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The article shows the differences and similarities between critical thinking and problem solving - one of the pillars of the 21st century.

Great article. Thank you

The author distinguishes strengths and weaknesses of 'critical thinking', 'moral integrity' and 'citizenship'.

Cognitive aspect of thinking is hard to make separation with affective and morality aspects of thinking and learning.

It's unquestionable that Research4Life has had a significant impact in improving access to research information for communities in developing countries. I do have a number of criticisms about how the program is organized and delivered, however. 1. Publisher participation in the program is 'entirely voluntary', without 'a single contract (being) signed between any of the partners' (Aaronson, 2004), meaning that publishers can opt out at any point. This issue was highlighted in 2011 when Elsevier, Lipincott Williams & Wilkins, Springer and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, publisher of Science Magazine) withdrew access to over 2500 journals through the HINARI system. Following international attention, and widespread condemnation, publishers restored access, with Elsevier announcing that they were in discussions with the government in Bangladesh to transition towards a paid licensing scheme (Wise, 2011). 2. Countries that meet the eligibility criteria of the program (which are based on the World Bank's listing of Lower and Lower Middle Income Countries) are sometimes excluded. Take for example India or Pakistan- although these countries are in the lists of eligible countries, the publishers deliberately exclude participation to protect whatever business they may have in these countries. So although hundreds of institutions could benefit, they exclude access to protect the business they receive from a handful of institutions. 3. Access to content is delivered through a single username and password for each institution. This is problematic for librarians, as they are unable to ensure the security of the password (a well-meaning researcher may share the password with a colleague in another institution, violating the license agreement). Abuse of institutional accounts has severe consequences, and librarians are sent messages from Research4Life threatening to not only cut off the institution, but all institutions in their country if they

Research4life is a great program by committed government and non-government organizations dedicated to produce valuable researches that will improve the life of people. Librarians play an important role in assisting researchers find valid, current, relevant information in order to produce a reliable output or results that will help humankind's betterment of living.

The author of the article focuses on the question of exhistance of such a thing as 'emotional intelligence and how does it relate to critical thinking.

Peter Downes wrote this blog criticizing the Cape Town Declaration. It was very interesting reading in terms of looking at the issues from different perspectives. I did not agree on everything he wrote, but the following paragraph was resonated in my mind as I read it. I DID , however add a word - in parenthesis. "If there is anything that could be thought of as a truism in contemporary education, it is the idea that we are all learners and that we are all teachers. The idea of lifelong learning makes explicit the former idea, and the principles of learner-centered, constructive and inquiry-based learning make explicit the latter. Knowledge - particularly social and public knowledge - is not something that is (only) produced by a hothouse meeting of experts, but rather, is produced through a process of dialogue and conversation".

The fact is someone had to initiate and ask for comments. The door might not have been widened enough as the author comments. It is perhaps time to understand that in as much as we would like to live in an open world, our views will always diverging to a number of directions.

By: Matthew LeBar Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are often described as the future of education - or at least a significant part of it. But there may be a significant problem with them: a very small proportion of students who start them actually finish. This poses a serious threat to their legitimacy.

This brings up the question of what it means to complete something? And why is it so important to us? And why 'productivity', a thing somebody defined ages ago, is so important to our humanity? .. or is it anymore?

Because I am taking a MOOC course but also on campus at University, I receive credits and grades where this is definitely one of the motivations for me to contribute. Although I agree that completion of the course is not essential to attain knowledge, what about our motivations to learn? And what about our incentives? Not saying MOOCs are not interesting nor helpful, I like MOOCs, but I think people like recognition too. I think to just receive the "statement of accomplishment" is not enough to prove efforts made within the course. However MOOCs are not as well developed at this stage, there definitely will be adjustments in the near future.

Social media plays a critical role in defining professional identity. This article from Levo is a great point of reference for young people looking to seperate personal and professional identity online.

Social media is a critical part of our everyday lives and we are consistently challenged to adapt to the proliferation of the ever-changing digital platforms. This 7-step guide lists the top do's and don'ts of social media .

It is great that people are connecting with each other; however, we need to think about the influence of online social network on our Youth.

I think this is a valid concern, high schools around the country are permitting cell phone use in classrooms which is opening the doors to more group chat during and after class about everything but academics.

In a world dominated by technology there is no denying the significant influence of social media on our Youth. That being said, I think there is a critical demand for social media education in the classroom. I would love to see a stronger emphasis placed on employing technology as an instrument of education in the school system. Social media should be taught as a tool for research, collaboration and activism rather than a trivial pastime.

Cool short video describing skills we need to be part of the participatory culture.

This video did a great job of illustrating the shift from critical media consumption to more participatory culture. We are no longer just consumers, we are now producers, curators and publishers. We must develop critical digital literacy skills in order to creatively express ourselves online.

Teachers are discovering the value of imparting media-literacy skills, from critical analysis of news programs, commercials, and films to basic design and video-production techniques.

This is an excellent video summarizing all the skills and necessity of them in a participatory culture. Everyone is spending more and more time in the multimedia world these days, especially the youth, who can be considered the most vulnerable. An ability to perceive all the information we are getting through a critical lens is profound, as is an ability to dissect and understand the logic of multimedia. Learning the tricks of graphics, cinema, music studies (collectively called "communication studies"), young people learn to understand and create media, find new ways to express themselves efficiently in an ever-changing world and supplement the traditional ("written") curriculum, which is behind the needs of today's man. The point is illustrated nicely by George Lucas, founder of The George Lucas Educational Foundation (GLEF): "Everybody is affected by this, and it should be taught in school." I agree 100%.

Re-thinking communication skills is absolutely essential for all educators, since much of the communication students are faced with during a day comes in the shape of different kinds of media. But the result of this is also that we need to address the fact that not all educators are necessarily equipped to teach about media because it's rarely included in teacher's programs (especially if you were trained twenty or thirty years ago). So the video makes a lot of good points about media-literacy and hopefully our educational systems will make sure that educators are given the tools to include this in their classrooms.

A collection by Edutopia about digital citizenship.

A great collection of thoughts, lists and posters that can be very helpful in teaching digital literacy and digital citizenship in the classroom. There are so many aspects of digital citizenship to consider and copyright is one of those things that I think many educators forget to discuss, but it's so very important to understand.

Digital citizenship is a very large topic and it encompasses so much, including digital literacy. Every day it is more and more important for people to develop critical lenses regarding what is digitally available. With so much out there, I think part of being a good digital citizen is to have a critical lens to filter all the information.

Looks at the "Linux model" as a successful way of doing business."I think there is a general movement and a general recognition in the technology community that we need to reform the patent process. There's far too much effort and energy put into creating patents that do not end up fostering innovation," said Musk. "I think no reasonable person would say that the current patent system is ideally suited to foster innovation."

A true pioneer, Mr Musk is. I think he has an extra sense for the future. Patents seem to be an institution which increasingly focuses on short term profit instead of the common benefit on the long run.

Patents are the biggest responsible for the technological delays. The laws should change radically.

Young, K. (2004). Internet Addiction: A new Clinical Phenomenon and Its Consequences. American Behavioral Scientist. 48:402

a. Although this is a psychology article, it poses an important concern over the rise of internet addiction in connected populations. This article is relevant to this course, as it relates to the notion of critical consumption; some users are unable to filter information effectively, which should be recognized as a concern. Young states many statistics from educators and researchers discounting internet use in the classroom as it is far too distracting and the loss of productivity (in both students and the workforce) is immense.

Some might argue that this article shows the downside of connected learning and e-resources, however this is not the case. Certain web activities mentioned in the paper such as chat rooms, social media, and video games are not the focus of this course. Open Knowledge deals with the light side of the internet, which is the interconnectivity, the accelerated learning, and the ability to publish ones own content. The internet can definitely be misused, but not every web activity is "junk food". If someone obsessively became a mathematician and ultimately ended up being the best mathematician in the world due to "addiction" people would call him or her a genius. The trick is to filter which content and activities one engages in.

This very short, yet engaging piece challenges us to think more critically about the opportunities and implications stemming from open access principles.

Online discussions and post-publication analyses are catching mistakes that sneak past editorial review. This article describes the pitfalls with editorial review and pre-publication peer review, and advocates for post-publication crowd-sourced reviewing through social media platforms.

I think having a comments section is a great way to provide feedback on the information provided. Often when I read articles the comments section allows me to understand different perspectives and interpretations of the information.

This article, while not necessarily explicitly, managed to hint at what I find to be a source of problematic practices/outcomes in the academy, publishing, etc. That is, it is not necessarily that traditional peer review processes are ineffective at finding errors or misconduct, but rather it is when our processes and practices become so systematized that we can mindlessly or effortlessly engage in and reproduce them without our full, critical attention that they can produce problems. While I think there are good reasons to critique the notion of peer and "expert" culture within traditional peer review processes, an additional and separate critique is the problems that arise with systematization. The article implicitly addressed this when the author commented that current post-publication environments "provide a public space that is not under the control of journal editors and conference organizers." Yet, as White indicates, there exists skepticism of the value of post-publication reviews along with a simultaneous effort to build post-publication systems that have standards that put those questioning it at ease. The National Institutes of Health establishing requirements that potential post-publication reviewers must meet demonstrated this. That is, they are trying to figure out how to systematize post-publication. For me, what this article indicates is that we ought to figure out how to keep our academic and publishing processes "fresh," so to speak. This way we don't become so comfortable with our methods and practices that they allow us to simply go through the motions without fostering innovative and critical inquiry.

A timely article on the Outernet, a service that can broadcast e-books and culled information from the internet to less wealthy nations who do not have access to the internet. A few criticisms of the emerging technology do arise: addressing literacy in less developed locations, questioning whether the information broadcast is information that would be suited for that community, and finally whether there would be a prioritization of information with paid net-connected organizations.

"But what about for the many people in the world that lack internet connectivity? The answer is still yes - at least according to Syed Karim, who explained how at TEDGlobal. The entrepreneur had been invited to the human ingenuity-themed event in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to speak about his company, Outernet. The business aims to address the fact that about two-thirds of the world's population still has no internet access."

Thank you for posting this article about Syed Karim's TED talk as I had not seen it before and found it very interesting. With the outernet, I believe people living in places where this is inadequate or no access to the internet will be able to accrue information. However, I still believe more efforts need to be done to expand the web so that all can partake.

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.