January 29, 2013
Den Groom, YouTube, January 29, 2013
Dean Groom shared the following message with TALO: "A video I've made (short) about a project I'm working on via http://www.ierg.net. Should start 2014 in public. Right now working on an 'app' for want of better term, which is about peer-feedback using game-like methods. The actual IE programme is already in play, I'm trying to create a technological-connection between students and teachers to provide a feedback loop anonymously. Think Suga Mitra meets 4 Square. Anyone into this sort of stuff?" Even if you don't have time to watch videos (I rarely have time, though Groom's 40-second video wasn't too much for me) do check out the Imaginative Education Research Group website s it contains much more than just a few videos. "This website introduces new theories, principles, and practical techniques for making education more effective. Because engaging students' imaginations in learning, and teachers' imaginations in teaching, is crucial to making knowledge in the curriculum vivid and meaningful, we call this new approach Imaginative Education (IE)."
Brian Kelly, UK Web Focus, January 29, 2013
Brian Kelly suggests that PDF authors should encode metadata into the PDF file so Google will be able to retrieve it. In addition to including the title of the work, he suggests that authors include the ORCID author id (ORCID stands for 'Open Researcher and Contributor ID' - of course it goes without saying that now everyone who creates a PDF will be an 'open researcher or contributor'). Kelly asks whether it is preferable to do it this way or "to provide richer structured metadata in PDF files, using the XMP (Extensible Metadata Platform) standard." I think the idea is a good one either way, but I really think there has to be a way for other people, not just Google, to see the data.
[Link] [Comment][Tags: Research, Google, Metadata, Wikipedia]
Cable Green, Creative Commons, January 29, 2013
The United States government yesterday announced "the Open Book Project (remarks, fact sheet, press notice), an initiative to expand access to free, high-quality educational materials in Arabic." While no doubt this initiative has a political purpose, it doesn't follow that it merits criticism on that basis. The proof will be in the content of the material, and whether it serves the more generic objective of advancing eduation for Arab-speaking people. And I think the launching of this initiative shows that there are many good grounds for supportin g open access, and that narrowly-focused "sustainability models" don't always capture those grounds.
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