Group items tagged

Compares the cost of articles from society and non-profit publishers to those of the major commercial publishers.

Its crazy. The numbers (of profit and control) for the publishing companies is astronomical!

Universities have received a poor deal from the system of private, subscription-based access to knowledge production since the port WW2 commercialization of the scientific publishing industry. It is absurd that the university or research funder supplies the content (the research), pays for the authoring (the time of the researcher writing the article), and provides and pays for the time of peer reviewers and academic editors. In addition, it often pays page charges or formatting charges to publishers. It then cedes copyright and finally buys back its own research at prices that have escalated at four times the rate of inflation in the past decade and a half! Considering most of this research is conducted using public funds, it becomes a moral argument when public resources are used once again to purchase access to the outputs of this research. The commercial model of disseminating research does not obey the rules of supply and demand. A relatively small number of 'core' journals occupy monopoly positions, in that university libraries have to subscribe to access their content, whatever the cost, because these journals have been established as 'must-have' resources. While the practice of 'bundling' offers the advantage of bulk pricing, it reduces room for choice, as bundles consume large chunks of library budgets, making it difficult to subscribe to smaller, individual titles. In addition, the inflexibility of indexing systems makes it difficult for new journals to establish themselves; thus compromising the potential for smaller niche subjects and newer interdisciplinary areas. Thankfully the global inequalities engendered by the commercialization of scholarly publishing are being challenged by open access.

The change has come more slowly to books than it came to music or to business correspondence, but by now it feels inevitable. The digital era is upon us. The Twilights and Freedoms of 2025 will be consumed primarily as e-books. In many ways, this is good news. Books will...

when I take a book in my hands, I always start with smelling paper (old or new), can we do the same thing with technology?

I do like physical book in my hand, but I find e-books more convenient either when I am writing my research paper or I want to read certain book right away. I heard that more and more universities are supporting e-book system, and getting rid of physical textbooks due to costs and other reasons. A lot more e-books will become useful in the future. I think paper books will exist, but it will be rare in the future.

Knowledge is becoming an increasingly recognised asset within business. But what exactly is it? This short animation guides you through the main terms you'll come across when discussing knowledge, including tacit knowledge, explicit knowledge, codification and diffusion.

Back to basics. In order to evolve knowledge, we have to re-ask ourselves what we think it is.

This video does a good explanation about the difference between data, information, and knowledge. In our class discussions, we talked about the differences too, which I never knew there were any. So data is just the facts of the world, information is capturing data within the context, and knowledge is what we know about plus our experiences.

So, you need an image for your blog? We've spent some time categorizing our favorite sources for free images and organizing them in such a way as to help you find what you're looking for. Here are the criteria we've examined: Subjects: Does a site focus on specific genres of images, or is it a mass collection of various image types?

Very helpful resource. The categories help to narrow one's search.

Nice! Thanks for sharing. Both useful IRL, and pertinent to the course.

In everyday life we are learning continually from each other. Whatever the situation, most of us draw on the knowledge, skills and experience of our friends and colleagues. Within any educational setting learners naturally engage in informal peer learning to make sense of their course, test their ideas and share their concerns.

Peer learning is engaging, and researches say that people learns most effectively when they are interacting with each other. It creates this network of knowledge when you share and connect with people, it not only benefits the individual, but benefits everyone as a whole. It also relieves the pressure of University funding with teachers having to teach such a large class, which affects the quality of learning as well. With peer learning, students engage with one another, and will eventually find the correct answer. It is not independent learning, this is interdependent learning.

Thank you for your share. I think this is a great article that introduces the potential of peer learning in higher education from the teacher's perspective. I agree that connected learning does a great job in promoting student's interactivity, creativity, motivation and interest in learning a particular topic with peers. In addition, peer learning provides learners with opportunities to collaborate and learn a subject together, which might maximize the productivity if used in a correct way. Peers and collaborative learners can do their own research separately, and meet together to discuss and express different opinions on the issue, which can inspire student's deep thinking. However, peer learning and collaborative learning is not always superior to individual work, or contributing to the learning result of every individual. Sometimes it might decrease the learning productivity if the group members or peer partners over reply on others in the group without doing much themselves, or if they didn't communicate well. Thus it's important to practice students learning ability and teacher's facilitating ability in peer learning or collaborative learning.

"Open data could add up to $3 trillion worth of economic activity per year worldwide, according to a study by McKinsey Consultants. But in the race to liberate thousands of data-sets from the government and business sectors, the African continent is seen as lagging behind. "

If there is any continent that needs Open Data most, it is Africa. African needs transparency and accountability, which are the core foundation of Open Data, to create meaningful change on the continent. But making data available and Open is just the initial stage of accomplishing something. The challenge here is how to ensure that the people of Africa have knowledge of the information and are ABLE to ACCESS the information. What use is information when still limited Internet access, scarce electricity, and other ICT infrastructure, including language barriers continue to act as roadblocks to accessing Open data? Wow!! Just when I finished this short posting, the light went off. Couldn't access the Internet. Everything is dead. I have being waiting 30mins, 1hr, 2hrs, 2hrs 45mins … and now its 4hrs and my laptop battery power is running down. ALAS!! Finally power is restored after 4hrs 49mins for me to make my post. You feel me? This is not the exception, and this is not a coincidence but the norm

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.

informal survey of OER in Nordic/Baltic countries from 2011.

A look at the challenges refugees face when trying to access educational opportunities, even if they are cost-free.

This recently published book, by a University of British Columbia journalism professor named Alfred Hermida, questions how the new culture of sharing and collaboration-and the pace of change that sharing enables-changes our lives. It's particularly interesting for us because it doesn't back away from the challenges that open access poses for us: how does being both creator and consumer change us? How does blurring the lines between these two change the way we think about the balance between copyright and the public good? Hermida doesn't tackle these last questions directly, but he provides a useful lens for thinking about our changing roles and how open knowledge and sharing need to reflect that. Considering the book's focus on sharing, it's somewhat ironic that it's not open access, but I highly recommend checking it out. It's received significant attention in the Canadian press and is exactly the kind of mainstream attention that can get conversations about open access started.

Not everything can be shared. Aside from the 14 reasons what makes people share knowledge is because they are trust each one with the knowledge that they will share will be beneficial to the receiver of the knowledge or learning. Knowledge is power when shared.

"Having explored a "learning theory" that George Siemens (2005; 2006a) and Stephen Downes (2005; 2007) developed for a networked and digital world called connectivism. Fascinating and extensive conversations in the blogosphere and in educational journals debate whether connectivism is a new learning theory or whether it is merely a digital extension of constructivism."

I agree, is a wonderful delineation.

The article is great. I only have one observation, we always assume learning is all about connecting special nodes and sources of information but we forget that the opposite is also learning. When we disconnect our wrong nodes and sources of information in terms of beliefs and wrong information, I believe we are also learning.

All German universities will be free of charge when term starts next week after fees were abandoned in Lower Saxony, the last of seven states to charge. "Tuition fees are socially unjust," said Dorothee Stapelfeldt, senator for science in Hamburg, which scrapped charges in 2012.

Could this also be 'open access'?

...to see the full text you need to subscribe ...ironically I hit pay wall again!

Interesting article: a journalist unmasks one of the biggest trolls on the web, an editor in Reddit that use the anonimity to cover his identity. What happens when he is unmasked?.

The principle of the Panopticon still works in today's "big data" society. As we get more and more assesses to information on the Internet, our personal information is also being exposed to others. However, as an user commented, "there is a place for surveillance -- but not when its scope and power has the ability to undermine our networks and connections that are essential for fostering healthy human development and communities -- which is the best protection against harm". The invisibility of the power, to some extent, builds up the self-suiveillance.

Editing your photos is easy with PicMonkey! Add filters, frames, text, and effects with our free online photo editing tool!

PicMonkey is my favorite too. I've tried different on-line image-editors, but I think PicMoneky is most intuitive to use. Sometimes I use http://ipiccy.com/ to edit colors when a picture needs a touch-up.

starting from the Actor Network Theory (see Latour, Callon, Law) obbligatory passage points turn to distribuited passage points when the authors start describing boundary objects....