Google Announces 100 Live Hangouts For Teachers Around The World
Jeff Dunn, Edudemic, October 23, 2012.

I'm finding the quality of these hangouts announced by Google as listening experiences, um, variable. I also noticed that these (and the Hangouts on Air generally) being boosted in the Google search rankings (for example, they occupy (undeservedly) several of the top video spots on MOOCs). But they exist, so I report them here. Here are the recordings (they're a bit hard to find on the site).

[Link] [Comment][Tags: Video, Google, Quality, Experience]

How Much Does It Cost to Run an Online School?
Patrick O'Donnell and Molly Bloom, State Impact, October 23, 2012.

According to this report, the Educational Service Center of Cuyahoga County can offer an online program for about $2,980 per student for a full course load all year. Meanwhile, TRECA Digital Academy, another publicly operated provider of online K-12 education, says it can do it for about $3,600 per student. This compares with the $5,700 the state government pays charter schools. Now (obviously) all these numbers are cherry-picked. But I would be interested to see a systematic study of what it costs to offer an equally good education online. Via Helge Scherlund.

[Link] [Comment][Tags: Schools]

Download Hundreds of Free Art Catalogs from The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Dan Colman, Open Culture, October 23, 2012.

Just what the art doctor ordered: "the Metropolitan Museum of Art has launched MetPublications, a portal that will 'eventually offer access to nearly all books, Bulletins, and Journals' published by the Met since 1870." That means I can read things like Al-Andalus: The Art of Islamic Spain for free online. Oh, where does all the time go?

[Link] [Comment][Tags: Books, Research, Portals]

Reusable Imagery: Half Empty or Half Full?
Alan Levine, CogDogBlog, October 23, 2012.

Alan Levine writes, "We have to do better at (a) being vigilant on using media that is clearly licensed to do so; (b) being equally vigilant on stating clearly and linking to the source of our media; and (c) being sharing enough to add what we can to the open licensed space." And he has a point. But. There are the essential principles of fair use (fair dealing in Canada, which has similar provisions) that judges consider:

• the purpose and character of your use
• the nature of the copyrighted work
• the amount and substantiality of the portion taken, and
• the effect of the use upon the potential market.

So, consider the implications for an image found on some website and reposted, say, here. The purpose is educational, non-profit, and typically taken from the post it illustrates. It's a single image that already appears on the open web. It's shown thumbnail size, never more than 500px wide, and is itself a part of the site it illustrates. The effect on the market is either nil, or of net benefit to the image owner. Every one of my posts names and links back to the image used. So, on balance (and given precedent in such sites as Google and the BBC, I would state that I am well with the bounds of fair use.

See, that's the problem with making everybody license, and state licenses, and look for licenses, and be all persnickety - we risk lose the existing rights we have under common law and statute. (Image from Wikipedia).

[Link] [Comment][Tags: Linking and Deep Linking, Google, Copyrights, Wikipedia]

Iceland votes for crowdsourced constitution
Philippa Warr, Wired UK, October 23, 2012.

The main provisions of Iceland's proposed constitution, drafted thoughwide open consultation (including social media), were supported in a referendum Sunday. The story is in most of the tech papers; Wired was one fo the few linking to actual external resources. While I couldn't find the text of the proposed constitution I found this paper which has quite an impressibe list of rights and clearly shows what new rights Icelanders voted for themselves (as most other people would, were they to live in democracies too): freedom of the press, right to fair compensation, right to health care, right to safe working conditions, rights of children guaranteed, right to a reasonable standard of living, and the right to view government information. You may think this is not relevant, but then there's this report showing American child poverty is the second-highest among developed nations, and you wonder what their education outcomes would be were tbhis not the case, and what the poverty rate would be were Americans to have Iceland's new constitution.

[Link] [Comment][Tags: United States, Linking and Deep Linking]