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Beware of impostors: Research has shown that 'citizen journalism' is no replacement for the real thing. Photo: Michael Fitzjames "Citizen journalism is an oxymoron," says Rakhal Ebeli, managing director of Melbourne-based news bureau Newsmodo. "I mean, how can someone who is not a journalist be a journalist?" I am adding this not that I am in agreement but its an example of negativity towards this area.

I think that this article does a good job of discussing some of the "darker" aspects of citizen journalism. It distinguishes how citizen journalism often deals with trying to change public opinion, whereas traditional journalism, in theory at least, aims to be objective and truth-based. While it is a large stretch to call traditional journalism "truth-based," there are typically certain measures in place to promote accuracy, such as fact checking, review, etc. I like how this article supports the professional integrity and need for trained, educated journalist, comparing "citizen journalism" to "citizen-pharmacy and crowd-sourced obstetrics." While there is certainly value in IndyMedia and citizen journalism, the flip side is that information distributed in this manner is not by any means guaranteed to be accurate or fair.

I am a professional journalist (Bachelor and master degree in Journalism) and I can tell you that a journalist that works for a media is not truth-based, accurated or with professional integrity. A professional journalist is an employee in a company with economical, policital and social interests supported by the content that is being published. I have the content of my articles changed from my managers in order to "match" the diary interests. And what was finally published was far from being truth (then I denied to put my name in the article, but it was still published). So citizen journalism might include emotions, prejudices and non contrasted impressions from citizens, but are still free and natural. I am totally towards citizen journalism.

"Unnoticed by most of its readers, Wikipedia continues to undergo dramatic changes, as its sister project Wikidata introduces a new multilingual "Wikipedia for data" (http://www.wikidata.org) to manage the factual information of the popular online encyclopedia. With Wikipedia's data becoming cleaned and integrated in a single location, opportunities arise for many new applications."

Open access success or failure as a policy problem. It is!

Very interesting! No-one said it would be easy! One could always suggest a few other complications as well...but we are here for the solutions.

This weeks module 4 in the Stanford Online course OpenKnowledge: Changing the Global Course of Learning is not only about copyleft and economics of open, but also about Open Education. Just this week President Obama highlights Open Education in a speech to U.N. and updates the U.S. The course requires to seek, sense and share resources, and bookmark them at Diigo. I have found a range of resources about Open Education and Open Educational Resources from the Netherlands. Those are listed below, including a couple of other links. At least there is written a lot about OE&OER in the Netherlands.

Vernacular resistance to data collection and analysis: A political theory of obfuscation Computer-enabled data collection, aggregation, and mining dramatically change the nature of contemporary surveillance. Refusal is not a practical option, as data collection is an inherent condition of many essential societal transactions.

Terasem Movement, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit charity endowed for the purpose of educating the public on the practicality and necessity of greatly extending human life, consistent with diversity and unity, via geoethical nanotechnology and personal cyberconsciousness. Terasem accomplishes its objectives by convening publicly accessible symposia, publishing explanatory analyses, conducting demonstration projects, issuing grants and encouraging public belief in a positive technologically-based future.

Interesting video with ideas about Education.

Education is due for a change, beginning with training teachers to teach in new ways. Learning needs also vary, making it important for a teacher to be able to teach in a variety of ways to get knowledge across, e.g., math solutions may be achieved in several ways - one student may get it the first time while another may need a different explanation. Young people need to be encouraged to learn and know that learning will get them somewhere. Finding a teaching model that works for the majority is definitely a challenge - perhaps more than one or a combination of models?

The combination of the Vernier Video Physics and the Vernier Graphical Analysis apps works well to digitize and analyze simple video x,y coordinate data on the iPad. However, it is sometimes desirable to digitize more complex data (e.g., changes in the area of an object over time), and other apps work better in this regard.

As I participate in, and contribute to, the MOOC for Changing the Global Course for Learning, I will inevitably tie the readings / work / ideas back to education at the K12 level. As noted, "Before the internet there were two important things to teach: content and skills, like writing," November said. "Now there's a third skill which is to build out your network to the world."

The essay "The Human Presence in Digital Artefacts" by Alan Galey from "Text and Genre in Reconstruction", an open book on the effects of digitalization on ideas, behaviours, products and institutions (http://stephanieschlitz.com/dh/Text%26Genre-McCarty_vol_2.pdf). Would be of interest to those curious about publishing, literature, digital texts, etc.

El vídeo de Mozorov del módulo 3 me ha recordado esta animación de RSA con la charla de Ken Robinson acerca de las reformas del sistema educativo. La educación no puede matar la creatividad, debe conectar los aprendizajes y sacar lo mejor de cada uno de nosotros, como veíamos en el módulo 2. Que lo disfrutéis!

Judging by the mainstream media, the most pressing problems facing capitalism are 1) income inequality, the subject of Thomas Piketty's bestseller Capital in the Twenty-First Century , and 2) the failure of free markets to regulate their excesses, a common critique encapsulated by Paul Craig Roberts' recent book The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism .

This article is primarily about structural change in the global economy. But Smith notes, "[T]he middle class that has paid for its ever-expanding consumption with rising wages is in structural decline due to the displacement of human labor by software; and the state's ability to manage structural crises while protecting global cartel profits is being undermined...by the ever rising costs of providing healthcare and income security and paying the external costs of environmental damage." He goes on, "What could replace the current iteration of global state-capitalism? If we assemble these three potentially transformative dynamics-degrowth, the recoupling of risk and loss, and entrepreneurial mobile capital-we discern a new and potentially productive teleological arc to global capitalism, one that moves from a capitalism based on financial hyper-centralization and obsession with rising consumption to one focused on more efficient use of resources and capital via decentralization and localized innovation." We might ponder how open access/open knowledge can play a role these transformative dynamics.

Perhaps a bit narrow, but relevant to me. The article touches upon some aspects of privacy and openness bothering librarians. On the one hand people themselves are sharing lots of information about their reading lists, reading habits and favorites. On the other hand, libraries are trying to preserve patrons' privacy and protect their privacy from unwanted eyes.

I enjoyed this reading very much, thanks! Not to spoil the end, but it is a good comment that in order to protect the patrons' privacy, they must do their part too. If they use machines that requires to log in to Amazon, for example (I don't own a Kindle so I don't know it that is true), well, libraries cannot protect their privacy on what they are reading. Which reinforce the idea of the role that libraries should play in educating people about online privacy. the example of combining books that were borrowed by the same person that allows to identify the patron is very powerful and shows how something that looks innocent like a list of borrowed books can be harmful.

I think this article really demonstrates how the meaning of libraries is constantly in flux, and in recent decades has been evolving quicker than it has in perhaps the past couple of centuries. But the library has always been evolving, first mostly accessible to academics and eventually democratizing its mission by bringing literacy to the masses with public libraries. Now we are evolving to decide how open and social the patron habits should be. I think there is a way that libraries can adapt to this change and incorporate ways for patron data to inform the collection and recommendations, but also give patrons the option of being completely private, perhaps similar to an "incognito" browser window. Ultimately, the library should take privacy seriously and give patrons options that do not deceive. Thanks for sharing!

"Heather Joseph, Executive Directory, Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, talks to the University of Maryland community about the evolution of open access and how trendlines are pointing up. Change is accelerating in the push to make information openly and freely available."

An interesting overview of the challenges that both teachers and students face in the era of participatory culture

By Elisabeth Losh in Information Science and Web 2.0.

Two interesting links extracted from the article: Connected learning http://connectedlearning.tv/ Connected Learning is an educational approach designed for our ever-changing world. It makes learning relevant to all populations, to real life and real work, and to the realities of the digital age, where the demand for learning never stops. http://www.itofisher.com/mito/weblog/2012/03/connected_learning.html

An article about Open Access Publishing for Scientific publishing.