Edu_RSS
Swimming In It
If you got a chance to listen to
the podcast in the previous post, you heard me say something like "most educators don't yet understand what it means to be connected 24/7, the power and the potential that holds." Something like that. So when I read "
Information Everywhere" over at Clarence Fisher's blog just now, it really clicked. Listen to how he describes what his students are starting to experience: They
weblogged News on September 22, 2005 at 10:45 p.m..
Logan Airport - Crappy on purpose when it comes to wifi
Logan Airport has forced the American Airlines lounge to turn off its over-priced T-Mobile wirelessness so the Airport can sell its own overpriced wirelessness without competition. Sucks big time. And while I'm on the topic of Logan sucking: The re-done Terminal A opened a few months ago. It cost tons of money and it shows. Yet travelers still have to hunt out the rare power outlets. Didn't Logan ask a single traveler what we want in a terminal? We would not have said overpriced, single-sourced wifi and no power outlets. Jeez! And while I'm on the topic of T-Mobile sucking:... From
Joho the Blog on September 22, 2005 at 6:48 p.m..
Enabled comments via Haloscan
Marco Kalz complained about a missing comment feature. So, Marco, especially for you: Comments! I did not want to implement a comment feature myself, so I use the
free Haloscan service to add comments and trackbacks. The drawback of this is, that comments may get lost once I want to quit the service. From
owrede_log on September 22, 2005 at 6:47 p.m..
SEM Sees Optimization PPC
Search engine optimization spending has grown over the past year. Expectations are the growth will continue. From
ClickZ Stats on September 22, 2005 at 6:45 p.m..
Opera
The Opera web browser - for a long time a viable alternative to Netscape and Internet Explorer - is now free. Moreover, the advertising that used to plague Opera users has been removed. [ From
OLDaily on September 22, 2005 at 6:45 p.m..
Outsourced Grading , Inside Higher Ed
You can be sure academics will respond, as one commenter already has, that grading is an integral part of teaching. But there comes a point, as it did for me when I taught, when grading comes to be measured in vertical feet, and represents a burden, not an opportunity. Anyhow, this pilot, launched by Kentucky From
OLDaily on September 22, 2005 at 6:45 p.m..
Online Communities: From BBSes to Blogs and Beyond , Andy Carvin's Waste of Bandwidth
Andy Carvin is offering a mix of blog posts and podcasts from the Scottish Learning festival, including talks by Marc Prensky and Robin Blake. I have thought of podcasting others' talks, in addition to my own, but issues of permission, quality and hosting have deterred me. How long before the conference podcast becomes standard and before people routinely start posting the audio of their talks on their own websites? How long after this before transcripts become standard as well? [ From
OLDaily on September 22, 2005 at 6:45 p.m..
Handbook for Bloggers and Cyberdissidents ,
An outstanding work for activists, the Handbook for Bloggers and Cyberdissidents not only tells you what tools to use and how to blog well, it also tells you how to blog anonymously, route around censorship and to keep your email private. Indispensible. PDF. Via From
OLDaily on September 22, 2005 at 6:45 p.m..
The Quiet Crisis , University Business
Interview with author Peter Smith, who offers his own analysis of the crisis in American education: it's the universities' fault. "The problem, he says, is not that millions of lower-income and minority students lack the capacity to learn, but that colleges and universities lack the capacity to educate." I think there's a point to what he says, but I think that the deeper point is that there is a social divide, not just in the U.S. (though we have certainly witnessed that) but around the world, and that the current structure of learning results in a disinclination on the part of From
OLDaily on September 22, 2005 at 6:45 p.m..
How International High School Students do in the US , PILOTed
More commentary on the state of learning in the U.S. (it seems to be a theme these days). Mitch Weisburgh observes, "When my sisters and I were in high school, our family hosted kids from Sweden, France, and Chile. The students from these countries were not able to keep up with the honors classes at our high school and enrolled in easier classes. Today, it's a completely different story. Virtually every AFS high school student comes to the US ahead of our kids in math, statistics, chemistry, physics, and biology; even ahead of our elite kids." On the other hand, he observes, American kids From
OLDaily on September 22, 2005 at 6:45 p.m..
SearchFox
This application is still in beta (write to esteban@searchfox.com for access, indicating your preferred username). What it does is aggregate your RSS feeds (you can import your list of feeds using OPML (it's a bit hard to find - click on "Manage My World" in the "Resources" menu or click on the pencil next to "My World"). What SearchFox will then do is watch what you're reading and arrange the items in the order of most interest to you (at least, as perceived by the algorithm). The ordering seemed to be pretty good even after only a few reads (of course, this is the sort of thing tha From
OLDaily on September 22, 2005 at 6:45 p.m..
Dept. of Back to the Lab.
Dept. of Back to the Lab. I saw this in Tomalak's Realm and thought, great, it's about time somebody put an iPod-type drive into a camcorder. But reading the review brought me back to reality. The headline must have been written by someone from JVC. In short, these camcorders would be ok for consumer use, but they complicate editing and the quality is not up to professional standards. Still, it's nice to know somebody is thinking in the right direction. NY Times:
Aha! Video Straight t From Bill Brandon: eLearning on September 22, 2005 at 4:46 p.m..
Mark Your Calendars - 09/22/06 is OneWebDay
Susan Crawford has a vision
for OneWebDay - an Earth Day style celebration of the Net. In most cases I'd be highly skeptical of such a thing, but it apparently only takes one breakfast with Susan (and Berkmanites) to make a believer out of me. We've got 365 days; let's go to work. What would you like to do to celebrate what the Net's done for you individually and us collectively? Make sure
A Copyfighter's Musings on September 22, 2005 at 4:45 p.m..
ETC2C Podcast #3
Three out of the four of us got together Tuesday night and chatted via
Skype for about 45 minutes primarily about access, access to the Web, access to the tools, access to the content. In a nutshell, I'm the depressing one. The longer it takes everyone to get connected, the more the divide is going to grow. There's just no question in my mind that not providing THE most powerful and important technology out there to every kid is just absolutely unfair at best and really immoral at worst. Just a couple of show notes...I'm amazed at the qualit
weblogged News on September 22, 2005 at 2:47 p.m..
robots.txt question
[Note: This post is part of the Be Dumb in Public program, of which I am a lifetime member.] There's lots of good info on the Web about how to create a robots.txt file that will keep the major search engines from spidering your site. But I haven't found instructions aimed at my precise level of ineptitutde. So, here goes... Let's say my "hideme.com"directory exists at root level. That is, my host won't let me go any further down than that. I see hideme.com plus all the other directories I own. Let's say I want to put in a robots.txt... From
Joho the Blog on September 22, 2005 at 1:48 p.m..
[berkman] Susan Crawford on One Web Day
"The popular myth is that the Internet was bult to withstand a nuclear attack, but it may not withstand the depravations of the telcos and cablecos." Her idea: A year from today, we have an Earth Day for the Internet. No particular political agenda. Big tent. "A first step towards recognizing the fragility of this resource." She says, "The key pain humans feel is alienation." She wants One Web Day to help counter this with connection. Her mother said, "But on Earth Day, you can plant a tree!" So, what can we do on OWD? It has to be participatory.... From
Joho the Blog on September 22, 2005 at 12:46 p.m..
Los blogs de ABC
El diario ABC se suma a la movida bloguer con blogs.abc.es, lo cuenta Juan Varela en ABC.es a punto de estrenar blogs, y él mismo estrena Vida Digital.... From
eCuaderno v.2.0 on September 22, 2005 at 9:53 a.m..
The New Is
I've posted the write-up Ars Electronica required of its presenters. It's called (overly-dramatically) The New Is. It's a slightly different take on what's becoming my same-old topic: The effect of the change in principles of organization currently underway. This piece focuses on the dismantling and re-mantling of knowledge. Here's a snippet from near the beginning: From Aristotle's way of thinking came a history of thought and politics that made certain assumptions: Because knowledge and being are fused, just as there is only one reality, there is only one struct From
Joho the Blog on September 22, 2005 at 9:49 a.m..
World blogging guide
Rebecca MacKinnon at Global Voices gets the scoop on Reporters without Borders' Handbook For Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents being released today: The Reporters Without Borders Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents is not for any of those purposes. It is the first truly useful book I've seen aimed at the kinds of bloggers featured here at Global Voices every day: People who have views and information that they want to share with the world beyond their own national borders. They are often people whose perspectives are not well represented in their own country's media, and cert From
Joho the Blog on September 22, 2005 at 8:46 a.m..
Bogus Contest: Internet MadLibs
[The following is from the latest issue of my (free) newsletter, JOHO:] Bogus Contest: Internet MadLibs At the Emmy's, Jon Stewart apparently dubbed in network-acceptable words to passages they have found too hot (= interesting, real) to allow on air. This suggests a type of Internet MadLibs. Can you improve on the following famous Internet quotes? Information just wants to _____ - John Perry Barlow The network ___ the computer - Scott McNealy The future is already here. It's just not ______ - William Gibson ...I took _____ in creating the Internet - Al Gore (See here for the actual. From
Joho the Blog on September 22, 2005 at 8:46 a.m..
It doesn't get worse than this
Michael Ruppert
doesn't hesitate to comment on Rita - the second category 5 Hurricane - that is making landfall. Now it's possible, that this will be desasterous to US economy: The remaining half of Gulf energy production undamaged by Katrina is directly in Rita's
crosshairs. He is quoting several articles. For instance
owrede_log on September 22, 2005 at 8:45 a.m..
The essay as partial
I was working with a student today on the essay as a literary genre. As we talked, I found myself interested in the problem of authority and the limits of the authority held by the essayist. An essay usually differs from a treatise or an encyclopedia article by not being definitive, not even trying to be definitive. An essay suggests, trys out, considers; an essay follows the thinker in the course of an experience or an investigation. The reader of an essay knows that the piece is only... From
Weblogs in Higher Education on September 22, 2005 at 6:52 a.m..
Cell Ban Proposed for New Drivers
Talking on a cell phone or other wireless device would be illegal for teens and other novice drivers if a proposal by the National Transportation Safety Board is adopted. From
Wired News on September 22, 2005 at 6:45 a.m..
Florida May Vote on Stem Cells
Embryonic stem-cell research advocates in the Sunshine State try their hand at a ballot initiative, hoping to avoid the complications California faced. By Kristen Philipkoski. From
Wired News on September 22, 2005 at 6:45 a.m..
Let Google Copy!
A lawsuit this week targeting the search giant's plans to scan library books offers a chance for the court to roll back unnecessarily restrictive copyright laws. A Wired News editorial. From
Wired News on September 22, 2005 at 6:45 a.m..
Goof Lets Times' Content Go Free
Hot on the heels of The New York Times' launch of its paid subscription service, a blog publishes links to the content on other sites. The paper is now cracking down on syndication partners. By Cyrus Farivar. From
Wired News on September 22, 2005 at 6:45 a.m..
A Sci-Fi Future Awaits the Court
As chief justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts will preside over cases pitting individual privacy against technologies we can only dream of today. How he will judge them is anyone's guess. Commentary by Bruce Schneier. From
Wired News on September 22, 2005 at 6:45 a.m..
Metal Gear Punk'd
How Team US Online Media got destroyed in the final round of the Metal Gear Solid online tournament -- and loved every second of it. Chris Kohler recounts his final Tokyo Game Show adventure. From
Wired News on September 22, 2005 at 6:45 a.m..
Can Bloggers Strike It Rich?
Blog network pioneers keep their finances close to the chest, but salary information for scribes behind hit sites like Gizmodo, Fleshbot and Gawker is starting to trickle out. Time to quit your day job and blog for a living? Commentary by Adam Penenberg. From
Wired News on September 22, 2005 at 6:45 a.m..