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"Intended to serve as a "citizen's guide," Controlling Knowledge is a vital resource for anyone seeking to understand how freedom of information and privacy protection are legally defined and how this legislation is shaping our individual rights as citizens of the information age."

module1 privacy knowledge "public policy" "digital citizenship" ebook

"Even with abundant information and the removal of censorship, truth may not prevail. This the edited text of a plenary address to the IFLA World Library and Information Congress in Singapore, 20 August 2013. Journalists and librarians share a faith in the power of public knowledge, but the media are failing in their duty"

I took this sentence from the article that I think is crucial: Public media must provide more than just "naked facts"; they must provide the resources for people to make judgments effectively.

If you are interested/involved in the field of Information and Digital Literacy, this site is for you. It is run by information professionals from key UK organizations actively involved in this field. This is an amazing source that has been created for practitioners, researchers, and anyone with such interest from around the world. It is well structured, maintained, and updated. It provides definitions and models, teaching materials, information about research in the filed of Information Literacy, extra reading (e.g. books, journals, websites, reports, etc.), and much more. You can search about Information Literacy by sector (e.g. schools, health, public, and special libraries, higher and further education, etc.). You can also get in touch with editorial team or leave your comment.

"Just as important as learning these helpful tools, however, is unlearning and avoiding the most common pitfalls of common sense. Reminding us of where society is most vulnerable to those, Sagan writes: In addition to teaching us what to do when evaluating a claim to knowledge, any good baloney detection kit must also teach us what not to do. It helps us recognize the most common and perilous fallacies of logic and rhetoric. Many good examples can be found in religion and politics, because their practitioners are so often obliged to justify two contradictory propositions.He admonishes against the twenty most common and perilous ones - many rooted in our chronic discomfort with ambiguity - with examples of each in action"

The 20 fallacies: "ad hominem - Latin for "to the man," attacking the arguer and not the argument (e.g., The Reverend Dr. Smith is a known Biblical fundamentalist, so her objections to evolution need not be taken seriously) argument from authority (e.g., President Richard Nixon should be re-elected because he has a secret plan to end the war in Southeast Asia - but because it was secret, there was no way for the electorate to evaluate it on its merits; the argument amounted to trusting him because he was President: a mistake, as it turned out) argument from adverse consequences (e.g., A God meting out punishment and reward must exist, because if He didn't, society would be much more lawless and dangerous - perhaps even ungovernable. Or: The defendant in a widely publicized murder trial must be found guilty; otherwise, it will be an encouragement for other men to murder their wives) appeal to ignorance - the claim that whatever has not been proved false must be true, and vice versa (e.g., There is no compelling evidence that UFOs are not visiting the Earth; therefore UFOs exist - and there is intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe. Or: There may be seventy kazillion other worlds, but not one is known to have the moral advancement of the Earth, so we're still central to the Universe.) This impatience with ambiguity can be criticized in the phrase: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. special pleading, often to rescue a proposition in deep rhetorical trouble (e.g., How can a merciful God condemn future generations to torment because, against orders, one woman induced one man to eat an apple? Special plead: you don't understand the subtle Doctrine of Free Will. Or: How can there be an equally godlike Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in the same Person? Special plead: You don't understand the Divine Mystery of the Trinity. Or: How could God permit the followers of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - each in their own way enjoined to

Wonderful post, Kim! These are great guidelines alongside which to test ideas.

An online course by David Wiley covering a wide range of topics within open education and open knowledge in the wider sense.

Opened in a broader sense knowledge and a broad range of topics is something wonderful for those wanting to learn more and more from anywhere in the world!

Una manera diferente de ver la Educación, muy interesante.

Wits University said yesterday that it was partnering edX, a non-profit provider of such online courses that was founded by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. edX has more than 200 000 students in Africa who will now be able to access free courses offered by Wits without having to pay a cent.

this is a good innitiative by Wits, Its good to see African University keeping up with the world trends in education. Considering the cost of education in SA this will make life easier. However acess to broadband and internet is still a problem.

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.

"Open access to academic research has never been a hotter topic. But it's still held back by myths and misunderstandings repeated by people who should know better. The good news is that open access has been successful enough to attract comment from beyond its circle of pioneers and experts. The bad news is that a disappointing number of policy-makers, journalists and academics opine in public without doing their homework."

Open access is a hot topic in today's world. The article clarifies some misunderstandings about open access

Okmooc was my first mooc experience, and quality is one of the main reason that can lead me to do it all again. So, open does not mean poor quality.

Citizen journalism refers to a wide range of activities in which everyday people contribute information or commentary about news events. People behind the citizen journalism can range from News Company to a normal citizen writing about anything they wish to share with the world. How they wish share it is up to them. They may use blogs, videos, among other social medias. The significance of citizen journalism is that they may share things that people may not know about or may share things that other "professional" sources are not willing to talk about. However, there are downsides to citizen journalism, such as reliability and validity. This site has everything you need to know about Citizen Journalism.

The resource is good. Citizen journalism is a resource that everyone can join and contribute to. However, not everyone can and is willing to join it. This is a pity of citizen journalism. on the other hand, like what is above, there are problems about reliability and validity

In a world where everything is recorded, stored and digitally captured forever it's hard to keep things private. Enter Snapchat, where everything that is meant to be lost is lost. But what happens when our lives turn into a ticking clock? What's done, is done.

Due to rising prices of printed textbooks, majority of higher universities are working with publishing companies to come up with a plan. Check out the program they have come with.

This model of education would be very difficult to establish but it will save a huge amount of trees all over the world. I PADs as full text books for students is on of my favorite.

Adding a few high quality photos is a great way to improve a website, article or presentation - but be careful. A search engine like Google Images will quickly locate just about any shot you could ever want, but using them will almost certainly violate someone's copyright.

Very useful. Thank you.

thank you

"The debate on open access is a debate about the future of academia. We discuss the problems of for-profit academic publishing, such as monopoly prices and access inequalities and point at the limits of contemporary perspectives on open access as they are frequently advanced by the publishing industry, policy makers and labour unions. "

Young, K. (2004). Internet Addiction: A new Clinical Phenomenon and Its Consequences. American Behavioral Scientist. 48:402

a. Although this is a psychology article, it poses an important concern over the rise of internet addiction in connected populations. This article is relevant to this course, as it relates to the notion of critical consumption; some users are unable to filter information effectively, which should be recognized as a concern. Young states many statistics from educators and researchers discounting internet use in the classroom as it is far too distracting and the loss of productivity (in both students and the workforce) is immense.

Some might argue that this article shows the downside of connected learning and e-resources, however this is not the case. Certain web activities mentioned in the paper such as chat rooms, social media, and video games are not the focus of this course. Open Knowledge deals with the light side of the internet, which is the interconnectivity, the accelerated learning, and the ability to publish ones own content. The internet can definitely be misused, but not every web activity is "junk food". If someone obsessively became a mathematician and ultimately ended up being the best mathematician in the world due to "addiction" people would call him or her a genius. The trick is to filter which content and activities one engages in.

Introduction Sophisticated knowledge of the natural world is not confined to science. Human societies all across the globe have developed rich sets of experiences and explanations relating to the environments they live in. These 'other knowledge systems' are today often referred to as traditional ecological knowledge or indigenous or local knowledge.

Realizing the value of sharing in digital world the open licenses.

Very useful information. it's going to be of key importance that people know about copyright now that we're all moving into an era of massive creativity being shared globally. Understanding copyright needs to be part of digital literacy.

"Based on a series of research projects, this book explores the role of technology in the lives of three- and four-year-old children. We analyse children's experiences at home and in preschool settings and include the perspectives of parents,

Digital Debut The world knows that your baby is a boy, thanks to Twitter. The Instagrammed ultrasound photo shows him sucking his thumb. Your Facebook post gives his due date as August 28, so he'll either be one of the oldest or youngest in his class when he gets to school - and that's all before he's been born, much less before you start shopping for his first lunch box.

from website: "Bioline International is a not-for-profit scholarly publishing cooperative committed to providing open access to quality research journals published in developing countries. BI's goal of reducing the South to North knowledge gap is crucial to a global understanding of health (tropical medicine, infectious diseases, epidemiology, emerging new diseases), biodiversity, the environment, conservation and international development. By providing a platform for the distribution of peer-reviewed journals (currently from Bangladesh, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Egypt, Ghana, India, Iran, Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Tanzania, Turkey, Uganda and Venezuela), BI helps to reduce the global knowledge divide by making bioscience information generated in these countries available to the international research community world-wide." The site offers a range of journals, with full text access. Areas include zoology, health, agriculture, and nutrition. There aren't a lot of journals so the site is manageable. Good source if you are a scientist seeking data/information from areas other than the west.

About the book: Information Literacy and Cultural Heritage: Developing a model for lifelong learning Kim Baker, Cape Town, South Africa - covers cultural heritage in the museums, archives and... Kim is our fellow co-student from Cape Town. She already created a digital project, her blog. She also has created an analog project: a book, you know, something printed on paper :) Kim is a GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) expert. Her book covers anything digital and GLAM or cultural heritage, at least that is what the content section promises. So I'm very glad to have such an expert in her field in the class.

Thank you very much. :) And I am so happy to be here and learn from so many experts around the world!