OKMOOC

This is a great follow-up reading to the core reading for module5 from J. Willinksky (2006). I thought it was timely now though written 12 years ago, due to the surge in citizen video journalism and ease of access to government websites now for public policy information, voting and campaigning.

Ukufunda, which means "learn" in isiZulu, is the name of the virtual school that was developed by Mxit Reach, UNICEF and the Department of Basic Education. It's an innovation in the South African education system that will address inequalities in the school system, raise education standards and put the power of education in the hands of every learner, teacher and parent.

Part of the experience of being a keynote speaker at the Jon C. Dalton Institute on College Student Values is that you get to do an interview with the Character Clearinghouse at Florida State University. The questions from Pamela Crosby, the editor of the site (as well as the Journal of College and Character), were stellar.

This is an interdisciplinary open access publication on sharing after a conference being held in Innsbruck, Austria 2011. I would especially like to recommend the article by Katherine Sarikakis (Sharing, Labour and Governance on Social Media: A Rights Lacuna), who is dealing with invisible 'online labour' on SNS from a political economy perspective. Very interesting one, because, in my opinion, this also applies to open knowledge projects as well.. But also the other articles by Andrea Hemetsberger ('Let the Source be with you!' - Practices of Sharing in Free and Open-Source Communities), Volker Grassmuck (The Sharing Turn: Why we are generally nice and have a good chance to cooperate our way out of the mess we have gotten ourselves into), and the others (half of it in English, the other in German) are definitely worth reading!

Originally shared by Inez in the course Google Community. From the article, by Morozov: "For all its utopianism and scientism, its algedonic meters and hand-drawn graphs, Project Cybersyn got some aspects of its politics right: it started with the needs of the citizens and went from there. The problem with today's digital utopianism is that it typically starts with a PowerPoint slide in a venture capitalist's pitch deck."

"It is the first TEDx talk of the founder of Free Software movement. Stallman, RMS for short, has changed the world with his vision of freedom for the digital age. He launched the GNU operating system, used with Linux as a component, and inspired the development of Creative Commons licences and Wikipedia project. In this talk, Stallman describes how nonfree programs give companies control of their users and what users can do in order to recover control over their computing."

"Although the Directory of Open Access Journals reports that nearly two-thirds of OA journals listed there do not charge authors, a recent study indicates that 50% of OA articles have been published after the author paid a fee." That still leaves at least 50% of OA journals that DO NOT charge author fees. This is often forgotten.

A photo-sharing app enabling healthcare professionals to view patients' photos is to be launched across western Europe.

Even though this app is surrounded by controversy I see it as the natural next step in healthcare. There is no reason why doctors should not be able to freely exchange information as long as the identity of the patients remains unknown.

An article that contains a link to a video with a nearly 1 and 1/2 hour debate on the purpose of education and the future of online learning. One of the participants is Sebastian Thrun, who is the CEO of Udacity, a service that offers free courses.

Reuters / Eric Thayer Internet giant Twitter is suing the Department of Justice in hopes that the United States government will let the web company publish more details about requests made for user data. The complaint, filed in federal court on Tuesday this week, asks the Justice Dept.

An interesting read. Freedom of speech is allowed as long it does not relate to the US government. One important thing to understand here is that the flow of information can never be stopped or banned (at least only temporarily.) There is no such thing as good or bad information - it all depends on who interprets the information and what point of views these people have.

"los autores están usando su potencial de autoría más sabiamente al hacerse más colaborativos en su forma de trabajar, lo que está impulsando una inflación aparente en la productividad de cada autor así como autor por líneas. En lugar de ello, la fuerza subyacente del aumento del volumen de artículos publicados es simplemente la introducción de nuevos autores competidores en el mercado. Esto no es sorprendente, ya que la población de investigadores a nivel mundial sigue aumentando cada año, y llegan a estar cada vez más sujetos a los principios de "publica o perece", y así el ciclo continúa."

"In opening up its new Stephen Fry book to crowdsourced remixes, Penguin hopes to catalyze an amazing, disruptive reading experience."

Publishers of scholarly journals currently obtain most of their revenue from subscription fees charged to libraries and individual users. We call this the 'Reader Pays' pricing model. An alternative pricing method has recently emerged, in which publishers collect their revenue by charging significant publication fees to authors, and then supply their content over the Internet, at no cost to readers.

Retrospectiva de los repositorios de acceso abierto y tendencias en la socialización del conocimiento Retrospective of Open Access Repositories and Trends in the Socialization of Knowledge Silvia Irene Adame Rodríguez, Luis Lloréns Baez, Michel Schorr Wiener Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, Edificio de Investigación y Posgrado, Blvd.

En este post se habla de Randy Schekman y su postura sobre las revistas de lujo y el open access

"The Open Source Malaria project is trying a different approach to curing malaria. Guided by open source principles, everything is open and anyone can contribute."

Open Source Malaria is an effort to find medicine for malaria faster by opening up the data and the process. There are even some non-science tasks in a to-do list!  https://github.com/OpenSourceMalaria/OSM_To_Do_List/labels/Non-Science 

Daniel Gil Pérez * Amparo Vilches ** SÍNTESIS: La alfabetización científica de la ciudadanía, en opinión de muchos expertos y responsables políticos, constituye hoy día un componente básico de la educación ciudadana. Pero ¿es necesaria, realmente, una formación científica para toda la ciudadanía? ¿Es posible alcanzar dicho objetivo?

Me ha encantado el punto de vista mostrado en el artículo; no sólo por la defensa que hace de la educación científica de la ciudadanía, sino por el método que propone para conseguirlo: fomentar la participación en la investigación. Me ha recordado mucho al planteamiento que se hace en las escuelas de las materias de letras: No es lo mismo estudiar literatura con un profesor que no sólo te invita a leer los libros, sino que los comenta en su entorno social, histórico, político y cultural, que estudiar lengua y gramática desde el punto de vista del desglose de las oraciones en sujeto, predicado, complementos, frases subordinadas, etc. Aunque ambas son necesarias, sólo la primera ayuda a comprender la importancia de la lengua como herramienta de transmisión de cultura. La segunda es necesaria para comprender su complejidad y evolución, pero no ayuda demasiado a la toma de decisiones sobre el estado de la cultura en un país. Con la ciencia ocurriría algo parecido: hace falta una educación en "literatura científica" más que en "lenguaje científico" para que los ciudadanos seamos capaces de comprender las situaciones científicas que afectan a temas tan importantes como la salud, la biodiversidad o el cambio climático. ¡Gracias por compartir!

Qué opináis vosotros de este articulo?

Estoy de acuerdo en que el 'periodismo ciudadano' no va desplazar al periodismo profesional, por que carece de un "agente regulador" que revise/edite/controle el contenido 'investigado' y compartido.

Yo creo que el periodismo profesional debería hacer un giro hacia el análisis en profundidad de lo que está ocurriendo; hacer previsiones, estudios de factores que nos han traído hasta la situación actual, qué opciones hay, quién participa en la toma de decisiones... El periodismo ciudadano cubre los sucesos de manera puntual, el aquí y ahora, de una forma eficiente e inmediata. Es tarea de los periodistas analizar toda esa información y obtener conclusiones de la marcha de los acontecimientos. Si se limitan a seguir informando de sucesos puntuales, ¿quién querrá financiar una actividad que ya hace el ciudadano por propia iniciativa?

An interesting overview of the challenges that both teachers and students face in the era of participatory culture

By Elisabeth Losh in Information Science and Web 2.0.

Two interesting links extracted from the article: Connected learning http://connectedlearning.tv/ Connected Learning is an educational approach designed for our ever-changing world. It makes learning relevant to all populations, to real life and real work, and to the realities of the digital age, where the demand for learning never stops. http://www.itofisher.com/mito/weblog/2012/03/connected_learning.html

This is a Citizen Science project for the UE.