Group items tagged

Researchers found out that " Wikipedia is significantly more biased than Britannica by their measurement, and a bit more left-leaning." But isn't the biggest and the most important thing of Wikipedia is their neutral point of view policy? This is introduced by the Wikipedia founder as the core principle of the community in our lecture video. However, researchers also found out that, the research result is influenced by their measurement, "Wikipedia articles are longer, on average, than Britannica articles, and on a per word basis Wikipedia is actually slightly less biased. Wikipedia articles which have received more revisions tend to be more neutral. The more the crowd works on an article, the less biased it is."

Does that mean it has created a platform for all the political foes to meet, under one roof and voice out their views.

"This small pilot study suggests that the article creation process may more closely mirror the traditional writer/editor process than it does the "crowd as writer-editor". It also raises questions about potential changes in how people view the content creation process."

Are you agree that social media profile becoming as important as your resume?

Actually I don't think so. Personally think Facebook is more about personal use and private, but resume is more professional. For example you wouldn't never put a photo that your friend and you was in a pub on your resume, but you may put this on Facebook. However, LinkedIn do better in professional online profile in terms of social media networking.

I would argue that LinkedIn and Twitter are better indicators of professional accomplishment. I would like to think that as of now Facebook is still relatively private considering its primary function is to serve as a social (more intimate/private) communication tool rather than a networking platform. I have heard employers openly admit to using LinkedIn as a preliminary screening tool. Regardless of the forum, social media will continue to play a significant role in reflecting our personal and professional identities.

Considering digital identities, here's an interesting article over a new form of data privacy: our health. As health devices (i.e. smart watches) become more available and mainstream we should consider what type of data we want 'floating' around the internet such as our weights/BMIs or whatever other personal information the health device may obtain. This is one issue that the increase in technology and social communication has brought to us (not entirely a bad thing)…more personal data becoming easily accessible for advertisers. "This week, Apple has updated its privacy policy to try and ensure that developers don't market personal healthcare data to advertisers and brokers. The company is betting big on its new HealthKit platform, part of iOS 8. It gives developers a set of APIs to share their apps' data with Apple's […]"

This is an interesting presentation given at 'EUNIS 2014 Conference: Higher Education in the Digital Era' by professors from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). Although the presentation concentrates on UAB experience and the COURSERA platform, it gives also a European perspective on use of MOOCs. According to the presentation, there were 510 MOOCs in April 2014 in Europe. Some findings are especially thought provoking. The UAB course on Egyptology had 25350 initially enrolled students. Only 1/3 of them watched the first video, and a completion certificate was issued to only 2950 students (11.7%). Another course (Pre-Calculus) had only 0.01% completion ratio. Something to really think about!

On Monday 8 September 2014, the Nal'ibali reading-for-enjoyment campaign, in partnership with Mxit Reach, will launch a literacy app. The Mxit social networking platform, which has five million monthly users, will allow anyone with a mobile handset to help put their children on the path to educational success with access to regular stories, literacy tips and support

Great idea. Part of a lots of creative digital projects taking advantage of the interest of child for mobile phones and permanent connection

Roopika Risam puts forth an argument that digital publication is not merely a new platform in which to carry out traditional academic actives. Rather, Risam proposes three ways in which digital scholarship is distinct from print, fundamentally shifting the values potentially underlying the academy: (1) it tends towards more collaboration (2) it is an iterative process, rarely considered "finished", and (3) it is frequently more public. Risam notes that these new principles do not guarantee dramatic shifts in the academy, and there are efforts to systematize these features in order to make digital scholarship more closely reflect the principles in print scholarship. Yet, it is emphasized we are at a point in time where we have the opportunity to be clear enough about the ways digital scholarship differs from print scholarship in order to decent and uplift these qualities rather than try to transform them to better resemble print scholarship.

imp to read

So glad you posted this! I want to share it on every social media platform I have. So many people I know have a hard time distinguishing legitimate sources of information from illegitimate ones - mainly because so many sites look polished, professional, and have well-written (if ill-informed) pieces. I find it difficult to tell sometimes as well, and if unsure I just look for another source of information. Thank you!

With the development of technology, more and more people can join the media and become reporters. However, the rise of citizen journalism also has revolutionary effect on different kinds of careers, such as publishers and other aspects of news and sociey.

Dated from 2012 but an interesting read that really puts the importance and significance of citizen journalism into perspective

Citizen journalism is especially powerful when it disagrees with the popular paradigm of the mass media platforms. This article specifically talks about occupy, Syria, and other movements where the media was not necessarily on the side of the protesters. This is particularly powerful because it disinter mediates the mass media and shows a balanced perspective - something that history prior to the internet lacked all too often. Citizen Journalism, although often biased and unfiltered, gives a raw perspective on events which helps people form more informed opinions.

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.

This is a great platform to share and publish research. Graduate and undergraduate students, independent researchers, faculty members, alumni, etc. can create their own account, publish their papers, exchange ideas and news, ask for an advice, track own and others papers and posts, and more. It provides open access to all published materials. It is a very useful website. I am a member and I recommend to check it out.

This is a inspiring resource for all the students. They acquire a chance to show their ability and work.

Thank you very much for your link. In the specific case of my university (University of Málaga, in Spain) we have the Jabega platform, (http://jabega.uma.es) where all the members of the university community (students and professor) have free access to the different journals whose license was paid by our university. It is a very similar project, offering not only the name of the journals and resources but also a summary describing their topic.

I wanted to share a OK resource: Cory Doctorow... yes a whole author as resource. He writes about open access on a number of different platforms and enacts open access in his published works. He is a YA novelist with many good books that explore many of the complex issues of society and technology that we are considering in this class. He sells his books through major publishers in print--but does not allow them to have DRM. But he also provides ebook copies for free on this website. Basically you can read it and remix it, but if you like it and want to support him--buy the book. This model seems to work for him. You can find him ranting about DRM and other open access issues all over the net, such as BoingBoing. Interesting guy, interesting topics--and some interesting free fiction books that are relevant to this class.

for a specific book suggestion, check out Little Brother http://craphound.com/littlebrother/ exciting SciFi all about online surveillance state, but also supposed to be filled with actual advice about how to hack your way around it and be a subversive, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Brother_%28Doctorow_novel%29

Thanks. I like this. I haven't read his stuff, but now I will.

The Global Open Access Portal (GOAP) presents a current snapshot of the status of Open Access (OA) to scientific information around the world.For countries that have been more successful implementing Open Access, the portal highlights critical success factors and aspects of the enabling environment. For countries and regions that are still in the early stages of Open Access development, the portal identifies key players, potential barriers and opportunities.

ScienceOpen, is a next generation Open Access platform that builds on the premise that scholarly publishing is not an end in itself, but the beginning of a dialogue to move research forward. It combines over 1 million articles from all areas of modern science, the humanities and social sciences with collaborative pre-publication workspaces, immediate publication and post-publication peer-review.

"Peeragogy is a collection of techniques for collaborative learning and collaborative work. By learning how to "work smart" together, we hope to leave the world in a better state than it was when we arrived. Indeed, humans have always learned from each other. But for a long time - until the advent of the Web and widespread access to digital media - schools have had an effective monopoly on the business of learning. Now, with access to open educational resources and free or inexpensive communication platforms, groups of people can learn together outside as well as inside formal institutions. All of this prompted us to reconsider the meaning of "peer learning."- A great tool for student publishers to use.

"With the emergence of new publishing tools, public libraries are able to be publishers for themselves. In essence, we can build a Maker culture for local publishing. "

Thanks! I did not know about Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing. Quite useful!

Two competing views on the future of publishing, and how shifts in consumer behavior to purchasing or consuming electronic content is causing such a shift in the literary world. I found it interesting to read that a number of open source software platforms were identified as the harbingers of today's self-publishing model online. I never knew Wattpad existed - watt an awesome site (pun intended). I agree with the articles viewpoint about the role that public libraries can play in this shifting landscape. A good read.