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An alternative perspective on some of the hype around makerspaces and hacking, looking into how it supports and extends the neoliberal agenda.

It is curious to see that everytime some new technology rises, there are someone saying that it will mean the end of the system (call it capitalism, for instance) and a new real democracy era will arise. Nevertheless, once and over again we see that the technology arrives to everyone's door, but always controlled by someone else. You might have your own car, which was almost imposible in the early 50's, but you depend on how expensive gas is and how many barriers you find in your way; you have internet in your pocket, but every movement you do and every site you visit are being saved in someone's server with we don't know what exact purposes. But we keep hoping and saying, once and over again, that democracy, the real one, will some day florish with a new magical device. I honestly think it is in human nature to try to control and manipulate others; even people that honestly see themselves as good collaborative human beens, when they are under a tense situation, they don't hesitate to hide the truth, manipulate or lie to find adepts to their cause. So only with a genetic mutation we will reach that golden dream!

Kevin you mentioned this article to me several weeks ago and I did read it and really appreciated the recommendation. I think it is important for us to think about other perspectives to makerspaces to really understand how libraries should (and do) fit into this changing landscape. The library landscape is definitely changing, and some are really latching on to this idea of makerspaces, and others latching on to the more traditional services that libraries offer. I think that we really need to understand how the concept of makerspaces can fit into developing strong civic skills, critical thinking and appreciation of the arts to really make it fit into libraries, and focus less on the "production" and "innovation" appeal that makerspaces have. I do think that skills that can be honed in makerspaces have the potential to create great global citizens, but only if it is accompanied by deep critical thinking and a broader understanding of the world.

Open Source and openness in Higher Education: MOOC, OCW, OER.

October 29, 2014 Today I want to share with you this awesome read I came across in Global Citizen Education. The article is entitled " 21st Century Fluencies" and is basically based on Crockett et al.'s book Literacy is Not Enough .

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.

i like it

A map displaying the locations of institutional repositories, which can be filtered by country, platform and date of registration. Each entry links to the url of the repository.

El Repositorio de la Educación es un servicio en línea para recoger, preservar y proporcionar acceso a los datos de las publicaciones de investigación y los contenidos digitales en todo el mundo se producen. Mejore sus estudios, añadir dinamismo a sus clases y llevar a cabo sus investigaciones con una gran variedad de los objetos digitales mejor producidos. Por el momento, hay 19.662 objetos disponibles y 149 se están evaluando o están en espera de la autorización de su autor para ser publicada. El número total actual de acceso es 4.357.339.

El último módulo de este curso "OpenKnowledge Changing the Global Course of Learning" se centra en el pasado y futuro del Conocimiento Abierto. Desde aquí, he querido compartir las reflexiones de Francesco Tonucci hacia la escuela del futuro, donde, entre sus puntos importantes, evita también el uso de libros de texto y aulas cerradas y propone una escuela democrática, participativa y colaborativa, con aprendizaje por descubrimiento y pensamiento crítico capaz de formar a personas felices. Promueve un aprendizaje basado en proyectos no centrados en libros de textos estancos, sino construyendo el material o buscándolo entre los recursos que hoy día tenemos disponible. En una concepción de escuela como la de Tonucci, precisamente que la información pueda ser de acceso libre para todos permite reforzar la idea de una escuela nueva formando a personas felices y competentes.

The book that I share with you is a treasure, is so extraordinary that in it we can find information about universities with high academic prestige just like Stanford University. It covers topics of great interest and dynamism like, augmented reality, game-based learning and global knowledge among others.

"The paper reveals the historical process of the emergence of the phenomenon of Open Access."

"In 2013, Jeffrey Beall published an attack on the open-access scholarship movement in tripleC: "The Open-Access Movement Is Not Really About Open Access". This article examines the claims and arguments of that contribution. Beall's article makes broad generalizations about open-access advocates with very little supporting evidence, but his rhetoric provides good examples of what Albert O. Hirschman called the "rhetoric of reaction". Specifically, it provides examples of the perversity thesis, the futility thesis, and the jeopardy thesis in action. While the main argument is both unsound and invalid, it does show a rare example of reactionary rhetoric from a librarian."

Social media management with Hootsuite. Manage multiple networks and profiles, great way to use one dashboard to aggregate your feeds and content into one area.

Very interesting examples. Thank you for sharing this. Something I need to learn more about. It seems to be a flexible way to invite groups to share material and create together. It can definitely be used in a global education way I think.

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.

Hackers might bee seen as a threat to security and privacy, but at the same time they fight for internet freedom, open source and open information. By finding security holes before criminals do it, maybe they are good for your privacy? I think this video is a good introduction to the global hacker culture.

An interesting and simple definition of the technoculture, globalization and the social networks.

"It is an irony of the digital age that at a time when we are used to having easy access to seemingly endless information and knowledge, so much of it is disappearing into a digital black hole. For 450 years the concept of legal deposit has helped to preserve the nation's intellectual record.| There is this aspect of disappearing data as well.

See my bookmark post 'Academic citation practices ...' for some geeky stuff on the reference / citation issues.

Jacynthe, you are welcome, and Phillip, many thanks!

Who has heard of this festival about Open Knowledge? Who has been there?

It's common knowledge that the amount of online rich media consumption is increasing exponentially on an annual basis. But how much video traffic is projected over the next five years? And what does this growth really mean for global residential, business, and mobile subscribers and the service providers that support them? I have used this infographic many times since I have found it. There are times in presentations or when trying to educate people on the size and scope of the internet that words do not do enough. The pictures and numbers and scaling provided by this infographic conveys the message quite well even if the numbers are losing their meaning because they are so large. The other important part of this infographic is that is is updated constantly. When I first found this link it was referring to the year 2014, as of this post it is now referencing 2015 and what will be available on line at that time.