May 25, 2012
SPAWS Use Case: Paradata for Widgets should be shared across Widget Stores
Scott Wilson,
Scott's Workblog, May 25, 2012.
Scott Wilson helps us all understand SPAWS (Sharing Paradata Across Widget Stores) with a new use case. "Paradata – reviews by users, ratings and ‘likes’, and aggregate download statistics – is collected separately by each store. Sharing this paradata between stores will add value for users of all the stores." Basically, then, it's like sharing metadata created by users (or as I called it, second party metadata) - except that the metadata is shared (as I could see from the paradata cookbook) in JSON rather than XML. meanwhile, related to another educational metadata initiative (LRMI), Phil Barker asksthe all-importnat question: Will using schema.org metadata improve my Google rank?
How the AP's Overview Turns Documents Into Pictures
Jonathan Stray,
Idea Lab, May 25, 2012.
What would be really neat would be to take a product like Overview and apply it to the OLDaily archives. With more than 11 years of stuff, something interesting should turn up. And because each post is actually a link to an external resource, it would be creating a map of a web space, and not just a set of documents. "It breaks down documents by words and short phrases. It starts by counting how many times each word appears in each document. Frequent words are 'key' words."
A Canadian hero, is giving at talk at Mesh.
David Weinberger,
Joho the Blog, May 25, 2012.
Michael Geist talks about internet legislation and the culture of resistance that has formed in response to it. "For months people have been trying to figure out the “SOPA Story.” How did the number one legislative effort from the number one lobby go down in flames?" To me, one of the most interesting results is that people are forming their own media consortia. I'm thinking that the day publishers turned on their audience was the day they lost that audience. "At the Media Consortium, a national network of independent media outlets, we realized that we could aggregate independent media content into media tools that could be embedded on individual member sites.... Instead of being pushed toward one central site à la Huffington Post, this model allows audiences to go to their favorite independent media outlet, where they can find national content created by the independent media sector." See also, How Journalism Education Can, and Should, Blow Up the System, from Eric Newton.
Why We Killed Our College Daily Paper for a More Digital Future
Ryan Frank,
Mediashift, May 25, 2012.
As a former student journalist I watch the affairs of campus media with a close eye, which is only one of the reasons why it's interesting to see student newspapers shutting down or reducing their print versions and going online. It's a challenge, because their exclusive distribution - it was always so easy to just pick up a copy of the paper on the way to class - becomes a much greater challenge in the online world. Still, student newspapers are hyper-local, which (in my mind) is a key to success in today's online media environment. "In the newsroom, daily is too slow. We will report in real-time on the web, mobile and social media. To do this, we made digital news its own team and set aside money to equip them with new iPads and video cameras to report live from the field."
Open Access: The People’s Petition
Richard Poynder,
Open and Shut, May 25, 2012.
Petitions don't do a whole lot for me (I'd much rather see spontaneous individual demonstrations of support). And petitions especially to some other government (like, say, the American government) don't do anything for me. But they've become vogue recently as a way to engage people into talking about open access and open education. Hence an initiative called Access2Research decidedto launch a petition on the “We the People” site — which was introduced on whitehouse.gov by the US government last September — and invite the public to sign it." It's being supported by OERu and Saylor and others.
On the purpose of education
Miles Berry,
Open Source. Open Learning., May 25, 2012.
People posit all sorts of motives for creators, makers, scientists and researchers, everything from wanting to make the big money to wanting to be famous. But there's in my mind a motivation that is frequently overlooked: curiosity. Or as Brian Cox says, “We explore because we are curious, not because we wish to develop grand views of reality or better widgets.” There is something to be said for a concept of 'science as discovery' or 'art as discovery'. That's certainly what motivates me; otherwise I'd just go into finance or law or some other unproductive sector. Via Purpos/ed, which is still chugging away.
Beware of Amazon
Douglas Gibson,
Canadian Conference of the Arts, May 25, 2012.
Publishers and authors are being warned, beware of Amazon. I'm trying to feel sorry for the commercial press, but really, their experience of negotiating with Amazon is like many an author's negotiations with publishers. "The “negotiating” consisted of Amazon stating that they wanted a markedly increased discount, which would see both the publishers involved and their authors lose close to a tenth of their revenue, including revenue from both books in print and in e-book form... Then they learned about “negotiating” with Amazon. The gun-to-the-head Amazon style led to the threat that IPG had to agree to the proposed terms, or all of their e-book titles would be pulled off the Amazon site. That is precisely what happened in the middle of February. And that is the situation today."
UMW Faculty Academy
Giulia Forsythe,
G-LOG, May 25, 2012.
Giulia Forsythe presents at the UMW Faculty Academy. "The big take away is that DS106 and ds106radio communities have given me the tools and inspiration to unleash my creativity in ways that best suit my learning. I hope I convinced a few folks to take DS106 a spin this summer at Camp MacGuffin." The web page also has a video from Grant Potter and numerous images like the one above created by attendees.
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