Thoughts on To Save Everything, Click Here (and Higher Education)
Michael Caulfield, Hapgood, April 1, 2013

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A couple good reviews of Evgeny Morozov's To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism, one from Mike Caulfield, the other from Audrey Watters. I don't have a whole lot to add, except to insist that I'm not a solutionist, that it is reasonable to aergue that the education system (amonbg other things) is broken, and to point to evidence that it is, without at the same time arguing tha 'tech will save everything'. But of course I think Morozov anticipates this sort of position, and generally embraces it. I think; I haven't read the book. Because, it being a book, it is pretty much inaccessible to me, since I can't send $30 to Amazon every time i want to skim somethintg, and since we hav nothing like a real library or bookstore in Moncton.

[Link] [Comment][Tags: Accessibility, Online Learning]

Rockefeller University Press: CC-BY is not essential for Open Access
Richard Poynder, April 1, 2013

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I've been arguing this for years and won't belabour it here. But I will quote Richard Poynder: "CC-BY is not essential for OA, or even for text and data mining, and will alienate some of OA’s friends. So why insist on it?" Yes, this aligns me with some commercial publishers such as Mike Rossne who would much rather publish open content under an NC (non-commercial) license. But all that proves is that I'm not dogmatically opposed to commercial publishers. But just so we're clear: 'fair use' is not limited to "156 characters in length," the RUP license notwithstanding. And the standard thumbnail is at least 100 pixels, not 72. There's a reason commercial publishers get such a bad name: they think they own the content, when all they really own are certain rights. (Photo: Mike Rossner, via Poynder)

[Link] [Comment][Tags: Open Content, Books]

Cetis 2013 Keynote - Digital Citizenship: Underpinning Open Education
Josie Fraser, SocialTech, April 1, 2013

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Keynote from the recent zombie!Cetis "on digital literacy and in particular, digital citizenship, as critical agendas in terms of supporting access and protecting gains in open education, and enabling participation in society." Speaker Josie Fraser addresses the question of how we ensure people are best able to take advantage of all that the internet and web web offer. This doesn't just happen by accident, but requires "being explicit about the important role open education plays within the context of what digital literacy looks like in a school setting - particularly in terms of the ability to find, create, build on and use open educational resources, and in connecting to, participating in and creating open learning networks." It's not just media awareness and digital safety - though these are a large part of it - but also about being able to use new media to express oneself, self-organize, and make change.

[Link] [Comment][Tags: Schools, New Media, Networks]

You didn’t make the Harlem Shake go viral—corporations did
Kevin Ashton, Quartz, April 1, 2013

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You are probably aware of the Harlem Shake, which I was told the other day has replaced Gangnam Style (and to which I responded "no-o-o-o..."). We are supposed to believe it's a grassroots meme (and not a product of the K-Pop industry, etc). But according to this article, it's manufactured hype. And they make a good case. "It came not from YouTube users, but from Maker Studios, a Los Angeles company that specializes in making money from YouTube and is partly owned by Time Warner... Six Twitter accounts—EDM Snob, Baauer, Diplo, Mad Decent, Major Lazer and Flosstradamus—were the cause of views of  'Harlem Shake' on Thursday, Feb. 7 and Friday, Feb. 8. EDM Snob was selling himself. The other five were selling the record." The reason the APIs on things like Twitter and Google+ are closed is so they can monetize this phenomenon, making sure nothing goes viral unless they pay corporate-sized fees to make it happen. Which leaves, you know, the people, you know where. See also: the fakery of brands on Reddit.

[Link] [Comment][Tags: Twitter, YouTube, Video, Google, RSS]

How to Increase Concentration and Retention
Chelsea Wilson, @WashULaw, April 1, 2013

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I am all in favour of listening to music while working or studying, but I prefer music like Dido over the classical repertoire suggested by this article. Chelsea Wilson writes of "an entire field of instruction called 'Accelerated Learning,' developed by Dr. Georgi Lozanov and Evelyna Gateva [which] was created in part to find ways to incorporate music into learning experience." But if you think of learning as more than just remembering, your results may vary. (Photo: Dido)

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

The Hidden Biases in Big Data
Kate Crawford, Harvard Business Review Blogs, April 1, 2013

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Norwood Russell Hanson authored one of the most significant attacks on traditional empiricism with ther argument that all data is 'theory-laden', that is, that what counts as data depends on how we interpret what we perceive. The figures in the image above, for example, may resemble antelopes, but in a different context, the same figures may be interpreted as pelicans. Why is this important? As we enter the era of 'big data' we are forgetting that what we find in data analysis depends very much on what we are looking for.  This is Kate Crawford's message in The Hidden Biases in Big Data. "As we move into an era in which personal devices are seen as proxies for public needs, we run the risk that already existing inequities will be further entrenched. Thus, with every big data set, we need to ask which people are excluded. Which places are less visible? What happens if you live in the shadow of big data sets?" Good questions. For more scepticism on big data, this list of articles from Metafilter is also recommended.

[Link] [Comment][Tags: none]