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All credit to theSkimm, definitely caught my attention and leaves me wanting to learn/understand further... WHAT TO SAY WHEN THE NEXT EPISODE OF "HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER" WON'T LOAD… Barney blocked. Today, Netflix and a bunch of other big-name websites like Etsy, Kickstarter, and WordPress are protesting to support net neutrality. The sites will be showing a picture of the 'spinning wheel of death' loading symbol - not to make sure you're still breathing, but as a friendly reminder that this could be the future. Refresher: net neutrality is the idea that all content on the Internet should be treated equally, and preference shouldn't be given to sites willing to pay for faster connections. That's not what happens now. There's currently no regulation over how Internet providers treat traffic from different websites. The FCC's been listening to comments on some new rules for monitoring pay-to-play. They're going to stop listening to everyone's opinions next week.

Who owns the Data or the question should be, who is manipulating the Data? The article by Alistair Croll on who owns the Data asks big questions but fails short to highlight the fact that there is someone out there manipulating the well intended, innocent data into their own profit motive agendas. Many times, I have received emails, phone calls and SMS from sales people trying to sell me something. How they got my contact details is definitely my guess that someone is busy manipulating the data, I gave away for profit motives. At the end of the article the writer makes an opinion that, we are using the internet for free? Which I disagree, because our data makes and runs the internet. Without our data, the internet will not be the internet. Without our data on Facebook, facebooks or twitter will be blank, no value and worthless. If companies are paying people to participate in surveys and opinions, then it means our free data we upload on the internet, facebook and twitter is a payment for us to use the internet. After all we have to pay to the internet service providers for us to access to use the internet, and face book. Or someone is even suppose to pay for our data, in fact we have made things easy for the marketing people who now just sit behind their laptops and manipulate our free given data for their own consumptions. Or maybe I should console myself that, since the article is old, maybe someone has answered my question?

A mi me pareció que el artículo señala dos puntos centrales, aunque resolver el tema es una empresa peliaguda. El asunto de lo gratuito en un sistema basado en la ganancia y la capacidad de aprovechar los resquicios que abren las situaciones nuevas y una buena dosis de desorientación generalizada: 1. As we use the Internet for "free," we have to remember that if we're not paying for something, we're not the customer. We are in fact the product being sold - or, more specifically, our data is. 2. The important question isn't who owns the data. Ultimately, we all do. A better question is, who owns the means of analysis? Because that's how, as Brand suggests, you get the right information in the right place. The digital divide isn't about who owns data - it's about who can put that data to work. Tal vez, como menciona natashasana, el problema sea más complejo, y reducir la manipulación al negocio deje temas relavantes fuera. Y la información que usan/manipulan es la que todos aportamos. Cierto, pero no todos la usamos o aprovechamos de la misma forma.

Interesting reading in this Module, esp the article about having an additional anonymous online persona. It's interesting in that reddit not only allows users to register using obviously fake names, but also declines to require any authentication, but still offers it as an option. I participated in the reddit community for about a year, and in that time connected with numerous individuals, most of which I never learned 'who' they were. Personally, I was never harassed, bullied or otherwise hassled, save for one or two PMs from various mods when I had run afoul of their guidelines.

You beat me to it, i was planning on posting about reddit! Yeah, it's anonymous, and it's against its rules to post personal information, but it gets leaked and some people managed to get someone's information by reading old posts and connecting dots. The information you post, as a whole, its your footprint and can be tracked.

You beat me to it too! Reddit is a fascinating experiment. I actually mod a couple subreddits over there, and it's always interesting to read articles about it. In my two or so years on Reddit, I have: --Made friends (and lost touch with) with people from all over the world. --Been cyber-bullied and therefore witnessed exactly how good the moderators of certain subreddits can be. It was taken care of quickly and cleanly. I still love the community. --Seen people get "doxxed" (where their anonymity is broken, and often angry users track down the victim in a rather frightening way). --Seen the outrage the general community expresses at "doxxing", which was heartening. --Seen it used as an amazingly effective social networking and marketing tool. Posts and posters that come across and genuine, informed, and amicable are usually welcomed with open arms, even if they deal with a subject or product Redditors dislike. --Seen it completely backfire as a social networking and marketing tool, which happens when someone uses marketing "tricks" or comes across as anything less than genuine. --Gotten death threats for posting a picture of a squashed coin that made the front page. Reddit can be very weird. --Gotten beautiful, kind, completely random private messages for no reason at all on days where I really need them. Reddit can be very sweet. --Read articles in the Washington Post comparing Reddit to a democratic fiefdom. Sounds about right. --Been exposed to points of view I never would have seen before in my life, simply because of where I live and who I know. It's mind-blowing. The whole website just never ceases to amaze me. Honestly, it sort of reminds me of a MOOC: it's an ever-continuing event where people learn and argue and network.

From June 2014, lecture at the Open Data Institute, UK. Professor Carr explains how the open web we know is just one of many attempts over the last century to build a planet-wide network of information. Why was this one successful? And will it continue to be so? Professor Leslie Carr is a Director of the Web Science Institute at the University of Southampton where he researches the impact of network technologies on our lives and economy, and in particular on the research and knowledge industries. Slides for this talk can be found here - http://www.scribd.com/doc/230569908/Friday-lunchtime-lecture-Open-data-open-web-Just-a-passing-fad-with-Professor-Leslie-Carr (recommended) From the slides, I thought this was interesting: "......The loss of ignorance, by all agreeing to share information The loss of privacy , by all agreeing to share a public space " also: "......The development of society as a whole (nuanced and structured and refined) is inextricably related to the technology of information provision, consumption and dissemination (e.g. writing, reading, printing, education). Different parts of society have different objectives and hence incompatible Web requirements, e.g. openness, security, transparency, privacy."

"It is an irony of the digital age that at a time when we are used to having easy access to seemingly endless information and knowledge, so much of it is disappearing into a digital black hole. For 450 years the concept of legal deposit has helped to preserve the nation's intellectual record.| There is this aspect of disappearing data as well.

See my bookmark post 'Academic citation practices ...' for some geeky stuff on the reference / citation issues.

Jacynthe, you are welcome, and Phillip, many thanks!

"What kinds of knowledge are we going to expect? How we going to incentivize to scientists to share?"

A radical vision of the open access and books: The Political Nature of the Book: On Artists' Books and Radical Open Access. Janneke Adema: http://tinyurl.com/kv5hg2f In this article we argue that the medium of the book can be a material and conceptual means, both of criticising capitalism's commodification of knowledge (for example, in the form of the commercial incorporation of open access by feral and predatory publishers), and of opening up a space for thinking about politics. The book, then, is a political medium. As the history of the artist's book shows, it can be used to question, intervene in and disturb existing practices and institutions, and even offer radical, counter-institutional alternatives. If the book's potential to question and disturb existing practices and institutions includes those associated with liberal democracy and the neoliberal knowledge economy (as is apparent from some of the more radical interventions occurring today under the name of open access), it also includes politics and with it the very idea of democracy. In other words, the book is a medium that can (and should) be 'rethought to serve new ends'; a medium through which politics itself can be rethought in an ongoing manner.

I read his book (Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science) and really loved it. It inspired this blog post of mine: http://www.scopeofscience.com/2014/04/the-need-for-open-science/ Highly recommend that book to anyone who enjoyed his ted talk - it is a quick read!

"Logan Laplante is a 13 year-old boy who was taken out of the education system to be home schooled instead. Not only was he home schooled, but Logan had the ability to tailor his education to his interests and also his style of learning, something traditional education does not offer." I realise this article (and the video on which the article is based) does not fall neatly into any category we've studied yet, though I hope many of you may find it as interesting and inspiring as I have. At core, this is about "hacking" the educational system. As Logan explains, his methods can be applied in mainstream schooling (or indeed for anyone interested in lifelong/lifewide education). There's also the element of "participatory culture" embedded in the production of this video: Logan is sharing his experiences, allowing others to comment and contribute so that he might learn as others are learning from him.

This is a truly amazing talk, I was especially pleased to discover your post since I was just about to share a talk that speaks to many of the same issues! My shared video talks about how schools simply aren't made for boys - for many reasons - and what should be done to reengage them in education. (You can check it out here, if you're interested - https://groups.diigo.com/group/okmooc/content/gaming-could-the-ultimate-tools-to-re-engage-boys-in-education-12782090) The part about "writing about butterflies and rainbows" quite literally made me chuckle, here's why: (from my video) "Boy comes home from school, and he says, "I hate writing." "Why do you hate writing, son? What's wrong with writing?" "Now I have to write what she tells me to write." "Okay, what is she telling you to write?" "Poems. I have to write poems. And little moments in my life. I don't want to write that stuff." :) The boy then goes on to saying "I want to write about video games. I want to write about leveling-up. I want to write about this really interesting world. I want to write about a tornado that comes into our house and blows all the windows out and ruins all the furniture and kills everybody." ...which is one of the main points of "hackschooling" -writing through experiences & interests. Also, speaking from personal experience as someone who also left a diploma behind, I can confirm that leaving a rigid non-functional study environment for an open world of possibility can be the best thing you can ever do. All in all - thumbs up for sharing the talk!

Thanks for sharing - what an inspiring talk. Many of his lessons are just as valuable for adults, who often seem to lose any sense of creativity after settling in to their lives, careers, and relationships. FYI - my wife and I have done some limited homeschooling with one of our kids who really doesn't thrive in traditional school settings. I wish we could have done more, but at the very least I encourage each of our kids to explore other ways to learn to either supplement (or question) what they are learning in school. Traditional education just isn't supportive of creative thinking and creative thinkers.

"Responding to rapid and steep increases in the cost of scientific journals, a growing number of scholars and librarians have advocated "open access" (OA) to the scientific literature. OA publishing models are having a significant impact on the dissemination of scientific information. Despite the success of these initiatives, their impact on researchers in the developing world is uncertain. This article analyses major OA approaches adopted in the industrialized world (so-called Green OA, Gold OA, and OA mandates, as well as non-OA information philanthropy) as they relate to the consumption and production of research in the developing world. The article concludes that while the consumption of scientific literature by developing world researchers is likely to be significantly enhanced through such programs, promoting the production of research in the developing world requires additional measures. These could include the introduction of better South-focused journal indexing systems that identify high-quality journals published in the developing world, coupled with the adjustment of academic norms to reward publication in such journals. Financial models must also be developed to decrease the reliance by institutions in the developing world on information philanthropy and to level the playing field between OA journals in industrialized and developing countries."

A teacher is a life long learner, in fact, everyone should be a lifelong learner, but the difference between us ( teachers and educators ) and others is that we have no choice but to be life long learners. We can not stop learning for fear that we might be outrun by our students.

Interesting way to frame teachers' life long learning: "for fear that we might be outrun by our students". The author also tells teachers that they need to lead students, "not lag behind". These ideas bring up interesting questions around self-directed learning and participatory learning environments, which might actually celebrate times when students outrun their teachers by finding new tools and solutions and leading their teachers in different directions.

Of the 255 papers that underwent the entire editing process to acceptance or rejection, about 60% of the final decisions occurred with no sign of peer review. For rejections, that's good news: It means that the journal's quality control was high enough that the editor examined the paper and declined it rather than send it out for review.

This article is certainly controversial, and I believe in some way did a service to the Open Access community by highlighting the practice of predatory journals. However, the irony of Bohannon's article, being an example of the kind of "bad science" he describes in his own article is inescapable. First, there is no randomization of his "experimental group", and there is no control group; second, there was elimination of non-responders; third, there was no application of the intention to treat principle in the analysis; and finally there were no inferential statistics and no references! Using his own standard, there is nothing that can be concluded from his study. For the criticism regarding Bohannon's targeting of OA journals exclusively, it is important to note that this experiment has been done before with 'traditional' journals as well- and many of them failed the test of peer review. http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/02/27/how_nonsense_papers_ended_up_in_respected_scientific_journals.html

I think Bohannens "study" should be considered more "investigative journalism" than scientific study. While it may have some flaws if held against the standards of a scientific study, as a journalistic piece it goes a long way to justify its central accusation that there are predatory open access journals. He does not claim that there are no or evwen less predatory journals in the tradional sector (although it seems reasonable to believe that it might seem easier to predatory publishers to dupe unsuspecting scientists rather than subscription paying librarians). It demonstrates that open access is not a cure for all the problems besetting acacemic publishing. I think more deeply about it, it shows that author fees for publication may create a buisiness model just as open to abouse as the traditional subscription system. One answer might be to make the peer-review process more transparent, i.e. name the reviewers But that of course has other drawbacks.

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.

There are two versions (at least) of this text. One earlier version is a first draft of sorts "A BOOK CROWDSOURCED IN ONE WEEK MAY 21-28, 2010" http://hackingtheacademy.org/ The url supplied above (http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?cc=dh;c=dh;idno=12172434.0001.001;rgn=full%20text;view=toc;xc=1;g=dculture) gives you access to the slicker version. Both can be read online. The text professes to a hacker ethos: "1 The world is full of fascinating problems waiting to be solved. 2 No problem should ever have to be solved twice. 3 Boredom and drudgery are evil. 4 Freedom is good. 5 Attitude is no substitute for competence." One of the opening chapters encourages academics to "get out of the business." "Burn the boats/books" focuses on the need to move away from "librocentrism." Something I hadn't thought of: "A PDF document is not a web-based document. It is a print-based document distributed on the web." This is to make the point that online materials should be interactive, which a pdf is not. The focus is hacking scholarship, teaching, and institutions. Seems worth dipping into here and there .

A timely article on the Outernet, a service that can broadcast e-books and culled information from the internet to less wealthy nations who do not have access to the internet. A few criticisms of the emerging technology do arise: addressing literacy in less developed locations, questioning whether the information broadcast is information that would be suited for that community, and finally whether there would be a prioritization of information with paid net-connected organizations.

"But what about for the many people in the world that lack internet connectivity? The answer is still yes - at least according to Syed Karim, who explained how at TEDGlobal. The entrepreneur had been invited to the human ingenuity-themed event in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to speak about his company, Outernet. The business aims to address the fact that about two-thirds of the world's population still has no internet access."

Thank you for posting this article about Syed Karim's TED talk as I had not seen it before and found it very interesting. With the outernet, I believe people living in places where this is inadequate or no access to the internet will be able to accrue information. However, I still believe more efforts need to be done to expand the web so that all can partake.

"At the same time, a fair amount of resistance to OA practices still exists. Publishers object to OA on economic principles, as it undermines the revenue generated by journals. Some researchers feel that it devalues their work as well, lowering it to the level of "a database to be consulted," in Eve's words. He believes the academic community is over-reliant on scholarly publishing's status quo; as he told the crowd at Columbia, "the system reinforces itself through economies of prestige." Even as interest in altmetrics grows, the quality of research continues to be gauged by the number of citations an article gathers and the status of the journal it appears in."

This is a good overview of a project that seeks to demystify and break down resistance to open educational resources.

Get involved. Please go to the website for more details: "TASK We are launching a print magazine to educate teachers, school administrators and students. The magazine will provide information and training tips for these sets of people to improve their capacity in teaching and managing schools. And improve life skills for students. We are in need of experienced writers and educationalists to contribute original contents to the magazine. Each article should not be more than 250 words and every information needed about the organization will be provided. "

Hi Maria, I like your tag "get involved". I hope others will use it as they post opportunities for our group.

It's absolutely shameful that so few library and information science journals are open access: if any professional associations have a professional imperative towards improving the scholarly and cultural communication processes, it is librarians and other information professionals. This substantial (but still woefully short) list of open access journals that publish on library and information science will be a great resource for those of us in this course who are aspiring or practicing librarians. As we've heard over and over again throughout this course, advocacy is absolutely essential if open access principles are ever to receive wider acceptance and implementation; that's why it's important that, as practicing information professionals, we use open access publications for our research whenever we can. Lists like this one allow us to streamline our research in ways that align most closely with our professional values, though of course currently there just isn't enough published to allow us to rely exclusively on open access material for our own work. But having lists like this also allows us to determine where our research should be submitted; otherwise, by publishing in paid journals, we are only making things worse. This all being said, most lists like this that I could find online were either outdated and incomplete, part of a larger database that made hyperlinking difficult, or-like this one-they lacked any explanation of what sorts of articles could be found within; even this one hasn't been updated in eighteen months. But as is so often the case with open access, we must take what we can get.

Hi, thank you for sharing the link! I agree with your comments. However, I am very pleased that I found my professional journal on the list :)

"This paper interrogates and situates theoretically from a Marxist perspective various aspects and tensions that inhere in the contemporary academic publishing environment. The focus of the article is on journal publishing. The paper examines both the expanding capitalist control of the academic publishing industry and some of the efforts being made by those seeking to resist and subvert the capitalist model of academic publishing. The paper employs the concepts of primitive accumulation and alienation as a theoretical register for apprehending contemporary erosions of the knowledge commons through the enclosure effects that follow in the wake of capitalist control of academic publishing. Part of my purpose with this discussion will be to advance the case that despite a relatively privileged position vis-à-vis other workers, academic cognitive labourers are caught up within and subject to the constraining and exploitative practices of capitalist production processes."

This recently published book, by a University of British Columbia journalism professor named Alfred Hermida, questions how the new culture of sharing and collaboration-and the pace of change that sharing enables-changes our lives. It's particularly interesting for us because it doesn't back away from the challenges that open access poses for us: how does being both creator and consumer change us? How does blurring the lines between these two change the way we think about the balance between copyright and the public good? Hermida doesn't tackle these last questions directly, but he provides a useful lens for thinking about our changing roles and how open knowledge and sharing need to reflect that. Considering the book's focus on sharing, it's somewhat ironic that it's not open access, but I highly recommend checking it out. It's received significant attention in the Canadian press and is exactly the kind of mainstream attention that can get conversations about open access started.

Not everything can be shared. Aside from the 14 reasons what makes people share knowledge is because they are trust each one with the knowledge that they will share will be beneficial to the receiver of the knowledge or learning. Knowledge is power when shared.