Enter Facebook. The site began as a free but closed system. It required not just registration but an acceptable email address (from a university, or later, from any school). Google was forbidden to search through its servers. By the time it opened to the general public in 2006, its clublike, ritualistic, highly regulated foundation was already in place. Its very attraction was that it was a closed system. Indeed, Facebook’s organization of information and relationships became, in a remarkably short period of time, a redoubt from the Web — a simpler, more habit-forming place. The company invited developers to create games and applications specifically for use on Facebook, turning the site into a full-fledged platform. And then, at some critical-mass point, not just in terms of registration numbers but of sheer time spent, of habituation and loyalty, Facebook became a parallel world to the Web, an experience that was vastly different and arguably more fulfilling and compelling and that consumed the time previously spent idly drifting from site to site. Even more to the point, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg possessed a clear vision of empire: one in which the developers who built applications on top of the platform that his company owned and controlled would always be subservient to the platform itself. It was, all of a sudden, not just a radical displacement but also an extraordinary concentration of power. The Web of countless entrepreneurs was being overshadowed by the single entrepreneur-mogul-visionary model, a ruthless paragon of everything the Web was not: rigid standards, high design, centralized control.
Erin Connors on 25 Sep 12Arizona State University is using data mining to collect information on their students and help guide them to the "most appropriate major". also, in class, using data collection methods, teachers collect information to be used in assessment Ex: "Ms. Galayda can monitor their progress. In her cubicle on a recent Monday, she sees the intimacies of students' study routines - or lack of them - from the last activity they worked on to how many tries they made at each end-of-lesson quiz. For one crammer, the system registers 57 attempts on multiple quizzes in seven days. Pulling back to the big picture, a chart shows 15 students falling behind (in red) and 17 on schedule (in green)."
Maria Anaya on 26 Sep 12wow this is kind of bothersome on some levels and kinda amazing on other levels. While I can see the benefit of understanding where and how a student is more likely to succeed, I think there are some potential dangers with such a system. There is the what I would imagine the psychological effect of such a program and I am thinking particularly about STEM fields where women are already way under-represented and often self conscious about their performance, do you really also need a system telling you you shouldn't be majoring in that as well cause you're not performing at that point....or what about a student who really wants to be an engineer but maybe hasn't been fully prepared with the appropriate math courses in high school, would he or she be filtered into another major? I understand using such a system as a means to target help for example if a student could get an assessment of where they currently are, where they want to go and how to get there....
