. Some people even write autobiographies. In fact, a key premise of psychotherapy (in the Freudian sense) is to become explicitly conscious of your feelings and subconscious beliefs by talking through them, i.e capturing your understanding in language. In expressing underlying forces of your life through words you can identify relevant psychological angst and formulate a better way to live. In each case, we capture our feelings and implicit views with words, articulating their meaning through language. Now technology gives us the ability to take this a step further, but before we get to that, a word about mental models. YOUR MENTAL MODEL We are the aggregation of how all our thoughts, feelings and experiences connect. This gestalt forms a perspective of the world as we see it. It's kind of like a miniature version of the world in our heads -- a "mental model" if you will. We use our mental models to store, analyze and decide everything. When we make a decision we check our mental models and use them to try to predict what will happen in the
David McGavock

Wanna Solve Impossible Problems? Find Ways to Fail Quicker | Co.Design - 2 views

  • a British industry magnate by the name of Henry Kremer wondered: Could an airplane fly powered only by the pilot's body? Like Da Vinci, Kremer believed it was possible and decided to try to turn his dream into reality. He offered the staggering sum of £50,000 for the first person to build a human-powered plane that could fly a figure eight around two markers set a half-mile apart.
  • A decade went by. Dozens of teams tried and failed to build an airplane that could meet the requirements. It looked impossible.
  • MacCready’s insight was that everyone who was working on solving human-powered flight would spend upwards of a year building an airplane on conjecture and theory without a base of knowledge based on empirical tests. Triumphantly, they would complete their plane and wheel it out for a test flight. Minutes later, a year's worth of work would smash into the ground.
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  • The problem was the problem. MacCready realized that what needed to be solved was not, in fact, human-powered flight. That was a red herring. The problem was the process itself.
  • He came up with a new problem that he set out to solve: How can you build a plane that could be rebuilt in hours, not months? And he did.
  • MacCready’s Gossamer Condor flew 2,172 meters to win the prize. A little more than a year after that, the Gossamer Albatross flew across the English Channel.
  • So what's the lesson? When you are solving a difficult problem, re-frame the problem so that your solution helps you learn faster. Find a faster way to fail, recover, and try again. If the problem you are trying to solve involves creating a magnum opus, you are solving the wrong problem.
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    "Wanna Solve Impossible Problems? Find Ways to Fail Quicker A case study in how an intractable problem -- creating a human-powered airplane -- was solved by reframing the problem. " So what's the lesson? When you are solving a difficult problem, re-frame the problem so that your solution helps you learn faster. Find a faster way to fail, recover, and try again. If the problem you are trying to solve involves creating a magnum opus, you are solving the wrong problem.
David McGavock

Making Science by Serendipity. A review of Robert K. Merton and Elinor Barber's The Tra... - 0 views

  • Robert K. Merton and Elinor Barber’s The Travels and Adventures of Serendipity (English-language translation 2004) is the history of a word and its related concept.
  • Barbano (1968: 65) notices that one of Merton’s constant preoccupations is with language and the definition of concepts and recognizes that the function of the latter is for him anything but ornamental.
  • Merton proposes an articulated technical language now widely used by sociologists and is perfectly aware of the strategic importance of this work.
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  • Walpole tried to illustrate the concept of serendipity with other examples, but basically failed to do it in an unequivocal way.
  • It was in the 1930s that Merton first came upon the concept-and-term of serendipity in the Oxford English Dictionary. Here, he discovered that the word had been coined by Walpole, and was based on the title of the fairy tale, The Three Princes of Serendip, the heroes of which “were always making discoveries by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of.”
  • As Rob Norton (2002) recognizes: “The first and most complete analysis of the concept of unintended consequences was done in 1936 by the American sociologist Robert K. Merton.” In this way, the combined etymological and sociological quest began that resulted in The Travels and Adventures of Serendipity.
  • it was to serve as a propedeutic to Merton’s seminal work – On the Shoulders of Giants, acronymised to OTSOG and published in 1965.
  • Merton provides interesting statistics to illustrate how quickly the word had spread since 1958. By that time, serendipity had been used in print only 135 times. But between 1958 and 2000, serendipity had appeared in the titles of 57 books. Furthermore, the word was used in newspapers 13,000 times during the 1990s and in 636,000 documents on the World Wide Web in 2001.
  • The Italian version was published in 2002, after Barber’s death. Two years later and a year after Merton’s death, we could welcome the appearance of the original English version.
  •  Now let us focus on an analysis of the content of the book and its theoretical consequences, that is, on the history of this term-and-concept and its significance to the sociology of science.
  • The first few chapters elucidate the origin of the word, beginning with the 1557 publication of The Three Princes of Serendip in Venice.
  •  In a letter to Horace Mann dated January 28, 1754, Walpole described an amazing discovery as being “of that kind which I call Serendipity.”
  • in 1833, Walpole’s correspondence with Horace Mann was published.
  • As Mario Bunge (1998: 232) remarks, “Merton, a sociologist and historian of ideas by training, is the real founding father of the sociology of knowledge as a science and a profession; his predecessors had been isolated scholars or amateurs.”
  • Serendipity was used in print for the first time by another writer forty-two years after the publication of Walpole’s letters.
  • Edward Solly had the honor
  • Solly defined serendipity as “a particular kind of natural cleverness”
  • he stressed Walpole’s implication that serendipity was a kind of innate gift or trait.
  • Walpole was also talking of serendipity as a kind of discovery.
  • The ambiguity was never overcome and serendipity still indicates both a personal attribute and an event or phenomenon
  • the word appeared in all the “big” and medium-sized English and American dictionaries between 1909 and 1934.
  • authors reveal disparities in definition
  • To avoid both the ambiguities of the meaning and the disappearance of one of the meanings, Piotr Zielonka and I (2003) decided to translate serendipity into Polish by using two different neologisms: “serendypizm” and “serendypicja” – to refer to the event and the personal attribute respectively.
  •  Even if Merton waited four decades to publish his book on serendipity, he made wide use of the concept in his theorizing.
  •  It is worth now turning our attention to the theoretical aspects of serendipity and examining the sociological and philosophical implications of this idea.
  • “Everything of importance has been said before by someone who did not discover it.”
  •  It is true that the American sociologist studies mainly institutions of science, not laboratory life and the products of science (e.g., theories). But he never said that sociologists cannot or should not study other aspects of science.
  • His attention to the concept of serendipity is the best evidence
  • Some scientists seem to have been aware of the fact that the elegance and parsimony prescribed for the presentation of the results of scientific work tend to falsify retrospectively the actual process by which the results were obtained” (Merton and Barber 2004: 159)
  • “Intuition, scriptures, chance experiences, dreams, or whatever may be the psychological source of an idea.
  • Colombus’ discovery of America, Fleming’s discovery of penicillin, Nobel’s discovery of dynamite, and other similar cases, prove that serendipity has always been present in research. Merton (1973: 164)
  • Indeed if you are clever enough to take advantage of the opportunity, you may capture a fox thanks to accidental circumstances while searching for hares.
  • This descriptive model has many important implications for the politics of science, considering that the administration and organization of scientific research have to deal with the balance between investments and performance. To recognize that a good number of scientific discoveries are made by accident and sagacity may be satisfactory for the historian of science, but it raises further problems for research administrators.
  • If this is true, it is necessary to create the environment, the social conditions for serendipity. These aspects are explored in Chapter 10 of The Travels and Adventures of Serendipity.
  • The solution appears to be a Golden Mean between total anarchy and authoritarianism. Too much planning in science is harmful.
  • Whitney supervised the evolution of the inquiry everyday but limited himself to asking: “Are you having fun today?” It was a clever way to make his presence felt, without exaggerating with pressure. The moral of the story is that you cannot plan discoveries, but you can plan work that will probably lead to discoveries:
  • If scientists are determined by social factors (language, conceptual frames, interests, etc.) to find certain and not other “answers,” why are they often surprised by their own observations? A rational and parsimonious explanation of this phenomenon is that the facts that we observe are not necessarily contained in the theories we already know. Our faculty of observation is partly independent from our conceptual apparatus. In this independence lies the secret of serendipity.
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    Robert K. Merton and Elinor Barber's The Travels and Adventures of Serendipity (English-language translation 2004) is the history of a word and its related concept. The choice of writing a book about a word may surprise those who are not acquainted with Merton's work, but certainly not those sociologists that have chosen him as a master. Searching, defining, and formulating concepts has always been Merton's main intellectual activity.
David McGavock

Betsy Aoki: Critical Thinking and Bing - 1 views

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    "As I talk with leaders in the education and librarian communities, I am, particularly bothered by reports of students who just paste information from Wikipedia or Google into their term papers and call it a day. No matter what search brand you are using, these reports mean that a generation of youngsters are growing up accepting that just the first few examples of information they see on their screens are sufficient, and a generation of teachers are spending time struggling to convince them they need good Internet research skills. "
David McGavock

Uses of Critical Thinking--Guide to Critical Thinking--Academic Support - 0 views

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    "Uses of Critical Thinking Critical thinking underlies reading, writing, speaking, and listening. These are the C basic elements of communication. Critical thinking also plays an important part in social change. Consider that the institutions in any society - courts, governments, schools, businesses - are the products of a certain way of thinking. Any organization draws its life from certain assumptions about the way things should be done. Before the institution can change, those assumptions need to be loosened up or reinvented. Critical thinking also helps us uncover bias and prejudice. This is a first step toward communicating with people of other races and cultures. Critical thinking is a path to freedom from half-truths and deception. You have the right to question what you see, hear, and read. Acquiring this ability is one of the major goals of a liberal education. Skilled students are thorough thinkers. They distinguish between opinion and fact. They ask powerful questions. They make detailed observations. They uncover assumptions and define their terms. They make assertions carefully, basing them on sound logic and solid evidence. Almost everything that we call knowledge is a result of these activities. This means that critical thinking and learning are intimately linked. Practice your right to question!"
David McGavock

The New Toolkit | the human network - 3 views

  • Everyone is directly connected, as in the tribe, but in unknowably vast numbers, as in the city.
  • there are roughly 5.4 billion directly addressable individuals on the planet, individuals who can be reached with the correct series of numbers.
  • 5,400,000,000 / 6,900,000,000 or 0.7826
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  • deeper into the 21st century, this figure will approach 1.0:
  • This type of connectivity is not simply unprecedented, nor just a unique feature in human history, this is the kind of qualitative change that leads to a fundamental reorganization in human culture. 
  • can be termed hyperconnectivity, because it represents the absolute amplification of all the pre-extant characteristics in human communication, extending them to ubiquity and speed-of-light instantaneity.
  • II: Hyperdistribution What happens after we are all connected?
  • Language is a distribution medium, a mechanism to replicate the experience of one person throughout a community.
  • any culture which develops effective new mechanisms for knowledge sharing will have greater selection fitness than others that do not, forcing those relatively less fit cultures to either adopt the innovation, in order to preserve themselves, or find themselves pushed to the extreme margins of human existence.
  • Where humans are hyperconnected via mobile, a recapitulation of primate ‘grooming behaviors’ appears almost immediately. 
  • The human instinct is to share that which piques our interest with those to whom we are connected, to reinforce our relations, and to increase our credibility within our networks of relations, both recapitulations of the dual nature of the original human behaviors of sharing.
  • III: Hyperintelligence
  • Those who possess knowledge also hold power.  The desire to conserve that power led the guilds to become increasingly zealous in the defense of their knowledge domains, their ‘secrets of the craft’.
  • The advent of Gutenberg’s moveable-type printing press made it effectively impossible to keep secrets in perpetuity.
  • he professions of medicine, law, engineering, architecture, etc., emerged from this transition from the guilds into modernity.  These professional associations exist for one reason: they assign place, either within the boundaries of the organization, or outside of it.  An unlicensed doctor, a lawyer who has not ‘passed the bar’, an uncredentialed architect all represent modern instances of violations of ritual structures that have been with us for at least fifty thousand years.
  • Hyperconnectivity does not acknowledge the presence of these ritual structures;
  • There is neither inside nor outside.  The entire space of human connection collapses to a point, as everyone connects directly to everyone else, without mediation.
  • Both Kenyan farmers and Kerala fishermen9 quickly became irrevocable devotees of the mobile handset that provided them accurate and timely information about competing market prices for their goods.
  • Once hyperdistribution acquires a focal point, and becomes synonymous with a knowledge domain, it crosses over into hyperintelligence: the dedicated, hyperconnected hyperdistribution of domain-specific knowledge.
  • IV: Hyperempowerment A group of hyperconnected individuals choosing to hyperdistribute their knowledge around an identified domain can engender hyperintelligence. 
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    The Age of Connection now takes its place alongside these earlier epochs in humanity's story. We are being retribalized, in the midst of rising urbanization. The dynamic individuality of the city confronts the static conformity of the tribe. This basic tension forms the fuel of 21st century culture, and will continue to generate both heat and light for at least the next generation. Human behavior, human beliefs and human relations are all reorganizing themselves around connectivity. It is here, therefore, that we must begin our analysis of the toolkit.
David McGavock

How's Your Bullshit Detector? | The Smirking Chimp - 2 views

  • the phrase, "crap-detecting," originated with Ernest Hemingway who when asked if there were one quality needed, above all others, to be a good writer, replied, "Yes, a built-in, shock-proof, crap detector."
  • As I see it, the best things schools can do for kids is to help them learn how to distinguish useful talk from bullshit
  • There are so many varieties of bullshit I couldn't hope to mention but a few, and elaborate on even fewer. I will, therefore, select those varieties that have some transcendent significance.
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  • Pomposity:
  • plenty of people who are daily victimized by pomposity in that they are made to feel less worthy than they have a right to feel by people who use fancy titles, words, phrases, and sentences to obscure their own insufficiencies.
  • Fanaticism:
  • The essence of fanaticism is that it has almost no tolerance for any data that do not confirm its own point of view.
  • Inanity:
  • The press and air waves are filled with the featured and prime-time statements from people who are in no position to render informed judgments on what they are talking about and yet render them with elan and, above all, sincerity. Inanity, then, is ignorance presented in the cloak of sincerity.
  • Superstition:
  • Superstition is ignorance presented in the cloak of authority. A superstition is a belief, usually expressed in authoritative terms for which there is no factual or scientific basis.
  • you can't identify bullshit the way you identify phonemes. That is why I have called crap-detecting an art. Although subjects like semantics, rhetoric, or logic seem to provide techniques for crap-detecting, we are not dealing here, for the most part, with a technical problem.
  • if you want to teach the art of crap-detecting, you must help students become aware of their values.
  • So any teacher who is interested in crap-detecting must acknowledge that one man's bullshit is another man's catechism. Students should be taught to learn how to recognize bullshit, including their own.
  • Postman's Third Law: "At any given time, the chief source of bullshit with which you have to contend is yourself."
  • The reason for this is explained in Postman's Fourth Law, which is; "Almost nothing is about what you think it is about--including you."
  • An idealist usually cannot acknowledge his own bullshit, because it is in the nature of his "ism" that he must pretend it does not exist. In fact, I should say that anyone who is devoted to an "ism"--Fascism, Communism, Capital-ism--probably has a seriously defective crap-detector
  • Sensitivity to the phony uses of language requires, to some extent, knowledge of how to ask questions, how to validate answers, and certainly, how to assess meanings.
  • You, therefore, probably assume that I know something about now to achieve this. Well, I don't. At least not very much. I know that our present curricula do not even touch on the matter. Neither do our present methods of training teachers. I am not even sure that classrooms and schools can be reformed enough so that critical and lively people can be nurtured there. Nonetheless, I persist in believing that it is not beyond your profession to invent ways to educate youth along these lines. (Because) there is no more precious environment than our language environment. And even if you know you will be dead soon, that's worth protecting.
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    ""Bullshit and the Art of Crap-Detection" by Neil Postman (Delivered at the National Convention for the Teachers of English [NCTE], November 28, 1969, Washington, D.C.)"
David McGavock

There Is No Digital Divide - Technology Review - 1 views

  • I think we've all sort of accepted the "digital divide" framework, but there are some real problems with that.  First of all, saying there is a "digital divide" presumes a shared understanding of that term and there's not one.
  • Given that in the original research, the middle- and upper-classes, whites, and men were more likelyt to have access to technology, those sorts of questions about the characteristics of the "have-nots" just point us to old ways of thinking about class, about race, and about gender."
  • My research finds that Black/Latina/o LGBT youth who are homeless - in other words, the very people who should be on the "other side" of so-called the "digital divide," are in fact, quite adept at technology and most have smart phones. They use this technology to survive - to find work, social services, avoid police or report police misconduct.
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  • Instead of "digital divide," other scholars have talked about "digital fluency," or even "digital entitlements" which I like better.
  • I found that while they were very adept at some things (opening multiple browser windows, locating things online quickly), they weren't very good at some other, important tasks. For example, they weren't good at deciphering "cloaked" sites from legitimate ones. 
  • I'd point to the work of my friend Howard Rheingold and his new book "Net Smart," which is an excellent guide for how to be a digitally fluent user of all the technologies we have available to us now.  It's an excellent book and I think the FCC should include it in their plan for training the digital educators going into schools!
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    a recent New York Times piece, "Wasting Time Is New Divide in Digital Era" (or, as Gawker put it, "Poor People Are Wasting Time on the Internet!") asserts that while all kids are spending more time with media, those with lower socio-economic status were spending even more of it, and on activities like Facebook that aren't exactly conducive to learning. In other words: even when you give poor people access to technology, they don't know what to do with it! Might as well give a paleolithic tribe access to a chip fab, pffft. Jessie Daniels, Associate Professor of urban public health at Hunter College and CUNY and author of a forthcoming book on Internet propaganda, tweeted her displeasure at the piece. (There's even a Storify of all her comments on it.)
Julie Shy

Real-world math problems are everywhere | - 3 views

  • Mathematically proficient students can apply the mathematics they know to solve problems arising in everyday life, society, and the workplace.” But I wonder if we often try too hard to create real-world problems when, if all we did were look around and ask “what do you wonder?” and “what do you notice?”, we would find that math problems are everywhere.
  • “I know that teachers are asking, “Are there any questions?” and “Do you understand?”; however, I’m not sure how many teachers are asking, “What do you notice?” or “What do you wonder?” So many times, teachers will ask if there are any questions, or whether students understand, only to be met with blank stares. This leads to nobody’s “needs” being met.”
  • “Asking good questions is key to any well-functioning classroom. The CCSS include students’ ability to communicate mathematically. Asking good questions gets conversations started. Simply by asking students what they notice and/or what they wonder, students will begin to communicate mathematically. Asking them what they notice and what they wonder puts the ownership back on the student, encouraging them to think and communicate about math.”
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    We hear this everywhere - students should be doing "real-world" math and they should be applying what they learn in math to "real-world situations."
David McGavock

Critical Reading - 1 views

  • Critical reading means thinking carefully about an author’s claims, rather than accepting these claims at face value. It requires several skills: ·        identifying the claims or arguments of a text; ·        evaluating the logic of these arguments; ·        determining whether the author has presented sufficient and valid evidence in support of these arguments; and ·        considering alternative evidence and arguments that might challenge the author’s claims. Why bother?  Because if you don’t read critically, you may miss the main arguments of the text, or – worse – your opinions may be influenced by bogus arguments.
  • 1.       Claims:  What are the main claims or arguments in the text?  What is the author’s main point? 2.      Logic:  How does the author reach these conclusions?  What are the steps in the author’s reasoning or logic?  Is this logic sound? 3.      Evidence:  What evidence does the author present to support the argument(s)?  Does the author offer enough evidence?  Is this evidence convincing?  Can you think of any counter-evidence that would challenge the author’s claims? 4.      Assumptions:  Does the author rely on hidden assumptions?  If so, are these assumptions correct? 5.      alternative arguments:  Can you think of alternative arguments that the author has not considered?
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    "Critical reading means thinking carefully about an author's claims, rather than accepting these claims at face value. It requires several skills: · identifying the claims or arguments of a text; · evaluating the logic of these arguments; · determining whether the author has presented sufficient and valid evidence in support of these arguments; and · considering alternative evidence and arguments that might challenge the author's claims. Why bother? Because if you don't read critically, you may miss the main arguments of the text, or - worse - your opinions may be influenced by bogus arguments."
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    When you are reading for understanding, here are some questions to ask. They will help you weigh the arguments and check for validity.
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    How does this apply to Internet searches? We are looking for authority. What are the practices we should adopt to navigate the network world?
David McGavock

As We May Think - Magazine - The Atlantic - 1 views

  • Our ineptitude in getting at the record is largely caused by the artificiality of systems of indexing. When data of any sort are placed in storage, they are filed alphabetically or numerically, and information is found (when it is) by tracing it down from subclass to subclass. It can be in only one place, unless duplicates are used; one has to have rules as to which path will locate it, and the rules are cumbersome.
  • human mind
  • operates by association
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  • trails that are not frequently followed are prone to fade, items are not fully permanent, memory is transitory. Yet the speed of action, the intricacy of trails, the detail of mental pictures, is awe-inspiring beyond all else in nature.
  • Selection by association, rather than indexing, may yet be mechanized
  • memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.
  • "memex"
  • It affords an immediate step, however, to associative indexing, the basic idea of which is a provision whereby any item may be caused at will to select immediately and automatically another.
  • It is exactly as though the physical items had been gathered together from widely separated sources and bound together to form a new book
  • And his trails do not fade.
  • photographs the whole trail out, and passes it to his friend for insertion in his own memex, there to be linked into the more general trail.
  • Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified.
  •  
    All of this sounds a lot like social bookmarking - Diigo, Delicious, others.
  •  
    Wikipedia
David McGavock

Can neuroscience inform management accountants? | CIMA Financial Management Magazine - 1 views

  • In business we regularly have to consider what level of risk is acceptable to the organisation. Management control systems typically assume that people adhere to some rational decision rules and are able to estimate the probabilities and values of future outcomes.
  • Pre-neuro behavioural studies have shown that this is most often not the case. Moreover, the way in which alternatives to a decision are presented to people affects their opinion about them and their choice between them.
  • Behavioural economics shows that if alternatives are framed as gains, decision-makers usually opt for safer options, thereby exhibiting risk-averse behaviour, but they reverse their choice when alternatives are framed as losses.
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  • Management accountants need to consider what kind of presentation of information may reduce hidden fear and anxiety.
  • Management accountants need to provide management with overviews of the inter-temporal consequences of managerial decisions
  • People simply have such a strong preference for sooner rather than later (positive) outcomes that it appears to be hard to change that.
  • people barely make a difference between two outcomes that lie in the distant future.
  • Neuroscientific research may provide a starting point in the analysis and solution of this problem, as its results suggest that humans’ preference for short-term outcomes is the consequence of the emotional system’s strong response to immediate, rather than to delayed, rewards.
  • When applying neuroscientific methods for fundamental or applied research, management accountants have to deal with at least four challenges.
  • First, neuroscience requires a mastery of observation techniques that are not the normal repertoire of social researchers
  • Second, given the technological complexities of neuroscientific research, it is crucial to develop cooperation in multidisciplinary teams consisting of neurologists, economists and psychologists, as well as management accountants.
  •  
    A new pilot study has been looking at how neuroscience can be used to understand how business decisions are arrived at, and the role it can play in management accountancy by evaluating the decision-making process and the role that emotional responses play their part in this
David McGavock

#53 - How to detect bullshit « Scott Berkun - 3 views

  • The first detection tool is a question: How do you know what you know?
  • People so rarely have their claims challenged, that asking someone to explain how they know sheds light on whatever ignorance they’re hiding.
  • Even credible thinkers need time to sort through their logic, separating assumptions from facts: an an exercise that works in everyone’s favor.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • The second tool is also a question: What is the counter argument?
  • Similarly useful questions include: Who besides you shares this opinion? What are your biggest concerns, and what will you do to address them? What would need to change for you to have a different (opposite) opinion?
  • Anyone creating BS knows this, and will tend towards urgency. They’ll resist reviews, breaks, consultations or the suggestion of sleeping on decisions before they’re made. Use time & pressure, the third tool of BS detection, in your favor: never allow big decisions to be mismanaged to the point where they must be made urgently.
  • Especially in business and technology, jargon and obfuscation hide huge quantities of BS. Inflated language is a technique of intimidation.
  • The fourth tool of BS detection (derived from the rule of expecting BS) is careful assignment of your trust. Never agree to more than your trust allows. Who cares how confident they are: the question is how confident are you in them? It’s rare that there isn’t time for trust to be earned. Divide requests, projects or commitments into pieces. It’s not offensive to refuse to take someone’s word if they have no history of living up to it before (especially if they’re trying to sell you something).
  • But lies, serious lies, should not be encouraged as they destroy trust, the binding force in all relationships. One particularly troublesome kind of lie is known as Bullshit (BS). These are unnecessary deceptions, committed in the gray area between polite white lies and complete malicious fabrications.
  •  
    "Be like Socrates: assume people are unaware of their own ignorance (including yourself) and politely, warmly, probe to sort out the difference."
Enrique Rubio Royo

The Adolescent Brain | Conversation | Edge - 1 views

  • The idea that the brain is somehow fixed in early childhood
  • the plasticity is a baseline state, no matter how old you are
  • the plasticity is a baseline state, no matter how old you are.
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • The idea that the brain is somehow fixed in early childhood
  • The idea that the brain is somehow fixed in early childhood
  • The idea that the brain is somehow fixed in early childhood
  • The idea that the brain is somehow fixed in early childhood
  • The idea that the brain is somehow fixed in early childhood
  • fixed in early childhood
  • The idea that the brain is somehow fixed in early childhood
  • The idea that the brain is somehow fixed in early childhood
  • The idea that the brain is somehow fixed in early childhood, which was an idea that was very strongly believed up until fairly recently, is completely wrong. There's no evidence that the brain is somehow set and can't change after early childhood. In fact, it goes through this very large development throughout adolescence and right into the 20s and 30s, and even after that it's plastic forever, the plasticity is a baseline state, no matter how old you are. That has implications for things like intervention programs and educational programs for teenagers.
  • The idea that the brain is somehow fixed in early childhood, which was an idea that was very strongly believed up until fairly recently, is completely wrong. There's no evidence that the brain is somehow set and can't change after early childhood. In fact, it goes through this very large development throughout adolescence and right into the 20s and 30s, and even after that it's plastic forever, the plasticity is a baseline state, no matter how old you are. That has implications for things like intervention programs and educational programs for teenagers.
  • e brain is so
  • e brain is so
  • e brain is so
  • The idea that the brain is somehow fixed in early childhood
  • The idea that the brain is somehow fixed in early childhood
  • The idea that the brain is somehow fixed in early childhood
  •  
    "The idea that the brain is somehow fixed in early childhood, which was an idea that was very strongly believed up until fairly recently, is completely wrong. There's no evidence that the brain is somehow set and can't change after early childhood. In fact, it goes through this very large development throughout adolescence and right into the 20s and 30s, and even after that it's plastic forever, the plasticity is a baseline state, no matter how old you are. That has implications for things like intervention programs and educational programs for teenagers."
David McGavock

Intute - Training - Encouraging Critical Thinking Online - 1 views

  •  
    "Encouraging Critical Thinking Online Encouraging Critical Thinking Online is a set of free teaching resources designed to develop students' analytic abilities, using the Web as source material. Two units are currently available, each consisting of a series of exercises for classroom or seminar use. Students are invited to explore the Web and find a number of sites which address the selected topic, and then, in a teacher-led group discussion, to share and discuss their findings. The exercises are designed so that they may be used either consecutively to form a short course, or individually. The resources encourage students to think carefully and critically about the information sources they use. The subject matter of the exercises is of relevance to a range of humanities disciplines (most especially, though by no means limited to, philosophy and religious studies), while the research skills gained will be valuable to all students."
David McGavock

10 Must-Haves for Your Social Media Policy - 3 views

  •  
    A few weeks ago, I wrote that your organization should have a social media policy, and one of the things I heard among all the great comments was: "Okay, but what should it say?" There are generally two approaches to social media policy making. Some organizations handle social media in an evolutionary way. Chad Houghton, the director of e-media and business development at the Society for Human Resource Management, told me that he thinks, "it might be beneficial not to create some arbitrary rules without first seeing where the opportunities and risks really are." Other organizations, meanwhile, feel more comfortable establishing a clear policy from the outset. IBM, for example, has published their social media guidelines publicly for anyone to read. It's a great policy, though rather long. Whether you're writing your social media policy from the get-go, or letting it develop organically in reaction to situations as they arise, here are 10 things you should definitely consider. These 10 tips will help you steer clear of pitfalls and allow you to focus on what's important: engaging the customer.
BTerres

Stephen Downes: Things You Really Need To Learn - 1 views

  • to educators, I ask, if you are not teaching these things in your classes, why are you not?
  • 1. How to predict consequences
  • The prediction of consequences is part science, part mathematics, and part visualization. It is essentially the ability to create a mental model imaging the sequence of events that would follow, "what would likely happen if...?"
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  • 2. How to read
  • how to look at some text and to understand, in a deep way, what is being asserted (this also applies to audio and video, but grounding yourself in text will transfer relatively easily, if incompletely, to other domains).
  • 3. How to distinguish truth from fiction
  • Do not simply accept what you are told. Always ask, how can you know that this is true? What evidence would lead you to believe that it is false?
  • 4. How to empathize
  • this will allow other people to become a surprising source of new knowledge and insight.
  • 5. How to be creative
  • Sometimes people think that creative ideas spring out of nothing (like the proverbial 'blank page' staring back at the writer) but creativity is in fact the result of using and manipulating your knowledge in certain ways.
  • creativity involves a transfer of knowledge from one domain to another domain, and sometimes a manipulation of that knowledge.
  • pattern recognition can be learned
  • 6. How to communicate clearly
  • 7. How to Learn
  • Learning to learn is the same as learning anything else. It takes practice.
  • 8. How to stay healthy
  • 9. How to value yourself
  • You can have all the knowledge and skills in the world, but they are meaningless if you do not feel personally empowered to use them; it's like owning a Lamborghini and not having a driver's license.
  • 10. How to live meaningfully
  • When you realize you have the power to choose what you are doing, you realize you have the power to choose the consequences. Which means that consequences -- even bad consequences -- are for the most part a matter of choice
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