Group items tagged

How an open course can work. "We don't want the students to remember the formulas. We want to change the way they look at the world."

I liked how Ted explains the way students access to Open Courses and how right he is when he says that if there are no due dates, even if the topic is very interesting, there are always other things to do first, therefore, you end up not doing it. I am also with him in not doing moocs to long that can get you bored and end up losing all your attention.

very informative!

Pretty cool article about the power of twitter in classrooms and how education is changing. Lots of helpful charts as well. Edchat seems to be a great tool/source for anyone interested in education.

I was surprised of how to use social media for professional development and the classroom. Always had in my mind that social media was used only for fun. another paradigm falling to read this!

This was fun to look at. I'm observing an increased of use in Twitter as a resource in business meeting and religious group settings, as well.

Rheingold puts his thoughts, videos,course syllabi on the skills to be network smart on this site. Here is his introduction: The future of digital culture-yours, mine, and ours-depends on how well we learn to use the media that have infiltrated, amplified, distracted, enriched, and complicated our lives. How you employ a search engine, stream video from your phonecam, or update your Facebook status matters to you and everyone, because the ways people use new media in the first years of an emerging communication regime can influence the way those media end up being used and misused for decades to come. Instead of confining my exploration to whether or not Google is making us stupid, Facebook is commoditizing our privacy, or Twitter is chopping our attention into microslices (all good questions), I've been asking myself and others how to use social media intelligently, humanely, and above all mindfully. This book is about what I've learned.

Dr Jane McGonigal (a professional game developer) talks about the time spent playing video games (which approximates to the span of human evolution), and that this time has to increase to make any major changes to the world. I have selected this resource partially in relation to week 3's Clarke's lecture (and others), which talks about using our idle time to do something meaningful - participate in citizen science games, for example. Dr McGonigal's talk very much illustrates this point - except that it talks about solving global issues through indirect games, e.g. a World Without Oil online game simulates a world in which you have to survive oil shortage. Creator's research shows, that people maintain the skills and habits they have taken up after playing this intense game, which include making better choices for our changing environment. The only difference here from actual citizen science games is that Dr McGonigal's games are fictional (rather than providing direct data / input for actual scientific research), however, they empower people to influence global change, which is the topic of the other lectures this week, especially Morozov's thoughts about the power of internet and connectiveness to create "revolutions". Although Morozov has taken up a rather critical view, suggesting only those who want it, take the best from the Internet, Dr McGonigal's ideas might be what bridges the two - taking games, which are integral part of many people's lives, especially in the younger generation, and turning them into real "life schools" may help more people get the idea and the essential skills to "fix" their environments. In all honesty, this is a video I would watch again and again, and recommend it to anyone who would listen (and that doesn't happen often for me).

Gamification for learning - using game elements - sounds very promising. Prior to the internet, technology, there were board games or hands on projects - all with the intent to engage and interact with each other. So it is no surprise to me given the appropriate design/project that students can learn and solve real world problems. Letting students choose their persona and role also allows them to make their own future and take ownership for how they want to participate. Just like the original promise of multimedia training that was purported to replace the traditional classroom events and enable getting the "best" teacher recorded for all to have the same experience...I believe it was then thought that the learning experience needs o be "blended". Different techniques - online, face to face, etc.. This is not my field of expertise so these are just personal opinions. If the online game approach can be combined with face to face and tactile/outdoor activities, aka a blended approach - I think that might be very useful. I do also believe that design solutions should be encouraging win win situations to reinforce collaboration and the feeling that all can succeed. One question I might have is how do you measure success in learning?

Gaming promoters unfortunately for me have a commercial agenda and its always difficult to make that balance of pure learning and commercialization aspect

Places the popular concept of the makerspace within the theoretical context of experiential education.

I have a 11-year old daughter, so a lot of the readings and activities we do in this course usually lead me to compare between how they apply to k-12 "fundamental" education and professional development. We are lucky in that some of her teachers are experimenting with flipped classroom and project-based learning. However, as a parent on the sideline, sometimes I wonder about their activities. How do I or anyone evaluate an activity to know that it is "educational"? This article gives a great definition, "...an experience is educative if it lead to further growth, intellectually or morally..." Another quote I like a lot is "learner to take initiative, make decisions, and be accountable for the results."

Good article on the Maker Movement, and references to the thinking of John Dewey. I hadn't realized some of the Maker Movement extends back to the 1970's. I had the chance to meet Sylvia Libow Martinez a couple of years ago (of Invent to Learn - http://www.inventtolearn.com/) and got a deeper insight into the power of the Maker Movement, Maker Fairs, and how sharing knowledge and collaboration is producing some amazing things in the realm of 3D printing, wearable technology, and changing paradigms for education.

Publicado el 7/5/2012 This is a brief overview of several Open Peer Review Models, including ETAI, Nature, ACP, PLoS One and EJCBS. It is recorded based on a Prezi Presentation first developed for Open Access Week 2011 at UBC.

I found this presentation, in particular the visual representations, to be very useful in understanding just how diverse open peer review models can be. Several things stuck out to me throughout the presentation. First, I was surprised that many of the open peer review models either maintained anonymity of the reviewers or self-identification was optional. For example, PLOSone and the Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics journals did not require self-identification. This raises a tension for me in that it does enable more people to participate in the publishing/review process, but it still inherently indicates context does not matter, which is something I disagree with. That is, if, for example, a paper is on student-faculty partnerships or feminism, it seems to me that crucial insights pertain to the particularities of the people reviewing an article. The other aspect that stuck out to me was how crucial it is for a journal to be intentional about implementing, integrating, and valuing an open peer review process. The Nature experiment is a good example of this. While I am sure they spent a great deal of time figuring out how to construct and enable an open peer review process, it was not necessarily emphasized as important by the journal nor well integrated into people's current practice. In contrast, the ETAI did this by permanently archiving the peer comments rather than deleting them unannounced, and editors also sent notifications to people that articles were ready rather than assuming people would seek out articles themselves.

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.

How the Internet has evolved to effect our society in terms of collaboration, government, participation, intellectual property, content, and information as a whole

Open Access book - Opening Science: the evolving guide on how the internet is changing research, collaboration and scholarly publishing / edited by Sonke Bartling and Sascha Friesike. 2014

I was lucky to be in Berlin with some colleagues earlier this month for the 2014 Open Knowledge Festival and associated fringe events. There's really too much to distill into a short post-from Neelie Kroes, the European Commissioner for Digital Agenda, making the case for " Embracing the open opportunity," to Patrick Alley's breathtaking accounts of how Global Witness uses information, to expose crime and corruption in countries around the world.

A useful summary of some of the key take-aways from the 2014 Open Knowledge Festival, courtesy of Tariq Khokhar From the article: 1. There are some great open data initiatives around the world and two common themes are the need for a strong community of technologically literate data re-users, and the sustained effort needed within governments to change how they create, manage and publish data in the long term. 2. Spreadsheets are code and we can adopt some software engineering practices to make much better use of them. There are a number of powerful tools and approaches to data handing being pioneered by the scientific community and those working in other fields can adopt and emulate many of them. 3. Open data fundamentally needs open source software. App reuse often doesn't happen because contexts are too different. Reusable software components can reduce the development overhead for creating locally customized civic software applications and a pool of high quality civic software components is a valuable public good worth contributing to. Reading time: 15mins

I see that Google are the sponsors of the 2014 Open Knowledge Festival but despite having little knowledge about Google's role and interest in the Open Knowledge , I also feel they are the culprit when it comes to data manipulative for their own profit motives.

Exploring Digital Identity: Beyond the Private Public Paradox. A great article that explores how new media is transforming culture and how we identify ourselves online. The article uses a metaphor called digiSelves to describe how we are also creating a new identity too.

Indeed, maintaining the distance between the private self and public persona may be more difficult as we enter the virtual global village. As we continue to use the media, the proposition that we may become invested in the public persona possibly at odds with our private self seems to be a reasonable assertion. School shootings tend to support this.

People have a digital identity to surf on the Internet and get access to different kinds of information. Yes, there are a lot of good resources online for people to know and to learn. However, during the process, people's privacy also takes the risk of being viewed by others. On the other hand, everyone also has a chance to see others' privacy. So, is it good or bad to have such a digital identity. I think it is good and people acquire much more benefits than the risk they take.

An interesting opinion/confessional piece on one academic's experience of publishing in the developing world. The author points out cultural pressures and differences that could possible contribute to the expanding knowledge gap.

It is very fascinating articles, thank you for posting this. I myself, most of the times, focus on the publisher issues rather than the author himself. However, after read this I realise how important it is to pay attention to the authors because their contribution can really affect the quality of researches that they involved in. Regardless how successful the authors are, they are still human beings who are also affected by the national cultures.

This is an interesting piece but raises the question - why is the institution placing the pressure? It says, tacitly, a lot about the culture of the academic institutions in the country as a whole - and this culture is often shaped by funding patterns from central government, or major funders. The institution then responds to these funding patterns by pressuring staff to produce what is funded. In South Africa this is very much the pattern, with central government funding articles published in selected journals (see the readings for the module 11). However, there has been a rethink and there is proposed changes in now supporting book publication to a much greater degree. So whereas the pressure was on to produce articles, now the universities are looking at book production to a greater extent. As has been said as a truism; "Follow the money" - and in this case we see how this affects what should be, in effect, academic freedom.

We are now in a world with new media, such as Facebook, Twitter and so on. These tool spread knowledge and information. They help people to work more efficiently. However, on the other side. There are also some false information on the internet. Some people may deliberately post some information to hurt others. It will hurt people. So, we must teach people how to protect themselves from all those dangers. This is media literary. The article emphasizes on how to create such a literacy. Only with this literary, people can control the social media. As a result, they can create a participatory culture.

The Knowledge Unlatched model depends on many libraries from around the world sharing the payment of a single Title Fee to a publisher, in return for a book being made available on a Creative Commons licence via OAPEN and HathiTrust as a fully downloadable PDF.

Great concept! This goes to show that Open Knowledge does not equate to free and giveaway. I love the blend of effectively using a crowd-funding model through libraries to ensure appropriate fees are paid to cover costs and compensate authors and publishers to enable open access under a CC license across a global library network. It would be interesting to see the follow up to this. I would think this approach would be useful for school libraries in a district or region to use this approach and effectively share the resources.

Interesting take on what will happen to the future of libraries and how information will be published and sold. It's important to realize that nothing comes free and that we should promote a business model that benefits content-producers as well as consumers.

How do I evaluate the quality of websites? How can I teach students to evaluate websites? Where can I find checklists for evaluation? There's lots of good information on the Internet, but you will also find opinions, misconceptions, and inaccurate information. How do you judge the quality of Internet resources?

"Evaluating Internet Resources" has been designed for teachers, but is a good starting point for all who want to enhance their critical skills when using the internet. Three main areas are covered: Instructions on assessing the validity of websites, guidance on educating students in these skills and other website links on the topic. Examples of legitimate and fictitious websites are provided to use for teaching purposes. The website masters should have categorized the different website links into the genuine and bogus sites to facilitate their use for the teacher. Access to some of these websites has been discontinued. Measures to be used for evaluation, including authority, objectivity, authenticity, reliability, timeliness, relevance and efficiency are considered. Indicators to verify the website and exercises to practice student evaluation skills are provided. The layout of this resource is easy to use and well-organised

I followed a trail about Wikipedia that led me to their funding model. This is an interesting rebuttal to their strategy of asking users for donations atop the page (sort of a PBS/NPR model for those in the US). Interesting to think about how advertising or marketing might play into the Wikipedia model, and how it might change the dynamic of the conversation.

Thanks for the post! I also thought it was interesting to read the arguments for and against an ad-driven business model at the link below: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Funding_Wikipedia_through_advertisements A limited advertising model actually makes a lot of sense to me. I think the real obstacle to changing business models is how passionately and adamantly Jimmy Wales has rejected even the future possibility. Strong wording sound heroic, but not allowing some flexibility could greatly limited Wikipedia's positive impact.

The Canadian Government promoting how sharing private content of someone is illegal. Having the internet and our social media tools, it is so easy to share and connect with people. It is great in many ways, like education, social life, work etc. but when it comes to personal life, maybe it is not as great. People like to share because it is easy and fast, there are no physical restrictions. There are consequences but because there are too many people doing it, it is hard to target everyone. With this digital age coming so quickly, maybe rules, regulations, and education are still trying to catch up. If I have not taken this course, I would not have known that sharing a screenshot on Whatsapp with friends is actually illegal. The point is when everyone is doing it now, and we were not deeply educated on this topic beforehand, how is this going to stop? When sharing screenshots has became a trend, how is it possible to stop?

I think this video does an excellent job of not victim-blaming, or casting any moral judgement. I think it's easy to say "don't take pictures", etc., but approaching it as a strictly legal matter may be a better route to take. Speaking of the general open access movement, I think some valuable lessons could be taken from this for raising awareness about appropriate uses of open access information. It reminds me of the Disney compilation copyright video we watched at the beginning of the course - using some very literal imagery to get a point across, and explaining what the law is, not what people are doing with it.

I think this PSA does a really good job of communicating a 'touchy' subject in a tasteful manner. The message is simple and very relatable for adolescents. Cyberbullying is a tremendous issue among youth in Canada and I am really glad to see the government taking preventative initiatives.

"By leveraging technology, we can open new doors to scholarly inquiry for ourselves and our students. Through new collaborations, we can create exciting shared spaces, both virtual and physical, where that inquiry can take place. The library is a natural home for these technology-rich spaces.

This article is fantastic, and speaks to just about everything I'm passionate about as an aspiring academic librarian. I'm somewhat worried about how smaller universities-my chosen workplace-will adapt to these newer models of scholarly communication and publication, and generally with how the academic conversation is changing. These exciting developments in what the university means have the potential to widen the already extensive divide between smaller and larger schools. I know the challenges section at the end talks a little bit about convincing decision makers to fund these projects, but has anyone read anything about how these changes can be made specifically by smaller or poorly funded universities?