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Learning and teaching will be severely damaged, many publishing companies will close and thousands of jobs will be lost if the government implements its proposal to remove any choice in which textbooks schools use. Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga published the policy proposal in the September 4 Government Gazette and invited public comment on it.

It is well known that the rules that allow for certain educational uses of copyrighted works under certain conditions without permission of the rights' owners vary greatly between countries. But how different are those rules? And how difficult is to access those differences? Can a teacher with no legal background determine alone whether a certain...

Socientize Project is funded by EU 7th framework program, and hosts several citizen science projects, including SavingEnergy@home (collecting global thermal data), Cell spotting (looking at images of treated cancer cells), Collective Music Experiment (creating music from audio samples), Urban Bees and others. The page also includes links to useful citizen science resources (e.g. Pybossa, EpiCollect, BOINC), policy pecommendations & news regarding citizen science.

The World Bank Policy on Access to Information sets forth a groundbreaking change in how the World Bank makes information available to the public. Now the public can get more information than ever before-information about projects under preparation, projects under implementation, analytic and advisory activities, and Board proceedings.

In an article published in Psychology Today, US psychologist and business administrator Steve Albrecht argues that companies are violating freedom of expression with policies on tattoos and piercings, claiming that they want their employees to appear professional. "Doctors, teachers, lawyers, brain surgeons, astrophysicists, cops, fire-fighters and grandmothers have tattoos," Albrecht said.

nowadays most people gladly tattoo themselves to add to their image as indelible touch, but it is worth remembering that sometimes the image is nothing but work everything. So, it is better do not risk a career.

A really complete must read on Digital ID

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.

The report gives some critical background information and history on the French public research environment and the French Open Access movement up to 2010. The report is concluded by giving some suggestions on how the French Open Access policy should be executed. Some great French digitisation programs are included such as couperin.org, Persée, Numdam etc for further use.

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 […]"

Why it "works" Network Effect Wikipedia benefits tremendously from the network effect. The network effect is when a user of a product benefits more from a product if other people also use the product. Telephones are a textbook example. If only a few dozen consumers have telephones, then the telephones aren't very useful. But if millions of consumers have telephones, they become more useful since each telephone owner can contact many people. The large number of Wikipedia users benefits Wikipedia. First, the more editors there are, the the higher the accuracy and quality of the articles. Secondly, it gives an incentive to users to edit. Since editors know the each article will be read by thousands of users, the sheer influence of each article is a strong enough incentive to edit, even though Wikipedia is free. Openness Wikipedia is free and open for any user to edit, even anonymously. This means there is a very large number of editors. This helps Wikipedia ensure accuracy since each mistake and inaccuracy will have to get by hundreds of editors. With so many writers, the scope of Wikipedia articles is very large, minimizing the amount of missing information. Although the openness of Wikipedia provides a powerful self-correcting method, it also makes Wikipedia vulnerable to vandalism. In addition, editors are anonymous and may have a conflict of interest, or might have inadequate knowledge of the article's subject. Yet, because Wikipedia is open to any edits, it is also likely to be corrected. It operates by a system of checks and balances from many editors. However, it has some guidelines to protect it against misinformation and bias: 1. Verifiability principle. To prevent bias and to protect the encyclopedic quality of its articles, all edits on Wikipedia must in theory be a verifiable fact. Moreover, it must have a reliable source to verify each fact. 2. No Original Research. As an encyclopedia, it is mean to be a secondary source of infor

"Intended to serve as a "citizen's guide," Controlling Knowledge is a vital resource for anyone seeking to understand how freedom of information and privacy protection are legally defined and how this legislation is shaping our individual rights as citizens of the information age."

module1 privacy knowledge "public policy" "digital citizenship" ebook

The massive expansion of higher education across all continents is one of the defining features of our century. This volume examines two dimensions of this: those of access and equity. Building on the country studies undertaken by this group of Fulbright New Century Scholars, the book offers a unique focus in its commitment to bring together an analysis of the theoretical literature on equity; a focus on the methodological problems of measuring access and equity from a comparative perspective; a comparative analysis of trends and policy developments set in a global framework; and a comparative analysis of targeted initiatives which are currently in place in different societies. The need to develop a comparative research programme addressing the question of measuring equity is noted

Great fact sheet that I just used to write a paper for CMNS 323 at SFU. Very informative on the policies of the new EU law.

"Just as important as learning these helpful tools, however, is unlearning and avoiding the most common pitfalls of common sense. Reminding us of where society is most vulnerable to those, Sagan writes: In addition to teaching us what to do when evaluating a claim to knowledge, any good baloney detection kit must also teach us what not to do. It helps us recognize the most common and perilous fallacies of logic and rhetoric. Many good examples can be found in religion and politics, because their practitioners are so often obliged to justify two contradictory propositions.He admonishes against the twenty most common and perilous ones - many rooted in our chronic discomfort with ambiguity - with examples of each in action"

The 20 fallacies: "ad hominem - Latin for "to the man," attacking the arguer and not the argument (e.g., The Reverend Dr. Smith is a known Biblical fundamentalist, so her objections to evolution need not be taken seriously) argument from authority (e.g., President Richard Nixon should be re-elected because he has a secret plan to end the war in Southeast Asia - but because it was secret, there was no way for the electorate to evaluate it on its merits; the argument amounted to trusting him because he was President: a mistake, as it turned out) argument from adverse consequences (e.g., A God meting out punishment and reward must exist, because if He didn't, society would be much more lawless and dangerous - perhaps even ungovernable. Or: The defendant in a widely publicized murder trial must be found guilty; otherwise, it will be an encouragement for other men to murder their wives) appeal to ignorance - the claim that whatever has not been proved false must be true, and vice versa (e.g., There is no compelling evidence that UFOs are not visiting the Earth; therefore UFOs exist - and there is intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe. Or: There may be seventy kazillion other worlds, but not one is known to have the moral advancement of the Earth, so we're still central to the Universe.) This impatience with ambiguity can be criticized in the phrase: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. special pleading, often to rescue a proposition in deep rhetorical trouble (e.g., How can a merciful God condemn future generations to torment because, against orders, one woman induced one man to eat an apple? Special plead: you don't understand the subtle Doctrine of Free Will. Or: How can there be an equally godlike Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in the same Person? Special plead: You don't understand the Divine Mystery of the Trinity. Or: How could God permit the followers of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - each in their own way enjoined to

Wonderful post, Kim! These are great guidelines alongside which to test ideas.

"Open access to academic research has never been a hotter topic. But it's still held back by myths and misunderstandings repeated by people who should know better. The good news is that open access has been successful enough to attract comment from beyond its circle of pioneers and experts. The bad news is that a disappointing number of policy-makers, journalists and academics opine in public without doing their homework."

Open access is a hot topic in today's world. The article clarifies some misunderstandings about open access

Okmooc was my first mooc experience, and quality is one of the main reason that can lead me to do it all again. So, open does not mean poor quality.