Wil Wheaton - Why it's awesome to be a nerd
Wil Weaton, YouTube, July 31, 2013

I used to hate Wesley Crusher (still do - we would play games like "that could have killed Wesley Crusher" while watching Star Trek). And I wasn't happy Wil Weaton gathered a gazillion followers online just for being Wil Weaton. But, I like what he has done with his fame, not doing the obvious and making movies or another televsion show, but rather supporting the new and offbeat, and making videos like this one: "We come from all over, in some cases all over the world, so that we can be around people who love things that we love the way that we love them, and that's why being a nerd is awesome. And done't ever let anybody tell you that that think that you love is a thing that you can't love. Don't ever let anyone tell you you can't love that, that's for boys, you have to love this because you're a girl. You find the things that you love and you love them the most that you can."

[Link] [Comment]

Unequal Classrooms: What Online Education Cannot Teach
Jennifer M. Morton, The Chronicle: The Conversation, July 31, 2013

It doesn't take much to jump from "what can't online education teach?" to "what can't MOOCs teach?" but that's the state of play in today's educational discourse, where terms like 'MOOC' (and, for that matter, 'free' and 'open') can mean whatever you want them to (and where, somehow, 'education' has come to mean 'memorization' and 'school' now means 'job training'). Anyhow, philosophy professor Jennifer M. Morton tells us "college is the first place where they will be asked to defend a position and to engage in vigorous intellectual debate. It is also likely to be the first place where they have to consistently engage with middle-class students and professors and navigate middle-class social norms." You know, this whole 'social norms' and 'interpersonal communication' thing. "Children of middle-class families learn how to navigate middle-class social relationships at home. Children from impoverished communities often do not."

True, all too true, and I've pointed to this phenomenon myself in recent discussions. But I framed it a bit differently - I identified it as part of the value proposition offered by upper class elite universities. If the middle class learns its norms at state and community colleges (and the lower classes, I guess, learn their norms on the street?) then it's also true that the weathy and privileged learn their norms apart from the rest of us at Oxford and Cambridge, Yale and Harvard. You know - where presidents and prime minsters go to study. And what I argue (and surely a philosophy professor must appreciate the logic of this) is that if we are actually interested in social equity then the best thing we can do is to dismantle the system that sorts us into social classes and replace it with a system where we all learn through the same medium - these days, interchangeably referred to as online education or MOOC.

I know I'm outside 'the club' that gets to rule our lives and our society, not simply because of my rough edges, but also because I didn't have the right friends in high school, university or at the workplace. But I'll be damned if I'm going to simply accept that.

[Link] [Comment]

Canadian Occupational Projection System (COPS)
Human Resources, Skills Development Canada, July 31, 2013

I ran across this yesterday (I guess it's relatively new?) while looking up data for an internal project. "Use this search tool to find projected industrial data used in the development of the COPS projections. Users can search for industrial data such as gross domestic product, employment, retirements, deaths and job openings by industry. Users can view this data in tables or in graphs." It's Canadian data only, but it's sure useful inside Canada. Related: the Komarnicki Report describing projected labour and skills shortages in Canada.

[Link] [Comment]

BYOD – the first steps
Alice Leung, July 31, 2013

Alice Leung points to a literature review into BYOD and links to Mal Lee take. as she and her school prepares to embark down the BYOD road. BYOD stands for 'Bring Your Own Device' and refers to the idea that the school will support whatever access device - iPad, Android, whatever - a student brings, rather than issuing centrally managed computers or tablets from a cart. Why go down this path? She writes (and I paraphrase, a bit):

• students are already familiar with their own devices
• it saves time as they longer need to move from their regular classrooms to a computer room
• bringing their own devices to school will make learning more fluid between school and home
• technology becomes a part of students everyday lives

Yes, there are issues, but to my mind, the advantages outweigh the risks. Related: the Marine Corps embraces BYOD to reduce costs.

[Link] [Comment]

Fear and anxiety on the like/retweet web
Brian Lamb, Abject, July 31, 2013

Brian Lamb writes, "in a grim economic climate, prodding people’s anxieties and fears so you can monetize their relationships really creeps me out." He's responding in part to Alan Levine's satirical take on LinkedIn Endorsements. "The layers of mindlessness embodied by this 'feature' are ably mocked by the CogDog, a particularly pernicious manifestation of the Like/Retweet web...  easily 'gamed'." It's really hard to get this right - Klout failed, and LinkedIn has also failed. What will be much more interesting is our reaction when someone gets it right.

[Link] [Comment]

'Could Have Done More'
Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Ed, July 31, 2013

MIT has released a report summarizing and evaluating its actions in the wake of the Aaron Swartz case. Swartz, readers may recall, was at MIT when he attempted to download the entire JSTOR library, violating the company's terms of service. They threw the book at him, MIT went "hem, haw" and Swartz eventually committed suicide. "MIT took the position that U.S. vs. Swartz was simply a lawsuit to which it was not a party." But as MIT washes its hands the case against Swartz appears even less fair; Lawrence Lessig comments, "If indeed Aaron’s access was not 'unauthorized' — as Aaron’s team said from the start, and now MIT seems to acknowledge — then the tragedy of this prosecution has only increased." MIT claims it was neutral, but as Joi Ito says, "there are obviously plenty of contexts in which to be “neutral” is simply to be wrong."

[Link] [Comment]

The Hole in Our Collective Memory: How Copyright Made Mid-Century Books Vanish
Rebecca J. Rosen, The Atlantic, July 31, 2013

Data reinforcing what we all suspected was true: "Copyright correlates significantly with the disappearance of works rather than with their availability," Heald writes. "Shortly after works are created and proprietized, they tend to disappear from public view only to reappear in significantly increased numbers when they fall into the public domain and lose their owners." The disappearance is substantial, with all but a tiny remnant of books published in the 1930, 40s and 50s available today.

[Link] [Comment]

Dino 101 MOOC opens, offering free tuition in paleontology
Katie Collins, Wired, July 31, 2013

My old friends at the University of Alberta opened MOOC registration yesterday to the much anticipated Dino 101 massive open online course on paleontology. Who can resist? More, "The course is academically rigorous and will be open to University of Alberta students and students from other universities around the world, who will be able to gain the documentation they need in order to seek academic credit." Register here. Here's an intro video. See also: Dino course gets roar of approval.

[Link] [Comment]