Group items tagged

"So what does knowledge mobilization mean for education? It asks us to reimagine what it means in exchanging knowledge. It requires us to embrace being open and unselfish in our learning and knowledge exchange. It requires admitting that a large part of what continues to happen in our world isn't good for our students, our teachers, our communities - or our world. It means creating change in our education systems or risk the return to the tragedies of the early 20th century."

More about KMbeing: http://www.knowledgemobilization.net/

I've saved this because it identifies a facet of open knowledge that is becoming increasingly important - the concept of "open manufacturing". Additive manufacturing - or 3D printing as it is more commonly known - is being used in more industry sectors than ever before. New materials and use cases have led to 3D manufacturing in Health, Entertainment, Automobiles, Fashion, Construction etc. I particularly liked this quote from David Rowan at Wired: "The democratisation of manufacturing will empower anyone with a compelling idea to prototype, make and launch a physical product ay speed and low cost".

The issue of digital identity seems to be causing a lot of waves on the online community. people are really indeed concerned about their privacy and its management. Internet privacy tools have an unfortunate but well-deserved reputation for being technically difficult and bothersome. There's a persistent story that says that there is an intrinsic, irreducible complexity to the problem of keeping your communications from being snooped on and keeping your data from leaking that makes it the exclusive domain of spies and the professionally paranoid.

There's a lot to digest here, particularly if you want to read the whole report as well as the edited summary. I particularly liked the responses from JP Rangaswami: "The quality of real-time information that becomes available will take the guesswork out of much of capacity planning and decision-making......The net effect will be to reduce waste everywhere: in physical flows and logistics, in the movement of people and goods; in logical flows and logistics, in the movement of ideas and information; decisions will be made faster and better, based on more accurate information; prior errors in assumption and planning will be winkled out more effectively." And from Howard Rheingold: "We will live in a world where many things won't work, and nobody will know how to fix them." On a personal note, I can see there might be benefits with the IoT, particularly the use of sensors and actuators for monitoring and improving health, but will it put the final nail in 'privacy' and enable marketers to push their products and control my thoughts 24 x 7 through the pervasive use of wearable devices and biological interfaces with technology? Reading time: 60 mins

Free access to 3 articles: The Unfolding of the Knowledge Commons pp. 13-24(12) Author: Hess, Charlotte Free Content From Lobsters to Universities: The Making of the Knowledge Commons pp. 25-42(18) Author: Caffentzis, C. George Open Access Scientific Publishing and the Developing World pp. 43-69(27) Author: Contreras, Jorge

Hi Raúl. Thanks for sharing these free resources. Which one do you like best? Which new insight did you gain?

I think Elinor Ostrom's approach to commons pool resources (used by Hess, for example) is very useful not only for understand the case of natural resources as commons (the tragedy of the commons to which it was originally applied), but to matters more close to this course, as knowledge. The approach is useful because it complicates the original perspective on commons. Originally (Elinor Ostrom) her perspective considered only group boundaries clearly defined (very small groups, peasants or indigenous); rules governing the use of collective goods well matched to local needs and conditions; cases where most individuals affected by these rules can participate in modifying the rules; the right of community members to devise their own rules is respected by external authorities; monitoring mechanisms by community & graduated sanctions. With the new commons (surprisingly, not only knowledge but roads, budgets, radio spectrum; medical commons, atmospheric commons and even silence as commons), new questions rises on the evolution or building new types of commons with no pre-existing rules and norms; increasingly complex; with size, communities, incentives often unknown; extremely dynamic; reactions to threats of enclosure; heterogeneous community; new forms of collaboration and collective action; and global in many cases. I think is a perspective that can help a lot in the case of knowledge and new forms of learning.

I dare also to share this paper which recently appeared on seminar.net. It deals with my PhD project and tries to link open government data with educational concepts, merging a critical perspective with productive approaches. If any other people in this MOOC are interested in this field, I would be truly glad to discuss these ideas and read/hear your opinions about it!

Using game like concept to teach kids and adults is becoming more and more recognize a great learning and teaching tool. I am also interested on using games for computer cognitive rehabilitation exercixes.

A very thorough paper especially useful for its careful analysis of the "flip side" of open government data. It presents the main objections raised against the OGD "paradise" and also analyses ways in which media pedagogy can alleviate these problems. It culminates in a very important question: » An educational conception towards 'governing students not to be governed (that much)' within formal, obligatory education can too easily act out what it pretends to counteract. Informal settings, however, run the risk of fortifying social injustice and privilege - if largely used by well-educated citizens and semi-experts, as assumed. «

The issue of subjectivity in peer reviewing an open access journal article where the name of the author is disclosed.

What I appreciated most about Costa's account of her first time experiences with an open peer review where author/reviewer are known to one other is that the changes it invoked in her behavior ought to have been possible in under traditional peer review. There is another article in the Diigo, Is Social Media Saving Science?, where I discuss this a bit, but what Costa's comment highlight is that traditional peer review processes are partially problematic simply because we've become too comfortable with the process, enabling us to take shortcuts. That is, we know what our responsibilities and duties are to one another as peers, but we are not fulfilling them because there are not external pressures. I agree with Costa's insights. Simultaneously, I find it concerning that there is a need for "peer pressure," in a sense, for us to fulfill our responsibilities. It makes me question how we can change our practices in a way that make us actually want to do our best, regardless of external pressures. For me, this raises very big picture questions regarding how we can change the meaning of work so that it doesn't invoke us to cut corners because we are not wholly invested and/or enjoying how we are spending our time.

This is one of many examples to read about lack of privacy. I find this entry so interesting because of the importance from our privacy from a government point of view. Think about the big amount of information they have about us: health, financial, educational, and so on. It may arrive one day in which some of our politicals will be intelligent enough and will create a centralised database with all these information. Poor of us the day it arrives!

"CAN 3D printing be subversive?" asks a voice in the creepiest Internet video you'll be likely to watch this month. It's a trailer for Defcad.com, a search engine for 3D-printable designs for things "institutions and industries have an interest in keeping from us," including "medical devices, drugs, goods, guns."

I've read in Japanese paper that Ricoh and Canon started producing and announced 3D printers. The market has been expanding. It used such as a design of dental work etc. I don't think it's matter of that "open source" is winning or not. It's been and will continue to utilize, but how to use it could be changing. Maybe more creative way, people may need to be smarter about how to analyze to SELECT right source before analyze the source of data, etc..

Interesting article but he couldn't really develop a cogent argument in a op-ed. However, "open is the new green" could be true. That's why I want to learn about 'open' now so I can be ahead and stay ahead of what happens to 'open' when it gets reduced, like 'the environment' did to 'green'.

"When you're reading for information, you should ALWAYS jump ahead, skip around, and use every available strategy to discover, then to understand, and finally to remember what the writer has to say. This is how you'll get the most out of a book in the smallest amount of time." This has been a very useful article for me. After reading this the first time I found that every thing that I did when I was reading was the opposite of what I "should" be doing according to this article. I treated all the definitions, table, and sections that were highlighted as if they were advertisements and just ignored them. This was a very useful article in helping me get back on track when it came to learning how to study in an academic environment, and I was very happy to get new and better skills from it as well.

Muy útil para todos, gracias.

Thanks for sharing! Great refresher and reminder on how to read (esp. for a communications student where reading and writing is essential!)

When we want to use image from the Internet, sometimes we don't review the rights that have the image or we don't know where to find them, so there are search engines that help us to do this, therefore we can watch the licence and use it without any problem.

Useful site.

I have many identities through many social media. When I post things online I wonder if I am being responsible of what I am posting. Even though I pick the people who are allowed to see my post, sometimes I wonder if people I do not know visit my profile. It is great to connect with people around the world. However, we have to take caution of what we post and whom we connect with. We need to protect our digital identities and be careful of hackers. If we are not careful, we can have our identity stolen.

I totally agree! I think protecting our digital identities is really important. I personally is a multi-social media user, I used Pinterest, Facebook, Weibo, Instagram etc. and I also write blog sometime. However i realize that for some of the social media digital platform is not allow you to delete everything all at once, and sometime if you want to make your blog post private after you have published it, but the system wouldn't let you do that. Also so many social media platform are actually tracking your location by suing the gps ect. Right now I really feel like need to be aware when using social media and be aware when you are trying to post something online.

Thanks for the reminder once again to be wary of what and where we post online and the implications behind posting or leaving our digital identities online. I often forget that my information can easily be tracked, seen, manipulated, stolen by others when I participate in online activities such as social media sites, online shopping, and/or any other applications that requires submitting personal information.

Librarian site from New Zealand. It's still far from comprehensive but it can provide a good start if you're looking for stuff to try. FOSS4LIB is a much larger directory of library-specific open-source projects you might also look at.

I've used Greenstone, Koha, and Wordpress, and while Wordpress is the easiest to use, I find it the least "library-esque" of the three. Koha is excellent once you get started, and has barcode-scanning built in, which can be very useful. Greenstone I've only just started to look at, but is fairly user-friendly once you get started and has a huge community of users that can help with any number of add-ons and tutorials. Great article!

Thanks, great stuff. I created a blog using WordPress.

Indigenous knowledge is unique to a culture or society. It shows us how to connect and to sustain through the environment. This kind of knowledge is passed down to generation to generation. Back then our ancestors did not have Internet or computers to store or to share their ideas. Our ancestral knowledge is very fragile and can easily be lost. Knowledge is history and our roots, which are passed down from our ancestors to us and these knowledge should be kept and be preserved. New information is also valuable, but so is our past. Here is a site that helps us to learn about what Indigenous knowledge is and activities to help us how to preserve Indigenous knowledge.

It is a good idea. We should remember our indigenous knowledge and pass it down to following generations. People without past can not value the present. We shouldn't let these knowledge be destroyed by fast information on the internet.

Allows for having different classes, public and private test, etc. Very well organized!

Very useful! thank you for the information.

Very nice website i will work on it.

BC Open Textbooks is an initiative started by the province of British Columbia in Canada. It is open textbooks adapted and created by BC faculty. It's difficult to tell which texts are complete and ready for use as Tony Bates incomplete text that I created another post about appears on the same page with complete texts (eg Chemistry, Biology Geography.) All the texts can be modified through Creative Commons licensing. This project has been creating concern for publishers who stand to loose business in BC and other provinces if the texts get adopted outside of BC. Initially, the project was focused on creating "a collection of open textbooks aligned with the top 40 highest-enrolled subject areas in the province. A second phase was announced in the spring of 2014 to add 20 textbooks targeting trades and skills training." Initially they looked for existing Creative Commons books they could adapt and they adapted 8 textbooks. From inception to fall 2014, 2244 students have used their open texts for a savings of $353,000 or $157 per student. The aim is to reach 200,000 students annually so they are at .6% and save each $900-$1500/year, still quite a way to go. Wondering how much this project is costing taxpayers, I googled and found this article http://www.ousa.ca/2013/04/24/textbooks/ which claims $600k-$1m/year. So the government has spent $1.2 - $2 million to save students $350k over the past two years. Still a long way to go to break even. In summary, 65 texts published, 45 adoptions, 2244 student users, for a savings of $353k to date. If this was a traditional textbook publishing company, they'd soon be out of business if they weren't already.

Thank for sharing, I believe that the conclusions that this article leaves us are not surprising, although yes very interesting. "Recently, the Babson Survey Research Group and Pearson conducted a survey of nearly 8,000 faculty members in higher education to find out more about how faculty are using social media. While we often post infographics showing trends or results from specific studies here at Edudemic, I found the results of this survey particularly interesting - perhaps because they were so different from what I expected." Julia Echeverria

You are so, so lucky. Here in South Africa, we are regressing, not even looking at online textbooks, but trying to reduce textbooks to only one per subject. The textbook crisis: http://mg.co.za/article/2013-08-23-00-south-africas-hidden-textbook-crisis and the regressive "solution" http://mg.co.za/article/2014-10-10-single-textbook-option-slammed. It is very frustrating for me, knowing all the possibilities, but not having any agency to get through to the authorities here.Llibraries are also failing horribly in advocating for the solutions that ARE available.

Compares the cost of articles from society and non-profit publishers to those of the major commercial publishers.

Its crazy. The numbers (of profit and control) for the publishing companies is astronomical!

Universities have received a poor deal from the system of private, subscription-based access to knowledge production since the port WW2 commercialization of the scientific publishing industry. It is absurd that the university or research funder supplies the content (the research), pays for the authoring (the time of the researcher writing the article), and provides and pays for the time of peer reviewers and academic editors. In addition, it often pays page charges or formatting charges to publishers. It then cedes copyright and finally buys back its own research at prices that have escalated at four times the rate of inflation in the past decade and a half! Considering most of this research is conducted using public funds, it becomes a moral argument when public resources are used once again to purchase access to the outputs of this research. The commercial model of disseminating research does not obey the rules of supply and demand. A relatively small number of 'core' journals occupy monopoly positions, in that university libraries have to subscribe to access their content, whatever the cost, because these journals have been established as 'must-have' resources. While the practice of 'bundling' offers the advantage of bulk pricing, it reduces room for choice, as bundles consume large chunks of library budgets, making it difficult to subscribe to smaller, individual titles. In addition, the inflexibility of indexing systems makes it difficult for new journals to establish themselves; thus compromising the potential for smaller niche subjects and newer interdisciplinary areas. Thankfully the global inequalities engendered by the commercialization of scholarly publishing are being challenged by open access.

Useful resources for Citizen Scientists who wish to publish, so sharing valuable data which otherwise may have been lost. Of course, caution should be taken to ensure that all data recorded is done scientifically and is reliable.

Very useful; thank you very much. You can find useful the list made by Prof. Andy Miah on academia and social networks: http://www.andymiah.net/2012/12/30/the-a-to-z-of-social-media-for-academics/

Thanks for sharing both lists of resources. Very useful!

"We live in an age of information overload. While many of us find ourselves inundated with vast amounts of data daily, our fast-paced society also requires us to make more rapid decisions." A very short blog post that reminds us to slow down and focus. It doesn't add much new to the conversation but the reminders are helpful, especially the one about multitasking. It truly is a myth.

i enjoyed reading it

Interesting read! 4 ways to retain your brain to handle information overload

Article about how a resource such as twitter can drive classroom learning going forward.

This is an area I'd like to tune up for myself and learning communities that I work with. Twitter's potential seems huge and not yet well utilized (in my networks) for closing the gap between sharing information and building relational solutions that move insight into action.

The reason I really like using Twitter for education is that it fits so well with constructivism. Like other social media, Twitter blurs the line between content creators and consumers, making interactions inherently collaborative; and more than that, the short character limit ensures that these interactions remain a dialogue rather than long-form conversations that frustrate sharing. I think suggestions like this article makes are also important beyond Twitter, because-let's be honest-it won't remain the dominant form of social media forever. Like we've talked about throughout the course, we need to be sure that technology doesn't drive change and that we don't simply adopt technologies because of their vogue; but whatever tools we end up using absolutely need to become more open and collaborative, or we risk losing student engagement and, ultimately, students themselves.