Group items tagged

"An overlay journal performs all the activities of a scholarly journal and relies on structural links with one or more archives or repositories to perform its activities."

"Self-publishing is at a stage analogous to the early days of Wikipedia, when users were reluctant to trust information contained in a communally written encyclopedia. It turns out that online democracy performs quite an effective self-regulating function. "

Good points in the article: There are several good reasons a novelist chooses to self-publish: 1. Because of repeated rejection. 2. To get the book to market more quickly. 3. To have more control over the process. 4. To receive a larger share of the book's earnings. 5. To attract the attention of a major publisher.

With digitization of publishing its now an option to self publicize especially for new writers who thing their work will never be acknowledged. But musicians are also using the self publicizing/promotion and later one it does pays on. I heard of Justin Bieber story of when the mother was busy posting you-tube videos.So its possible to go a "freenuim" way and start with e.g blogging and eventually build a fan/interest base

Our WhoIs lookup is designed to help you perform a variety of whois lookup functions. WhoIs lets you perform a domain whois search, whois IP lookup and search the whois database for relevant information on domain registration and availability. This can help provide insight into a domain's history and additional information.

whois.com is interesting because it allows individuals who otherwise would be afforded privacy to be reachable. This has a connected learning aspect to it, because now you can find the creators of websites and reach out to them - this is something I have done in the past. However, websites such as GoDaddy allow for one to purchase privacy, which blocks the whois lookup service. I believe this is ethical however because websites are not inherently social media, and anonymity should be a choice.

"MELIBEA is a Spanish database that uses a composite formula with eight weighted conditions to estimate the effectiveness of Open Access mandates (registered in ROARMAP). We analyzed 68 mandated institutions for publication years 2011-2013 to determine how well the MELIBEA score and its individual conditions predict what percentage of published articles indexed by Web of Knowledge is deposited in each institution's OA repository, and when. We found a small but significant positive correlation (0.18) between MELIBEA score and deposit percentage. We also found that for three of the eight MELIBEA conditions (deposit timing, internal use, and opt-outs), one value of each was strongly associated with deposit percentage or deposit latency (immediate deposit required, deposit required for performance evaluation, unconditional opt-out allowed for the OA requirement but no opt-out for deposit requirement). When we updated the initial values and weights of the MELIBEA formula for mandate effectiveness to reflect the empirical association we had found, the score's predictive power doubled (.36). There are not yet enough OA mandates to test further mandate conditions that might contribute to mandate effectiveness, but these findings already suggest that it would be useful for future mandates to adopt these three conditions so as to maximize their effectiveness, and thereby the growth of OA. "

Strings attached: I needed an id!

A really interesting view about the lack of privacy from the viewpoint of a lawyer in the USA who is concerned about privacy and client confidentiality. This really opened my eyes to a different viewpoint, that lawyers have to maintain privacy to the best of their ability. Knowing that confidential client data could be accessed has a significant effect on whether law practioners can perform their role effectively.

"...we need to recognize you can't kill the instinct the technology produces. We can only criminalize it. We can't stop our kids from using it. We can only drive it underground. We can't make our kids passive again. We can only make them, quote, "pirates." And is that good?" - Larry Lessig This is a great talk about the free use of materials to make something new. The crux of Mr Lessig's argument is that every time a "kid" remixes a song with a video they are committing a criminal act. By doing this the law is making their free expression criminal. He shows three great examples of this starting at 8:29 in the video. He suggests that by using Creative Commons materials, we can avoid being criminals, and by doing this we can break the cartel of the RIAA and others. He uses the example of BMI causing the downfall of ASCAP. You can see this at 4:55 in the video. Here is the quote: "Finally. Before the Internet, the last great terror to rain down on the content industry was a terror created by this technology [Shows a picture of a broadcast radio antenna]. Broadcasting: a new way to spread content, and therefore a new battle over the control of the businesses that would spread content. Now, at that time, the entity, the legal cartel, that controlled the performance rights for most of the music that would be broadcast using these technologies was ASCAP. They had an exclusive license on the most popular content, and they exercised it in a way that tried to demonstrate to the broadcasters who really was in charge. So, between 1931 and 1939, they raised rates by some 448 percent, until the broadcasters finally got together and said, okay, enough of this. And in 1939, a lawyer, Sydney Kaye, started something called Broadcast Music Inc. We know it as BMI. And BMI was much more democratic in the art that it would include within its repertoire, including African American music for the first time in the repertoire. But most important was that BMI took public domain works a

The competencies discussed by Dr. Jenkins in the Module 3 video, for those who are interested, are: "Play - the capacity to experiment with your surroundings as a form of problem-solving Performance - the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery Simulation - the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real world processes Appropriation - the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content Multitasking - the ability to scan one's environment and shift focus as needed to salient details. Distributed Cognition - the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities Collective Intelligence - the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal Judgment - the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources Transmedia Navigation - the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities Networking - the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information Negotiation - the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms."

Interesting TED talk about artists who sample other artists' music for their songs. As Owen Chapman states, the artists who are successful with sampling and song mash-ups are the ones who do not make profit from the actual songs. Rather, they make their living from their concerts. I liked this video because it exposed me to a different avenue of making it in the music world - sample and mash-up popular songs to build a fan base, then have that fan base turn into a demand for live performances.

I say it's about time. A family member of mine studied on the East Coast USA and tuition was impossible. While I can't speak extensively for American schools, I can say that post-secondary education at established universities in Canada is expensive and the financial burden becomes a stressor, often effecting academic performance. It is accessible, yes. National and provincial student loans make it possible for almost anyone to obtain a post-secondary education. But does it make sense? Definitely not. The debt incurred by students is mortifying. What about a European model? Many schools around the globe offer free post-secondary educations. I recently visited New Mexico, where if you stay within the state after high school graduation you enter a lottery to go to university for free. Every entree into the lottery is awarded sufficient funds to make a post-secondary career in the state of New Mexico feasible. My question about this article is about how "low income" is determined. There are a lot of factors that can play into one's financial needs that sometimes aren't on paper.

Shule.Info is a project that puts data about Tanzanian schools online, providing information for the overall country, regions, and individual schools. The website is also in both English and Swahili, the language of the majority of Tanzanians. This is a great attempt at making this open data accessible and understandable to the people to who need it. "We all know that education in Tanzania is in a state of crisis. Massive failure rates. Not enough teachers. Not enough books. Poor teaching. And many more problems. So what do you do if you are a parent, brother or sister and want to find a good school? What if you are a council or national government leader and want to track progress? Right now it is very difficult to do so, because data is not easily available. And when you can access data, it is very difficult to understand and use. Open data is in fact relevant to all of us in making beter decisions. It is not just a concept for technical experts. If we knew which medicines were available in our nearest health centres we would save ourselves wasted trips. If we had live traffic updates we could better plan our travel. And if we had data on school performance we would have the chance to make better decisions about our children's education and potentially shape the course of their future differently."

Fairness of a test relates to fair use. One definition of fair use states that a common qualifying score may be used with two groups if the regression line based on one group does not systematically over- or under-predict criterion performance in the other.

"It turns out that students are poorly trained in college to effectively navigate the Internet's indiscriminate glut of information. Another Project Information Literacy study, involving more than 8,300 undergraduates at 25 American colleges, found that most make do with a very small compass. They rely on tried and true resources such as course readings, library databases, Google, and Wikipedia....The skills that students cultivate through traditional assignments-writing essays based on library research-are far different from those required to perform efficient, high-level, accurate research in the digital world. All of those types of research skills take practice under the eye of experts."

This commentary emphasises the need for students to be taught within the curricula on how to be discerning when navigating the surfeit of information on the internet.

"Is Luciana Fasani too cool for school or better prepared than most teens for a rapidly changing workplace? A qualified make-up artist and hair consultant and now studying the performing arts, the 14-year-old Cape Town teen tells Nelia Vivier about stepping up to today's job market and life in future.. "The educational system today only values one type of intelligence - if you do not fit into that mold, you are made to feel unhappy and stupid" "Schools and schooling ar becoming increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No-one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes, or politicians in civic classes, or poets in English classes - John Gatto"."Our school crisis is a reflection of the greater social crisis (in South Africa) - children and old people are penned up and locked away to a dgree without precendent... a community that has no future, no past, only a continuous present". "We live in networks, not communities and everyone I know is lonely...school is a major actor in this tragedy....We appear to be creating a caste system, complete with untouchables who wander..."

you really get the feel of the dynmics: Bells indicate additions and string plucks indicate subtractions. Pitch changes according to the size of the edit; the larger the edit, the deeper the note. Green circles show edits from unregistered contributors, and purple circles mark edits performed by automated bots. You may see announcements for new users as they join the site, punctuated by a string swell. You can welcome him or her by clicking the blue banner and adding a note on their talk page.

This is an excellent article which explains how Sugata Mitra's teaching models helped to transform a failing school in Mexico. It's a story which completely changed my attitude to learning and education and inspired me to discover as much as possible about cloud-based and student-centred learning.

Thanks for posting. I have heard of similar ideas from my girlfriend who works with learning disabled people, helping them make goals and follow through with them. The way the criticized traditional 'top down' eduction system is set-up, learning disabled people end up with the impression that they are failures and burdens. This goes beyond learning disabled people though, anyone who finds no inspiration for math, English and the sciences is bound to under perform at school, fail at the competitive aspect of it and get told their failures as a result, implicitly or explicitly. I also found that at design school when I realized that math and English were important for the projects I was working on I started to learn effectively and enjoy doing so. This is after failing my secondary education (pre university in New Zealand). You say this changed your attitude towards cloud learning, have you done much else as a result?

This is about the inequitable global power and how it dynamics the confronting global knowledge production in nowadays.

Underlying this notion of global knowledge production inequities is how developed countries "The Global North" dominate modern knowledge systems. This hegemonic control of global knowledge, driven by increased globalization, places pressure on virtually all societies to adopt global values and services. While this development does have positive implications (e.g. better understanding of modern health practices, nutrition, environmental protection, governance systems, etc), on the negative side, the imposition of cultural forms from the developing world could be considered a form of political and economic domination. This leads to the increasing homogenization of cultures and a threat to local knowledge, and the exacerbation of local differences and inequalities through uneven access to such knowledge and the means for it's application. The production of knowledge implicates and is implicated in power relations, as those with superior technology cannot only generate but also store, monopolize and disseminate information to safeguard their interests. Foucault (1972) suggests that the relationship between power and knowledge has its origin in the ownership of the means of material production and technical expertise. According to Said (1978), Western powers in a colonial and post-colonial context, using agents in developing countries, have been able to develop elaborate cultural and political institutions where knowledge production exists with supporting mechanisms that dominate and suppress African communities. In a critical examination of development policies and programs in Africa, Okolie (2003) considers these to be shaped by knowledge and assumptions about knowledge production that are primarily Euro-American centered, and are consequently "exclusionary and often contemptuous of other ways of knowing" (Okolie, 2003). The establishment of the continent's universities and research centers was primarily driven by Western powers, and the African elites who h

Providers of free online courses are officially in the headhunting business, bringing in revenue by selling to employers information about high-performing students who might be a good fit for open jobs. On Tuesday, Coursera, which works with high-profile colleges to provide massive open online courses, or MOOC's, announced its employee-matching service, called Coursera Career Services.