Flu's Deadly Danger & the Benefits of School Vaccinations
Jonathan Kantrowitz , Education Research Report, October 22, 2012.

Most of the people I know locally don't take flu shots, and every year, like clockwork, they are laid low by the flu. Knowing about things like the 1918 flu pandemic, I have a keen awareness of just how dangerous the flue can be, and so I take my shot every year. I have yet to sprout wings, and I maintain a state of flu-free health every winter. It is a matter of some interest to my why well-educated people would prefer to get the flu than to take a simple vaccine. Photo: Stanford.

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ds106 is a Complex Universe Full of Stars
Alan Levine, CogDogBlog, October 22, 2012.

I think it's nice to say ds106 is a universe filled with stars, except that in the univrse stars barely interact with each other - they throw out a little gravity and EM radiation to the erest willy nilly, but that's about it. The stars - be they resources or people or events - in ds106 are much more closely related; the course features, true, some content just throuwn out there like an x-ray, but also a lot of person-to-person communication, the sort of denser interaction that characterizes something a lot more cohesive than a universe. But i get the metapho, and the diagram is nice.

[Link] [Comment][Tags: Traditional and Online Courses, Interaction]

Minnesota No Longer Banning Coursera
Katie Lepi, Edudemic, October 22, 2012.

Needless to say, it took the government of Minnesota a matter of hours to reverse its policy on banning free and open online learning. If you ever wondered what  juggernaut looks like, that's it. See also Education Week.

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Outlawed by Amazon DRM
Martin Bekkelund, En blogg om IT, October 22, 2012.

Why oh why would anyone spend any amount of money on goods that can be made to vanish at the whim of the priovider? That's exactly what you sign up for when you buy DRM-encumbered content in a closed environment, like (say) Amazon Kindle. And what appears to have happened to this Amazon customer could happen to you: all her Kindfle books were wiped out and her account shut down. Amazon's explanation? "We have found your account is directly related to another which has been previously closed for abuse of our policies." One wonders, what account, what abuse, and what policies? But no more information is forthcoming. Due process, thy name is not DRM. Via Copyfight.

[Link] [Comment][Tags: Digital Rights Management (DRM)]